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Today's
Stories
February 27, 2004
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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February
27, 2004
Punished for Honest
Intelligence
No
Skunks Allowed
By RAY McGOVERN
It was a quite a show at the Senate Intelligence
Committee's worldwide threat assessment briefing on Tuesday,
Feb. 24. Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., outdid
himself as damage control officer for fallout from failed intelligence.
Sen. Roberts captured the spirit when
he told reporters that, although "everybody would have some
second thoughts" about the reasons for the war, he believes
that Saddam Hussein posed a threat "in some ways more dangerous
[than weapons of mass destruction]," because his leadership
had deteriorated (sic). Small wonder that Roberts took pains
to ensure there would be none who might snicker at the formal
briefing.
The casting was a dead giveaway. For
the first time since annual threat assessment briefings by the
heads of key intelligence agencies began a decade ago, the director
of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research
(INR) was disinvited.
Roberts and his Republican colleagues
decided to preclude the possibility that some recalcitrant senator
might ask why INR was able to get it right on Iraq when everyone
else was wrong. Recall that the CIA and other intelligence agencies
signed on to the worst National Intelligence Estimate in 40 years--the
one issued in October 2002 with the loaded title "Iraq's
Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." (The
only near rival in infamy is the NIE of September 1962, which
said that the Soviet Union would not risk trying to put missiles
in Cuba. The missiles were already en route.)
Punished For Honesty
INR has been forced to sit with its face
to the wall ever since it resisted White House pressure to cook
intelligence to the recipe of high policy. CIA Director George
Tenet and other malleable intelligence managers acquiesced in
that pressure and became accomplices in the Bush administration's
successful effort in the fall of 2002 to deceive Congress into
forfeiting to the president its constitutional prerogative to
declare war.
INR was the skunk at that picnic. It
dissented loudly from some of the most important key judgments
of the NIE of October 2002. For example, the canard about Iraq
seeking uranium from Niger--impossible on its face and based
on a forgery--found its way into the estimate, but INR's footnote
dismissed the story as "highly dubious."
This was no small matter. As Rep. Henry
Waxman, D-Calif., noted in an irate letter to the president on
March 17, 2002, the Iraq/Niger canard had been "a central
part of the U.S. case against Iraq" --a key piece of "evidence"
used to sway Congress to give its approval for war.
INR analysts also debunked the fable
about aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment for Iraq. Although
the tubes had been advertised by National Security Adviser Condolleeza
Rice as useful only in a nuclear application, State Department
intelligence analysts joined counterparts in the Department of
Energy and U.N. specialists in pointing out, correctly, that
the tubes were for conventional artillery.
Most obstreperous of all, on the highly
neuralgic nuclear issue, INR was unwilling to predict when Iraq's
"nuclear weapons program" was likely to yield a nuclear
device. Why? It saw no compelling evidence that Vice President
Dick Cheney was correct in claiming that the previous nuclear
weapons program had been "reconstituted."
And if that were not enough, State Department
intelligence committed several sins not directly connected with
the NIE. INR's most experienced Middle East specialists prepared
a study exposing as a chimera the notion that democracy could
be brought to the area at the point of a gun. INR also provided
invaluable support to the interagency team that worked so hard
to prepare sensibly for post-war Iraq. Its analysis and recommendations
were trashed by Pentagon neophytes who knew the invasion would
be a "cakewalk"--and by Vice President Dick Cheney,
who knew that our troops would be seen as liberators.
Who Needs Context?
A bad lot, those State Department intelligence
types! Always trying to "put things in context;" unable
to see the overriding need to "get with the program."
Last year, INR's director, Carl Ford,
harped on the need for putting the country's best analysts to
work providing policymakers with the context in which threats
arise. Ford has retired, but the current acting director, Thomas
Fingar, is cut of the same cloth--the kind of straight shooter
likely to say things that would embarrass the CIA, the administration
and maybe even the committee itself.
Who needs context? Better to let them
talk about how many terrorists they can kill than the conditions
that breed terrorism. Let them continue to use the paradigm of
combating malaria: Surely it's easier to try to shoot down the
mosquitoes as they leave the swamp than to drain the swamp.
And tell Tenet, too, to lay off this
context business. The administration is still smarting from that
memorandum he sent up two years ago warning that "the underlying
causes that drive terrorists will persist." That CIA report
cited a Gallup poll of almost 10,000 Muslims in nine countries
in which respondents described the United States as "ruthless,
aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased."
Rubbish! They just hate our democracy.
When senators ask--as they undoubtedly
will--if the United States is safer now than after the 9/11 attacks,
we want to have folks who know the correct answer. Tenet, FBI
Director Robert Mueller and Defense Intelligence Agency Director
Lowell Jacoby know it has to be "yes." As for the State
Department, although Secretary Colin Powell has now been brought
into line, you can never be sure his intelligence specialists
will see the light and "get with the program."
Better to keep them away.
Ray McGovern
is a 27-year veteran CIA analyst whose duties included chairing
National Intelligence Estimates. He is co-founder of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and co-director of the
Servant Leadership School, an outreach ministry in the inner
city of Washington, DC. He can be reached at: rmcgovern@slschool.org
Weekend
Edition Features for February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
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