Ray McGoven: July 14, 2003--an ill-starred date in the history of the occupation

[BurtWorm]

It happens to be the date Novak outed Valerie Plame. But that wasn't the only disaster that occurred that day.


http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/14/2534/

Revisionist History

Fourth (as if further proof of duplicity were needed): on July 14, 2003, President Bush, during a Q and A session with reporters after an Oval Office meeting with then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, provided this remarkable version of why Saddam Hussein was to blame for the invasion:

“We gave them a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he <Saddam> wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations <sic>, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.”

Compare that statement to that of Kofi Annan on March 17, 2003, announcing his reluctant withdrawal of UN inspectors from Iraq, made necessary by the imminent shock, awe, and invasion:

“Yesterday <we> got information from the United States authorities that it would be prudent not to leave our staff in the region. I have just informed the Council that we will withdraw the inspectors.”

Someone ought to tell the president that his version about Saddam Hussein refusing to allow the inspectors in was Plan A; i.e., the plan worked out with the British to “wrong foot” Saddam into such refusal by demanding the most intrusive inspection regime in modern history-the kind that Saddam would be sure to reject (or so it was thought). Washington and London would then have the casus belli after which they had been lusting. (Plan A is fully described in official British documents leaked to and published by the London press.)

Please, quickly, someone remind the president that, as things turned out, Plan A was foiled; that Saddam outfoxed London and Washington by acceding to a very rigorous inspection regime and that in early 2003 intrusive inspections, and one-on-one interviews with Iraqi scientists, were being conducted without serious interference (but, alas, with no success in finding WMD). Please remind President Bush that, nonetheless, someone who worked for him and Cheney abruptly told Annan to pull out the inspectors two days before the attack on Iraq. Remind Bush that he and Blair had to default to Plan B; i.e., get the UN inspectors out of Iraq before it became even clearer that, if any WMD were eventually found, they would certainly not be of such quality or quantity as to pose a serious threat.

In other words, Plan B was war without pretense. No one knew that better than Kofi Annan. So it was difficult to watch him squirm on July 14, 2003, as Bush played fast and loose with the facts…as the president continues to do, without challenge from the corporate media. To wit, at his press conference on July 12, 2007:

Q. Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing…. Thousands and thousands are dead…you brought the al-Qaeda into Iraq.

A. Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That’s why I…worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course…It was his decision to make…. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.

[BurtWorm]

1. kick

[Peace Patriot]

2. Well, of course, the event for which 7/14/03 is most famous is the outing of

covert CIA agent Valerie Plame--which McGovern discusses in the first part of the article. But I don't buy the story that Plames's outing by Novak, and his outing of her entire WMD counter-proliferation network, one week later, were an effort by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove to control the newsstream. They already had a supremely lagdoggish corporate press, starting with the New York Times. What difference would it have made if a few Democrats squawked, after reading about the phony Niger/Iraq nuke claim? Really--just another item to be drowned in the corporate newsstream river of forgetfulness, along with Wilson's opinion.

I think much more was at stake. And there is an event that falls right smack between those dates--the outing of Plame, 7/14/03, and the outing of the entire Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network, 7/22/03-- that may be the key. It goes like this:

7/6/03: Wilson publishes his article.
7/7/03: Tony Blair is informed that David Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" (Hutton report).
7/14/03: Plame outed (by Novak).
7/18/07: Kelly is found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.
7/22/07: The entire Brewster-Jennings network is outed (also by Novak) putting all of its covert agents/contacts around the world at great risk of getting killed, and ending all of their counter-proliferation efforts.

Who was David Kelly? He was the British WMD expert--and also UN weapons inspector--who began whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about the "sexed up" pre-war WMD intel in late May 2003 (a month before Wilson's article), was mysteriously outed to his bosses at the end of June (--same timeframe as the clandestine Judith Miller-Libby meetings about Wilson/Plame; Miller was the NYT's chief war propagandist on WMDs, and also a friend of David Kelly's), was interrogated at a "safe house" and threatened with the Official Secrets Act in the first week of July (report to Blair July 7), was forced to go before a parliamentary defense committee and partially recant, was then outed to the press, by his own government, and sent home without protection and apparently without surveillance. He was found dead under a tree near his home, four days after Plame was outed, apparently having bled to death all night in the rain, from one slit wrist (minor artery; note, Kelly was a scientist), while those from the British government who were, no doubt, surveilling him, watched him die.

This is the preposterous story laid out by the Hutton report whitewash (except for asking where his surveillance was while he bled to death). The paramedics said there was not enough blood at the scene for such a death, and that the body had been moved. Their testimony was ignored (not even solicited). It was a cover up.

When you add this event--Kelly's whistleblowing, interrogation and death--into the Plame timeline, things become clearer. Something HUGE was happening behind the scenes on the both sides of the Atlantic, during that several week period--something far more important than a few anti-war blips in the newsstream. Something that caused mobilization of many top Bushites, who put themselves at risk of treason charges by contacting at least six reporters (journalist witnesses to treason) in one week, to get Plame and her network outed; something that caused the Blair government to go into an absolute tizzy to hunt down, interrogate and silence a WMD expert who was merely saying that their WMD reports had been "sexed up"--something that billions of people had known all along. It's a bit of a thing that an insider would say it. But not that big of a thing. Hounded, interrogated, outed and--little doubt in my mind--'suicided.'

What could it have been? My guess: A foiled Bush/Blair plot to PLANT the nukes on Iraqi soil, after the invasion--to be "found" by the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for them (notably accompanied by Judith Miller)--as the follow-up, or Part 2, of the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries scam. It has the smell of a Rumsfeld Office of Special Plans" scheme, with Cheney running the political end of it (--for instance, getting the Niger-Iraq nuke allegation into Bush's State of the Union address, over the objections of the CIA).

The Bushites were not just trying to suppress dissent, when they outed Wilson's wife. They were trying to cover up a CRIME--illicit weapons transport, a monstrous hoax. Their scam was foiled. They didn't know by whom. They outed EVERYBODY--the entire counter-proliferation network. And they more than likely had David Kelly killed (--because of the "uncomfortable things" that Blair was told he "COULD say"). And they are now trying to cover up MULTIPLE crimes, related to the initial plot. That's what they are behaving like--with all of these outrageous assertions of "executive privilege" and secrecy (also related to election fraud, I think). They didn't just lie. They were trying to STAGE the "finding" of the WMDs that would justify their heinous corporate resource war.

It's a damn good theory anyway--makes a lot of senses, solves a lot of mysteries, fits the known facts--and needs serious investigation.

[Maddy McCall]

3. K/R