Iraq War Decision

CIA’s Lies About Secret Program Should Have Congress In Open Revolt

dlindorff — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:04:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they
were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had
lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from
9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed
secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a
state of rebellion, demanding answers.

After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the
majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of
Congress about such things.

But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.

Now, given what we do know about the Bush/Cheney
administration—that it initiated a massive campaign of spying on
Americans by the Defense Department, the FBI, and the National Security
Agency, as well as other intelligence agencies, that it initiated a
campaign of torture of captives, including American citizens, while
asserting that the President didn’t even need to notify the courts or
the public about the arrest, detention, torture or even execution of an
American citizen if he, acting on his own, deemed that person to be an
“enemy combatant,” and given that we also know that Bush and Cheney
lied repeatedly about the justification for their invasion of Iraq, and
refused to be put under oath in their “interviews” by the 9-11
Commission, you would think the members of Congress, which was
railroaded into supporting everything from the USA PATRIOT Act to the
Iraq War invasion based on all these lies and deceptions, would be
demanding answers regarding this mysterious program.

For the rest of this story, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Another Downing Street Memo Proves Bush Lied About Iraq

Bob Fertik — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:06:35 -0400

Starts at 1:20. Unfortunately Keith missed all the important points made by David Swanson so go read them.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Did Bush Invade Iraq to 'Change History'?

Bob Fertik — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:06:29 -0400

Chris Matthews is a god-awful interviewer, but in the few seconds he let former Bushevik Richard Haass speak he offered an interesting explanation for Bush's decision to invade Iraq: that invading Afghanistan was too easy and Bush wanted to "make a bigger statement" and "change history."

Of course Matthews didn't ask Haass about Cheney's passion for oil, or the Neocons' passion for U.S. bases in the heart of the Middle East. Hopefully we'll see better interviews with Haass, ideally by smart Stanford students or 4th graders.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Brits Demand Truth About Iraq

Bob Fertik — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:30:47 -0500

From the U.K. Guardian (h/t digby):

Fresh questions over the legality of the Iraq war were raised today after the government admitted it could not substantiate its claim that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind over the legal basis for the invasion before a highly controversial meeting with two of Tony Blair's closest allies.

The admission has revived allegations that the former attorney general was pressured to revise his opinion that an invasion could be illegal without an explicit UN resolution.

Opposition MPs have renewed calls for a full Iraq inquiry in light of the new information.

On 3/7/03 - 12 days before the US/UK invasion of Iraq - Attorney General Goldsmith

gave Blair a detailed legal opinion that doubted its legality...

On 17 March, he published a single-page parliamentary answer, asserting that the war would be legal on the basis of existing UN resolutions.

What changed Goldsmith's mind over those 10 days? One doesn't speak this way about Lords, but obviously someone put his nuts in a vice and turned the screw.

Given the disastrous consequences of Goldsmith's unexplained flip-flop, some in Parliament would like a truthful explanation, thank you very much.

Incredibly, there is no one in the U.S. Congress or the Corporate Media who is the least bit interested in the learning the truth about Bush's decision to invade Iraq. At his final press conference, Bush said he was "disappointed" there were no WMD's in Iraq, and the entire Washington Elite replies with a shrug. (Last night, Jon Stewart managed at least to ask WTF?)

In December, David Swanson and I sent an Op Ed to the NY Times proving Bush knew Iraq had no WMD's. The Times didn't publish it and didn't even bother to explain why. Instead it published an utterly absurd Op Ed by John Bolton and John Yoo arguing why the Senate should suddenly insist on treating international agreements as treaties after they spent 8 years shredding all treaties and negotiating executive-only agreements.

Someday the American people will get the real reason why Bush invaded Iraq. But it may require "enhanced interrogation" of Bush and Cheney to get it.

We Need to Demand Hearings!

dlindorff — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:03:19 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

With the Bush Administration, the two leading presidential
candidates, and the Congressional leadership, as well as a phalanx of
Wall Street lobbyists all pushing hard for a massive transfer of
taxpayer money to the coffers of banks and investment banks, the
American people need to demand a halt to this bums' rush to a bailout.

