Bush Asks U.S. to Look Past Iraq Bloodshed

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 9 minutes ago

Beginning the fourth year of an unpopular war, President Bush defended his Iraq record on Monday against skeptical questioning. He said he could "understand people being disheartened" but appealed to Americans to look beyond the bloodshed and see signs of progress.

Bush fielded questions for nearly an hour at the City Club, a forum known for its tough interrogations of world leaders. Not only was he grilled on Iraq, but he also was asked to justify his warrantless wiretapping program, U.S. relations with Pakistan and his domestic priorities.

The president was asked why he deemed Iraq — which turned out not to have weapons of mass destruction — as enough of a threat three years ago to launch an invasion, in contrast to nuclear-ambitious Iran today.

"One difference was that, in Iraq, there was a series of unanimous (U.N. Security Council) resolutions that basically held the Iraqi government to account, which Saddam Hussein ignored," Bush said. Still, he said Iran was a concern, on the question of nuclear weapons and on its role in Iraq.

The White House has accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi politics and of supporting armed militias in Iraq by sending men and weapons, including components for increasingly lethal roadside bombs. Iran and the United States have agreed to talk about Iraq, but Bush said, "It's very important, however, for the Iranians to understand that the discussion is limited to Iraq. We feel like they need to know our position."

As the president delivered the latest installment in an upbeat defense of his Iraq policy, opponents used the day after the third anniversary of the invasion to step up their criticism.

Three potential 2008 presidential candidates — Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska — offered critical assessments at the International Association of Firefighters' legislative conference in Washington.

Biden said it was time for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to "be told to go home" and for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "be given his walking papers." Richardson said U.S. involvement in Iraq had been "badly mismanaged by the administration."

Hagel, in an interview at the conference, said many of the predictions and promises made by the administration have fallen short, such as that oil revenues would pay for the war and the conflict would be short. He also pointed to Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion last May that the insurgency was in its "last throes."

"There's been a credibility erosion for three years," Hagel said.

On Capitol Hill, some Democrats said there had been progress in Iraq, as Bush asserted, but they said it was clouded by problems across the country. They said Bush had gone to war without enough troops.

"Some positive signs do not mitigate this administration's gross miscalculations and stunning incompetence in Iraq," said Rep. Steny Hoyer (news, bio, voting record) of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the "policies of the Bush administration and the civilian leadership of our military have made America less safe and left Iraq on the precipice of all-out civil war."

Bush pointed to success in stabilizing an insurgent stronghold in Tal Afar, a northern Iraqi city of 200,000 near the Syrian border.

"The strategy that worked so well in Tal Afar did not emerge overnight," Bush said. "It took time to understand and adjust to the brutality of the enemy in Iraq."

"The example of Tal Afar gives me confidence in our strategy," the president said.

One woman asked Bush whether he saw terrorism as a sign of the biblical Apocalypse, and a man followed up with how he could restore confidence in U.S. leadership after several reasons for going to war with Iraq later proved false.

"Like you, I mean, I asked that very same question: Where'd we go wrong on intelligence?" Bush said. He said he was working to improve intelligence gathering because "the credibility of our country is essential."

As for the Apocalypse, Bush said, "I haven't really thought of it that way. ... I guess I'm more of a practical fellow."

Bush bantered with the audience at times. And despite the probing questions, he received several rounds of enthusiastic applause.

"Anybody work here in this town?" Bush joked to laughter as he responded to question after question.

The White House made no attempt to screen either the audience or the questions, said spokesman Scott McClellan.

However, much of downtown near the hotel where Bush spoke was barricaded off. About 100 anti-war protesters chanted for the Republican president to leave the heavily Democratic city, held signs with peace messages and banged on drums.

Inside, not all the questions challenged Bush's war rationale.

One member of the audience invited him back for the Cleveland Hungarian Revolution 50th Anniversary next October. Others complimented him on his vision for a nuclear treaty with India and for his "very enlightening" comments about Iraq.

