The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon

OFFENSE AND DEFENSE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH  der schon Perle zum Sturz brachte,im Guardian gefunden,diese Details könnten schon gewaltig für Unruhe sorgen

The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.
Issue of 2003-04-07
Posted 2003-03-31
As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was anger in the Pentagon. Several senior war planners complained to me in interviews that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers, who had been chiefly responsible for persuading President Bush to lead the country into war, had insisted on micromanaging the war’s operational details. Rumsfeld’s team took over crucial aspects of the day-to-day logistical planning—traditionally, an area in which the uniformed military excels—and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He thought he knew better,” one senior planner said. “He was the decision-maker at every turn.”
On at least six occasions, the planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans—the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003—he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. Rumsfeld’s faith in precision bombing and his insistence on streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. “They’ve got no resources,” a former high-level intelligence official said. “He was so focussed on proving his point—that the Iraqis were going to fall apart.”
The critical moment, one planner said, came last fall, during the buildup for the war, when Rumsfeld decided that he would no longer be guided by the Pentagon’s most sophisticated war-planning document, the TPFDL—time-phased forces-deployment list—which is known to planning officers as the tip-fiddle (tip-fid, for short). A TPFDL is a voluminous document describing the inventory of forces that are to be sent into battle, the sequence of their deployment, and the deployment of logistical support. “It’s the complete applecart, with many pieces,” Roger J. Spiller, the George C. Marshall Professor of military history at the U.S. Command and General Staff College, said. “Everybody trains and plans on it. It’s constantly in motion and always adjusted at the last minute. It’s an embedded piece of the bureaucratic and operational culture.” A retired Air Force strategic planner remarked, “This is what we do best—go from A to B—and the tip-fiddle is where you start. It’s how you put together a plan for moving into the theatre.” Another former planner said, “Once you turn on the tip-fid, everything moves in an orderly fashion.” A former intelligence officer added, “When you kill the tip-fiddle, you kill centralized military planning. The military is not like a corporation that can be streamlined. It is the most inefficient machine known to man. It’s the redundancy that saves lives.”
The TPFDL for the war in Iraq ran to forty or more computer-generated spreadsheets, dealing with everything from weapons to toilet paper. When it was initially presented to Rumsfeld last year for his approval, it called for the involvement of a wide range of forces from the different armed services, including four or more Army divisions. Rumsfeld rejected the package, because it was “too big,” the Pentagon planner said. He insisted that a smaller, faster-moving attack force, combined with overwhelming air power, would suffice. Rumsfeld further stunned the Joint Staff by insisting that he would control the timing and flow of Army and Marine troops to the combat zone. Such decisions are known in the military as R.F.F.s—requests for forces. He, and not the generals, would decide which unit would go when and where.
The TPFDL called for the shipment in advance, by sea, of hundreds of tanks and other heavy vehicles—enough for three or four divisions. Rumsfeld ignored this advice. Instead, he relied on the heavy equipment that was already in Kuwait—enough for just one full combat division. The 3rd Infantry Division, from Fort Stewart, Georgia, the only mechanized Army division that was active inside Iraq last week, thus arrived in the Gulf without its own equipment. “Those guys are driving around in tanks that were pre-positioned. Their tanks are sitting in Fort Stewart,” the planner said. “To get more forces there we have to float them. We can’t fly our forces in, because there’s nothing for them to drive. Over the past six months, you could have floated everything in ninety days—enough for four or more divisions.” The planner added, “This is the mess Rumsfeld put himself in, because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.”
Plan 1003 was repeatedly updated and presented to Rumsfeld, and each time, according to the planner, Rumsfeld said, “‘You’ve got too much ground force—go back and do it again.’” In the planner’s view, Rumsfeld had two goals: to demonstrate the efficacy of precision bombing and to “do the war on the cheap.” Rumsfeld and his two main deputies for war planning, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, “were so enamored of ‘shock and awe’ that victory seemed assured,” the planner said. “They believed that the weather would always be clear, that the enemy would expose itself, and so precision bombings would always work.” (Rumsfeld did not respond to a request for comment.)

