According to a recently published piece at Salon.com, two former CIA officers have come forward and backed claims recently made by the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe that President Bush knowingly ‘squelched top-secret intelligence’ regarding Iraq’s possession of WMD’s. An excerpt…

“On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.”

Years after the fact, there simply is no arguing that the politicization of intelligence occurred, nor that the Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq no matter the lack of solid intelligence. In fact, they relied on entirely baseless sources, such as the now discredited ’Curveball’, for some of their information simply because it supported their position.

This outrage, which I have always believed to be a matter of impeachment, has always been vastly overlooked. The books were cooked, and the information that has come to light since, that proves it, has fallen on entirely deaf ears.

How much video footage exists in which the President, Vice President, and others unequivocally state that the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction? And since that time, how many of them have been seriously confronted about the blatant lies employed that led to an invasion and occupation that has since claimed the lives of some 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent people?

And do note that I did just employ the term seriously confronted.

As Gordon Prather points out, sometimes the trusty fox doesn’t raid the chicken coup…

“Days after Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei made his most recent “confidential” report to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Cheney Cabal sycophantic editorialists at the Washington Post charged ElBaradei with being a “Rogue Regulator,” behaving as if he was “free to ignore” the Board, using his IAEA Secretariat to “thwart” the will of leading members of the IAEA “above all, the United States.”

Well, obviously these rogue editorialists haven’t read or don’t comprehend (a) the IAEA Statute or (b) Chapter VII of the UN Charter or (c) the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons or (d) the Iranian Safeguards Agreement or (e) any of the recent IAEA Board of Governors resolutions dealing with Iran or (f) the recent Security Council resolutions dealing with Iran or (g) any of ElBaradei’s recent reports to the IAEA Board.

The IAEA – whose General Conference currently comprises 144 member-states – has as its primary mission the facilitation throughout the world of the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA Board of Governors has the authority to carry out the functions IAEA in accordance with the IAEA Statue, subject to its responsibilities to the General Conference.

The IAEA may conclude one or more legally binding Safeguards Agreement with a nation-state, wherein IAEA “inspectors” are authorized access “at all times to all places and data and to any person … as necessary to account for source and special fissionable materials” subject to the Safeguards Agreement, for the exclusive purpose of determining “whether there is compliance with the undertaking against use in furtherance of any military purpose.”

On May 15, 1974, Iran entered into such an agreement with the IAEA – to remain in force as long as Iran remained a party to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – wherein all Iranian “source or special fissionable materials” and activities involving them were to be made subject to IAEA Safeguards “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful purposes.”

ElBaradei’s most recent report has once again verified to the Board, to the IAEA General Conference, to all NPT-signatories and to the Security Council “the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials” by Iran.

That’s wonderful! Even though the United States egregiously fails to honor its legally binding commitments made pursuant to the NPT and IAEA Statue, as best ElBaradei can determine, Iran continues to honor its commitments.

So why are Cheney Cabal media sycophants so upset?

Well, on February 4, 2006, under extreme pressure by the United States, the IAEA Board of Governors adopted an outrageous resolution in which it concluded that for “confidence” to be built “in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program” it was “deemed necessary” for Iran to, inter alia;

“implement transparency measures, as requested by the Director General, including in GOV/2005/67, which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol, and include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations.”

Did you get that? The IAEA Board deems it necessary for ElBaradei to satisfy himself of the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, past and present. And the UN Security Council subsequently agreed, applying sanctions on Iran until such time as ElBaradei so satisfies himself.

So, if Iran doesn’t (a) suspend indefinitely its uranium-enrichment activities, (b) ratify the Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement, or (c) cancel the construction of a heavy-water moderated reactor at Arak, as far as the IAEA Board and Security Council resolutions are concerned, it doesn’t matter so long as ElBaradei so satisfies himself!

Far from being a “Rogue Regulator,” behaving as if he was free to ignore the IAEA Board and the Security Council, ElBaradei has just done what he was told to do, concluding an agreement with the Iranians which he believes – if implemented – will satisfy him whether or not Iran intends to build nuclear weapons.”

I believe that’s what they refer to as a man without a country.

Via AFP…

“An independent US government auditor on Friday cast doubt on US military statistics expected to show a huge dip in sectarian violence in Iraq under the current troop surge strategy.

Comptroller General David Walker said there was a “significant difference” of approach between the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which he heads, and Pentagon evaluations of violence in Iraq.

“The primary difference between us and the military is whether or not violence has been reduced with regard to sectarian violence,” Walker told the Senate Armed Services committee.

A GAO report published this week on 18 benchmarks for progress for the Iraqi government set down in law by Congress, found that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s administration had failed to reach targets for cutting violence.

“It is unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased — a key security benchmark,” the report said, pointing to the difficulty in judging whether a killing was sectarian or criminal in nature.

In long-awaited testimony on Monday to Congress on the progress of the surge, Walker said war commander General David Petraeus will cite a large decrease in sectarian violence.

“I think you need to ask him how he defines sectarian violence,” Walker told senators.

“The other thing you have to look at is if it’s sustainable.”

Some reports say Petraeus will argue that sectarian violence in Iraq has fallen by up to 75 percent under the surge.

“We could not get comfortable with (the military’s) methodology for determining what’s sectarian versus nonsectarian violence,” Walker told senators.

“You know, it’s extremely difficult to know who did it, what their intent was.”

Walker was unable to go into further details, as the rest of the GAO’s conclusions in the report on sectarian violence have been declared secret by the Pentagon, and urged senators to read the classified version of the study.”

Oh to be a fly on the wall at a Senate Arms Services Committee meeting.

They’ve all returned to Parliament. The Accordance Front, a Shia bloc loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, and the eleven members of the National Dialogue Front, a Sunni-Arab bloc led by Saleh al-Mutlaq.

The reason? Oil – and the imminent debate concerning it. Stay tuned.