helping reclaim america from the dark side since 2004
I haven't been able to find anything written on the Right about the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), and for good reason. No publicity about the Group can be good for the Right's arguments about war aims. This blog entry is the very first thing that I've found written anywhere on the Right side of the internets about the group that gave this blog its raison d'être."That's it. That's the problem: A group worked to drive support for the Iraq war based on true pretenses." [emphasis added]To which I would add a helpful quote from Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10e):
pretense, or pretence \\ n (15c) 1: a claim made or implied; esp : one not supported by fact 2 a : mere ostentation : PRETENTIOUSNESS {confuse dignity with pomposity and ~ --Bennett Cerf} b : a pretentious act or assertion 3 : an inadequate or insincere attempt to attain a certain condition or quality 4 : professed rather than real intention or purpose : PRETEXT {was there under under false ~s} 5 : MAKE-BELIEVE, FICTION 6 : false show : SIMULATION {saw through his ~ of indifference}Pretenses have never been truer than the pretenses of the White House Iraq Group.
Or do you find yourself tossing and turning with excite-
So this is what they were worried about when they should have been worried about finding the absolute best crony to sit in Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat:'It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site,' Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)
Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal 'is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.'
WASHINGTON - It was called the White House Iraq Group and its job was to make the case that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biochemical weapons.
So determined was the ring of top officials to win its argument that it morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims, sources told the Daily News.
One of those critics was ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush that Iraq sought nuclear materials in Africa. His punishment was the media outing of his wife, CIA spy Valerie Plame, an affair that became a "side show" for the White House Iraq Group, the sources said.
The Plame leak is now the subject of a criminal probe that has seen presidential political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, hauled before a grand jury.
Both men were members of the group, also known as WHIG. From late 2002 through mid 2003, it was locked in a feud with officials inside the CIA and State Department over claims Saddam tried to buy "yellow cake" uranium in Niger to build nukes, a former Bush administration and intelligence sources told The News.
"There were a number of occasions when White House officials or Vice President [Cheney's] staffers, or others, wanted to push the envelope on things," an ex-intelligence official said. "The agency would say, 'We just don't have the intelligence to substantiate that.'" When Wilson was sent by his wife to Africa to research the claims, he showed the documents claiming Saddam tried to buy the uranium were forgeries.
"People in the Iraq group then got very frustrated. It was a side show," said a source familiar with WHIG.
Besides Rove and Libby, the group included senior White House aides Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James Wilkinson, Nicholas Calio, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley. WHIG also was doing more than just public relations, said a second former intel officer.
"They were funneling information to [New York Times reporter] Judy Miller. Judy was a charter member," the source said.
One of the more nauseating images of the year 2002 is that of our Prime Minister kneeling in the church on Christmas Day praying for peace on earth and good will towards all men while simultaneously preparing to assist in the murder of thousands of totally innocent people in Iraq.
I've been taken to task recently by the American Ambassador to Britain for calling the US Administration a blood thirsty wild animal. All I can say is: take a look at Donald Rumsfeld's face and the case is made.
I believe that not only is this contemplated act criminal, malevolent and barbaric, it also contains within itself a palpable joy in destruction. Power, as has often been remarked, is the great aphrodisiac, and so, it would seem, is the death of others.
The Americans have the ostensible support of the 'international community' through various sure-fire modes of intimidation; bullying, bribery, blackmail and bullshit. The 'international community' becomes a degraded entity bludgeoned into the service of a brutal military force out of control. The most despicable position is that of course of this country which pretends to stand shoulder to shoulder with its great ally while in fact being more of a whipped dog than anyone else. We are demeaned, undermined and dishonoured by our government's contemptible subservience to the United States.
The planned war can only bring about the collapse of what remains of the Iraqi infrastructure, widespread death, mutilation and disease, an estimated one million refugees and escalation of violence throughout the world, but it will still masquerade as a 'moral crusade', a 'just war', a war waged by 'freedom loving democracies', to bring 'democracy' to Iraq.
The stink of the hypocrisy is suffocating.
This is in reality a simple tale of invasion of sovereign territory, military occupation and control of oil.
We have a clear obligation, which is to resist.
[...] At Ford, sales of the Explorer, Expedition and Lincoln Navigator fell more than 50 percent compared with the same month a year earlier. The company also built its last Excursion in the month, ending production of its largest S.U.V.
At G.M., sales of the Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe fell more than 50 percent, while the GMC Yukon was down 46 percent and the Cadillac Escalade fell nearly 23 percent, with the supersize Escalade ESV falling 40 percent. Sales of the Hummer H2, made by G.M., fell 32 percent. [...]
[...]''She's the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played,'' said one friend [and longtime crony and current war profiteer], Joseph M. Allbaugh, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ''She will give the president advice unvarnished, and that's exactly what he wants.''She may be a very nice person. The Washington Post is even reporting that she gave money to Al Gore's Presidential campaign in 1988, so maybe she's even [gasp] some sort of moderate. But can it really be that hard among all the legal talent in this country to find someone for our Supreme Court who has actual judicial experience? Isn't her experience as Governor Bush's Chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission the perfect example of cronyism? If there were a National Lottery Commission, wouldn't the job of Chairman be a perfect fit for Mike "Brownie" Brown or some other political hack? Weren't Lottery Commissions (and the ambassadorships to the Vatican and Monaco) created just to provide safe harmless havens for hacks and cronies and college roommates?
Ms. Miers, 59, currently serves as deputy chief of staff for policy and assistant to the president. She has rarely, if ever, talked to reporters since arriving in Washington in 2001, and she declined a request for an interview on Friday.
But her history, and comments from friends, suggest that she is the kind of woman, like Karen P. Hughes [crony & WHIG member] and Condoleezza Rice [WHIG & war criminal], whom Mr. Bush likes on his staff: tough, direct and intensely loyal. Her appointment reflects the president's determination to promote longtime members of his inner circle to critical positions for his second term. [...]
