Published: Friday December 5, 2008
A University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign political science professor
says he
found
that the White House had modified elements of its website dealing with the
coalition and in some cases deleted key documents in the public record.
At the onset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the White House released a list
of the nations participating in the coalition, an important part of Bush
Administration PR efforts, as the war was not UN-endorsed.
Over a period of years, however, the original releases were modified to account
for the diminishing number of nations.
Two releases were deleted from the White House website entirely, the professor
says.
According to the
university's student newspaper,
a proofreader doublechecking a paper Althaus co-authored on the edited releases
found that one of the URLs included in his paper now led to a blank page.
"Related lists of coalition countries also appeared to contradict one another,"
the paper added.
The Cline Center for Democracy asserted that the "pattern" of "revision and
removal" suggest that the White House has edited documents dealing with the
period between 2003 and 2005.
*********
"I think that it raises the question of whether or
not we can trust the government to maintain public records of things that were
said or done that later prove embarrassing," Scott Althaus, Illinois
political science professor, said.
"It could be what we found is limited," Althaus continued. "But if it is not, it
certainly opens the finding up to larger questions."
"Instead of the White House Web site maintaining an updated list while
preserving copies of the old ones or issuing revised lists in addition to the
original posts, the White House removed original documents, altered them and
replaced them with backdated modifications that only appear to be originals,"
wrote Kelly Gibbs, Illinois University reporter. "Several documents had been
revised and listed different numbers and names of coalition countries."
"In many ways it is puzzling why so much effort was put into revising and
deleting these documents," Althaus said. "This is mainly because the changes
were pretty small potatoes."
"Our findings out in the blogosphere are generally interpreted in a political
lens, which was not our intention at all," Althaus added. "Our intention was
to alert scholars and journalists who rely on government documents to let them
know the facts have been tampered with."
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How History Will View Bush
By Bob Fertik and David Swanson
As George Bush prepares to leave office, he and his aides are trying desperately
to rewrite history, especially on Iraq. Nearly six years after
invading Iraq on the basis of lies that were manufactured inside the White
House, the Bush Administration adamantly insists the lies were all innocent
mistakes. Were they?
Originally, the invasion of Iraq was justified primarily on grounds that Iraq
had substantial quantities of chemical and biological weapons and had
"reconstituted" its nuclear weapons development program, and that it could give
terrorists "weapons of mass destruction."
But there was no actual evidence Iraq had such weapons, and the White House knew
it.
In 1995, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel informed U.S. and British
intelligence officers that all Iraqi biological, chemical, missile, and nuclear
weapons had been destroyed under his direct supervision. After U.N. inspectors
left Iraq in 1998, Scott Ritter wrote, "The chemical, biological, nuclear, and
long-ranged missile programs that were a real threat in 1991, had by 1998 been
destroyed or rendered harmless." Ritter's conclusion was confirmed by the DIA in
September 2002: "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents,
precursors, munitions and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and
1998 … [T]here is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and
stockpiling chemical weapons."
In September 2002, CIA Director George Tenet personally told President Bush that
Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri - whom the CIA had recruited and persuaded to
remain in place - said Iraq had no WMD. That fall, the CIA sent Iraqi-Americans
to visit Iraqi weapons scientists, and they reported all weapons programs had
ended. In January 2003, Iraq's intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush told
British intelligence the same thing.
Thus the evidence against Iraq's possession of WMD's was overwhelming. What was
the evidence for WMD's?
The source for biological weapons was the German informant "Curveball," whose
interrogators informed the Bush Administration that Curveball was not
"psychologically stable," was a heavy drinker, had had a mental breakdown, was
"crazy," and was "probably a fabricator."
