I Cogitate

*** George Bush was getting pushed by the neo-con cabal to go after Iraq prior to 9/11 taking place--9/11 provided the necessary cover to push it to the frontburner. Because of Bush's inexperience, callowness, shallowness, and uninquisitive CEO management style, he bought into the neo-con fantasies as a grandiose means of establishing his legacy -- George Bush, re-maker of the world. The present condition of  the state of Iraq is today has to be paining Bush tremendously regardless of the talk about '40 years from now history will judge me' blathering.

*** Naji Sabri was the Iraq Foreign Minister prior to the invasion and was being 'developed' as an asset by Bill Murray, the CIA station chief in Paris. Sabri told Murray there were no Iraq  WMDs, that the chemical arsenal was all gone, that any biological weapons were amateurish and that no fissille material for nuclear weapons was being developed. Murray shared this with CIA major domo John McLaughlin who responded: "you may be a guy who stopped a war." If only.

*** A top level Iraq Operations group manager is quoted in the book as telling a CIA official: "one of these days you're going to get it. This is not about intelligence. This is about regime change." The Administration was knee deep in destabilization activities within Iraq way prior to the actual invasion.

*** Newt Gingrich was an Ahmed Chalabi champion. Keep this in mind as Newt travels the country testing his 2008 presidential chances. The oh-so-bright neo-con Gingrich was conned by a con because Chalabi was speaking what Gingrich wanted to hear.

*** Former assistant Harvard professor Laurie Mylroie  became known as the 'it's Saddam' obsessive compulsive. Curiously, Mylroie pushed Saddam as a very useful guy until the invasion of  Kuwait. Then she did a 180 turn and everything, from a hiccup in California to a burp 10,000 miles away was seen as Saddam's doing. Mylroie went off the deep end and saw Saddam's hand in anything and everything--the 1998 embassy bombing in Africa, the 2000 bombing of USS Cole, the Oklahoma City bombing and the WTC bombing in 1993. Of course, Paul Wolfowitz absolutely believed her,

*** He and the others, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, John Bolton and Scooter Libby were uber-obsessed with Iraq and Saddam, earning them the label of "quick to see darkness when others see dusk." This is the best pejorative description of the neo-con thought process as has ever be developed.

*** Doug Feith is quoted as the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

*** Isikoff and Corn put it this way in describing such a mindset: "if it was possible, it was believeable"

*** Before he was deep-sixed, Paul O'Neil saw that the Bush Administration focus was on getting rid of Saddam. Donald Rumsfeld wanted Saddam targeted along with Osama bin-Laden.

***  Paul Wolfowitz preferred attacking Iraq over Afghanistan. That is how deep this sickness ran.

*** In an irony of ironies, on page 95 of the book, it's written that Joseph Wilson probably ended up going to Niger probably because of pressure Cheney was applying to CIA analysts.

*** Donald Rumsfeld absolutely distrusted the CIA. For him, the CIA was too staid and didn't utilize enough out-of-the-box thinking. Rumsfeld is quoted as saying: "I'm going to create my own intelligence agency" At that point, he already controlled the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and continually battled CIA Director George Tenet for even greater authority and budget control

*** Per Donald Rumsfeld, Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, the events of 9/11 had to have a state sponsor because a 'rag tag bunch of terrorists in Afghanistan' couldn't have accomplished the 9/11 carnage. This is a great hypocritical example of being too staid and rejecting out-of-the-box thinking.

*** Ibn al-Shayka al-Libi was an Al-Queda commander who was captured, sent abroad and then tortured in Egypt. He finally offered up that Osama bin-Laden had sent two operatives to Iraq for chemical and biological weapons training--something the Bush Administration then trumpeted. Ibn al-Shayka al-Libi later recanted and told the FBI "They (the Egyptians) were killing me. I had to tell them something."

*** In September 2002, the CIA was told off-the-record by the German Foreign Intelligence Service that the Iraqi defector "Curveball' was crazy and that speaking to him would be a waste of time. Regarding "Curveball's" claim of the existence of mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq, the Germans said, "we think he's a fabricator." Curiously, German Intelligence officially supported Curveball as credible. German inteligence also said "Curveball" couldn't speak English, which was not true. English intelligence doubted "Curveball" but not officially. The true legacy of "Curveball" was graduating at the bottom of his engineering class--not at the top as he claimed, that he was a low level trainee and not a project chief/site manager as he claimed, that he was fired in 1995,and then became a Baghdad taxi driver. And yet the Bush Administration eagerly based a war at least partically upon Curveball's ravings.

