Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War: "Chalabi, whose INC received millions of dollars in taxpayer money over the past decade, effectively conspired with his supporters in and around the administration to take the United States to war on pretenses they knew, or had reason to know, were false.
Indeed, it now appears increasingly that defectors handled by the INC were sources for the most spectacular and detailed -- if completely unfounded -- information about Hussein's alleged WMD programs, not only to U.S. intelligence agencies, but also to U.S. mainstream media, especially the 'New York Times', according to a recent report in the New York 'Review of Books'.
Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.
Feith's office was home to the office of special plans (OSP) whose two staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing raw intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein represented a compelling threat to the United States.
OSP also worked with the defense policy board (DPB), a hand-picked group of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend.
... Chalabi, whose family, it was reported this week, has extensive interests in a company that has already been awarded more than 400 million dollars in reconstruction contracts, is signaling his willingness to take all of the blame, or credit, for the faulty intelligence.
But one of the reasons for going to war was suggested quite directly by Garner -- who also worked closely with Chalabi and the same cohort of U.S. hawks in the run-up to the war and during the first few weeks of occupation -- in an interview with 'The National Journal'.
Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, ''I hope they're there a long time'', and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S. military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.
''One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)'', he said. ''And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade''. "
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