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Post by Kensterberg on Jan 30, 2007 18:12:18 GMT -5
When I was stationed in Germany, we were still finding unexploded ordnance from WWII c. 1987-1990! (We also found an intact German fighter-plane (more or less) buried under our airstrip during that time -- things get "hidden" in wars that no one remembers the where-abouts of after it's over).
It's amazing how many bombs don't go "boom" during an all-out conflict. Considering how much fighting has gone on in both Iraq and Iran in the last century, I'd be amazed if there aren't literally tons of unexploded munitions, from a literally bewildering number of sources.
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Post by phil on Jan 30, 2007 20:48:32 GMT -5
What a mess. According to the text in the article,
Russian, Chinese, and South African made. Most of ours go "pop."
ERRRR ....
Cluster bombs wound two Belgian soldiers in southern Lebanon
By DPA
Two Belgian soldiers were wounded in a cluster bomb blast during a demining operation in southern Lebanon, Lebanese and United Nations sources said Monday.
The two Belgian soldiers were wounded in Kunin, southeast of the southern port city of Tyre, UN spokesman Liam McDowall said.
McDowall said one of the soldiers received wounds to the leg and the other to the head.
Belgium has deployed 370 troops to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), part of the beefed-up UN force deployed in southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 1701 which ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah last August.
Israel is reported to have dropped up to 1 million cluster bombs in Lebanon during the 33-day war. The UN says 40 per cent of the bomblets failed to explode on impact.
The unexploded ordnance has killed at least 27 people and wounded more than 143 in southern Lebanon since the conflict ended.
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Post by phil on Jan 30, 2007 21:03:09 GMT -5
Deadly harvestLebanese villagers must risk death in fields 'flooded' with more than a million Israeli cluster bombs - or leave crops to rot The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more. The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon's farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields. In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father's bed in the hospital. At least 83 people have been killed by cluster munitions since the ceasefire, according to independent monitors.Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon. A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) unit told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the army had fired 1,800 cluster rockets, spraying 1.2 million bomblets over houses and fields. "In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs," he said. "What we did there was crazy and monstrous." What makes the cluster bombs so dangerous is that 30 per cent of the bomblets do not detonate on impact. They can lie for years - often difficult to see because of their small size, on roofs, in gardens, in trees, beside roads or in rubbish - waiting to explode when disturbed. Cluster bomblet ... Food packet ... 
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Post by phil on Jan 30, 2007 21:14:09 GMT -5
Cluster bombs 101 ...
Cluster bombs are small explosive bomblets carried in a large cannister that opens in mid-air, scattering them over a wide area. The bomblets may be delivered by aircraft, rocket, or by artillery projectiles.
The CBU (cluster bomb unit) 26, which was widely used in Laos, is an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb that consists of a large bombshell holding 670 tennis ball-sized bomblets, each of which contain 300 metal fragments. If all the bomblets detonate, some 200,000 steel fragments will be propelled over an area the size of several football fields, creating a deadly killing zone.
Because the fragments travel at high velocity, when they strike people they set up pressure waves within the body that do horrific damage to soft tissue and organs: even a single fragment hitting somewhere else in the body can rupture the spleen, or cause the intestines to explode. This is not an unfortunate, unintended side-effect; these bombs were designed to do this.
During its wars in Indochina, the U.S. dropped enormous amounts of cluster bombs. A B-52 bomber fitted with two Hayes dispensers could drop 25,000 bomblets on a single bombing run. It's estimated that some 90 million CBU-26 bomblets were dropped on Laos (and the CBU-26 is just one of 12 different kinds of cluster bombs that have been recovered there to date).
Because cluster bombs disperse widely and are difficult to target precisely, they are especially dangerous when used near civilian areas. In addition, they are prone to failure: if the container opens at the wrong height, or the bomblets don't fuse properly, or their descent is broken by trees, or they land on soft ground - they may not detonate. With a high dud rate estimated to be 10 to 30 percent, unexploded cluster bombs lay on the ground becoming, in effect, super landmines, and can explode at the slightest touch. They have proven to be a serious, long-lasting threat, especially to civilians, but also to soldiers, peacekeepers and bomb clearance experts. Children, who are sometimes attracted to the bomblets' bright colors and interesting shapes, represent a high percentage of victims.
