The Intelligence War

.....The article, based on declassified excerpts of the DIA report provided by Michigan Senator Carl Levin, goes on to strongly suggest that Bush administration officials simply ignored this warning to scare the public into supporting war in Iraq.

The Times article cites a claim George W. Bush made in a speech he gave in Cincinnati in October 2002. Bush said: "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."

Why would Bush make such a claim when a DIA report had raised the possibility that al Libi was lying? One possibility: The CIA was saying that al Libi was credible.

On February 11, 2003--a year after the DIA report--CIA Director George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said: "Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful."

Hard evidence Saddam’s WMDs were removed from Iraq: the CW plot against Jordan

On April 13, 2004, Jordanian security forces foiled an al-Qaeda plot against the nation’s intelligence agency. The plot, reported on April 26 by Agence France-Presse (AFP), involved a plan to use trucks packed with 20 tons of chemical explosives, including blistering agents, nerve gas and choking agents. Jordanian officials estimated that had the attack been successful, the amount of chemicals involved had the potential of killing up to 80,000 people.

Six members of the terror network which planned to execute the plot were arrested and four others were killed in a series of raids in Jordan which concluded on April 20. The ringleader of the terror network was a Jordanian, Azmi al-Jayussi. Jayussi had been recruited for the operation in Iraq by al-Qaeda leader Abu Massab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was identified by Jordanian officials as the mastermind of chemical weapons plot.

According to a Jordanian security official interviewed by AFP, “Jayussi started to plan for the operation in Iraq where he had moved to from Afghanistan. He received direct orders from his leader, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, to whom Jayussi had pledged allegiance and absolute obedience since he met him in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”

In a taped statement, Jayussi related how his first encounter with Zarqawi had been in Herat, Afghanistan, and how he later connected up with him again in Saddam’s Iraq. He stated that it was Zarqawi who had trained him in the use of “explosives and strong poisons.” Excerpts of Jayussi’s taped statement, which were aired on ABC’s “Nightline” on April 26, 2004, revealed that the planning and training for the WMD plot took place in Iraq more than a year before the US-led coalition invasion.

In Iraq, Zarqawi introduced Jayussi to another of his Jordanian followers, Muwafaq Adwan. Muwafaq was killed in a shootout with Jordanian police in Amman on April 20. Jayussi told Jordanian security officials that Zarqawi had ordered Muwafaq and him to Jordan where “[o]ur mission was to instigate military work” in the country.

In Jordan, Jayussi was aided by several Syrians under Zarqawi’s direction. The aim of their operation was to attack Jordan and its ruling family as part of a “war against crusaders and infidels.”

Anti-terror experts said that the network’s 20 tons of explosives would have caused “two explosions: a traditional one and a chemical in an area of two square kilometers.”

“The chemical explosion would lead to the emission of poisonous chemical gasses which would have caused physical deformities and direct injuries to the lungs and eyesight,” said one of the experts on a Jordanian news program. “Outside this circle, the human loss would amount to around 80,000 people dead and 160,000 injured.”

To fund the operation, Jayussi said that he received the equivalent of $170,000 (US) in installments from Zarqawi, sent through messengers, most of them from Syria.

Another arrested suspect, Ahmed Samir, told Jordanian security that he had been trained in Iraq by a Zarqawi aide and worked on explosives for two months in a factory in Ramtha, near the Jordanian-Syrian border.

News of this foiled plot should have provided conclusive proof that what President Bush feared, and which justified the effort to take Saddam down, was real – that Saddam allowed the operation of terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda, within Iraq, and that terrorists trained in Iraq and supplied with a significant quality of WMD materials from Iraq, could have international reach. News of this foiled terrorist plot to use WMDs in a spectacular attack in Jordan received scant attention in the US media. While ABC’s “Nightline” carried the story, and similar stories appeared in articles published in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, the American news media did not give this news the significant level of attention it deserved. The news media’s mantra is that the failure to find stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq is a scandal that rests on the head of George W. Bush. “Bush lied!” The real scandal here is the failure or refusal of the American news media to report and pursue events which give credence and justification to President Bush’s policies in Iraq.

