[casi] News, 1-8/10/03 (1) with apologies

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

Dear all

Someone recently described me as a 'baboon' and I'm beginning to think they
mightn't be far wrong. Not only did a message I wanted to send to the list
manager accidentally get sent to the whole list but I find that I sent an
old outdated news mailing (News, 16-23/7/03 (1)) instead of the following.

Mind you, not many people seem to have noticed ...

All the best

Peter


News, 1-8/10/03 (1)

STATE OF THE PRETEXT

*  Officials Say Bush Seeks $600 Million to Hunt Iraq Arms
*  In Iraq, U.S. Finds No Banned Weapons
*  Russia Hid Saddam's WMD's
*  Survey Group head's link to arms industry
*  Extracts from Robin Cook's diary
*  Revelation casts doubt on Iraq find
*  No uranium, no munitions, no missiles, no programmes

WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

*  4,000 U.S. non-combat evacuations in Iraq
*  US Iraq budget- devil in the details
*  White House to Overhaul Iraq and Afghan Missions


STATE OF THE PRETEXT

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/02/politics/02WEAP.html?pagewanted=print&posi
tion

*  OFFICIALS SAY BUSH SEEKS $600 MILLION TO HUNT IRAQ ARMS
by JAMES RISEN and JUDITH MILLER
New York Times, 2nd October

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 ‹ The Bush administration is seeking more than $600
million from Congress to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that
Saddam Hussein's government had an illegal weapons program, officials said
Wednesday.

The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental
spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that
has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said.

The budget figures for the weapons search are included in the classified
part of the administration's supplemental appropriations request, and have
not been made public. The size of the request suggests the White House is
determined to keep searching for unconventional weapons or evidence that
they were being developed under Mr. Hussein. The search so far has turned up
no solid evidence that Iraq had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when
the American invasion began in March, according to administration officials.

Counting the money already spent, the total price tag for the search will
approach $1 billion.

The money is intended specifically to pay for the activities of the Iraq
Survey Group, made up of teams of troops and experts who are managed by the
Pentagon but whose activities are coordinated by David Kay, a former United
Nations weapons inspector who reports to the director of central
intelligence, George J. Tenet.

Officials said the money for the Iraq Survey Group comes under the
classified intelligence part of the Pentagon's budget request. A Pentagon
spokesman declined to comment on the classified category.

The request for increased funding comes just as Mr. Kay is scheduled to
brief Congress in closed sessions on Thursday on an interim report of the
Iraq Survey Group's findings so far.

He is to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The C.I.A. is
expected to publicly release a declassified statement based on Mr. Kay's
testimony after the briefings, officials said.

C.I.A. and other officials said last week that Mr. Kay's report would be
inconclusive, suggesting that he will not say that he has found strong
evidence of the existence of illegal weapons in Iraq.

Since the fall of the Hussein government, the failure to find evidence of
illegal weapons has been a major political embarrassment for the Bush
administration.

After the initial military-led effort to find such weapons came under fire,
President Bush turned to the C.I.A. to oversee an expanded search. In June,
Mr. Tenet asked Mr. Kay to act as his personal adviser on the issue and to
provide strategic advice to the weapons hunters.

Officials familiar with the request said that if the administration gets all
the money it is seeking, it will provide funding for a staff of 1,400 for
the Iraq Survey Group. It currently has more than 1,200 members.

The cash infusion is being sought even though the group has gotten off to
what experts and military officials said had been a rocky start.

Though a larger group than the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the military
weapons hunting group that preceded it, the Iraq Survey group includes many
members drawn from reserve units.

Some weapons hunting units have sat in Baghdad for days, sometimes weeks,
waiting for missions, officials say.

"Even when hot tips have come in, it often takes days to mobilize a unit to
visit a suspect site or talk to a suspect scientist," said a former member
of one unit, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

The Iraq Survey Group has also been slow to mobilize former international
arms inspectors who had volunteered to accompany the Exploitation Task Force
and the Iraq Survey Group, those inspectors say.

"Most of us have just given up waiting and gone on with our lives," said one
former weapons inspector, who was told he would be sent to Baghdad.

The group has also concentrated on installing an unnecessarily elaborate
infrastructure to support its operations, said several military officials
who complained there was a disparity between the resources allotted to the
two programs.

While the Exploitation Task Force worked out of an abandoned palace and the
servants' housing quarters near Baghdad airport and remained short of
vehicles, air support, computers and even electricity during the initial
months of the weapons hunt, the Iraq Survey Group spent its first weeks
installing air-conditioned trailers, a new dining facility, state-of-the-art
software and even a sprinkler system for a new lawn, according to officials
and experts who worked with the group this summer.

"They kept unloading crates and crates of new Dell laptops," said one
Pentagon official who complained that the exploitation force lacked
resources.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35638-2003Oct2.html

*  IN IRAQ, U.S. FINDS NO BANNED WEAPONS
by Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 3rd October

After searching for nearly six months, U.S. forces and CIA experts have
found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and have determined that
Iraq's nuclear program was in only "the very most rudimentary" state, the
Bush administration's chief investigator formally told Congress yesterday.

Before the war, the administration said Iraq had a well-developed nuclear
program that presented a threat to the United States.

Now, "It clearly does not look like a massive, resurgent program, based on
what we discovered," former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, who heads the
government's search, said yesterday after briefing House and Senate
intelligence committees in a closed session on his interim report. He said
he will need six to nine months to conclude his work, and congressional
sources said the administration is requesting an additional $600 million
toward the effort to find weapons of mass destruction.

