friday reads
The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.
McClatchy: Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?
Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Paul Alexander: How Karl Rove played politics while people drowned
Tomgram: William Astore, Militarizing Your Cyberspace
Chris Hedges: What it means when the US goes to war
LA Times - 40 years later: The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.
Three businessmen at the centre of one of the biggest and longest-running frauds in banking history received stiff prison sentences yesterday after their £350m edifice of deceit was brought tumbling down by a fax sent to the wrong office.
Would You Believe Copyright Infringement Notices Are Based On Faulty Information?
A Tale of Two Speeches
The Drive-In Theater Turns 75
It's not a 'tumour'.
1 comment:
Ummm...why automatically assume the "foreign intelligence services" are Iran's?
The "foreign intelligence service" mentioned in the Senate report could just as easily have been Israel's intelligence service (which, according to Israeli general Shlomo Brom, was "exaggerating the Iraqi threat" to push the US into attacking Iraq) as well as the Italian intelligence service (US intelligence agencies received several reports from the Italian intelligence service SISMI of a supposed agreement between Iraq and Niger for the sale of yellowcake uranium.)
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