"Shock and Awe" Is "Mocked and Flawed"

Senator Jay Rockefeller calls for investigation of Bush


1998 - 2003© Copyright From The Wilderness Publications 

THE GATHERING STORM PART II 

"Shock and Awe" Is "Mocked and Flawed" -- War Plan Stumbles as 
Bush Tells CNN, "It's Gonna Take a While to Achieve Our Objective...
This Is Just the Beginning of a Tough Fight." -- U.S. Soldiers 
Captured, Iraqi Resistance Significant and Toughening 
U.S. Press/Political Hostility to Bush Administration Intensifies - 
Major Papers Discussing Criminal Behavior, Impeachment as Focus 
Intensifies on Forged Niger Uranium Docs - Cheney, Powell and 
Rumsfeld Implicated 

Oil Bonanza Fading as Economic Indicators Weaken in an Unstable 
Environment - Iraqi Oil Deliveries Interrupted - Reality Tramples 
Market Exuberance - Turk-Kurdish Chaos More Likely 

Has the U.S. Been Set Up by Europe, Russia and China? 
by Michael C. Ruppert

© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, 
www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, 
distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit 
purposes only. 

March 24, 2003, 2100 EDT (FTW) - Atlanta, Military, economic, 
oil, and political storms continue to gather and converge in 
what may become a Perfect Storm for the Bush Administration and 
the United States economy. 

On the fifth day of a U.S. military campaign rejected by the 
U.N. Security Council, at least 12 U.S. soldiers have been 
captured by Iraqi forces near al Nasiriyah even as various foreign 
news sources are reporting that as many as four to ten of the 
vaunted M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks have been destroyed in 
combat. A helicopter aircrew has been captured further north. 
ABC has reported that coalition casualties are approaching 200. 
Promises that Iraqi civilians expecting liberation would greet 
coalition troops with open arms have been unfulfilled as Iraqi 
resistance stiffens on a daily basis. In a tragic event, an 
African-American Sergeant of the 101st Air Assault Division staged 
a grenade attack on tents occupied by his comrades-in-arms, killing 
one and wounding fourteen. The fallout from this tragedy will 
have lasting repercussions on the psyches of both U.S. military 
and civilian populations. Images of an American Black man face 
down and handcuffed - no matter how serious the offense - will 
not fade quickly and will further erode an extremely fragile 
and increasingly volatile domestic landscape. The suspect is 
Muslim.

Saddam Hussein and his forces are now gaining strength, political 
cachet, and popular support with each new engagement while 
coalition forces lose it with every casualty and delay. One of 
the first questions asked at a somber, live press conference at 
Central Command headquarters in Qatar on Sunday was, "Has 
America gotten itself into another Vietnam?" This question came 
after only three days of ground combat. Around the Arab and 
Muslim world, Saddam Hussein's picture is becoming an icon of 
anti-colonial resistance. Over a thousand years of European and 
American history, the Arab world has never given in easily to 
occupying forces; they always prefer one of their own - no 
matter how distasteful - to an outsider. The Crusades were the 
earliest lesson for Europe and the Suez crisis of 1956 the most 
recent.

Consistent with predictions made in FTW, the Turkish government, 
poised to send several brigades into northern Iraq, is threatening 
to turn Northern Iraq into absolute chaos. The Kurds who live in 
the region ethnically blur the borders of Syria, Turkey, Iraq 
and Iran and their support is critical to U.S. military plans. 
Having sought an independent homeland for decades, they have 
been consistently used by the U.S. and western powers for covert 
operations and destabilization programs and they have always been 
betrayed later. At the moment FTW gives a 50-50 likelihood that 
the U.S. will ultimately - and after much protestation for effect - 
allow the Turkish incursion. That will instantly create a highly 
unstable and balkanized region. The U.S. has historically both 
created and preferred "balkanization" to secure commercial control 
of natural resources and civilian populations with devastating 
results for anyone living in the region. This could ultimately - 
if the U.S. invasion is successful - result in Iraq being divided 
into three or more separately governed regions.

The instability created by such a development would likely spread 
throughout the Middle East quickly. None of the region's borders 
has existed for more than eighty years and all of them were drawn 
by departing colonial powers. Perceptions in Saudi Arabia of this 
kind of trend might automatically require U.S. forces to engage 
in a two-front war if the already unstable Saudi regime begins to 
fracture and weaken.

