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06/12/2004:
"Not Really a Puppet Government??"
Meet the New Iraqi LeadersBy GARY LEUPP counterpunch.org
These are not America's puppets. This is a terrific list and really good government, and we're very pleased with the names that emerged.
Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor
...In 2002, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord received attention when it passed on to the British government a report that Saddam's regime could fire germ warfare missiles as far as Cyprus within 45 minutes of giving the order. Published in a dossier in September 2002, the report helped prepare British public opinion for the Iraq war. In January 2004 a New York spokesman for Allawi acknowledged this was in fact "a crock of shit." Almost sounds like the new Prime Minister is a bald-faced liar. And then there's the story about that supposed top-secret, hand-written memo by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service revealed to the world last December. I have referred to it as "the neocons' dream memo" since it implausibly describes a three-day "work programme" undertaken by none other than Chief 9-11 Hijacker Mohammed Atta at a Baghdad base of Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal in 1991, and refers to a "Niger shipment" of some unspecified material arriving in Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Who confirmed the authenticity of the memo, released through the Iraqi Governing Council? Why, none other than Dr. Allawi! And since each element of the putative al-Tikriti memo had been already debunked by U.S. intelligence, and only kept afloat by the most duplicitous of the neocons, it almost sounds like the Prime Minister is an especially shameless bald-faced liar and abject puppet of his imperialist sponsors. (Interesting, too, that it first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, owned by Conrad Black, and part of the Hollinger Group on whose board of directors sits Richard Perle, Black buddy and leading warmongering neocon.)
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