Cluster bomblets become less stable - and more dangerous - as time passes. In Laos, nearly every day people are still being killed from bombs dropped 30 years ago. With an estimated 10 million (or more) unexploded cluster bombs, it could be many decades - or even centuries - until the killing is over.
There are many different kinds of cluster bombs. The WDU-4, used in Indochina, contained 6,000 barbed metal darts which were released overhead. Eyewitness accounts tell of the WDU-4 literally nailing people to the ground. The CBU- 41 has bomblets filled with naplam, the CBU-89 disperses mines, and the Honest John carries 368 bomblets filled with sarin nerve gas. The CBU-87, widely used by the U.S. during the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, and the war in Afghanistan, has three kill mechanisms: anti-personnel (for people), anti-armor (for tanks), and incendiary (setting the target area on fire). The B1 bomber can carry enough cluster bombs to turn an area the size of 350 football fields into a killing zone.
The Consequences
Wherever they been used - Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Ethiopia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, unexploded cluster bombs have created problems for civilians:
During the Gulf War over 30 million cluster bomblets were dropped on Kuwait and Iraq and, in the following months, unexploded bombs killed 1,600 civilians and injured another 2,500.
According to a recent study by the Red Cross, children in Kosovo are five times more likely to be killed or injured by a NATO-dropped unexploded cluster bomb than by a Serbian landmine.
Today, in Afghanistan, reports indicate that the U.S. use of cluster bombs is causing the same kinds of tragic consequences for civilians there as they did in other countries. Because cluster bombs are area weapons with a wide dispersal pattern, they kill living things indiscriminately, including civilians. And their high-failure rate means that the killing of innocent people will continue long after the bombs stop dropping.
Cluster Bombs Today
Their current use in Afghanistan is helping to focus the world's attention on cluster bombs. Many feel that their impact on civilians is unacceptable and a breach of international humanitarian law. More than 50 international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Mennonite Central Committee, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Committee to Ban Landmines have called for a moratorium on cluster bomb use. And, in spite of the fact that cluster bombs are one of the favorite and most deadly weapons in the U.S. and NATO arsenals, on December 13, 2001 the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for an immediate global moratorium on their use to be followed by an outright ban.
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Post by strat-0 on Jan 30, 2007 22:37:50 GMT -5
I was commenting on the article and pictures you posted, Phil. You've done a bit of a bait-and-switch.
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Post by phil on Jan 30, 2007 23:27:53 GMT -5
No bait intended on my part but how would you know that
as far as bombs are concerned, "most of ours go pop" as you said.
One thing we do know for certain is that cluster bombs
manufactured by the U.S. have a known % of misfire ...
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Post by phil on Feb 3, 2007 12:25:15 GMT -5
You do know that the only reasonable thing to do in Irak
is to scoop up as many of the military toys still lying around
pack up your gear and get the fuck out of Irak ...
In a few years, when the killings/massacres/ethnic cleansings stop,
and it will stop ...
it will be time for the entire world community to get back in there
and fix the mess that Saddam started and the US-
"Coalition of the Bribed or Coerced" finished ...
Sad to think that it all went down exactly as the rest of the world
told Junior and his "Poodle" what would happen if they invaded Irak ...
Suicide Bomber Kills 102 in Baghdad
By KIM GAMEL 02.03.07, 11:13 AM ET
A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 102 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, the most devastating strike in the capital in more than two months.
The attacker was driving a truck carrying food when he detonated his explosives, destroying stores and stalls that had been set up in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.
The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against commercial targets in the capital as insurgents seek to maximize the number of people killed ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.
Many of the injured were driven to the hospitals in pickup trucks and lifted onto stretchers.
"It was a strong blow. A car exploded. I fell on the ground," said one young man with a bandaged head, his face still streaked with blood.
Officials said at least 102 people were killed and more than 200 wounded.
It was the deadliest attack in the capital since Nov. 23, when suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters attacked the capital's Sadr City Shiite slum with a series of car bombs and mortars that struck in quick succession, killing at least 215 people.
