Dear Friends:

As Americans begins to pay attention to what is happening in their name, more and more are calling for public investigations of the administration's misrepresentation and manipulation of intelligence data. When it all finally come to an Iraqgate hearing, trial, or tribunal, we submit the following list of friendly witnesses--the people who told the truth about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. ______________________

TomPaine.com July 23, 2003

The Prosecution Calls... by the TomPaine.com Staff

Editor's note: Members of Congress and major media outlets are pushing for comprehensive investigations of the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence data. Although Republicans impeached President Clinton for fudging about the tawdry hours he spent with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, they have blocked open inquiries into the verity of the statements that led the country to war. As the media's shadow trial of these statements heats up, we present a partial list of witnesses the prosecution should tap.

On WMD: David Albright Of the Institute for Science and International Security. On the aluminum tubes: "A knowledgeable government scientist told me that the administration could say anything it wanted and about the tubes while government scientists who disagreed were expected to remain quiet."

Hans Blix Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations. "We never said that we had evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but rather that we had evidence that unanswered questions remained"

Mohamed ElBaradei International Atomic Energy Agency Director. "Mr. President, to conclude, we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s... we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapon program."

Scott Ritter Former U.N. weapons inspector. On the line about the uranium from Niger in the State of the Union: "It's not an honest mistake. It's part of a larger effort of deception that was, you know, taken by the president, by his administration in regards to justifying this war with Iraq."

Joseph C. Wilson The retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons. "My judgement on this is that if they were referring to Niger, when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, that that information was erroneous and that they knew about it well ahead of the publication of the British White Paper and the President's State of the Union address."

Unnamed "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." -- A top-secret report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released last September.

Unnamed "It's one thing to have information in a classified document with caveats and footnotes, and another to have the president flatly assert something" -- Anonymous intelligence official on the fact that the report on the uranium from Africa contained a footnote stating there were doubts at the State Department about the evidence.

On The Threat Posed By Iraq: Rand Beers Formerly a top White House counterterrorism advisor, now national security adviser for presidential candidate John F. Kerry. Beers said that the focus on Iraq was "making us less secure, not more secure" by taking manpower, brainpower and money away from domestic security. [LINK]

Larry Johnson Former CIA officer. Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an "imminent threat" to the West was "laughable and idiotic" and that "We can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war." [LINK]

Brent Scowcroft National security adviser under presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. "Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them... Our pre-eminent security priority -- underscored repeatedly by the president -- is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken." [LINK]

George J. Tenet Director of Central Intelligence. "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. against the United States. Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." [LINK]

Greg Thielmann Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "As of March 2003, when we began military operations, Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States" [LINK]

Unnamed "My judgment would be that the probability of [Saddam] initiating an attack -- let me put a time frame on it -- in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low." -- A senior intelligence witness responding as to whether Saddam would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction if he did not feel threatened. [LINK]

On The Iraq - Al Qaeda Connection: Vince Cannistraro Former CIA counterterrorism chief. On the Bush administration's allegations of connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda: "They're cooking the books" [LINK]

Michael Chandler Chairman of a United Nations Al Qaeda monitoring group. "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al Qaeda" [LINK]

Colin Powell Secretary of State. "But if the heart of your question is whether or not we see any complicity between Iraq and the events of Sept. 11 through Al Qaeda, we do not have that connection."

Unnamed "I remember reading the Abu Zubaydah debriefing last year [in which he stated that bin Laden rejected any alliance with Saddam], while the administration was talking about all of these other reports [of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link], and thinking that they were only putting out what they wanted," -- Anonymous CIA official

Unnamed "It was a classic case of 'rumint,' rumor-intelligence, plugged into various speeches and accepted as gospel." -- Former National Security Council official on the Iraq - Al Qaeda connection.

On The Administration's Handling of Intelligence: Hans Blix Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations. "Toward the end the [Bush] administration leaned on us."

General Wesley Clark Former NATO Supreme Court Commander. "I think there was a certain amount of hype in the intelligence, and I think the information that's come out thus far does indicate that there was a sort of selective reading of the intelligence in the sense of sort of building a case... [The hype] came from the White House, it came from people around the White House."

John Dean Former Counsel to President Nixon. "There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world."

Stephen Hadley Deputy national security adviser. "There were a number of people who could have raised a hand [to have the passage about the purchase of uranium from Africa removed from Bush's State of the Union address] and no one raised a hand."