Kay, who heads the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group, said the team had
"discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts
of equipment" that Iraq had hidden. He said he believes "there was an intent
. . . to continue production at some point in time." Among the evidence
unearthed was a network of laboratories and safe houses, a laboratory
complex hidden in a prison and evidence of a program for ballistic and
land-attack missiles with ranges prohibited by the United Nations.

After Kay's briefing, Republican and Democratic senators criticized the
intelligence community for misreading the facts on the ground, and some said
they believed the administration had misled the public about the threat Iraq
posed.

"I'm not pleased by what I heard today," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.),
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who has been
supportive of the administration and the CIA. Roberts said he believes some
of the raw intelligence did not support the administration's prewar
statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and called some of the
claims "sloppy."

"There's enough . . . to make me believe our intelligence was badly flawed,"
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said as she exited the three-hour meeting.

In a separate but related matter, CIA Director George J. Tenet this week
sent an angry letter to the two top House intelligence committee members to
dispute as misguided and ill informed their criticism of the raw
intelligence used to assess the threat from Iraq.

"The suggestion by the committee that we did not challenge long-standing
judgments and assessments is simply wrong," Tenet, a former Capitol Hill
intelligence panel aide known for his smooth dealings with members of
Congress, said in a letter to chairman Porter J. Goss (R Fla.), of the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and ranking member Jane Harman
(D-Calif.).

Tenet was responding to a letter the two had sent him last week, after their
panel examined 19 volumes of data underlying the assessment that Iraq posed
a threat to the United States. The letter called the information outdated,
circumstantial and fragmentary, and it criticized the CIA for not adequately
vetting information or challenging some of its long-held assumptions.

Tenet's letter, obtained by The Washington Post, said the committee had not
interviewed enough people to legitimately make its claims and that the
communication raised serious claims "in ways that makes more difficult a
reasoned and serious dialogue."

"In our view, the committee is not yet in a position to evaluate fully the
[intelligence] community's work," the letter states. He also disputed the
notion that the CIA did not develop enough human informants in Iraq that
could provide fresh, credible information about Iraq since 1998, when U.N.
inspectors left the country.

The agency, he said, "directed a sustained and intense collection effort to
enable us to continue to make the best possible assessments" of Iraq's
secretive weapons programs. "To my knowledge, the committee has never sought
to understand the results of these collection initiatives before providing
us your letter."

Kay's interim report and the exchange between Tenet and the House committee
come at a time of heightened tension between the intelligence community, the
White House and Congress over the building of the case for invading Iraq and
the mounting costs of a violent, open-ended nation-building effort there.

"Did we misread it?" John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the ranking
Senate intelligence committee member, asked after meeting with Kay. "Or did
they [the administration] mislead us, or did they simply get it wrong?
Whatever the answer, it's not a good answer."

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, "Maybe
he was just playing an old card game bluff."

The administration is asking Congress to approve $600 million to fund the
weapons team's further investigation, double the amount the team has been
allocated. While the program is classified, Kay suggested that one of the
team's objectives will be to inspect and explode 600,000 tons of ordnance
yet to be tested for chemical or biological warheads. The funding request,
first reported by the New York Times, also came under attack by some
senators.

"At some point, we have to ask ourselves whether there's something better to
spend our money on," Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

Kay said his search was hindered by what appeared to be the destruction and
looting of laboratories and archival records areas, including the
destruction of selective computer hard drives as late as May. Inspectors
found "small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents
were intentionally destroyed," he said.

The team, Kay said, found evidence of new research on biological weapons
agents, one biological organism concealed in a scientist's home that could
be used to produce biological weapons, and labs with the capability to
"surge the production of [biological] agents" quickly.

Kay described the two mobile labs discovered after the war ended in northern
Iraq -- which President Bush once said confirmed that Hussein possessed
programs for weapons of mass destruction -- as not being "ideally suited"
for that use. "We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a
mobile BW [biological weapons] production effort," the report states.

The survey has begun looking at equipment that could be used to resume
chemical production, Kay said. He also indicated that there were leads on
other purchases and attempted purchases of chemical agents. He said many
scientists said, "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled
[chemical] weapons program after 1991." That finding conflicts with a
finding in the intelligence community's October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) that it was active.

Kay said Hussein wanted to obtain nuclear weapons, according to interviews
with Iraqi scientists and government officials, but "to date we have not
uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to
actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material."

On Oct. 7, 2002, Bush said that "the evidence indicates that Iraq is
reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. . . . Facing clear evidence of
peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come
in the form of a mushroom cloud."

After the briefing, some lawmakers were optimistic that the military-CIA
search would prove the administration's case against Hussein.

Goss, who co-authored the letter to Tenet last week, said of Kay's interim
report: "I think the news is extremely good." He said that "no one was
misled by the intelligence community." Goss said he believed the community
had included the proper caveats in the October 2002 estimate but that "they
were working with not quite enough intelligence."

He said his views were meant to be constructive, and that "instead of
picking at Dr. Kay, we ought to congratulate him."

Researcher Margaret Smith contributed to this report.


NO URL

*  RUSSIA HID SADDAM'S WMD'S
by Ion Mihai Pacepa
Washington Times, 2nd October

On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led
"aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days
later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was
predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started
plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since.

As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB,
it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped
Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all
its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing
weapons of mass destruction ? in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar,
meaning "emergency exit." I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding
Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western
imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be
traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving
them anything they could make propaganda with.