Rumsfeld’s personal contempt for many of the senior generals and admirals who were promoted to top jobs during the Clinton Administration is widely known. He was especially critical of the Army, with its insistence on maintaining costly mechanized divisions. In his off-the-cuff memoranda, or “snowflakes,” as they’re called in the Pentagon, he chafed about generals having “the slows”—a reference to Lincoln’s characterization of General George McClellan. “In those conditions—an atmosphere of derision and challenge—the senior officers do not offer their best advice,” a high-ranking general who served for more than a year under Rumsfeld said. One witness to a meeting recalled Rumsfeld confronting General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, in front of many junior officers. “He was looking at the Chief and waving his hand,” the witness said, “saying, ‘Are you getting this yet? Are you getting this yet?’”
Gradually, Rumsfeld succeeded in replacing those officers in senior Joint Staff positions who challenged his view. “All the Joint Staff people now are handpicked, and churn out products to make the Secretary of Defense happy,” the planner said. “They don’t make military judgments—they just respond to his snowflakes.”
In the months leading up to the war, a split developed inside the military, with the planners and their immediate superiors warning that the war plan was dangerously thin on troops and matériel, and the top generals—including General Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, and Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—supporting Rumsfeld. After Turkey’s parliament astonished the war planners in early March by denying the United States permission to land the 4th Infantry Division in Turkey, Franks initially argued that the war ought to be delayed until the troops could be brought in by another route, a former intelligence official said. “Rummy overruled him.”
Many of the present and former officials I spoke to were critical of Franks for his perceived failure to stand up to his civilian superiors. A former senator told me that Franks was widely seen as a commander who “will do what he’s told.” A former intelligence official asked, “Why didn’t he go to the President?” A Pentagon official recalled that one senior general used to prepare his deputies for meetings with Rumsfeld by saying, “When you go in to talk to him, you’ve got to be prepared to lay your stars on the table and walk out. Otherwise, he’ll walk over you.”
In early February, according to a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld appeared at the Army Commanders’ Conference, a biannual business and social gathering of all the four-star generals. Rumsfeld was invited to join the generals for dinner and make a speech. All went well, the official told me, until Rumsfeld, during a question-and-answer session, was asked about his personal involvement in the deployment of combat units, in some cases with only five or six days’ notice. To the astonishment and anger of the generals, Rumsfeld denied responsibility. “He said, ‘I wasn’t involved,’” the official said. “‘It was the Joint Staff.’”
“We thought it would be fence-mending, but it was a disaster,” the official said of the dinner. “Everybody knew he was looking at these deployment orders. And for him to blame it on the Joint Staff—” The official hesitated a moment, and then said, “It’s all about Rummy and the truth.”
According to a dozen or so military men I spoke to, Rumsfeld simply failed to anticipate the consequences of protracted warfare. He put Army and Marine units in the field with few reserves and an insufficient number of tanks and other armored vehicles. (The military men say that the vehicles that they do have have been pushed too far and are malfunctioning.) Supply lines—inevitably, they say—have become overextended and vulnerable to attack, creating shortages of fuel, water, and ammunition. Pentagon officers spoke contemptuously of the Administration’s optimistic press briefings. “It’s a stalemate now,” the former intelligence official told me. “It’s going to remain one only if we can maintain our supply lines. The carriers are going to run out of jdams”—the satellite-guided bombs that have been striking targets in Baghdad and elsewhere with extraordinary accuracy. Much of the supply of Tomahawk guided missiles has been expended. “The Marines are worried as hell,” the former intelligence official went on. “They’re all committed, with no reserves, and they’ve never run the lavs”—light armored vehicles—“as long and as hard” as they have in Iraq. There are serious maintenance problems as well. “The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements come.”
The 4th Infantry Division—the Army’s most modern mechanized division—whose equipment spent weeks waiting in the Mediterranean before being diverted to the overtaxed American port in Kuwait, is not expected to be operational until the end of April. The 1st Cavalry Division, in Texas, is ready to ship out, the planner said, but by sea it will take twenty-three days to reach Kuwait. “All we have now is front-line positions,” the former intelligence official told me. “Everything else is missing.”
Last week, plans for an assault on Baghdad had stalled, and the six Republican Guard divisions expected to provide the main Iraqi defense had yet to have a significant engagement with American or British soldiers. The shortages forced Central Command to “run around looking for supplies,” the former intelligence official said. The immediate goal, he added, was for the Army and Marine forces “to hold tight and hope that the Republican Guard divisions get chewed up” by bombing. The planner agreed, saying, “The only way out now is back, and to hope for some kind of a miracle—that the Republican Guards commit themselves,” and thus become vulnerable to American air strikes.
“Hope,” a retired four-star general subsequently told me, “is not a course of action.” Last Thursday, the Army’s senior ground commander, Lieutenant General William S. Wallace, said to reporters, “The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against.” (One senior Administration official commented to me, speaking of the Iraqis, “They’re not scared. Ain’t it something? They’re not scared.”) At a press conference the next day, Rumsfeld and Myers were asked about Wallace’s comments, and defended the war plan—Myers called it “brilliant” and “on track.” They pointed out that the war was only a little more than a week old.
Scott Ritter, the former marine and United Nations weapons inspector, who has warned for months that the American “shock and awe” strategy would not work, noted that much of the bombing has had little effect or has been counterproductive. For example, the bombing of Saddam’s palaces has freed up a brigade of special guards who had been assigned to protect them, and who have now been sent home to await further deployment. “Every one of their homes—and they are scattered throughout Baghdad—is stacked with ammunition and supplies,” Ritter told me.
“This is tragic,” one senior planner said bitterly. “American lives are being lost.” The former intelligence official told me, “They all said, ‘We can do it with air power.’ They believed their own propaganda.” The high-ranking former general described Rumsfeld’s approach to the Joint Staff war planning as “McNamara-like intimidation by intervention of a small cell”—a reference to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and his aides, who were known for their challenges to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War. The former high-ranking general compared the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Stepford wives. “They’ve abrogated their responsibility.”


Perhaps the biggest disappointment of last week was the failure of the Shiite factions in southern Iraq to support the American and British invasion. Various branches of the Al Dawa faction, which operate underground, have been carrying out acts of terrorism against the Iraqi regime since the nineteen-eighties. But Al Dawa has also been hostile to American interests. Some in American intelligence have implicated the group in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which cost the lives of two hundred and forty-one marines. Nevertheless, in the months before the war the Bush Administration courted Al Dawa by including it among the opposition groups that would control postwar Iraq. “Dawa is one group that could kill Saddam,” a former American intelligence official told me. “They hate Saddam because he suppressed the Shiites. They exist to kill Saddam.” He said that their apparent decision to stand with the Iraqi regime now was a “disaster” for us. “They’re like hard-core Vietcong.”
There were reports last week that Iraqi exiles, including fervent Shiites, were crossing into Iraq by car and bus from Jordan and Syria to get into the fight on the side of the Iraqi government. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. Middle East operative, told me in a telephone call from Jordan, “Everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq. Not Saddam. They’ve been given the high sign, and we are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties a day and they die by the thousands, they’re still winning. It’s a jihad, and it’s a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war.” There were press reports of mujahideen arriving from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Algeria for “martyrdom operations.”
There had been an expectation before the war that Iran, Iraq’s old enemy, would side with the United States in this fight. One Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, has been in regular contact with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or sciri, an umbrella organization for Shiite groups who oppose Saddam. The organization is based in Iran and has close ties to Iranian intelligence. The Chalabi group set up an office last year in Tehran, with the approval of Chalabi’s supporters in the Pentagon, who include Rumsfeld, his deputies Wolfowitz and Feith, and Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Chalabi has repeatedly predicted that the Tehran government would provide support, including men and arms, if an American invasion of Iraq took place.
Last week, however, this seemed unlikely. In a press conference on Friday, Rumsfeld warned Iranian militants against interfering with American forces and accused Syria of sending military equipment to the Iraqis. A Middle East businessman who has long-standing ties in Jordan and Syria—and whose information I have always found reliable—told me that the religious government in Tehran “is now backing Iraq in the war. There isn’t any Arab fighting group on the ground in Iraq who is with the United States,” he said
There is also evidence that Turkey has been playing both sides. Turkey and Syria, who traditionally have not had close relations, recently agreed to strengthen their ties, the businessman told me, and early this year Syria sent Major General Ghazi Kanaan, its longtime strongman and power broker in Lebanon, to Turkey. The two nations have begun to share intelligence and to meet, along with Iranian officials, to discuss border issues, in case an independent Kurdistan emerges from the Iraq war. A former U.S. intelligence officer put it this way: “The Syrians are coördinating with the Turks to screw us in the north—to cause us problems.” He added, “Syria and the Iranians agreed that they could not let an American occupation of Iraq stand
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030407fa_fact1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/...,12965,926333,00.html  

Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?
Issue of 2003-03-31
Posted 2003-03-24
Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability. It was an important presentation for the Bush Administration. Some Democrats were publicly questioning the President’s claim that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate threat to the United States. Just the day before, former Vice-President Al Gore had sharply criticized the Administration’s advocacy of preëmptive war, calling it a doctrine that would replace “a world in which states consider themselves subject to law” with “the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.” A few Democrats were also considering putting an alternative resolution before Congress.

According to two of those present at the briefing, which was highly classified and took place in the committee’s secure hearing room, Tenet declared, as he had done before, that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes that was intercepted on its way to Iraq had been meant for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium. The suitability of the tubes for that purpose had been disputed, but this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy five hundred tons of uranium oxide from Niger, one of the world’s largest producers. The uranium, known as “yellow cake,” can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors; if processed differently, it can also be enriched to make weapons. Five tons can produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a bomb. (When the C.I.A. spokesman William Harlow was asked for comment, he denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger.)

On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country, “despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.” The allegation attracted immediate attention; a headline in the London Guardian declared, “african gangs offer route to uranium.”

Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq.

On December 19th, Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials, in a State Department position paper that rhetorically asked, “Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?” (The charge was denied by both Iraq and Niger.) A former high-level intelligence official told me that the information on Niger was judged serious enough to include in the President’s Daily Brief, known as the P.D.B., one of the most sensitive intelligence documents in the American system. Its information is supposed to be carefully analyzed, or “scrubbed.” Distribution of the two- or three-page early-morning report, which is prepared by the C.I.A., is limited to the President and a few other senior officials. The P.D.B. is not made available, for example, to any members of the Senate or House Intelligence Committees. “I don’t think anybody here sees that thing,” a State Department analyst told me. “You only know what’s in the P.D.B. because it echoes—people talk about it.”

President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” He commented, “Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.”



Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said.

One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”

The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office.

It took Baute’s team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that “they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.”

The large quantity of uranium involved should have been another warning sign. Niger’s “yellow cake” comes from two uranium mines controlled by a French company, with its entire output presold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan, and Spain. “Five hundred tons can’t be siphoned off without anyone noticing,” another I.A.E.A. official told me.

This official told me that the I.A.E.A. has not been able to determine who actually prepared the documents. “It could be someone who intercepted faxes in Israel, or someone at the headquarters of the Niger Foreign Ministry, in Niamey. We just don’t know,” the official said. “Somebody got old letterheads and signatures, and cut and pasted.” Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassador’s return to Rome.

Baute, according to the I.A.E.A. official, “confronted the United States with the forgery: ‘What do you have to say?’ They had nothing to say.”

ElBaradei’s disclosure has not been disputed by any government or intelligence official in Washington or London. Colin Powell, asked about the forgery during a television interview two days after ElBaradei’s report, dismissed the subject by saying, “If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved.” A few days later, at a House hearing, he denied that anyone in the United States government had anything to do with the forgery. “It came from other sources,” Powell testified. “It was provided in good faith to the inspectors.”

The forgery became the object of widespread, and bitter, questions in Europe about the credibility of the United States. But it initially provoked only a few news stories in America, and little sustained questioning about how the White House could endorse such an obvious fake. On March 8th, an American official who had reviewed the documents was quoted in the Washington Post as explaining, simply, “We fell for it.”



The Bush Administration’s reliance on the Niger documents may, however, have stemmed from more than bureaucratic carelessness or political overreaching. Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections. Then as now, the Security Council was divided, with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese telling the United States and the United Kingdom that they were being too tough on the Iraqis. President Bill Clinton, weakened by the impeachment proceedings, hinted of renewed bombing, but, then as now, the British and the Americans were losing the battle for international public opinion. A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program—part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops—was known to a few senior officials in Washington. “I knew that was going on,” the former Clinton Administration official said of the British efforts. “We were getting ready for action in Iraq, and we wanted the Brits to prepare.”

Over the next year, a former American intelligence officer told me, at least one member of the U.N. inspection team who supported the American and British position arranged for dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence—to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. “It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn’t move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,” the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area. The British propaganda scheme eventually became known to some members of the U.N. inspection team. “I knew a bit,” one official still on duty at U.N. headquarters acknowledged last week, “but I was never officially told about it.”

