Bush has hit the Trifecta of Failure, in his foreign policy in the "War on Terrorism"

Opinion, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Bush has hit the Trifecta of Failure, in his foreign policy and his "War on Terrorism"

Francis Lewis

Al-Jazeerah, 9/26/03

Bush has hit the Trifecta of Failure, in his foreign policy in the "War on Terrorism": Osama, Saddam & WMDs. Where are they all?

(The Bushies' track-record on domestic policies represents a Plethora of Failures ... but that's for another blog ... and their track-record on other foreign policy issues is also an abysmal disaster ... but that's also for another blog ... ):

(1) Osama bin Forgotten

Osama bin Laden was responsible for building the Al Qaida network of terrorists, who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania, causing the deaths of over 3000 innocent Americans. [Bush has massacred over 3500 innocent Afghan civilians, between 7346-9146 innocent Iraqis, 17 journalists, and over 350 American & British soldiers.] We still don't know what the Bushies knew in advance of that horrific tragedy, and when they knew it, as they have thwarted investigations into the truth behind 9/11.

Bush vowed to "Get 'im Dead or Alive", and not to stop his hunt for Osama bin Laden until he was brought to justice. But Bush forgets his promises as soon as he finishes his bumbling rhetoric (kind 'a like O. J. Simpson's promise to find the "real" killers of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson) ... Osama bin Forgotten ...

Meanwhile, the Al Qaida network is growing in size, having successfully defeated Bush, by achieving their goals to : (i) Remove US Troops from Saudi Arabia; (ii) Create Discord and Havoc by Manipulating a ... President to Act like a Dictatorial Emperor; and, (iii) Recruit More Muslims to the Cause of Fighting America, having foreseen the Bushies' hypocritical and incompetent bungling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In "Below the Beltway - Sifting Through the Rubble", by John B. Judis on http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/9/judis-j.html :

"There is also some evidence that in Iraq, Islamic radicals are making common cause with the Iraqi Ba'ath resistance to the American occupation. If so, the invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to prevent an alliance between secular Baathists and Islamic radicals, will have brought one into existence. This alliance won't necessarily threaten commuters in New York, but it will certainly endanger U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and it will make it even less likely that the Bush administration will get its way in that country."

(2) Saddam Hussein is Alive & Kicking

Saddam Hussein was used as a "convenient scape-goat" in a squalid diversionary tactic, by Bush, unable to defeat Al Qaida and failing to get Osama "dead or alive", as promised. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the U.S., our allies, or his own neighbors ... Saddam Hussein hadn't threatened us ... the CIA confirmed that Saddam Hussein had no interest in harming the U.S.A., and was in fact, an enemy of Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, and the Bush Regime ruthlessly figured that they could get away with lying to America ... Karl Rove, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz probably assumed that if the war was successful, their immorality and crimes would be "swept under the carpet".

Saddam Hussein's regime had nothing to do with Al Qaida, or any terrorist group that threatened the U.S.A. The invasion of Iraq (planned well in advance of 9/11) was useful to the PNAC insane vision of U.S. domination of the world, and to the Bush Regime's devotion to their corporate campaign contributors: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, and Big Oil-- all of whom lust after the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world.

Bush invaded Iraq to divert attention from his failed economic policies raping America senseless, and failing to capture Osama bin Forgotten, and to achieve his sordid Business Plan to enrich his corporate cronies. The bungled war-turned-guerrilla-quagmire, has indeed, been the very cause of increasing terrorism and more recruitment of those Muslims who don't want to be occupied by the American Corporate President & Robber-barons, who intend to rape Iraq of their businesses and oil.

In "Pilger claims White House knew Saddam was no threat" on http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/23/1064082978207.html :

"In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of Bush's father and ex-president, George Bush senior.

McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction "was 95 per cent charade."

Pilger also claims that six hours after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to "hit" Iraq and allegedly said "Go Massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not.", and [Condi] Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil."

Read "Unilateralism Disgraced - The price we all have to pay for Bush's botched tack" by Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay on http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/9/daalder-i.html .

(3) WMDs ... The Biggest Lie of Them All

Bush and his corrupt gang of houligans, for months, lied to America, lied to the U.N., and lied to the entire world. Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired today, and tried for treason, as it is a crime under the U.S. Constitution to wage war by misleading Congress.

In "The hunt for weapons of mass destruction yields - nothing : Intelligence claims of huge Iraqi stockpiles were wrong, says report", by Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill and Patrick Wintour, on http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1049228,00.html :

"An intensive six-month search of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has failed to discover a single trace of an illegal arsenal, according to accounts of a report circulating in Washington and London.

The interim report, compiled by the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) of 1,400 weapons experts and support staff, will instead focus on Saddam Hussein's capacity and intentions to build banned weapons.

A draft of the report has been sent to the White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street, a US intelligence source said. It has caused such disappointment that there is now a debate over whether it should be released to Congress over the next fortnight, as had been widely expected.

