- Bombshell: Chalabi & Top INC Official Are Spies for Iran; Op Inadvertently Paid for by Pentagon
The US-backed Iraqi National Congress was actually a front for Iranian intelligence, which used the group to help bamboozle the US into invading Iraq and then to receive stolen US military secrets, some of it classified above top secret. Patrick...
Posted Sat 05/22/2004
- Senior Pentagon & Dept. of Justice Officials Approved Torture, er, "Extreme Interrogation" Techniques at Gitmo
From the Washington Post: In April 2003, the Defense Department approved interrogation techniques for use at the Guantanamo Bay prison that permit reversing the normal sleep patterns of detainees and exposing them to heat, cold and "sensory assault," including loud...
Posted Sun 05/09/2004
- Torture at Abu Ghraib: The Complete Taguba Report (part 1)
The full text of the secret Teguba Report, detailing the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison by members of the US military. Includes the section on "ghost detainees" (prisoners secretly held with no record of their detention) that is missing from many public versions. Also includes photos.
Posted Sun 05/09/2004
- Torture at Abu Ghraib: The Complete Taguba Report (part 2)
(Continuation from part 1 of this post.) The full text of the secret Teguba Report, detailing the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison by members of the US military. Includes the section on "ghost detainees" (prisoners secretly held with no record of their detention) that is missing from many public versions. Also includes photos.
Posted Sun 05/09/2004
- Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) Illegally Used State Dept. Money to Disseminate Propaganda In US
From Newsweek (4/5/2004): Ahmad Chalabi has never paid much attention to rules. As an international financier, he was convicted in absentia in 1992 of embezzling millions from his own bank in Jordan. In the mid-'90s, the CIA tried to make...
Posted Wed 04/14/2004
- Iraqi National Congress (INC) List of News Items Using Their Propaganda
List distributed by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) summarizing articles in major English-language news outlets worldwide (October 2001-May 2002) using propaganda information disseminated by their Information Collection Program (ICP). The goal of the ICP was to plant information (much of...
Posted Wed 04/14/2004
- Claim vs. Fact: Rice's 9/11 Testimony Dissected
Claim vs. fact – a factual counterpoint to the testimony of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (aka the 9/11 Commission) on April 8, 2004. Written by David J. Sirota and Christy Harvey and...
Posted Sat 04/10/2004
- Full Transcript: Condoleezza Rice's Sworn Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission, 4/8/04
The complete transcript of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, on April 8, 2004. Includes her prepared opening statement as well as the question-and-answer session that followed.
Posted Sat 04/10/2004
- Transcript: Richard Clarke on 60 Minutes, 3/21/04
CBS has not posted an official, full transcript of Richard Clarke's explosive appearance on 60 Minutes. Here is an unofficial rush transcript. Leslie Stahl interviews Richard Clark Sixty Minutes March 21, 2004 LESLIE STAHL: ... and was held over by...
Posted Tue 03/23/2004
- CIA Using Database Codenamed 'Harmony' to Catalog Info from Tortured Captives
The London Guardian reported in Sept. 2003 that the CIA is using a database codenamed "Harmony" to catalog the responses given by captives taken in the war on terror. This includes the results of interrogations under torture. Especially important or...
Posted Mon 03/15/2004
- Pentagon Deploys Sound Weapon in Iraq; Can Cause Permanent Deafness and 'Cellular Damage'
From the LA Times: Marines arriving in Iraq this month as part of a massive troop rotation will bring with them a high-tech weapon never before used in combat — or in peacekeeping. The device is a powerful megaphone the...
Posted Mon 03/15/2004
- White House Source Confirms O'Neil Account on Iraq Invasion
From ABC News: President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, an official told ABCNEWS, confirming the account former Treasury Secretary Paul...
Posted Thu 01/15/2004
- Bush Planned Iraq Invasion From Day 1 - Transcript of Paul O'Neil on 60 Minutes
The official CBS transcript of the Paul O'Neil segment on 60 Minutes, which aired on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2004. In it, O'Neil (Bush's first Secretary of the Treasury) discusses the very first NSC meeting of the new Administration, 10 days...
