George Bush is really beginning to sweat, not only on his taxpayer-paid safari to some of the hotter parts of Africa, but also because more information is becoming public regarding his and his neocon advisers' mendacity regarding the reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And Bwana Bush's faithful manservant, Tony Blair of England, is sweating even more than his master, as the Labour Party is almost on the verge of dumping him as Britain's Prime Minister. It appears that both need the political equivalent of the servants that were always fanning some African king in the old Tarzan movies, that is, someone or something to take the heat off of them.
More Leaks and More Finger Pointing
George Bush's and his neocon advisers – aka the Axis of Deceit – seem to have lost their ability to contain the usual amount of information leaks that occur in Washington, DC, and this appears to have caused them to break out into another sweat. Bush's safari to and in Africa, to promote the ghastly and wasteful 5-year, $15 billion, that the U.S. is giving to fight AIDS on that continent, appears to be just another attempt to divert the public's attention from his real concerns, namely that the public is increasingly demanding an accounting for the lies told to justify the war on Iraq.
And as the post-war Iraqi situation turns increasingly sour – due to the lack of finding any actual weapons of mass destruction, the numerous terrorist attacks on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, and the $4 billion per month cost of running this failing operation, DC's info sleuths have stepped up the pace of their own hunt, asking "What did the President know," and "When did he know it?" They even suggest that he might have lied by deliberately overstating the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to gain domestic support for the U.S. attack.
The most recent tussle between the press and the Bush Administration has taken place over Bush's January 2003 state of the union address, in which he claimed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from an African nation, ostensibly to use in building nuclear weapons. At a press briefing in Uganda, where Bush stopped during his lengthy African trip, his National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice, stated that the speech was vetted by the CIA and that Bush did not knowingly state anything he knew to be false. Before and after the speech, some U.S. intelligence officials reportedly expressed concern about the validity of intelligence reports on possible Iraqi purchases of uranium in Africa. Thus, Condoleeza Rice and the upper echelons of the Bush Administration are blaming the CIA for not excluding the information about possible Iraqi purchases of uranium from the speech.
Not willing to take the blame, the CIA appears to have struck back. In a separate article in the July 11 Washington Post, long-time national security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus (a reliable outlet for hot information that senior intelligence and national security officials wish to leak) reported that the CIA tried unsuccessfully last September to "… persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa … ." Bush used that British information, from the British intelligence analysis of September 2002, in his state of the union address. According to Pincus, "British officials have insisted that the Bush Administration has never been provided with the intelligence that was the basis for the charge included in London's September intelligence dossier." Furthermore, Pincus reported that a diplomatic source told him that the British obtained their information on possible Iraqi purchases of uranium from an unidentified third country. Pincus also learned that the National Security Council issued guidance stating that the U.S. has never received any such information from British intelligence.
Thus, even British intelligence is covering for the CIA, stating that they never provided the raw intelligence report to Langley for analysis. The real question then becomes this: if the U.S. only received the finished British intelligence report, and if the CIA wanted the information on possible Iraqi purchases of uranium removed from the report, then why did anyone in the chain of command – who should have had access to the British report and CIA's objections – allow that information to remain in Bush's speech? Unsurprisingly, the whole thing sounds rather fishy, doesn't it?
This leads to the troubles Her Brittanic Majesty's government is having in keeping secrets, despite having laws which really muzzle the press (the Official Secrets Act, which can prevent leaks if enforced). And Tony Blair has really broken out in a heavy sweat. According to the London Telegraph, "Tony Blair called a special Cabinet meeting yesterday to plan ways of restoring the Government's credibility after Downing Street was forced to admit that no actual weapons of mass destruction are likely to be found in Iraq. The three-hour political session of the Cabinet was an indication of the alarm within the Government over the damage being caused by the failure to find deadly weapons in Iraq and the most sustained outbreak of Labour dissent since Mr. Blair came to power."
According to the Telegraph, "Downing Street embarked on a frantic damage limitation exercise after the BBC (author's note – the British Broadcasting Company) claimed that "sources at the top of Whitehall" were saying that the Government no longer expected to find any weapons."
But a Downing Street spokesman claimed that evidence of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program existed. According to the Telegraph, "It is understood that it could be chemicals used in the preparation of WMD or plans for their construction." Even if true, that is a big difference from actually having WMD ready to use, within 45 minutes notice, which was one of the main reasons given for attacking Iraq. After all, it could turn out that the chemicals could have intended for the manufacture of agricultural pesticides or herbicides.
Sweating It Out
While the British seem less concerned about the U.S. stink over the false report over Iraqi uranium purchases, Tony Blair has good reasons to be sweating it out. Unless his spin doctors are able to quell the budding rebellion among the ranks of Labour party Members of Parliament, Tony could soon be history.
While Americans seem to be almost comatose regarding the big lies and dirty deeds done by Bush and his Axis of Deceit to justify and stage the war on Iraq, nonetheless Bush and his political strategists decided a trip to Africa might just take the public's mind off of the Iraq fiasco. But a Blair fall from power, with other nasty secrets being revealed, might encourage other bureaucrats – namely those on this side of the Atlantic – to start squealing to the press if they know any more details of this horrible affair.
If Bwana Bush's troubles over Iraq increase further, both he and Blair might find themselves booted out of office. And they would no longer have minions cooling them off with the political equivalent of waving palm branches.
July 14, 2003
Jim Grichar (aka Exx-Gman) [send him mail], formerly an economist with the federal government, writes to “un-spin” the federal government’s attempt to con the public. He teaches economics part-time at a community college and provides economic consulting services to the private sector.
