Book says CIA tried to provoke Saddam to war

[DoYouEverWonder]

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday September 7, 2006
The Guardian

More than a year before the invasion of Iraq the CIA devised a plan, codenamed Anabasis, to use Iraqi exile fighters to seize an air base and declare a revolt against Saddam Hussein in the hope that his response would create a pretext for war, according to a book published tomorrow.

The plan was ultimately rejected by General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion in March 2003, but the CIA-backed fighters carried out sabotage operations and assassinations of Ba'athist officials in the run-up to the war, the book, called Hubris, reports.

Hubris, by investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn, adds more weight to a body of evidence that the White House was determined to go to war from early 2002. Planning on Anabasis, which cost $400m (£210m), started at the end of 2001 and was approved by President Bush in February 2002. CIA agents entered Iraq to recruit volunteers two months later. Talking to his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, in May 2002, President Bush made clear his intentions towards Saddam when he said: "I'm going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the Mid East," according to another press aide, Adam Levine, who witnessed the conversation.

The covert CIA preparations for war have been previously reported, but this is the first time details of the plan have been made public. According to the book, the CIA flew 80 former Iraqi soldiers into the US in the summer of 2002, and trained them at an energy department nuclear test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1866298,00.html

[eccles12]

1. This is precisely why I suspect who is behind many of the killings

in Iraq (like the UN complex bombing) is not really insurgents but our own folks sowing the seeds of conflict. Nothing is beyond the US/UK/or Israel.

[mike_c]

2. this point needs to be raised more often....

In a world in which we cannot trust appearances because we know our government manipulates them, we cannot believe anything they tell us.

[0007]

3. Your so right....

Probably a tie as to why WTC-7 fell to the ground without being hit.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. I want to know exactly what time did Rudy Guiliani evacuate

his multi-million dollar OEM bunker and why?

What did he know, that the rest of us don't know?

Funny, Rummie didn't evacuate from the Pentagon even after it was hit. Yet, Rudy high tailed it out of WTC7 before the 1st Tower fell.

[Demeter]

5. That Was Obvious To Even the Most Casual Observer

Dubya even tried to pick a fight, but Saddam, being an actual tried-under-fire leader, wouldn't play those frat boy games.