A suicide bomber also crashed his car into the Bab al-Sharqi market, near Sadriyah, on Jan. 22, killing 88 people. The surge in violence comes as Sunni insurgents have stepped up attacks against Shiite targets in an apparent bid to maximize the number of people killed ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, eight bombs exploded within two hours, beginning with a suicide car bomber who targeted the offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, police said. Two people were killed in the first explosion, which devastated four nearby houses.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in the oil-rich region, but concerns have been raised that insurgents have fled north to avoid the impending crackdown in Baghdad.
At the Kurdish party offices, guards opened fire as the attacker drove up, and the explosives detonated about 15 yards from the building, killing at least two people and wounding 30, including five KDP guards, police Col. Dishtoun Mohammed said.
Concrete blast walls protected the offices from serious damage, but the explosion devastated four nearby houses. Five charred cars were near the entrance of the Kurdish building, in a mainly Turkomen district.
"We are upset and angry about the existence of a party office in our area," Um Khalid, a 52-year-old Turkomen housewife, said as she examined her damaged home. "Had the office not been here, the suicide bomber would not have chosen to explode his car near our houses."
Another car bomb exploded about 20 minutes later near a girls' school in the south of the city, but the school was closed for the weekend and no casualties were reported, police Col. Anwar Hassan said.
A third car bomb hit a gas station in southern Kirkuk, followed by two other parked car bombs 20 minutes later near a popular pastry shop. Eight people were wounded in those explosions.
"I heard the sound of the explosion as I was adding water to the flour inside the shop. I rushed outside to see smoke and fire rising from the car bombs while some moving cars were colliding with each other," said Mohammed Faleh, who works in the Shaima pastry shop.
A sixth car bomb wounded five other people in the mainly Arab al-Wasiti area in southern Kirkuk, while two roadside bombs targeted police patrols at about the same time in a predominantly Christian area in the north of the city.
Razqar Ali, a Kurdish leader and head of Kirkuk provincial council, accused the militants of trying to destabilize the city, which Kurds hope to incorporate into their autonomous region to the north - over the objections of the Arab and Turkomen populations.
"They want to depict the city as unsafe to provide a pretext to other groups to interfere," he said, an implicit reference to Turkey's objections to the Kurdish efforts.
Turkey, Iraq's northern neighbor, is pressuring the Iraqi government to protect the interests of the Turkomen, ethnic Turks who once were a majority in the city. Ankara also fears Iraqi Kurdish ambitions could fuel hostilities with Kurdish separatists at home.
In Mosul, northwest of Kirkuk, armed insurgents and Iraqi forces fought for several hours and authorities imposed a temporary curfew on the city. There was no immediate word on casualties. Police spokesman Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri said Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. air power were moving in.
Gunmen also attacked a police checkpoint at the northern entrance to Samarra 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing four policemen and wounding another, police said, adding that three militants were killed and one was wounded in the fighting that lasted for about 30 minutes.
In Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, a convoy of 15 cars carrying gunmen brandishing weapons and banners declaring the establishment of an "Islamic State" drove through the Sunni town while businessmen quickly closed their stores for fear of trouble.
The show of force followed the Iraqi government's announcement on Tuesday that it had arrested a provincial leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and broken a major cell in the area.
On Friday, a U.S. Army helicopter was shot down near Taji, a major U.S. base about 12 miles north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said - the fourth helicopter lost in Iraq in the last two weeks. The U.S. command said two crew members were killed, and the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility.
Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, meanwhile, called for Muslim unity and called for an end to sectarian conflict - his first public statement in months on the worsening security crisis.
He called on all Muslims to work to overcome sectarian differences and calm the passions, which serve only "those who want to dominate the Islamic country and control its resources to achieve their aims."
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Post by phil on Feb 4, 2007 14:37:45 GMT -5
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Post by kmc on Feb 4, 2007 14:48:00 GMT -5
We're turning a corner!
Freedom is on the march!
