The Big Question today folks is: "How much more are you going to take?"

Shock! Horror! An all new presidential commission has revealed, yet again, that Saddam had no WMDs and that the fault lies with the US intelligence community's inability to communicate intelligence!

Now, we all have two choices. We can either sit back and take this BS, or we can stand up and condemn it far and wide. But before we decide, let's look at some facts:

Prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq, the IAEA, you know, the guys who have spent their ENTIRE LIVES working in the field of WMDs and their proliferation, said that, after many months spent combing the entire surface of Iraq and digging deep into Saddam's weapon manufacturing facilities, there were probably no WMDs in Iraq. They told the world, "Iraq has no WMDs". Those words fell on deaf ears in Washington, mainly because without WMDs there could be no reason for an invasion of Iraq. As the weeks passed the job of convincing the world was getting more and more difficult. Finally, Rumsfeld hit on an ingenious approach:

Rumsfeld: Lack of evidence could mean Iraq's hiding something

Yes indeedy, the greasy old codger was actually claiming that the IAEA's report stating that there were no WMDs in Iraq, was actually evidence in itself that Saddam really DID have WMDs. Rummy stated:

"The fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq's WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq's noncooperation," we do know that Iraq has designed its programs in a way that they can proceed in an environment of inspections and that they are skilled at denial and deception."

Rumsfeld said the United States and the United Nations have no obligation to prove that Iraq has continued efforts to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Instead, he said, Iraq must prove that it has abandoned them.

Imagine if we were to apply this logic in a criminal investigation. In such a case, anyone could accuse anyone else of a crime, using the fact that there is no evidence that they committed the crime as evidence that they did commit a crime, based on the idea that people are quite inventive and also often lie, so the person is probably lying and has probably hidden the evidence that they committed the crime. Not only that, but the person themselves must prove to the court that they did not commit the crime. If they cannot prove this, then they are guilty of committing the crime.

Sounds a little unreasonable, does it not?

Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, got in on the act too with similarly bizarre logic when he stated in July 2003:

"I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."

Needless to say, the mangled thinking coming out of the White House was evidence that the Bush administration was getting "kinda antsy" at the whole "lack of WMDs" argument.

So what to do? Well, when in doubt, call in the CIA. Surely "the agency", possessing some of America's most fervent patriots, could be relied on to perform above and beyond the call of duty and come up with the goods? Just to make doubly sure, Dick Cheney stormed over to CIA headquarters, not once, not twice, but ten times to offer some "direction". Now that the evil IAEA had to some extent put the kabosh on the "Saddam has WMD" angle, Cheney decided that a Saddam Osama link was the next best thing.

"So Saddam and Osama were buddies, right? Queried Cheney

Er..."no, not really, more like enemies actually" came the reply.

Cheney's blood pressure shot up a few bars.

"OK, what about Al-Zarqawi, didn't he get treatment at a Baghdad hospital?" Cheney probed.

"Em.. sort of" informed Tenet.

"Well then, that's it!" exclaimed Cheney "they're obviously in bed together!"

"Well, ok" quoth Tenet "just as long as they are in separate beds and the beds aren't in the same room, or even the same house. In fact, al-Zarqawi is happier spending time in bed with the Iraqi Kurds, you know, the ones that are in direct opposition to Saddam."

At this point, Cheney blew his top his face crimson his jowls quivering with rage.

"Look, what you need to provide is politically acceptable results, Prime Minister Sharon and the guys in the Pentagon will NOT accept any conclusions that tend to prove that Saddam poses no threat to the US and is NOT involved with any terrorist network! OK!?"

Tenet slinks off, feeling strangely disturbed as a result of his encounters with the Vice President.

Well, the CIA dutifully tried their best, but, in the end, the job of making a case for Saddam's WMD's was just too far "out there" for even the most imaginative minds in the CIA. The problem you see was the complete lack of evidence. It's one thing to ask your spooks to "skew" the evidence, but what if there isn't even any evidence to skew?

Former CIA Chief George Tenet realised that, while he had a responsibility to support the megalomaniacal cravings of the Washington Neocons, he also had the CIA's reputation to think of. He was understandably reluctant to make his agency synonymous with dodgy intelligence, and he perhaps had some precognition that, if, or rather when, the whole thing blew up in their faces, the Neocons would surely pass the buck. Which, in fact, is exactly what the Presidential Commission has "revealed" today.

In the end, Colin Powell was forced to humiliate himself at the UN in February 2003 by presenting an inevitably pathetic case for an invasion of Iraq which included badly drawn pictures and a plagiarized grad student essay. Of course, that didn't stop the plan from going ahead. Not to be outdone however, once the war had been "won", the Bush administration turned their attention back to the intelligence agencies that had "failed" them, ousting Tenet before instituting a radical overhaul and placing Bush-man Porter Goss in the top position. One major benefit of course is that the Bush administration can now, and forever more, shift the blame for its criminal behavior onto the "intelligence community" and, at the same time, justify a concentrating of power over all intelligence into the hands of seasoned war criminals like John Negroponte.

