Hitting the Rim

Many moons ago, the Bush White House "discovered" a letter from Iraqi security chief Tahir Jalil Habbush to Saddam Hussein. The letter showed a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein—Mohammad Atta (lead man on September 11) had trained in Iraq and  al-Qaida had been involved with some mysterious shipments from Niger to Iraq, which were believed to contain yellow cake uranium. Dubya and the boys (sorry Condi) viewed this as the "slam dunk" they needed to make their case for invading Iraq.

As Ron Suskind has been so kind to back up with fact what many of us have long believed, this letter wasn't quite kosher. Point of fact, it was a bald-faced lie. This week his book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, detailing the events leading up to this letter as well as the aftermath was published. Suskind's sources are two former CIA officials—Rob Richer and John Maguire— who have said CIA Director George Tenet ordered them to create the forged document. And yes he has the men's interviews on tape.

Richer and Maguire have made a statement. First from Richer:

I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book. 

Richer, the CIA's former deputy director of clandestine operations, then added that he had spoken with Maguire (former head of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group at the time), currently in Iraq on a consultant basis, who gave permission to state the following on his behalf:

I never received any instruction from then Chief/NE Rob Richer or any other officer in my chain of command instructing me to fabricate such a letter. Further, I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq.

And of course the Bush folk issued their own statement, courtesy of the White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto. "The notion that the White House directed anyone to forge a letter from Habbush to Saddam Hussein is absurd."

Bless Dennis Kucinich's heart. He must be salivating over the possibility of his impeachment motions against Bush and Cheney actually gaining some traction. Now of course, between the denials of the sources and no smoking gun other than said sources memories, those less inclined to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy might cry foul over Suskind's allegations.

But really folks, do you put anything past Dubya and the boys at this point? Ain't nothing straight about those boys except the creases in their pants. They are crooked and would lie to their own mothers.

Now if the Bush administration had actually paid attention to what Habbush, their source was saying, rather than what they wanted him to say, it looks like we could have avoided this whole debacle (not that avoiding war was ever something Dubya was interested in–he had a stiffie to be a "War Time President" as soon as the Supreme Court handed him the keys to the White House). Suskind notes that in January 2003 (the letter appeared in September of the same year) Habbush told British Intelligence that Saddam's nuclear program and chemical weapon stockpile were a thing of the past–the distant past, Saddam kibboshed them TWELVE years earlier.

Tenet's response to this news, "They're (the Bush Administration) not going to like this downtown." The information that Habbush supplied went away.

Salon offers a pretty even handed review of the book, which is about much more, good and bad, than this one episode—in fact the forged letter gotcha doesn't appear until page 370.

And last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann had an exclusive with Suskind as well, it is about 13 minutes long if you have the time.