Bush administration chastised as 'dead wrong' by panel on prewar
intelligence on Iraq

http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/news/story.html?id=e99e98db-b77a-46bb-89df-31abfb0ca5b2
Katherine Shrader Canadian Press

March 31, 2005

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial that he said could
contain anthrax as he presents evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons programs
to the United Nations Security Council on, Feb. 5, 2003. (AP Photo/Elise
Amendola)

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a scathing report, a presidential commission said
Thursday that America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their
judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that
the United States knows "disturbingly little" about the weapons programs and
threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries.

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It
outlined more than 70 recommendations, saying that President George W. Bush must give [Death Squad Facilitator] John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, broader powers for overseeing the nation's 15 spy agencies.

It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's
counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.
The unclassified version of the report does not go into significant detail
on the intelligence community's abilities in Iran and North Korea because
commissioners did not want to tip the U.S. hand to its leading adversaries.
Those details are included in the classified version.

The commission was formed by Bush a year ago to look at why U.S. spy
agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction, one of the administration's main justifications for invading in
March 2003.

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the
commission said in a report to the president. "This was a major intelligence
failure."

[Failure? Try misdirection, for the purpose of creating ONE MASTER AGENCY with total government control by a fascist 'death camp loving' degenerate.]

The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community's
"inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious
errors in analysing what information it could gather and a failure to make
clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than
good evidence.

[For the record: They fabricated huge piles of evidence.]

"On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this
magnitude," the report said.

But the commission also said that it found no indication that spy agencies
distorted the evidence they had concerning Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction, a charge raised against the administration during last year's
presidential campaign.

"This is not 'politicization,' " the panel said of its own report. "It is a
necessary part of the intelligence process."

The commission gave Bush a specific suggestion about the daily intelligence
briefings he receives - traditionally delivered by the nation's most senior
intelligence official. The panel said that Negroponte should not be the
person who briefs the president, or even be in the room every day when the
report is given.

"For if the DNI is consumed by current intelligence, the long-term needs of
the intelligence community will suffer," the report said.

Overall, the report delivered a harsh verdict. "Our intelligence community
has not been agile and innovative enough to provide the information that the
nation needs," the commission said. It noted that other investigations have
reached similar conclusions. "We should not wait for another commission or
another administration to force widespread change in the intelligence
community," the report said.

Looking beyond Iraq, the panel examined the ability of the intelligence
community to accurately assess the risk posed by America's foes.

"The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons
programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous
adversaries," its report said. The commission did not name any country, but
appeared to be talking about nations such as North Korea and Iran.

"Our review has convinced us that the best hope for preventing future
failures is dramatic change," the report said. "We need an intelligence
community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run
risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new
technologies."

The report urged Bush to give more authority to Negroponte, his new director
of national intelligence, overseeing all of the nation's 15 spy agencies.
"It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components
of the Defence Department or to the CIA," the commissioners said. "They are
some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they
will try to run around - or over - the DNI. Then, only your determined
backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways," the
commission told Bush.

The commission was unanimous in its report and recommendations.
The panel recommended that Bush demand more of the intelligence community, which has been repeatedly criticized for failures as various investigations have looked back on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S.

"The intelligence community needs to be pushed," the report said. "It will
not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers - sometimes to the
point of discomfort."

It said analysts must be pushed to explain what they don't know and that
agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information
on key subjects. At the same time, the report said the administration must
be more careful about accepting the judgment of intelligence agencies.
"No important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp
questioning that forces the (intelligence) community to explain exactly how
it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true," the
report said.

On the Net: The report is available at:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/050331wmdreport.pdf

_______________
 

 

March 20/06

WASHINGTON – Here's one that tops the Dubai Ports World deal – but, so far, no one is complaining.

U.S. taxpayers are lending Westinghouse Electric Co. almost $5 billion to build nuclear power plants in China – even though the company, based in Pennsylvania, is about to be sold to Japan's Toshiba Corp., and even though the company is currently owned by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.

And, so far, no one in the U.S. government is showing any interest in scrutinizing the sale over the transfer of nuclear-power technology – or in halting the loan from the Export-Import Bank.

The saga began just over a year ago when the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., a federal agency whose board members are appointed by the president, approved a request from Westinghouse for a combination of guaranteed and direct loans of up to almost $5 billion to support export sales to construct four nuclear power plants at two sites in China.

The Ex-Im Bank, as it is known, boasts of assisting in financing U.S. goods and services to developing markets around the world. It typically finances around $15 billion in U.S. exports annually.

While that deal got almost no notice at the time – despite China's record of spreading nuclear technology throughout the world – last month the British parent company that owns Westinghouse agreed to sell it off to Toshiba, a Japanese conglomerate, for $5.4 billion in cash, a deal that is expected to close later this year.

Undersecretary for Export Administration David McCormick said Wednesday in a speech in Pennsylvania he had no plans to review the bid on the basis of the nuclear-transfer issue.

