Year: 2004

A handgun that Saddam Hussein was clutching when U.S. forces captured him in a hole in Iraq last December is now kept by President Bush at the White House, Time magazine has reported.

[…]

The magazine quoted a visitor who had been shown the gun, which is kept in a small study off the Oval Office where Bush displays memorabilia. It is the same room where former President Clinton had some of his encounters with former intern Monica Lewinsky.

Bush shows Saddam’s gun to select visitors, telling them it is unloaded, both now and when Saddam was captured, Time reported.

“He really liked showing it off,” Time quoted a visitor who had seen the gun as saying. “He was really proud of it.”

[Source: CNN]

An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.

According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.

The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi’s contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.

The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war.

“It’s pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. “Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi.”

Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: “When the story ultimately comes out we’ll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy.”

[Source: The Guardian]

Washington’s global anti-terror policies are “bankrupt of vision” as human rights become sacrificed in the blind pursuit of security, a leading human rights group charged on Wednesday.

Amnesty International also rapped partners across the world in the United States’ self-declared “war on terror” for jailing suspects unfairly, stamping on legitimate political and religious dissent, and squeezing asylum-seekers.

“The global security agenda promoted by the U.S. administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle,” Amnesty head Irene Khan said, launching its annual report.

“Violating rights at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses has damaged justice and freedom, and made the world a more dangerous place.”

Specifically, Amnesty lashed Washington for unlawful killings of Iraqi civilians; questionable arrest and mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan; and opposition to a new global criminal court.

[More: CNN]

Tony Blair jumped the gun yesterday when he unequivocally promised that the new government in Baghdad will be able to exercise a veto over controversial US-led military operations after the handover of sovereignty on June 30.

The prime minister, trying to address widespread scepticism in the Arab world and Europe that the transfer of power will be genuine, said: “Let me make it 100% clear, after June 30 there will be the full transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi government.

“If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government.”

Mr Blair’s words go significantly further than the stance of Washington. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, spelled out the US position, stressing that if they disagreed with the new Iraqi authorities on certain operations, “US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves.”

It was left to Downing Street officials to insist that the remarks applied to British forces, though not necessarily to US troops.

[Source: The Guardian]