Armitage Says State Dept. Will Be Dominant in Shaping U.S. Policy on Iraq

[CShine]

With Iraqi sovereignty restored, the State Department will assume the dominant role in shaping Bush administration policy on Iraq, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Monday. Until now, the Pentagon has taken the lead, but with John D. Negroponte departing imminently for Baghdad to take over as U.S. ambassador, that means "the Department of State is taking the lead now," Armitage said. "We will be the dominant voice," Armitage said.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority transferred control of Iraq to an interim Iraqi government on Monday, two days earlier than expected. Armitage, in an interview with National Public Radio, said the Iraqis were ready and "it had a subsidiary benefit, we thought, of perhaps somehow confusing the plans or what we believe are plans, to disrupt the proceeds by the anti-coalition militants."

Three other U.S. officials told The Associated Press that Negroponte also was advancing the date for his arrival in Baghdad. He had been expected to go there at the end of the week. U.S. plans call for a U.S. Embassy that probably will be the largest in the world, with some 1,000 Americans assisted by hundreds of Iraqis. Negroponte will be assisted by a handful of U.S. ambassadors who volunteered for duty in Baghdad. At the same time, though, administration officials say the United States intends to maintain a low-key presence, deferring to the interim Iraqi government.

Armitage described the United States as a partner, working with Iraqi officials to improve the "scary situation" in Iraq. He said Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday night called all the foreign ministers and defense ministers of the countries that were part of the U.S.-led coalition to advise them of the early transfer of power to Iraqis.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=1&u=/ap/20040628/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq

[Gloria]

1. Yeah, right. The old IGC members have

all been safely ensconced in the new "interim" gov. and our buddy Chalabi is still alive and kicking, as he ran/runs the committee that is running the big "jirga" (not a jirga, but similar)/meeting scheduled for July with 1000 attendees.. Qualified outsiders were shut out.

Plus, the US has people embedded in all the ministries.

I posted a great article on this ...it's in the 6/25 WMW. The article if from the 6/25 Daily Star, Lebanon.

A prof from Washington Univ. in DC says that basically, our handicked IGC has basically found a new home in the "interim" gov.

[leftchick]

3. and the idiot mis-administration thinks the Iraqis are not aware of it ...

Once again bushco* "mis-underestimates" everything! .... :eyes:

[0007]

11. Hilarious!

" our handicked IGC has basically found a new home in the "interim" gov." -- "Qualified outsiders were shut out."

[cthrumatrix]

2. it's a shell game....why not give them back thier oil fields, contracts

and let them elect who they want...?

One reason...it's a sham. The US and the US puppets are not going anywhere...and all real decisions and power will remain with the "occupiers" of a war based on lies.

[LittleApple81]

4. Armitage's firm (CACI) will get more "private contractors" in there.

And now they have immunity... MONEY, MONEY, MONEY-COOKIE MONSTER!!!

And will they ever find the 20 Billion of Iraq's money which has been "misplaced" or otherwise "disappeared" in the CPA's bowels??? Hmmmm?

[salin]

5. Who would have ever thought that Armitage...

would suddenly sound like "a voice of reason" and one of the "good guys". Isn't relativity an interesting phenomenon. It is what made rightwinger George Schulz suddenly look like a reasonable moderate in the Reagan White House... and it is what is makes Armitage (in relation to the extremist neocon gang) seem to be moderate/reasonable in this white house.

Yet is seems that this relative notion and recasting as Armitage as moderate and "good" - is somewhat dangerous. Have heard his name floated as one of the more "desirable" potential nominees to replace Tenet at the CIA. With the alternative of drawing from the NEOcon stable... sounds like a decent nomination - but in the broader picture of agendas, ties to the military industrial complex... not to mention ... didn't he play a role in the whole ... executive branch foreign policy breaking congressional law Iran-Contra debacle?

Washington seems to get more Orwellian with each passing day.

[Rose Siding]

6. Or at least State got to the mic before the DoD

I remember at one point even Condi was claiming control.

[Barrett808]

7. Negroponte: "Fly my death squads, fly!" n/t

[Just Me]

8. Hey, Armitage,...you are UGLY!!! Get OFF my screen!!!! *click* n/t

[seemslikeadream]

10. Behind Close Doors at the State Department

Behind Close Doors at the State Department

The Bush Administration had sought the "cooperation" of those, who were directly supporting and abetting the terrorists. Absurd, but at the same time consistent with Washington's broader strategic and economic objectives in Central Asia.

