April 21, 2005

Let's start with a simple fact. The United States invaded and conquered Iraq on the basis of lies. Even the official report of the United States Senate < http://www.infowars.com/print/iraq/war_on_alie.htm > admits as much.
So, where did all this bad information come from? While the culprits would like to pin the blame on the Central Intelligence Agency, the facts point in a different direction. To cite just one example, the now-discredited claim that Saddam was trying to buy "Yellow Cake" Uranium from Niger came from the Pentagon, specifically from Paul Wolfowitz < http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold.php?articleid=1913 >, using information the CIA stated was unreliable. Wolfowitz, and his assistant Douglas Feith, set up a special office called the "Office of Special Plans" in 2001, that fed information to the White House to urge the attack on Iraq. Shortly after the invasion, the OSP was disbanded.

So, the trail of the lies that started a war goes from the White House, to the Pentagon, to the Office of Special Plans. But where was the OSP getting their information? Clearly, they were not using information provided by the CIA, or the CIA would not have denounced their cources as "unreliable". According to some reports, the OSP was using "consultants" who came from outside the Pentagon and operated with no oversight or accountability! < http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0402osp.php >

The Office of Special Plans operated on its own, off the official payroll and away from Congressional oversight < http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html >. According to several sources, it was the information given out by the Office of Special Plans that Dick Cheney "encouraged" the the CIA to adopt! So where does the trail lead from the OSP?

As it turns out, the OSP was getting their information from primarily two sources. The first was Ahmed Chalabi, the bank embezzler who would be king and didn't care how it came about. < http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&s=dreyfuss >

The second, and more damning source, is the office of the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon! As the Office of Special Plans poured out the lies that led to war, Israeli officers, up to the rank of General, were repeatedly escorted inside the Pentagon to the Office of Special Plans < http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0807-02.htm > . At no time were they required to sign in!

Douglas Feith would then take this information, despite CIA doubts about the credibility of the claims, into private briefings at the White House that bypassed CIA. < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07
/11/wsept11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/11/ixnewstop.html ... > In some cases, the CIA was unaware of Feith's private briefings until the OSP information became part of White House public policy.

So, this is the trail of the lies that started a war, beginning at the White House, and via Dick Cheney moving upstream to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, under Wolfowitz and Feith, then from OSP to a parallel group operating out of Ariel Sharon's office in Israel.

That's the trail.