We've seen what happens when Congress forgoes the time-tested
process of deliberative and investigative hearings and simply takes a
floor vote on a Bush Administration-backed measure. First there was the
October 18, 2001 resolution for use of military force against Al Qaeda
in Afghanistan. Because there were no hearings on that measure, its
loose, deliberately ambiguous wording has been used ever since by the
Bush/Cheney crew as authorization for their global so-called "War" on
Terror, including the claim that the president has the dictatorial
power ignore treaties, US law, and bills passed by the Congress.
Shortly thereafter, there was the Patriot Act, a compendium of
anti-Democratic measures that had failed to win passage in Congress
over the years which were cobbled together in the dead of night by
Bush/Cheney zealots and passed on a voice vote the next day by a
Congress too cowed to hold hearings on the measure. Then, in October
2002, there was the second authorization for use of military force
resolution, this time against Iraq, which has ended up miring the US in
a disastrous five-year-long war without end that has killed 4500
Americans, chewed up 40,000 more, and killed in excess of one million
innocent Iraqi civilians.

Had there been serious hearings on any of these three terrible
measures, there is a chance none of them would have passed, or that at
least, had they been passed, they would have been reworded to tie the
administration's hands. The first AUMF could have limited military
actions to attacking Al Qaeda. Period. The Patriot Act's constitutional
overrides could have been exposed early, and challenged. And the
administration's lies about the alleged threats posed by Iraq could
have been challenged in public by other witnesses, plus a clear
requirement could have been included that any attack on Iraq would need
UN authorization.

Now Congress is being pressured to pass an equally horrific bill
with no hearings. We know that 200 leading economists, including at
least three Nobel Laureates, one of them former World Bank economist
Joseph Stiglitz, are opposed to the bailout, saying throwing a trillion
dollars at Wall Street won't work and will be a waste of taxpayer money
or worse. We know that it fails to address the root problem--the
housing and mortgage crisis. We know that it could be a crippling blow
to the dollar. Yet without hearings to expose this giant scam, the only
ones getting through to members of Congress are Wall Street lobbyists,
their pockets stuffed with campaign cash.

Citizens can't even get past the Capitol switchboard, which is
jammed with angry callers trying to get through to their
representatives and senators.

The point that needs to be made is that there is no great urgency to
pass a bill. The administration's claim that the bottom will fall out
of the economy and that the country will be plunged into a depression
if the bill isn't passed immediately is nonsense. The Great Depression
took years to develop after the 1929 stock market crash.

The current market could collapse, and there'd be plenty of time to
act to revive the national economy. Meanwhile, the credit crisis, which
is serious, has been underway for months and months. It is not
something that came up last week and needs to be resolved tomorrow (as
if that were possible by the mere passing of a give-away bill). There
is plenty of time to hold the kind of hearings that will let members of
Congress, and the American public, learn about the causes of the
crisis, of its impacts, and about what the various strategies are that
might most effectively address it.

So the public demand should not be for passage of a "good" bailout
bill. It should be for a halt to this rush to passage of any bill. The
demand should be for "No Bill Without Hearings!"

So call Congress (202-225-3121, 202-224-3121 or 800-828-0498) and
tell your representative and your two senators that you don't want them
railroaded. Tell them you demand hearings before legislation. And tell
them, again, that you will vote against anyone who votes for the
current bailout for Wall Street. (Hint: If you can't get through, then
call one of their local offices, which are listed in the blue pages of
your phonebook, or go visit a local office.)

Don't forget to write letters, too, to your local paper demanding hearings and a reasoned response to the crisis, not a bailout.
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Condi Lies About Suskind Forgery Charge

Bob Fertik — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:28:54 -0400

Ron Suskind's explosive new book has the Busheviks so terrified that they deployed their designated liar, Condi Rice, to lie through her teeth to Karl Rove's personal stenographer, Politico's Mike Allen.

Here's the video link, at least until they scrub it because Condi's lies (in bold) are so obvious:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=9160921

Mike: Madame Secretary, as you know there's a new book by Ron Suskind which says the White House ordered the CIA to falsify intelligence about Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda. Is it possible the United States government forged a letter from Iraq's intelligence chief to Saddam Hussein?
Condi: the United States government didn't forge a letter. The White House in which I was working and I think...
Mike: they didn't direct...
Condi: the people as I understand it - the people that he quotes as being sources for that have denied it.
Mike: So you think it's impossible...
Condi: The United States, the White House was not going to ask someone to ask someone to forge a letter on something of this importance.
Mike: You believe it did not occur...
Condi: It did not occur. The intelligence might have been wrong, that's now clear, not because people weren't working very hard. But when you have an opaque regime like Saddam Hussein's regime that had used WMD before that had them before, one can understand how the judgment may have been wrong. But the decision to go to war was based on the strategic threat of Saddam Hussein, the fact that we'd been to war against him before, the fact that he still threatened his neighbors, and the fact that we were told that he was reconstituting his weapons of mass destruction.

