Books

Book Arts Web BookLab II Future of the Book Hands On   Bookbinding Models

All Purpose

allied Andrea's Weblog Antipixel blivet 2.0 Boing Boing Cheek Code: The Web Socket dangerousmeta! drat fink dumbmonkey environy Ethel the Blog follow me here... gordon.coale Jeff's Weblog Medley NewPages Weblog plep rebecca's pocket Schockwellenreiter Scripting News Subteranean 2020 Hindsight UBUWEB wood s lot

Pure Politics

AMERICAblog Atrios Back to Iraq 3.0 Billmon Blah3.Com BOP Body and Soul CalPundit/   Political Animal Juan Cole corrente Crooks & Liars Cursor Daily Kos DonkeyRISING Gilliard's News Blog Huffington/The Blog Hullabaloo Interesting Times Jesus' General liberal oasis Media Transparency Michael Bérubé The Moderate Voice NDOL New Patriot Oliver Willis Orcinus POAC Raw Story Smirking Chimp Talking Points Memo TBRNews TPMCafe This Modern World Tomb of Horrors James Wolcott

Intelligence

Al-Ahram Weekly AlterNet America Held Hostile! American Politics Journal The American Prospect Asia Times Associated Press BBC Boston Globe B'Tselem Bush Watch BuzzFlash CCR CNN CSM Common Dreams CounterPunch DEBKAfile Democratic Underground From the Wilderness Guardian Google News Secrecy News Archive Ha'aretz IHT IMC-Palestine The Independent IndyMedia Information Clearing House Junction City LA Times Liberal Slant mediachannel.org Media News Middle East Times Mother Jones Narco News The Nation New America Foundation News Now New York Times Online Journal openDemocracy Palestine Chronicle The Progressive Public i Reuters Reuters AlterNet SFGate Tapped TomPaine truthout Viridian Washington Post What Really Happened Working For Change ZNet

Music

All Music Guide Blogcritics Honky Tonk Texas Insurgent Country Jensen Guitars MusicSearcher TexasMusicGuide trouser press Whole Wheat Radio

Library Weblogs

Bookslut Internet Scout Liblog librarian.net L.A.C.K. Library Blog Library Juice LibraryNotes Library Stuff LISNews Neat New Stuff Research Buzz The Rogue Librarian SEP Weblog Shifted Librarian --- Library Weblogs

Reference

American Memory Book Preservation Bibliography Librarians Index Library Spot Literary Calendar Live365 Translation VDHBS xrefer

E-Pubs

21C magazine archipelago ALT-X Ariadne Cites & Insights Cultivate DigiNews D-lib Magazine Edge Exquisite Corpse First Monday The Idler JoDI megapixel.net

Links

CLIR CoOL Digital Eyes Digital Photography Review KUT LibDex NewPages Online

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Feeling safer?  The Other Weapons Threat in Iraq by Bob Drogin Insurgent networks across Iraq are increasingly trying to acquire and use toxic nerve gases, blister agents and germ weapons against U.S. and coalition forces, according to a CIA report. Investigators said one group recruited scientists and sought to prepare poisons over seven months before it was dismantled in June. U.S. officials say the threat is especially worrisome because leaders of the previously unknown group, which investigators dubbed the "Al Abud network," were based in the city of Fallouja near insurgents aligned with fugitive militant Abu Musab Zarqawi. The CIA says Zarqawi, who is blamed for numerous attacks on U.S. forces and beheadings of hostages, has long sought to use chemical and biological weapons against targets in Europe as well as Iraq. An exhaustive report released last week by Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons investigator in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s and never tried to rebuild them. But a little-noticed section of the 960-page report says the risk of a "devastating" attack with unconventional weapons has grown since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq last year (emphasis added) The Bush administration, which went to war primarily to disarm the Baghdad regime of suspected illicit stockpiles, has not previously disclosed that the insurgent groups that have emerged and steadily expanded since Hussein's ouster are trying to develop their own crude supplies of such deadly agents as mustard gas, ricin and the nerve gas tabun. Neither of the two chemists who worked for Al Abud had ties to Hussein's long-defunct weapons programs, and Duelfer's investigators found no evidence that the group's poison project was part of a "prescribed plan by the former regime to fuel an insurgency." For now, the leaders and financiers of the network "remain at large, and alleged chemical munitions remain unaccounted," the report says. It adds that other insurgent groups are "planning or attempting to produce or acquire" chemical and biological agents throughout Iraq, and says the availability of chemicals and munitions, as well as sympathetic former Iraqi weapons scientists, "increases the future threat." [more So, there were no WMDs before the invasion, but now there are. I don't recall Bush mentioning this in the debate or his important policy speech last week. Bush and the CIA  The CIA 'old guard' goes to war with Bush by Phillip Sherwell (...) There is anger within the CIA that it has taken all the blame for the failings of pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes. Former senior CIA officials argue that so-called "neo-conservative" hawks such as the vice president, Dick Cheney, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his number three at the defence department, Douglas Feith, have prompted the ill-feeling by demanding "politically acceptable" results from the agency and rejecting conclusions they did not like. Yet Colin Powell, the less hardline secretary of state, has also been scathing in his criticism of pre-war intelligence briefings. (...) Fighting to defend their patch ahead of the future review, anti-Bush CIA operatives have ensured that Iraq remains high on the election campaign agenda long after Republican strategists such as Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser, had hoped that it would fade from the front pages. In the latest clash, a senior former CIA agent revealed that Mr Cheney "blew up" when a report into links between the Saddam regime and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist behind the kidnappings and beheadings of hostages in Iraq, including the Briton Kenneth Bigley, proved inconclusive. Other recent leaks have included the contents of classified reports drawn up by CIA analysts before the invasion of Iraq, warning the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba'athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war. Critics of the White House include officials who have served in previous Republican administrations such as Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism and member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan. "These have been an extraordinary four years for the CIA and the political pressure to come up with the right results has been enormous, particularly from Vice-President Cheney. "I'm afraid that the agency is guilty of bending over backwards to please the administration. George Tenet was desperate to give them what they wanted and that was a complete disaster." [more]