To date, this writer has seen no reportage of how the Saudi 
populace is reacting to a war plan that is stumbling. For 
approximately six months, FTW has been reporting that Saudi Arabia 
would likely become unstable with the invasion and that American 
war planners might be planning for a nearly simultaneous operation 
to control Saudi oil fields, which contain 25% of all the oil on 
the planet. But as the efficacy of U.S. military might comes into
question, the brass ring of oil becomes ever more elusive and a 
Saudi occupation becomes a military goal out of reach.

In the meantime, there are increasing signs that the U.S. 
political and economic elites are laying the groundwork to make 
the Bush administration, specifically Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, 
Powell, Perle and Wolfowitz, sacrificial scapegoats for a failed 
policy in time to consolidate post 9-11 gains, regroup and move 
forward. These indications include: written press attacks on the 
Bush administration by select journalists long known for their 
loyalty and obedience to financial interests and the CIA; a 
growing revolt from within the intelligence communities of the 
U.S. and the U.K. including damaging leaks undermining the 
credibility of the administration; serious economic consequences 
closing in on the financial markets; growing signs of pending 
oil shortages; and indications that the use of forged documents 
by the Bush and Blair regimes may become the Watergate burglary
of the 21st century.

THE WRITTEN PRESS TURN ON BUSH, BIG TIME

While most of the American people rely on television coverage for 
their worldview, those within the government, politics and the 
financial markets look to a select group of entrenched print 
journalists to sniff the winds of political change. Those winds 
started blowing against George W. Bush and his administration 
before the war began. In what appears to be intensifying anti-
Bush rhetoric, an unprecedented media effort is beginning to cut 
the legs from under the administration even as it gambles 
everything on an increasingly elusive military victory.

March 12 - Beginning with a relatively unknown press organization, 
it was reported at www.informationtimes.com that 35 members of 
the U.S. Congress, overwhelmingly Democrat, had flatly rejected 
the U.S. war effort and were calling for a repeal of the February 
resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq.

March 12 - On the same day, journalistic heavyweight Howard 
Fineman of NEWSWEEK reported that the "blame game" had already 
begun for a war that had not. He wrote "But few think it's going 
to be easy. And my guess is that team discipline inside the Bush 
administration is about to be fractured by the collateral damage 
that already is being caused by a war we have yet to fight. We 
are embarrassingly alone diplomatically, and State Department 
underlings (privately) blame Rumsfeld & Co. Inside the Pentagon - 
but outside of Rumsfeld's office - I'm told that E-Ring brass 
have adopted what one source calls a 'Vietnam mentality,' a sense 
of resignation about a policy...they seriously doubt will work...

"This time around is a different story. The closer we get to the 
event, the less Bush is in control of events..."

March 14 - The Los Angeles Times' Greg Miller reported that a 
State Department document was contradicting the Bush 
administration's claim that the Iraqi invasion would encourage 
the spread of democracy.

"A classified State Department report expresses doubt that 
installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of 
democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made 
in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence 
officials familiar with the document.

"The report exposes significant divisions within the Bush 
administration over the so-called domino theory, one of the 
arguments that underpins the case for invading Iraq."

The story specifically singled out Pentagon hawks Richard Perle 
and Paul Wolfowitz as objects of criticism by the U.S. 
intelligence community.

March 15 - The International Herald Tribune reported that top 
officials of the World Trade Organization had also started 
turning on Bush by reporting, "...officials said they feared that 
American moves within the organization and toward a war in Iraq 
would weaken respect for international rules and lead to serious 
practical consequences for the world economy and business.

"In the past months the United States has compiled one of the 
worst records for violating trade rules...

"They said they were worried that all international institutions 
would suffer a loss of credibility if the one superpower 
appeared to be choosing which rules to obey and which rules to 
ignore."

The WTO, globalization, is the heart of the economic power bloc 
that brought Bush into power.

March 16 - The big guns at The Washington Post begin to open 
fire. In a lengthy story on the controversial Carlyle Group, 
a major private investment bank with which both the President 
and his father have deep financial connections, Greg Schneider 
made some absolutely stunning statements:

"David M. Rubenstein is exasperated, and he blurts something 
that a quick look around the room proves is outrageous: "We're 
not," he nearly shouts, "that well connected!

