Who is who in Iraq

[ago]

John Negroponte


Cominciamo dal nuovo "ambasciatore" iracheno, ambasciatore che occupera' la piu' grande sede diplomatica al mondo e quello con maggiore "influenza" sul governo locale...

Quest'uomo e' stato gia' ambasciatore in Honduras, nel controverso periodo in cui gli USA hanno aiutato i contras nicaraguensi, nella base militare da lui costruita furono rinvenuti 185 corpi e vi furono numerosi casi di tortura ed assassini riportati dal tristemente famoso battaglione 316, cose di cui il nostro era al corrente e nonostante cio' decise di continuare il rapporto di "collaborazione"...

John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. As such he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. Among other things he supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980's. The base was used as a secret detention and torture center, in August 2001 excavations at the base discovered the first of the corpses of the 185 people, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at this base.

During his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with them, while lying to Congress.

[ago]

Geoffrey Miller.


Ora veniamo alla persona di recente incaricata di prendersi cura delle carceri irachene

Chi e' Miller? Il comandante di Guantanamo la base americana dove sono detenuti i presunti terroristi... La base dove si sono rifiutati di applicare la convenzione di Ginevra sui i prigionieri di guerra, nonche' le leggi USA, nonche' le leggi locali. Nessuna legge insomma. Cosa facciano a questi detenuti e' ben noto ai difensori dei diritti umanitari....

Non solo, Miller e' la persona che, secondo il rapporto interno dell'esercito redatto dal generale Taguba, ha SUGGERITO DI TORTURARE I DETENUTI IRACHENI DI CUI AVETE DI RECENTE AMMIRATO LE FOTO

Rimosso il generale precedentemente incaricato delle prigioni irachene, gli USA hanno pensato bene di inviare come sostituto lo stesso Miller...

Gen. Miller Set to Command Iraq Prisons


Wednesday May 5, 2004 8:01 AM

By PAISLEY DODDS

Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - The Army major general appointed to run Iraq's prisons in fallout of a major scandal weathered controversy in his last assignment overseeing the detainment center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller spent more than a year at Guantanamo Bay, boasting that detainees there had become much more cooperative during his time there. But he was in charge during a time when one interrogator was accused of espionage and human rights groups leveled their most scathing criticism at the camp.

The career military officer from Menard, Texas, began his time at Guantanamo with tough talk.

``If you attack America, then you, too, could end up in Guantanamo,'' Miller, 55, said in a fiery warning as he took control of the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects on Cuba's eastern tip.

He softened his tone soon after arriving at Guantanamo in October 2002, promising to release detainees who didn't pose a threat and to increase information from uncooperative prisoners.

Miller was appointed to the Iraq job last month, replacing Gen. Janis Karpinski. She was suspended amid investigations into the allegations that U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

In response to the claims in Iraq, Miller on Tuesday said he would eliminate some interrogation techniques considered humiliating, such as the hooding of prisoners.

By the end of his stint at Guantanamo in March, the square-jawed Miller said intelligence tips at the U.S. prison camp had increased dramatically and that detainees, accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network, were being more cooperative.

He said three-fourths of the approximate 600 detainees had confessed to some involvement in terrorism and many had exposed former friends.

He attributed those success to a reward system he started, which included the opportunity for detainees to live communally in a medium-security prison and to get extra perks, such as packets of sugar or exercise time.

But Miller's time in Guantanamo was not all smooth.

Under his watch, one interrogator was charged with espionage and is up for court martial this month. Another interrogator was charged with transporting secret documents; his case is pending. A Muslim chaplain - and close adviser to Miller - was charged with mishandling classified information and adultery, though those charges were recently dropped.

Miller also faced steady criticism from human rights groups over the U.S. detention mission itself, which they say is abusive. None of the detainees have been charged yet, and some have been held for more than two years. The U.S. government has yet to agree on a date for tribunals.

In a rare public rebuke, the International Red Cross condemned the prolonged detentions at Guantanamo in October, saying that mental instability and attempted suicides among detainees indicated severe problems with the U.S. operation.

Miller, who said his deployment to Guantanamo would likely last for two years, always contended that the detainees were being treated humanely.

Coming from an assignment in South Korea, Miller succeeded Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, who left Guantanamo after complaints from some interrogators that he was too concerned about prisoner treatment.

Some former prisoners who returned to Afghanistan recently complained of torture at Guantanamo, saying they were abused and deprived of sleep - similar allegations to those made by former Iraqi prisoners.

