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AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS
Saturday, February 10, 2007
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“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure
wind.” ~George Orwell~
OFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS
Pentagon office ‘misled’ on Iraq war
By Demetri Sevastopulo in
Munich Financial Times (FT.COM) Published: February 10 2007
01:28 | Last updated: February 10 2007 01:28 (Excerpt) A special Pentagon office [Office of Special Plans]
created in the run-up to the Iraq war engaged in “inappropriate”
activities by providing misleading intelligence to policymakers, according to
the US Department of Defense. The Pentagon inspector-general on Friday said the
Office of Special
Plans set up by Douglas Feith,
then undersecretary of defence for policy, provided senior policymakers with “alternative
intelligence assessments” on alleged links between
al-Qaeda and Iraq that were “inconsistent with the
consensus of the intelligence community”. Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of
the armed services committee and senior member of the intelligence committee,
said the report was a “devastating condemnation”
of senior Pentagon officials. “The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the
Iraq/al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high ranking officials in the
Department of Defense to support the administration’s decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence
assessments of the professional analysts of the intelligence community did
not provide the desired compelling case,” said Mr Levin. The report comes at a critical time for the White
House as President George W. Bush struggles to keep Republican support for
the war in Iraq. Democrats have long argued that Mr Feith was
engaged in helping Dick Cheney, vice-president, build the case for war based on inaccurate, or misleading,
intelligence.  Council on
Foreign Relations: US Should Leave Iraq by Dave Clark Fri Feb 9, 9:02 AM ET
Yahoo News (via AFP) (Excerpt) An independent think tank warned that
the situation in Iraq was beyond repair and urged that US forces should be
pulled out whatever the result of the current "surge" of troops
into Baghdad. A report from Washington's Council on
Foreign Relations concluded that a US military victory was impossible in
Iraq, where "amateurish" post-invasion rule by American officials
had seen Iraq collapse into civil war. The respected institute's stark
assessment comes at a time of collapsing public support for the war in the
United States and mounting opposition to President George W. Bush's strategy
within Congress. "The United States has already achieved all that it is likely to achieve in Iraq... Staying in Iraq can only drive up the price of those gains | ||||