None of the past and present officials I spoke with were able to categorically state that the fake Niger documents were created or instigated by the same propaganda office in MI6 that had been part of the anti-Iraq propaganda wars in the late nineteen-nineties. (An MI6 intelligence source declined to comment.) Press reports in the United States and elsewhere have suggested other possible sources: the Iraqi exile community, the Italians, the French. What is generally agreed upon, a congressional intelligence-committee staff member told me, is that the Niger documents were initially circulated by the British—President Bush said as much in his State of the Union speech—and that “the Brits placed more stock in them than we did.” It is also clear, as the former high-level intelligence official told me, that “something as bizarre as Niger raises suspicions everywhere.”



What went wrong? Did a poorly conceived propaganda effort by British intelligence, whose practices had been known for years to senior American officials, manage to move, without significant challenge, through the top layers of the American intelligence community and into the most sacrosanct of Presidential briefings? Who permitted it to go into the President’s State of the Union speech? Was the message—the threat posed by Iraq—more important than the integrity of the intelligence-vetting process? Was the Administration lying to itself? Or did it deliberately give Congress and the public what it knew to be bad information?

Asked to respond, Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency had not obtained the actual documents until early this year, after the President’s State of the Union speech and after the congressional briefings, and therefore had been unable to evaluate them in a timely manner. Harlow refused to respond to questions about the role of Britain’s MI6. Harlow’s statement does not, of course, explain why the agency left the job of exposing the embarrassing forgery to the I.A.E.A. It puts the C.I.A. in an unfortunate position: it is, essentially, copping a plea of incompetence.
The chance for American intelligence to challenge the documents came as the Administration debated whether to pass them on to ElBaradei. The former high-level intelligence official told me that some senior C.I.A. officials were aware that the documents weren’t trustworthy. “It’s not a question as to whether they were marginal. They can’t be ‘sort of’ bad, or ‘sort of’ ambiguous. They knew it was a fraud—it was useless. Everybody bit their tongue and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the Secretary of State said this?’ The Secretary of State never saw the documents.” He added, “He’s absolutely apoplectic about it.” (A State Department spokesman was unable to comment.) A former intelligence officer told me that some questions about the authenticity of the Niger documents were raised inside the government by analysts at the Department of Energy and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, these warnings were not heeded.

“Somebody deliberately let something false get in there,” the former high-level intelligence official added. “It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.” (The White House declined to comment.)

Washington’s case that the Iraqi regime had failed to meet its obligation to give up weapons of mass destruction was, of course, based on much more than a few documents of questionable provenance from a small African nation. But George W. Bush’s war against Iraq has created enormous anxiety throughout the world—in part because one side is a superpower and the other is not. It can’t help the President’s case, or his international standing, when his advisers brief him with falsehoods, whether by design or by mistake.

On March 14th, Senator Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally asked Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, to investigate the forged documents. Rockefeller had voted for the resolution authorizing force last fall. Now he wrote to Mueller, “There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.” He urged the F.B.I. to ascertain the source of the documents, the skill-level of the forgery, the motives of those responsible, and “why the intelligence community did not recognize the documents were fabricated.” A Rockefeller aide told me that the F.B.I. had promised to look into

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washingtonpost.com
Reporter Arnett: U.S. War Plan Has Failed


By DAVID BAUDER
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 30, 2003; 9:11 PM


Journalist Peter Arnett, covering the war from Baghdad, told state-run Iraqi TV in an interview aired Sunday that the American-led coalition's first war plan had failed because of Iraq's resistance and said strategists are "trying to write another war plan."

Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, garnered much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. He is reporting from the Iraqi capital now for NBC and its cable stations.

The interview could make Arnett a target of the war's supporters. The first Bush administration was unhappy with Arnett's reporting in 1991 for CNN, suggesting he had become a conveyor of propaganda.

He was denounced for his reporting about an allied bombing of a baby milk factory in Baghdad that the military said was a biological weapons plant. The American military responded vigorously to the suggestion it had targeted a civilian facility, but Arnett stood by his reporting that the plant's sole purpose was to make baby formula.

NBC, in a statement Sunday, praised Arnett's "outstanding" reporting from Iraq and said he was trying nothing more than to give an analytical response to an interviewer's questions.

In the interview, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing.

He said the United States is reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, "and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."

"Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces," Arnett said during the interview broadcast by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt.

Arnett said it is clear that within the United States there is growing opposition to the war and a growing challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct.

"Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States," he said. "It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments."

The interview was broadcast in English and translated by a green military uniform-wearing Iraqi anchor. NBC said Arnett gave the interview when asked shortly after he attended an Iraqi government briefing.

"His impromptu interview with Iraqi TV was done as a professional courtesy and was similar to other interviews he has done with media outlets from around the world," NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said. "His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more. His outstanding reporting on the war speaks for itself."

Arnett was the on-air reporter of the 1998 CNN report that accused American forces of using sarin gas on a Laotian village in 1970 to kill U.S. defectors. Two CNN employees were sacked and Arnett was reprimanded over the report, which the station later retracted. Arnett ultimately left the network.

He went to Iraq this year not as an NBC News reporter but as an employee of the MSNBC show, "National Geographic Explorer." When other NBC reporters left Baghdad for safety reasons, the network began airing his reports.


© 2003 The Associated Press  

After being accused of disloyalty to the troops by his former cabinet colleagues, Mr Cook said he was not advocating immediate withdrawal and that he wanted President Saddam defeated.

But he stood by his criticisms, saying the Government's hopes for a "quick, easy war" had failed to materialise and that the campaign had been "badly planned". He said there was no sign of President Saddam being overthrown by his associates or the Iraqi people welcoming coalition troops as liberators.

His comments reflected concern among Labour MPs that the war strategy has been blown off course. Doug Henderson, a former armed forces minister, called for a ceasefire. He said: "Unless there is a withdrawal very soon, then we will probably get bogged down in the way that the Americans got bogged down in Vietnam. Half a million soldiers [were] committed in Vietnam; 55,000 American deaths, probably about two million deaths of Vietnamese. Now, do we want to get into the kind of situation that could lead to that?"

