| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
18 Jan 2005 03:07:40 PM |
| Object: |
New intelligence reports raise questions about Bush's disastrous war |
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10667714.htm
Jan. 17, 2005
New intelligence reports raise questions about U.S. mission in Iraq
By Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON -
A series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim
picture of the road ahead and concludes that there's little likelihood
that President Bush's goals can be attained in the near future.
Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are
likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war
between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA
and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials
who've seen the classified reports.
A CIA spokesman, Tom Crispell, said he was unable to comment.
A White House spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
The federal government was closed Monday for the Martin Luther King
Jr. holiday.
A new public report by the National Intelligence Council concludes
that instead of diminishing terrorism, U.S.-occupied Iraq has replaced
prewar Afghanistan as a breeding and training ground for terrorists
who may disperse to conduct attacks elsewhere.
Two senior intelligence officials with access to classified reporting
said Islamic militants allied with or inspired by Osama bin Laden were
forging ties to Iraqi nationalists and remnants of former dictator
Saddam Hussein's regime.
The linkage is similar to the one that so-called "Afghan Arabs" formed
with Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the Soviet Union withdrew from
that country, they said.
The Bush administration claimed before invading Iraq that Saddam had
strong ties to international terrorism, but most counterterrorism
experts dispute that and no evidence has been found to support the
claim.
"The sad thing is we have created what the administration claimed we
were intervening to prevent: an Iraq/al-Qaida linkage," one of the
senior intelligence officials said.
The officials who were more pessimistic spoke on condition of
anonymity, because the latest intelligence assessments are classified
and their views are at odds with public statements from the White
House.
Even in their public remarks, top military officers and policy-makers
are becoming more cautionary about the road ahead in Iraq.
All major U.S. intelligence agencies share a pessimistic prognosis for
Iraq's future, according to a senior administration official.
The assessment of the State Department's intelligence bureau is so
grim that it's referred to as the "I agree with Scowcroft's analysis"
report.
That's a reference to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who
was national security adviser to Bush's father, former President
George H.W. Bush.
Scowcroft said earlier this month that the Iraqi elections could
deepen the conflict and "we may be seeing an incipient civil war."
Bush and his national security team took issue with Scowcroft's
remarks, but the pessimistic indicators have led a growing number of
senior U.S. military and intelligence officials to say they worry that
the mission in Iraq is becoming untenable for the American military.
The United States faces an agonizing choice, they say, because an
American withdrawal would hand militant Islam a huge victory and
probably doom the transitional Iraqi government that will be chosen in
less than two weeks.
Another possibility is that the transitional government, expected to
be dominated by Shiites, could give the United States a timetable to
leave.
The White House and State Department have said such a request would be
honored.
The reports, also by the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence
Agency, were shared and discussed at a recent U.S. intelligence
community conference.
Intelligence analysts expect the Iraqi insurgents, who are primarily
Sunni, to have three post-election goals:
-Crippling and discrediting the new government by assassinating key
officials, killing police officers and demonstrating that the
government and its American allies can't secure the country.
-Fomenting Sunni-Shiite violence.
-Driving the Americans out of Iraq by undermining public and political
support there and the United States for the U.S. mission.
Bush has given no sign that he plans to change approaches in Iraq and
has declined to set his own timeline for American troops to withdraw.
The president told The Washington Post in an interview published
Sunday that he believed that the 2004 election ratified his Iraq
policies.
"I'm more patient than some, but also mindful that we've got to get
the Iraqis up and running as quickly as possible, so they can defeat
these terrorists," he said.
At the same time, the Bush administration has tried to lower public
expectations of what the elections for an Iraqi national assembly can
accomplish.
Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of multinational forces in
northwest Iraq, said Saturday that insurgents were likely to switch
their focus from disrupting the election to threatening those who won.
"I think there are some threats that will emerge in the post-election
period which are very, very important," Ham said.
Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told National
Public Radio last week that while civil war was not in the offing, "I
think most in the government expect the violence to continue long
after these elections."
The public report by the National Intelligence Council appears to
contradict the Bush administration's contention that the invasion of
Iraq struck a blow against terrorism.
The report by the council, an advisory board of top intelligence
analysts that's independent of the CIA, says Iraq has taken the place
once held by Afghanistan as a proving ground for terrorist leaders.
"The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in
Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the
dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," says
the unclassified report, "Mapping the Global Future," which is an
analysis of trends to the year 2020.
"Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide
recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language
proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are `professionalized'
and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself," it says.
_________________________________________________________
Don't forget to thank the presidunce.
Harry
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| User: "Mad Mambo Master of Macedonia" |
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| Title: Re: New intelligence reports raise questions about Bush's disastrous war |
18 Jan 2005 04:27:41 PM |
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Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in
news:phuqu0hav558coglk1lg6gnsc1sbpctr18@4ax.com:
New intelligence reports raise questions about U.S. mission in Iraq
Soon we'll hear Fattie Limbaugh & Bill "Blubbering Vagina" O'Reilly
harangue Tom Daschle on why LIBERALS LOST IRAQ.
--
"Prepare my war elephant!"
