100^th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. August is notoriously a quiet month around the corridors of power—the time most top officials go on vacation, Congress is on recess, and prominent media personalities leave the Beltway. Nonetheless, in August, 2003, certain wheels keep turning. The administration will have a year to work on trying to retain Congress and the White House in the 2004 elections in the face of imploding claims about Iraq. The work involves positive representations to the public and aggressive cover-up behind the scenes.
August 1-12, 2003:

 
Aug. 1, 2003 – The Directorate of Operations (DO) in CIA gets a new Information Review Officer, Marilyn A. Dorn, who will be responsible for determining which materials will be released for investigations or criminal proceedings such as in the CIA leak matter.

Aug. 5, 2003 – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers give a joint press briefing at which they try to put a good face on the situation in Iraq:

 
“With the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein last month, confidence is growing in Iraq that the Ba'athists will not be returning to power. As a result, more Iraqis are coming forward to help the coalition as the coalition works to get the country back on a path of stability and self-government. And the people coming in are providing helpful information as the coalition deals with the remnants of the Ba'ath regime that are seeking to undermine their progress.

The U.S. recently approved $30 million award to the person who provided the whereabouts of Uday and Qusay Hussein. That information silenced two dangerous enemies and has made Iraq safer for the Iraqi people.

As more Iraqis step forward with information and assistance, coalition forces have conducted scores of raids against the remnants that still exist in the country. Within recent weeks, coalition forces have captured literally many hundreds of individuals. They have now captured or killed 38 of the top 55 "most wanted." The forces have confiscated millions of dollars -- money that could have been used and some of which undoubtedly would have been used to pay dead-enders to ambush American and British troops. They have seized thousands of mortar rounds, hundreds of small arms, plus heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, plastic explosives, documents and ammunition.

In addition to the military successes that the forces are having, the Coalition Provisional Authority has had successes on the civil side as well: the opening of the universities and hospitals, the return of Iraq to the world oil market, the hiring of Iraqi police and the formation of an Iraqi army, and the local municipal councils that are taking office all across Iraq.”

It is sad how infrequently these local councils—some of which have existed, in some form, for millennia—are mentioned by U.S. public officials.

Aug. 8, 2003 – The New York Times reports that the administration is said to be retaliating against Joseph Wilson for his July op-ed about Niger.

Aug. 12, 2003 – The conservative Washington Times newspaper, in the Reverend Sun Myoung Moon’s media conglomerate, publishes an article by former Reagan White House official Frank Gaffney, Jr., another ‘Project for the New American Century’ member, which accuses the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) of (liberal) bias:

 
“Matters were made worse when Secretary of State Colin Powell decided to turn the vast majority of the policy-making positions in his department over to foreign service officers and civil servants who were recruited and/or promoted to senior posts during the Clinton administration. Not surprisingly, Foggy Bottom has been a hotbed of covert and occasionally overt opposition to much of Mr. Bush's foreign and defense policy agenda.  

       This has been particularly true of the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR], an organization staffed by foreign service officers and civil servants who do tours of duty in INR between rotations to overseas and other assignments. Not surprisingly, this bureau's intelligence products have tended to reflect the policy predilections of State's permanent bureaucracy, rather than the facts.        

       Two INR officials, recent retiree Greg Thielmann and his former subordinate Christian Westermann, have been among the few intelligence officials publicly to attack the integrity of the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq. The former reportedly fared poorly when given an opportunity to support his charges recently before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Senate staffers have described Mr. Westermann's charges of politicization of intelligence to be "laughable."”
(“Divided Loyalties,” A12)

Soon afterward, a spate of attacks on the INR will appear on rightwing Internet sites.