*** What was accepted as 'truth' by all foreign intelligence services was that Saddam had some chemical and biological weapons but what was not known was whether these were leftovers or residual stockpiles.

*** An NIE (national intelligence estimate) from the CIA contained definitive conclusions that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and had started a nuclear program back up. In reality, there was no evidence and plenty of dissenters within the CIA but these doubts were located in the fine print.
CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, Paul Pillar, wrote a paper prepared on Iraq that was 'worse' than the above-referenced NIE. His paper contained no mention of dissentsand he eventually labeled his work as being "reduced to producing propaganda."

*** On page 180 of the book -- George Bush and Tony Blair talked at one point: "And when the two talked briefly about post-invasion Iraq, Bush remarked that it was unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups. Blair agreed."

*** Paul Wolfowitz made a number of grandiose but inaccurate claims: Iraqi oil revenues would cover the cost of the war, not even close to 400,000 troops would be needed, the United States soldiers would be greeted as liberators, the ethnic militias wouldn't fight each other---all was labeled in the book as a case of civilians telling military and other experts what reality would be.

*** This quote in in the book: "Paul Wolfowitz' whole reason for living was to start the war...somewhere along the line they had decided they were smarter than the rest of us"

*** President Bush asked Commander Tommy Franks about the post-invasion and was told that a lord mayor would be appointed for each major Iraqi town and village and not to worry about the aftermath. Franks told a lie.

*** On page 195 of the book, the War College Studies Institute produced a pre-war report in January 2003. It contained there was the likelihood of ethnic, tribal and religious schisms, that reconstruction would be a hefty commitment, that the longer we were there, the more likely violent resistance would develop, that an occupation would last for an extended period of time, that the armed militias and political parties would increase divisions and suicide bombings, that providing 'the basics' to the population would be challenging, that sabotage would certainly take place, that any oil revenues wouldn't be enough to cover costs. The paper listed 135 post invasion tasks and advised against abolishing the Iraqi Army. The overall conclusion: "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious."

*** There was no feedback on the report from the civilians in the Pentagon. Congress also received copies.

*** On page 198 of the book: In January 2003, Paul Pillar wrote another report examing challenges of a post Saddam Iraq. He offered that the oil revenues wouldn't be enough, ethnic and religious conflict could turn violent and that there was a need for a large enough military presence.

*** The Pentagon and White House reponse: "you guys just don't see the possibilities, you're too negative."

*** In spring 2002, the State Department Future of Iraq Project said the same (big problems) as described by the War College Studies Institute report would take place..

*** The neo-con plan was for the Pentagon to install Ahmed Chalabi as the leader of Iraq. In the State Department, many who didn't support Chalabi got blacklisted from contributing.

Here some great quotes from the book:

*** Bill Kristol - "we'll be vindicated when we find the WMDs"

*** Richard Perle - "very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by the president"  and "Chalabi would be a pluralistic force" and "there was  no need for large number of troops.".

Here is a compilation of wrongdoing from the book:

*** a faulty and misleading NIE
*** the phony Niger charge
*** the false claims of Iraqi defectors
*** WH Iraq Group's spin campaign
*** misleading media reorts, aided bi the iraqi National Congress
*** disputed aluminum tubes
*** CIA white paper that copncelaed intelligence agnecy dissents
*** Rice's mushroom cloud
*** the imaginary Atta-in-Prague story
*** the flawed Powell presentation
*** Bush's overstated rhetoric

*** Iraqi Viceroy Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority Order #1 was the de Baathification of Iraq. It was drafted by Doug Feith, with presidential guidance offered to Bremer by George Bush. This Order was implemented by Ahmed Chalabi since he headed the de Baathification commission. One quote from the bookt: "he was using it to settle scores"

*** Iraqi Viceroy Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority Order #2 was to disband the Army, Again, Doug Feith drafted it and it was approved by the White House.

*** In June 2003, David Kay was asked to take over the Iraq Survey Group, the individuals searching for WMDs. After he read the pre-war intelligence, this was his conclusion: "is that all there is?"

Thomas X. Hammes, retired Marine colonel and author of "The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century" -- "Talking about a new strategy (in Iraq) is useless until we get a new team—in the Pentagon, in the Administration. These guys have screwed up everything. They haven't got the credibility to implement anything."

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