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April 3, 2004

Daily newsbrief journal for April 2004, also see http://www.usdemocrats.com/brief for a global 100-page perpetual brief and follow twitter @usdemocrats


April 3, 2004

Postby admin » Thu Jan 26, 2012 7:23 am

April 3, 2004

Germany: 500,000 people protest against lowering social standards in Berlin, Cologne, and Stuttgart as part of a European protest weekend.
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Re: April 3, 2004

Postby admin » Thu Jan 26, 2012 7:23 am

Colin Powell admits the case for attacking Iraq was wrong« Thread Started on Apr 3, 2004, 10:34pm »--------------------------------------------------------------------------------From: Alert (www_insider_org@postmaster.co.uk)Subject: Colin Powell admits the case for attacking Iraq was wrong View this article only Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.british, alt.politicsDate: 2004-04-03 12:07:03 PST Colin Powell admits the case for attacking Iraq was wrongUS Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has finally admitted that thecase for invading Iraq "appears" to have been untrue. As if the USgovernment didn't know it at the time!Powell was given the job of making the case for overthrowing Iraq'sgovernment to the UN last year. He delivered a presentation to theSecurity Council, broadcast in the media throughout the world,claiming that Iraq had WMD and had to be disarmed. He showedphotographs and maps of weapons facilities. But none of the locationshe pointed to were weapons facilities. These sites were all visited byUN weapons inspectors before the war and known to be clean.Colin Powell said the US knew Iraq had WMD, and even claimed to knowwhere the weapons were located. Many people took his word for it,particularly in the US. Did you? The official reason for the war onIraq was a pack of lies. The UN weapons inspectors knew it. Russianintelligence knew it. German intelligence knew it. French intelligenceknew it. Even we knew it. Are we supposed to believe that the US andthe UK were the last to know? In fact, the truth was freely availablefor anybody who cared to look.Richard Clarke, the US government security advisor during the lastfour presidencies, and Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary,have both confirmed that the plan to conquer Iraq was already on thetable on 9/11. Bush and his cabinet were ready to use 9/11 as anexcuse to take Iraq's oil even before the bodies were cold.There was literally never any evidence whatsoever to supportaccusations that Iraq had WMD. The reasons for the war on Iraq werenot the reasons sold to us: http://www.thedebate.org http://www.theinsider.org SOURCEBBC News, "Powell admits Iraq evidence mistake", 3 April 2004.[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 596033.stm ]US Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted that evidence hesubmitted to the United Nations to justify war on Iraq may have beenwrong.In February last year he told the UN Security Council that Iraqhad developed mobile laboratories for making biological weapons.On Friday he conceded that information "appears not to be... thatsolid".The claim failed to persuade the Security Council to back the war,but helped sway US public opinion.Mr Powell said he hoped the commission appointed to investigatepre-war intelligence on Iraq would examine whether the intelligencecommunity was justified in backing the claim.Doubts have been widely cast on the existence of the mobile labs,not least by the former US chief weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay,who now says does not know whether Iraq ever had a mobile weaponsprogramme.... FURTHER READINGNew York Times, "Ex - Advisor Says Bush Eyed Bombing of Iraq on 9 /11", 19 March 2004.[ http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/internat ... ation.html]NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former White House anti-terrorism advisorsays the Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliationafter Sept. 11, 2001 even though it was clear al Qaeda had carried outthe attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.Richard Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board that gleanedintelligence from the Internet, told CBS ``60 Minutes'' in aninterview to be aired on Sunday he was surprised administrationofficials turned immediately toward Iraq instead of al Qaeda and Osamabin Laden.``They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about iton 9/12,'' Clarke says.Clarke said he was briefing President Bush and Secretary ofDefense Donald Rumsfeld among other top officials in the aftermath ofthe devastating attacks.``Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. ... We all said,'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan,'' recounts Clarke, ``andRumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and thereare lots of good targets in Iraq.'''Clarke, an advisor to four presidents, left his position inFebruary 2003 after the White House transferred functions of thecybersecurity board to Homeland Security.Clarke's comments are the latest to raise the question of the Bushadministration's focus on overthrowing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, fired in a shake-up ofBush's economic team in December 2002, told ``60 Minutes'' in aninterview aired in January he never saw any evidence Iraq had weaponsof mass destruction -- Bush's main justification for going to war.O'Neill also charged that Bush entered office intent on invadingIraq and ousting its leader, Saddam Hussein.``I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection''between Iraq and al Qaeda, Clarke tells ``60 Minutes.''``But the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I wassitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. Foryears we've looked and there's just no connection,''' says Clarke.
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Re: April 3, 2004

