Iraq turns over documents on anthrax, missiles (‘Change of heart’Maybe)

BAGHDAD: Iraq has provided the United Nations with documents on anthrax and its Al-Fatah and Al-Sumoud missiles, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix announced here Sunday.

Appearing at a press conference at the end of a 36-hour mission, Blix said the documents would now be submitted to United Nations experts in New York for further analysis.

Blix said that Iraq has promised a response by Friday to a UN request for use of U2 surveillance planes.

He said Iraq’s cooperation on the process of disarmament resolution 1441 had been prompt and practical but said it was less forthcoming on the substance.

“Access (to suspect sites) has been prompt and practical,” Blix told a press conference in Baghdad after two days of crucial talks to assess Baghdad’s compliance with UN disarmament directives.

‘Change of heart’: ElBaradei said he was seeing a “:change of heart” from Iraq with regard to compliance to UN disarmament demands. “We’re beginning to see another change of heart” from Iraq, ElBaradei said.

48-hour deadline: The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as little as 48 hours to flee Baghdad or face war, as part of a second UN resolution, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Such a resolution could be put before the UN Security Council by next weekend, the British paper said.

Bush, Powell: President George W. Bush kept the pressure on Iraq and the United Nations on Sunday, saying Baghdad must disarm and the UN Security Council must decide if it remains relevant.

“The United Nations gets to decide shortly whether or not it is going to be relevant in terms of keeping the peace, whether or not its words mean anything,” Bush.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that Saddam still had an opportunity to avoid war but had to act immediately to come into compliance with UN disarmament demands. “I hope that we can avoid war,” he said. “There is still the opportunity to avoid war ... but it’s in the hands of Saddam Hussein.”

US to lease passenger planes: The Pentagon announced the activation of a plan to lease passenger and cargo aircraft from commercial airlines to ferry US troops and materiel to the Gulf area. The authority covers 47 passenger aircraft and 31 wide-body cargo aircraft belonging to a total of 22 US airlines. The Pentagon said however it would now only be using the passenger aircraft.

Germany, Russia: Germany and Russia said on Sunday they hoped Iraq could be disarmed peacefully, with Moscow saying France, Germany, Russia and China were broadly in agreement.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin made the comments after meeting in Berlin.

Sabri in Iran: Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri arrived in the Iranian capital Sunday for an unscheduled 24-hour visit, foreign ministry officials here said.

Airstrike: Aircraft of a US and British coalition attacked an Iraqi mobile air defense command and control facility on Saturday in response to threats to coalition aircraft policing the southern “no-fly” zone, the US military said.

Marc Rich's White House Mole:
Lewis Libby
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. punctuated his Jan. 28 State of the Union webcast with a call for the immediate ouster of Lewis Libby from his post as chief of staff and top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Not only is Libby one of the pivotal players in the Administration "war party," promoting the suicidal invasion of Iraq. He is, notoriously, a mole for Russian "Mafiya" interests linked to his business associate of 18 years, Marc Rich.

The Libby-Rich duo played a filthy role in the Jan. 28 Israeli elections, staging a disruption of Labor Party chair Amram Mitzna's election campaign in the weeks before the vote, in order to secure re-election of serial war-criminal and Mafiya collaborator, Ariel Sharon.

Libby and Rich are also behind the promotion of former French military company clerk, Laurent Murawiec, as a Rand Corporation and Hudson Institute "military strategist," whose only claim to fame was his July 10, 2002 appearance at Richard Perle's Defense Policy Board. There, Murawiec psychotically called for an American invasion and occupation of the Saudi oilfields. Murawiec's Power-Point presentation to Pentagon policy advisers was so outrageous and incompetent, that a storm of protest (after his closed-door pitch leaked to the Washington Post) led to his ouster from a post as "senior analyst" at Rand. In the brouhaha that followed, Murawiec allies in the neo-conservative camp—including Moonie Washington Times senior editor Arnaud de Borchgrave—tried to salvage his shattered image by promoting the fact that in 1985-90, he had operated as an inside spy and provocateur among the European supporters of Lyndon LaRouche.