The Government, which has been repeatedly assured by the Bush administration that the war is going according to plan, was thrown on to the defensive by Mr Cook's attack.

But the fractures in London are being mirrored in the US, where The New Yorker says in today's edition of the magazine that Mr Rumsfeld turned down requests from top uniformed commanders for more troops, and resisted pleas that the campaign be delayed until more troops were ready.

The US commander, General Tommy Franks, said there had been no new deployment orders since the start of the war, and he maintained that troop numbers were sufficient.

Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, conceded that more British troops might be needed. But he insisted it was "not possible" that the coalition would lose the war. "I am absolutely confident in the military strategy," he said.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=392455  

Die Iraker lassen sich längst nicht so schnell und leicht besiegen und von der Demokratie überzeugen, wie es sich viele in den USA vorgestellt haben. Washington hat deshalb offenbar schon die nächsten Gegner im Visier: Sie residieren in Damaskus und Teheran.
Washington - US-Außenminister Colin Powell rief Iran und Syrien auf, sich jetzt gegen den Terrorismus und für den Frieden zu entscheiden. Iran müsse sein Streben nach Massenvernichtungswaffen einstellen und seine "Opposition gegen alle Terrorgruppen erklären, die gegen den Friedensprozess im Nahen Osten arbeiten", sagte der Minister.
Syrien stehe ebenfalls vor einer entscheidenden Wahl: Die Regierung in Damaskus könne "mit der direkten Unterstützung für terroristische Gruppen und das sterbende Regime von Saddam Hussein fortfahren, oder es kann einen anderen, hoffnungsvolleren Kurs" einschlagen. "So oder so, hat Syrien die Verantwortung für seine Entscheidung und die Konsequenzen", stellte Powell klar.

Syriens Außenminister Faruk al-Shara warf der US-Regierung Kurzsichtigkeit und Ignoranz der Geschichte und Kultur der Araber vor. Syrien habe ein nationales Interesse, dass die Invasoren aus dem Irak hinausgeworfen würden, sagte Schara während einer Parlamentssitzung am Sonntag in Damaskus
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,242776,00.html  

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,242773,00.html  

TV-Sender NBC feuert Reporter Arnett

Meinungsfreiheit ist schön. Manchmal. Den amerikanischen Kriegsreporter und Pulitzerpreisträger Peter Arnett haben seine Ansichten nun den Job gekostet: Er hatte im irakischen Fernsehen erklärt, die Strategie des US-Militärs sei fehlgeschlagen. NBC feuerte daraufhin den Journalisten, der aus Bagdad für den TV-Sender berichtet hatte.
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,242855,00.html  

Im Kreuzfeuer der Kritik steht vor allem Pentagon-Chef Donald Rumsfeld. Den Frontalangriff startete die "Washington Post": Sie zitierte "jetzige und ehemalige Offiziere" mit den Worten, der Verteidigungsminister sei dafür verantwortlich, dass nicht genügend Truppen vor Ort im Irak-Krieg zur Verfügung stünden.

Rumsfeld habe sich immer wieder in die militärischen Planungen eingemischt und Forderungen von Generälen nach der Entsendung eines stärkeren Soldatenaufgebots brüsk zurückgewiesen, hieß es weiter. Ein Ex-Divisionskommandeur aus dem Golfkrieg von 1991 sprach von einem "Mikromanagement" des Ministers. Es basiere auf latentem Misstrauen gegenüber den hohen Offiziersrängen und dem "sturen Willen", eigene Prioritäten durchzusetzen.

So groß war der Wirbel um diese Vorwürfe, dass der Befehlshaber im Irak-Krieg, Tommy Franks, US-Generalstabschef Richard Myers und Rumsfeld gemeinsam dagegen vorgingen. In Pressekonferenzen, Fernseh-Talkshows und Interviews betonten sie auf Journalisten-Fragen immer wieder unisono, die Strategie für den Irak-Krieg sei gemeinsam entworfen worden und bewähre sich voll und ganz. Die jetzt angeforderten Truppenverstärkungen seien Teil der ursprünglichen Planung und nichts anderes.

Tatsächlich hatte es schon Monate vor Beginn des Irak-Krieges Berichte über Differenzen zwischen der zivilen und der militärischen Führung bei seiner Planung gegeben. Wie es hieß, strebte Rumsfeld einen Irak-Krieg nach dem Muster des Anti-Terror-Feldzuges in Afghanistan an. Danach sollten Luftangriffe den Gegner zunächst mürbe machen und der Rest dann von einer relativ geringen Zahl an Bodentruppen - unter 100 000 Soldaten - erledigt werden. Wie in Afghanistan habe sich der Pentagon-Chef hauptsächlich auf den Einsatz von Spezialeinheiten in Kombination mit High-Tech-Waffen stützen wollen und dann schließlich schweren Herzens den Forderungen von Franks nach einer stärkeren Streitmacht nachgegeben.

Was immer damals konkret hinter den Kulissen lief: Nach Ansicht von Experten zeugen die Attacken gegen Rumsfeld von einer derart ausgeprägten Abneigung in den militärischen Rängen gegen den Minister, dass sie sogar unerlässliche «Solidaritätsgebote» in kritischen Kriegszeiten sprengten. Hintergrund, so wird gemutmaßt, könnten Rumsfelds «skrupellose» Methoden bei der Durchsetzung von Reformen sein. Der Minister arbeitet kontinuierlich an einer "Verschlankung" der Streitkräfte zu Gunsten kleiner mobiler Einheiten. Und viele Spitzenmilitärs haben sich darüber beklagt, der Minister wolle ihren Rat nicht. Er sei rüde, selbstherrlich und derart "high-tech-besessen", dass er den Blick für den konventionellen Wert von Truppenmassierungen verliere. In Kreisen des Weißen Hauses heißt es, Präsident George W. Bush sei unglücklich über diese internen Scharmützel, die die "wirklich wichtigen Errungenschaften in diesem Befreiungsfeldzug vernebeln". Dabei hätte es noch schlimmer kommen können, wie Kommentatoren verschiedener Medien süffisant anmerkten. Danach hat eine politische Zitatensammlung aus den vergangenen Wochen ergeben, dass "Vize" Richard Cheney wiederholt einen raschen Sieg im Irak vorhersagte. Die massive Kritik an Rumsfeld, so heißt es, haben immerhin davon abgelenkt.