Ray McGovern CIA analyst for 27 years, serving seven presidents, now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. "I have done a good bit of research here, and one of the conclusions I have come to is that Vice President Cheney was not only interested in 'helping out' with the analysis, let us say, that CIA was producing on Iraq. He was interested also in fashioning evidence that he could use as proof that, as he said, 'The Iraqis had reconstituted their nuclear program,' which demonstrably they had not."

George J. Tenet Director of Central Intelligence. Tenet told members of Congress a White House official insisted that President Bush's State of the Union address include an assertion about Saddam Hussein's nuclear intentions that had not been verified.

Greg Thielmann Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided"

Stansfield Turner Former CIA director. "There is no question in my mind [policymakers] distorted the situation."

Christian Westermann A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons. In a closed hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in mid-June, Westermann said that he had been under pressure to distort evidence Iraqi weapons programs to fit the political agenda of President George W. Bush's administration.

Joseph C. Wilson The retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Unnamed A senior intelligence official for the CIA said that visits by Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."

Unnamed "That kind of pressure would be enormous on these young guys." -- Anonymous former CIA official on Vice President Cheney's visits to CIA headquarters.

Unnamed "Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt." -- A former defense intelligence official

Unnamed "People [kept] telling you first that things weren't right, weird things going on, different people saying 'There's so much pressure, you know, they keep telling us, go back and find the right answer,' things like that." -- A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Unnamed "You had senior intelligence officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie." -- Anonymous intelligence analyst.

©TomPaine.com ________________________________

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, visit our web site at http://www.warandpeacewatch.com or send an e-mail to: Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact: Otoño Johnston ===========================================================(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================
9:09:31 PM    

Re: Seymour Hersh on Syria

Dear Friends:

Seymour Hersh tells an inside story of conflicting views in the administration toward Syria, and how ultimately, differences over Iraq destroyed the possibility of Syria's finding common ground with America. Through our waging war on Iraq, we threw it all away.

In late March, Rumsfeld accused Syria of supplying Iraq with night-vision goggles and other military goods. He also suggested that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might be stashed there. Syria denied the assertions, and members of the intelligence community characterized the evidence against Syria as highly questionable.

The Syrians were rattled by these threats and accusations, in part because many in and close to the administration have been urging regime change in Damascus for years. The Defense Department pushed for the hard line on Syria, but the White House wasn't yet ready to go forward. There was anger in Washington about what many officials saw as the administration's decision to choose confrontation with Syria over day-to-day help against Al Qaeda. The competition between this drive to go to war in Iraq and the need to fight terrorism has created a deep rift in the administration, and has left many CIA operatives frustrated.

The Syrians were willing to help more, but Rumsfeld and his colleagues saw them as next on the list of countries to overthrow. Washington's publicly trying to humiliate Syria caused them to become recalcitrant as well. Now, according to a Syrian foreign-ministry official, there is no security relationship. When the administration became heavy-handed about Iraq, differences over Iraq destroyed the Syrian bet. _____________________________

The New Yorker July 28, 2003 issue

Annals of National Security The Syrian Bet by Seymour M. Hersh

Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda?

On the night of June 18th, Task Force 20, an American Special Operations team stationed in Iraq, expanded its operations dozens of miles inside Syria. Military intelligence had observed large numbers of cars and trucks speeding toward the border, and senior officers suspected that the vehicles were carrying fleeing members of the Iraqi leadership. Communications intercepts had indicated that there were more Syrian soldiers congregated along the border than usual, including some officers. The military concluded, according to a senior Administration official, that something down there was going on. Two days earlier, one of Saddam Hussein's closest aides, Abid Hamid Mahmud, had been captured, and told his interrogators that he and Saddam's two sons had sought refuge in Syria but were turned back. Although the Syrian government denied knowledge of the brothers' whereabouts, the military was now ready to cross the border to stop any future flight attempts.

Sometime after midnight, Army helicopters and Bradley Fighting Vehicles attacked two groups of cars heading into Syria, triggering enormous explosions and fireballs that lit up the night sky. A gas station and nearby homes were destroyed. Task Force 20 sped across the border into Syria. Five Syrian guards were injured and flown to Iraq in American helicopters for medical treatment, and several other Syrians were seized, handcuffed, and detained before being released.

