This is just flabbergastingly brazen. (I wish I could say I was surprised... and yet the last seven years have left me too jaded.) According to a new book by journalist Ron Suskind, in 2003 the Bush administration ordered the CIA to create and plant false, forged evidence of Iraqi collusion with al Qaeda:
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Ron Suskind [By October 2003,] the White House had finally thought of a way to use [Saddam's intelligence chief] Habbush. ... The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq - thus showing, finally that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda... The letter also mentioned suspicious shipments to Iraq from Niger set up with al Qaeda's assistance. The idea was to take the letter to Habbush and have him transcribe it in his own neat handwriting on a piece of Iraqi government stationery, to make it look legitimate. CIA would then take the finished product to Baghdad and have someone release it to the media. Even five years later, [Rob Richer, who worked in CIA for 30 years and was in charge of "clandestine ops" in the Middle East--now working as an executive at Blackwater USA] remembers looking down at the creamy White House stationery on which the assignment was written. "The guys from the Vice President's office were just barraging us in this period with one thing after another: Run down this lead, find out about that. It was nonstop. Of course, this was different. This was creating a deception." Richer passed the directive down the chain, to the Iraq Operations Group, [a CIA team co-led by John Maguire]. ..."When it was discussed with me, I just thought it was incredible," Maguire recalls. "A box-checking of all outstanding issues in one letter, from one guy." |
And, presto! A few weeks later the "discovery" of the letter was reported in Britain's Sunday Telegraph.
And in anticipation of the usual apologetics claiming that this is just politics (or foreign intelligence) "as usual," let us note:
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Ron Suskind Under a 1991 amendment to the statutes that in 1947 created CIA and that govern its actions, there is a passage that reads, "No covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media." The operation created by the White House and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with those statutory requirements. ...It is not the sort of offense that brings jail time. It is much broader than that... the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings." |
At this point, our Congressional "leadership's" unwillingness to impeach Bush and Cheney does nothing other than leave them swimming in the same muck. It's unconscionable.