"It will mainly be an accounting of programmes and dual-use technologies," said one US intelligence source. "It demonstrates that the main judgments of the national intelligence estimate (NIE) in October 2002, that Saddam had hundreds of tonnes of chemical and biological agents ready, are false."

A BBC report yesterday said that the survey group, which includes British and Australian investigators, had come across no banned weapons, or delivery systems, or laboratories involved in developing such weapons.

According to the BBC, the report will include computer programmes, files, paperwork and pictures suggesting Saddam's regime was developing a WMD programme.

Both Washington and London are likely to focus on documentary evidence that the Saddam regime was capable of producing weapons of mass destruction, and probably intended to once international scrutiny had faded.

But the report will fall far short of proving Iraq was an "imminent threat" even to its neighbours.

According to accounts of the ISG draft, captured Iraqi scientists gave the investigation, led by a former UN inspector, David Kay, an account of how weapons were destroyed, but those accounts refer to the period immediately after the 1991 Gulf war.

The NIE was put together last year by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies, and claimed that the Iraqi leader had chemical and biological stockpiles, and a continuing nuclear programme that could produce a homemade bomb before the end of the decade.

The NIE became a key document in the propaganda war by President Bush in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in March, although intelligence officials warned that many of the nuances and cautionary notes from original reports had been removed from the final documents.

The timing of this disclosure could hardly be worse for Tony Blair, days before the start of the Labour party conference.

Iraq has dogged the prime minister almost continuously for five months. Downing Street had been hoping for respite after Lord Hutton's inquiry, which closes today. Mr Blair put forward Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for going to war and has repeatedly insisted that the weapons would be found.

He told a sceptical Conservative MP in the Commons on April 30 that he was convinced that Iraq had such weapons and predicted that, when the report was published, "you and others will be eating some of your words".

Although Downing Street last night officially dismissed the leak as speculation, government sources confirmed it was accurate. A No 10 spokesman said: "People should wait. The reports today are speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim re port that has not even been presented yet. And when it comes it will be an interim report. The ISG's work will go on. He added: "Our clear expectation is that this interim report will not reach firm conclusions about Iraq's possession of WMD."

The government defence will be to stress that failure to find WMD does not mean that they do not exist.

Last night's leak will fuel the anti-war sentiment ahead of Saturday's demonstration in London for withdrawal of US and British troops from Iraq. It will also make it harder for Labour conference organisers to resist grassroots pressure for a debate on Iraq. The in terim report is at present pencilled in for publication next week but Labour, anxious to avoid it landing in the middle of its conference, is trying to get that changed.

In Washington, congressional aides said they still expected to hear from Dr Kay next week. He arrived back from Iraq last Wednesday and since then has been working on the report. The nuclear section of the survey group has also finished its work and left Iraq.

After addressing the Senate in July, Dr Kay claimed "solid evidence" was being gathered and warned journalists to expect "surprises". No such surprises appear to be in the draft.

The CIA took the unusual step of playing down expectations of the report yesterday.

"Dr Kay is still receiving information from the field. It will be just the first progress report, and we expect that it will reach no firm conclusions, nor will it rule anything in or out," the chief agency spokesman, Bill Harlow, said.

An intelligence official added yesterday that the timing of the report's release "had yet to be determined".

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "It is David Kay's report. We do not have it. We will comment on it when it is presented. When it comes, it will be an interim report. ISG's work will continue. The reports are speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report that has not yet even been presented yet."

David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, said: "It's clear that the US and British governments wildly exaggerated the case for going to war."

But he added that the fact that the survey group had not found concrete evidence of weapons did not mean that the Baghdad regime did not have programmes to quickly reconstitute programmes and weapons at short notice. "I'm not surprised, given how incompetent this search has been. They've had bad relations with the [Iraqi] scientists from the start because they treated them all as criminals."

Many of the Iraqi scientists and officials who surrendered to US forces have been held in detention for months without contact with their families, despite assurances they would be well treated if they cooperated.

But recently the Bush administration, under mounting pressure to justify the invasion, has been trying to improve the incentives for former Saddam loyalists to provide information.

Reuters quoted a senior US official yesterday as saying that the former defence minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, had been given "effective" immunity in the hope he would provide information on Saddam's weapons programmes.

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, at the United Nations general assembly, declined to comment on the report. "If people want evidence, they don't have to wait for Dr Kay's report. What they can do is look at the volumes of reports from the weapons inspectors going back over a dozen years including the final report from Unmovic on March 7 this year, which set out 29 separate areas of unanswered disarmament questions to Iraq," he said. "

Someone should remind the Bush Regime's spin-meisters and liars extraordinaries, that "unanswered disarmament questions" don't equate to "massive armaments of WMDs posing an 'imminent threat'" that could be launched in 45 minutes to wipe us all out!

Does Bush and his corrupt and dangerously ignorant buffoons represent the smartest politicos we can dig up? God Help Us!

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).