"Behind him is a picture of Rubenstein on a plane with then-Gov. 
George W. Bush. Across the room, a photo of Rubenstein with the 
President's father and mother. Next to that, Rubenstein and 
Mikhail Gorbachev. Elsewhere: Rubenstein and Jimmy Carter. On 
a bookshelf: Rubenstein and the pope...

"Rubenstein, after all, is founder of the Carlyle Group...

"But the connections have cost Carlyle, in ways that are hard 
to measure. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the 
business world - omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister...

"Last year then-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even 
suggested that Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East 
made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. 
While her comments were widely dismissed as irresponsible, the 
publicity highlighted Carlyle's increasingly notorious reputation. 
Internet sites with headlines such as "The Axis of Corporate Evil" 
purport to link Carlyle to everything from Enron to Al Qaeda.

"'We've actually replaced the Trilateral Commission' as the 
darling of conspiracy theorists, says Rubenstein - who, truth 
be told, happens to be a member of the Trilateral Commission.

"It didn't help that as the World trade Center burned on Sept. 
11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at 
the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin 
Laden. Former President Bush, a fellow investor, had been with 
him at the conference the previous day...

"The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average 
annual rate of return...

"Times are changing, though. It's no longer valid to assume that 
Carlyle's golden roll of all-stars automatically opens doors in 
certain parts of the world, says Youssef M. Ibrahim of the Council 
on Foreign Relations in New York. 'George Bush junior is kind of
screwing his father up, slowly but surely, in terms of securing 
relationships in the region,' Ibrahim says of the Mideast. The 
current administration's support for Israel, its hostility 
toward Iraq and its rocky dealings with the Saudi royal family 
have soured business and political relationships alike, he says."

[To view previous FTW stories on the Carlyle group please visit 
www.fromthewilderness.com.] 

March 16 - On the same day as the Carlyle story, one of The 
Washington Post's biggest pundits for several decades, Walter 
Pincus, fired a serious shot into the administration's belly. 
To veterans of the 1996-98 popular nationwide campaign to expose 
CIA connections to cocaine trafficking, Pincus' name will be 
remembered as one of the chief defenders of the CIA. In fact, 
Pincus has been one of the Post's primary CIA conduits for more 
than thirty years. In 1967, he wrote a short feature for the 
Post titled, "How I Traveled the World on a CIA Stipend."

In a story titled "U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms", Pincus 
described how U.S. "Senior intelligence analysts say they feel 
caught between the demands from the White House, Pentagon and 
other government policymakers for intelligence that would make 
the administration's case 'and what they say is a lack of hard 
facts,' one official said.

"The assertions, coming on the eve of a possible decision by 
President Bush to go to war against Iraq, have raised concerns 
among some members of the intelligence community about whether 
administration officials have exaggerated intelligence in a 
desire to convince the American public..."

Pincus went on to detail how key U.S. Senators like Carl Levin 
and John Warner were questioning data that had apparently been 
misrepresented and/or hidden from the U.N.

An ominous note at the end of the story, reminding anyone who 
read it of Watergate and the demise of the Nixon presidency, 
added "Staff Writer Bob Woodward contributed to this report."

March 18 - Pincus returned again, in the company of Post Staff 
Writer Dana Milbank, to place more bricks in the wall that 
might seal the administration's fate. The story titled, "Bush 
Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq" opened with the lead, 
"As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, 
it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against 
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that have been challenged - and 
in some cases disproved - by the United Nations, European 
governments and even U.S. intelligence reports."

The story went on to document misrepresentations by George Bush, 
Dick Cheney and Colin Powell that made it clear that if George 
W. Bush was going down his whole administration was going with 
him. It was now a part of the official Washington record that 
all three had been guilty of misrepresentations to the press 
and the American people.

March 20 - Columnist Craig Roberts, writing in the traditionally 
pro-Republican, conservative Washington Times delivered perhaps 
the most shocking signal that the power establishment, which 
should have stopped the war before it started, was moving to 
set the administration up for a fall. 

In a column titled "A Reckless Path", Roberts' lead paragraph read:

"Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These 
are not hyperbolic questions. Mr. Bush has permitted a small cadre 
of neoconservatives to isolate him from world opinion, putting him 
at odds with the United Nations and America's allies."

It got worse from there.