The meeting behind closed doors at the State Department on September 13 between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was shrouded in secrecy. Remember President Bush was not even involved in these crucial negotiations:

"Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed over a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to take".13 "After a telephone conversation between Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate." 14 President George W. Bush later confirmed (also on the morning of September 13th) that the Pakistan government had accepted "to cooperate and to participate as we hunt down those people who committed this unbelievable, despicable act on America''. 15
Attacks by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html


Richard L. Armitage former director of CACI guits to join Bush team


Civilian accused of killing ‘doing fine job’

MICHAEL SETTLE, Chief Political Correspondent May 06 2004

Executives from Virginia-based CACI International complained that they had still not been informed by their client, the US defence department, that their employee, working for the CIA as an interrogator, was involved in the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.
Jack London, CACI president, said: "The fact remains we are simply not able to confirm in any fashion any CACI employee was involved in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison."
Ken Johnson, the company's president of US operations, added: "The employee questioned is still on the site and still performing the duties there and, by all accounts from our understanding, is doing a damn fine job."
It has been suggested the CIA contractor could escape any prosecution because US Army jurisdiction does not extend to American private contractors in Iraq.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/15501.html

Contractors act as interrogators

Control: The Pentagon's hiring of civilians to question prisoners raises accountability issues.

Founded in 1962 as a small consulting firm, CACI now has more than $1 billion in annual revenue. It specializes in information technology but also has branched into every corner of the Defense Department to become "essentially an odd-jobs provider for the federal government," according to Tim Quillin, an analyst for the investment banking firm Stephens Inc.

More than 90 percent of CACI's business comes from its main customer - the Pentagon - and other federal agencies, according to reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.


Among the company's former directors is Richard L. Armitage, who resigned in 2001 to accept an appointment from President Bush as deputy secretary of state.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.contractors04may04,0,7348149.s ...


But these soldiers aren’t simply mavericks. Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations. Two “civilian contract” organisations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration.
California-based Titan Corporation says it is “a leading provider of solutions and services for national security”. Between 2003-04, it gave nearly $40,000 to George W Bush’s Republican Party. Titan supplied translators to the military.
CACI International Inc. describes its aim as helping “America’s intelligence community in the war on terrorism”. Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI’s board.
No civilians, however, are facing charges as military law does not apply to them. Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, from CentCom, said that one civilian contractor was accused along with six soldiers of mistreating prisoners. However, it was left to the contractor to “deal with him”. One civilian interrogator told army investigators that he had “unintentionally” broken several tables during interrogations as he was trying to “fear-up” detainees.
Lawyers for some accused say their clients are scapegoats for a rogue prison system, which allowed mercenaries to give orders to serving soldiers. A military report said private contractors were at times supervising the interrogations.
Kimmitt said: “I hope the investigation is including not only the people who committed the crimes, but some of the people who might have encouraged the crimes as well because they certainly share some responsibility.”
Last night, CACI vice-president Jody Brown said: “The company supports the Army’s investigation and acknowledges that CACI personnel in Iraq volunteered to be interviewed by army officials in connection with the investigation. The company has received no indication that any CACI employee was involved in any alleged improper conduct with Iraqi prisoners. Nonetheless, CACI has initiated an independent investigation.”
However, military investigators said: “A CACI investigator’s contract was terminated because he allowed and/or instructed military police officers who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations which were neither authorised nor in accordance with regulations.”

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:LGgQIc6IKxoJ:southafrica.indymedi ...

CACI is among an elite group of Washington area companies that do classified work for the federal government. The company, formed in the 1960s, first caught the government's eye with a computer language it developed that could be used to build battlefield simulation programs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5677-2004May5_2.html

- Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State is president and partner of Armitage Assoc. LLP, was a Boeing consultant, a Raytheon consultant and an advisory board member. Armitage was also President Bush's special emissary to Jordan's King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. Armitage has also worked in the past for Halliburton.
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=45246&group=webcast

From March 1992 until 1993, Armitage as ambassador, funneled U.S. dollars into the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. In January 1992, the Bush Administration's desire to cozy up to the NIS (and their oil) resulted in Armitage's appointment as Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance.

During this time Armitage took on the other international patronage projects that normally follow war, accommodating the assuagement of the European Community, Japan and other donor countries.

Armitage owns Electronic Data Systems stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (EDS is the 49th largest defense contractor, and lobbies the Defense Dept. over various appropriations issues), General Electric stock worth $500,001 to $1 million, Merck & Co. stock worth $100,001 to $250,000 (Merck lobbied the Defense Dept. over the Biological Weapons Convention implementation protocol), and Verizon Communications stock worth $250,001 to $500,000.

Armitage also worked as a consultant to Halliburton. Armitage is a former co-chairman of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. He was instrumental in the reconstruction of the emerging economies of the former Soviet republics, after the fall of the Communist empire; along with Condi Rice, who rode herd on the Bush cabal's bid for U.S. control of the Caspian oil.
http://www.ifpafletcherconference.com/army2000/bios/armitage_rt.htm
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/outside/commentary/2002/0204oil_b ...

AccuPoll has teamed with Electronic Data Systems to jointly bid on voting system opportunities. EDS is a leading global information technology services company for over 40 years, and one of the leading systems integration companies in the world, with over 140,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $21 Billion. EDS will provide deployment, training, and customer support services to state and local governments. Management believes that EDS currently has relationships with, or does business with, more than seventy percent of every federal, state and local government in the United States.

