Review: PBS Airs Frontline's Bush's War, Part I
 Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

On Tuesday, March 24th, PBS debuted the first half of a two-part special series "Bush's War," produced by Michael Kirk and funded by public contributions, The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Park Foundation.  The second half aired last night.  This is a review of Tuesday's Part 1, with just a peek at the startling series that every American ought to sit down and watch for him or herself.

Ready to watch a film you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever forget?  Split up in 8-11 minute segments for convenient snack and potty breaks (and so the viewer can better understand the five-year timeline covered), PBS breaks down the roles of key players in the Bush Administration and the war on terror, in a series that has the most astounding portions of 400+ interviews conducted with White House Insiders.  Retired Generals.  A slew of former CIA Officers.  White House lawyers and employees. Iraq weapons experts, NSC Counterterrorism experts.  Members of the press, of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council.

Part I connect the dots in a game masterminded by one of the most powerful Vice President's in US history, Dick Cheney; combined with the stubborn missteps of Donald Rumsfeld; the lies the American public were told; who took the falls, and why.  Condoleezza Rice and even George W. Bush himself play almost miniscule parts in a shocking scheme to wage the wrong war, as the administration simultaneously invented and omitted key information to the public at will.  At the end of the day, as Colin Powell has expressed, there was still only one man who had the final word.  Dick Cheney had the final word.

Among the revelations:
We Could Have Had Bin Laden
-When the CIA received intelligence that Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were hiding out in the Eastern areas of Afghanistan in rugged territory, no Army Special Forces were sent to assist the CIA, nor regular U.S. troops to even attempt to block the mountains.  Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had other plans, which were to find a connection between Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and Al-Qaeda.

"We could all feel it slipping away after week after week after week went by and the US had no military units on the ground except a few special forces," Richard Clarke, Director of NSC Counterterrorism 1998-2001

A CIA Officer with decades under his belt, Gary Bernsten, was sent to Andabar province in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, and without the support of the DOD forged ahead to Camp Milawa.  He was told "'One-third of your men will die.  Be prepared for that.  I accept it, you need to accept it, proceed aggressively.'"

According to the documentary's interviews, While Donald Rumsfeld was clashing with George Tenet (head of the CIA at the time), engaging in an alleged power struggle with Colin Powell, and directing others to look for ties between 9/11 and Iraq, Bin Laden got away.

"Four guys - two CIA officers and two JSOC with about 10 Afghan guards - call in the first 56 hours of airstrikes against the motherload of Al-Qaeda down below them," Bernsten relayed.  The beginning, he said, of a sixteen-day battle that received little assistance from Special Forces.  They phoned the Pentagon urgently, but received only air support - no rangers on the ground.

Gary Schroen, with the CIA from 1970-2002, is still convinced that Bin Laden was there at Torah Bora that day, and wounded, but the US did not close the Afghan border, and Bin Laden escaped.  The could have covered the North, South, and West, he said, but didn't have enough troops to cover the East.

The Military Order Of 2001 - "Rumsfeld's Rules" - Came Straight From Cheney
White House Lawyer from 2001-2003, Bradford Berenson, relays that he delivered the Military Order of Nov 13, 2001 from Dick Cheney to President Bush while the helicopter outside was preparing for Bush's departure on one of his many brief trips; and the Military Order needed Bush's signature urgently before he left.  Journalists agree this is not standard procedure, and that documents that require the President's signature are usually passed among many assistants before eventually getting signed.

"The people involved in this did not want to wait for the President to get back from whatever one- or two-day trip he was going on," Berenson said.  "They felt it was important that the authority to create these Commissions exists immediately.  And so Stuart and I went into the Oval Office, brought the order to the President.  He quickly reviewed it and put his signature and then headed off down the hallway with Andy Card and a couple of others to get on the helicopter."
 
The document was the authorization to keep Iraqi detainees out of civilian courts and allow military trials under rules set by Donald Rumsfeld.  No one told John Bellinger - the lawyer for the National Security Staff - until after Bush signed the document.  Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and their lawyers had been "kept out of the loop."

There Was Definitely Torture
HVT's ("High Value Terrorists") such as Ibn Sheikh al-Libby - the head of a Taliban training camp in Afghanistan, captured in Dec. 2001 - are treated brutally.  An inside source revealed, "local commanders were making their own decisions about where to draw the lines based on a general atmosphere of 'we're taking off the gloves.'"  Who drew the lines, and who was in charge?  No one seemed to know.  Al-Libby - who the FBI had, and wanted to bring to justice in the United States - was taken away by the CIA, and delivered to Egypt.

