This, from today's Washington Post:

"With significant help from his top aides, President Bush has managed
to shoot himself and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in their
combined four feet in a minor intelligence controversy that threatens
to obscure the real problems of U.S. assessments of Iraq before and
during the Second Gulf War.

"The flap over what the CIA told the Bush White House about Iraqi
efforts to buy uranium in Africa is a classic Washington case of going
for the capillary rather than the jugular -- of pounding on a
superficial but politically symbolic issue rather than examining the
tougher and more complex institutional questions about intelligence
that the Iraq crisis raises.

"Part of the 'yellowcake' controversy is payback by intelligence
professionals trained in the arts of disinformation and spreading
confusion. The political leadership of the administration declared war
on the careerists at the CIA soon after Bush's election. There should
be no surprise that analysts who feel their insights have been scorned
and attacked would use this opportunity to get even."

Ful
article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62121-2003Jul15.html?nav=
hptoc_eo

__Peter Feldmann

Indeed, the more serious issue is that the true motivation for the Iraq war, as described by some Bush Administration officials--to "send a message" after 9-11 to Syria and Iran--was completely withheld from the American public. As one official described it, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" issue was thought to be the most effective argument from a public relations standpoint. Apparently Madison Avenue is the new model for deciding what to tell the public when you want to start a war. This makes the "Wag the Dog" scenario trivial by comparison, and is perhaps the most serious threat at all to a functioning democracy.

This is not a new thing--since the PR campaign that changed John D. Rockefeller's image from an industrial pirate to a gentle old man handing out dimes to children, there has been an increasing trend toward subverting democratic decision-making by "managing" public opinion. Apparently, we have now reached a whole new level in this process. It should probably be grounds for impeachment, but since Bush didn't lie about oral sex, it probably won't happen. THAT we take seriously.

Martin Shackelford

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Indeed this has sent a message to more than just Syria and Iran.  However
with the current state of events in Iraq just what is that message?  Either
we did not think this conflict all the way through for this contingency or
again poor intel before, during and after the main body of the war.  Either
way we have far more urgent and potentially damaging concerns than just an
inappropriate misdirection of public opinion.

Anthony Jasso

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Group:

I'd have to agree that whatever deterrent value this conflict might have had
has been lost due to the heavy media coverage of US casualties - has anyone
noticed that there's almost no coverage of losses inflicted on Iraqi attackers?
- and domestic criticism in the US and Britain.

Seen clear-eyed, the war remains a considerable strategic achievement (it
seems to me), and taking on Iraq made much more sense than trying on either Iran
or N. Korea.  If you had to finish off one to try and scare the other two,
Iraq was the safest bet.

On another front: the NY Times ran a story the other day about video disks
being distributed in Syrian border villages encouraging attacks on US troops
patrolling the border and showing what appeared to be an American - at any rate,
a white male - being beheaded, while surrounded by a cheering crowd.  The
Pentagon denies that any US casualty was beheaded.

Can anyone add anything to this story?  Has anyone ever heard of an incident
like this that might be serving as the material for the videodisk - I'm
thinking something that might have happened elsewhere at some other time.  I've
heard of Soviet soldiers being beheaded on film in Afghanistan in the 1980s and
the tapes being used to raise funds in the Gulf.  Ditto Chechnya, although in
that case you didn't have cheering crowds.  I'm wondering if someone's adapted
some old footage to a new cause.

Robin Bhatty