Pentagon officials subsequently praised the nighttime mission. I'm confident we had very good intelligence, Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference on June 24th. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, There were reasons, good reasons, to believe that the vehicles that were violating the curfew that existed in that area were doing it for reasons other than normal commerce. Asked if he believed that senior Iraqi leaders had been killed in the raid, Rumsfeld said, Were trying to find out.

In fact, according to current and former American military and diplomatic officials, the operation was a fiasco in which as many as eighty people--occupants of the cars and trucks as well as civilians living nearby--were killed. The vehicles, it turned out, were being used to smuggle gasoline. The Syrian government said little publicly about the violation of its sovereignty, even when the Pentagon delayed the repatriation of the injured Syrian border guards--reporters were told that the guards had not been fully interrogated--for ten days.

Weeks later, questions about the raid remained: Why had American forces crossed the border? And why had the Syrian response been so muted? An American consultant who recently returned from Iraq said, I don't mind so much what we did, but it's the incompetence with which we did it. A senior adviser to the Pentagon noted that the people who were killed had put themselves into the gray area by smuggling fuel across the border. The troops were trying to work with actionable intelligence, the official said. You might make the same mistake. This month, two retired veterans of the C.I.A.'s clandestine service, Vincent Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who now consult on intelligence issues, noted in a newsletter for their private clients that the attacks had been based on fragmentary and ambiguous information and had led to increased tension between Rumsfeld and the C.I.A. director, George Tenet.

Tenets involvement was significant. American intelligence and State Department officials have told me that by early 2002 Syria had emerged as one of the C.I.A.'s most effective intelligence allies in the fight against Al Qaeda, providing an outpouring of information that came to an end only with the invasion of Iraq. (A number of the details of the raid and the intelligence relationship were reported by U.P.I. on July 16th.) Tenet had become one of Syria's champions in the interagency debate over how to deal with its government. His antagonists include civilians in the Pentagon who viewed Syria, despite its intelligence help, as part of the problem. Tenet has prevented all kinds of action against Syria, one diplomat with knowledge of the interagency discussions told me.

Syria is one of seven nations listed by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. It has been on the list since 1979, in large part because of its public support for Hezbollah, the radical Islamic party that controls much of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for, among other acts, the 1983 bombing of the American Marine barracks in Beirut, which left two hundred and forty-one Americans dead; it was implicated in the 1984 kidnapping of William Buckley, the C.I.A.'s Beirut station chief, who was tortured and murdered; and it has been linked to bombings of Israeli targets in Argentina. Syria has also allowed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two groups that have staged numerous suicide bombings inside Israel, to maintain offices in Damascus.

Nevertheless, after September 11th the Syrian leader, Bashar Assad, initiated the delivery of Syrian intelligence to the United States. The Syrians had compiled hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on the men who participated--and others who wanted to participate--in the September 11th attacks. Syria also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. That data began flowing to C.I.A. and F.B.I. operatives.

Syria had accumulated much of its information because of Al Qaeda's ties to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic terrorists who have been at war with the secular Syrian government for more than two decades. Many of the September 11th hijackers had operated out of cells in Aachen and Hamburg, where Al Qaeda was working with the Brotherhood. In the late nineties, Mohammed Atta and other Al Qaeda members, including Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who is believed to have been one of the organizations top recruiters, worked on occasion at a German firm called Tatex Trading. Tatex was infiltrated by Syrian intelligence in the eighties; one of its shareholders was Mohammed Majed Said, who ran the Syrian intelligence directorate from 1987 to 1994. Zammar is now in Syrian custody.

Within weeks of the September 11th attacks, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A, with Syria's permission, began intelligence-gathering operations in Aleppo, near the Turkish border. Aleppo was the subject of Mohammed Atta's dissertation on urban planning, and he travelled there twice in the mid-nineties. At every stage in Atta's journey is the Muslim Brotherhood, a former C.I.A. officer who served undercover in Damascus told me. He went through Spain in touch with the Brotherhood in Hamburg.

Syria also provided the United States with intelligence about future Al Qaeda plans. In one instance, the Syrians learned that Al Qaeda had penetrated the security services of Bahrain and had arranged for a glider loaded with explosives to be flown into a building at the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters there. Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who served until early this year on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, told me that Syria's help let us thwart an operation that, if carried out, would have killed a lot of Americans. The Syrians also helped the United States avert a suspected plot against an American target in Ottawa.