All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea.
Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche
buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons,
especially those produced in Third World countries, which lack sophisticated
production facilities, often do not retain lethal properties after a few
months on the shelf and are routinely dumped anyway. And all chemical
weapons plants had a civilian cover making detection difficult, regardless
of the circumstances.

The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing Moammar
Gadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies!
Come to Libya and see! Our Western left-wing organizations, like the World
Peace Council, existed for sole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave
them. These very same groups bray the exact same themes to this day. We
always relied on their expertise at organizing large street demonstrations
in Western Europe over America's "war-mongering" whenever we wanted to
distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes we
sponsored.

Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow.
It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard
it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny
Primakov, told me so, too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's
weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of
the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of
foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not
know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab
radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited
Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.

The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to
make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from
December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian
military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals:
Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a
former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary
medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give
Saddam military advice for the upcoming war?Saddam's Katyusha launchers were
of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG
fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to
Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward.
They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.

The U.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have
been allowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to
liquidate weapons arsenals in the event of defeat in war ? the technological
documents showing how to reproduce weapons stocks in just a few weeks.

Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995 ? when Saddam's
son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and
biological programs for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM
and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken
farm owned by Kamel's family and found more than one hundred metal trunks
and boxes containing documentation dealing with all categories of weapons,
including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its
"extensive biological warfare program, including weaponization," issued a
"Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned over documents about
the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons.

Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three
days later, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were
murdered, in what the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous
administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed,
miserable people, Saddam then made a show of cooperation with UN inspection,
since Kamel had just compromised all his programs, anyway. In November 1995,
he issued a second "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure" as to his
supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month, Jordan
intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined for
Iraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River,
again refuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed
the door shut to UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On
Aug. 5, 1998, halted cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and
they withdrew on Dec. 16, 1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and
hide his weapons of mass destruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N.
Security Council resolutions 1115, (June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997),
and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issued condemning Iraq?ineffectual words that
had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup
by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another "Full, Final and
Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements" and to
constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of
paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991).

It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of
intervening with the U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that
Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad ? even
though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at the border, war was imminent, and Moscow
could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen. Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning
up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan and assuring Saddam that Moscow
would rebuild his weapons of mass destruction after the storm subsided for a
good price.

Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in
world affairs. Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As
minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored
the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by
elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia. Between Feb. 9 12, Mr.
Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tactical alignment
against the United States to advocate further inspections rather than war.
On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and French parliaments
to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. military
aggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for
generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find
the line appealing.

Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military
victory, demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it
has begun losing the peace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves
of Saddam's victims, anti-American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere,
spewed out vitriolic attacks, accusing Washington of greed for oil and not
of really caring about weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating their
risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were really nothing very much to
worry about after all.

It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet
hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to
develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov
explained in 1968, "to the grave perils threatening the human race
thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine." Even Igor
Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from
1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about
helping to create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic
explosives is such," he warned in an article written together with several
other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "that in just a few
years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which
the existence of life on earth will be impossible."

The Cold War was fought over the reluctance to use weapons of mass
destruction, yet now this logic is something only senior citizens seem to
recall. Today, even lunatic regimes like that in North Korea not only
possess weapons of mass destruction, but openly offer to sell them to anyone
with cash, including terrorists and their state sponsors. Is anyone paying
any attention? Being inured to proliferation, however, does not reduce its
danger. On the contrary, it increases it.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=450120

*  SURVEY GROUP HEAD'S LINK TO ARMS INDUSTRY
by Glen Rangwala
The Independent, 5th October

For at least 10 years David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, has staked
his professional and business reputation on the case that Iraq was a serious
threat.

He was a frequent pundit on US television shows, making the case for regime
change in blunt language. He called the attempt by Kofi Annan, the UN
Secretary General, to broker an effective inspections process in 1998 "worse
than useless"; claimed in 2002 that Iraq was pursuing its weapons of mass
destruction in order to bring about the elimination of the state of Israel;
and said before entering Iraq that the Coalition would find not just a
"smoking gun", but a "smoking arsenal".

Until October last year, Mr Kay was the vice-president of a major San
Diego-based defence contractor, Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC), co-ordinating its homeland security and
counter-terrorism initiatives. It was while he held this role that he
claimed that Iraq could launch terrorist attacks on the US mainland.

SAIC was in the headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that the US
government had given it a contract three years ago to produce mobile
biological vans for training purposes. Until February SAIC's corporate
vice-president was Christopher Ryan Henry, now a senior policy official at
the Pentagon.

SAIC's spokesman acknowledged earlier this year that the company is deeply
involved in the current war in Iraq, including its role in leading a $650m
contract for services and support for the US army. Among other activities,
the company runs the US-funded radio station in Umm Qasr, "Voice of the New
Iraq", and helps to provide senior advisers to the US occupation authorities
in Baghdad. It is not known if Mr Kay retains financial interests in SAIC.


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/oct/04/100409195.html

*  Kay's Report Casts Doubt on Iraqi Weapons
by JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Las Vegas Sun, 5th October
{This AP account ends with a useful collection of URLs for key moments in
the US government presentation of the case for war]

WASHINGTON (AP) - On the eve of war, President Bush told the nation that
intelligence left no doubt Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was
among the final assertions of an 18-month campaign by his administration to
cast Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a serious and imminent threat.

Six months later, there are doubts.

Last week, the CIA's chief weapons hunter, David Kay, told Congress: "We
have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where
we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist, or that
they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have
gone."

On March 17, two days before the war, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by
this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to
possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Kay presented an interim report Thursday that disclosed findings of his
search teams. He argued against drawing final conclusions, saying he will be
able to provide a full picture on Iraq's weapons programs in six to nine
months.