Where will it all end? More than likely in "Armageddon", or something like that. Bet you can't wait.

WASHINGTON - A sacked CIA official is suing the agency for allegedly retaliating against him for refusing to falsify his reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to support the White House's pre-war position, The Washington Post said on Thursday.

Described as a senior CIA official who was sacked in August "for unspecified reasons," the plaintiff's lawsuit appears to be the first public instance of a CIA official charging that he was pressured to produce intelligence to support the US government's pre-war contention that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a grave threat to US and international security.

"Their official dogma was contradicted by his reporting and they did not want to hear it," said Roy Krieger, the officer's attorney.

CIA spokesperson Anya Guilsher told the daily she could not comment on the lawsuit, adding: "The notion that CIA managers order officers to falsify reports is flat wrong.

"Our mission is to call it like we see it and report the facts."

Krieger wrote a letter requesting a meeting with CIA director Porter Goss due to "the serious nature of the allegations in this case, including deliberately misleading the president on intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction", said the daily quoting from the letter.

The US overthrew the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, but has found no WMDs in Iraq.

The US government has acknowledged some of its pre-war intelligence may have been faulty.

The plaintiff, whose identity is blacked out in the lawsuit as well as any reference to Iraq, is of Middle Eastern descent, worked 23 years in the CIA, much of them in covert operations to collect intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, said the daily.

The lawsuit alleges that the CIA investigated alleged sexual and financial improprieties by the plaintiff "for the sole purpose of discrediting him and retaliating against him for questioning the integrity of the WMD reporting ... and for refusing to falsify his intelligence reporting to support the politically mandated conclusion" of matters that are redacted in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit requests that the plaintiff be restored to his former position in the CIA and received compensatory damages and legal fees.

The latest line from Secretary of State Colin Powell and others is that the Iraq war was such a just cause that we would have invaded even if we had known beforehand that no weapons of mass destruction existed.

To some, that might sound like a feeble effort to downplay a massive intelligence failure. I think it's more than that. I think it's the truth.

In effect, the Bush administration is now admitting that WMD were never the reason for the war. They chose to invade Iraq not to protect us from anthrax or nuclear attack, but because they hoped that an invasion would inspire new respect for U.S. power and would allow us to use Iraq as a base from which to transform the entire Arab world.

In the fall of 2002, however, administration officials recognized that honesty was not the best policy. Americans would never support an unprovoked war based on some grandiose ambition and dubious strategic benefit. If Bush officials wanted war, they needed to terrorize the American public into supporting it, and they seized upon the CIA's assessment of Iraqi WMD as the perfect tool for achieving that goal.

But first, the intelligence agencies had to be whipped into playing along.

While the CIA believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, it had also concluded that his stockpiles posed little danger to us or the rest of the world. That widely held view was captured perfectly in remarks by Powell on Feb. 24, 2001:

"Frankly, [sanctions] have worked," Powell told an Egyptian press conference. "[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

To get its war, the administration had to transform what it knew to be a minor, contained annoyance into a threat big enough to scare the American people. The solution it hit upon was ingenious: They fabricated a link between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.

Once again, though, the "realists" at the CIA posed a problem. They knew that no such link existed, and they naively thought their job was to be honest about what they knew. So, CIA Director George Tenet told Congress that it was highly unlikely that Saddam would ever give WMD to terrorists, and CIA analysts confirmed that Saddam and bin Laden were far from allies and, in fact, hated and distrusted each other.

That was true, but back then, the administration was more interested in fear than truth. It began a campaign to force the CIA to toe the company line, a campaign focused in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Pressure was exerted in private, including visits by Cheney to cross-examine analysts at CIA headquarters. It took place in public, as well, as mouthpieces in the conservative press attacked the CIA as Saddam-loving apologists. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even created a whole new intelligence office to reinterpret evidence "overlooked" by the fools at CIA.

Inevitably, the agency gave in, with surrender coming in the form of a letter from Tenet that grudgingly allowed for the possibility of a bin Laden-Saddam link. That was all the administration needed.

"Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam," President Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."

A similar sequence of events can be traced involving Iraq's nuclear program. The CIA's honest assessment was that "Iraq has probably continued at least low-level theoretical R&D associated with its nuclear program," but little more.

Again, postwar analysis has confirmed the accuracy of that claim, but again, the administration didn't want accuracy. It wanted scary. It cowed the CIA and other agencies into silence, allowing Cheney, Bush and others to warn that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program, had sought to buy uranium, had tried to acquire ways to enrich that uranium. None of that was true, but it served its purpose.