Posted Thu 01/15/2004
- Israeli Source Confirms More Details re: Kurdish Capture of Saddam; Political Fall-Out Mounts
From the Scotland Sunday Herald: When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has been engineered. For a story that three weeks ago gripped the...
Posted Tue 01/06/2004
- The Brave New World of Computers on the Battlefield
From Reuters: The blue dots moving on the computer screen are US tanks and Humvees, the red ones are the enemy that American soldiers must kill or capture. This is not a video game but how the most high-tech division...
Posted Mon 01/05/2004
- Pentagon Tries to Shut Down Wash. Post Military Reporter in Meeting With Editors
The Defense Department sent a letter of complaint to the Washington Post, then met with the paper's top editors in an effort to crack down on the paper's military reporter, Tom Ricks. It is unusual -- if not unprecedented --...
Posted Fri 01/02/2004
- Hussein's Capture Has Not Reduced US Deaths in Insurgency
Knight Ridder reports that a review of recent attacks and interviews with US and Iraqi officials shows the pace of killing and maiming of American troops hasn't slowed since Saddam's Dec. 13 arrest. In the 14 days prior to Saddam's...
Posted Fri 01/02/2004
- Official CENTCOM Casualty Counts Before & After Hussein Capture
Quoting a release from US Central Command (CENTCOM). The following information may be used by those papers wishing to chart US casualties for the 14 days prior to and 14 days after Saddam's capture: Nov. 29 - 2 dead, 1...
Posted Fri 01/02/2004
- Memo Shows INC Piped Raw Iraq 'Intel' Directly to Cheney & Office of Special Plans
A memo obtained by Newsweek shows the Iraqi National Congress fed questionable intelligence reports about Iraqi WMD and purported ties to al-Qaida directly to one of Vice President Cheney's top national security aides, as well as to a senior member of the Office of Special Plans who formerly served as military adviser to Newt Gingrich. This completely bypassed all normal intelligence channels and vetting, contrary to Cheney denials on just this point. Cheney and OPS staffers later pushed that same INC info to bolster the case that Hussein's government posed a direct threat to America.
Posted Fri 01/02/2004
- A Reader's Guide to SAOs (Senior Administration Officials)
New coverage of the executive branch is packed with quotes by "senior administration officials." The Bush team seems obsessed with keeping the names of top officials out of the news except for strictly sanctioned occasions. Who are the people behind the blind quotes? This key to the "SAOs" will help you decipher the dispatches.
Posted Fri 01/02/2004
- Compile of News Links re: Kurdish Capture of Saddam Hussein
A phenomenal piece of work by Rowan Wolf at Correspondences.org compiling dozens of news stories on the Kurdish capture of Hussein.
Posted Tue 12/30/2003
- US Using Police Software to Track Iraqi Insurgents
From the Associated Press: American troops battling the shadowy guerrilla insurgency in Iraq have adopted the computer-sleuthing tactics of urban police departments to prepare strikes against rebel fighters and their sources of money and weapons. Military intelligence analysts have adopted...
Posted Fri 12/26/2003
- Kurdish Paper Scooped Sunday Express Story on Kurdish Capture of Hussein
An article published Dec. 20 by the independent Kurdish weekly newspaper Hawal made the same claim of PUK responsibility for Saddam Hussein's capture as published the day after in the London Sunday Express. The account in Hawal is evidently based...
Posted Tue 12/23/2003
- Kurdish PUK Claims Hussein Wife Was Tipster, Contradicts US Account
Sources in the Kurdish PUK told a Cairo news agency two days after Saddam Hussein's capture that the dictator's location had come to them from Hussein's second wife. This claim contradicted a report the day before, in which unnamed US...
Posted Tue 12/23/2003
- Dec. 14 News Coverage May Buttress Kurdish Claim of Hussein Capture
The Kurdish PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) was the first to break the news of Saddam Hussein's capture on Dec. 14, some 12 hours before the official US announcement at 3 pm local time in which it took sole credit...