So far Bush's prewar assertion is one of many that have not been validated
by discoveries in Iraq.

A look at some:

On nuclear weapons:

Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002: "Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against
our allies and against us."

Formal intelligence assessments were more conservative: "Although we assess
that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make
any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad
started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that (United
Nations) inspectors depart - December 1998," says the October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate, or NIE.

Kay: "Despite evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear
weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook
significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce
fissile material."

On biological weapons:

"The issue is that he's developing and has biological weapons," Cheney told
CNN on March 24, 2002.

The NIE, six months later: "We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating
BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of
such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial
sprayers and covert operatives. ... Baghdad has established a large-scale,
redundant and concealed BW agent production capability."

Kay said his teams have uncovered evidence of what they interpret as a
covert biological weapons development program, possibly centered in secret
labs run by the Iraqi intelligence service. But he reported no signs any
weapons were produced.

"Teams are uncovering significant information - including research and
development of BW applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi
Intelligence Service in possible BW activities and deliberate concealment
activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized
its program and focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that
could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents."

On chemical weapons:

Before the war, the belief was widely held that Iraq had chemical weapons.
Saddam had used them in the 1980s against Iranian troops in the eight-year
Iran-Iraq war and against restive Iraqi Kurds.

"The issue is that he has chemical weapons, and he's used them," Cheney told
CNN in March 2002.

The NIE from last October said, "Although we have little specific
information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100
metric tons and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents - much of it added
in the last year."

Kay said on Thursday: "Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on
Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable
information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we
continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks. We have
multiple reports that Iraq retained CW munitions made prior to 1991, ... but
we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions."

On whether chemical weapons would be used during combat:

Secretary of State Colin Powell, on Feb. 5, 2003, told the United Nations:
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi
field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator
tells the world he does not have."

Kay: "We have not yet found evidence to confirm prewar reporting that Iraqi
military units were prepared to use CW against coalition forces."

On a chemical weapons production line:

The NIE said: "We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of
mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosarin) and VX; its capability probably is more
limited now than it was at the time of the Gulf War, although VX production
and agent storage life probably have been improved."

Kay: "Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told (weapons
search teams) that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled
CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's
large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was
reduced - if not entirely destroyed."

On Scud missiles:

"Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the
150 kilometers permitted by the U.N.," President Bush told the United
Nations on Sept. 12, 2002.

"(Iraq) retains - in violation of UN resolutions - a small number of Scud
missiles that it produced before the Gulf War," CIA Director George J. Tenet
told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 11, 2003.

According to Kay: "One high-level detainee has recently claimed that Iraq
retained a small quantity of Scud-variant missiles until at least 2001,
although he subsequently recanted these claims. Work continues to determine
the truth."

On longer-range missiles:

Tenet: "Iraq ... is developing missiles with ranges beyond 1,000 kilometers
(620 miles)."

True, Kay said: "The Iraqis were engaged in a very full-scale program that
would have extended their delivery systems out beyond 1,000 kilometers."


David Kay's report to members of Congress:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/public-affairs/speeches/2003/david-kay-10022003.html

Bush's March 17, 2003, address to the nation:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html

Tenet's Feb. 11, 2003, Worldwide Threat Briefing:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/public-affairs/speeches/2003/dci-speech-02112003.html

Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, address to the United Nations:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm

Bush's Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union Address:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

Declassified excerpts from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2002/nie-iraq-october20
02.htm

Bush discusses Iraq with reporters, Sept. 13, 2002:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020913.html

Bush's Sept. 12, 2002 address to the United Nations:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html

Cheney's Aug. 26, 2002, speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html

Cheney's March 24, 2002, appearance on CNN:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20020324-2.
html


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3527302&thesection=news&t
hesubsection=world

*  EXTRACTS FROM ROBIN COOK'S DIARY
by NIGEL MORRIS
New Zealand Herald, 6th October

LONDON - Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, kept a diary throughout
the turbulent period leading up to war in Iraq. In it he reveals for the
first time the extent of disquiet in the Cabinet and claims that Tony Blair
knew Iraq had no useable weapons of mass destruction shortly before Britain
joined the US-led attack on Saddam Hussein.

CABINET 'MUTINY'

At a cabinet meeting on February 28, 2002, more than a year before military
action started, worries are being aired among ministers about the wisdom,
and legality, of attacking Iraq.

When Mr Cook ventures that the Arab world sees Israel as more of a threat
than Iraq, he provokes a round of "hear hears" from colleagues, which is
"the nearest I've heard to a mutiny in the Cabinet".

On March 7, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, asks where Britain had
obtained the "legal authority" to act. Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and
Industry Secretary, complains: "We are in danger of being seen as close to
President Bush, but without any influence over President Bush."

Mr Cook says it was the last cabinet session at which a large number of
ministers spoke out against the war. "Over the next six months we were to
discuss Iraq more than any other topic, but only Clare Short and I ever
expressed frank doubts about the trajectory in which we were being driven."

WHERE BUSH LEADS. . .

Mr Cook characterises Mr Blair as "Sancho Panza to George Bush's Don
Quixote."

He writes: "It would never occur to Tony Blair that there might be more
respect for a prime minister who had the courage to say 'no' to someone as
powerful as the president of the US."

He says Mr Blair earlier promised President Bill Clinton that he would
support US military action in Iraq if the United Nations route failed.

"It would certainly have been in line with his previous practice if he had
given President Bush a private assurance of British support."

