In September 2003, according to Suskind, CIA officials -- at the direct command of then-CIA director George Tenet and at the behest of the White House -- deliberately forged a backdated letter from Iraqi security chief Tahir Jalil Habbush to Saddam Hussein. The phony letter claimed that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq and that al-Qaida had facilitated mysterious shipments from Niger to Iraq. The letter was the "slam dunk" the Bush administration had been seeking so desperately: evidence of a direct operational link between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime.
...Since then, that narrative has unraveled thread by thread -- as has the Habbush letter. That it was a forgery can no longer be doubted; that it originated with the White House may be harder to prove. Two former CIA officials -- Rob Richer and John Maguire -- have gone on record as saying they were personally charged with carrying out the forgery, but their marching orders, if they existed, came directly from Tenet (who has fiercely denied the story).
...The irony is that if White House honchos had listened to what Habbush was really saying instead of putting (or wishing) words in his mouth, they might have avoided the war that destroyed their political fortunes. As early as January 2003, writes Suskind, Habbush told a British intelligence officer that Saddam, 12 years earlier, had both ended his nuclear program and destroyed his chemical weapon stockpile and was in no hurry to build them up again. "They're not going to like this downtown," said Tenet, referring to his Pennsylvania Avenue bosses. They didn't. The Habbush report was buried, the war was set in motion, and Habbush himself was spirited to Amman, Jordan, where he was placated with $5 million in CIA hush money (even as his picture showed up as the jack of diamonds in Bush's playing deck of Iraqi war criminals).
More here.
I'm still angry about this whole murderous charade. I'll probably stay angry until they pour me into the urn.
No comments:
Post a Comment