--Legend of Suroyathai
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: New intelligence reports raise questions about Bush's disastrous war |
18 Jan 2005 03:31:00 PM |
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Harry Hope wrote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10667714.htm
Jan. 17, 2005
New intelligence reports raise questions about U.S. mission in Iraq
By Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
[...]
By Robert Fisk
The Independent U.K.
Wednesday 12 January 2005
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.
Journalism yields a world of clich=E9s but here, for once, the first
clich=E9 that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful
Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful
journalists.
That day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, 30
January, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday.
The latest Zarqawi video shows the killing of six Iraqi policemen. Each
is shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead.
Then a gunman walks up behind him and blows his head apart with
bullets. These images haunt everyone. At the al-Hurriya intersection
yesterday morning, four truckloads of Iraqi national guardsmen - the
future saviours of Iraq, according to George Bush - are passing my car.
Their rifles are porcupine quills, pointing at every motorist, every
Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army pointing their weapons at their
own people. And they are all wearing masks - black hoods or ski-masks
or keffiyahs that leave only slits for frightened eyes. Just before it
collapsed finally into the hands of the insurgents last summer, I saw
exactly the same scene in the streets of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad.
Now I am watching them in the capital.
At Kamal Jumblatt Square beside the Tigris, two American Humvees
approach the roundabout. Their machine-gunners are shouting at drivers
to keep away from them. A big sign in Arabic on the rear of each
vehicle says: "Forbidden. Do not overtake this convoy. Stay 50 metres
away from it."
The drivers behind obey; they know the meaning of the "deadly force"
which the Americans have written on to their checkpoint signs. But the
two Humvees drive into a massive traffic jam, the gunners now screaming
at us to move back.
When a taxi which does not notice the U.S. troops blocks their path,
the American in the lead vehicle hurls a plastic bottle full of water
on to its roof and the driver mounts the grass traffic circle. A truck
receives the same treatment from the lead Humvee. "Go back," shouts the
rear gunner, staring at us through shades. We try desperately to turn
into the jam.
Yes, the Russians would probably have chucked hand grenades in Kabul.
But here were the terrified "liberators" of Baghdad throwing bottles of
water at the Iraqis who are supposed to enjoy an American-imposed
democracy on 30 January.
The rear Humvee has "Specialist Carrol" written on the windscreen.
Specialist Carrol, I am sure, regards every damn one of us as a
potential suicide bomber - and I can't blame him. One such bomber had
just driven up to the police station in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and
destroyed himself and the lives of at least six policemen.
Round the corner, I discover the reason for the jam: Iraqi cops are
fighting off hundreds of motorists desperate for petrol, the drivers
refusing to queue any longer for the one thing which Iraq possesses in
Croesus-like amounts - petrol.
I drop by the Ramaya restaurant for lunch. Closed. They are building a
20-floor security wall around the premises. So I drive to the Rif for a
pizza, occasionally tinkling the restaurant's piano while I watch the
entrance for people I don't want to see. The waiters are nervous. They
are happy to bring my pizza in 10 minutes. There is no one else in the
restaurant, you see, and they watch the road outside like friendly
rabbits. They are waiting for The Car.
I call on an old Iraqi friend who used to publish a literary magazine
during Saddam's reign. "They want me to vote, but they can't protect
me," he says. "Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling
station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a hand-grenade in my
home three days later? The Americans will say they did their best,
Allawi's people will say I am a 'martyr for democracy'. So, do you
think I'm going to vote?"
At Mustansiriya university - one of Iraq's best - students of English
literature are to face their end-of-term exam. January marks the end of
the Iraqi semester. But one of the students tells me that his fellow
students had told their teacher that - so fraught are the times - they
were not yet prepared for the examination. Rather than giving them all
zeros, the teacher meekly postpones the exam.
I drive back through the al-Hurriya intersection beside the "Green
Zone" and suddenly there is a big black 4x4, filled with ski-masked
gunmen. "Get back!" they scream at every motorist as they try to cut
across the median. I roll the window down. The rear door of the 4x4
whacks open. A ski-masked Westerner - blond hair, blue eyes - is
pointing a Kalashnikov at my car. "Get back!" he shrieks in ghastly
Arabic. Then he clears the median, followed by three armoured pick-ups,
windows blacked, tires skidding on the road surface, carrying the
sacred Westerners inside to the dubious safety of the "Green Zone", the
hermetically-sealed compound from which Iraq is supposedly governed. I
glance at the Iraqi press. Colin Powell is warning of "civil war" in
Iraq. Why do we Westerners keep threatening civil war in a country
whose society is tribal rather than sectarian? Of all papers, it is the
Kurdish Al Takhri, loyal to Mustafa Barzani, which asks the same
question. "There has never been a civil war in Iraq," the editorial
thunders. And it is right.
So, "full ahead both" for the dreaded 30 January elections and
democracy. The American generals - with a unique mixture of mendacity
and hope amid the insurgency - are now saying that only four of Iraq's
18 provinces may not be able to "fully" participate in the elections.
Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and
realize - as the generals all know - that those four provinces contain
more than half of the population of Iraq.
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