Iran, Iraq Herald 'New Chapter' in Shiite-Led Alliance
Former Enemies to Forge Closer Ties On Security, Economy, Leaders Say
By Andy Mosher and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 17, 2005
BAGHDAD, July 16 -- A quarter-century after Iraq's invasion of Iran launched
the Middle East's bloodiest modern war, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari
arrived in Tehran on Saturday for a three-day visit that officials on both
sides said signals a new alliance that could change the religious and
political balance of power in the region.
Jafari and more than 10 other Iraqi cabinet ministers are scheduled to work
with their Iranian counterparts on closer security and economic cooperation,
particularly on counterterrorism, control of their porous 900-mile frontier,
and oil, gas and manufacturing deals. Jafari, a Shiite Muslim who spent
almost a decade of exile in Iran while President Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq,
is the first Iraqi head of government to visit Shiite-ruled Iran in more
than a dozen years.
-cont.-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071601165.html?nav=hcmodule
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"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory
after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would
have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there,
and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of
the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered
American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."
- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, "It Doesn't
Take a Hero."
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They Knew...
Despite the whitewash, we now know that the Bush administration was warned
before the war that its Iraq claims were weak
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/they_knew_0802/
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1435181,00.html
www.iraqbodycount.net
www.costofwar.com
http://icasualties.org/oif/
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U.S. Report Finds Iraq Was Minimal Weapons Threat in '03
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - Iraq had essentially destroyed its illicit weapons
capability within months after the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991, and its
capacity to produce such weapons had eroded even further by the time of the
American invasion in 2003, the top American inspector in Iraq said in a
report made public today.
http://tinyurl.com/3p3q9
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/international/middleeast/0
6CND-INTE.html?hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=)
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The question of prewar intelligence has been thrust back into the public eye
with the disclosure of a secret British memo showing that, eight months
before the March 2003 start of the war, a senior British intelligence
official reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that U.S. intelligence was
being shaped to support a policy of invading Iraq.
Moreover, a close reading of the recent 600-page report by the president's
commission on intelligence, and the previous report by the Senate panel,
shows that as war approached, many U.S. intelligence analysts were
internally questioning almost every major piece of prewar intelligence about
Hussein's alleged weapons programs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100474_pf.html
--
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