To prove that Condi is lying, we'll pay $1,000 to anyone who runs this video through lie detector software and gets a reliable result.

It's long past time for Congress to ask Condi these questions under oath and threat of perjury.

Nobody's Hero: My War Story

dlindorff — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:32:53 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I’m certainly no hero, but since some readers of my last post have
reacted by attacking my courage and integrity on the grounds that I
“never served,” I want to at least set the record straight on my
youthful response to war.

In 1967, when I was a senior in high school in Storrs, CT., I faced
a momentous decision. In April, I would turn 18, and would have to
register for the draft. The Vietnam War was by then in full swing. A
year or two earlier, I’d been an avid fan of military aviation
magazines, and bought into the whole anti-Communist Cold War thing. But
by ’67, I had seen enough of the violence being done in Vietnam against
a desperately poor peasant population—the napalm attacks on civilians,
the burned babies, etc.—that I had done a 180-degree turn. I wanted
nothing to do with war and killing. So I made a decision: I would fill
out my registration at the draft board, and I’d get my draft card, but
I would not let myself be inducted into the military.

When I told my parents, who still supported the war, of my plan,
they were of course upset but supportive. My dad was an engineer and a
former Marine and my mother a Navy WAVE in WWII. My paternal
grandfather had earned a silver star in WWI and my maternal grandfather
had had his lungs permanently scarred by mustard gas in the same
conflict. A history teacher, Bernie Marlin, referred me to a junior
high teacher in the school who had been a conscientious objector during
the Korean War. I talked with him, a Mr. Storrs, at length, and was
very impressed with his story, but I soon realized that I didn’t really
think I was CO material. I did feel war could be justified
sometimes—for example if America were attacked. At any rate, in early
April of ’67, I went ahead and filled out my draft registration form.

That fall, I began college at Wesleyan University. By then, I had
been working as a foot soldier in the anti-war movement a bit, and had
already been to one anti-war demonstration and march in New York City.
At college registration, there was a table for registering for a
student deferment. I decided on the spur of the moment to pass that up.
It seemed unfair to me that friends of mine in high school, who were
not college bound, were going to get drafted, but I wouldn’t because I
was lucky enough to be going to college. So unlike Vice President and
Warmonger-in-Chief Dick Cheney, I just skipped it. I figured when my
time came and I got an induction notice, I would just refuse, and
they’d jail me.

In October, there was a huge demonstration and march in Washington
against the war—the famous “Mobe” about which Norman Mailer wrote in
“Armies of the Night.” I went down to DC with a few other students. We
ended up near the front of the march, and then up on the Mall of the
Pentagon. Through the night, federal marshals were arresting people up
there on the Mall. I made it through until morning, when I was finally
grabbed by the legs, yanked through a line of bayonet-armed soldiers,
beaten with clubs and carried off to a paddy wagon, which took me to a
federal minimum-security prison in Occoquan, VA. I spent a couple days
there in the company of a hundred or so other demonstrators in a prison
dormitory. It was an education like no other. Veteran anti-war and
civil rights activists ran workshops about the war and about a strategy
of resistance, and about how we could build a better world. I soaked it
all up avidly.

When I was released, with a small fine and a 10-day suspended
sentence for “trespassing” on the Pentagon, I hitchhiked back to
school, all fired up to challenge the war. The night before my arrest,
I had joined hundreds of other protesters in burning my draft card. I
had kept the ashes in my shirt pocket, and when I got home, I put them
in an envelope and mailed them to my draft board, with a note saying I
would never carry that card again (a federal crime). My draft board
responded by sending me a new I-A card. I tucked it in my wallet,
saving it for the next card-burning opportunity.

Over the next two years, during which time I participated actively
in student radical activism, building sit-ins, and draft-resistance
actions, such as informational picketing of inductees at the induction
center in New Haven, CT, I had occasion to burn my card and tear up my
card several times—including once at a communion at the Yale chapel,
where we turned our cards in to Rev. William Sloane Coffin. Each time,
I’d send the ashes or the pieces of card to my draft board, and each
time, they’d send me a new one. Along the way, the infamous draft
lottery was established. I was number 81—a certainty to be called up.

