I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
An incompetent person actually fell out of favor???
Dr Hamza seldom turned up for work
Who the Bush does this guy think he is anyway?
I imagine being evicted from the Green Zone is more or less a death sentence. I'm sure there will be some who are not to pleased with Hamza's cooperation with the CPA. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
A face that launched a thousand ships (a witness that killed over six hundred GI's) ...
sadness.
We need you.
We dont need you.
GET OUT!
This reinforces the embarrassing truth that Bush and the neocons were willing dupes of sleazy con artists like Chalabi and Hamza.
Kafka himself could not have penned such a story of deceit, betrayal and bizarre events....pls sir, slow the ride down, I am getting dizzy!!!
A fraud impostor foisted upon Iraq by a fraud impostor foisted upon the United States by the Supreme Court!
How much do apartments inside the Green Zone go for these days? I heard there was a cheap one not far from CPA Headquarters, only 7 GI's a month. Hey, if you've got the wherewithal, why not spend it.
The amount of havoc this guy has caused in less than one full term is absolutely mind boggling.
OT, but as usual, Steve Gilliard nails it.
The Hamza dude may have been a minor player in iWaq but he is also a very, teensy, weensy, minor player over here 
.
..............
The much more hilarious prollem they have is their big ole canard they tried to propagate when everyone told them Dubya was a doofus, they said, it didn’t matter that they had a dim bulb on the top of the tree if there were plenny of bright bulbs below, and now we know, yikes, simply ain’t so .
.....
You know things are bad inthe media when the only person of late who gives these warniks a hard time is Pat Buchanan!
Pat was subbing for John "these's a body in my office!" Scarborough and it was a good thing too, because the Prince of Darkness was a guest.
Pat asked Perle about Hamza'a asser5tions that there were hundreds, hundreds I tell you of secret nuclear research thingamajigs. That they were is schools and are sorts of places. None of these "facilities" have turned up, doesn't that mean that Hamza lied? Well, no, said the evil one, he was just stating the truth as he understood it at the time. Yes, that's what he said.
Anyway Pat gave him a hard time. But at no point would Dracula admit that he or anyone else had done anything wrong. Nor would he admit that Hamza's confabulations were bad.
Pure evil.
In view of the constant (and fully justified) complaints that no heads are rolling after 9/11, one could assume that heads are only dispensable if they have "rags" on them.
Looking through LeoGrande's "Our Own Backyard" again early this morning, I noticed that the final paragraph reads:
"We went to war in Central America to exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam and to renew the national will to use force abroad. These imperatives, more than the Soviet threat, Fidel Castro's menace, or the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran revolutions, shaped U.S. policy -- how it was conceived, struggled over, and executed. Central America's misfortune lay in being the stage upon which this American drama was played out."
Many of the same personnel are involved. And we see that the pressures to expand DoD and its budget, to feed specific corporations with ties to specific administrations, and to play power games within the target countries have been, in fact, causes rather than results of military action in both Central American and Iraq. Lately, though, that politically useful "Onward Christian Soldiers" motif has been added to the mix.
Also, the Bush administration's agenda has been so dominant and its actual knowledge and understanding of the targets so minimal that a character such as Hamza could use this administration and mislead it for his own aggrandizement.
I wonder just how many deaths Americans are willing to allow before they recognize they've been duped, before they turn on this administration and its corporate benefactors/beneficiaries with real outrage.
Though I gotta say for all his smarts, Blair has been playing twin Ventriloquist Dummy to dweeb face just fine .
So maybe it needs more than just smarts .
.....
Lets not blame the dupes or the opportunists...
Bush needed corroborative evidence for a lie. Where else to find such but from liars and opportunists? The blame is on Bush and his administration and these schmucks are just leeches making a few shekels for abetting the destruction of their nation. have a great time out there in "free" Iraq Hamza.....
Somewhat OT, Josh Marshall cites an AP report about the wholesale plundering of nucearl material, even whole buildings, from sites in Iraq. WTF???
Sorry, not enuf caffeine. Make that nuclear. Or, for Texans, nukular.
Bean, I think people are plenty concerned as would be evidenced by the reports we see and hear in the communities, people are indeed expressing their concerns and people are gonna be shore and bounce Bushie’s sorry nincompoop tuchas all the way back to Waco, Texas for his bungling and bamboozling, thank you .
......
A year ago, there was an article in the WaPo about how it took the army weeks to even get to nuclear sites. When they got there, they found that--surprise--many of them had been entirely looted. As I remember, also, there was a Frontline that covered the same ground. I thought for sure they'd have learned their lesson and would've been sitting on those sites and tracking shit down, because, hell, isn't that what we're really concerned with? We were ostensibly concerned that Saddam might be supplying terrorists with nuclear, biological, or chemical materials or weapons, but now it seems that through our negligence that we're potentially supplying terrorists with nuclear materials. How much clearer can it be???
at least he gets to keep the consolation gifts.
Oh gee, another factesque item rendered inoperable. What a surprise.
And like most things with Bushco, the retraction gets buried.