Syria's efforts to help seemed to confound the Bush Administration, which was fixated on Iraq. According to many officials I spoke to, the Administration was ill prepared to take advantage of the situation and unwilling to reassess its relationship with Assad's government. Leverett told me that the quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the Agency's expectations. But, he said, from the Syrians perspective they got little in return for it.

For thirty years, Hafez Assad, Bashar Assad's father, ruled Syria through the socialist Baath Party. The journalist Thomas Friedman has described him as looking like a man who had long ago been stripped of any illusions about human nature. He dealt with his opponents brutally. In 1982, after years of increasingly violent terrorist attacks throughout Syria, Hafez Assad ordered a massive military assault on the Muslim Brotherhood in the northern city of Hama. He saw the group as a threat to his control of Syria, and his forces, showing little mercy, killed at least five thousand people, many of them civilians, in a monthlong battle that left the city in ruins. In 1994, his oldest son and presumed heir, Basil, was killed in an automobile accident. Bashar, then twenty-eight, was studying ophthalmology in London, where his wife, Asmaa, worked in the executive-training program at J. P. Morgan. They returned to Damascus in 1994, and shortly after the death of his father, in June, 2000, Bashar took over the Presidency.

Unlike his father, Bashar is routinely depicted in Western newspapers not as ruthless but as unsure, inexperienced, and unable to control a corrupt Old Guard. Last month, I visited him at his office in Damascus. Tall, gangly, and seemingly shy and eager to please, Assad was waiting at the door for me. He offset his tentative and somewhat fussy manner with humor. He was frank about his reasons for speaking to me: he wanted to change his image, and the image of his country. September 11th was like out of a Hollywood movie--beyond anyone's imagination, he said. But it was not surprising as a concept. We actually experienced innocents being killed on our streets, and we know how it feels. Syria had sent official expressions of sympathy, backed by offers to share intelligence. We thought Al Qaeda was not different than the Muslim Brotherhood as a state of mind, Assad said.

For us, Assad said, September 11th was a good opportunity. The need to coöperate was very self-evident, and it was in our interest. It was also a way to improve relations. Syria hoped to get off the list of state sponsors of terrorism; its case was based in part on the fact, acknowledged by the State Department, that it hadn't been directly implicated in a terrorist act since 1986. On a practical level, removal from the list would make Syria eligible for trade and other economic aid--and arms sales--from which it is now barred.

In interviews and public statements, Assad has tried to draw a distinction between international terrorists and those he called part of the resistance in Israel and the occupied territories, including young Palestinian suicide bombers. It is a distinction that few in the Bush Administration would endorse. Syria's enmity toward Israel has been unrelenting, as has its criticism of the United States for its support of Israel. In a typical comment, made in late March to Al Safir, a Lebanese newspaper, Assad declared, No one among us trusts Israel; not the Syrians, not any other Arabs. . . . We must be very careful. Treachery and threats have always been Israeli characteristics. Through its existence, Israel always poses a threat.

Assad and his advisers--many of whom are his father's cronies--had hoped that their coöperation in the hunt for Al Qaeda would allow them to improve and redefine their relations with the United States. Among other things, the Syrians wanted a back channel to Washington--that is, a private means of communicating directly with the President and his key aides. But there was a major obstacle: Syria's support for Hezbollah. Hezbollah may be the A team of terrorists and maybe Al Qaeda is actually the B team, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in a speech last September.

Last fall, however, General Hassan Khalil, the head of Syria's military intelligence, told Washington that Syria was willing to discuss imposing some restrictions on the military and political activities of Hezbollah. The General requested that the C.I.A. be the means of back-channel communication. A senior Syrian foreign-ministry official I met argued that a back channel was crucial because while Assad might be able to take quick action against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a public stance against Hezbollah would be impossible. He can't do it, the official said, adding that the leader of Hezbollah, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, is enormously popular in Syria.

The proposal went nowhere. A former State Department official told me that the C.I.A., ecstatic about the high level of coöperation with Syrian intelligence, didn't want to destroy the happy talk about Al Qaeda by dealing with all the other troubling issues in the back channel. The State Department, he added, did not like the Agency's having access to U.S.-Syrian diplomatic correspondence. And the Pentagon, preoccupied with the Iraq war and ideologically hostile to Syria, vehemently opposed a back channel.

