Habbush Forgery Update

I've mentioned it in passing a couple times, but the latest on Ron Suskind's claim that US officials forged documents to give the impression of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link is that Suskind has released a transcript between him and CIA agent Rob Richer that looks pretty damning.

Rob: Let me tell you what I know, just so before you color any of it. Is that when you first asked me about it I remember just really telling you that it was a non-event, and if you were to ask me today I would tell you it was a non-event. It came down from the seventh floor. It was part of--as I remember it, it wasn't so much to influence America--that's illegal--but it was kinda like a covert, a way to influence Iraqis [...]

Rob: To characterize it right, I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on--it was to--and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: 'Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.' To be honest with you, I don't want to make it sound--I for sure don't want to portray this as George jumping: 'Okay, this has gotta happen.' As I remember it--and, again, it's still vague, so I'll be very straight with you on this--is it wasn't that important. It was: 'This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. 'Rob,' you know, 'do something with this.' I think it was more like that than: 'Get this done.'

Ron: Do something with this, right. Get this, this is like--

Rob: It died a natural death as you know.

Ron: 'This thing stinks, take it.'

Rob: Yeah, kinda like that, yeah. But, you know, we got so much garbage that first couple-that year [...]

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.

Ron: Right, I'm with you, I'm with you. But there wasn't anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president.

Rob: Nope.

Ron: It just had the White House stationery.

Rob: Exactly right.

Richer is disputing the transcript and sticking to his new story that George Tenet never asked him to fabricate a document. And FWIW, The American Conservative is claiming that Doug Feith's shop took care of this, which makes a bit more sense, since Cheney always distrusted the CIA and might not have been willing to hand over such a crucial job to them.

The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.

Joe Conason has also added to the story.

But the credulous Telegraph coverage is still significant now, because Coughlin identified the source of his amazing scoop as Ayad Allawi. For those who have forgotten the ambitious Allawi, he is a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam, formed the Iraqi National Accord movement to fight the dictator, and was appointed to Iraq's interim Governing Council by the U.S. occupation authorities after the invasion [...]

Allawi was a longtime asset of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had funded his struggle against Saddam for years prior to the invasion. His CIA sponsorship is noted in nearly every news article about Allawi, usually contrasted with the Pentagon sponsorship of his political rival, Ahmed Chalabi, the infamous fabricator of WMD intelligence (and suspected double agent for Iran) [...]

On Dec. 11, 2003 -- three days before the Telegraph launched its "exclusive" on the Habbush memo -- the Washington Post published an article by Dana Priest and Robin Wright headlined "Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. to Stem Attacks." Buried inside on Page A41, their story outlined the CIA's efforts to create a new Iraqi intelligence agency:

"Badran and Ayad Allawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein." (The Web link to the full story is broken but it can be found on Nexis.)

So Allawi was at the CIA during the week before Coughlin got that wonderful scoop. That may not be proof of anything, either, but a picture is beginning to form.

I think it's undeniable that the White House WANTED to beat back the negative coverage they were getting throughout late 2003 by asserting some link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, if only to quiet the voices rumbling that we were taken to war for lies. Allawi's whereabouts and Richer's testimony bring us closer to the truth, and if the question is whether this was carried out by Feith or the CIA, neither answer is particularly good for the Bush Administration.

Stay tuned.

Iraq's Truth Bursts At The Seams

A country may be credibly thought to be still at war when it can't hold a mass gathering without dozens of deaths.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four female suicide bombers and a gunman killed at least 70 people and wounded almost 300 others during a string of attacks in central Baghdad and Kirkuk on Monday, officials said.

In Baghdad, three suicide bombers detonated their explosives in three locations within 30 minutes of each other. The attacks killed at least 32 people and wounded 102 others, most of them Shiite pilgrims, an Interior Ministry official said.

It was the second day attackers have targeted Shiite pilgrims taking part in an annual march to one of the Shiites' holiest shrines.

On Sunday afternoon, seven pilgrims were gunned down in a town south of Baghdad.

About 150 miles north of the capital, another suicide bomber ran into a crowd of protesters at a Kurdish political rally, a police official said. After she detonated the explosives she was carrying, gunmen began firing into the crowd from different directions, the official said.

Every time there's a pilgrimage, security cannot be maintained. And yet, in this country discussion is shut down, because the surge has unquestionably worked. That's not what you hear from folks like the former Iraqi Prime Minister:

In a briefing before members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday, (Iyad) Allawi answered questions from members of he subcommittee on international organizations, human rights, and oversight. When asked by Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the subcommittee's ranking member, for Allawi's "assessment of of what's come of the surge," Allawi all but said, not much.

Reminding Rohrabacher that the original objective of the surge was to create a safe environment for a process of national reconciliation, Allawi said, "Now, militarily, the surge has achieved some of its goals. Politically, I don't think so."