Gabriele Chwallek, dpa
 

Die britische Regierung hat die BBC als zu Irak-freundlich kritisiert. Der Labour-Vorsitzende und Kabinettsminister John Reid solle den Sender sogar beschuldigt haben, ein "Freund Bagdads" zu sein, berichtete die britische Sonntagszeitung "The Observer". Sie zitierte eine "Führungsfigur" aus der Downing Street mit den Worten, die BBC behandele die Alliierten genauso wie Saddam Hussein.

"Auf der einen Seite steht eine Diktatur, die keine Überprüfung ihrer Handlungen zulässt; auf der anderen Seite stehen Demokratien, die eine Politik der Offenheit betreiben", wurde die Regierungsquelle zitiert. "Man kann nicht mit beiden Seiten umgehen, als wären sie das Gleiche." Der britische Außenminister Jack Straw sagte in einem Interview mit dem "Observer", er bezweifle, dass 1940 die Rettung der in Dünkirchen eingeschlossenen britischen Truppen möglich gewesen wäre, wenn es damals schon die rund um die Uhr berichtenden Nachrichtensender gegeben hätte.

BBC-Chefs bestritten die Vorwürfe und wiesen darauf hin, dass das Bemühen um Objektivität gerade in einem Krieg wesentlich sei. Der politische Chefkorrespondent der BBC, Andrew Marr, sagte, die Regierung betrachte inzwischen jeden, der sich um eine ausgewogene Berichterstattung bemühe, als Saddam-Freund. Die Regierung sei "wütend darüber, dass sie zwar kontrollieren kann, wohin die Reporter gehen, aber nicht, was sie sehen", sagte Marr.

n-tv  

unabhängige Medien zu geben. Danke Kicky für diese Postins.

So long,
Calexa
www.investorweb.de  

Bundespräsident Johannes Rau hat US-Präsident George W. Bush wegen des Irak-Kriegs sowie seiner religiösen Rechtfertigungen des Feldzuges erstmals direkt angegriffen.
Berlin - "Es gibt zwar Situationen, in denen Krieg unvermeidlich ist, aber dies war im Irak nicht der Fall", sagte Rau in der n-tv-Sendung "Maischberger" am Montag.
Außerdem unterliege Bush einem "grandiosen Missverständnis", wenn er von einer göttlichen Mission spreche, die ihn zu diesem Krieg antreibe. Der Schaden scheine grenzenlos zu werden. "Es ist höchste Zeit, dem Krieg durch humanitäre Taten zu widerhandeln, statt nur zu widersprechen."

Rau sagte: "Ich glaube nicht, dass ein Volk einen göttlichen Hinweis erhält, ein anderes Volk zu befreien." Das sei eine völlig einseitige Botschaft von Bush. Nirgends in der Bibel werde zu Kreuzzügen aufgerufen und die Einstellung des US-Präsidenten sei nicht verbindlich für alle Christen. "Der Papst hingegen spricht in dieser Frage wohl eher für die ganze Menschheit."

Viel dringlicher als der Irak-Krieg wäre Rau zufolge eine Lösung des israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikts gewesen, "aber darum kümmert sich die amerikanische Administration leider viel zu wenig". Die Berichte vom Krieg weckten in ihm schlimme Erinnerungen an den Zweiten Weltkrieg.

 

DAMASCUS, March 31 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Following a new warning against Damascus from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Syria said Monday, March 31, it had chosen to support the Iraqi people against the "illegal" U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.

"Syria has chosen to align itself with the brotherly Iraqi people who are facing an illegal and unjustified invasion and against whom are being committed all sorts of crimes against humanity," a foreign ministry spokesman said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Syrian spokesman said Powell, "like the whole world knows, Syria has chosen to be with international legitimacy represented by the United Nations and the Security Council whose role its to preserve world peace and security
 

While the U.S. military finds itself bogged down on the road to Baghdad, the real hitch in Bush administration's grand vision for post-war Iraq may well be the man slated to take charge of it -- arms-dealer and former "Star Wars" guru General Jay Garner.

In a move typical for what passes for U.S. diplomacy these days, the Pentagon developed and announced its occupation plan without consulting the rest of the alleged coalition (no, not even trusty Britain) or the State Department. Worse, to this highly visible and important position, it picked a man with a dubious past and ideological credentials worthy of a Bush appointee.

A unilateralist hawk, the retired general is an ideological soulmate of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, his main collaborators in developing the "axis of evil" approach to U.S. foreign policy. But when it comes to the Middle East, his track record is even more alarming.

In 2000, Garner and 26 other U.S. officers signed a statement released by the right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) praising the Israeli Defense Forces for its "remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of a Palestinian Authority." Indeed, the choice of Garner seems designed to enflame local and regional resistance. This is a man who after one JINSA junket declared, "A strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on."

Fortune magazine burbled that "Garner's civilian status is a big plus." But although his official title is "co-ordinator of civilian administration," Garner has always been a die-hard advocate of all things military -- sometimes at the expense of the facts. During the first Gulf War he went to Congress and touted the success of the Patriot missiles during the Iraqi attack on Israel. He did not issue a retraction when it was revealed that the

Patriots caused more damage to Israel than the Iraqi Scuds they were supposed to bring down.

