117th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. While the White House continues to fight a rearguard campaign on Iraq, using its most prominent spokespersons in public—including the president and the National Security Adviser—it also receives support in a narrower venue from the unorthodoxly credentialed new addition to the White House press corps, James Guckert/Jeff Gannon. Meanwhile, White House cronies and insiders benefit from contracts for Iraq reconstruction.
February 13-29, 2004:

 

 

Feb. 13, 2004 – Jeff Gannon/James Guckert asks a helpful question about WMD at the White House press briefing conducted by Scott McClellan:

“Q On the weapons of mass destruction issue. With the revelation that A.Q. Khan was conducting a rather extensive trading business in nuclear secrets, technology, et cetera, we know that North Korea has interest in things like that. Libya had a program they are now going to abandon. There are questions about Iran having an illegal centrifuge; Syria, et cetera. Is it reasonable or even prudent to think now, because of David Kay's statements, that there are absolutely no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? That the guy who was totally devoted to weapons of mass destruction now has none? Is it reasonable or logical to even consider that?

 

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, we know he had them, we know he had used them. Those are facts. We know he had the intent and capability. We know he was a gathering threat. And that's been spelled out by Dr. Kay most recently.

What we have learned since the war only reconfirms that he was a grave and gathering threat, even before the war.

 

Q Okay. Let me go one step further. The weapons of mass destruction concept is, to most people, I think they're envisioning some of the Cold War-era weaponry, missiles with warheads and things of that nature. But weapons of mass destruction, doesn't that include very small, very discrete pieces of equipment and vials of biological agents? Isn't that included in this weapons of mass destruction?

 

MR. McCLELLAN: We believed he had them. We expected to find them. The President made very clear that the Iraq Survey Group continues their work. We'll find out the truth. They will find out what happened to the weapons of mass destruction.

 

Q But you're not abandoning the idea that there still could be those weapons there?

MR. McCLELLAN: Jeff, I think there are a lot of different theories out there about what happened to the weapons of mass destruction.”

 

Feb. 26, 2004 – Major General Antonio M. Taguba issues the report of the investigation of detention and internment operations at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

 

Feb. 28, 2004 – Foreign banks are allowed back into Iraq for the first time since they were expelled in the 1960s. Iraq’s Central Bank announces licenses given to the National Bank of Kuwait, the Standard Chartered of Britain and HSBC of Britain, the world’s second-largest bank by market value. According to the office of central bank governor Sinan al-Shabibi, the banks would “start as of the middle of March . . . The banks will be required to begin actual banking operations . . . in Iraq no later than Dec. 31, 2004. These banks will bring modern banking practices, capital and know-how to the Iraqi economy.”

 

Same day -- The U.S. military announces that a $327 million contract is awarded to a little-known, privately held northern Virginia company named Nour USA, a new consortium with ties to Ahmad Chalabi and to presidential brother Marvin P. Bush. The fixed-price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract calls for Nour USA to provide a broad range of equipment to the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. The controversial contract is later re-bid but is then effectively awarded again to a new entity comprising the same interests.