Shouldn't the CEO presidency excel at checking references? Do we have a secretary of HR?
Why is it,that we dont hear what it is the Iraqi people want?We hear what the misadministration wants for the Iraqi people and what they want us to think they want yet we hear nothing from the "leaders" themselves.The "coalition" speaks for the people not the people speaking to the "coalition".Why cant we hear from them?It seems if we were to ask the People what it is they want it could relieve the tensions on the battlefeild.Untill the cabal gives us and the Iraqi's this outlet for consideration they will continue in a quagmire and there will be no relief from the killing.
This line from the Independent report hints at what Hamza was finally fired for: "Appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, he had partial control of Iraq's nuclear and military industries."
But you left out the paragraph that clinches it:
"Back in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, Dr Hamza's position as a senior advisor was very influential. The US-appointed advisors share control over ministries with Iraqi ministers. The ministry was, among other things, in charge of monitoring and securing the remains of Iraq's nuclear industry"
That would be those sites the IAEA says have been looted, with radio active materials being shipped to Europe along with scrap metals, right?
http://tinyurl.com/2pqnd
Looks like there are some serious side effects from drinking too much Bush Kool Aid:
U.S. General in Baghdad Nearly Faints
Kimmitt had left the podium for a few minutes earlier in the press conference, which was broadcast live internationally. He returned, looking pale, to take more questions.
Just after answering a question, Kimmitt leaned toward Senor and whispered, "I gotta go."
Senor nodded and said, "OK," and then told reporters the next question would be the last.
As he listened to the question, Kimmitt's eyes rolled upward and he began leaning forward into the podium. The podium's small black microphone struck him on the right side of the mouth. After a few seconds leaning against the microphone, he slumped backward but remained standing.
Senor stepped toward him and said, "You all right?"
"No, I'm not," Kimmitt mumbled. Two aides approached the podium and led him out a side door.
Senor continued answering questions. About 15 minutes later, Kimmitt returned again and resumed answering questions. When one reporter prefaced a question by saying, "I hope you're feeling better," Kimmitt smiled but offered no explanation.
dingbat,
yeah, I knew for sure that the administration was 1) incompetent and 2) a big bunch of liars when we didn't have forces immediately at that nuclear site.
What could be a higher priority than securing a nuclear facility if you felt that terrorists were determined to get their hands on radioactive material?
This reinforces the embarrassing truth that Bush and the neocons were [willing dupes of] sleazy con artists like Chalabi and Hamza.
bigvic
Omit the stuff in brackets and it's true. We seem to like to think that the virginal innocence of Bush and the war party has been cruelly abused by villainous liars, but nothing in their public or private histories indicate such decency. It wasn't a seduction; more like a meeting of two rival gangs planning a robbery.
Minnie -- I live too close to Waco to be entirely thrilled about the possibility of having Bush back here full time!
(snip)
On 4 March, his contract was not renewed by the CPA. It is now trying to evict him from his house in the heavily guarded "Green Zone" where the CPA has its headquarters.
If they really wanted to evict him, I imagine the CPA has the resources to do it. Of course if they really piss him off, he can probably tell some embarrassing tales about how the Bushies want him to 'sex up' Saddam's bomb...
His contract is not being renewed BECAUSE HE IS BEING PROMOTED!
My guess is he's coming back to Washington to be the new presidential science advisor.
Hamza gave testimony to the United States Congress in 2002.
References to his work appeared in George Bush’s dossier on Iraq.
Much of that work was forged.
I think this was the guy I saw on Crossfire one time before the invasion. He was making outrageious claims about Iraqi WMD-- I thought he was exaggerating at the time, know I know he was just fucking lying. Guys like Hamza and Chalabi just took our whole country for a major ride and ruined what reputation we had left. Thanks, Bush!
I guess Dr Hamza was really out of the loop.
Are you saying they lied to us?
"He could not be contacted by The Independent but is believed to have taken up a job with a US company."
Any bets on whether the US company begins with "Haliburton"?
As dad likes to observe, the smart primate makes sure that he has a firm grip on branch #2 before letting go of branch #1.
I guess to be a nuclear scientist in Saddam's Iraq, you didn't have to be a smart primate.
Not only did pom-pom shakers like Matthews, Koppel, Judith Miller and the rest go down on Hamza...
...they swallowed every drop.
This is one of the great crimes of the propaganda department called the Mainstream Press.
Hamza was just another part of the Office of Strategic Influence disinformation plan alluded to by Robert S. Rumsfeld in the months after 9/11. We can then tie the forged Niger documents to this plan as well as much of the rest of the propaganda that is now crumbling before our very eyes.
The question now is will the US Congress live up to its constitutional responsibility to charge these people with high crimes.
This can only start with Hamza, Chalabi, and the rest of the worker bees who did the dirty work, then move upward to the architects of this crime - Rumsfeld, McGeorge Wolfowitz, Colin Rusk, and, finally, of course, Lyndon Milhous Bush...
As dad likes to observe, the smart primate makes sure that he has a firm grip on branch #2 before letting go of branch #1.
