US Vetoes UN Resolution Criticizing Israel
Reuters reported that the United States on Tuesday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Israel stop its major offensive in the Gaza Strip that has cost at least 68 Palestinian lives. Eleven nations voted in favor. Britain, Germany and Romania abstained on the measure, which was drafted by Arab nations.
Blindly supporting Israel's offensive against the Palestinians is not going to help us in Iraq, or anywhere else, except in Israel and with some constituencies in the US. Bush had it backwards; the road to peace in Baghdad runs through Jerusalem. We are only asking for more Arab and Muslim hatred.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Bush Is a Liar, Or Something Is Rotten in the White House, Say Dean and the NYT
Howard Dean pulled a few punches on Letterman last night, but he still spoke more clearly and honestly than anybody else, including Kerry. He spoke at length about the Sunday New York Times article on the aluminum tubes that Bush and his subordinates (Cheney, Rice, Powell) said were for centrifuges for nuclear purposes, but that the intelligence community knew were for conventional weapons uses.
Today the NYT followed up its article with an editorial saying that the administration had plenty of evidence that the tubes-for-bombs theory was baseless. The editorial says that Colin Powell "gravely damaged his reputation" by using the faulty information in his UN briefing, and that either Condi Rice fell down badly in keeping the President informed about this issue and should resign, or the President "terribly misled the public."
Howard Dean pulled a few punches on Letterman last night, but he still spoke more clearly and honestly than anybody else, including Kerry. He spoke at length about the Sunday New York Times article on the aluminum tubes that Bush and his subordinates (Cheney, Rice, Powell) said were for centrifuges for nuclear purposes, but that the intelligence community knew were for conventional weapons uses.
Today the NYT followed up its article with an editorial saying that the administration had plenty of evidence that the tubes-for-bombs theory was baseless. The editorial says that Colin Powell "gravely damaged his reputation" by using the faulty information in his UN briefing, and that either Condi Rice fell down badly in keeping the President informed about this issue and should resign, or the President "terribly misled the public."
Monday, October 04, 2004
MTCR Meeting in Seoul
A meeting of the members of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which I helped create while I was working at the State Department, is being held in Seoul, South Korea. I'm glad it's still around and hopefully doing some good.
A meeting of the members of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which I helped create while I was working at the State Department, is being held in Seoul, South Korea. I'm glad it's still around and hopefully doing some good.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
New York Times Studies Iraqi Aluminum Cylinders
A huge article in today's New York Times, "How the White House Used Disputed Arms Intelligence," describes at length how the Bush administration used questionable analysis of intelligence to support its plan to invade Iraq. The White House knew that there was disagreement within the Intelligence Community about what Iraq intended to do with the aluminum tubes, but chose to ignore the disagreement and use only the interpretation that the tubes were intended to be used only in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. According to the article, this administration interpretation was mainly supported only by one junior analyst at CIA, and was opposed by analysts at the Department of Energy who had the most expertise on the subject.
The article is a strong indictment of the current intelligence structure, because George Tenet, the then-Director of Central Intelligence, claimed that he had no role in settling this dispute between intelligence organizations, despite the fact that this dispute was intimately related to the US decision to go to war with Iraq.
In addition, experts at the IAEA (the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency) also strongly discounted the CIA interpretation. According to the article, when the CIA analyst championing the nuclear use went to Vienna to make his presentation to the IAEA, the presentation was a disaster.
A huge article in today's New York Times, "How the White House Used Disputed Arms Intelligence," describes at length how the Bush administration used questionable analysis of intelligence to support its plan to invade Iraq. The White House knew that there was disagreement within the Intelligence Community about what Iraq intended to do with the aluminum tubes, but chose to ignore the disagreement and use only the interpretation that the tubes were intended to be used only in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. According to the article, this administration interpretation was mainly supported only by one junior analyst at CIA, and was opposed by analysts at the Department of Energy who had the most expertise on the subject.
The article is a strong indictment of the current intelligence structure, because George Tenet, the then-Director of Central Intelligence, claimed that he had no role in settling this dispute between intelligence organizations, despite the fact that this dispute was intimately related to the US decision to go to war with Iraq.
In addition, experts at the IAEA (the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency) also strongly discounted the CIA interpretation. According to the article, when the CIA analyst championing the nuclear use went to Vienna to make his presentation to the IAEA, the presentation was a disaster.
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