The Lie Factory !

[G_j]

an article that deserves periodic posting:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/mideast/iraq/1448.html



The Lie Factory

News: This special Mother Jones investigation late last year detailed how, only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest

January/February 2004 Issue

It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs.

So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone.

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

..more..



Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski

[McKenzie]

1. damn! I've never seen that chart until now.

I have saved the file and I am going to study it real close.

Just goes to show why the DU team works so well - no-one has all the information.

thnx

[displacedtexan]

2. Where does WHIG (White House Iraq Group) fit in?

And why was it left out?

[AuntiBush]

3. Maybe the Scandal Sheet is Too Long

Seeing that chart makes it easier to "get it."

[G_j]

6. good question

the OSP was centered in the Pentagon, but Cheney was so involved in this, I'm not sure if they aren't really the same group. Any further input on your question would be appreciated.

here is more (provided by OmmmSweetOmmm)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Office_of_Special_Plans

[displacedtexan]

8. Here's s snippet...

The members:

* Karl Rove
* Karen Hughes
* Mary Matalin
* James R. Wilkinson
* Nicholas E. Calio
* Condoleezza Rice
* Stephen Hadley
* I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby

(Note: Bush & Cheney attended some of the meetings)

Response to Yellowcake Forgery Issue

In response to the Yellowcake forgery issue, the White House Iraq Group devised this strategy<8> to combat critics:

"There is a strategy now, devised by White House communications director Dan Bartlett, Mary Matalin, a former aide to Vice President Cheney, and former Bush aide Karen Hughes. Both advise the White House as a consultants to the Republican National Committee.

The plan: Release all relevant information. Try to shift attention back to Bush's leadership in the war on terrorism. Diminish the significance of that single piece of iffy intelligence by making the case that Saddam was a threat for many other reasons. Put Republican lawmakers and other Bush allies on TV to defend him.

Most important: Question the motives of Democrats who supported the war but now are criticizing the president."


CIA leak scandal

Records and notes of White House Iraq Group activities were subpoenaed by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the investigation into the leak of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Iraq_Group

[G_j]

11. seems like if

you were not involved in the White House Iraq Group, you were involved in the OSP.

[bigbrother05]

4. On the lighter side the graph looks

like an under ground sewer. Have bookmarked for later reading, always enjoy motherjones. thanks.

[AuntiBush]

5. Nominated & Kicked!

Thank you for posting this, especially now. The scandal sheet is so long, it's hard to keep-up w/it all.

[G_j]

7. there is no doubt Fitzgerald is aware of this by now

we will see what happens, fingers crossed

[AuntiBush]

9. Mine, too.

Behind my back. Hope you're right, G_j. The weight of the world is on Fitzgerald's back right now.

[G_j]

10. kick

:bounce:

[G_j]

12. ~~

[callady]

13. For any who missed it then

they should read it now so they will know....

Does congress read?

[mshasta]

14. wow my head is spining...

:crazy:

[crispini]

15. Fifth recommendation.

and a kicketypoo!

[slay]

16. Kick. Recommended.

The chart alone is worth it.

[Karenina]

17. Back to one.

:kick:

[G_j]

19. !

:thumbsup:

[oasis]

18. Thanks. And a kick.