THIS MODERN WORLD

Ron Suskind was on NPR this morning to discuss his new book The Way of the World, which alleges Iraq’s intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush told the US before the war that Iraq had no WMD.

NPR asked George Tenet and the White House for comment, and, remarkably enough, they both essentially admitted this was true.

SUSKIND: What we now know from this investigation is that a secret mission was conducted in which a British manager, intelligence agent, met with the head of Iraqi intelligence in a secret location in Amman, Jordan. And what the Iraqi intelligence chief told the British—and essentially the Americans, because we’re all in this together—is that there were no WMD in Iraq. And what that meant is that we knew everything that became so obvious by the summer after the invasion. And the president made a decision essentially to ignore that intelligence…

NPR: We have called key players in Ron Suskind’s account…George Tenet says the Iraqi failed to persuade, and a White House spokesman adds that any information the Iraqi may have provided was, quote, “immaterial.”

Further corroboration appears in a November, 2003 New York Times story by James Risen. Risen’s article is about last-minute attempts by Iraq to avert war, using a Lebanese-American intermediary named Imad Hage who knew Richard Perle:

A week [after February, 2003 meetings in Beirut with the Iraqi Intelligence Service’s chief of foreign operations], Mr. Hage said, he agreed to hold further meetings in Baghdad. When he arrived, he was driven to a large, well-guarded compound, where he was met by a gray-haired man in a military uniform. It was Tahir Jalil Habbush, the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, who is No. 16 on the United States list of most wanted Iraqi leaders. Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush asked him if it was true that he knew Mr. Perle. “Have you met him?”

Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush began to vent his frustration over what the Americans really wanted. He said that to demonstrate the Iraqis’ willingness to help fight terrorism, Mr. Habbush offered to hand over Abdul Rahman Yasin, who has been indicted in United States in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mr. Yasin fled to Iraq after the bombing, and the United States put up a $25 million reward for his capture.

Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush offered to turn him over to Mr. Hage, but Mr. Hage said he would pass on the message that Mr. Yasin was available.

Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush also insisted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and added, “Let your friends send in people and we will open everything to them.”

Mr. Hage said he asked Mr. Habbush, “Why don’t you tell this to the Bush administration?” He said Mr. Habbush replied cryptically, “We have talks with people.”

Mr. Hage said he later learned that one contact was in Rome between the C.I.A. and representatives of the Iraqi intelligence service. American officials confirm that the meeting took place, but say that the Iraqi representative was not a current intelligence official and that the meeting was not productive.

In addition, there was an attempt to set up a meeting in Morocco between Mr. Habbush and United States officials, but it never took place, according to American officials.

This can be added onto the pile:

• The CIA sent thirty relatives of Iraqi scientists to Iraq to ask them what WMD Iraq had, and they uniformly reported it had nothing.
• Iraq’s foreign minister Nouri Sabri secretly told the US in 2002 that Iraq had no active WMD programs.
• Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center, told an acquaintance just before the war that he expected we would find “Not much, if anything.”

TO: Jamison Foser, Media Matters
FROM: Me
RE: Your recent column

Jamison,

You write today:

There’s nothing inherently “effective” about an attack like this [Republicans ridiculing Obama for saying we’d save a lot of gas if everyone kept their cars’ tires properly inflated]. Reporters have a choice: They can simply repeat the GOP claims, in which case the shot is effective. Or they can do their jobs and give their readers and viewers an accurate understanding of the situation, in which case the attack will be ineffective — and, in fact, counterproductive, since it will make the attackers look ignorant or dishonest.

Reporters don’t have a choice. Repeating stupid right-wing claims is their job.

Wait a sec….I thought Iraq was responsible for the anthrax attacks :

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is there any proof at all that Hussein is involved in the anthrax scares?

MYLROIE: There is no proof that Saddam is involved in the anthrax scares, but proof is different from evidence. Proof, according to the dictionary, is conclusive demonstration. Evidence is something that indicates, like your smile is evident of your affection for me. There is evidence that Iraq is behind the anthrax scares. First, it takes a highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the lethal form that was in the letter sent to Senator Daschle. Not many parties can do that. Second, there is an additive in that anthrax, bentonite, which is used to cause the anthrax to not stick together, and float in the air. Iraq is the only party known to have produced anthrax with bentonite.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Should the U.S.take action against Iraq?

MYLROIE: Yes. It is necessary for the United States to take action against Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War never ended. We continue it in the form of an economic siege whose origins lie in the Gulf War. And also, we bomb Iraq on a regular basis, and Saddam continues his part of the war in the form of terrorism. It is unlikely that that anthrax will remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used at some point, for example, in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us. He wants to do to the U.S. what we’ve done to Iraq. One way he can do that is terrorism, particularly biological terrorism.

Then again, who would believe the “crackpot” theories of Laurie Mylroie? Well, there’s this guy :

At the Pentagon, Wolfowitz was an insistent force behind an invasion of Iraq, bringing it up at the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration, months before Sept. 11. For years he had been a firm believer in the crackpot theories of Laurie Mylroie, a neoconservative writer, who argued that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and even the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

…and these guys :

For those of you playing “six degrees of neoconservatism”, Laurie Mylroie also co-wrote a book with Judy Miller about – you guessed it – Saddam Hussein.

Now that the neocons have mostly moved on the greener pastures, I’m sure we can expect the “evidence” that Bruce Ivins was an Iranian double-agent to surface any day now…

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Rush Limbaugh program.

Twenty years of lies and distortions, of single-handedly poisoning the political discourse in this country.

Most of us try to make our mark, in some small way. But it’s a rare group of human beings who can look themselves in the mirror and know, beyond any doubt, that the world is a far worse place for their having lived in it.

It’s quite an achievement!

So Seymour Hersh says that Vice President Cheney and his staff sat around back in January and discussed having Navy SEALS dress up as Iranian sailors and then attack American ships. This would fool Americans into supporting a war with Iran, you see.

In non-insane countries, this would merit screaming headlines and congressional investigations, all leading to mass resignations if it turned out to be true. In America, it merits a few blog posts.

Oh, and remember all stuff about how Saddam was killing us with his evil anthrax?

In October 2001, [Wayne] Downing, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and other proponents of a war with Iraq thought they had yet more ammunition for the case against Saddam. A series of deadly anthrax-laced letters had been sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Senator Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy and to several newsrooms. Mylroie asserted that Saddam was behind the mailings. An early forensic test of the anthrax letters (which was later disputed) appeared to show that the anthrax spores were highly refined and “weaponized.” To the Iraq hawks, the news was electric. “This is definitely Saddam!” Downing shouted to several White House aides. One of these aides later recalled overhearing Downing excitedly sharing the news over the phone with Wolfowitz and Feith. “I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other,” the White House official said.

Turns out we were a little off on that one—it looks like the perpetrator was probably someone from the US government’s own biological weapons lab. Well, no harm, no foul. Ho hum.