Mr Cook says that in March, the Prime Minister told him he was acting as a
restraining influence on the White House. He quotes Mr Blair as saying:
"Left to himself, Bush would have gone to war in January. No, not January,
but back in September."

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Mr Cook recalls that following a private briefing on February 20 from John
Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, he concluded that
Iraq probably did not have WMD "in the sense of weapons that could be used
against large-scale civilian targets".

On March 5, a fortnight before war began, he says he told Mr Blair of his
conclusion, but added that he accepted Saddam probably had several thousand
battlefield munitions that could be fired at British troops. The Prime
Minister did not contradict him and even argued that these munitions were so
well hidden that they could not be quickly assembled.

"I have no reason to doubt that Tony Blair believed in September 2002 that
Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction ready for firing within 45
minutes. What was clear from this conversation was that he did not believe
it himself in March this year," he says.

USE OF INTELLIGENCE

The September 2002 dossier that made the case for war painted a '"one-sided
picture" of the intelligence information available, amounting to a "gross
distortion", he says.

"Intelligence is supposed to be the evidence on which ministers reach
decisions on foreign and defence policy. It is not meant to be the
propaganda by which ministers sell a policy to a sceptical public," he adds.

He notes that that in the crucial Commons debate of March 18 ministers had
backed off from claims Saddam could launch a WMD strike within 45 minutes,
that he had rebuilt chemical weapons plants or that he had tried to buy
uranium from Niger.

MISLEADING THE COMMONS

The doubt over whether the Government believed the September dossier claims
six months later as it prepared to take Britain to war, raised the "gravest
of political questions", he says.

"The rules of the Commons require Ministers to correct the record as soon as
they are aware that they may have misled Parliament ... Should they not have
told Parliament before asking the Commons to vote for war on a false
prospectus?"


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1057558,00.html

*  REVELATION CASTS DOUBT ON IRAQ FIND
by Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, 7th October

The test tube of botulinum presented by Washington and London as evidence
that Saddam Hussein had been developing and concealing weapons of mass
destruction, was found in an Iraqi scientist's home refrigerator, where it
had been sitting for 10 years, it emerged yesterday.

David Kay, the expert appointed by the CIA to lead the hunt for weapons,
told a congressional committee last week that the vial of botulinum had been
"hidden" at the scientist's home, and could be used to "covertly surge
production of deadly weapons".

Since then, the discovery of the vial has been at the heart of the debate
over prewar claims that Iraq had an arsenal of banned weapons.

It was cited in justifications of the invasion by President George Bush and
by Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who described botulinum toxin as
"15,000 times more toxic than the nerve agent VX".

Mr Straw claimed after the report came out that it presented further
"conclusive and incontrovertible" evidence that Saddam had been in breach of
UN resolutions. He said the report confirmed how "dangerous and deceitful"
the regime was and that the military action was "both justified and
essential to remove the dangers".

The US state department even argued that the discovery of the test tube
meant that Mr Kay's Iraq Survey Group (ISG), contrary to its own claim, had
found a weapon of mass destruction. However, newly disclosed details about
the circumstances in which the botulinum vial was found, have raised fresh
questions about its significance.

While presenting his progress report to Congress, Mr Kay did not say when
and where the botulinum had been hidden but he told a television interviewer
on Sunday that the scientist involved said he was asked to hide the
botulinum in his refrigerator at home in 1993. Iraq admitted pursuing a
biological weapons programme to UN inspectors two years later. It is unclear
whether the Iraqi scientist had received any orders from the regime after
that date.

It is also unclear whether the vial contained the bacteria botulinum, from
which the toxin is drawn, or the toxin itself, as Mr Kay claimed in
interviews over the weekend.

Furthermore, the most lethal form of the germ is the A strain, while the
form found by the ISG was the B strain.

Mr Kay admitted that "we have not yet found shiny, pointy things that I
would call a weapon", but he insisted there was plenty of evidence of
Saddam's intentions to reconstitute weapons programmes once free of
international scrutiny. He said the scientist who had the botulinum toxin in
his refrigerator had also been entrusted with many more strains of
biological weapons, including anthrax, but had given them back "because he
said they were too dangerous; he had small children in the house".

More evidence of such programmes was included in a 200-page classified
version of the 13 page report made public, but experts in the ISG, including
former UN inspectors, have so far not been allowed to read the classified
version, according to one of their former colleagues.

The refusal to allow ISG experts to read a report on their own work adds
weight to suspicions that the report has been manipulated. "They're under
huge pressure to come up with whatever," the ex-colleague said.

Mr Kay has said privately the report's publication was held up for about two
weeks while more work was done on it at CIA headquarters.

He says the ISG will need up to nine months to complete its search, and his
1,200-strong team is following up an abundance of leads, including the claim
by the Iraqi scientist that he had been asked in 1993 to look after anthrax
and other biological agents.

Mr Kay also said the ISG had found some evidence to support the British
government's prewar claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.
That claim had been undermined by the discovery that a letter purporting to
be an offer by the Niger government to sell uranium to Baghdad turned out to
be a fake.

But Mr Kay said: "We have found a document that is an unsolicited - as far
as we can tell - proposal to sell uranium to them from another African
country, not Niger. And we're continuing- that's an active area of a current
investigation."


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=450121

*  NO URANIUM, NO MUNITIONS, NO MISSILES, NO PROGRAMMES
by Glen Rangwala
The Independent, 7th October

Last week's progress report by American and British weapons inspectors in
Iraq has failed to supply evidence for the vast majority of the claims made
on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction by their governments before the war.