Looking back, then, the real scandal is not what the CIA got wrong. The real outrage is how much it got right, but was muzzled from telling us.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays.

Before he departed on his quest for Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction last June, David Kay, chief of the Iraq Survey Group, told friends that he expected promptly to locate the cause of the pre-empti ve war. On January 28, Kay appeared before the Senate to testify that there were no WMDs. "It turns out that we were all wrong," he said. President Bush, he added helpfully, was misinformed by the whole intelligence commu nity which, like Kay, made assumptions that turned out to be false.

Within days, Bush declared that he would, after all, appoint a commission to investigate; significantly, it would report its findings only after the presidential election.

Kay's testimony was the catalyst for this u-turn, but only one of his claims is correct: that he was wrong. The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail, but presented correct assessments and warn ings, that were overridden and suppressed. On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but f rom several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP r oamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president.

At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance. In one case, a senior intelligence officer who refused to buckle under was removed.

Bruce Hardcastle was a senior officer for the Middle East for the Defence Intelligence Agency. When Bush insisted that Saddam was actively and urgently engaged in a nuclear weapons programme and had renewed production of chemical weapons, the DIA reported otherwise. According to Patrick Lang, the former head of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told [the Bush administration] that the way they were handling evidence was wrong. " The response was not simply to remove Hardcastle from his post: "They did away with his job," Lang says. "They wanted only liaison officers ... not a senior intelligence person who argued with them."

When the state department's bureau of intelligence and research (INR) submitted reports which did not support the administration's case - saying, for example, that the aluminum tubes Saddam possessed were for conventi onal rocketry, not nuclear weapons (a report corroborated by department of energy analysts), or that mobile laboratories were not for WMDs, or that the story about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger was bogus, or that there was no link between Saddam and al-Qaida (a report backed by the CIA) - its analyses were shunted aside. Greg Thielman, chief of the INR at the time, told me: "Everyone in the intelligence community knew that the White Hou se couldn't care less about any information suggesting that there were no WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."

When the CIA debunked the tales about Niger uranium and the Saddam/al-Qaida connection, its reports were ignored and direct pressure applied. In October 2002, the White House inserted mention of the uranium into a spe ech Bush was to deliver, but the CIA objected and it was excised. Three months later, it reappeared in his state of the union address. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed never to have seen the original CIA memo and deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said he had forgotten about it.

Never before had any senior White House official physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to argue with mid-level managers and analysts about unfinished work. But twice vice president Cheney and Lewis Libby , his chief of staff, came to offer their opinions. According to Patrick Lang: "They looked disapproving, questioned the reports and left an impression of what you're supposed to do. They would say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to contradict them."

The CIA had visitors too, according to Ray McGovern, former CIA chief for the Middle East. Newt Gingrich came, and Condi Rice, and as for Cheney, "he likes the soup in the CIA cafeteria," McGovern jokes.

Meanwhile, senior intelligence officers were kept in the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld t o take to the president. That's the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent."

CIA director George Tenet, for his part, opted to become a political advocate for Bush's brief rather than a protector of the intelligence community. On the eve of the congressional debate, in a crammed three-week per iod, the agency wrote a 90-page national intelligence estimate justifying the administration's position on WMDs and scrubbed of all dissent. Once the document was declassifed after the war it became known that it containe d 40 caveats - including 15 uses of "probably", all of which had been removed from the previously published version. Tenet further ingratiated himself by remaining silent about the OSP. "That's totally unacceptable for a CIA director," said Thielman.

On February 5 2003, Colin Powell presented evidence of WMDs before the UN. Cheney and Libby had tried to inject material from Iraqi exiles and the OSP into his presentation, but Powell rejected most of it. Yet, for the most important speech of his career, he refused to allow the presence of any analysts from his own intelligence agency. "He didn't have anyone from INR near him," said Thielman. "Powell wanted to sell a rotten fish. He had decided there was no way to avoid war. His job was to go to war with as much legitimacy as we could scrape up."

Powell ignored INR analysts' comments on his speech. Almost every piece of evidence he unveiled turned out later to be false.

This week, when Bush announced he would appoint an investigative commission, Powell offered a limited mea culpa at a meeting at the Washington Post. He said that if only he had known the intelligence, he might not have supported an invasion. Thus he began to show carefully calibrated remorse, to distance himself from other members of the administration and especially Cheney. Powell also defended his UN speech, claiming "it reflected the best judgments of all of the intelligence agencies".

Powell is sensitive to the slightest political winds, especially if they might affect his reputation. If he is a bellwether, will it soon be that every man must save himself?