The intelligence coöperation on Al Qaeda was important and effective, said Martin Indyk, who served as Ambassador to Israel in the Clinton Administration and is now director of the Saban Center. But the Syrians thought it would compensate for all their other games with Iraq and the Palestinian terror organizations, and it doesn't. On the issue of shutting down the Hamas and Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus, Indyk said, They're playing around. He asked, Why are they doing it despite our anger? One, they think were going to grow short of breath in Iraq and fail with the Middle East road map. So they're biding their time. And, two, there doesn't seem to be much consequence for not heeding our warnings.

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, who headed the Israeli delegation during the ill-fated peace talks with Hafez Assad in the mid-nineties, acknowledged that he was aware of the key Syrian intelligence role in the war against Al Qaeda, but he made it clear that Israel's distrust of Syria remains acute. Rabinovich wondered aloud whether, given the quality of their sources, the Syrians had had advance information about the September 11th plot--and failed to warn the United States. He said that under the elder Assad the Syrians had been masters of straddling the line. He added, Hafez negotiated with us, and he supported Hezbollah. The son is not as adept as the father, who could keep five balls in the air at the same time. Bashar can only handle three--if that. He has good intentions, but he's not in control. He can't deliver. For that reason, Rabinovich believed, Israel has urged Washington not to open the back channel to Assad. For the Syrians, he added, the best channel is a back channel--its ideal. They are then not embarrassed in public and they buy themselves some time.

Many of those I spoke to said that there had been an apparent shift in Hezbollah's behavior--one that may have created an opening which the Bush Administration has yet to exploit. With the exception of exchange of fire over the Shebaa Farms--a disputed area on the Lebanese border--its been quiet since the Israeli evacuation in 2000, said Richard W. Murphy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as Ambassador to Syria in the nineteen-seventies. The fact is Hezbollah knows its limits. Murphy pointed to Hezbollah's deepening involvement in the Lebanese government: Nasrallah's group now has twelve seats in the parliament. Many in Pentagon circles and in Israel attribute Hezbollah's silence to America's swift defeat of the Iraqi regime. The U.S. is now in the Middle East, and east of Israel, a retired Israeli intelligence officer told me. As a result, another Israeli official said, Hezbollah is playing defense today.

Michel Samaha, Lebanon's minister of information, told me that Hezbollah has stabilized daily life in southern Lebanon, by controlling and monitoring the sometimes violent activities of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in squalid refugee camps scattered through the area. He argued that America was making a foolish mistake by not trying to engage Hezbollah. The group, Samaha said, complied with Syria's insistence that it prevent would-be Palestinian suicide bombers from crossing the border into Israel. Rabinovich also said that Hezbollah had become more careful in its actions against Israel.

Martin Indyk questioned how much credit Syria should get for the change. Nasrallah independently figured it was a good time to quiet things down, well before the war in Iraq, he says. I don't think the Syrians were against it, but I wouldn't rush to credit them for the cooling down. Hezbollah, like Hamas, has read the map much better than Bashar and has decided it makes sense to keep its head down, preserve its assets and resources, rebuild where it needs to, and wait for the next round.

I spoke with Nasrallah, who is in his early forties, over tea at his offices south of Beirut. In his speeches to the faithful, his language is laced with hostility toward Israel and the United States, and with rationalizations for suicide bombings. In his conversation with me, he said, I used to believe that the Americans would need a year or two before the Iraqis begin protesting, but here they are doing it in just two months, not two years. Armed resistance, he said, was inevitable: The history of Iraq says that it is possible to occupy Iraq, but one cant stay there for long. (On the eve of the war, he had said that American troops should expect martyrdom operations and that Death to America was, is, and will stay our slogan.)

Nasrallah emphasized that he was not seeking a confrontation with the United States. Because of Hezbollah's ability to disrupt a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, I asked Nasrallah about his view of the renewed talks. He hesitated a moment and declared, At the end, this is primarily a Palestinian matter. I, like any other person, may consider what is happening to be right or wrong. . . . I may have a different assessment, but at the end of the road no one can go to war on behalf of the Palestinians, even if that one is not in agreement with what the Palestinians agreed on. Of course, it would bother us that Jerusalem goes to Israel.

I asked, But if there was a deal?

Let it happen, he answered. I would not say O.K. I would say nothing.