"...On the eve of Mr. Bush's ultimatum, it came to light that a 
key piece of evidence used by the Bush administration to link 
Iraq to a nuclear weapons program is a forgery. Sen. Jay Rockefeller 
of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence 
committee, has asked the FBI to investigate the forged documents 
that the Bush administration has used to make its case that Saddam 
Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Amazingly, Roberts then went on to make a comparison with Adolf 
Hitler's faked attacks by SS soldiers dressed as Polish troops in 
1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, which started the Second 
World War.

Roberts closed his column with a dire warning. "Mr. Bush and his 
advisers have forgotten that the power of an American president 
is temporary and relative."

March 22 - One of The New York Times' chief experts on intelligence, 
with close contacts at the CIA, is James Risen. Whenever reading a 
Risen story it's a safe bet to assume that it was fed to him directly 
by CIA headquarters. In a story headlined, "CIA Aides Feel Pressure 
in Preparing Iraqi Reports" Risen wrote:

"The recent disclosure that reports claiming Iraq tried to buy 
uranium from Niger were based partly on forged documents has 
renewed complaints among analysts at the C.I.A. about the way 
intelligence related to Iraq has been handled, several intelligence 
officials said. 

"Analysts at the agency said they had felt pressured to make their 
intelligence reports on Iraq conform to Bush administration policies.

"For months, a few C.I.A. analysts have privately expressed concerns 
to colleagues and Congressional officials that they have faced 
pressure in writing intelligence reports to emphasize links between 
Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda.

"As the White House contended that links between Mr. Hussein and 
Al Qaeda justified military action against Iraq, these analysts 
complained that reports on Iraq have attracted unusually intense 
scrutiny from senior policy makers within the Bush administration.

"'A lot of analysts have been upset about the way the Iraq-Al 
Qaeda case has been handled,' said one intelligence official 
familiar with the debate."

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES TURN ON BUSH/BLAIR

It has been happening for two months now. Leaks, protests, even 
overt criticisms from those like former senior CIA analyst 
Stephen Pelletier, who has revealed that it was Iran rather than 
Iraq which had killed thousands of Kurds in massive poison gas 
attacks in the 1980s. More recently we have seen British 
intelligence personnel leak information to the press showing 
that Britain's infamous intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons 
of mass destruction (WMD) had been plagiarized from outdated 
information in graduate student papers and that the U.S. National 
Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in illegal wiretapping of U.N. 
officials in attempts to secure enough votes for a resolution in 
support of the invasion. One or perhaps two of these events could 
be explained as the actions of individuals. But the frequency 
and number of these attacks is suggesting that the intelligence 
services, which view themselves as permanent and enduring 
institutions as compared to passing administrations, are slowly 
pulling structural supports from underneath the Bush and Blair 
administrations' platform.

On February 8, Counterpunch published a statement by a group 
calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity 
(VIPS) which gave Secretary of State Colin Powell a C- grade 
for providing "context and perspective" on Iraqi weapons and 
intent. The statement specifically and correctly chided the 
Bush administration for making the violation of a U.N. 
resolution a pretext for war pointing out that Israel's refusal 
to comply from a U.N. resolution calling for its withdrawal from 
territories occupied in 1967 has never been addressed. 

[NOTE: Israel is currently in violation of 64 U.N. resolutions 
as opposed to Iraq's 17]

The VIPS statement also vigorously disputed any notion that Iraq 
posed any immediate threat to the U.S. and quoted CIA reports 
supporting that position. It also disputed Bush/Powell contentions 
that Iraq had any previous involvement with terrorist activities. 
Revealing what may actually be an intention of the Bush 
administration, VIPS stated, "Indeed, it is our view that an 
invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers 
for terrorists into the indefinite future."

And, striking a chord that is sure to resonate in millions of 
U.S. military veterans, VIPS observed, "Reminder: The last 
time we sent troops to the Gulf, over 600,000 of them, one out 
of three came back ill - many with unexplained disorders of 
the nervous system. Your Secretary of Veteran's Affairs recently 
closed the VA healthcare system to nearly 200,000 eligible 
veterans by administrative fiat."

Stories from early March in Britain's The Observer actually 
produced a copy of a Top Secret NSA memorandum calling on 
allied intelligence agencies to increase their wiretapping and 
monitoring of U.N. diplomats who might swing a Security Council 
vote in favor of the U.S. While reportage on this major breach 
of international trust and protocol has gone away, the rage 
felt by many diplomats has not. It was later disclosed that an 
employee of British intelligence who was outraged by its contents 
had leaked the memo. However, reading between the lines, this 
writer suspects that the leak took place with a wink and a nod 
from higher ups.

