The Cover Up

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

Imperial Folly

The Telegraph reports that the soldier and former American football player Pat Tillman who was killed in Afghanistan thought George W. Bush was a "cowboy" and the Iraq an "imperial folly".

Slowly, but surely, the truth behind the hype over this invasion will come out. Bush, Cheney et al will be kept very busy trying to defend their reputations in the coming years.

So?

Cheney demonstrates his contempt for US public opinion.

Cheney Speaks Out Against Invasion of Iraq

Cheney explains why invading Iraq was a very bad idea (1994).

Quote:

"..how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many.."



Plus ca change!

Cheney Organising Coup

Those of you who are fed up with the Iraq war, may be "pleased" to know that there will soon be another war to occupy your waking hours.

It would seem that Dick Cheney is trying to organise, in all but name, a coup against President Bush and start a war with Iran.

Source: The Washington Note

Tenet Assails Administration

George J. Tenet, the former director of the CIA, has assailed Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in his new book, "At the Center of the Storm", saying that they pushed the US into war in Iraq without ever conducting a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

Quote:

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat."

Halliburton Move

Halliburton announced on Sunday that it plans to open a new corporate headquarters in Dubai.

Some US lawmakers have raised concerns that Halliburton, which is the Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq and holds a logistics contract valued at over $25BN, might be able to reduce its tax burden by moving its headquarters to Dubai.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., asked whether it might really be a back-door way to enable Halliburton to expand its business dealings with Iran or avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Halliburton used to employ US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rumsfeld To Go

Donald Rumsfeld the failed US Defence Secretary and one of the main architects of the failed Iraq invasion and occupation, will be leaving office before the end of this year.

Source Channel 4 News 7 November 2007 (click on the watch the report link)

Candidates to replace him are being approached, two have already declined the poison chalice. However, it is expected that Senator John Warner will replace him.

At the time of writing the Democrats have swept to power in Congress, the final results for the Senate are yet to be announced. Dick Cheney, another man with blood on his hands, has gone shooting.

Bush Refused Saddam's Surrender

A former political adviser to Saddam Hussein's son is claiming that Saddam was willing to surrender to all American demands before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but that the Bush administration refused his offers.

The disclosure has been made by Hossam Shaltout, a Canadian aerospace engineer and former American pilot, and founder of the peace organisation Rights and Freedom International. He claims that war could have been averted, but Bush aides blocked his efforts to announce Saddam's decision.

Quote:

"Saddam was willing to yield to all American demands, announced and unannounced, to reach peaceful resolution, but the Bush administration, including Elizabeth Cheney, undersecretary of State, David Welch, the U.S. ambassador in Egypt, and Gene Cretz, his political attache, did not respond to his offers."

Shaltout claimed that he was planning to fly from Amman to Baghdad to announce Saddam's decision, but the Royal Jordanian Airlines officials claimed that the US ordered the flight to leave five hours earlier causing him to miss the flight, preventing him from announcing on CNN that Saddam would bow to the Bush ultimatum.

Shaltout said he traveled by road to Baghdad, delaying him almost one day, but raced to get the communique approved from Saddam to broadcast over international TV stations broadcasting from Baghdad.

Two hours before the expiration of the Bush ultimatum, Saddam ordered Colonel Amer, his strongman, to facilitate Shaltout's broadcast of the communique. Colonel Amer ordered Allaa Mecky, the head of the Iraqi Channel 2 television, to accompany Shaltout and help him broadcast the communique."

It was very late at night and CNN in Baghdad was closed. So they went to al-Jazeera, and Shaltout told al-Jazeera Washington correspondent Hafez Almirazy on the air that he had the Iraqi government's official reply to the Bush ultimatum. Moments after Mirazy asked him for a brief, the plug was pulled on the transmission. Shaltout has a copy of that interrupted broadcast.

Shaltout said that when the Americans arrived in Baghdad, he offered his assistance to U.S. military officials. Instead he was arrested by Marines who went to his hotel suite taking his documents. Shaltout has the videotape of his arrest, and several supporting documents.

If this claim is true then the Bush Administration should be held to account, in the same manner as Saddam, for the thousands of lives lost during this criminally negligent fiasco.

Bush Cherry Picked Reason For War

Paul Pillar, a former CIA National Intelligence officer with 28 years' experience, has set the cat amongst the pigeons in an article that he has written for the journal Foreign Affairs.

In the article he alleges that the Bush administration selectively chose parts of intelligence (ie "cherry picked") to justify its decision, already made, to invade Iraq.

The Administration has repeatedly denied manipulating intelligence.

Vice President Dick Cheney said last year:

"What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence."

Intelligence officers have insisted that they did not distort the intelligence to satisfy the administration.

In a VOA interview, Paul Pillar alleges that Administration officials wanted to demonstrate a substantive link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida. He notes that no such links existed.

Quote:

"The main thing that happened there, particularly with reference to this issue of, was there a relationship between the Saddam regime and al-Qaida -- was a selective use of bits and pieces of reporting to try to build the case that in this case there was some kind of alliance without really reflecting the analytic judgment of the intelligence community that there was not."

Pillar claims that, whilst there was no direct pressure to alter intelligence analyses, the Administration's determination to go to war created a climate that cut off objectivity and stopped dissenting views among intelligence analysts.

Quote:

"If, instead, the analyst is operating in an environment in which he knows decisions have already been made, in which he knows the policymaker has a particular preference for what would suit his purposes in mustering support for that decision..well, that's an entirely different sort of thing."

The question that the American people need to ask is this:

Did President Bush take us to war to avenge his father, and use "exaggerated" intelligence to justify that decision?