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a scathing report, a presidential commission said Thursday that America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows "disturbingly little" about the weapons programs and threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries.

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined more than 70 recommendations, saying that President George W. Bush must give John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, broader powers for overseeing the nation's 15 spy agencies.

It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office. [...]

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the commission said in a report to the president. "This was a major intelligence failure."

The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community's "inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analysing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence.

"On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude," the report said.

Looking beyond Iraq, the panel examined the ability of the intelligence community to accurately assess the risk posed by America's foes. [...]

"Our review has convinced us that the best hope for preventing future failures is dramatic change," the report said. "We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new technologies."

The report urged Bush to give more authority to Negroponte, his new director of national intelligence, overseeing all of the nation's 15 spy agencies. [...]

The panel recommended that Bush demand more of the intelligence community, which has been repeatedly criticized for failures as various investigations have looked back on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S.

"The intelligence community needs to be pushed," the report said. "It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers - sometimes to the point of discomfort."[...]

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II hovered close to death after receiving last rites following a devastating heart attack as senior cardinals prepared Catholics around the world for his demise.

The pope's condition was "very serious" after deteriorating dramatically following the heart attack, septic shock and a urinary tract infection, the Vatican announced early Friday, but by midday he had rallied somewhat and his condition was reported to be "stable".

John Paul II is "fully conscious," lucid and "extremely serene," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told a news conference at 12:30 pm (1030 GMT), adding that he had received his closest advisers in separate meetings at his bedside.

But a visibly moved Navarro-Valls, the papal spokesman for over 20 years, made no attempt to hide his concern, even as thousands of pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square to pray for the 84-year-old pope in what many believe to be his final hours.

"I'm trembling because I can feel that this time he may not make it," said Maria Abbate, a 50-year-old Italian woman standing in the large sun-filled St. Peter's square.

"The fact that he did not go to hospital means that he is ready to die," said Abbate. [...]

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41.

Schiavo died at 9:05 a.m. at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her in what was easily the longest, most bitter - and most heavily litigated - right-to-die dispute in U.S. history.

The feud between the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and their son-in-law continued even after her death: The Schindlers' advisers said Schiavo's brother and sister had been at her bedside a few minutes before the end came, but were not there at the moment of her death because Michael Schiavo would not let them in the room.

"And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," said the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest. He added: "This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again."

Dawn Kozsey, 47, a musician who was among those outside Schiavo's hospice, wept. "Words cannot express the rage I feel," she said. "Is my heart broken for this? Yes."

She left no written instructions, but her husband argued that his wife told him long ago she would not want to be kept alive artificially. His in-laws disputed that, saying that would have gone against her Roman Catholic faith, and they contended she could get better with treatment. They said she laughed, cried, responded to them and tried to talk.

In Washington, the president said he was saddened by the death.

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak," Bush said. "In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life." [...]

Gov. Jeb Bush said that millions of people around the world will be "deeply grieved" by her death but that the debate over her fate could help others grapple with end-of-life issues.

WASHINGTON - The World Bank unanimously approved Paul Wolfowitz as its president on Thursday despite quiet misgivings by some members over his role as the Bush administration's architect of the Iraq war.

The outcome had already largely been decided by the governments of the bank's major shareholder nations before the 24-member board met for a vote by consensus.

Wolfowitz, 61, the U.S. deputy defense secretary, will overlap with current bank chief and Clinton appointee James Wolfensohn before taking the reins of the biggest funder of development projects in the poorest nations on June 1.

"It is humbling to be entrusted with the leadership of this critically important international institution," Wolfowitz, who had sought to convince his new global constituency he was more multidimensional than his hard-line image, said in a statement.

He said the next six months would be important for development policy decisions, before a September U.N. summit to measure progress toward global poverty reduction goals.

Wolfowitz also said he understood the urgency of helping ease the bank's poorest borrowers' debt burdens, and improve infrastructure and regional integration if poverty was to be properly tackled.

While many had fumed privately at President Bush's nomination of the prominent conservative, not a single European government spoke out against his candidacy. Sources said grumbling was kept low in part because of European jostling for top jobs at other global agencies.

The Pentagon's No. 2 civilian official was the only nominee for the World Bank job, which by informal agreement is headed by an American. The top post of the International Monetary Fund usually goes to a European.

PRAISE AND DISSENT

The Bush administration said it looked forward to working with Wolfowitz, who has promised member countries he will not force U.S. policies on the bank.

"The mission of the World Bank is of vital importance to our country and the world, as this year's focus on development and accelerating action in Africa by the G-8 and the U.N. highlights," the White House said in a statement.

Britain, the bank's other large shareholder, described Wolfowitz as "a distinguished individual with a great deal of international experience." [...]