Postby admin » Thu Jan 26, 2012 7:24 am

Bush Resistance Against 9/11 Probe Raises Concerns« Thread Started on Apr 3, 2004, 10:29pm »--------------------------------------------------------------------------------From: black_ice (black-ice@bellsouth.net)Subject: Bush Resistance Against 9/11 Probe Raises Concerns This is the only article in this thread View: Original Format Newsgroups: , alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics, alt.politics.democratsDate: 2004-04-03 15:02:49 PST Gee GW, why would the President resist getting to the bottom of who andwhat allowed 9/11 to happen on US soil?seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/opinion/03SAT1.html?ex=1082022333&ei=1&en=b32cad0767018000The Mystery DeepensPublished: April 3, 2004The Bush administration's handling of the bipartisan commissioninvestigating the 9/11 tragedy grows worse ‹ and more oddlyself-destructive ‹ with each passing day. Following its earlierattempts to withhold documents from the panel and then to deny itsmembers vital testimony, we now learn that President Bush's staff hasbeen withholding thousands of pages of Clinton administration papers aswell.Bill Clinton authorized the release of nearly 11,000 pages of files onhis administration's antiterrorism efforts for use by the commission.But aides to Mr. Clinton said the White House, which now has control ofthe papers, vetoed the transfer of over three-quarters of them. TheWhite House held the documents for more than six weeks, apparentlywithout notifying the commission, and might have kept them indefinitelyif Bruce Lindsey, the general counsel of Mr. Clinton's presidentialfoundation, had not publicly complained this week. Yesterday thecommission said the White House had agreed to allow its lawyers toreview the withheld documents, but without guaranteeing any would bereleased.This latest distressing episode followed the White House's pattern ofresisting the commission in private and then, once the dispute becomespublic, reluctantly giving up the minimum amount of ground. Earlier inthe week, Mr. Bush finally agreed to allow Condoleezza Rice, thenational security adviser, to testify under oath ‹ but only afterextracting a commitment that the commission would not seek any furtherpublic testimony from any White House official. After months offoot-dragging, Mr. Bush also grudgingly agreed to let the panelquestion him and Vice President Dick Cheney privately. Last year thePentagon, the Justice Department and other agencies stonewalled thecommission's requests for documents until its chairman, Thomas Kean,the former Republican governor of New Jersey, complained publicly.Explaining the latest act of obstruction, Scott McClellan, thepresident's spokesman, said on Thursday that some documents wereduplicative, unrelated or "highly sensitive." The White House, he said,had given the commission "all the information they need." Mr. Bush'sstaff should not be making that judgment. The commission's 10 memberscan be trusted with sensitive material.Moreover, given the repeated criticism of this administration'sobsessive secrecy on other issues, it is astonishing that it wouldstill withhold anything that did not pose an immediate and dire threatto national security. The American people would like to know that theyhave a government that freely gives information to legitimateinvestigations on matters of grave national interest, not one thatfights each reasonable request until it is exposed and forced tosubmit. The White House is serving no public purpose by acting lessinterested than the rest of us in having this commission do its vitalwork. Its ham-handed behavior is also gravely damaging the entireconcept of executive privilege.
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