The man who will be in charge of the disarmament of Iraq was also a fervent proponent of the fatally flawed Star Wars missile defense system, touting its virtues even when the results of its testing was later revealed to be rigged.

Garner's so-called civilian career was also closely related to the Pentagon. In a classic example of the military-industrial complex at work, Garner retired from the military in 1997 to become President of SY Technology, a defense contractor specializing in missile defense systems.The company soon landed non-competitive contracts as part of the Star Wars program that Pentagon whistleblower, former Lt. Colonel Biff Baker, alleged were procured through Garner's influence. SY Technology sued Baker for defamation and for "causing loss of privacy" for Garner.

The case was settled out of court in January this year, just as Garner was moving to his new and very public position. And by a yet another startling coincidence, the company was awarded a $1.5 billion contract this year to provide logistics services to U.S. special operations forces.The Iraqis themselves may be unhappy, if not surprised, to hear that their to-be satrap's former company has contracts to help build Patriot missile systems for Israel and Kuwait.

The Bush administration has been busy spinning Garner's record to make him appear the perfect, sensitive, team player that Iraq needs to rebuild itself in the American image. But it seems entirely appropriate that Garner was unilaterally appointed on Jan. 20, even as the US was still officially trying to get a UN resolution for the invasion of Iraq.

Nor did Garner's visit to the UN impress the aid officials. He made it clear the only job for the UN in Iraq is to help finance the U.S.-led occupation. But if anything can save Iraq from Garner's tender clutches, it will be the need for UN money.

The Bush Administration is like the Red Queen in Alice in the Looking Glass, perfectly able to believe in three impossible things before breakfast. This is a White House that has committed itself both to tax cuts and an expensive war. It claims Iraqi oil fields are the property of its people even as it prepares to pay the post-war reconstruction with the same oil. The same administration that pledged to ensure a role for the UN at the Azores Summit had already announced plans for an all-American administration headed by Jay Garner.

At the heart of Washington's contradictory and constantly shifting position is the desire to monopolize the control of Iraq but persuade the rest of the world to split the bill. The U.S. attitude is best epitomized by the junior diplomat who turned up at the United Nations in the first week of the war and asked the UN officials to hand over the money they had allocated for relief and humanitarian aid -- money that the White House sorely needed since Congress had failed to appropriate any money for the worthy effort. Not surprisingly, Kofi Annan refused.

The two sides finally reached a temporary compromise on Friday when the Security Council unanimously passed a short-term measure allowing the UN to take charge of the oil-for-food program and sign off on food shipments, which then will be distributed by the coalition forces to the Iraqis. But the resolution also made it very clear that the UN is not interested in financing a U.S.-ruled Iraq. It stressed that "to the fullest extent of the

means available to it, the occupying power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population." So when the time comes to set up a post-war administration in Iraq, the U.S. will either have to pay its own way or play ball with the rest of the Security Council.

But so far, there are few signs that the White House is willing to change its greedy ways. Even the British were not impressed with the U.S. decision to let the infamous union-busting company, Stevedoring Services of America, run the newly "liberated" port of Umm Qasr -- a role that they thought rightly belonged to the Iraqis. Aiming General Jay Garner at the innocent civilians of post-war Iraq will be yet another ham-handed, arrogant decision that guarantees an aftermath that is as messy and potentially disastrous as its initiation.

 

From March 21 to March 24, 2003, Iranian air-space had been violated with

impunity by US aircraft. The US attacked the oil-industry communities of

Khorramshahr, Abadan and Manyuhi in Iran not far from the US-UK-Kuwaiti

controlled Faw Peninsula and Umm al Qasr--control points for the Shatt al

Arb through which billions of gallons of crude oil have passed to the US, UK

and Japan. The oil refinery and depots in Abadan were the primary targets.

The were casualties but no deaths. US and UK bombers have also circled over

Arvand-Kenar in Iran on their way into Iraq. Iranian officials have

protested these violations of International Law, but to no avail. Pentagon

officials declared the cause of the attacks to be "stray" cruise missiles

and bombs. That is improbable. These attacks (and overflights), it seems,

were part of the preprogrammed target packages planned early on by US

military commanders to test, or light up, Iranian air defenses for the

invasion of Iran which is likely to take place if George Bush II takes the

US presidency in 2004. They serve as a stark warning to Iran not to meddle

in what has now become the American, British and Kuwaiti sphere-of-influence

in the southeastern sector of Iraq.

Between April of 2003 and November 2004, the US, UK and Israel will

accelerate instability operations in Iran and engage in global

disinformation campaigns to belittle the political and military leadership

there. They will take to the airwaves to portray to Americans a country

beset by internal strife and dissension. Corporate media will revisit the

Iranian Hostage Crisis and display for war-hungry Americans footage from the

1978-80 timeframe. That will include images of Khomeni's henchmen hanging

and executing the Shah's secret police. Movies such as Sally Field's Not

Without My Child portraying many Iranians as "evil doers" will be broadcast

by all the networks. Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah of Iran, will be

featured with greater frequency on CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS.

Images from the 1983 bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Lebanon allegedly

by Iranian backed Hezbollah will be aired and printed. Coincidently, in

Washington, DC, on March 17, 2003, relatives of US Marines killed in Lebanon

were allowed to proceed with a lawsuit to collect $2 billion in damages from

the Iranian government. According to the sometimes reliable Washington Post,

"U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has ruled that survivors and family

members can sue Iran under the provisions of a 1996 law that allows U.S.

citizens to take legal action against nations that sponsor terrorism.'The

U.S. military force . . . embodies everything that is resented by the

enemies of this country,' Lamberth wrote. 'Failure to permit military

service member [lawsuits] would create a perverse incentive for state

sponsors of terrorism to target noncombatant U.S. military personnel.'