One of Wolfowitz's first tasks will be to fill management slots left vacant over the past year, as the Bush administration made clear it would replace Wolfensohn.

Development experts and commentators have been willing to give Wolfowitz the benefit of the doubt as he takes over at an organization that many feel has lost its way.

"Let us see his decisions and then judge him on performance rather than on ideology," said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, co-chairman of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

Cheney moves to take control of development coffers through his main man

He wasn't in the room when President George W. Bush announced it recently, but somewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney must have been smiling - well, smirking - when the commander-in-chief's voice coupled the improbable name Paul Wolfowitz with the title "President of the World Bank."

Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz have long worked hand-in-glove on a global quest for U.S. domination over world affairs. This latest action is as bold as the invasion of Iraq two years ago.

Dick Cheney, a long-time beneficiary of World Bank largess, has moved to take ownership of the world's development coffers through his man, Wolfowitz. For his part, Wolfowitz will have a chance to extend his Iraq reconstruction theories to the global level. These concepts mostly involve U.S. control over energy resources. While the Bank, over which the U.S. holds de facto veto power, has done a lot for the nation's oil interests over the years, his nomination is a clear signal that the administration craves more.

"Wolfowitz's words and deeds are antithetical to World Bank pretenses of multilateralism and development," said long-time World Bank critic John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies. "Between this and John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the UN, it's March Madness on Pennsylvania Avenue."

Like others in the Bush administration, Wolfowitz is consistent. In and out of office, he has articulated a clear vision of U.S. being the world's only superpower, fueled by free-flowing Persian Gulf oil.

Flash back to the early 1990s. Dust settled where the Berlin Wall once stood. The old world order was gone. Then-Defense Secretary Cheney tabbed Wolfowitz - his Assistant Secretary for Policy - to plan new national security strategies that reflected the preeminence of corporate quests in the extension of U.S. military might. Wolfowitz and Cheney prioritized defending Middle East oil fields, which they said "ranks above South America and Africa in terms of global wartime priorities." Wolfowitz fine-tuned this new world order in, writing: "In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."

After Cheney and Wolfowitz left office following the first President Bush's defeat at the polls, both men continued to push for U.S. corporate access to global oil resources. Cheney, through his stint as CEO of Halliburton, parlayed his political connections into company deals in democracy-rich places like Burma and Turkmenistan. "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments," he grumbled to his critics. He had the World Bank, which financed projects in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Chad, and Kazakhstan, to thank for some part of his Halliburton paycheck.

Wolfowitz, meanwhile, articulated the intellectual side of their shared agenda. As dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he gravely predicted the world's fate with Middle East oil resources threatened by Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. In 1994, he expressed the new preemptive doctrine, saying "By and large, wars are not constructive acts: they are better judged by what they prevent than by what they accomplish."

His was the clearest voice in a chorus of ex-Reagan and Bush officials calling upon Clinton to strike Hussein as the decade progressed. "The Persian Gulf with its vital oil resources is critical to us," he told Jim Lehrer in 1996. "That's absolutely central to constructing the kind of world that will be safer in the next century."

Wolfowitz started warning European governments and oil companies doing business with Iraq. "Companies that want to develop Iraq's enormous oil wealth should line up with a government of free Iraq instead," he wrote in 1997.

He sought congressional support for a plan to install Ahmed Chalabi's Iraq National Congress in Southern Iraq, and lashed out at European countries that opposed military measures. The French and Russians, he testified in September 1998, should understand "that the fabulous - and they are fabulous - oil resources of Iraq… will be ultimately in the control of a Government of Free Iraq."

Cheney and Wolfowitz placed their bets on Saddam's demise. With another Bush in office, they rolled the dice.

Wolfowitz never really emphasized eliminating global poverty - the World Bank's stated mission - as a national strategic priority. Bush points to Wolfowitz's stint as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia as proof of his "commitment to development." But as an envoy he obsessed about gaining U.S. corporate access to Indonesia's energy resources in the 1980s, at a time when strongman Suharto banned opposition, and skimmed plenty from World Bank and other development finance groups.

Wolfowitz's main "development" experience is actually in post-invasion Iraq. After the invasion, he stomped through Europe, demanding that its governments cancel Iraq's debt. When Europe balked, he signed an order saying that anyone not involved in the military coalition would be barred from Iraq reconstruction contracts. A recent Inspector General audit of coalition reconstruction funds found the coalition "did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial, and contractual controls to ensure (development) funds were used in a transparent manner. Consequently, there was no assurance the funds were used for the purposes mandated by" the UN.

But Cheney and crew, with the unbounded joy of spring, remain on the charm offensive, trying to secure the economic crown jewel.