David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told congressional
committees in Washington that no official orders or plans could be found to
back up the allegation that a nuclear programme remained active after 1991.
Aluminium tubes have not been used for the enrichment of uranium, in
contrast to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's lengthy exposition to the
UN Security Council in February. No suspicious activities or residues have
been found at the seven sites within Iraq described in the Prime Minister's
dossier from September 2002.

The ISG even casts serious doubt on President Bush's much-trumpeted claim
that US forces had found three mobile biological laboratories after the war:
"technical limitations" would prevent the trailers from being ideally suited
to biological weapons production, it records. In other words, they were for
something else.

There have certainly been no signs of imported uranium, or even battlefield
munitions ready to fire within 45 minutes. Most significantly, the claim to
Parliament on the eve of conflict by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that
"we know that this man [Saddam Hussein] has got ... chemical weapons,
biological weapons, viruses, bacilli and ... 10,000 litres of anthrax" has
yet to find a single piece of supportive evidence.

Those who staked their career on the existence in Iraq of at least chemical
and biological weapons programmes have latched on to three claims in the
progress report.

First, there is the allegation that a biologist had a "collection of
reference strains" at his home, including "a vial of live C botulinum Okra B
from which a biological agent can be produced". Mr Straw claimed the morning
after the report's release that this agent was "15,000 times more toxic than
the nerve agent VX". That is wrong: botulinum type A is one of the most
poisonous substances known, and was developed in weaponised form by Iraq
before 1991. However, type B - the form found at the biologist's home - is
less lethal.

Even then, it would require an extensive process of fermentation, the
growing of the bug, the extraction of the toxin and the weaponisation of the
toxin before it could cause harm. That process would take weeks, if not
longer, but the ISG reported no sign of any of these activities.

Botulinum type B could also be used for making an antidote to common
botulinum poisoning. That is one of the reasons why many military
laboratories around the world keep reference strains of C botulinum Okra B.
The UK keeps such substances, for example, and calls them "seed banks".

Second, a large part of the ISG report is taken up with assertions that Iraq
had been acquiring designs and under- taking research programmes for
missiles with a range that exceeded the UN limit of 150km. The evidence here
is more detailed than in the rest of the report. However, it does not
demonstrate that Iraq was violating the terms of any Security Council
resolution. The prohibition on Iraq acquiring technology relating to
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons was absolute: no agents, no
sub-systems and no research or support facilities.

By contrast, Iraq was simply prohibited from actually having longer-range
missiles, together with "major parts, and repair and production facilities".
The ISG does not claim proof that Iraq had any such missiles or facilities,
just the knowledge to produce them in future. Indeed, it would have been
entirely lawful for Iraq to develop such systems if the restrictions
implemented in 1991 were lifted, while it would never have been legitimate
for it to re develop WMD.

Third, one sentence within the report has been much quoted: Iraq had "a
clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi
intelligence service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and
suitable for continuing CBW research". Note what that sentence does not say:
these facilities were suitable for chemical and biological weapons research
(as almost any modern lab would be), not that they had engaged in such
research. The reference to UN monitoring is also spurious: under the terms
of UN resolutions, all of Iraq's chemical and biological facilities are
subject to monitoring. So all this tells us is that Iraq had modern
laboratories.


WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4895.htm

*  4,000 U.S. NON-COMBAT EVACUATIONS IN IRAQ 
by Mark Benjamin

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have been medically
evacuated from Operation Iraqi Freedom for non-combat reasons -- with more
than one in five of those for psychiatric or neurological problems,
according to Pentagon data.

A total of 3,915 evacuations from the region have been for non-combat
medical problems. A combination of what the Pentagon is calling evacuations
for "psychiatric" and "neurological" problems make up 22 percent of the
total, with 478 and 387 evacuations, respectively.

Another 544 evacuations have been for "general surgery," 290 for
gynecological reasons and 118 for orthopedic problems.

Army Surgeon General spokeswoman Virginia Stephanakis, who supplied the
data, said on Friday that she had few details, but that the Pentagon had not
detected any "red flags" indicating troubling or unexpected health patterns.

Some of the evacuations were for accidental injuries, she said, adding that
orthopedic, or bone, problems might reflect vehicle accidents.

A leading veterans' group said the data needed to be studied to understand
the true cost of the war and potential health hazards.

"Clearly there is more detail that needs to be given about the nature and
causes of these evacuations," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the
National Gulf War Resource Center.

In August, the Pentagon announced an investigation into a mysterious
pneumonia that killed two soldiers and made 17 others so sick they needed
ventilators to breathe. The probe is focusing on the role of smoking, those
officials said.

An investigation by United Press International found that 17 soldiers in
Operation Iraqi Freedom have died from sudden illnesses, including three
with fluid in the lungs, eight who suddenly collapsed and three who were
found dead in their cots. 

Robinson questioned whether any of the psychiatric or neurological problems
might be related to Lariam, a common anti-malaria drug given to many
soldiers in the region. Lariam's FDA-approved product label warns of reports
of hallucinations, seizures, paranoia, aggression, delusions and suicide. 

Published reports this summer said the military was investigating several
suspected suicides. UPI found that at least 15 service members in Operation
Iraqi Freedom have died from what were described as non-combat gunshot
wounds, the latest on Sept. 30.

The Pentagon says it sometimes uses Lariam, known generically as mefloquine,
over other anti-malaria drugs because side effects are rare and must be
weighed against the risk of getting malaria.

A total of 318 soldiers have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom since March 20,
according to the Pentagon. Another 1,380 soldiers have been wounded in
action as of Oct. 1.

