WHY they lied, HOW they lied, and WHAT they did when they got caught

[Stephanie]

Now that this Iraq Lies story is finally starting to get hot, a few stories bear revisiting. These stories from this summer provide background for the Iraq Lies.

Cheney & Co. have left a compelling trail of evidence of the crimes that brought them to this moment.

Why have we heard nothing more on Cheney's Energy Task Force divvying up the Iraqi oil fields in March 2001? On the spin doctors in the DoD fabricating the case for war? On the WH official who, in retribution, exposed diplomat Joseph Wilson's wife as an undercover agent?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92372,00.html
Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Detail Iraqi Oil Industry
Friday, July 18, 2003

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.

Judicial Watch (search), a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."

The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.<more>



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html
The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.

It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.

This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. <more>


http://www.nynewsday.com/news/ny-uscia0722,0,2289800.story?coll=nyc-topnews-short-navigation
Columnist Names CIA Iraq Operative
By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
Washington Bureau
July 21, 2003, 9:48 PM EDT

Washington -- The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.<more>

*edit - changed title - grammar!

[Q]

1. K

i
c
k

[Forkboy]

2. another kick

for a great post

[Clete]

3. A jewel of a post like all of your's are.

Downloaded so I can read it without a TV in my ear tomorrow morning. Thank you so much. I was thinking about this today and exactly what are they up to.

[leftofthedial]

4. but wait! this wasn't about Iraq's oil!

it was about regime change, er, UN sanctions, er, WMDs, er, freeing Iraqis, er . . . .

[FauxNewsBlues]

5. A very big If

If the records are released, and If it shows that Iraqi oil fields were being discussed in March 2001, it is game over.

Even Dick Cheney won't be able to survive that. Even if it was somewhat innocent (unlikely). Any document from March 2001 with lines drawn through Iraqi oil fields is the straw that broke the evil puppet master's back. No wonder Cheney is willing to ask for a lifetime favor from the Supremes to keep this thing buried.

Perhaps the energy records are what we should really scream at our congress critters about.

[Stephanie]

6. Here's a new interview with Joseph Wilson

by Joshua Micah Marshall.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Part 1 today - I'm hoping Part 2 on Tuesday will cover the brewing scandal. What the WH did to Wilson's wife is a felony.

[Karenina]

7. Thanks, Stephanie!

:kick: