[Peace-discuss] documented proof that Bush intentionally fabricated grounds for war

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts
by Ray McGovern
 
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those
words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less.
 For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its
British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries'
leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq.
 More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of
incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what
they want to believe.  As long as our evidence, however
abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not
compel belief.  It simply is much easier on the psyche to
assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco
on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were
sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized
disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now
leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged.
 Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international
Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the
most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's
Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard
Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh
back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove
briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security
officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans
to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which
immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. 
Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions.  Or,
worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.

Juggernaut Before The Horse

In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others
that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by
launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction."  Period.  What
about the intelligence?  Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The
intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush
has decided on war, but notes that stitching together
justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin."
 Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and
his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or
Iran.

In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a
well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. 
The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement
from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:

    *
      Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
    *
      Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in
Africa;
    *
      Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile
biological weapons laboratories;
    *
      Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped
missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
    *
      Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
    *
      A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good
measure.

All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that
"there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath
after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's
briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S.
military options under discussion involved "a continuous air
campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli"—the clear
implication being that planners of the air campaign would also
see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.

The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to
mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security
Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it
clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list,
according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was
there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no discussion of
why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam.  Rather, after CIA
Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in
Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or
biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to
which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb.  Again, neither
O'Neil nor the other participants asked the obvious questions.
 Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for
dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.

Obedience School

As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further
grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's
"poodle."  The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone
conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey
the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought
that, "If the political context were right, people would
support regime change."  This, after Attorney General Peter
Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change
"was not a legal base for military action,"—a point Goldsmith
made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was
persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to
change his mind 10 days later.

The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the
assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."

I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting
so jarring.  Surely it is what one might expect, given all
else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white
somehow gives it more impact.  And the implications are no
less jarring.

One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his
American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet.  (And there
is no closer relationship between two intelligence services
than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.)  Tenet, of
course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless
played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind
of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome.  If
there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that
kind of politicization.  But Tenet decided to be a "team
player" and set the tone.

Politicization:  Big Time

Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what
happened.  The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was
manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding
foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in
helping supervise the deceit.  The British documents make
clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in
analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception—an order
of magnitude more serious.  No other conclusion is now possible.

Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former
case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers
told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to
go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the
alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball"
raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication
about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United
Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA
supervisor:

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen
regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the
powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether
Curveball knows what he's talking about."

When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director
late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees
explaining the "rules of the road"—first and foremost, "We
support the administration and its policies."  So much for
objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.

Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized
environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new
ethos—one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to
that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak
truth to power.

Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence
chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up"
(as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior
decision for war.  There is no word to describe the reaction
of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our
profession on a matter of such consequence.  "Outrage" does
not come close.

Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures

Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who
gave this latest British government document to The Sunday
Times a debt of gratitude.  Unauthorized disclosures are
gathering steam.  They need to increase quickly on this side
of the Atlantic as well—the more so, inasmuch as
Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted
on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.

In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S.
government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:

    We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and
careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government
officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the
young men and women put in harm's way.  We urge you to act on
those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and
effective way to serve the nation.  The time for speaking out
is now.

If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses
bring them to light, the chances become less that a president
could launch another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran.

Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on
the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the
ecumenical Church of the Saviour. 
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
spring semster 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Biology, Williams College
Williamstown, MA
phone: (413)-597-3518

Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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