I guess to be a nuclear scientist in Saddam's Iraq, you didn't have to be a smart primate.
Isn't it reassuring that the Bush Junta is so good at crossing every t and dotting every i. Sort of like the star congressional testimony before Bush War I. A little thing like a phony expert. Details.
How much does anyone want to bet that his "excellent English" had a lot more to do with this than anything else?
Sorry, You know the witness to babies being taken out of incubators and left to die on the floor.
Send Khidir Hamza back to Iraq. Let the insurgents deal with him.
can't blame clinton for this one (oh, i am sure they could). used to see this guy on the press all the time. to me, seemed like the one credible source about WMD. which created some cog. dissonance, as nothing else seemed to add up.
i blame the press. seriously, if i was a journalist i'd want to make sure my sources were credible, or at least caveat the info. i was disseminating. don't journalists have ethical standards they are supposed to follow? is'nt there something called fact checking? is this what the repugs. call a useful idiot? jesus, i have questions, who is going to provide answers i can trust? thank god for these blogs, a thin veil between democracy and the tyranny of ignorance.
Patrick Cockburn, the author of the piece on Hamza, is doing some fantastic reporting from Iraq for the moment for The Independent(UK).
It's extraordinary how the legacy of the great Claud Cockburn lives on, including CounterPunch in the US.
trying to evict him from the green zone
HA HA HA may all those bastards find themselves locked outside of their estates and villas and palaces, preferably in offensive (to Muslims) degrees of clothing and clutching a NYT!
Charley -- Thank god for the blogs, indeed!
But I had a long conversation with a trustworthy journalist maybe two years ago about how bad the media has become. She said, Remember, we don't make decisions about what to print or where to print it. The "gatekeepers" decided what to edit out, what to keep in, what the headline will emphasize, and whether the story goes on page 1 or gets buried in the back of the paper.
And I'm assuming the gatekeepers are responsible to the owners/publishers, to their advertisers, and to what the public apparently wants to read whether it's the truth or not. We've had a breakthrough here locally in the past several days -- the truth printed and talked about on talk radio. The public reaction has, in some cases, been quite vicious.
Everytime we buy the paper, pay our cable bill, etc. etc., we support suppression of the truth if that's what they want or think is a good decision economically.
And I'm assuming the gatekeepers are responsible to the owners/publishers
No need to assume. The system is called capitalism. It demands maximization of profits.
Not that there is anything wrong with it. Simpply that we must not forget the fact that this reality also applies to the media. And why not?
Sorry for the missing tag.
Can someone please tell Christopher Hitchens that Hamza was full of shit? I expect we'll see the 'Sorry, I was wrong, I am a credulous tool' column any day now.
Chilabi is being paid $350,000.00 per year by the C.I.A. At one point he was offered the leadership of Iraq, (the second largest source of oil in the world.)
Chilabi certainly had no reason to lie, did he? Dr. Hamza seems to be following the lead of Chilabi. If you tell the neocons what they want to hear they will reward you handsomely seems to be the message George Bush's private intelligence apparatus is sending to Iraqis who may or may not have inside information and may or may not be lying. Certainly not people that one would choose to take their information seriously enough to start a war. Abrams, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney were Bush's secret intelligence agency who not only accepted Iraqi deserters information as fact, but seem to also have been on a pipeline for Israeli propaganda. The press also seems to also accept Israeli propaganda whole. Why else would the racist perceptions have become so much a part of America's perception. There is no reason to hate all Arabs unless one is Israeli, yet the racism has been promoted by people like William Kristol for his own personal reasons.
It is no wonder then that our intelligence was so skewed. Bush and Cheney abandoned the normal intelligence agencies for their own group of people who were telling them what they thought they wanted to hear.
It is no wonder that there was a break down in intelligence considering the sources. Israeli intelligence should have been considered as unreliable because all second source information should be required to have confirmation through at least one other source.
Under Dick Cheney, who runs things, this was not to be the case. He and his group heard what they wanted to hear because the trumpet call of enormous profits pushed them into becoming George Bush's unreliable sources of inforrmation. The entire administration needs to be dumped for their inability to adapt and to see beyond their own noses. Their incompetence led to the tragedy that is now known as 9.11.
We are definitely not safer because of this administration. They bungled everything.
I don't see the neocons as being innocent dupes of two Iraqi individuals. There is something missing in all of this. Somebody else is running all of this and I don't know exactly who. The U.S. must not rely on unconfirmed intelligence through another country simply because another country's agenda and our own are most likely different.
We doubt this "innocent dupes" and "failure in intel" bullshit for a number of good logical reasons: we knew they wanteed an Iraq war, Chalabi was obviously meant not to dupe them but to offer the palest imitation of "evidence" to us, all the CIA's failures have happened insuch a way as to greatly strengthen their public position, their organization and support, etc.. What remains is a lot of good logical Americans refusing to see what is before their eyes for the same reason they do not say protest their employers' crimes somewhere.
You learn to not care about all that ash coming out of the wierd smokestacks at the prison/factory that doesn't produce anything...
fooled me once, shame on you. fool me twice... won't get fooled again.
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