Cheney, attending a political fundraiser in Hanoverton, in northeast Ohio, also defended U.S. involvement in Iraq and said decisions on troop levels would be made without political consideration.

"Our coalition is also helping to build an Iraqi security force that is well trained and well equipped," Cheney said.

Saddam's foreign minister was CIA source: NBC

1 hour, 19 minutes ago

In the period before the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Naji Sabri, was a secret paid source of the CIA, "NBC Nightly News" reported on Monday.

Citing unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials, NBC said Sabri provided details of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be more accurate than CIA estimates.

Intelligence sources said Sabri was paid more than $100,000 through an intermediary in a September 2002 deal brokered by the French, NBC reported.

Sabri may have thought he was working with the French, but some U.S. intelligence officials believe he knew it was the CIA, NBC said.

The CIA questioned Sabri through a go-between about Saddam's WMD program, the report said.

According to the intelligence sources, Sabri indicated that Saddam had no significant weapons program and that while the deposed Iraqi leader desperately wanted a nuclear bomb it would have taken more time for him to build one than the CIA's several-months-to-a-year estimate, NBC reported.

Both the CIA and Sabri said Saddam had stockpiled chemical weapons, but both were wrong, NBC said.

WMD were the main justification for President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq three years ago, but no such weapons have been found.

Citing intelligence sources, NBC said the CIA's brief relations with Sabri ended after he refused to defect to the United States. The agency had been hoping for a public relations coup, the network said.

Sabri was not named among the former senior Iraqi officials on the U.S. most-wanted list of 55 Iraqi fugitives.

NBC said it found Sabri teaching at a university in the Middle East, but was not revealing his location for security reasons.

Sabri declined to be interviewed or to comment as did the CIA, NBC said, adding that the agency also would not say why it did not listen to Sabri's warnings.

A CIA representative had no comment on the report.

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Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina

By MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers 16 minutes ago

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage â€” along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press â€” show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Linked by secure video, Bush expressed a confidence on Aug. 28 that starkly contrasted with the dire warnings his disaster chief and numerous federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.

A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the video footage.

"I hope people don't draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing," presidential spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times."

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said his department would not release the full set of videotaped briefings, saying most transcripts â€” though not the videotapes â€” from the sessions were provided to congressional investigators months ago.

"There's nothing new or insightful on these tapes," Knocke said. "We actively participated in the lessons-learned review and we continue to participate in the Senate's review and are working with them on their recommendation."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a critic of the administration's Katrina response, had a different take after watching the footage Wednesday afternoon from an AP reporter's camera.

"I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now," Nagin said. "I was listening to what people were saying â€” they didn't know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware."

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

â€¢ Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. "I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done," National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

"I don't buy the `fog of war' defense," Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. "It was a fog of bureaucracy."

â€¢ Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. He later clarified, saying officials believed, wrongly, after the storm passed that the levees had survived. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility even before the storm â€” and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

"I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches."

â€¢ Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. "I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off," Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.

It wasn't long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.

"We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what's going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up," Smith said Aug. 30.

Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.

"We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we'll have people dying â€” not because of water coming up, but because we can't get them medical treatment in our affected counties," said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.

Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government's disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.

"We're going to need everything that we can possibly muster, not only in this state and in the region, but the nation, to respond to this event," Brown warned. He called the storm "a bad one, a big one" and implored federal agencies to cut through red tape to help people, bending rules if necessary.

"Go ahead and do it," Brown said. "I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me."

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him. Neither asked questions in the Aug. 28 briefing.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event.

One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.

Chertoff: "Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?"

Brown: "We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now."

Chertoff: "Good job."

In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing. Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

"They're not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I'm very concerned about that," Brown said.

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome â€” which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response â€” would be safe and have adequate medical care.

"The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don't know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane," he said.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

"Not to be (missing) kind of gross here," Brown interjected, "but I'm concerned" about the medical and mortuary resources "and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."

___

Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

On the Net:

Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov

Federal Emergency Management Agency: http://www.fema.gov

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