*Trivia: "The U.S. government's Energy Information Administration projects [from 2004] that in 20 years, the Persian Gulf will supply between one-half and two-thirds of the oil on the world market - the same percentage as before the 1973 embargo. Fifty years later, in other words, the Middle East will have regained all its old power over oil - and the U.S. government knows it. Whether or not Washington's war in Iraq was directly motivated by oil, American planners clearly hoped it would lay the groundwork for a stable, democratic Middle East - which, among other benefits, would in Washington's view put the world's oil supply in more trustworthy hands." [National Geographic Magazine, June 2004, p. 108]
*Trivia: "President George W. Bush's administration helped rally public and congressional support for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq by publicizing the claims of an Iraqi defector [Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri] months after he showed deception in a lie detector test and had been rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence agencies." [Knight Ridder Newspapers, 05/18/04]
*Trivia: "A report on the merits of intelligence used to justify the Iraq war dealt a blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday [07/14/04] by asserting that intelligence had partly been based on 'seriously flawed' or unsubstantiated information. The report found no evidence of cooperation between Iraq's rulers and al-Qaida and no evidence that Iraq possessed usable stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. [....] The 200-page report echoed a U.S. Senate committe report released last week [July 2004] that was critical of unsubstantiated U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. [....] In a statement to the House of Commons, Blair acknowledged that it was 'increasingly clear' Saddam had no stockpiles of unlawful weapons on the eve of the war." [Cox News Service, 07/15/04]
*Trivia: "Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged to his Labor Party Tuesday [09/28/04] that the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq had been wrong. [....] 'The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong,' Blair said." [A.P., 09/29/04]
*Trivia: "Israel’s intelligence, Mossad, knows what’s going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israel’s survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. Led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there has been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel’s security is to spread democracy in the area. Wolfowitz wrote: 'The United States may not be able to lead countries through the door of democracy, but where that door is locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, American power may be the only way to open it up.' And on another occasion: Iraq as 'the first Arab democracy . . . would cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and Iran but across the whole Arab world.' Three weeks before the invasion, President Bush stated: 'A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example for freedom for other nations in the region.' Every president since 1947 has made a futile attempt to help Israel negotiate peace. But no leadership has surfaced amongst the Palestinians that can make a binding agreement. President Bush realized his chances at negotiation were no better. He came to office imbued with one thought—re-election. Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. You don’t come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq. But George W. Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days after inauguration. And, without any Iraq connection to 9-11, within weeks he had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq." [Based on: Sen. Ernest F. Hollings]
*Trivia: "Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector [Charles Duelfer] said Wednesday [10/06/04] he found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991. [....] Contrary to prewar statements by President George W. Bush [2003], Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, Duelfar said." [Ken Guggenheim, A.P., 10/07/04]
*Trivia: "The final report [March 2005] of a presidential commission studying American intelligence failures on illicit weapons includes a searing critique of how the CIA and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapons stockpiles. [....] The report particularly singles out the CIA under its former director, George Tenet. It also includes what one senior official called 'a hearty condemnation' of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, two of the largest intelligence agencies. [....] The report particularly ridicules the conclusion that Saddam's fleet of 'unmanned aerial vehicles,' which had limited range, posed a major threat. Assertions about Iraqi weapons programs were repeated by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior officials before the war. To this day, Cheney never has backed away from his claim, repeated last year, that 'mobile laboratories' were likely part of a biological weapons program. [....] The commission's conclusions may fuel arguments now heard in China, South Korea and Europe that an intelligence system that so misjudged Iraq cannot be fully trusted regarding assessments of North Korea and Iran." [Based on: New York Times article by David E. Sanger & Scott Shane, S.L.P.D., p. A2, 03/29/05]
*Trivia: "The U.S. intelligence community was 'dead wrong' in its prewar assessment of Iraq's weapons programs and can't accurately guage the future threat from countries such as Iran and North Korea, a presidential commission concluded Thursday [03/31/05]. The commission called the exaggerated estimates of Iraq's weapons programs 'one of the most public - and most damaging - intelligence failures in recent American history.' Even today, intelligence agencies have failed to adapt, and the United States knows 'disturbingly little' about the nuclear weapons programs of potential adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, the panel said. [....] The panel was led by former Sen. Charles Robb, a Democrat, and U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican. [....] 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,' the vice president [Dick Cheney] said in August 2002. Silberman said the commission had no authority to consider how policymakers used intelligence that was sent to them. When pressed, he suggested that Bush was misled by a steady stream of information that exaggerated the threat. 'We looked at the flow, or the stream of intelligence that came to the White House.... If anything, it was even more alarmist,' he said. The issue may never be aired fully. The Senate Intelligence Committe appears to have dropped a second stage of its own investigation that was to have focused on the administration's use of intelligence. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, 'The intelligence never supported his (Bush's) claim that Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States.... The investigatioin will not be complete unless we know how the Bush administration may have used or misused intelligence to pursue its own agenda.' [....] As far as is known, no individual in the intelligence community or the Bush administration has been fired or otherwise held accountable for the flawed data used to justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. [....]" [Based on: Knight Ridder Newspapers, 04/01/05]
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