[NYTr] Bush Used Fake Photos to Persuade Reluctant Reps to Support Iraq War

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Incredible -- this goes beyond stretching and distorting ambiguous
intelligence in an effort to make the intel fit the policy. This is
outright fraud, using faked photos of so-called "drones" armed with
missiles that were described as capable of hitting US cities and
allegedly on their way to our hallowed shores. The photos were actually
faked by the CIA in the desert of the Southwest US not -- as might be
expected, to fool a foreign enemy, agents of the US in foreign
countries or even "allied" governments or members of the UN -- but
brazen forgeries used to trick reluctant US lawmakers into approving
Bush's war!  Is THIS not well above and beyond what the US Congress
needs to vote articles of impeachment against the Bush-Cheney regime??
If not, nothing is. -NY Transfer] 

Counterpunch - Sep 3, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/brasch09032007.html


The News Drones

Fake Photos Helped Lead US to War in Iraq

By WALTER BRASCH

Add faked photos to the list of lies told by the Bush­Cheney
Administration before its invasion of Iraq.

In a town hall meeting in Bloomsburg, Pa. this week, Rep. Paul
Kanjorski, a 12-term congressman, said that shortly before Congress was
scheduled to vote on authorizing military force against Iraq, top
officials of the CIA showed select members of Congress three
photographs it alleged were Iraqi Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs),
better known as drones. Kanjorski said he was told that the drones were
capable of carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and could
strike 1,000 miles inland of east coast or west coast cities.

Kanjorski said he and four or five other congressmen in the room were
told UAVs could be on freighters headed to the U.S. Both secretary of
state Condoleezza Rice and President Bush wandered into and out of the
briefing room, Kanjorski said.

Kanjorski said it was the second time he was called to the White House
for a briefing. He had opposed giving the President the powers to go to
war, and said that he hadn't changed his mind after a first meeting.
Until he saw the pictures, Kanjorski said, "I hadn't thought that Iraq
was a threat." That second meeting changed everything. After he left
that meeting, said Kanjorski, he was willing to give the President the
authorization he wanted since the drones "represented an imminent
danger."

Kanjorski said he went to see Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a retired
Marine colonel. Murtha, said Kanjorski, "turned white" when told about
the drones; Murtha, a former intelligence officer, believed that such
information was classified.

Several years later, Kanjorski said he learned that the pictures were
"a god-damned lie," apparently taken by CIA photographers in the desert
in the southwest of the U.S. The drone story itself had already been
disproved, although not many major media carried that story.

In October 2002, President Bush said in Cincinnati that "Iraq has a
growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used
to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas." He said
that he was concerned "that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs
for missions targeting the United States." In that same speech, he
claimed, "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of
hundreds of miles-far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey,
and other nations-in a region where more than 135,000 American
civilians and service members live and work." Bush further claimed,
"Surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities
that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons." Those
claims were later proven false.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said that at the time the President made his
speech, intelligence analysts had already discounted that threat.
Nelson had told Florida Today in December 2003 that no analysts had
"found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability." Any
drones that Iraq did have, John Pike, director of Global Security, a
major military and intelligence "think tank," told Florida Today, had
limited range, and would not be able to target Tel Aviv, let alone the
U.S.

Nelson, on the floor of the Senate in January 2004, said that the
information presented by the Administration was crucial in getting him
and others to authorize a pre-emptive strike.

In a four-day period after that meeting in northeast Pennsylvania, Rep.
Kanjorski did not return phone calls to follow up on his statements.
The Department of Defense and the CIA did not comment. Certain
representatives who could confirm the meeting were unavailable.

Assisting on this story were Bill Frost, and John and Sandie Walker.

[Walter Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, is an
award-winning syndicated columnist and the author of 15 books, most of
them about social issues, the First Amendment, and the media. His
forthcoming book is America's Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal
Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Liberties (Peter
Lang Publishing.) You may contact Brasch at brasch at bloomu.edu or at
www.walterbrasch.com]