Wolfowitz Sought To Undermine Blix So US Attack Iraq in 02
 
By Jason Leopold

06/25/03: (Information Clearing House) Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy 
secretary of defense, was so eager to see the United States launch a 
preemptive strike against Iraq in early 2002, that he ordered the CIA 
to investigate the past work of Hans Blix, the chief United Nations 
weapons inspector, who in February 2002, was asked to lead a team of 
U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass 
destruction, in an attempt to undermine the scientist.  

The unusual move by Wolfowitz underscores the steps the Bush 
administration was willing to take a year before the U.S. invaded 
Iraq to manipulate and or exaggerate intelligence information to 
support it's claims that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the 
United States and that the only solution to quell the problem was 
the use of military force.  

U.S. military forces in Iraq have yet to find any evidence of WMD. 
Some U.S. lawmakers have accused the Bush administration of distorting 
intelligence information, which claimed Iraq possessed tons of chemical 
and biological agents, to justify the attack to overthrow Iraq's President 
Saddam Hussein. Although the Bush administration continues to deny 
the accusations, evidence, such as the secret report Wolfowitz asked 
the CIA in January 2002 to produce on Blix, prove that the 
administration had already decided that removing Saddam from power 
would require military force and it would do so regardless of the U.N..  

Earlier this month, Blix accused the Bush administration of launching 
a smear campaign against him because he could not find evidence of 
WMD in Iraq and, he said, he refused to pump up his reports to the 
U.N. about Iraq's WMD programs, which would have given the U.S. the 
evidence it needed to get a majority of U.N. member countries to 
support a war against Iraq. Instead, Blix said the U.N. inspectors 
should be allowed more time to conduct searches in Iraq for WMD.  

In a June 11 interview with the London Guardian newspaper, Blix 
said "U.S. officials pressured him to use more damning language 
when reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons programs."  

"By and large my relations with the U.S. were good," Blix told the 
Guardian. "But toward the end the (Bush) administration leaned on us."

Tensions between Blix and the hawks in the Bush administration, such 
as Wolfowitz, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice 
President Dick Cheney, go back at least two years, when President 
Bush, at the urging of Secretary of State Colin Powell, said he wanted 
the U.N. to resurrect U.N. arms inspections for Iraq.  

The move angered some in the administration, such as Wolfowitz, who, 
according to an April 15 report in the Washington Post, wanted to see 
military action against Iraq sooner rather than later.  

When the U.N. said privately in January 2002 that Blix would lead an 
inspections team into Iraq, Wolfowitz contacted the CIA to produce a 
report on why Blix, as chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency 
during the 1980s and 1990s, failed to detect Iraqi nuclear activity.  

But, according to the Washington Post's April 15, 2002 story, the CIA 
report said Blix "had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear 
power plants fully within the parameters he could operate as chief of 
the Vienna-based agency between 1981 and 1997."

Wolfowitz, according to the Post, quoting a former State Department 
official familiar with the report, "hit the ceiling" because it failed to 
provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the 
new U.N. weapons inspection program."  

"The request for a CIA investigation underscored the degree of concern 
by Wolfowitz and his civilian colleagues in the Pentagon that new 
inspections -- or protracted negotiations over them -- could torpedo 
their plans for military action to remove Hussein from power," the Post 
reported.  

Soon after the CIA issued its report, the administration began 
exaggerating intelligence information of Iraq's weapons programs and, 
in some cases, forcing intelligence officials to ocookoe up information 
to support a war, according to a Nov. 19, 2002 story in the London 
Guardian newspaper.  

For example, last August, Cheney said Iraq would have nuclear weapons 
"fairly soon" - in direct contradiction of CIA reports that said it 
would take at least five more years.  

Rumsfeld, in public comments last year, accused Saddam Hussein of 
providing sanctuary to al-Qaida operatives fleeing Afghanistan - although 
they had actually traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan, which is outside Saddam's 
control, the Guardian reported.  

On Feb. 12, 2002, a week or so after the CIA issued its report to 
Wolfowitz on Blix, reporters questioned Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld 
about the accuracy of the Bush administration's claim that Iraq was 
harboring al-Qaida terrorists and the countries alleged stockpile of 
WMD, which some news reports said was not true.  

Rumsfeld's response to the reporters' questions about the accuracy 
of the information proves that the Defense Secretary cares little 
about providing the public with thoughtful, intelligent analysis.  

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting 
to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we 
know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we 
know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown 
unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know," Rumsfeld said.  

But on Wednesday, Rumsfeld and Gen Richard Myers, Chairman, Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, radically changed their stance on the accuracy of 
such intelligence  The officials said at a news conference that 
intelligence information the U.S. gathered leading up to the war 
in Iraq that concluded the country possessed WMD may have been wrong.  

"Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true," Myers said 
"It's just -- it's intelligence. You know, it's your best estimate of the 
situation. It doesn't mean it's a fact. I mean, that's not what intelligence 
is. It's not -- they're -- and so you make judgments."

                             -==-  

Source: Information Clearinghouse ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3928.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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