He was duct-taped and thrown in a box in the back of a truck, Schroen reveals.  Vincent Cannistraro, also a former CIA Officer, said Al-Libby was sent there to be tortured.

"We know [at the time] that he's going to be tortured; anyone who's worked on Egypt, has worked on other countries in the Middle East, knows that.  Egyptians torture him, and he provides a lot of information."  This information made it's way back to become further American "intelligence."

Colin Powell argued in opposition of abandoning the Geneva Conventions, which protect detainees against torture.  Administration sources quickly insulted him in the press, and accused him of bowing to the political "left."  Rumsfeld instead announced that President Bush determined the Geneva Conventions would NOT apply to conflict with Al-Qaeda, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere; and Rumsfeld would decide where their interrogations would take place.

"We were told that the President had been advised that the Geneva Conventions did not apply."  William Howard Taft, IV Legal Advisor to Secy. of State, 2001-2005

New interrogation techniques were being practiced in light of Rumsfeld's announcement that the Geneva Conventions were to be ignored.  Mohammed al-Qahtani, held by US forces and dubbed the "20th hijacker," was deprived of sleep and food, terrorized by dogs, forced to wear women's underwear, forced to urinate on himself, put on a dog leash and made to do animal tricks, called a homosexual, touched and straddled by female interrogators mocking his devout Muslim faith.  Rumsfeld specifically authorized exploiting detainee's phobias, deprivation of light, 20-hour interrogations, shackling and stress positions for hours at a time.

The Iraqi National Congress/Ahmad Chalabi's Secrecy
When the Vice President's office relied on Iraqi National Congress (INC) member Ahmad Chalabi for information they "wanted to hear," others (including Powell) thought him a smart manipulator, and the administration's interior began to crack.  Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State from 2001-2005 couldn't get any receipts from Chalabi for his erratic spending, and vocalized his distrust:  subsequently, his twenty-plus year friendship with Paul Wolfowitz quickly soured.

"At that time, we had INC constantly shoving crap at us.  You know, they were providing information that they thought that we wanted to hear.  They were feeding the beast."  Mark Garlasco, Defense Intel. Agency, 97-03

"The Defense Dept. was paying millions of dollars a month to the INC to collect intelligence," a source states.  "Because the INC itself is an advocacy organization that advocated to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and its replacement by a government in which they would play a major part."

The CIA's "Blunder" Was Telling The Truth
"The CIA went back 10 years and examined around 20,000 documents, and could find 'no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda.  And to those attacks.'" -Former CIA Officer

For two years, from 2002-2004, Vice President Cheney repeated the story to the media that Mohamed Atta (the alleged "lead hijacker") met in Prague with a Senior Iraqi Intelligence Official five months before the WTC attacks, to imply a "connection" between Al-Qaeda and Iraq.  A meeting, CIA Officials say, Cheney knew never happened.  Former CIA heads met with Cheney over this intelligence, and agreed it was faulty - and they say next thing they knew, Scooter Libby was telling people to keep quiet and Dick Cheney was stating it as fact on Meet The Press.

Colin Powell arranged through Condi a meeting with Bush in the summer of 2002 to voice his opposition of invading Iraq.  He said the UN should be sent in instead, and a UN resolution crafted; he also advised that if UN inspectors were allowed in and Saddam Hussein complied, there would be no war.  But VP Cheney disagreed, and retaliated with a public speech in August of '02 that Saddam now "definitely" had weapons of mass destruction and that sending in inspectors would do no good.

General Tommy Franks, meanwhile, was being briefed and prepared for war.

In Feb. '03, Powell puts his reputation on the line by trusting information provided to him via George Tenet and Vice President Cheney's office, in a speech before the UN Security Council.  Unbeknownst to Powell, the "eyewitness" information was coming from "Curveball," the now infamously unreliable source that served as part of a pretext to war.  Additionally, the speech was based on claims Al-Libby made under torture in Egypt, that Al-Libby later said that he made up.

This is only a taste of Part I.  I highly recommend watching the series that fits all the nonsensical puzzle pieces together that we've been handed for over five years now.  It's done in high-quality, documentary-meets-bigscreen style; stunning context that leaves no room for doubt; and it's free to watch right now or anytime at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/.  Stay tuned for our review of Part II.

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