125^th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. The 2004 U.S. election race heads into its final month, but no definitive calling to account is achieved. Millions of Americans show themselves more able to call the White House to account than does the presidential campaign process.
October, 2004:

 

Oct. 3, 2004 – The deadly assault on the city of Fallujah in Iraq begins.
 

Oct. 3, 2004 – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, appearing on Sunday talk shows, says she stands by her pre-war intelligence assessment of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Interviewed on Late Edition on CNN, Rice, who had specifically cited the “aluminum tubes” as evidence before the war that Saddam was working on nukes, says,

“The fact of the matter is, the president made this decision based on a body of evidence, not just on aluminum tubes, and on the key judgment of his intelligence organization that this was a program of a reconstitution of the nuclear program.”

Making the round of the talk shows a month before the presidential election, Rice says that international support for the Iraq war is growing and that the ‘coalition’ was right to make war on Iraq.

 

Oct. 6, 2004 – A definitive report states conclusively that at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and no plans to build them.
 

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer summarizes a 1000-page report by the Iraq Survey Group, the weapons team. Saddam destroyed his chemical and biological weapons in 1991 and 1992 and halted nuclear efforts.

 

Oct. 7, 2004 – Speaking from the South grounds of the White House, President Bush responds to the Duelfer testimony on the Iraq Survey Group report:

“THE PRESIDENT: Chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.

The Duelfer report also raises important new information about Saddam Hussein's defiance of the world and his intent and capability to develop weapons. The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program, once the world looked away.

Based on all the information we have today, I believe we were right to take action, and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison. He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction. And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies. Saddam Hussein was a unique threat, a sworn enemy of our country, a state sponsor of terror, operating in the world's most volatile region. In a world after September the 11th, he was a threat we had to confront. And America and the world are safer for our actions.”

Two points might be noted here. The first is that even by administration standards, the principle for launching a war against another sovereign state is remarkably cavalier: Saddam may not have had nuclear weapons, but he still wanted them.

The second is the Bush-Cheney insistence that Saddam Hussein was somehow liable to hand weapons of mass destruction over to unnamed “terrorist enemies.” Every cogent study of Saddam and Islamist partisans has found them at odds, and the common-sense perception is that Saddam’s regime suppressed the guerrilla free agentry that the occupation of Iraq has now released. But the White House clings to its Orientalist misrepresentations of terrorism as unconnected to anything except Muslims—while extending potentially to all Muslims, presumably, including even secular Muslims in a head-of-state stratosphere like that of Saddam Hussein.

 

Oct. 7, 2004 -- The U.S. District Court for D.C., after a failed appeal by Miller, finds Judith Miller in civil contempt for refusing to answer a grand jury subpoena. The Court denies motions to quash subpoena by Time magazine and by Time reporter Matthew Cooper.

 

Oct. 13, 2004 – The U.S. District Court for D.C., after failed appeals, finds Time magazine and correspondent Matthew Cooper in civil contempt for refusing to answer a grand jury subpoena.

 
Attempts to turn the CIA leak investigation conducted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, once the grand jury has been convened, into a First Amendment issue consistently fail in courts, up to the highest court in the land.

 

Oct. 21, 2004 – Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), releases an unclassified report by the Senate Armed Services Minority Staff, Report of an Inquiry into the Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraq-Al Qaeda Relationship. The report states that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy conducted an inappropriate alternative analysis of intelligence and hyped a dubious connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

 

Oct. 28, 2004 – A study by a courageous team of U.S. and Iraqi scientists publishes that the number of civilian deaths in Iraq following the U.S. invasion is estimated at 100,000.

 
This estimate, said by the researchers themselves to be conservative, does not include the city of Fallujah, where a bloody U.S. assault began with destruction of the hospital.

 

Oct. 29, 2004 – Osama bin Laden, surfacing in an appearance obviously timed to influence the U.S. presidential a few days away, releases an elaborate videotape to Arab news station Al Jazeera.

 
In the tape, bin Laden, posed like an icon against a parchment-like backdrop and formally robed and turbaned, delivers a speech warning Americans in general terms: “O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results.”

 
Bin Laden has been seldom mentioned by the administration during the 2004 election campaign.

[n.b.: On September 28, I had published an interview with retired intelligence officer Theodore J. Pahle, for American Reporter. The interview included this Q&A on bin Laden:

"Pahle also feels that the "humint" community is often doing a "fabulous" job, though this view does not entirely include the CIA. "The CIA was not good enough to do it all," Pahle sums up. The CIA is "still very parochial" and "wants all the glory."

"That's what the hunt for bin Laden is about," he says -- a "CIA rush for glory."

Pahle was interviewed in Washington.

AR: Osama bin Laden is back in the news. Pakistan's Gen. Musharraf, who told more than one news agency in early 2002 that he thought UBL had been killed, directly or indirectly, by the bombing of Bora Bora, Afghanistan, in late 2001, is now saying that bin Laden is still alive. Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry and his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, recently referred to bin Laden as in hiding. Do you think Osama bin Laden is still alive?

Pahle: "No. I think he died in Tora Bora. Why? Because, by now, his reappearance, which could have been easily confirmed without compromising his location -- he's smart, he would have been easily able to do that -- would have been a terrible blow to American recovery after 9/11."

"To have Osama bin Laden reappear and say, 'I'm still alive, and I'm coming back!' Would have been absolutely devastating to the American economy," he said."

The factors in bin Laden's decision to make an abrupt appearance--assuming it was his decision--are not known. He was obviously online, and his videotape showed strong concern for appearances. He gave every sign of having been reading his own press. Naturally, I wd hope that my own article was not among the influences in bin Laden's flawed interpretation of the West.

It wd be incomparably worse to have in any way influenced the administration to attack the city of Fallujah so horribly. That would be a truly suicidal nightmare. There is already such a deep weight of sadness.]