Cheney and Wolfowitz understand that global hegemony requires control over the three pillars of power: military, political, and economic. The World Bank sets the terms of global development. When developing countries started demanding a decrease in U.S. political power in the institution, when the Bank balked at supporting Wolfowitz's reconstruction and debt cancellation plans for Iraq, and when a Bank-commissioned study recommended getting out of the oil business, the World Bank became a natural target for a hostile takeover.

Cheney wants in. There's no stopping him now, unless Europe, industrialized Asia, and the Global South decide to put up a fight.

Jim Vallette is research director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network) at the Institute for Policy Studies and an analyst at Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article originally appeared. He is the co-author of numerous studies about international finance and U.S. oil interests, including the December 2004 report, A Wrong Turn from Rio: The World Bank's Road to Climate Catastrophe and the 2000 examination, Halliburton's Destructive Engagement: How Dick Cheney and USA-Engage Subvert Democracy at Home and Abroad.

US Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who was appointed head of the World Bank yesterday, shocked pundits and the White House this morning by turning down the post in favor of an offer from the Roman Catholic Church to assume the papacy after the death of Jean-Paul II. A shaken Scott McClellan, Bush's Press Secretary, refused to answer questions at a brief appearance shortly after hearing the news, raising questions about rumors of a split between the administration and the neocons.

Reports from Israel say that Ariel Sharon was "jubilant" that his close friend and advisor, Wolfowitz, was assuming such an important post. "Let the crusade begin!" Mr. Sharon was reported to have told his cabinet.

A Vatican spokesman said the move was done to curb any accusations of anti-Semitism within the Church. Another official, speaking off the record, suggested that the move was designed to show Christians everywhere that the Catholic Church was prepared to do everything in its power to help bring on the Apocalypse, attempting to head off criticisms from the fundamentalist churches in the United States who believe the Roman Church is soft on Satan.

Update: President Bush has issued a statement in which he has given his full support to Wolfowitz. "He'll look great in those robes and he's offered to let me borrow the Popemobile when I play golf!" said an excited Bush, whose boyish enthusiasm was evident.

Bush also said he hopes the Church will not prolong the suffering of the current Pope, Jean Paul II, and will remove his feeding tube. "Life is much too precious to be wasted on the dead," he said. When an Italian journalist pointed out that Jean-Paul II was still conscious, Bush jokingly asked if he was from Il Manifesto, the communist paper whose reporter Giuliana Sgrena was attacked by US forces after her liberation in Baghdad.

Bush denied any split between his administration and the neoconservatives, and said that had he known the Papacy was open, he would not have tendered Wolfowitz's name for the World Bank.

"Our savior was Jewish, and my gut tells me that putting a Jew as Pope will lead to a new beginning in Christianity, one that will bring the glory of Armageddon to the Holy Lands and then to the world. Paul has been an ardent defender of this policy as part of my administration, and I have no doubt he will continue to play an important role at the Vatican."

Bush chose England to succeed Paul Wolfowitz, who was approved on Thursday as the next president of the World Bank. The nomination requires Senate confirmation.

England, 67, previously held the position of Navy secretary from 2001 until 2003. He was appointed deputy secretary at the Homeland Security Department in January 2003, but returned to the Navy post nine months later.

Before joining the Bush administration, England, worked at General Dynamics Corporation as executive vice president. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and his master's from the M.J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University.

SOFIA, April 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Bulgaria's government has decided to cut the number of soldiers in Iraq ahead of summer elections and withdraw completely from the country by the end of the year, Bulgarian daily Trud reported on Friday.

"The government proposes parliament allow the Bulgarian light infantry battalion to fulfill, until Dec. 31, its mandate for maintaining security and stability in Iraq," government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev told reporters on Thursday.

With the approach of general elections this summer, Bulgarian public opposition to the Iraq War has raised pressure on the government to bring home its some 500 soldiers stationed there.

According to the newspaper report, the government decided to reduce Bulgaria's troops in Iraq to 400 just before the general elections on June 25 and then withdraw completely before yearend.

Just to make it absolutely and positively CLEAR about the general nature of successive US governments and their policy towards the inhabitants of this planet:

Afghanistan. Just about every Western citizen, most particularly Americans, when asked for their opinion on Afghanistan will come up with something along the lines of, "cruel treatment of women, brutal fundamentalist Islamic Taleban, no education, no music", followed up by "US military, under the command of President Bush, liberated the Afghan people who now enjoy many more liberties."

Of course, none of us should be surprised to learn that the above is, at best, an extremely subjective interpretation of the facts, at worst an out and out lie. Recently, Laura Bush graced Afghan soil and declared:

"It's very hard to imagine the idea of denying girls an education, of never allowing girls to go to school"

The only conclusion that we can draw from such a comment is that Laura is not much of a history fan, particularly the history of the latter part of the 20th century which concerns US foreign policy in Central Asia. If Laura had bothered to delve into the harder to find history books, she would have discovered the real reason that Afghan women were treated like cattle throughout the 1980's and 90's.

