OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: More Than $600 Billion And Counting: Iraq War Lies Revisited

When the United Nations chose Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, in January 2002 to lead a team of U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction Wolfowitz contacted the CIA to produce a report on why Blix, as chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency during the 1980s and 1990s, failed to detect Iraqi nuclear activity, according to an April 15, 2002, report in the Washington Post.

The CIA report said Blix "had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants fully within the parameters he could operate as chief of the Vienna-based agency between 1981 and 1997," according to the Post.

Wolfowitz "hit the ceiling" because the report failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program," according to the Post, quoting a former State Department official familiar with the report.

"The request for a CIA investigation underscored the degree of concern by Wolfowitz and his civilian colleagues in the Pentagon that new inspections - or protracted negotiations over them - could torpedo their plans for military action to remove Hussein from power," the Post reported.

Blix accused the Bush administration of launching a smear campaign against him because he did not find evidence of WMD in Iraq. He said he refused to pump up his reports to the U.N. about Iraq's WMD programs.

In an interview with the London Guardian newspaper, Blix said "U.S. officials pressured him to use more damning language when reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons programs."

"By and large my relations with the U.S. were good,'' Blix told the Guardian. "But toward the end the (Bush) administration leaned on us.'"

White House Iraq Group

The Bush administration needed a vehicle to market a war with Iraq. So, in August 2002, Bush's former Chief of Staff Andrew Card formed the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) to publicize the so-called threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The WHIG was not only responsible for selling the Iraq War, but it took great pains to discredit anyone who openly disagreed with the official Iraq War story.

The group's members included Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, Bush's former adviser Karen Hughes, then Senior Adviser to the Vice President Mary Matalin, former Deputy Director of Communications James Wilkinson, Assistant to the President and Legislative Liaison Nicholas Calio, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to the vice president and co-author of the administration's pre-emptive strike policy.

Rove chaired the group's meetings. Moreover, Rove's "strategic communications" task force, operating inside the group, was instrumental in writing and coordinating speeches by senior Bush administration officials, highlighting in September 2002 that Iraq was a nuclear threat, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal in October 2005.

Another member of WHIG, John Hannah, along with former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Wolfowitz, were interviewed by FBI officials in 2004, according to a report in the Washington Post, to determine if they were involved in leaking U.S. security secrets to Israel, former head of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

A senior official who participated in the WHIG called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities," according to an Aug. 10, 2003, Washington Post investigative report on the group's inner workings.

During its very first meetings, Card's Iraq group ordered a series of white papers showing Iraq's alleged arms violations. The first paper, "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Nuclear Weapons," was never published. However, the paper was drafted with the assistance of experts from the National Security Council and Cheney's office.

"In its later stages, the draft white paper coincided with production of a National Intelligence Estimate and its unclassified summary. But the WHIG, according to three officials who followed the white paper's progress, wanted gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence," according to the Washington Post.

Judith Miller and the Mushroom Cloud

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