Allawi rattled off a laundry list of perils that still confront the Iraqi people: internal displacement of large numbers of people, millions of refugees outside Iraq, security forces he described as sectarian militias dressed in national uniforms, no enforcement of the national constitution, which he described as a "divisive" document.

It's pathetic that only an Iraqi can speak the truth, that the surge hasn't worked at accomplishing its stated goals, and the challenges that the Iraqis still face are immense. But of course, the costs of war have been hidden, both in treasure and in human lives. So the outcomes of the surge have been hidden as well. The entire war has been stage-managed, and yet Americans STILL have turned against it (thanks in no small part to the power of alternative media). There needs to be a sustained effort to get at the continued truth of what's happening in Iraq, instead of making political ploys based on shared assumptions.

BREAKING: David Ignatius Is A Fool!

David Ignatius laments the fact that Iyad Allawi didn't get illegal support from the CIA that would have rigged the 2005 Iraqi Parliamentary election in his favor. Seriously. Also lost in this is the fact that Allawi's secular list has absolutely no base of support outside of so-called "centrist" political pundits in Washington. More here.

That Ignatius feels it makes sense to keep writing about this without any mention of the big lobbying campaign under way on Allawi's behalf at the moment is pretty stunning. Of course, when Nouri al-Maliki first came to power, Ignatius hailed this as brilliant progress. That's because Ignatius seemed, during Zalmay Khalilzad's time in Baghdad, to just write whichever columns Khalilzad wanted. During an earlier period, when Robert Blackwill was running the Iraq desk at the NSC, what we mostly heard from Ignatius was about the transcendent genius of Robert Blackwill.

Today Blackwill is one of Allawi's lobbyists.

It's amazing, the level to which our elite pundits are bought and sold.

Getting Real About Iraq

I would guess that public opinion on Iraq among the troops mirrors society as a whole, and so I always greet stories that try to pinpoint troop morale with a skeptical eye. Still, it's clear that when war defenders make blanket statements about morale being sky-high in Iraq, this angers some because it gives the impression of the military being used as a political prop. And clearly, the stresses of multiple deployments and returning to the same village to clear it of terrorists time and again can be an enervating exercise, particuarly for our National Guard that didn't really sign up for this kind of work, which may be why you get standing ovations when you call for troop withdrawals in front of them (Nicolas Sarkozy called for a troop withdrawal from Iraq as well today, which will maybe temper these statements from the likes of Kruathammer that Old Europe is somehow becoming more conservative, defined as "in agreement with the Bush Administration on everything.")

Really the only public opinion that matters is Iraqi public opinion, and while anecdotally all you hear from surge supporters is that the Iraqis want us to stay, the data suggests something far different:

We learn in this report that a whopping 6 percent of Iraqis have "a great deal" of confidence in US and British forces. An additional 12 percent have "quite a lot." 30 Percent say they have "not very much." And 52 percent say "none at all." The Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, local political leaders, the national government, and the local militia are all more popular than the American military. A clear majority thinks the US government, rather than the Iraqi government, is controlling the country. 46 percent of Iraqis "strongly oppose" the presence of American troops in Iraq and 32 percent are somewhat opposed. 69 percent say the American presence is making things worse. More Iraqis see Iran as having a positive influence on their country than see the US that way. For that matter, more Iraqis see Saudi Arabia as having a positive influence. More Iraqis see Russia as having a positive influence. 51 percent say attacks on coalition forces are acceptable. More people blame US forces (31 percent) or President Bush (9 percent) for violence in Iraq than blame al-Qaeda (18 percent) or Iran (7 pecent).

I don't say, of course, that the Iraqi public is correct about all of this, but that's what they think. Under the circumstances, I just don't see how a counterinsurgency mission could possibly succeed. If we had just recently invaded the country and were facing initial skepticism then, sure, maybe better policies would win people over. But we're talking about the reverse. The initial reception we got was open-minded. That was years ago. Now the US military is very, very, very much disliked in Iraq and it ought to leave and go places (home, Kuwait, Germany, Turkey) where it's welcome.

Long ago "winning hearts and minds" was simply written off as a goal and thought as a de facto product of improving security. But these numbers suggest that it matters little who is providing for the Iraqis so long as it's being done under occupation, and anyway security is not really improving, in the consensus of Kevin Drum, who has really taken a hard look at the data. The Sunni revolt in Al Anbar started before the surge, and once Al Qaeda in Iraq is dismantled there's no reason to suggest that they will be folded into the political infrastructure of society; in fact we may be arming them to eventually turn on the Shiites and expand the civil war. Death toll figures are down from their peaks but up compared to last summer, and considering the consistent pattern of drops in fatalities in the summer heat, it cannot be said that the surge has made a major difference there. Indeed throughout the country, regions are getting more insecure, as fighters from Baghdad fan out into the countryside. And problems with the Iraqi police, the crumbling infrastructure, political rivalries such as those in the south (an internecine Shiite civil war) and in Kirkuk (where Sunni Arabs and Kurds are battling for control of the important oil city), and the still-robust insurgency persist. And this is a key point:

Reports of progress are considerably undermined by the apparently growing consensus that the U.S. will need to keep a significant military presence in Iraq for the better part of the next decade. This is hard to square with genuine confidence that the surge is reducing violence significantly. Link.