By March 14, the activities of VIPS were getting favorable 
coverage by the Associated Press, a sign that powers controlling 
both the media and the intelligence services were pushing the 
agenda. Although varying editions of the story appeared in 
print, on the AP web site and in different parts of the country, 
the basic story retained a key lead sentence. "A small group 
comprised mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to 
colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush 
administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for 
war with Iraq."

Such a statement from intelligence veterans has serious 
repercussions in a discipline that is noted for never leaking 
information. That is, unless there is an agenda that 
intelligence agencies themselves are pursuing. In those cases 
the CIA plays the media, as one CIA executive once described, 
"like a Mighty Wurlitzer."

As resignations of outraged civil servants are stacking up on 
both sides of the Atlantic like freshly cut firewood, the Bush 
administration was also seriously hurt by the resignation of the 
top Bush National Security Council official in charge of 
terrorism, Rand Beers. A March 19 UPI story, while repeating 
the Bush administration position that Beers' resignation was not 
because of administration deceit and vanishing credibility, left 
no doubt that Beers, widely respected in Washington, was just 
plain fed up and possibly sensing a sinking ship.

OIL'S NOT WELL

The utterly ridiculous and unjustified drop in oil prices and 
upsurge in the Dow last week is belied by real data on oil supplies 
as the Iraqi invasion stumbles. As the war intensifies some real 
garbage and some occasional gems of truth are coming from the major 
media.

First, it is a given that while the war is in progress, Iraqi oil 
exports are virtually non-existent. The port region around Basra - 
which accounts for well more than half of Iraqi exports -- is 
virtually shut down. One pipeline running from northern Iraq to 
the Turkish port of Ceyhan is reported to be intact but there are 
no reports as to whether oil is actually flowing. It's not likely. 
What this means is that it is a safe bet that two million plus 
barrels per day (Mbpd) have been taken out of world supplies.

In the face of this, BusinessWeek, in the February 24 issue, has 
engaged in the outrageously dishonest reporting that the Caspian 
basin may hold 200 billion barrels (Gb) of reserves and that there 
are some three trillion barrels of proven conventional oil 
remaining on the planet. Extensive research conducted by FTW has 
shown that Caspian reserves have been verified by drilling 
results over the last three years to be only around 40 Gb and 
are a major disappointment. FTW data was derived through extensive 
research in oil and gas journals, official government reports and 
by direct interviews with oil executives who have been in the 
region.

Planetary reserves of conventional oil are only about one trillion 
barrels or enough to keep the world supplied for approximately 30 
years in an ever tightening and ever more expensive marketplace 
that threatens economies all over the globe. Motives for the 
BusinessWeek deception would include providing propaganda cover 
for the fact that the invasion of Iraq is totally about oil and 
also give false confidence to investors as financial and equity 
markets teeter on the brink of collapse.

The Wall Street Journal, however, on March 18, recently engaged 
in some serious truth telling. In a page-one story titled "Why 
the U.S. IS Still Hooked On Oil Imports", the Journal reported:

"President Bush says hydrogen power will lead to energy 
independence... Mr. Bush is almost certain to be proved wrong, 
at least in the next couple of decades."

After acknowledging that oil price spikes have always led to 
recessions, the Journal relied on an extensive body of research 
of the statements of OPEC founder, Saudi Sheikh Zaki Yamani to 
hit at one of the core motivators for the Iraqi invasion - oil 
production costs. Not every country or region spends the same 
amount of money to produce a barrel of oil. And nowhere is oil 
cheaper to produce than in the Persian Gulf. The Journal quoted 
Yamani as stating at a 1980s OPEC meeting, "Let's see how the 
North Sea can produce oil when prices are at $5 a barrel." 

The Journal continued: "At low prices, the Persian Gulf countries 
have an unbeatable edge. In the mid 1980s it cost them a couple 
of dollars a barrel to produce oil. It cost about $15 a barrel 
off the coast of Britain and Norway or in the U.S." That was in 
the 1980s. Credible estimates of North Sea production costs in 
dying fields now place the cost per barrel at over $20.