At one point, back in the summer of 1968, I filed a CO application,
but I made it clear that I was not religious, and that I was not
opposed to all wars. When I had my CO hearing at the draft board, the
board members were sitting at a table, with all my destroyed draft
cards set in a pile in front of them. I explained to the men sitting in
judgement on me that while I opposed the war in Vietnam, if I were
Vietnamese, I would surely be fighting for my country against the US.
That didn’t go over very well. My application was unanimously rejected.

My day came in the spring of 1969. At the time, I was in a full leg
cast, having broken both bones in my lower leg just above the ankle in
a ski accident. I notified the induction center that I was on crutches
and in a cast and suggested they postpone my pre-induction physical
until I was out of the cast and all better—a delay of about four months
according to my doctor. They said no. They wanted to see me to make
sure I was genuinely injured.

So on a cold late-winter day, I found myself on a bus riding from
the draft board in Rockville, CT to New Haven with a bunch of
frightened young men. I handed out informational packets to everyone,
telling them their rights, how to apply for CO status, etc., and talked
about what was wrong with the war.

When we arrived, I joined everyone in taking the so-called
intelligence test. Then we went for our physicals. I was pulled from
the line and told I needed to go to see a consulting physician at
Yale-New Haven Hospital. Since the address was a mile or so away, and
the sidewalks were icy, I said I’d need cab fare. I was told by the
head of the medical unit that the government didn’t pay for
transportation. He informed me there was a bus that stopped outside
that would take me there.

I replied that I was on crutches, and that I hadn’t asked to be sent
to a consultation—in fact I had asked for a postponement until my leg
was healed—and said that if they wanted to send me anywhere they could
fucking well pay for the transportation. That didn’t make the guy very
happy. He had a screaming fit, and called the head of the center, who
came down. “What’s the problem?” he asked. I explained the situation,
and said that if they wanted me to go all the way to a hospital because
they didn’t trust that my leg was truly broken, they could pay my
fucking cab fare. The guy got angry, called me a “little prick,” but
then took out his wallet and threw some bills at me. I picked the money
up off the floor and went down to the street. Seeing no cab, I went
over to the bus stop. I looked up and saw the Induction Center
commander looking out of a window, so as the bus pulled up, I flipped
him a one-finger salute and got on.

At the hospital, I discovered that the office of the doctor in
question was closed for the day. Angry that I’d wasted all this time
for nothing, I got back on the bus and returned to the Induction
Center. This time, I went directly to the office of the head of the
center, and tossed an envelope of X-Rays from my doctor on his desk.
“It’s no wonder you’re losing the fucking war!” I said. “You guys can’t
even arrange a doctor’s appointment. The office was closed.” I told him
that he could check my X-Rays, and added, “But I’ve come down here once
already, and it’s the last time I’m coming. If you want me back, you
can send the FBI to bring me.” I hung around until the end of the day
and rode home on the bus to my draft board.

When I got there, I went into the office, where the office
secretary, an older woman with a neat grey perm, was still at her desk.
“Excuse me,” I said. “But I’m really pissed off.” She started at my
coarse language. I recounted my experience and she said, “Well, I think
they owe you an apology.” To my astonishment, she picked up the phone,
called the Induction Center, and asked to speak to the head of the
operation—the guy who’d thrown the money at me. “I have a young man
here who is very angry,” she said into the phone. “And I think you owe
him an apology.”

She handed me the phone.

“All right, you little prick,” he said, sounding like he was gritting his teeth. “I’m sorry.”

“You fuckin’ oughta be,” I said, again shocking the secretary.

I put down the phone, thanked the secretary and left.

A month later, to my astonishment, instead of FBI agents at my door,
I got a letter from my draft board. It was a card declaring me to be
IV-F—“unfit for military service.”

Clearly, there was no medical justification for my rejection. My leg
bones healed up just fine a few months later, and I spent part of the
next year loading heavy boxes in a warehouse and driving semi-trailer
trucks. I suspect that, it being 1969, and the army in Nam being by
then in a state of near insurrection, the Army had concluded it didn’t
want people like me anymore. Perhaps a year earlier, before Tet, I
might instead have been sent into the infantry.

