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Are Americans Getting Truth on Iraq?    [

    Click to read Part 2.

    If Beale Street Could Talk - Part 1
    Bush's Escalation Speech
    By David Swanson
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Tuesday 16 January 2007

Remarks at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee, January 13, 2007.

    I'd like to request that nobody shout during this event, and I'll tell you why. I watched Bush's speech with some people who thought it would be a good idea to take a sip of liquor every time he told a lie. Three days later my head is aching.

    But it aches mostly because of the media's coverage of the speech. Idiots don't offend me as much as smart people following idiots do. The Washington Post printed Bush's speech for those who missed it, and then printed some analysis of it. But the analysis was provided by the White House, which published a glossy brochure that so-called reporters could plagiarize.

    If you went to online sources like Foreign Policy in Focus, you found analyses of Bush's speech that pointed out the lies. If you turned on your television, you heard how smart Bush was to admit his mistakes. But you did not hear the long list of mistakes that he has not admitted to or gone to prison for. You just heard about his mistake of not having yet done exactly what he now wants to do.

    The following is what I would like to have heard on the TV and radio after Bush's speech (and similar reporting on Congressman Dick Durbin's so-called response):

Earlier this evening we aired a speech by President George W. Bush that may have left you with some false impressions. We need to correct these matters of fact.

0aThe president's speech did not mention WMDs or Saddam Hussein or attempt to explain why we are occupying the nation of Iraq or what it would mean for that occupation to "win" or "lose." This may have left you with the impression that no justification is required by law to forcibly occupy someone else's country and kill a significant portion of their population. That is not the case.

0aThe president made no reference to the permanent military bases he is illegally constructing in Iraq. This may have left you with the impression that he plans to leave Iraq some day. This, combined with his references to democracy, may have given you a certain idea of his plans for Iraq that does not seem to be suggested by the president's actions.

0aBush also expressed support for a number of Middle-Eastern nations allied with the United States, notably Saudi Arabia. This may have given you the idea that these nations are democracies. They are dictatorships.

0aBush began his speech by connecting Iraq to 9/11. In fact, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We apologize to the millions who have lost loved ones because of this lie. When Bush said that al Qaeda was "still" active in Iraq, he failed to add that it had only become active in Iraq as a result of his invasion and occupation of that nation.

0aBush said that he would see that the people of Iraq profit from its oil. This statement bears no relationship to actual US policy, and Bush has no legal right to decide what happens to another nation's resources.

0aBush suggested that most Iraqis want the occupation to continue. This is false.

0aBush suggested that occupying Iraq was making Americans safer. His own intelligence analysts disagree.

0aBush implied that he can escalate wars at his own discretion. In fact, Congress can prevent him from doing so if it chooses to.

0aOf course, Bush has escalated this war in the past. We have not reported on that as such because he did not make a big deal of it. The reason he is making a big deal of it this time was not addressed in his speech.

0aWhat was new in the speech was a threat to Iran and Syria. Bush claimed that Iran is providing material to Iraqi resisters. There is no evidence of this. Bush said he was sending ships and missile defense systems to the region. These steps have no clear connection to Iraq and may be seen as part of a threat to Iran.

0aBush said not one word about all of the Iraqi blood he has spilled. Approximately 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq, thus far. And the death rate is increasing, not diminishing. Here is video showing many of the people killed and injured in this war and their family members.

0aAmericans can support or oppose this war by contacting their Congressmembers. There will be a march in opposition to the war in Washington, DC, on January 27th followed by lobbying of Congress on the 29th. For more on that, see www.unitedforpeace.org.

    Go to Original

    Are Americans Getting Truth on Iraq?
    By Mark Seibel
    McClatchy Newspapers

    Sunday 14 January 2007

    Washington - President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.

    President Bush unveiled the new version on Wednesday during his nationally televised speech announcing his new Iraq policy.

    "When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation," he said. "We thought that these elections would bring Iraqis together - and that as we trained Iraqi security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

    "But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq - particularly in Baghdad - overwhelmed the political gains Iraqis had made. Al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's election posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis.

    "They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam - the Golden Mosque of Samarra - in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate," Bush said. "Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today."

    That version of events helps to justify Bush's "new way forward" in Iraq, in which U.S. forces will largely target Sunni insurgents and leave it to Iraq's U.S.-backed Shiite government to - perhaps - disarm its allies in Shiite militias and death squads.

    But the president's account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began targeting Sunni politicians and clerics. It also ignores the role that Iranian-backed Shiite groups had in death squad activities prior to the Samarra bombing.

    Blaming the start of sectarian violence in Iraq on the Golden Dome bombing risks policy errors because it underestimates the depth of sectarian hatred in Iraq and overlooks the conflict's root causes. The Bush account also fails to acknowledge that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups stoked the conflict.

    Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley used the same version of events in an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

    Much like the administration's pre-war claims about Saddam's alleged ties to al-Qaida and purported nuclear weapons program, the claims about the bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra ignore inconvenient facts and highlight questionable but politically useful assumptions.

    No one disagrees that the February bombing of the Golden Dome shrine was a pivotal moment. In the days following the attack, armed Shiites stormed Sunni mosques and neighborhoods, killing hundreds. Baghdad's Sunni residents responded by arming themselves, and Sunni insurgents set off car bombs in Shiite neighborhoods. By October, the monthly death toll was reaching into the thousands.

    U.S. diplomats, reporters and military and intelligence officers began reporting that Shiite death squads were targeting Sunni clerics and former officials of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime at least 15 months before the Samarra bombing.

    Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell urged a U.S. offensive against radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in 2004. But he was overruled by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. They argued against fighting a two-front war against Sunni insurgents and Shiite militants.

    The concerns about Shiite militias grew after the Jan. 30, 2005, elections that brought the Shiite-led government of then-Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to power. Journalists in Iraq, the CIA station, the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. military all reported throughout 2005 that evidence was mounting that Jaafari's government was incorporating Shiite militias and death squads into the Iraqi army and police.

    A year before the Samarra bombing, Hannah Allam, writing for what was then Knight Ridder Newspapers, reported that Iraq could be headed toward civil war. Knight Ridder was purchased by The McClatchy Co. last June.

    "Shiite Muslim assassins are killing former members of Saddam Hussein's mostly Sunni Muslim regime with impunity in a wave of violence that, combined with the ongoing Sunni insurgency, threatens to escalate into civil war," Allam, then the news organization's Baghdad bureau chief, wrote on Feb. 27, 2005. "The war between Shiite vigilantes and former Baath Party members is seldom investigated and largely overshadowed by the insurgency."

    She added, "Iraq's new Shiite leaders have little interest in prosecuting those who kill their former oppressors or their enemies in the insurgency."

    The story quoted the then-spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Sabah Kadhim: "It's the beginning, and we could go down the slippery slope very quickly.... Both sides are sharpening their knives."

    By the summer, the tortured bodies of kidnapped Sunni clerics had begun turning up regularly on Baghdad's streets, and on Aug. 10, 2005, Knight Ridder correspondent Tom Lasseter wrote:

    "A militant Shiite Muslim group with close ties to Iran has gained enormous power since Iraq's January elections and now is accused of conducting a terror campaign against Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that includes kidnappings, threats and murders."

    Lasseter identified the group as the Badr Organization and reported that Iraq's interior minister was associated with it.

    On Nov. 15, 2005, U.S. troops raided an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad and found 169 malnourished prisoners, many of whom had been tortured. The vast majority of the victims, if not all of them, were Sunnis.

    By December, Badr's involvement in death squads was widely known.

    "The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence activities and infiltrated its elite commando units," Lasseter wrote, on Dec. 12, 2005, citing U.S. and Iraqi officials.

    "That's enabled the Shiite Muslim militia to use Interior Ministry vehicles and equipment - much of it bought with American money - to carry out revenge attacks against the minority Sunni Muslims, who persecuted the Shiites under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein," he added.

    Beginning in 2002, the administration's case for a pre-emptive war in Iraq was plagued by similar oversights, oversimplifications, misjudgments and misinformation. Unlike the administration's claims about the Samarra bombing, however, much of that information was peddled by Iraqi exiles and defectors and accepted by some eager officials and journalists.

    The best known of those pre-war claims was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program - Bush's primary stated reason for invading Iraq.

    Administration officials and their allies also claimed that Saddam had trained terrorists to hijack airplanes; that a Saddam emissary had met with lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Prague; that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes that could be used only to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons; that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from the African country of Niger; that Iraqis would greet American troops as liberators; and that Iraqi oil revenues would cover most of the cost of the war.

    The administration has continued to offer inaccurate information to Congress, the American people and sometimes to itself. The Iraq Study Group, in its December report, concluded, for example, that the U.S. military was systematically under-reporting the violence in Iraq in an effort to disguise policy failings. The group recommended that the military change its reporting system.

    Whether many of the administration's statements about Iraq for nearly five years have been deliberately misleading or honest but gullible mistakes hasn't been determined. The Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to complete an investigation into the issue that was begun but stalled when Republicans controlled the committee.

    On Thursday, frustration over the accuracy of administration statements on Iraq boiled over during Rice's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

    "Madam Secretary," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., "I have supported you and the administration on the war, and I cannot continue to support the administration's position. I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth."

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    Mark Seibel, McClatchy Newspapers.