Great work by Kevin in tracking all of this down and following the facts wherever they take him. What we have is a lot of happy talk turning an inch of daylight into a mile of military progress. And it's just not there. The same with troop morale. And the same with the viewpoints of the Iraqi people. We are being spun - and since some Republican spinmeisters are attempting to pull off a lobbyist-administered coup of the Prime Minister I suppose that's apt.

I don't think the American people are totally buying it, but in the media there's this sense that you're not serious unless you acknowledge progress on any or all of these fronts. This is the bullying of war-defending groupthink instead of a sober look at reality. So if that denotes high seriousness, call me a dirty fucking hippie.

The Lobbyist/Media Complex

I had a head-shaking moment while having the unfortunate experience of watching CNN a few minutes ago. Ed Henry did an update on his "exclusive" report (which consists of him reading IraqSlogger scoops) about Iyad Allawi's hiring of a GOP lobbying firm to promote the overthrow of the Iraqi government and his installation as Prime Minister (OK, Henry didn't completely put it that way, but that's essentially what's going on). Blitzer and Henry then let slip what that lobbying firm is doing with all that money, and how it's working.

Henry mentioned that Ambassador Robert Blackwill, an envoy to Iraq for the President, was running the Allawi account, yet still believed the Administration tripe that they have nothing to do with this lobbying effort. Henry even called Blackwill's efforts "working against the President." Really? Where's the evidence for that? Because White House spokesmen say so?

But here was the revelation. Henry said:

Now, what are these lobbyists doing for three hundred thousand bucks? So far they're sending out emails to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, their staff, some people in the media, that are essentially just clips that have already been out there in newspapers like the New York Times, attacking Nouri al-Maliki, saying that he hasn't stepped up, things that have already been in the public domain. Not bad work if you can get it, $300,000 to be sending out those media clips. They'll obviously be doing some other lobbying, but not bad work, Wolf.

And then Blitzer added:

He had an op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend, which I read in the actual hard copy of the Washington Post, but then a day later, I got the email from a Dr. Iyad Allawi, and I had no idea where that was coming from, but you've cleared it up for me.

Later on, Blitzer announced that Allawi would be appearing on this weekend's CNN Late Edition.

Here we have the entire lobbyist-media complex that infects Washington groupthink like a horrible disease laid out for all to see. Interest groups pay lobbyists to get attention to their cause. Lobbyists pay media organizations to plant stories or print op-eds. Then they highlight these stories to the more lazy broadcast media, who chases the story like an errant soccer ball. It's all a well-known practice to those in Washington, but not to the vast majority of those media consumers. They actually think the stories with the most importance rise to the top, not the stories with the most money behind them. There is no reason for someone like Iyad Allawi, who's already failed miserably in his post as Prime Minister, should get any coverage from the traditional media.

In this case, the lobbying is on a major issue, and is designed to change both public opinion and the opinions of lawmakers. It should be no surprise that the lobbyists immediately take to planting articles and hectoring the media as the initial part of their strategy. I think there needs to be some walkback here. How was the Washington Post editorial board persuaded to print that editorial by Allawi in the first place? Did money change hands? What role did this lobbying group play in stories about the Maliki government's troubles in the first place? Where is the information for these stories coming from? Is Phillip Zelikow, who is still seen as an objective Expert on Iraq in media interviews, but who is also being paid by Allawi to degrade Maliki's stature, helping distribute anti-Maliki information to media outlets?

Glenn Greenwald asked a lot of these questions today, directly, to the GOP lobbying firm, BG&R:

I have placed several calls to BG&R today as well, and they claim that nobody responsible for answering press inquiries is available and they do not return messages. For any intrepid journalists who can obtain information from them, among the key questions are:

(1) Does Zelikow, as indicated by Chairman (Rep. Vic) Snyder, have a formal consulting relationship with the Bush administration itself to shape Iraq policy?;

(2) Did Zelikow disclose to ABC News that his firm was being paid by Allawi before agreeing to be interviewed about Iraq's future, in which he insinuated that the Bush administration was working to oust Maliki?

(3) Did BG&R have any role to play in having Fred Hiatt publish Allawi's Op-Ed two weeks ago, proclaiming Maliki to be the cause of Iraq's problems?