In 1973 Dr. Mohammad Daoud declared a new Republic of Afghanistan, ousting the monarch government of Mohammed Zaher Shah in a bloodless coup d’etat. Daoud was an extreme conservative and ruled as absolute dictator. In response to the oppressive policy of the new regime the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan PDPA was formed. On April 26, 1978 Daoud's ordered the arrest of almost the entire leadership of the PDPA. The progressive masses in Kabul saw the arrests as an attempt to annihilate the PDPA, just as the military junta had done to the workers' parties in Chile in 1973 (with US backing). An uprising by the lower ranks of the military freed the popular party leader, Nur Mohammad Taraki. Within a day, Daoud was overthrown and a revolutionary government proclaimed, headed by Taraki.

According to the CIA's own casebook in Afghanistan:

Before the revolution, 5 percent of Afghanistan's rural landowners owned more than 45 percent of the arable land. A third of the rural people were landless laborers, sharecroppers or tenants.

Debts to the landlords and to money lenders "were a regular feature of rural life." An indebted farmer turned over half his crop each year to the money lender.

"When the PDPA took power, it quickly moved to remove both landownership inequalities and usury." Decree number six of the revolution canceled mortgage debts of agricultural laborers, tenants and small landowners.

The revolutionary regime set up extensive literacy programs, especially for women. It printed textbooks in many languages-Dari, Pashtu, Uzbek, Turkic and Baluchi. "The government trained many more teachers, built additional schools and kindergartens, and instituted nurseries for orphans," says the country study.

Before the revolution, female illiteracy had been 96.3 percent in Afghanistan. Rural illiteracy of both sexes was 90.5 percent.

By 1985 there had been an 80-percent increase in hospital beds. The government initiated mobile medical units and brigades of women and young people to go to the undeveloped countryside and provide medical services to the peasants for the first time.

Among the very first decrees of the revolutionary regime were to prohibit bride-price and give women freedom of choice in marriage. "Historically," said the U.S. manual, "gender roles and women's status have been tied to property relations. Women and children tend to be assimilated into the concept of property and to belong to a male."

Before the revolution abride who did not exhibit signs of virginity on the wedding night could be murdered by her father and/or brothers.

After the revolution, young women in the cities, where the new government's authority was strong, could tear off the veil, freely go out in public, attend school and get a job. They were organized in the Democratic Women's Organization of Afghanistan, founded in 1965 by Dr. Anahita Ratebzada.

The revolution and the establishment of the social government under Taraki challenged the old fundamentalist Islamic order. Afghanistan was slowly being turned into a progressive and libertarian country with a somewhat secular government providing equal rights for all.

What was the US government's response?

The CIA began building a mercenary army, recruiting feudal Afghan warlords and their servants for a "holy war" against the "communists", who had liberated "their" women and "their" peasants. Washington spent billions of dollars every year on the war.

Now remember, the reforms in Afghanistan began in 1978 and were gaining pace over the following years.

In an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski in "Le Nouvel Observateur" Jan 15-21, 1998, p.76, Brzezinski tells us:

Brzezinski: According to the official version of history,
CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

The "pro-Soviet regime" mentioned here was the socialst government of Tariki that was advocating women's rights and education for all.

Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to
intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

The fact is that the Russians were enticed to intervene in Afghanistan because of the aforementioned aid and weaponry that the the US was supplying to the Feudal warlords who were seeking to overthrow the socialist government of Taraki - the one that had begun to reform and open up Afghan society.

Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

So not only did the US successfully give Russia its "Vietnam" it also succeeded in removing the socialist government of Tariki, replacing it with the regime of the Feudal warlords, you know, the ones that promote the murdering of women if they are not virgins on their wedding night.

Question: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Indeed, not only does the US government allege that Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace, but they also allege that the 19 hijackers on September 11th 2001 were trained, aided and abetted by the Taleban warlords that the US essentially placed in power.

If only we could encourage Laura Bush to expose herself to the truth about Afghanistan's history she might find it a little easier to "imagine how the idea of denying girls an education, of never allowing girls to go to school", can come about.

Heck! We might even get her to understand why, despite the "liberation" bestowed on the Iraqi people by her husband, twice as many Iraqi children are now going hungry than under Saddam...

GENEVA (AP) Malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis has almost doubled since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a hunger specialist told the U.N. human rights body Wednesday in a summary of previously reported studies on health in Iraq.

By last fall, 7.7 percent of Iraqi children under 5 suffered acute malnutrition, compared to 4 percent after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.