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Post by phil on Feb 4, 2007 14:58:16 GMT -5
Remember this ... ? Everything the Left Said About the War was WrongBy David Horowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | April 29, 2003In the aftermath of a successful war it opposed as a certain disaster, the left is attempting to rewrite the script, counting on others to forget what it said and did. No one has attempted this with more brazen aplomb than Arianna Huffington, a recent convert to the cause. In a column titled, "Why the Anti-War Movement Was Right," she has joined the self-satisfied ranks of smart people who seem determined to demonstrate that they don’t know what they’re talking about. In the lead up to the military campaign known as "Operation Iraqi Freedom," antiwar activists signed petitions, mounted lecterns, and marched in the streets in a desperate attempt to head off a conflict they claimed would mean hundreds of thousands of casualties, a bloody quagmire of urban combats, chemical and environmental disasters, terrorist retributions at home and abroad, and a region-wide eruption of the Arab street. Instead what we witnessed was the swiftest and most bloodless conquest of an armed nation in the history of warfare. The immediate result of the victory has been exactly what the Administration promised: a swift liberation of a largely grateful Iraqi people, no terrorist outbreak, and no explosion of Arab rage. But there is apparently nothing America can do that will satisfy Arianna Huffington. In her column, she turns all these welcome achievements into a postwar bill of indictment -- not of those who opposed the liberation, but of those who carried it out: "The speedy fall of Baghdad proves the anti-war movement was dead right. The whole pretext for our unilateral charge into Iraq was that the American people were in imminent danger from Saddam and his mighty war machine….Well, it turns out that, far from being on the verge of destroying Western civilization, Saddam and his 21st Century Gestapo couldn’t even muster a half-hearted defense of their own capital. The hawks’ ‘cakewalk’ disproves their own dire warnings." For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the three-week war was actually a "cakewalk," as Huffington asserts. Did leftists argue that this would be the case? That the war would be a trivial matter? Did hundreds of thousands of anti-war activists march to prevent a "cakewalk" that would liberate 18 million Iraqis from the clutches of "Saddam and his 21st Century Gestapo?" Shame on them if they did. In fact, Huffington and her friends argued the exact opposite. They argued that the death toll would be prodigious; that Iraq might even be another Vietnam; that costs were so high not even the freedom of 18 million Iraqis was worth it. The military operation would be so difficult and consuming, they warned, that pursuing it would cripple the "other war" on terrorism. This, of course, was disingenuous since they had not notably supported the war on terrorism (with some exceptions). There had been 150 "peace" demonstrations in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. These demonstrations were organized to protest in advance any armed American response to the attacks. But in the prologue to the Iraq war, the same "anti-war" forces pretended that they had not opposed the retributive (and preventive) war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban and argued instead that a war on Iraq would hinder the efforts to complete that task. Read more ...  www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7542 |
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Post by phil on Feb 4, 2007 15:09:11 GMT -5
"You are either with us or with the terrorists"
...
"We have irrefutable proofs"
...
"Mission accomplished"
...
History will not be kind on Junior's administration !!
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Post by Galactus on Feb 4, 2007 16:12:38 GMT -5
So the worse it looks the better it actually is? Krystal knows Colbert's a joke right?
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Post by phil on Feb 6, 2007 8:52:41 GMT -5
"Beggers cannot be choosers" or so it would seem ...
These moderates are in fact fanatics, torturers and killers
The longer the US and Britain back dictatorial regimes in the Middle East the more explosive the region will become
Mai Yamani
Tuesday February 6, 2007
The Guardian
Politicians, especially in times of geopolitical deadlock, adopt a word or a concept to sell to the public. In 1973, at the peak of cold-war tensions, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, coined the term "detente". Such words gain a currency and become useful political tools to escape policy quagmires. As the Middle East lurches from crisis to crisis, Tony Blair, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice compulsively repeat the word "moderates" to describe their allies in the region. But the concept of moderate is merely the latest attempt to market a failed policy, while offering a facile hedge against accusations of Islamophobia and anti-Islamic policies.