In midwinter, despite intense American pressure, Bashar Assad decided that Syria would not support the invasion of Iraq. Coöperation on Al Qaeda was now a secondary issue.

In our interview, Assad said that his opposition to the war was based on principle. Could the Iraqi people ignore an American occupation because they hated Saddam? The United States doesn't understand the society--not even the simplest analysis. His decision was also driven by internal politics. America had demanded that Syria monitor and curtail the heavy flow into Iraq of smuggled arms and other military necessities from Syrian entrepreneurs--many with high-level Baath Party connections. The U.S. had satellite photographs of the equipment and information on high-ranking Syrian officials, a foreign diplomat with close ties to Washington said. Bashar did not cut it off. The United States got furious.

Even Assad's most hopeful supporters told me that it was not clear how much control he had over his own government. Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian-born political scientist now at Washington's Middle East Institute, told me, Bashar is trying to reach out to the people, and the people like him, but what stands in the way is the financially corrupt state.

Hafez Assad supported the first Gulf War, and Dennis Ross, who was President Clinton's special envoy to the Middle East, said that Bashar Assad had bet wrong in refusing to support America this time. He got nervous after the war and sent a series of messages saying he wants peace, Ross said. He added, Assad has to know that he wont get by on the cheap--he truly must cut off support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad. But, Ross went on, if he did so the U.S. should reward him by renewing talks on the Golan Heights--land Israel occupied in 1967. Ross said that, so far, there was no indication that the Administration was pursuing such an approach.

Instead, in late March Rumsfeld said that Syria would be held accountable for its actions. He accused Syria of supplying Iraq with night-vision goggles and other military goods. He also suggested that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might be stashed there. Syria denied the assertions, and members of the intelligence community I spoke to characterized the evidence against Syria as highly questionable.

The Syrians were rattled by the threats, in part because many in and close to the Bush Administration have been urging regime change in Damascus for years. In 2000, the Middle East Forum, a conservative Washington think tank, issued a study offering many of the same reasons for taking military action against Syria that were later invoked against Iraq. The Defense Department pushed for the hard line on Syria, a former State Department official told me. I think Rummy was at least testing the waters--to see how far he could go--but the White House was not ready. The former official added that Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser, is not going to sit on the Pentagon the way shed have to in order to give the policy of engaging Syria politically a chance. She wont until the President has made his preferences clear. This kind of policy drift on Syria would be sustainable for another Administration, but Bush cant take it indefinitely. He's defined the war on terrorism in theological terms. A President who says "You're either with us or against us" can't let policy drift. Rumsfeld's approach is to tell the President, You do in Syria what you promised to do.

In Washington, there was anger about what many officials saw as the decision of the Bush Administration to choose confrontation with Syria over day-to-day help against Al Qaeda. In a sense, the issue was not so much Syria itself as a competition between ideology and practicality--and between the drive to go to war in Iraq and the need to fight terrorism--which has created a deep rift in the Bush Administration. The collapse of the liaison relationship has left many C.I.A. operatives especially frustrated. The guys are unbelievably pissed that we're blowing this away, a former high-level intelligence official told me. There was a great channel at Aleppo. The Syrians were a lot more willing to help us, but they--Rumsfeld and his colleagues--want to go in there next.

There is no security relationship now, a Syrian foreign-ministry official told me. It saddens us as much as it saddens you. We could give you information on organizations that we don't think should exist. If we help you on Al Qaeda, we are helpi ng ourselves. He added, almost plaintively, that if Washington had agreed to discuss certain key issues in a back channel, wed have given you more. But when you publicly try to humiliate a country it'll become stubborn.

Robert Baer, a retired C.I.A. officer who served in Syria and is the author of a new book, Sleeping with the Devil, on Washington's relationship with the Saudis, agreed that the Syrians had more to offer. The Syrians know that the Saudis were involved in the financing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they for sure know the names, Baer told me.

Up through January of 2003, the coöperation was topnotch, a former State Department official said. Then we were going to do Iraq, and some people in the Administration got heavy-handed. They wanted Syria to get involved in operational stuff having nothing to do with Al Qaeda and everything to do with Iraq. It was something Washington wanted from the Syrians, and they didn't want to do it.