Contributing: Christine Moyer 


NO URL

*  US IRAQ BUDGET- DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
by THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 5th October

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 ‹ Even as the Bush administration pleads with allies to
send peacekeepers to Iraq, $1.2 billion in hedge money is buried deep inside
President Bush's financing request for Iraq in case the Pentagon is forced
to mobilize two more National Guard brigades, squeeze the Army to send more
troops to Iraq or send marines for a year.

At least $3 billion in the overall request is classified to pay for
intelligence activities, Special Operations missions, experimental weapons
and even runways in a nation that supports America's efforts but does not
want to be identified. One program pulled out of the laboratory and sent to
the field is a robot used to detect and destroy remote-controlled bombs that
have been planted against troops and convoys with deadly effect, military
officials say.

The administration's $20.3 billion request for Iraqi reconstruction has been
under the hot lamp of Congressional scrutiny, but the vastly larger portion
of the emergency spending bill ‹ $65.6 billion for Pentagon activities,
military operations and classified programs ‹ has drawn few complaints.

The Pentagon's portion of the supplemental request includes $51 billion for
military operations in Iraq, $11 billion for operations in Afghanistan and
$4 billion for domestic security and to support allied efforts. It covers
everything from armored Humvees and protective body armor for troops to $50
million in reward bounties for capturing Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

"For us to successfully leave an Iraq that can stand on its own two feet, we
obviously have to continue to fund the military operations, but the $20
billion is equally as integral," Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller,
said in an interview. "That is the underpinnings of Iraq's future security."

The bulk of the Pentagon's sum covers the increased costs of keeping about
122,000 American troops in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan. The Army, as
expected, commands more than half of the request.

But there are some surprises.

The administration continues to plead with countries like South Korea and
Turkey to fill a third multinational division for Iraq. But even as the
administration tells its allies, justifiably, that it would be difficult to
find enough Americans to go if foreign troops do not materialize, it will
not be hard to find the money to pay for them, if Congress passes the
supplemental request unchanged.

The spending proposal includes $1.2 billion to pay for the National Guard
mobilization or a Marine division to go to Iraq next spring. Just in case
the allies do agree to help out, there is another $390 million for
transporting, feeding and housing foreign troops.

Their salaries, however, must come from the resources of their own
governments.

The request also includes $339 million for classified research and
development, unexpected in an emergency spending bill, since those costs,
part of the planned life of bringing a weapons system online, are usually
part of the regular budget.

Pentagon, military and Congressional officials say some of the research and
development request in the spending plan would pay for secret weapons that
may not have officially joined the American arsenal but have been ordered
into the field nonetheless.

The military used this strategy when it fielded the experimental Joint Stars
ground surveillance plane in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and the Global
Hawk remotely piloted reconnaissance aircraft in the Afghan and Iraq wars.

On Capitol Hill, the consensus among senior Republican and Democratic aides
is that the administration's military supplemental request will sail through
Congress largely unscathed.

If anything, top aides from both parties said, the Pentagon may be
shortchanging the Army of funds it needs to fully repair and replace worn
equipment used in the war and its aftermath, and to reset the force.

Scott Lilly, the Democratic staff director on the House Appropriations
Committee, said the Army would need more than $17.5 billion to replace or
repair worn or damaged equipment. But the Army's request for depot
maintenance and procurement was only about $2.2 billion in the supplemental
request. The military presumably would ask for the rest in future years,
Congressional aides said.

"The Army has huge unmet needs in Iraq that are not in this," Mr. Lilly
said.

Mr. Lilly said that the Army was short about 40,000 sets of body armor for
soldiers in Iraq (the vests, he said, cost about $500 apiece), but he added
that senior Army officials had assured the committee that all American
forces in Iraq would have the equipment by mid November.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill this week that transfers
nearly $1 billion from Navy, Air Force and other accounts to the Army to
help pay for the additional equipment.

In the Defense Department's request, some critical assumptions are
explained. The Pentagon is anticipating an average of about 113,000 military
personnel in Iraq through the fiscal year that ends next September. But the
military is also expecting the size of the Army's contribution to shrink to
just over two divisions, from five divisions now. That, again, assumes an
influx of allied forces ‹ or great strides in stabilizing the country and an
increase in Iraq's own police and defense forces.

There is an emphasis throughout the Pentagon's request on accommodating
allies that agree to help with the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The
Pentagon requested $1.4 billion to reimburse Pakistan, Jordan and other
allied countries for logistical support they provided. The Pentagon also
requested blanket authority to shift funds, if necessary, in its regular
operations budget to support allied forces help in Iraq.

"That's a little piece of language with a big impact on foreign aid," said
Gordon Adams, a White House budget official in the Clinton administration.

Much of the request underscores the toll that the fast-paced campaign in the
harsh desert conditions took on the military's equipment. The Navy is asking
for $56.5 million to fix cracked wings on E-2C's and EA-6B's, and $59
million in spare parts over all. The Air Force wants $4.9 million to buy 50
new Hellfire missiles for armed Predator aircraft.

The dangerous postwar mission needs special equipment. The Army has
requested $12.6 million for mobile X-ray scanning machines used to search
large containers and vehicles for weapons. The Army also wants $5 million to
buy 20 Packbot systems, small robots with acoustical sensors used to support
missions against snipers.

There are other effects of the supplemental spending proposal.

Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research
group in Arlington, Va., said that by requesting extra money now for
operating and maintaining the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon
was helping to shield the portion of its regular budget for buying new
weapons. "They have taken pressure off procurement," he said.