Posted Tue 12/23/2003
- Sunday Express: Saddam Hussein Captured by Kurdish PUK, Not US
Full text of the original Dec. 21 Sunday Express story, quoted in recent AFP wire reports, saying Kurdish forces with Jalal Talabani's PUK captured Saddam Hussein, drugged him, and left him in the famous spider hole for US forces to "discover." Currently unavailable anywhere else on the web.
Posted Tue 12/23/2003
- UPI Interview With Cell Leader in Iraq Insurgency
The UPI wire service has published a summary of four interviews with the pseudonymous "Abu Mujahid," the leader of one of numerous cells engaged in the Iraqi insurgency. (The interviews and the article predate the capture of Saddam Hussein.) The...
Posted Thu 12/18/2003
- Task Force 121 to Use Saddam's Spies and Israeli Commandos in Assassination 'Manhunts'
Seymour Hersh reports in The New Yorker that the new Task Force 121 death squad will use members of the "upper ranks of the old Iraqi intelligence services" to "provide information about individual [Iraqi] insurgents for the Americans to act...
Posted Mon 12/08/2003
- Colonel: 'Fear and Violence' Will Convince Iraqis the US is 'Here to Help'
The NY Times quotes battalion commander Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman as saying, "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help...
Posted Mon 12/08/2003
- American Reporters Say US Troops Intimidating, Threatening & Wrongly Detaining Them
From The Boston Globe: The Associated Press says soldiers in Iraq detained one of its photographers and a driver in late September near the site of the Abu Ghraib prison. Knight Ridder says its photographer at the scene of the...
Posted Thu 11/20/2003
- Task Force 121 'Death Squad' Hunting Saddam & Bin Laden
From the NY Times: The top American military commander for the Middle East has created a covert commando force to hunt Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and key terrorists throughout the region, according to Pentagon and military officials. The new...
Posted Thu 11/13/2003
- Senate Republicans Freeze Iraq Inquiry Over Leaked Dem Strategy Memo
Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on the author of the...
Posted Thu 11/13/2003
- US Has Plans for Guantanamo 'Death Camp'
The US commander of the Guantanamo detention camp has revealed that the US plans to build its own death row and execution chamber there. According to press reports, prisoners "would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving [Guantanamo's] boundaries, without...
Posted Tue 06/03/2003
- Washington and London: We Lied About Iraq
Recent press reports from the US and Britain have quoted intelligence and government sources of both countries who maintain that those governments "ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," trumpeted claims that had "repeatedly been disproved by...
Posted Tue 05/06/2003
- Hints That (US-Occupied) Iraq May Quit Opec
Fadhil Chalabi, cousin of the Pentagon's favorite puppet to lead post-invasion Iraq, told the London Observer the country may leave OPEC so that it can bypass limits on oil production and miximize profits. Chalabi said that in order to pay...
Posted Sat 04/26/2003
- US/Brit Spooks Bribed Republican Guard
The London tabloid, The Daily Express, reports that CIA and MI6 operatives, along with SAS paramilitaries, teams carried suitcases full of gold bullion, US dollars, Swiss francs and euros to buy off Iraqi military and government leaders, threatening to kill...
Posted Tue 04/22/2003
- Spin Control: US Attacks All Main Western and Arab Media HQs in Baghdad In Just One Day
In the space of a single day, US forces have attacked the provisional headquarters of all major Western and Arabic news outlets in Baghdad, killing at least four reporters and injuring numerous others. Some reporters on the scene think this...
Posted Wed 04/09/2003
- What's a War Crime for the Goose is Fine for the Gander
Even as the Bush Administration is shrieking about how Iraqi forces are committing war crimes by dressing in civilian clothing, it has been forced to concede that its own troops are using the very same tactic. An Army legal official...
Posted Mon 04/07/2003
- Oakland Police Fire Wooden Bullets at Protesters; At Least 12 Injured, Including Dockworkers
Police in Oakland, CA fired wooden dowels, rubber bullets, tear gas "stingers" and concussion grenades at protesters in front of the Port of Oakland on April 7. Protesters as well as longshoremen employed by the Port were injured in the...