One source for nuclear weapons was a letter about an attempted Iraqi purchase of
uranium from Niger that was given to the CIA in Rome in 2001, but the CIA
quickly rejected it as a forgery. Ambassador Joe Wilson visited Niger in early
2002 and further discredited the claim of an Iraqi uranium purchase. The other
source was the capture of aluminum tubes in Jordan in 2001, which Bush
administration hardliners claimed were intended for uranium-enriching
centrifuges. But experts in the Energy and State Departments insisted the tubes
were for conventional battlefield rocket launchers.
Thus the weight of evidence was solidly against Iraq WMD's; the evidence for
WMD's lacked credibility. So who is responsible for the lies - the intelligence
agencies or the White House?
In June 2008, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence blamed the White House
and said the statements about WMD's made by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were not
substantiated by evidence. According to Chairman Jay Rockefeller, "In making the
case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when
in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent."
Moreover, the White House directly pressured intelligence agencies to twist the
evidence. Cheney made several visits to the CIA to pressure analysts. Numerous
intelligence officials have testified about White House pressure, including
Robin Raphel and David Dunford of the State Department, Richard Kerr and Paul
Pillar of the CIA, and former national security official Kenneth Pollack.
The elaborate White House scheme to manufacture WMD lies was best summarized by
Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of Britain's MI6, upon his return from meeting
with CIA director George Tenet in Washington in July 2002. According to minutes
of Prime Minister Blair's cabinet meeting on July 23, Dearlove reported
"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam,
through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But
the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The invasion of Iraq was a catastrophe of historic proportions. George Bush and
senior White House officials may never admit they deliberately lied about Iraq's
weapons, but history has already concluded otherwise.
Bob Fertik is president of Democrats.com. David Swanson is Washington Director of Democrats.com.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-History-Will-View-Bush-by-David-Swanson-081217-488.html
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BUSH LEGACY TALKING POINTS - December 9, 2008
Bush "kept the American people safe" (Part 1) -
Bush legacy talking point
Bush "kept the American people safe," (Part 2) -
Bush legacy talking point
Today the LA Times published a White House document entitled ""Speech Topper on the Bush Record," intended for GOP administration officials only.
Bush "lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts"
- Bush legacy talking point
"What we have in mind with these documents is we feel the president's many accomplishments haven't been given the attention they deserve and in some cases have been purposely ignored," said White House spokesman Carlton Carroll.
Bush upheld "the honor and the dignity of his office"
- Bush legacy talking point
For Bush's staff, upbeat talking points on his tenureA two-page memo that has been sent to Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials offers a guide for discussing Bush's eight-year tenure during their public speeches.
Titled "Speech
Topper on the Bush Record," the talking points state that Bush "kept the
American people safe" after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the
economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and
maintained "the honor and the dignity of his office."
The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success.
It mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his
presidency: the collapse of the housing market and major financial
services companies, the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq
war, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners
at Abu Ghraib.
In a section on the economy, speakers are invited to say that Bush cut
taxes after 2001, setting the stage for years of job growth.
As for the current economic crisis, the memo says that Bush "responded
with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown."
The document is otherwise silent on the recession, which claimed 533,000
jobs in November, the highest number in 34 years.
A copy of the memo was obtained by The Times' Washington bureau. A
spokesman for Bush said Monday that the White House routinely sends out
suggestions to officials and allies on ways to talk about the
administration's record.
No one is required to recite the talking points laid out by the White
House, Carroll said.
The memo closes with a reference to Bush's 1999 memoir, "A Charge to
Keep":
"Above all, George W. Bush promised to uphold the honor and the dignity
of his office. And through all the challenges and trials of his time in
office, that is a charge that our president has kept."
One accomplishment cited is passage of the No Child Left Behind law,
Bush's attempt to improve education. "He promised to raise standards and
accountability in public schools -- and delivered the No Child Left
Behind Act," the talking points read.
On the presidential campaign trail this year, Democratic candidates
found that any criticism of No Child Left Behind was a surefire applause
line.
President-elect Barack Obama promised to revamp the program, contending
that it elevated test-taking at the expense of a well-rounded education.
Nicholas is a writer in our Washington bureau.
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