I tell this story because while it may not be heroic, and while
other war resisters paid heavily for their stands, I nonetheless think
it contrasts well with the likes of a Dick Cheney, who hid through the
war years behind student deferments and his wife’s skirt, or of a
George Bush, who joined the Air National Guard and made care to check a
box saying he would be “unavailable for overseas duty”—something the
poor guys in the Guard now doing multiple tours in the Iraqi desert on
Bush's orders didn’t have the option of doing.

I don’t apologize for my opposition to the Vietnam War. And while
being prepared to go to jail for a principle may not rank on the
courage meter anywhere near to standing one’s ground under fire during
an enemy assault, or jumping on top of a live grenade, I’m proud that I
did my best to oppose it, and that I never once tried to duck
responsibility for my own actions. Furthermore, I’ll stand my actions
up against any of those in the Bush administration or in Congress who
are so quick to support wars, but who hid behind student deferments or
used powerful connections to avoid military service or combat duty
themselves when it was their turn to “serve.”
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Bush/Cheney and special contracts with Big Oil in Iraq - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

seandiego — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:32:23 -0400

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE TODAY (7/2/08). THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST UNITE TO SHOW THE WORLD WE DID NOT SUPPORT OR APPROVE OF THE INJUSTICES OF THIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE CRIMES IT COMMITTED AGAINST IRAQ, THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD. TO REGAIN OUR STATURE IN THE WORLD, WE MUST CHARGE BUSH AND CHENEY WITH WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES IT FOR US. CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSONS TODAY!

Opening Iraq's oil fields to Big Oil

By Bob Herbert
THE NEW YORK TIMES

July 2, 2008

It's getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. It was the kind of news that big oil lives for.

Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

We also learned this week that a group of American advisers, led by a team from the State Department, played a key role in drawing up the contracts between the companies and the Iraqi government. Chevron and several smaller oil companies also got contracts.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney, both former oil company executives, have long tried to tell us this war was about terrorism, about weapons of mass destruction, about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, about anything but oil.

Said Bush: “We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He didn't wait. It didn't matter that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States. Or that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The troops were sent into battle in early 2003 and there is still, after more than five years and more than 4,000 American deaths, no end to the war in sight.

One of the starkest examples of U.S. priorities came during the eruption of looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. With violence and chaos all about, U.S. troops were ordered to protect one particularly treasured target – the Iraqi Oil Ministry. As David Rieff wrote in The New York Times Magazine in November 2003:

“This decision to protect only the Oil Ministry – not the National Museum, not the National Library, not the Health Ministry – probably did more than anything else to convince Iraqis uneasy with the occupation that the United States was in Iraq only for the oil.”

How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its unusual no-bid contracts with big oil.

The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq's vast oil reserves. As the Times reported Monday, “At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world's largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry.”

A prize, yes. But at what cost?

In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the United States, where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.

Even as oil companies are enjoying staggering profits, many Americans – in July! – are already worried sick about the potentially ruinous cost of heating their homes next winter.

And then there's the so-called war on terror.

The latest news is that al-Qaeda, the terror network that actually did attack the United States, has successfully regrouped in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has reconstituted its ability to institute terror attacks from the region.

For an administration joined at the hip to the oil industry, the lure of Iraq's enormous reserves was stronger even than the impulse to conquer an enemy that murdered more than 2,700 civilians on Sept. 11, a toll greater than the number of Americans killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Referring to al-Qaeda members who regrouped in Pakistan, the Times reported on Monday:

“Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.”

Who knows how long it will be before the United States disengages in any significant way from Iraq. What you can take to the bank is that this country will not make any major advances in energy policy, in health coverage, in rebuilding its infrastructure, in improving its public schools or in curtailing runaway public and private debt until our open-ended commitment to this catastrophic multitrillion-dollar war comes to an end.

How long will it take before that finally sinks in?

Does James Baker Control Bush's Iraq Policies?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:10:22 -0400

Is James Baker the real White House puppetmaster?

Did he write the plan to invade Iraq in April 2001, five months before 9/11?

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Is Baker writing the contracts that ExxonMobil and other oil giants are trying to impose on Iraq?

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

Those widely-reported contracts were rejected by Iraq because they were too greedy, but you have to read AfterDowningStreet.org to learn that.

"We did not finalise any agreement with them because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees as they wanted a share of the oil," [Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani] said.