Posted Mon 04/07/2003
- Baptist Army Chaplain Uses Water to Coerce Soldiers Into Conversions
Army chaplain Josh Llano (from Texas -- go figure) is using his precious store of water in the Iraqi desert to coerce parched soldiers into religious baptisms and hours of "sermons." Most of the soldiers have not bathed in weeks....
Posted Sun 04/06/2003
- Transcript of Peter Arnett Interview on Iraqi TV
Here is a complete transcript of Peter Arnett's fateful March 31 interview on Iraqi television. Arnett -- whose reporting has not been criticized (in this war, anyway) -- was of course immediately fired by both NBC and National Geographic Explorer...
Posted Wed 04/02/2003
- Al Jazeera Banned from NY Stock Exchange and NASDAQ
On Monday (March 24), Al Jazeera's two correspondents were suddenly banned from the floor of the NY Stock Exchange after 5 years. The NYSE rep who broke the news said it was because of "crowding" -- but Al Jazeera was...
Posted Thu 03/27/2003
- Summary of UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri's statement to the UN Security Council
The US ambassador to the UN, John "What death squads?" Negroponte, walked out on the Iraqi ambassador during the latter's remarks on March 27. "I'd heard enough," sniffed the man who lied to protect mass murderers during his Reagan-era assignment...
Posted Thu 03/27/2003
- White House's 'Global PR Network' Used to 'Dominate' War Coverage
The eruption of war in Iraq last week set in motion a massive global PR network, cultivated by the Bush administration during the months-long buildup of forces. The network is intended not only to disseminate, but also to dominate news...
Posted Thu 03/27/2003
- Nation's Largest Radio Conglomerate Oranizing Pro-War Rallies
Clear Channel -- the largest owner of radio stations in the country -- is leveraging it's massive resources to promote the invasion of Iraq. Not just by using the stations they own to broadcast the likes of Rush Limbaugh, but...
Posted Tue 03/25/2003
- Vandenberg AFB Threatens to Shoot Protesters
Security forces at Vandenberg Air Force Base are allowed to use "deadly force" in some cases if any anti-war demonstrators infiltrate the military complex, officials said. Some anti-war activists have announced plans to trespass in hopes of disturbing Vandenberg's mission...
Posted Mon 03/17/2003
- Ex-CIA Agents: US is 'Cooking' Intelligence on Iraq
A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq. Members of the group contend...
Posted Sun 03/16/2003
- US Ambassador Tells Turkey We'll Be in Iraq 'for 20 Years'
During a recent dinner party, the US ambassador to Turkey Robert Pearson told that country's justice minister and six members of parliament that the US would stay in Iraq "for twenty years." He also a spoke explicitly of US plans...
Posted Sat 03/15/2003
- US & Britain Passed Forged Documents to UN as Iraq Nuke 'Proof'
Mohammed ElBaradei, the chief UN inspector looking for evidence of nuclear capability in Iraq, explicitly accused the US and Britain of passing forged documents to the UN as part of their "proof" that Iraq has restarted its nuclear weapons program....
Posted Thu 03/13/2003
- NSA Intercepting UN Security Council Members' Private Communications
The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq. Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves...
Posted Mon 03/03/2003
- Declassified Documents Detail US Cozying to Saddam
The non-governmental National Security Archive has published a series of declassified US documents detailing the US embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show Presidential...
Posted Wed 02/26/2003
- Federal Lawsuit to Stop Iraq War Dismissed; Appeal Filed
A lawsuit filed on Feb. 13 in Federal court seeking to stop the US invasion of Iraq has been dismissed pursuant to a motion filed by the Bush Administration. The suit was filed by a group of 15 plaintiffs, including...
Posted Tue 02/25/2003
- Pennsylvania's Homeland Security Chief Consulted for 'Iraq Gate' Arms Dealer
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's choice to head the state's Department of Homeland Security resigned from a Lancaster TV station in 1990 after it was revealed he was consulting for an arms dealer that was illegally funneling weapons to Iraq. ...Keith...
Posted Sun 02/16/2003