Differences over Iraq destroyed the Syrian bet, said Ghassan Salamé, a professor of international relations at Paris University who served, until April, as Lebanon's minister of culture. They bet that they could somehow find the common ground with America. They bet all on coöperation with America. A Defense Department official who has been involved in Iraq policy told me that the Syrians, despite their differences with Washington, had kept Hezbollah quiet during the war in Iraq. This was, he said, a signal to us, and were throwing it away. The Syrians are trying to communicate, and were not listening.

© The New Yorker ________________________________

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, visit our web site at http://www.warandpeacewatch.com or send an e-mail to: Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact: Otoño Johnston ===========================================================(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================
9:09:28 PM    

Re: Draft Impeachment Resolution

Dear Friends:

It's time to resurrect an old favorite of the War and Peace Watch--law professor Francis Boyle's Draft Impeachment Resolution Against President George W. Bush. Perhaps we'll get a little farther with it this time. No time to waste. ____________________________

CounterPunch Originally published January 17, 2003

Draft Impeachment Resolution Against President George W. Bush by FRANCIS A. BOYLE professor of law, University of Illinois School of Law

108nd Congress H.Res.XX

1st Session

Impeaching George Walker Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

_______________________________________________

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January __, 2003

Mr./Ms. Y submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Judiciary.

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A RESOLUTION

Impeaching George Walker Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Impeaching George Walker Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That George Walker Bush, President of the United States is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of all of the people of the United States of America, against George Walker Bush, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE I

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has attempted to impose a police state and a military dictatorship upon the people and Republic of the United States of America by means of "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" against the Constitution since September 11, 2001. This subversive conduct includes but is not limited to trying to suspend the constitutional Writ of Habeas Corpus; ramming the totalitarian U.S.A. Patriot Act through Congress; the mass-round-up and incarceration of foreigners; kangaroo courts; depriving at least two United States citizens of their constitutional rights by means of military incarceration; interference with the constitutional right of defendants in criminal cases to lawyers; violating and subverting the Posse Comitatus Act; unlawful and unreasonable searches and seizures; violating the First Amendments rights of the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government for redress of grievances; packing the federal judiciary with hand-picked judges belonging to the totalitarian Federalist Society and undermining the judicial independence of the Constitution's Article III federal court system; violating the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and the U.S. War Crimes Act; violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; reinstitution of the infamous "Cointelpro" Program; violating the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Convention against Torture, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; instituting the totalitarian Total Information Awareness Program; and establishing a totalitarian Northern Military Command for the United States of America itself. In all of this George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

ARTICLE II

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. U.S. soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor White, Black, and Latino and their military service is based on the coercion of a system that has denied viable economic opportunities to these classes of citizens. Under the Constitution, all classes of citizens are guaranteed equal protection of the laws, and calling on the poor and minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy power elite of this country is a denial of the rights of these soldiers. In all of this George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

ARTICLE III

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has violated the U.S. Constitution, federal law, and the United Nations Charter by bribing, intimidating and threatening others, including the members of the United Nations Security Council, to support belligerent acts against Iraq. In all of this George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

ARTICLE IV

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prepared, planned, and conspired to engage in a massive war and catastrophic aggression against Iraq by employing methods of mass destruction that will result in the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of whom will be children. This planning includes the threatened use of nuclear weapons, and the use of such indiscriminate weapons and massive killings by aerial bombardment, or otherwise, of civilians, violates the Hague Regulations on land warfare, the rules of customary international law set forth in the Hague Rules of Air Warfare, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol I thereto, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956). In all of this George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

ARTICLE V

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the United States to acts of war without congressional consent and contrary to the United Nations Charter and international law. From September, 2001 through January, 2003, the President embarked on a course of action that systematically eliminated every option for peaceful resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis. Once the President approached Congress for consent to war, tens of thousands of American soldiers' lives were in jeopardy - rendering any substantive debate by Congress meaningless. The President has not received a Declaration of War by Congress, and in contravention of the written word, the spirit, and the intent of the U.S. Constitution has declared that he will go to war regardless of the views of the American people. In failing to seek and obtain a Declaration of War, George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

ARTICLE VI

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has planned, prepared, and conspired to commit crimes against the peace by leading the United States into aggressive war against Iraq in violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, the Kellogg-Brand Pact, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956), numerous other international treaties and agreements, and the Constitution of the United States. In all of this George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

(In memory of Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez - R.I.P. - and H. Res. 86, 102nd Cong., 1st Sess., Jan. 16, 1991.)

--Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU

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In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

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