Tom Daschle is the architect of this smear campaign against President Bush. He was the one who suggested that Harry Reid and Dick Durbin pull that stunt on Friday. He is still angry at Sen. Frist for going to S. D. to campaign against him.

For some reason he thinks people still care what he thinks. He must think he is still running the show in DC too...

Message to Washington:
It's Time to Bring Our Troops Home
Sign Tom's Online Petition Today

Together, we need to call on President Bush to adopt a plan for successful withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. After two years, $250 billion appropriated to fight this war and the tragic deaths of more than 2,000 American troops, we must provide a plan for victory and an exit strategy.

I have outlined my plan of Strategic Redeployment, developed in cooperation with the Center for American Progress, with input from some of the nation's most respected foreign policy experts. You can view the entire plan on CAP's website in PDF format. My plan calls for bringing home the first 80,000 troops beginning this January and no later than the end of 2006. The plan redeploys 20,000 American troops to Afghanistan to help finish our job there, including the capture of Osama bin Laden. Finally, the plan calls for the last 70,000 American troops to come home by the end of 2007.

Join me in calling on our leaders in Washington to bring our troops home by signing my online petition today.

I gave a speech covering foreign policy and my plan for strategic redeployment on November 2 at Northwestern University in Chicago. You can listen to an mp3 audio version of the speech or subscribe to my podcasts in iTunes on my podcast page. If you prefer to read the text of the speech, I have posted it to the web.

"I wish I could share with you the misleading information I personally was provided in September and October of 2002," he said in remarks scheduled for delivery at Northwestern University in Evanston.

The misrepresentations, Daschle said, underscore the need for Congress to repair the nation's foreign policy initiatives in order to restore the public's trust in the use of U.S. military power.

Daschle has raised his public profile in recent weeks and has not ruled out a presidential run in 2008.

In an advance text of the speech, obtained by The Associated Press, Daschle said terrorism and AIDS had become greater threats under the Bush administration. He accused President Bush of giving rise to "a world opinion that now holds America in lower esteem than ever before."

http://tinyurl.com/agugy

******

Nov. 6, 2005, 9:45AM
Secret session was year in the making
Only a handful of Democrats were in on the plan that originated with Sen. Daschle
By CHARLES BABINGTON
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - It took Democrats about five seconds to trigger the parliamentary move that forced the Senate into a rare closed session last week, but it was more than a year in the planning.

The final decision to employ the tactic, which infuriated Republicans and exacerbated partisan animosity, was made in the Democratic leader's second-floor Capitol office Monday night, in a small gathering of his lieutenants.

Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., considered the strategy to be so sensitive that only four of his colleagues knew what he intended when he entered the Senate chamber at 2:25 p.m. Tuesday, party aides said.

snip

Daschle's staff researched exactly how Rule 21 might be used, aides said, and their findings were at Reid's fingertips when he convened the weekly meeting of his leadership team at 6:15 p.m. Monday.

Present were party whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., conference secretary Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and campaign committee Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

snip

Reid obtained an enthusiastic endorsement of the plan from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the intelligence committee's top Democrat, Manley said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/3440266

Article Published: 11/6/05

Daschle’s Des Moines speech leaves his future open

snip

“While we take the offense and lead, the Republicans will be sticking with the same banalities, platitudes and false promises they have been concocting since 1980. They’ll try to keep rewarding the haves and shortchanging the have-nots. They keep trying to sell the idea that greed is good, that what America really needs most is just one more tax cut for billionaires, that our highest aspiration ought not [be] to help a neighbor, but to go shopping,” he said.

“Is a selfish America America at its best?” he asked the crowd.

he was standing on the holy ground of the 2008 presidential test

his political action committee was a national television appearance on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” HBO show.

******

The hand is out

The South Dakota Democratic Party is looking to get some financial assistance Wednesday with help from their political hall-of-famers.

Former Sens. George McGovern and Daschle will be honored at a D Street Washington, D.C., fund-raiser that will benefit the party.

What will it cost you?

Well, if you are a host, $5,000 will get you there. A sponsor can attend for $2,500. Actually, it is cheaper to be a “friend.” That will only cost you $1,000.