Is Baker writing the ~~occupation diktat~~ "security agreement" too? That was also too greedy, so U.S. negotiators are scaling it back by removing immunity for contractors and control over Iraqi airspace.

Iraq’s foreign minister said Tuesday that the United States had agreed to lift immunity for foreign security contractors operating in Iraq, making them subject to prosecution under Iraqi law, according to Iraqi politicians.

Is Baker engineering an even more disastrous war with Iran?

In all of these crucial stories about Iraq, the "deciders" are never identified. We know Dick Cheney is the "decider" within the government, but is he really just taking orders from James Baker in his role as consiglieri to the Bush Organized Crime Family?

Time for Congress to Stand Up in Its Own Defense: Impeach Bush and Cheney N

dlindorff — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:24:50 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation—as if it were needed—even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.

The release of a confessional book by former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan and the subsequent release of a long blocked report by the Senate Intelligence Committee make it clear that Bush, Cheney & Company deliberately lied to Congress and the American public back in 2002 and early 2003 about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (there was none). McClellan also states that Bush and Cheney conspired to “out” CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson, as part of a compaign to prevent her husband from exposing a major part of that campaign of lies: the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

It would be hard to overstate the extent of or the damage caused by these crimes that are now exposed to the light of day.

Beginning in 2001, making the most cynical use of the tragic killing of nearly 3000 Americans in the 9-11 attacks, Bush and Cheney moved to aggrandize as much power as possible in the executive, and then, to consolidate that power grab, engineered a full-scale war against Iraq, enabling them to claim that any opponent of their dictatorial usurpation of power was a traitor to the nation.

It was all a lie.

Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda, and he had no nuclear program. He had no weapons of mass destruction. His country was broken, thanks to years of international sanctions and war.

As a result of these lies, we have a country that no longer even remotely resembles what the Founders had intended. The Congress has been shorn of its once exclusive authority to legislate, and even its Constitutional power to investigate the executive branch has been successfully defied. It is now an atrophied relic. The federal judiciary, right up to the Supreme Court, has been packed with administration sycophants and Federalist Society advocates of unfettered executive power.

We also have been saddled with an unwinnable war in the Middle East that has claimed the lives of 4500 Americans, destroyed the lives of another 30,000—or perhaps several hundred thousand, if we add in all those suffering psychological damage, or genetic damage from exposure to depleted uranium weapons. That war has also killed over 1 million innocent Iraqis, including countless chiildren, destroyed their country, bankrupted this nation, and made the US a pariah and a rogue state in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Most Americans long since came to the conclusion that the Bush administration was a gang of idiots. Just watching their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfold was enough to make that clear. But the new reports from McClellan and from the Senate Intelligence Committee should make it clear that this was not just stupidity. The disasters that have befallen this nation, or that it has brought on the rest of the world, over the past eight years have been the result of deliberate lying and deceit and of the conspiratorial policies of a cabal of leaders whose goal from day one was undoing the Constitution and establishing the presidency as a kind of dictatorship.

Most of the corporate media have been unable to bring themselves to state this clearly. They edge around the issue by talking about the White House having been “misleading” or “untruthful.” And little is said about the lasting damage that has been done to the Republic and the Constitution, or about what is to be done about a still bloody war that never should have been fought in the first place.

The answer is clear. Impeachment proceedings should be initiated against both Bush and Cheney. These two arch criminals must not be permitted to leave office with their titles intact. They need to be tossed out in disgrace, and then indicted for war crimes and for crimes like perjury, conspiracy and perhaps treason.

We are already seeing the long-term damage that has been wrought. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, is saying that the president’s use of the National Security Agency to spy, without any court order, on tens or hundreds of thousants, or perhaps millions of Americans, is legal, and would continue under a McCain administration. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said that he would continue Bush’s use of “signing statements” to ignore Congressional legislation that he felt impaired his Constitutional powers as president.

The nation is at a dangerous crossroad. Either Congress reasserts its authority now, via impeachment, drawing a Constitutional line in the stand in defense of Article I of the Constitution—the article that defines the power of Congress as absolute in terms of passing legisation—or it forever surrenders that role, leaving us with what can only be called a dictatorship.

We clearly cannot count on the next president, whoever that may be, to surrender powers usurped by the current one. What leader in history has willingly and voluntarily surrendered authority, after all?

Such power must be wrested back by Congress, and the only way for that to happen is impeachment—a course laid out clearly by the authors of the Constitution for just such a crisis.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net