Russia has current estimated production costs of between $19 
and $27 a barrel which reveal the key to everything that's 
going on now. The world is running out of oil. In order to save 
a teetering U.S. economy the Bush administration is betting on 
the rapidly diminishing hope that it can get Iraqi oil back on 
the markets and available to the U.S. at a price of between $15 
and $20 per barrel. If the prices drop to the levels Bush needs, 
OPEC loses its profits and Russian oil becomes uncompetitive in 
the market place.

Bush is not going to get his way.

In a major development, it was reported on Saturday that growing 
unrest in Nigeria, an OPEC member and the world's sixth largest 
exporter, had shut down the Chevron Texaco pumping facilities. A 
story in today's Economist confirmed earlier reports that both 
Chevron and French giant TotalFinaElf had not only shut down 
production but ordered evacuations of all their personnel. These 
moves take an immediate 330,000 barrels a day out of world 
supplies and they also hearken back to recent lessons learned in 
Venezuela after a massive strike shut down Venezuelan production. 
Refineries and wells don't operate at the flip of a switch. They 
require a constant flow of chemicals and products to keep their 
systems primed. When recovering from a shut down, it often takes 
a considerable period to reach previous production levels.

While OPEC has announced that it will increase production to 
offset shortages, its ability to do so is limited to perhaps a 
3-5 Mbpd increase. That's a drop in the bucket in current tight 
markets and in a world that consumes a billion barrels every 
twelve days. Iraqi oil fields will require billions of dollars 
of investment and years to increase Iraqi production to five or 
eight Mbpd. And that clock will only start ticking once the 
country is secure and safe, an outcome that is not at all 
guaranteed at the moment.

In the meantime, according to The Financial Times today, the 
Mexican government has announced its intent to start selling 
U.S. dollars on world currency markets. This move could 
further weaken an already shaky U.S. dollar, especially if 
other nations, angered at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, follow 
suit. Since oil is currently purchased in dollars, inevitable 
future oil price spikes could become doubly painful for the 
U.S. economy as the dollar loses value.

BUSH'S WATGERATE BURGLARY

"At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of 
any U.S. claim regarding Iraq." - The Boston Globe, March 16, 2003

The first official report that documents prepared on stationery 
of the governments of Niger and Iraq detailing a planned sale of 
uranium to Iraq were forged came on March 7. Mohamed ElBaradei, 
the chief nuclear inspector for the International Atomic Energy 
Agency told the U.N. Security Council that the documents, "were 
not authentic." The first paper to break the news was London's 
Financial Times. The documents, not very clever or convincing, 
failed to convince the U.N. but were, however, included in British 
Prime Minister Tony Blair's now legendary flawed intelligence 
dossier, which had been presented to Parliament on Sept. 24, 2002. 

The Washington Post picked up on the story on March 8 where it 
reported that, "The forgers had made relatively crude errors that 
eventually gave them away - including names and titles that did 
not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the 
letters were purportedly written, the officials said."

The Post reported administration officials as giving the somewhat 
lame excuse, "We fell for it." No one even tried to suggest a 
motive for someone other than the Bush or Blair regimes to commit 
the crime.

Not everyone fell for it. As reported in what are now at least 
a half dozen stories, the CIA was suspicious of the documents and 
purposely left them out of their own report on Iraqi weapons. 
That did not, however, prevent George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald 
Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney from touting them as authentic. The State 
Department even authoritatively referred to the documents in a 
December 19, 2002 Fact Sheet titled "Illustrative Examples of 
Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations 
Security Council".

By March 13, The Post was back with a story indicating that the 
FBI was looking into the source of the documents and "the 
possibility that a foreign government is using a deception 
campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq."

Huh? Is there some country out there we haven't heard of that 
really hates Iraq other than the U.S., Britain or Israel? 

The Post story closed by saying, "The CIA, which also had 
obtained the documents, had questions about 'whether they were 
accurate,' said one intelligence official, and it decided not 
to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons 
of mass destruction."

This begs the question as to whether CIA Director George Tenet 
told Bush or Cheney or Powell that the documents were forged. 
That's his job above all else: to give the President reliable 
and trustworthy intelligence. 

On March 14, Ken Guggenheim of The Associated Press reported that 
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa.), ranking member of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee had called the FBI and asked for an 
investigation of the documents. Rockefeller's full name is John D. 
Rockefeller, IV and he is a direct descendant of the same family 
that essentially brought the Bush family into power. What is 
amazing here is not only that someone has requested an 
investigation of just one of the hundreds of Bush administration 
inconsistencies and proven lies since 9-11, but that it was a 
Rockefeller who requested it. That reality has thundered throughout 
Washington's power corridors like an earthquake.