Western leaders have simply chosen a few Arab rulers they believe are still saleable to western audiences. And, as the word moderate has been repeated by western leaders and echoed in the international media, these rulers have begun to believe their own billing. But who are they, and are they moderate? Their selection has been fluid at the periphery but solid at the core. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt clearly qualify, whereas Syria, an ally during the 1990-91 Gulf war, was once at the periphery but fell out of step with US interests after 9/11. Likewise, after the death of Arafat and the victory of Hamas, Fatah became moderate, while Iran, moderate under the shah, became "radical" after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
This minuet of political marketing may play well in the west, but not in the Arab world, where the double standards and manipulation are all too plain to see. The Saudi Wahhabis are, after all, fanatics; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is intolerant of dissent; and Jordan, the state closest to the western ideal, is a marginal player. These countries' appalling human rights records, lack of transparency and repression rank them among the world's least moderate. Is there such a thing as a "moderate public beheading"? For the US and UK governments there clearly is, because all departures from the ideals of liberal democracy and social justice are rooted in "tradition". Hence bribes, beheadings and the oppression of women and minorities are traditional, and because whatever is traditional is not radical, it must be moderate.
Nothing, it seems, is more moderate than inertia. So inertia pays. Egypt has received an average of $1.3bn a year in military aid from the US since 1979, and $815m a year in economic assistance. Saudi Arabia relies on oil revenues and the international legitimacy provided by membership of such moderate bulwarks as the WTO and the IMF.
But at home, all other hallmarks of moderation are missing. Amnesty International describes Saudi Arabia as a country where "there are no political parties, no elections, no independent legislature, no trade unions ... no independent judiciary, no independent human rights organisations. The government allows no international human rights organisations to carry out research in the country ... there is strict censorship of media within the country, and strict control of access to the internet, satellite television and other forms of communication with the outside world."
Likewise, Human Rights Watch's report on Egypt describes Mubarak's government as using a "heavy hand against political dissent in 2006. In April 2006, the government renewed emergency rule for an additional two years, providing a continued basis for arbitrary detention and trials before military and state security courts. Torture at the hands of security forces remains a serious problem." Amnesty's report on Egypt concurred: "Torture continued to be used systematically in detention centres ... Several people died in custody in circumstances suggesting that torture or ill-treatment may have caused or contributed to their deaths."
The use of moderate to describe such leaders is necessary to mask the death of Bush's "freedom agenda" in the Middle East, with its lofty goal of regionwide democratisation. Indeed, Rice's visit to Egypt in January emphasised the word moderate and completely ignored the word democracy.
The moderates are not democrats, but they are politically useful because of what else they are not: they are not Persian and not Shia, not defiant and not able to act independently of the US. They are moderate only because they do not need to be more radical to achieve absolute power. Mubarak already exercises it, and the al-Sauds are satisfied with the current level of fanaticism in the kingdom. Some are armchair jihadis, but their Islamism serves only to prop up their domestic legitimacy.
What the moderates do need is continued western military and financial cover. So they remain ideological stalwarts. If communism was the enemy of the US, then it was their enemy. If Shia Iran is America's enemy today, it is also the enemy of America's moderate allies.
The relationship with the west is a two-way street. The Saudis invest billions in the US, buy weapons they don't need or cannot use, and provide a thriving market for western goods. But, like Mubarak, the Saudi rulers are old and on the defensive against their own people. The more the US shelters them, the more their legitimacy erodes. And the longer Washington and London prolong the state of denial with the help of pithy and amorphous buzzwords, the more explosive the Middle East will become.
· Mai Yamani is author of Cradle of Islam, and Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia
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Post by phil on Feb 9, 2007 17:13:27 GMT -5
You think they could send a copy of this article to DICK Cheney ??
Pentagon report condemns misleading Iraq intelligence
Mark Tran
Friday February 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The row over the use - or misuse of intelligence - in the run-up to the Iraq war reignited today when a watchdog concluded that top Pentagon officials wrongly insisted on a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
The Pentagon's acting inspector general, Thomas Gimble, told the senate armed services committee that the office headed by Douglas Feith, formerly the number three man at the defence department, took "inappropriate" actions in pushing the al-Qaida connection not backed up by America's intelligence agencies.
But Mr Gimble said the actions of the office of the undersecretary of defence for policy "were not illegal or unauthorised".
