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London, Tuesday, April 20, 2004 Britain was
driving force in plans for war on Iraq, says
Woodward By Alec Russell in New York
and David Rennie in Washington THE bitter rivalries in
President George W Bush's White House were laid
bare last night in the most damaging account yet of
the covert drive for war against Iraq.  David
Irving comments: UNDER English law, if a
city councillor applies funds illegally,
for a purpose not permitted in law, he or
she can be "surcharged" -- he can be made
to pay the entire amount out of his own
pocket.
It happens quite often.
That is what hit Lady Porter,
née Lady Cohen of Tesco, who was
ordered to repay to us citizens of
Westminster around £25 million a few
years back over a housing/voting scam she
had dreamed up.
We are still waiting for the
cash, because she fled to Israel. Finding
life there not all it has been cooked up
to be by her own press, she is now seeking
a plea bargain -- if she pays, I think it
is ten million, -- can she pleath
return to her previously profitable life
in England.
I mention all this,
because in total ignorance of American law
I don't now if there's some way the Bush
family can be made to repay the $700
million dollars he seems to have
misapplied in planning his illegal attack
on Iraq? Failing which, can they be
persuaded to take an overnight flight from
Crawford, Texas, to downtown Tel Aviv and
stay there?
More seriously, what
puzzles me is this: if the consent of the
Congress was required before he was
permitted to remove funds from the
Treasury for the purposes of a war, why
did he not simply go to the Congressmen
and ask for that consent?
Did he perhaps fear that
all his ungrammatical waffle about "the
war on terror" might not wash with them to
the tune of $700 million of taxpayers'
money? After all, most of that kind of US
taxpayer money has already been earmarked
for somewhere else, right? 
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A new book by Bob Woodward, the journalist
who uncovered the Watergate scandal, paints a
picture of an administration secretly planning for
war from late 2001 even as it insisted that
conflict was not inevitable. Bob Woodward: accuses the Whitehouse of using
funds allocated to the war on terror to prepare for
war on Iraq. It also highlights the importance of
Tony Blair's support for Mr Bush. "Blair was
key," Mr Woodward said yesterday. "He was the
partner, a driving force in all of it." Shortly before the war began, Mr Bush even
offered the Prime Minister a chance to avoid
committing troops. But Mr Woodward said: "Maybe it
was an offer that Bush knew wouldn't be
accepted." On Capitol Hill, there was intense focus on the
book's claim that the secret preparations for war
in the summer of 2002 -- including the renovation
of airfields and fuel pipelines in Kuwait --
were paid for by siphoning
off up to £390 million that Congress
had earmarked for Afghanistan and the war on
terrorism. Mr Woodward spelt out the potential legal
implications on CBS television, saying: "Some people are going to look at a
document called the Constitution which says no
money will be drawn from the Treasury unless
appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally
in the dark on this." The White House strongly denied any illegal
acts, with senior officials briefing that Gen
Tommy Franks, the commander in Iraq and
Afghanistan, was granted funds by Congress to spend
on his theatre of war as a whole. The book also
alleges that Saudi Arabia offered to cut oil prices
to boost Mr Bush's re-election chances in November
-- cheap fuel is one of Americans' most cherished
assets. It says Mr Bush's relations with Saudi Arabia
were so close that the Saudi ambassador to the
United States was briefed on the preparations for
war before many of Mr Bush's top aides. As the Democrats reacted with outrage yesterday,
the Saudis issued a statement denying that they
would interfere with the election. The White House
launched a damage control operation, all but
conceding that the offer had been made.  It denied several other allegations, including
the claim that Colin Powell, the secretary
of state, was only informed about the push for war
after the Saudis. Conservatives accused Mr Powell of assisting Mr
Woodward to boost his own reputation. While Mr
Powell has not acknowledged that he was a source,
he and his deputy, Richard Armitage, are
depicted as agonising over going to war, and
abhorring the attempts of "hawks" to push the case
with faulty intelligence. Mr Bush also told Mr Woodward that Dick
Cheney, the vice president, had been worried
about him co-operating with the book. "He sees this
book coming out in an election and again he's just,
he's worried about it, just to be frank with
you." © Copyright of
Telegraph Group Limited 2004. |
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