One more thing noted on the invitation. “We want to encourage everyone to participate. No PAC? No problem. Come join us for the special price of $100. Federal PAC checks or personal checks only.”

Daschle: Plan must represent America
The Democratic Party cannot only rely on GOP missteps if it wants to succeed, the former senator says in Iowa.

By THOMAS BEAUMONT
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

November 6, 2005

Former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle on Saturday declared President Bush's presidency "essentially over," but said Democrats can capitalize in 2006 only if they establish a message that goes "to the soul of our country."

"I didn't expect they would be mired in as many difficulties as they are now experiencing," Daschle said about Bush during a Des Moines Sunday Register interview while in Iowa on Saturday.

Decidedly negative perceptions of Bush's work in Iraq, the indictment of a top White House adviser and the soaring budget deficit "have created a vastly different environment from what we saw just a year ago," Daschle said before headlining a state Democratic dinner in Des Moines.

snip

"In other words, it just can't be what we're going to do about energy policy. It's got to be deeper than that," Daschle said. "It's got to go to the soul of our country. I want to see our party talk again about social justice."

This is about getting Democrats elected in 2006 and the same idiots running for President in 2008...

Sen. John Kerry (who wants to try again) said in a speech on Oct. 26: "The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth... knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq." Hence, Tom Daschle (the deposed Senate Democratic leader, who is weighing a campaign) said in a speech Wednesday that senators voted incorrectly because "on so many fronts, we were misled."

At least four other Democratic senators who voted to authorize war have use the dupe argument in recent days, including Christopher Dodd of Connecticut (who periodically voices White House ambitions) and Tom Harkin of Iowa (who now calls his war support "one of the biggest voting mistakes of my career"). And once having confessed, these Democrats believe they have sufficient credibility to call for the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

But not all the prominent Democrats who voted with Bush have embraced the dupe message. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - who continues to exasperate the liberal base - hasn't renounced her vote; when asked about it the other day by NPR, she dodged: "I can't talk about this on the fly; it's too important." Sen. Evan Bayh, another presidential hopeful, hasn't renounced. Former Sen. John Edwards, another prospective candidate, hasn't renounced. Sen. Joe Biden hasn't, either.

snip

Charlie Cook, a Washington analyst who runs the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Friday: "If Democrats want to argue that the administration misrepresented and distorted the prewar intelligence, OK, that's one thing. But if they push the argument that they have been duped, fooled and victimized - well, to a lot of [independent swing] voters, they're just going to come across as weak."

snip

David Sirota, a liberal antiwar activist and organizer

Sirota said Thursday: "Obviously, the [dupe] message needs to be played properly. But most Americans already believe that Bush misled the country" - polls support his contention - "so it makes perfect sense for Democrats to say they too were misled... . They followed tradition and gave the benefit of the doubt to a president on a national security issue, and they were lied to. That doesn't mean they were stupid. They were being patriotic.

"And rather than just apologize for being misled, Democrats need a message of outrage. Make the argument that this administration deliberately manipulated the intelligence."

snip

And the dupe message may be only as good as the individual messenger. Kerry, in his Oct. 26 speech, declared that "as I said more than a year ago," he would not have voted for the war if he had known about "the Bush administration's duplicity." Yet, on Aug. 9, 2004, he said he would have still voted to authorize Bush even if he had known in advance that no mass weaponry would be found. Those statements don't necessarily contradict each other, but a fresh round of Kerry nuances may not boost his fortunes.

Clearly, gaining traction on Iraq is a Democratic imperative. Bush may be tanking in the polls, but Democrats have barely moved the needle their way. In the words of party pollster Stan Greenberg, summarizing his late-October numbers, "Democrats have not made noticeable gains on thinking long-term... knowing what they stand for, or being trusted to keep America safe."

As for the 2008 race, Charlie Cook suggests a way for Democrats to dump the dupe message entirely: "By 2008, there will be a tremendous constituency for a candidate who can argue clearly that the war was always a mistake. Forget all the senators. The answer for Democrats is to nominate a governor, somebody who never had to vote at all on the damn war."

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