I don’t believe it is the same set of documents being talked about, but when reading today’s notes from Ron Suskind, I was reminded of my post “Follow the Forger” from October 2003. Well, Suskind claims to have found at least one forger of documents related to the Iraq/Niger/Yellowcake connection that was claimed but did not exist.
The Forged Iraqi Letter: What Just Happened?
(Ron Suskind, Huffington Post, 5 Aug 2008)
What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:
The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush — a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush’s famous deck of wanted men — has been America’s secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, “resettled” Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.
In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD — as Habbush had foretold — the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a “small team from the al Qaeda organization.”
The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.
Mr Suskind is of course promoting a new book where he goes into these accusations in more detail I gather. I have not read it. I have no good way to evaluate if any of it is true.
But… If even 5% of all the things this administration has been accused of over the last 7+ years are even partially true, then the fact that there have not been full fledged impeachment proceedings is extremely shameful.
I wonder just how many preemptive pardons will be issued on January 19th. I am anticipating quite a few.
Not that I really think even a potential Obama administration would be interested in going after any of these jokers (including W). Instead they will look the other way and decide to worry about the future rather than the past, to not reopen old wounds, to “heal” etc. Blah Blah Blah.
Sorry, these folks need to be held to account. All the way up and down the command chain. Including W and Cheney.