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:wH5Q2g-CjDAJ:www.accupoll.com/New ...


On 9-6-2000 Nothrup Grumman Corp. acquired the government IT
market through Federal Data Corp/FDC whose customer base included NIH, NASA and FAA. FDC was folded into Northrup Grumman's Logicon, Inc. whose expertise is in command, control and communications; intelligence;weapons systems; training and simulation.

The Carlyle Group had bought FDC in 1995, The Carlyle Group assisted in this transaction too which was announced on 9-11-2000!
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0911/news-fdc-09-11-00.asp

COINCIDENCE AND LIKELY STORIES



BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
Buffy Sainte-Marie
© Gypsy Boy Music-SOCAN

When people ask, "What happened to the North American Indians in the 1880s?", you can pretty much point to the robber barons of the time who needed to make a fortune in oil, gold and other precious metals. Simple greed in the hands of a powerful few who manipulated the media and politicians. When people ask, "What happened to the Indian movement of the sixties and seventies?", you can pretty much point to the same motives a hundred years later, with uranium added to the list in very big print.
The shocking information in this song is not new, but strung together; the events tell a story that most non-Indian people don't know. Dedicated to Leonard Peltier, the memory of Anna Mae Aquash and Joseph Stuntz.

INTRO:
Indian legislation on the desk of a do-right Congressman
Now, he don't know much about the issue
so he picks up the phone and he asks advice from the
Senator out in Indian country
A darling of the energy companies who are
ripping off what’s left of the reservations. Huh.

1.
I learned a safety rule
I don’t know who to thank
Don't stand between the reservation and the
corporate bank
They send in federal tanks
It isn’t nice but it’s reality

chorus:
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh.

2.
They got these energy companies that want the land
and they’ve got churches by the dozen who want to
guide our hands
and sign Mother Earth over to pollution, war and
greed
Get rich... get rich quick.

chorus...

3. We got the federal marshals
We got the covert spies
We got the liars by the fire
We got the FBIs
They lie in court and get nailed
and still Peltier goes off to jail

chorus...

4.
My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of
exposure
Loo loo loo loo loo

chorus...

We had the Goldrush Wars
Aw, didn’t we learn to crawl and still our history gets
written in a liar’s scrawl
They tell ‘ya “Honey, you can still be an Indian
d-d-down at the ‘Y’
on Saturday nights”

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh!

http://www.creative-native.com/albums/coin.htm

Armitage Pledges to Deepen U.S.-Pakistan Alliance
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage pledged on Monday to deepen Washington's ties with Pakistan, dismissing talk of cracks in the relationship after meeting President Pervez Musharraf.

Last week Armitage said some in Pakistan's security community were less than enthusiastic about working with the United States, especially in tracking down Taliban and al Qaeda militants along the Afghan border.

Pakistan has also expressed deep reservations about Washington's decision to allow Israel to sell an advanced early warning radar system to India, saying it would create an arms imbalance in South Asia.

"We are very interested in having a full relationship with Pakistan, not simply one based on the global war on terror, the one that covers the entire gambit -- economic, social, political as well as of course security," Armitage said in Islamabad.

more..................

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=35626 ...




Bush's Armitage drug dealing ties letter & Nguyet Thi O'Rourke


Bush's Armitage drug dealing ties letter & Nguyet Thi O'Rourke
Secret Agent Man
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/07/naureckas2507.html

Nguyet Thi O'Rourke
The article was about Armitage's relationship with a woman named Nguyet Thi
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage
DEPT. OF DEFENSE

O'Rourke, a Vietnamese immigrant convicted of running a gambling operation in Northern Virginia. Armitage had already attracted the attention of the President's Commission on Organized Crime by writing a glowing character reference for her in conjunction with her trial, on Pentagon stationery no less. What our article added was the juicy personal angle that has become a requirement for killing a nomination. It seemed that when the Arlington Police raided O'Rourke's house, they discovered some unusual photographs: They showed a nude O'Rourke holding another photo, which depicted her and Armitage wearing swimsuits.

The most obvious motive for taking such photos was to give O'Rourke some kind of leverage over Armitage; even though they didn't prove anything in themselves, they certainly implied an intimate relationship between a high-ranking government official and an organized crime figure. At the very least, they raised the question of why the official had put himself in a position where a mobster might think she could blackmail him.

more..............

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:uS1jTErAt0E:internettrash.com/use ...

complaint letter to BushSr regarding alleged drug dealing ties to Armitage
http://www.dcia.com/bush.html

Ross Perot's probes of Armitage -
http://www.dcia.com/perot.html



And Richard Armitage's remark at the 9/11 Hearings

"Covert action...doing The Lord's work..."
In regards to popularizing covert action

[hatrack]

9. Yeah, right, Dick

When was the last time the State Department "shaped US policy" with ANY country, with possible exceptions for Andorra, Lichtenstein and San Marino? 1910? 1895? 1880? Just how stupid do they think we are?

[legin]

12. To paraphrase Stalin

"And how many army divisions does the State Department have ?"