"I can't think of a more devastating commentary," the Democratic senate armed services committee chairman, Carl Levin, said.
Mr Feith ran the Pentagon's secretive office of special plans when the Bush administration was making the case for invading Iraq. Created by the then-secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the office reviewed intelligence on Iraq as the Bush administration lacked full confidence in information coming from the CIA.
Mr Feith, who resigned in 2005, was a major cheerleader for invading Iraq, to the irritation of some of the Pentagon's generals. General Tommy Franks, the military commander of the 2003 war in Iraq, once referred to Mr Feith as "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth".
[really ? I can think of a few others ...]
A summary of the inspector-general's report cited the defence policy office's allegations of links between Iraq and al-Qaida, in particular an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, and an Iraqi intelligence officer. The claim turned out to be unfounded.
"That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war," Carl Levin, the chairman of the senate armed services committee, who has accused the administration of manipulating intelligence material before the war, told the Associated Press.
The Pentagon report was requested in 2005 by a Republican senator, Pat Roberts, Mr Levin's predecessor on the senate intelligence committee. The committee and a number of official inquiries had criticised the administration's prewar intelligence, but Democratic senators, led by Mr Levin, demanded further investigation of Mr Feith's operation.
Mr Feith told the Associated Press that he was pleased to hear that the report had concluded that his office's activities were neither illegal nor unauthorised. He took strong issue, however, with the finding that some activities had been "inappropriate".
He described as "bizarre" the inspector general's conclusion that some intelligence activities by the office of special plans were inappropriate but not unauthorised.
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Post by phil on Feb 9, 2007 23:59:29 GMT -5
And this one to DICK Rumsfeld ...
Those jerks lied from the very beginning ... !!
Pentagon unit defied CIA advice to justify Iraq war
. 'Alternative' agency set up to link Saddam to al-Qaida
· Mainstream intelligence was cast aside, Senate told
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian
An "alternative intelligence" unit operating at the Pentagon in the run-up to the war on Iraq was dedicated to establishing a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, even though the CIA was unconvinced of such a connection, the US Senate was told yesterday.
A report presented to the armed services committee by the Pentagon's inspector general, Thomas Gimble, exposes the Bush administration to new charges of manipulating intelligence to make its case for going to war against Saddam nearly four years ago.
Mr Gimble described a unit called the Office for Special Plans, authorised by then Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and overseen by the former policy chief Douglas Feith, to review raw intelligence on Iraq. The main focus of the unit was establishing a link between Saddam and al-Qaida - going against the consensus in the intelligence community that the Iraqi leader had nothing to do with the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
"The office of the under-secretary of defence for policy developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers," the report says.
Mr Feith's office was the source for some of the most glaring examples of faulty intelligence during the run-up to the war. In 2002 it promoted the idea that there had been a meeting between the lead September 11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. The intelligence community has never established this.
The unit deliberately undermined the work of intelligence agencies in briefings in August 2002 for the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and officials at the national security council, Mr Gimble said. The briefings repeated the claims about the Prague meeting but did not mention the CIA's extreme scepticism. Instead, the briefings alleged "fundamental problems with the way that the intelligence community was assessing the information".
Such actions were not illegal but they were "inappropriate", Mr Gimble said in his report. "A policy office was producing intelligence products and was not clearly conveying to senior decision-makers the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community."
Senator Carl Levin, who heads the committee, said the assessments produced by Mr Feith were of "dubious reliability" and created to bolster the case for war. "They arrived at an alternative interpretation of the Iraq/al-Qaida relationship that was much stronger than that assessed by the intelligence community and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the administration," Mr Levin told the committee. "I can't think of a more devastating commentary."
In 2002 Mr Feith was one of the most ardent proponents of a war on Iraq and a close associate of the other neo-conservatives of the administration: Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the vice-president, Dick Cheney. His work was authorised by Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Wolfowitz, and he coordinated with Mr Cheney's office.
Mr Feith, who left the Pentagon in 2005 for a post at Georgetown University, yesterday played down the influence of his unit. "This was not an alternative intelligence assessment," he told the Washington Post. "It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."
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