Officials at Guantanamo say interrogations are often done at night but deny mistreating detainees. And unlike the situation in Iraq, there have been no U.S. military punishments over alleged abuses at the Cuban prison

[ago]

Ahmed Chalabi


Ed ora veniamo al "governo degli iracheni". Sapete da chi e' formato? Un nome su tutti (la persona con maggior potere nel congresso iracheno): Chalabi

Questo tizio e' pappa e ciccia con i neoconservatori americani, da loro allevato e finanziato sin dal 1991, ed in particolare con Rumsfeld che, oltre ad avergli garantito un posto di rilievo nell'attuale "governo degli iracheni" intende affidargli una posizione di notevole influenza nel prossimo governo.... E' uno dei candidati principali alla presidenza...

E' a lui che dobbiamo molti dei documenti di intelligence FALSI che dimostravano l'esistenza delle ADM che hanno portato alla guerra. Intervistato sulla scarsa attendibilita' (per usare un eufemismo) delle prove fornite agli USA il nostro ha sostenuto di non pentirsi per quanto fatto, visto che grazie a cio' e' riuscito ad abbattere Saddam (e sopratutto a garantirsi un bel posticino)....

Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime



By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad and Anton La Guardia
(Filed: 19/02/2004)

An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.

Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Ahmad Chalabi: 'we've been entirely successful'

Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. "We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.

"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."

His comments are likely to inflame the debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the quality of pre-war intelligence, and the spin put on it by President George W Bush and Tony Blair as they argued for military action.

US officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.

US officials at first found the information credible and the defector passed a lie-detector test. But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been "coached by the INC".

He failed a second polygraph test and in May 2002, intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable.

But analysts missed the warning, and the mobile laboratory story remained firmly established in the catalogue of alleged Iraqi violations until months after the overthrow of Saddam.

America claimed to have found two mobile laboratories, but the lorries in fact held equipment to make hydrogen for weather balloons.

Last week, US State Department officials admitted that much of the first-hand testimony they had received was "shaky".

"What the INC told us formed one part of the intelligence picture," a senior official in Baghdad said. "But what Chalabi told us we accepted in good faith. Now there is going to be a lot of question marks over his motives."

Mr Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, but his star in Washington has waned.

[ago]

Iraqi National Congress

The Iraqi National Congress (INC) was created at the behest of the U.S. government for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Since 1992, the INC has received about $15 million in U.S. aid.

In May 1991, following the end of Operation Desert Storm, then-President George H.W. Bush signed a presidential finding directing the CIA to create the conditions for Hussein's removal. The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group, a PR firm run by John Rendon, to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign.

Rendon's postwar work involved producing videos and radio skits ridiculing Hussein, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and radio scripts calling on Iraqi army officers to defect. ClandestineRadio.com, a website that monitors underground and anti-government radio stations in countries throughout the world, also credits the Rendon Group with "designing and supervising" the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah, which began broadcasting Iraqi opposition propaganda in January 1992 from a US government transmitter in Kuwait.[1] According to a September 1996 article in Time magazine, six CIA case officers supervised the IBC's 11 hours of daily programming and Iraqi National Congress activities in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Arbil.[2]

A February 1998 report by Peter Jennings cited records obtained by ABC News which showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars in the first year of its contract with the CIA. According to ABC, Rendon came up with the name for the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition coalition of 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations whose main tasks were to "gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents." ABC also reported that the INC received $12 million of covert CIA funding between 1992 and 1996.[3]

The INC represented the first major attempt by opponents of Saddam to join forces, bringing together Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs (both Islamic fundamentalist and secular), as well as democrats, nationalists and ex-military officers.[4]. In June 1992, nearly 200 delegates from dozens of opposition groups met in Vienna, along with Iraq's two main Kurdish militias, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In October 1992, the major Shiite groups came into the coalition and the INC held a pivotal meeting in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, choosing a three-man Leadership Council and a 26-member executive council. The three leaders included moderate Shiite Muslim cleric Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum; ex-Iraqi general Hasan Naqib; and Masud Barzani. Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Iraqi Shiite Muslim and mathematician by training, became the group. Chalabi had previously served as chairman of the Petra Bank in Jordan, where he engaged in various cloak-and-dagger operations that ended abruptly in August 1989 when he fled the country "under mysterious circumstances" and was convicted in absentia for embezzlement, fraud and currency-trading irregularities.[5]

The INC's political platform promised "human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq"; preservation of Iraq's territorial integrity, and complete compliance with international law, including U.N. resolutions relating to Iraq. However, many observers noted that the INC might not act as a democratic body if it came to power, because most of its groups have an authoritarian internal structure.[6]