"The deal is not being formally reviewed," said McCormick, who heads the Commerce Department agency. "It's unclear if this deal required (U.S. government) review or not. Scrutiny would be justified, he said, if "there's a perceived or actual threat to national security."

Congress has not opposed the Westinghouse sale. In fact, the only member to call for scrutiny, Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, recently dropped his concerns. In a letter to Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pennsylvania, whose district includes Monroeville, where Westinghouse is based, Hall called Japan "one of our finest allies."

Meanwhile, Westinghouse, armed with the $5 billion in loans from U.S. taxpayers, may have a better shot at the $8 billion in nuclear contracts bid by China. Its chief competitor for the project, the state-controlled French company Areva SA is considering dropping its bid because of concerns about nuclear-technology transfers to the Chinese. Areva SA has reportedly refused to match the offer from Westinghouse.

Another puzzling aspect of the deal is the fact that China has run massive trade surpluses with the U.S. for many years. In fact, trade statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrate that China has built up over $1 trillion in surpluses with the U.S. since 1993.

In the last five years, here is the trend on China trade surpluses with the U.S.:

2001 $83 billion

2002 $103 billion

2003 $124 billion

2004 $162 billion

2005 $201 billion

In U.S.-China trade, that's a total of $673 billion in trade surpluses for the Chinese (or trade deficits for America) in just the last five years.

Not only is the U.S. government not questioning the deal to build nuclear reactors in China, it is actively financing it and using political influence at the highest levels to consummate the arrangement.

"The U.S. government has been very supportive of overall China-U.S. nuclear cooperation,'' says Gavin Liu, Westinghouse's representative in Beijing. "It's a very, very critical market for Westinghouse.''

China's nuclear-power market is growing faster than any other in the world. The four planned reactors are the first of more than 20 in a $54 billion push to quadruple Chinese nuclear-power capacity by 2020 – an effort to ease power shortages in an economy that grew 9.5 percent last year.

___________________________

Would any REAL Christian leader want to encourage the development of nuclear armaments, with a totalitarian regime that executes people for following the teachings of Jesus Christ?

China Prepares to Execute Christians

Amnesty International Report follows:

Gong Shengliang (m), aged 46 Li Ying (f), aged 36 Xu Fuming (m) Hu Yong (m) Gong Bangkun (m)

Zhang Hongjuan (f), aged 20 Li Tongjin (also known as "Immanuel”) (f) Yang Tongni (also known as "Ni”)(f)

The first five people listed above have been sentenced to death by the Jingmen City Intermediate People’s Court in the central province of Hubei, China.

All five were condemned to death on 29 December 2001 in connection with their membership of an unofficial Christian organisation, the "Huanan (South China) Church”. They were tried with 12 others who were sentenced to between two years and life imprisonment.

All 17 were arrested in April 2001 and accused of leading or being members of a ‘heretical religious organisation’ called the "Huanan Church” ("South China Church”).

 

Crooks and Liars | March 18 2006

Jon Stewart posted two clips that were of the most importance regarding Iran last night. Bush is trying to stir the pot and say Iran is supplying parts for IED's. While Pace and Rumsfeld can't verify his words.
Bush: Some of the most powerful IED's that we are seeing in Iraq today-includes components that came from Iran.

Reporter: Do you have proof that they are indeed behind this, the Gov't of Iran?

Pace: I do not sir.

The segment went on to show how "Stepford-like" the talking heads are as each cable news station repeats the same meme as if they received their talking points from Rove's office simultaneously.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/180306TDS.htm <<-[Video Clip]

Physics April 17/06

Thirteen of the nation’s most prominent physicists have written a letter to President Bush, calling U.S. plans to reportedly use nuclear weapons against Iran “gravely irresponsible” and warning that such action would have “disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.”

The physicists include five Nobel laureates, a recipient of the National Medal of Science and three past presidents of the American Physical Society, the nation’s preeminent professional society for physicists.

Their letter was prompted by recent articles in the Washington Post, New Yorker and other publications that one of the options being considered by Pentagon planners and the White House in a military confrontation with Iran includes the use of nuclear bunker busters against underground facilities. These reports were neither confirmed nor denied by White House and Pentagon officials.

The letter was initiated by Jorge Hirsch, a professor of physics at the University of California , San Diego , who last fall put together a petition signed by more than 1,800 physicists that repudiated new U.S. nuclear weapons policies that include preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries (http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/). Hirsch has also published 15 articles in recent months (http://antiwar.com/hirsch/) documenting the dangers associated with a potential U.S. nuclear strike on Iran .

[Read the rest of the article HERE]

 

 

Stewart Asks If Bush Really "Listens To His Generals"   You Tube | October 14 2006 The President continues to claim he would change his Iraq policy if only his generals would ask him to, despite the fact that numerous retired generals and now a handful of active-duty bigshots have voiced criticism of the war.

 

Military judge: objector can't raise questions about war legality

READ THE FULL NYT ARTICLE HERE

.