Bad news for puppet govt.; Bushhawks try to widen war

[Roger Baker]

Setting up a US-sponsored puppet government in Afghanistan sounds 
like a real nice way to extract ourselves from our predicament 
in theory -- until you understand the practical realities:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52236-2001Oct12.html


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http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/13/latest1.htm


13 October 2001  Saturday  25 Rajab 1422  
 

Hawks try to implicate Iraq by hunting for evidence in UK
  
A row has broken out in the Bush administration after it was revealed that hawks 
in the Pentagon had sent an ex-CIA director, James Woolsey, to Britain, behind 
the backs of the state department and the current CIA leadership. 

News of Mr Woolsey's travels, have exposed a deep fissure inside the administration 
over whether to extend the war against terrorism to Iraq. 

Last month, the state department, led by Colin Powell, convinced President Bush 
that there was no clear involvement in the attacks and that Iraq should not be 
included on the target list as such action might destroy the fragile coalition. 

However, hawks in the administration grouped around the deputy defence secretary, 
Paul Wolfowitz, are determined to ensure military action to topple Saddam Hussein. 

According to several sources in the U.S., Mr Wolfowitz paid for Mr Woolsey to 
travel to Britain last month to look for evidence of prior Iraqi involvement in 
terrorism. 

Mr Woolsey is convinced that Iraq has orchestrated terrorist attacks on U.S. 
interests in recent years. 

The state department and the CIA are furious at Mr Woolsey's freelance sleuthing 
and Mr Wolfowitz's role. "This is against their own political agenda to bomb Iraq," 
said one U.S. source with close links to intelligence. 

A British official said on Friday that the police and British intelligence were 
"bemused" by Mr Woolsey's activities and had been unsure of U.S. government awareness 
about the matter. 

According to the Knight Ridder news agency, the former CIA director was looking for 
evidence that a convicted terrorist known as Ramzi Youssef was an Iraqi agent. 

According to the prosecution in his trial, Ramzi Youssef was called Abdul Basit, who 
had studied in Swansea in the 1980s. Mr Woolsey believes that Basit was abducted 
by Iraqi intelligence and an agent took over his identity. 

Mr Woolsey has refused to comment on his trips to the U.K. However, he suggested that 
he was constructing a legal case against Iraq. 

The White House has left the door open to military action against Baghdad, 
should conclusive evidence of Saddam's involvement emerge.

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