With the revelations by CNN, it's important that we keep asking these questions and get some real answers. Right now, a blog is driving this story for the simple reason that this reveals the traditional media to be totally ethically compromised when reporting on events like Iraq. The blogs need to keep doing the driving so we can understand what's happening here.

Pay To Play

Glenn Greenwald brings up a very good point. Iyad Allawi is paying $300,000 to a GOP-connected lobbying firm (perhaps using some of the billion or so his buddy stole from the Iraqi Treasury when he was Prime Minister). A week ago he had an op-ed in the Washington Post essentially laying the blame for Iraq's problems on Nouri al-Maliki, which we've seen congeal into conventional wisdom. And we know that one of the things lobbying groups do is place their clients onto editorial pages to argue for their positions, particularly on the Washington Post's page, which gets the issue in front of the politically connected.

Did a GOP lobbying group pay Fred Hiatt to run an Iyad Allawi op-ed advocating for the overthrow of an elected Iraqi government?

Wouldn't you think that would rate as a scandal?

All According To Plan... Somewhat

Iyad Allawi's bloc in the Iraqi Parliament leaves the Maliki government, presumably under advice of his GOP lobbyist team. So confidence in Maliki withers, leading to perhaps a coup and a new Prime Minister, which would force the Bush Administration to stay in Iraq longer to give the new government more time and more breathing space, running out the clock until 2009...

What was that?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond [...]

Pace's recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who initially expressed private skepticism about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus, before publicly backing it.

According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq in order to bolster the military's ability to respond to other threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Darn generals, coming along and raining on Bush's war parade!

Of course, later in the article is the cynical view of what probably will happen:

Any discord among the top U.S. generals could be awkward for Bush, who professes to rely heavily on advice from military leaders. But there also is tremendous pressure for military officers to speak with one voice and defer to Petraeus and other field commanders. It remains possible that the Joint Chiefs may opt to weaken their stance before approaching Bush.

After all, a general who disagrees is a general out of a job, whereas a general who falls in line is a general whose advice is listened to. After all, Gen. Pace himself is leaving at the end of September.

See also Josh Marshall's post on Jim Hoagland's ope-ed, which makes the point that what's good for Bush (trying every single thing he can think of to reverse the course of Iraqi history and restore his legacy) and what's good for the country (not irreparably breaking our military) are two different things. Which is a position of incredible danger for the rest of us.

Time For A Democratic Coup

In sports, it's often said that teams can't fire all the players, so they fire the coach. This is the mentality behind the shameful proposal by some Democrats, like Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, to "fire" Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister of Iraq. Only we're not the owners of the country. The Iraqi people own the country, and only they can sort out the problems they now face. A new intelligence estimate declares that Maliki will not be able to bring together factions and achieve a political reconciliation, but it doesn't exactly see any other option, either:

“The report says that there’s been little political progress to date, and it’s very gloomy on the chances for political progress in the future,” said one Congressional official with knowledge of its contents.

The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is “more dire in its assessments” than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

“It doesn’t take a policy position,” one official said. “But it leaves you with the sense that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, but we can’t let up, or it’ll get worse.”

Damned if we stay and damned if we leave. Nice position you've put the country in, W.

Indeed, American officials are ending any hopes that democracy can exist in Iraq under the current structure. Changing Maliki in favor of a strongman who will crush opposing viewpoints is essentially what the generals are arguing here. And so we're back to the cult of Iyad Allawi, which, um, didn't work the first time, fellas.

he powerful Republican lobbying group of Barbour Griffith & Rogers is plotting an effort to displace Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and supplant him with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. IraqSlogger reported:

BGR’s work for Allawi includes the August 17 purchase of the Web site domain Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

In recent days, BGR sent hundreds of e-mail messages in Allawi’s name from the e-mail address DrAyadAllawi@Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

Allawi has been described as “Saddam lite.” In 2004, he handcuffed and blindfolded suspected terrorists and shot them in the head with a pistol. Now, with frustrations mounting against current prime minister Maliki, the administration may be using that as an opportunity to usher in its reliable ally Allawi. In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Allawi wrote a piece that seemed to be an effort to curry favor with the White House.

You know, overthrowing governments appears to be the only thing the Bushies can manage. They certainly can't deal with the aftermath.

All of this is kind of a useless argument. To believe that changing the figurehead of the Iraqi government would effect change assumes that you believe there still IS a functioning Iraqi government, and not a collection of city-states run by militias and factions. Militias control the electricity grid, by and large. Sunni militants can hold out in tiny Baghdad neighborhoods for months on end. The Iraqi government is irrelevant in this scenario, and no matter who is its leader, they will not be listened to. We have totally broken this failed state, and whether or not leaving will cause chaos, staying certainly already has. The famed "consequences of failure" are already being met. So Bush and McCain and Lieberman can play "Rambo" and claim that if we just stay a little bit longer (read: indefinitely) everything will be all right, but everything is already all wrong.

Get out. Now.