Differences within the INC eventually led to its virtual collapse. In May 1994, the two main Kurdish parties began fighting with each other over territory and other issues. As a result of the growing difficulties within the INC, the United States began seeking out other opponents who could threaten the Iraqi regime, such as the Iraqi National Accord (INA), headed by Iyad Alawi. The rivalries between the Kurdish parties prompted the KDP to seek armed support from Saddam Hussein for its capture of the town of Arbil from the rival PUK. Iraq took advantage of the request by launching a military strike in which 200 oppositions were executed and as many as 2,000 arrested. Six hundred fifty oppositionists (mostly INC) were evacuated and resettled in the United States under the parole authority of the US Attorney General.

The lNC was subsequently plagued by the dissociation of many of its constituent groups from the INC umbrella, a cutoff of funds from its international backers (including the United States), and continued pressure from Iraqi intelligence services. In 1998, however, the U.S. Congress authorized $97 million in U.S. military aid for Iraqi opposition via the Iraq Liberation Act, intended primarily for the INC.[7]

In April 2001, the Iranian government allowed the INC to open US-funded offices in a plush northern suburb of Tehran. It marked the first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979 that Washington allowed government funds to be spent inside Iran, according to a December 2001 Guardian article.[8]

The same December 2001 article reported that the INC worked with General Wayne Downing, a Bush counter-terrorism adviser, on a plan for the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein that at the time was being considered by the US joint chiefs of staff. The state department, the CIA and some of the Pentagon's uniformed top brass were reportedly highly sceptical of the Downing-INC plan, which called for a force of about 5,000 INC fighters crossing into Iraq from Kuwait and seizing a deserted airbase near Basra. The action would tempt Saddam to send his crack Hammurabi tank division to the south, where it would be a sitting duck for US bombers, according to the plan. Former Central Command commander, General Anthony Zinni derided the plan at the "Bay of Goats," the Guardian writes.[9]

In March 2002, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that "exile groups supported by the I.N.C. have been conducting sabotage operations inside Iraq, targeting oil refineries and other installations. The latest attack took place on January 23rd, an INC official told me, when missiles fired by what he termed 'indigenous dissidents' struck the large Baiji refinery complex, north of Baghdad, triggering a fire that blazed for more than twelve hours." However, Hersh added, "A dispute over Chalabi's potential usefulness preoccupies the bureaucracy, as the civilian leadership in the Pentagon continues to insist that only the INC can lead the opposition. At the same time, a former Administration official told me, 'Everybody but the Pentagon and the office of the Vice-President wants to ditch the INC.' The INC's critics note that Chalabi, despite years of effort and millions of dollars in American aid, is intensely unpopular today among many elements in Iraq. 'If Chalabi is the guy, there could be a civil war after Saddam's overthrow,' one former C.I.A. operative told me. A former high-level Pentagon official added, 'There are some things that a President can't order up, and an internal opposition is one.'"[10]

Notwithstanding these concerns, Hersh reported that "INC supporters in and around the Administration, including Paul Dundes Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, believe, like Chalabi, that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand." In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the administration of George W. Bush actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA. "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency.," he wrote. "The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. ... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war." Much of the pro-war faction's information came from the INC, even though "most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil. ... The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."[11]

"The [INC's] intelligence isn't reliable at all," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches."[12]

In February 2003, as the Bush administration neared the end of its preparations for war, an internal fight erupted over INC's plan to actually become the government of Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Chalabi wanted to "declare a provisional government when the war starts," a plan that "alienated some of Mr Chalabi's most enthusiastic backers in the Pentagon and in Congress, who fear the announcement of a provisional government made up of exiles would split anti-Saddam sentiment inside Iraq."[13]

A classified study prepared by the National Intelligence Council in early 2003 found that only one of Chalabi's defectors could be considered credible, The New Republic has learned. A more recent investigation undertaken by the DIA has found that practically all the intelligence provided by the INC was worthless. [14]

Despite this, it was revealed that in March 2004, the Pentagon continued to pay the INC $US340,000 a month for "intelligence collection".[15] "We're still getting good information from the INC ... There are a lot of insurgents that are doing bad things and they have a lot of contacts and [are] making better ones every day," an unnamed Pentagon official claimed.

Knight Ridder reported that the false INC intelligence fed to the US intelligence agencies was also distributed to news outlets in the United States, Britain and Australia. "A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq ... The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons," Knight Ridder reported.