Malnutrition, which is exacerbated by a lack of clean water and adequate sanitation, is a major killer of children in poor countries. Children who survive are usually physically and mentally impaired for life, and are more vulnerable to disease.

The situation facing Iraqi youngsters is ''a result of the war led by coalition forces,'' said Ziegler, an outspoken Swiss sociology professor and former lawmaker whose previous targets have included Swiss banks, China, Brazil and Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Overall, more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat, Ziegler told the 53-nation commission, which is halfway through its annual six-week session.

The U.S. delegation and other coalition countries declined to respond to his presentation, which compiled the findings of studies conducted by other specialists.

In reporting the 7.7 percent malnutrition rate for Iraqi youngsters, the Norwegian-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science said in November that the figure was similar to the levels in some African countries.

Iraq was generally regarded as having good nutrition rates in the 1970s and 1980s, but problems emerged when the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The United Nations later began an oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicine. That was credited with nearly doubling the Iraqi population's annual food intake and halving malnutrition among children.

Ziegler did not mention the role of Iraq's insurgency in the nutrition problem, something often cited by aid groups.

Late last year, Carol Bellamy, head of UNICEF, said the violence hampers the delivery of adequate supplies of food.

Ziegler also cited an October 2004 U.S. study that estimated as many as 100,000 more Iraqis many of them women and children had died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would normally have died, based on the death rate before the war.

''Most died as a result of the violence, but many others died as a result of the increasingly difficult living conditions, reflected in increasing child mortality levels,'' he said.

The authors of the report in the British-based medical journal The Lancet researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad conceded their data were of ''limited precision.''

Ziegler also told the commission he was concerned about hunger in North Korea, Palestinian areas, Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur region, Zimbabwe, India, Myanmar, the Philippines and Romania.

Worldwide, he said, more than 17,000 children under 5 die daily from hunger-related diseases.

''The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder,'' Ziegler said. ''It must be battled and eliminated.''

GENEVA - A UN human rights expert sharply condemned the invasion of Iraq and the global anti-terror drive, accusing the US-led coalition of using food deprivation as a military tactic and of sapping efforts to fight hunger in the world.

"The situation of the right to food in Iraq is of serious concern," the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said in a report to the UN human rights commission.

The report also highlighted "widespread concerns about the continued lack of access to clean drinking water" and allegations by British campaigners that water sources were deliberately cut off by coalition forces.

"Those are the allegations, but what is proven is that at Fallujah, denial, the blockade imposed on food and the destruction of water reservoirs was used as weapon of war," Ziegler told journalists.

He insisted that the practice was a "clear violation" of the Geneva Conventions and delivered a firm condemnation of any attempt to deny food or water supplies.

The UN expert insisted he was not judging the legitimacy of the invasion or the tactics used by military forces.

"I am simply maintaining a firm condemnation, very firm, of the humanitarian consequences of this strategy and the military tactics applied since March 2003 by the occupying forces," he said.

Citing previous studies reported last year, the report said that "acute malnutrition amongst Iraqi children under the age of five has almost doubled from four percent to 7.7 percent," since Saddam Hussein was toppled.

A US official said Ziegler's comments were "unfortunate."

"First he has not visited Iraq, secondly he's wrong," said US ambassador Kevin Moley.

Moley said the rise in malnutrition rates began in 2002 and 2003 under Saddam Hussein's regime, and the rates were still lower in Iraq than "throughout the Arab world."

"He's taking some information that in itself is difficult to validate and juxtaposing is own views which are widely known about the war in Iraq and suggesting the two are linked," he told journalists.

"Vaccination rates, food aid have improved dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein," the US envoy added.

Overall efforts to tackle terror groups and the invasion of Iraq had also drained precious resources away from fighting hunger in poor countries when they should be doing the opposite, the UN expert said.

The wide-ranging report on global food rights also warned that more people could die as aid programmes in crisis areas, notably in Africa, were obliged to cut down food deliveries.

The World Food Programme had cut food rations by about one third in February 2004, bringing them "drastically under" international minimum nutritional standards, according to Ziegler.

"This will bring higher mortality in the camps, because aid is being redirected towards the 'War against Terror.' This is unacceptable," he added.

Ziegler's report said the resources spent on "the international 'Alliance against Hunger' remain pitiful, when compared to the billions of dollars spent on the 'War against Terror.'"

"The amount of aid being provided for development and famine relief is falling, as money is redirected towards strengthening national security and the fight against terrorism."

"Yet the fight against terrorism should incorporate efforts to reduce hunger, poverty and inequality," it added.

Ziegler urged authorities in Iraq to ensure that reconstruction was carried out "in ways that address chronic malnourishment and do not undermine the future food security of the Iraqi people."