James Risen

03 January 2006

Tuesday

Discussing \"State of War\"

Mr. RISEN: Well, I think that's to me a--a kind of a great story.

This nice woman from Cleveland who was an Iraqi-American immigrant,

she and her husband had escaped from Iraq in the '70s. Her brother

was still in Iraq as a nuclear scie--he had been a nuclear scientist.

He had been involved in the nuclear weapons program of Saddam Hussein

in the early--in the '80s and early '90s until the program had been

abandoned. In ni--in 2002 the CIA asked her to go back to Baghdad and

talk no her brother to see if there was till a nuclear weapons program.

She went back to Baghdad and asked him a series of questions, and he

looked at her basically like `You're crazy. We haven't had a nuclear

program in 10 years.'

COURIC: And, in fact, he claimed that the nuclear weapons, or the WMD,

had been destroyed during the first Gulf War during the bombing strafe, right?

Mr. RISEN: Yes, right. And then it had been abandoned right after the war.

And that's...

COURIC: So they came back and reported what they had found. How many people,

by the way, were dispatched in all?

Mr. RISEN: Roughly 30.

COURIC: So they came back. They reported that there were no weapons of

mass destruction. Were they listened to?

Mr. RISEN: No. They were basically ignored. In fact, the CIA believed--they

came to believe that, well, these people are just being told what--what

these guys, you know, are being ordered by Saddam to say, that this is

dis--disinformation, and so they ignored it.

COURIC: Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet do not

come across very well in this book.

Mr. RISEN: Well, I--I think that during a period from about 2000--from 9/11

through the beginning of the Gulf--the war in Iraq, I think what happened

was you--we--the checks and balances that normally keep American foreign

policy and national security policy towards the center kind of broke down.

And you had more of a radicalization of American foreign policy in which

the--the--the career professionals were not really given a chance to kind

of forge a consensus within the administration. And so you had the--the--the

principles--Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tenet and Rice and many others--who were

meeting constantly, setting policy and really never allowed the people who

understand--the experts who understand the region to have much of a say.

COURIC: You suggest there were a lot of power-grabbing going on.

Mr. RISEN: Yes.

Iraq, Niger, And The CIA

By Murray Waas

02 February 2006

Bush 'plotted to lure Saddam into war with fake UN plane'

By Andy Mcsmith

03 February 2006

DoD staffer's notes from 9/11

16 February 2006

Notes from Steven Cambone detailing Rumsfeld's push on 9/11 to hit Saddam as well as Usama Bin Laden,

and to consider any other targets on their wish list.

Niger Uranium Rumors Wouldn't Die

By Bob Drogin And Tom Hamburger

17 February 2006

Describes how the Uranium forgeries kept re-surfacing.

What Bush Was Told About Iraq

By Murray Waas

02 March 2006

Lap Dogs of the Press

09 March 2006

By Helen Thomas

Dash to Baghdad Left Top U.S. Generals Divided

13 March 2006

By Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor

US postwar Iraq strategy a mess, Blair was told

14 March 2006

By Ewan Macaskill, diplomatic editor

Bush's Fantasy of 'Progress' in Iraq

14 March 2006

By Robert Scheer

Operation Overblown

17 March 2006

By Christopher Allbritton

On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled

17 March 2006

By Brian Bennett/Al Jallam

27 March 2006

By Don Van Natta

Bush-Blair Iraq war memo revealed

27 March 2006

BBC News

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic

09 April 2006

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War

12 April 2006

By Joby Warrick

Wrong on Iraq?  Not Everyone

March/April 2006

By Steve Rendall

L. Paul Bremer

In Iraq, Wrongs Made a Right

This has got to be satire.

Basically, he says, "There were so many total fuckups in Iraq that it's really crazy.

I mean, we shoulda seen some of this stuff coming, it was so obvious and those gabby

generals were going on and on about something, but we just ignored them. So, yeah, we

fucked up bad but we might be able to do some good things, sooo . . . it all evens out,

right?"

Walter Pincus

Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq

"The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until

last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to

justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the

country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam

Hussein."

Salon.com

Iraq: The big lie

By Sidney Blumenthal

truthout - Jason Leopold

Fitzgerald Eyes Plame-Niger Conspiracy

San Diego CityBEAT

19 April 2006

American Patriot

Iraq War critic Scott Ritter takes aim at Bush, Clinton,

the CIA, Cindy Sheehan—and you

Attytood

25 April 2006

Praise the Lord! Leg amputated in 2002, today he walks!

Story about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the bogus leg-amputation story

the administration used to attempt to link Al-Qaeda and Iraq (he

supposedly received medical care, during which his leg was amputated).

Turns out to be, surprise, bogus, and the administration knew, or

was very skeptical, for awhile.