NO URL

*  WHITE HOUSE TO OVERHAUL IRAQ AND AFGHAN MISSIONS
by DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 6th October

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 ‹ The White House has ordered a major reorganization of
American efforts to quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to speed the
reconstruction of both countries, according to senior administration
officials.

The new effort includes the creation of an "Iraq Stabilization Group," which
will be run by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The decision
to create the new group, five months after Mr. Bush declared the end of
active combat in Iraq, appears part of an effort to assert more direct White
House control over how Washington coordinates its efforts to fight
terrorism, develop political structures and encourage economic development
in the two countries.

It comes at a time when surveys show Americans are less confident of Mr.
Bush's foreign policy skills than at any time since the terrorist attacks
two years ago. At the same time, Congress is using President Bush's request
for $87 billion to question the administration's failure to anticipate the
violence in Iraq and the obstacles to reconstruction.

"This puts accountability right into the White House," a senior
administration official said.

The reorganization was described in a confidential memorandum that Ms. Rice
sent Thursday to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the director of central intelligence, George J.
Tenet.

Asked about the memorandum on Sunday, Ms. Rice called it "a recognition by
everyone that we are in a different phase now" that Congress is considering
Mr.

Bush's request for $20 billion for reconstruction and $67 billion for
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. She said it was devised by
herself, Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Powell and Mr. Rumsfeld in response
to discussions she held with Mr. Bush at his ranch in late August.

The creation of the group, according to several administration officials,
grew out of Mr. Bush's frustration at the setbacks in Iraq and the absence
of more visible progress in Afghanistan, at a moment when remnants of the
Taliban appear to be newly active. It is the closest the White House has
come to an admission that its plans for reconstruction in those countries
have proved insufficient, and that it was unprepared for the guerrilla-style
attacks that have become more frequent in Iraq. There have been more
American deaths in Iraq since the end of active combat than during the six
weeks it took to take control of the country.

"The president knows his legacy, and maybe his re-election, depends on
getting this right," another administration official said. "This is as close
as anyone will come to acknowledging that it's not working." Inside the
State Department and in some offices in the White House, the decision to
create the stabilization group has been interpreted as a direct effort to
diminish the authority of the Pentagon and Mr. Rumsfeld in the next phase of
the occupation. Senior White House officials denied that was the case, and
said in interviews on Sunday that the idea had been created by members of
the National Security Council and embraced by Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a
lightning rod for criticism about poor postwar planning.

"Don recognizes this is not what the Pentagon does best, and he is, in some
ways, relieved to give up some of the authority here," a senior official
insisted, noting that L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the allied provisional
authority in Iraq, will still report to the Defense Department. But one of
Mr.Bremer's key deputies will sit on the new stabilization group, giving him
a direct line outside the Pentagon.

Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday that the defense
secretary was "aware of the new approach" and noted that Mr. Bremer's
"relationship with Rumsfeld remains unchanged." If Mr. Rumsfeld is giving up
some authority, officials say, so is Mr. Powell.

The State Department has been in charge of the Afghan reconstruction effort,
but now the White House will assert new control over the interagency effort
there.

"While the problems in Afghanistan are less complex," a senior official
said, "the president wanted to know how come it took so long to get the
highway under construction." That project has become symbolic of the slow
pace of reconstruction, especially outside the capital.

The creation of the stabilization group appears to give more direct control
to Ms. Rice, one of the president's closest confidantes, who signed the
memorandum announcing it. For the first two and a half years of Mr. Bush's
presidency, Ms. Rice often seemed hesitant to take a more active role,
eschewing the kind of hands-on approach for which Henry A. Kissinger and
other national security advisers were known, and viewing her job chiefly as
providing quiet advice to Mr. Bush.

Now, four of her deputies will run coordinating committees ‹ on
counterterrorism efforts, economic development, political affairs in Iraq
and the creation of clearer messages to the media here and in Baghdad.

Each working group will include under secretaries from the State, Defense
and Treasury Departments, and senior representatives from the Central
Intelligence Agency.

State Department officials have complained bitterly that they have been shut
out of decision-making about Iraq, even as attacks on American troops
increased, lights failed and oil production remained stuck far below even
prewar levels.

Mr. Bush, a senior administration official said, made it clear that he
wanted "all the powers of the government" turned toward making the
reconstruction work in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "The president is
impatient with bureaucracy," the official said.

In the interview, Ms. Rice described the new organization as one intended to
support the Pentagon, not supplant it.

"The N.S.C. staff is first and foremost the president's staff," she said,
"but it is of course the staff to the National Security Council." That group
will in effect be taking more direct responsibility.

The council is made up of top advisers to the president who meet three times
a week in the Situation Room. They have often seemed unable to coordinate
efforts on the main issues relating to the occupation of Iraq. "The Pentagon
remains the lead agency, and the structure has been set up explicitly to
provide assistance to the Defense Department and coalition provisional
authority," Ms.Rice said.

Other officials said the effect of Ms. Rice's memorandum would be to move
day-to-day issues of administering Iraq to the White House.

The counterterrorism group, for example, will be run by Frances F. Townsend,
Ms. Rice's deputy for that field. Economic issues ‹ from oil to electricity
to the distribution of a new currency ‹ will be coordinated by Gary Edson.
He has been the liaison between the National Security Council and the
National Economic Council.

Robert D. Blackwill, a former ambassador to India, will run the group
overseeing the creation of political institutions in Iraq, as well as
directing stabilization for Afghanistan.

Anna Perez, Ms. Rice's communications director, will focus on a coordinated
media message ‹ a response to concerns about the daily reports of attacks on
American troops and lawlessness in the streets.




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