In March 2004, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) sent requested the General Accounting Office to investigate the INC's use of State Department money between 2001 and 2002. Newsweek reports, the issue under scrutiny is whether the INC violated its agreement with the State Department to not use U.S. fund for activities "associated with, or that could appear to be associated with, attempting to influence the policies of the United States Government or Congress or propagandizing the American people." [16]

The Senators' letter of March 3 found "troubling" the INC's use of money, pointing to the June 2002 memo to the Appropriations Committee and the "Information Collection Program." "Late last year Chalabi's Washington representative, Francis Brooke, told NEWSWEEK that State Department money had been used to finance the expenses of INC defectors who were sources for some of the listed news stories. Brooke said there were 'no restrictions' on the use of U.S. government funds to make such defectors available to the news media," Newsweek writes. But another INC spokesman told Newsweek in March 2004, "The INC paid some living and travel expenses of defectors with USG funds. None of these expenses was related to meeting journalists." The spokesman denied INC had violated any U.S. laws.[17]

Another potential violation of U.S. funding laws is a non-profit group set up by individuals who held senior positions with the INC called the Iraq Liberation Action Committee. The group, composed largely of Iraqi-Americans, was to lobby for U.S. action in Iraq. Knight Ridder reported in April 2004 that it "relied on private funds and was not subject to the same lobbying restrictions [as INC]. Even so, the formation of the group surprised and angered U.S. government officials, some of whom suspected it was an attempt to sidestep the lobbying restrictions."

Long-time INC representative and former Rendon Group employee Francis Brooke was listed as the group's principle founder, Knight Ridder reported. The group was "to work in support of United States and international efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq" and to help in "drafting resolutions, legislation and regulations" to advance democracy there.[18]

INC received $18 million in U.S. funds between 1998-2003. In addition to the Rendon Group, the Burson-Marsteller PR firm has also provided public relations assistance to the INC.

External links

* Julian Borger, "Plan resurfaces to target Saddam," Guardian, December 2001.
* Nick Grace, "Radio Hurriah Axed by State Department," December 14, 2002.
* "B-M Promotes INC," O'Dwyer's PR Daily, April 17, 2003.
* "B-M Working with Bush's Hand-Picked Iraqis," Holmes Report, May 1, 2003.
* Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff, Exclusive: Cheney and the ?Raw? Intelligence, Newsweek, December 15, 2003: "A memo written by a top Washington lobbyist for the controversial Iraqi National Congress raises new questions about the role Vice President Dick Cheney?s office played in the run-up to the war in Iraq."
* Maureen Dowd, The Thief of Baghdad, New York Times, February 15, 2004: "But here's the wild thing: the propaganda program was underwritten by U.S. government funds. So Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week ? and a precious human cost. Cops dealing with their snitches check out the information better than the Bush administration did. ... Mr. Chalabi's séances swayed the political set, the intelligence set and the journalistic set. In an effect Senator Bob Graham dubs 'incestuous amplification,' the bogus stories spewed by Iraqi exiles and defectors ricocheted through an echo chamber of government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources were corroborating the same story. Rather, one self-interested source was replicating like computer spam."
* Pamela Hess, "DOD weighs future of INC-fed intel group," Washington Times, March 3, 2004: "The Pentagon and Defense Intelligence Agency are trying to determine whether an intelligence collection unit fed by the controversial Iraqi National Congress will continue beyond July 1, when Iraq is scheduled to re-assume its sovereignty. ... The intelligence community last month recommended the Iraqi National Congress' Information Collection Program continue at least until July 1 but has specific concerns after that date if the program is either continued or disbanded, according to government officials and documents. ... However, the organization is also under scrutiny on Capitol Hill for its central pre-war role in producing questionable intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction."
* Douglas Jehl, "Chalabi spies in Iraq still on US payroll", Sydney Morning Herald, March 12, 2004. (SMH article credits the New York Times and Reuters for this story).
* Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media, Knight Ridder, March 15, 2004.
* Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, "Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding," Newsweek, March 27, 2004.
* Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, "Exile group crossed line on lobbying, U.S. believes," Knight Ridder, April 23, 2004.
* "Congress Probes INC's Lobbying Effort," Democracy Now! April 27, 2004.
* Lisa Myers, "Iraq congress members under investigation. Allegations include abduction, robbery, assault, car theft," NBC News, April 28, 2004.

[alfonso (POL)]

cvd a bush & soci non gliene frega niente di quello che è successo! altro che indignato! mi auguro solo che questi comportamenti rafforzino l'unione d'intenti della resistenza irachena per la cacciata degli invasori angloameritaliani.