FTW placed calls to both FBI headquarters and Rockefeller's 
Washington offices asking for comment or further information. An 
FBI spokesperson told FTW that the Bureau had nothing to say. 
After hearing what the topic was, a Rockefeller spokesperson 
promised to call back but did not.

Colin Powell immediately started denying that the State Department 
had anything to do with creating the forgeries. No one had accused 
him! And the story picked up "legs" in print media around the 
world.

By the 15th, CNN had picked up the story on its web site and had 
added damning observations about the childish, crude and "obvious" 
nature of the forgeries that "should never have gotten past the 
CIA." But the CIA had already established a record saying that it 
never trusted the documents. Asked about the documents on Meet 
the Press the previous Sunday, Powell simply stated, "It was the 
information that we had. We provided it. If that information is 
inaccurate, fine."

Not so fine.

Where did the documents come from? Already inconsistent finger 
pointing, eerily reminiscent of the loose threads pulled on by 
Woodward and Bernstein in 1972 and 1973 are starting to surface. 
Powell says he doesn't know where the documents came from. 
Britain is remaining silent and the government of Niger has 
issued a blunt statement indicating that the documents were 
forged in London and Washington.

My guess is that they were forged inside the National Security 
Council rather than at the CIA. The CIA would have done a better 
job. Can you say, "Iran-Contra"? 

The most scathing blow to date - and there are sure to be more - 
came from Congressman Henry Waxman (D, Ca.) who, in a six-page 
March 17 letter to George Bush, created a locked-down record of 
Bush's, Cheney's, Rumsfeld's and Powell's use of the documents, 
even pointing out that the President had made reference to the 
documents in his State-of-the-Union address in January by saying, 
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently 
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Waxman 
noted next that, "a day later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 
told reporters at a news briefing that Iraq "recently was 
discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Waxman closed his letter with three chilling questions that may 
now distance George Tenet from George W. Bush and his cabinet, 
who will all go down together if it becomes necessary. Waxman 
asked the President to directly address:

Whether CIA officials communicated their doubts about the 
credibility of the forged evidence to other Administration 
officials, including officials at the Department of State, the 
Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the 
White House;
 
Whether the CIA had any input into the "Fact Sheet" distributed 
by the State Department on December 19, 2002; and
 
Whether the CIA reviewed your statement in the State of the Union 
address regarding Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Africa 
and, if so, what the CIA said about the statement. 
I can hear the distant echoes of Senator Howard Baker in the 
Senate Watergate hearings asking, "What did the President know 
and when did he know it?"

THE PERFECT STORM

It's all coming together on the radar screen and the chances are 
that these storms are going to merge. In this all out economic 
war of survival, as Peak Oil forces its way into the public 
consciousness, Russia will likely continue to provide Saddam with 
arms and technical assistance. France may well share intelligence. 
China, with the slightest nod, can contribute tactical advice 
and many mines for the Mediterranean. All of them can indirectly, 
and through plausibly deniable methods, foster and supply revolts 
in oil producing regions around the globe. And they can all laugh 
and deny as the U.S. tries to point a finger at them. This has all 
been done before.

In the meantime Vladimir Putin can cushion his allies with cheap 
oil as the U.S. starts to die of thirst.

Before Americans become outraged that such a scenario might be 
unfolding, I would remind them that every one of these tactics 
has been employed by the United States in spades against each of 
these countries for more than fifty years. It was the U.S. that 
chose this course to begin with. The tragedy, of course, is that 
the American people will suffer greatly as the storms converge. 
The truth is that the American people have never been any more 
of a concern to the powers that be than the people in the rest 
of the world have, except that giving them a higher standard of 
living made them compliant and dumb. It appears as if even that 
is no longer necessary. The destruction of American credibility 
and the transfer of its wealth are necessary steps in the 
creation of the New World Order.

Everything might just come crashing down all at once and if that 
happens the powers that rule will sacrifice their little Caesar 
and cut a deal with the other nations quickly. Just as in 
Shakespeare's play, there will be many wounds in Caesar's body, 
inflicted by many different people. But most certainly one of 
the daggers will be found in the hand of George Tenet and the 
CIA. He knows where the real power resides.