Indeed, Murawiec had been picked up by Swiss-based organized-crime circles, including Marc Rich, and had conducted an effort to sabotage European circulation of a March 1986 EIR special report, Moscow's Secret Weapon: Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Mafia, which exposed the terror and crime circles behind Sharon, and the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy ring. Later, Murawiec surfaced on the payroll of the Marc Rich Foundation (run by ex-Mossad thug Avner Azulay), penning a shrill chapter on growing American anti-Semitism for a book edited by a top ally of self-professed Zionist fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Libby and Marc 'Filthy' Rich
Sources in and around the Bush Administration have reported that Lewis Libby has emerged as one of the most rabid "chicken-hawks" in Washington. Libby has been identified as protector of the nest of Sharonists in the Pentagon and State Department who were discredited, following the Murawiec incident last July, and only avoided being fired from top posts through Libby's intervention. Among Libby's allies in the Administration "war party" are Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Defense Secretary for Policy Doug Feith, and State Department arms control adviser David Wurmser.

Libby was part of a troika of wanna-be Pentagon imperialists, back in the Bush "41" Administration, who urged then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to adopt the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare—in response not to Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, but to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opportunity for the United States to emerge as the only global military power. Along with Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad, Libby promoted the insane notion of pre-emptive war against any nation or bloc of nations that might at some point, challenge American military hegemony. The scheme was enthusiastically embraced by Cheney, but rejected by (the elder) President Bush, his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker III—only to resurface nine years later, after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Libby also served as staff director for the Cox Commission, a Clinton-era Congressionally mandated study group which promoted the idea of a future conflict with China, along the lines of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington's wild call for a "Clash of Civilizations" war between the West on the one side, and the Islamic world and China on the other.

But Lewis Libby's real claim to fame is his 18-year collaboration with Russian Mafiya "godfather" Marc Rich. As an understudy to Washington power lawyer Leonard Garment, Libby was the personal attorney for Rich from 1985, shortly after Rich fled the United States to avoid criminal prosecution for tax evasion and "trading with the enemy"—for illegal oil dealings with the Khomeini regime in Iran, while they were holding American hostages.

Rich set up in Zug, Switzerland, and became one of the most important figures in busting the oil embargoes against apartheid South Africa, Iran, and, later, Iraq. All the while, Libby toiled as Rich's legal flack in America, presenting the swindler and Mossad bankroller as a victim of overzealous prosecutors.

Operation Spiderweb
Libby was the Svengali orchestrating the setup of President Bill Clinton to grant Rich a pardon in early 2001, just as Clinton left office. Libby, in Congressional testimony, admitted to working with ex-Al Gore attorney Jack Quinn, and two "former" Mossad agents in Rich's employ, to secure the pardon.

Now, Rich may be running into problems. He is a target of "Operation Spiderweb," a crackdown by Italian, Swiss, British, and American law enforcement agencies on a $9 billion Russian Mafiya money-laundering scheme (see box). "Spiderweb" aims at Grigory Loutchansky, head of the Nordex conglomerate of companies and a top figure implicated in the flow of illegal campaign funds into Ariel Sharon's recent re-election campaign—and at Rich.

In addition, French ministers at the end of January launched into a flurry of attacks on Rich around two other big scandals, involving the asset stripping and bankrupting of a French metal firm by Rich, and a large tanker oil spill off the coast of Portugal, also involving a Rich-owned firm.

Meanwhile, earlier in the month, at Libby's behest, Rich and fellow gangster Michael Steinhardt went to Israel to run the operation against Labor Party chairman Mitzna which undermined Labor's election campaign and helped cover up, for a while, corruption scandals that were damaging Sharon's re-election bid. Steinhardt confessed to a Washington journalist that he met Sharon secretly, and then joined Marc Rich to orchestrate a Labor revolt against Mitzna, for his refusal to enter a national unity government with Sharon.

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