Hundreds of family members turned out for the first day of what is expected

to be two days of testimony and evidence designed to document Iran's role in

the bombing. Iran did not send a representative to the trial." Once Iraq is

successfully occupied, the media will turn its attention to Iran and that

lawsuit.



Already, sources report that elements of the CIA are busy in and around

Iran, and that US-UK-Australian special operations teams operating out of

Afghanistan and Kuwait--and the US Province of Iraq--have been

surreptitiously setting up shop in Iran for months. Iran now finds itself

pinned on all sides by pro-US, UK forces. Operation Liberate Iran will take

place using the same strategy and tactics employed in the Massacre of Iraq.

Iran has few options. One, is the accelation of their nuclear program and a

successful test or demonstration of a nuclear device. That may slow a US led

invasion. A second option would be become part of a new counter-US alliance

that would include Russia, India, France, Germany and China. The last, of

course, is to "disarm" or go into "exile".
John Stanton is a Virginia Based writer specializing in national security
matters.

 

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minster, began his political retreat before a shot was fired. Mr Berlusconi was a signatory of the Anglo-Spanish letter that backed the US before the conflict begun. That did not translate into concrete military support, however. Last week, Mr Berlusconi was at pains to insist that the deployment in northern Iraq of 1,000 US paratroopers who had been stationed in Italy did not break a pledge that Italian bases would not be used for direct attacks on Saddam Hussein.
Denmark, which has backed the action, had to scale back its small military deployment because of parliamentary opposition. The Netherlands, which did not sign the Anglo-Spanish letter but was sympathetic, has ruled out military involvement, fearful of destabilising negotiations to form a coalition government.
Countries which took a tough, pro-American line are encountering political difficulties. Jose Maria Aznar, the Prime Minister of Spain, which has dispatched 9,000 troops to Iraq for humanitarian work, is under intense pressure from domestic opposition.
The publication of pictures of elite Polish troops posing for photos with US soldiers in Iraq provoked a backlash in Poland. Although Warsaw remains a firm supporter of the US, surveys suggest only 20 per cent of Poles think their troops should be involved in fighting.
The weight of public opposition has forced countries to face in opposite directions. Ireland has made Shannon airport available to the US, but failed to endorse the war.
Across the ex-Communist nations of Europe, identified by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, as part of the "coalition of the willing", sentiment has proved ambivalent. One explanation is that the Anglo-Spanish letter endorsed by three of the applicant nations, and a subsequent declaration by a further 10 eastern European states, did not commit them to supporting hostilities. Some leaders went along with the formulation on the basis that taking a tough line might force President Saddam to back down.
In others the politics have changed: in Czech Republic, which is included in Washington's list of coalition nations, the Anglo-Spanish letter was signed by the outgoing president, Vaclav Havel.
His successor Vaclav Klaus has warned that using force to impose democracy on Iraq is a notion "from another universe" and sets a dangerous precedent.
Several nations provided logistical support because failing to do so would have provoked a diplomatic schism with Washington. Yet these nuances have been brushed aside by a Pentagon in its efforts to present the image of broad support.
Croatia was presented as part of the "coalition of the willing" on the basis that it opened its airspace and bases to US civilian aircraft. But Stipe Mesic, the President, denounced the war as "illegitimate" because it lacked UN backing. Slovenia has also rejected the idea that it backs the conflict.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=392773
 

Maybe that's not ultimately as important as questions like whether preemptive wars are morally justifiable or if there will be a "domino democracy" chain reaction in the Mideast unleashed by regime change. But it's a good sign of what one of the biggest postwar battles will be fought over: Who gets to rebuild Iraq, and how?
On Wednesday, Darrel Issa, a Republican congressman from Southern California, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking him to make sure that the U.S. builds a CDMA cell system in Iraq – the same system that's used in America, and one developed by Qualcomm, which happens to be one of Issa's most generous donors. The Defense Department had apparently been thinking of setting up a GSM system in Iraq, but Issa warned Rumsfeld that such a system, which is the standard in Europe and elsewhere in the Mideast, would benefit "French and European sources, not U.S. patent holders." On Thursday, Issa introduced a bill that would make his policy recommendations law. There are no official co-sponsors, but under the headline "Parlez-vous français?" on his Web site, a statement says that many lawmakers have already expressed their support for an American cellphone system in Iraq.
It's not clear if members of Congress – many of whom, remember, were for telecom deregulation in the U.S. – will want to mandate the cellphone standard of postwar Iraq. But even if Issa's bill isn't passed into law, its broad policy goal – putting American firms at the front of the line in a Saddam-free Iraq – already seems to be the Bush administration's attitude.
Of the $75 billion in war-related money the White House has requested from Congress to cover the costs of war in Iraq, $3.5 billion is set aside for reconstruction and relief in Iraq. In the months ahead, as the specific needs of postwar Iraq become clearer, American companies are expected to get most, if not all, of the lucrative contracts provided by the new money. Already, there has been domestic and international criticism of the manner in which the money has been handed out.                                                                                            Russian officials are more optimistic about their chances in Iraq. "We are currently working on the immediate return of Russian firms, which have interests in Iraq, to the country as soon as peace is restored," Igor Yusufov, the country's energy minister, told the Russian press on Thursday. And Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister, recently said in a speech that "We will have to defend our interests so that the contracts which were signed under Saddam Hussein are not annulled as lacking legal force and to make sure the Iraqi debt owed us is respected." Ivanov added that "Iraq does not need democracy brought on the wings of Tomahawks."
At least so far in the war, though, there have been few scenes of freed Iraqis dancing in the streets. And if it does indeed turn out that Iraqis are less than pleased with their American "liberators," will they not feel some satisfaction in making it very difficult for American business in Iraq?
"I don't see how American executives can work when their lives will be at risk," one French Finance Ministry official recently told Reuters. "There will be such hatred toward Americans."

http://www.alternet.org/