DAVID BRANCACCIO: Mr. Wilkerson, thanks for doing this.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Thank you for having me.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We now know that there was deep skepticism within the intelligence community about some of these pre-war claims than what's being expressed publicly at the time. Is it reasonable to think that the administration knew about this skepticism?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Six months ago I would have said "no." Since that time, however, there have been some revelations. Principally about Sheik Al Libbi's testimony and how it was obtained. And how there was a DIA, for example, Defense Intelligence Agency, dissent on that testimony, apparently I'm hearing now, around the time the testimony was actually given.

And even more to the point than Al Libbi, Curve Ball. And the revelations that have come out about Curve Ball. And in particular the German dissent from the integrity of CurveBall's testimony.

I can tell you that having been intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council, neither of those dissents in any fashion or form were registered with me or the Secretary by the DCI, George Tenent, by the DDCI, John McLaughlin, or by any of their many analysts who were in the room with us for those five, six days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: And they didn't give you any inkling that--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: -- there was this debate about some of this information?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit. In fact it was presented in the firmest language possible that the mobile biological labs and the sketches we had drawn of them for the Secretary's presentation were based on the iron clad evidence of multiple sources.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Maybe they at the most senior level, like you, just didn't know?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I have to believe that. Otherwise I have to believe some rather nefarious things about some fairly highly placed people in the intelligence community and perhaps elsewhere.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What do you think really did happen with regards to this-- disconnect between what we now know about these profound questions about some of these key sources and the fact that somebody had these questions in real time?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I've been a consumer, a user of intelligence at the tactical, operational and strategic level for close to 35, 36 years. And I've seen many errors in intelligence. And I know it's not a perfectible business. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

However, I am astonished at the failures of our intelligence community over the-- last decade in particular. We failed to predict the demise of the Soviet Union. We failed to predict the Indian nuclear test in 1998.

We bombed a Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. We failed to detect the five year planning cycle of al Qaeda, the operatives who conducted 9/11. And we failed in terms of predicting Iraq's WMDs.

So we have a significant problem in this nation with our intelligence community. And, by the way, I don't think it's fixed in any way. Yet. This administration has really done nothing to fix it. And-- so I-- I'm familiar with intelligence failure.

However, this particular one seems to me to warrant a lot more investigation than it has to this point warranted. And I take in the recognition the Robb Silberman commission, the 9/11 commission and a host of other lesser-- investigations that have attempted to look at this. And the phase two investigation now going on in the Congress, which I think as long as the Republicans control the Congress will not be a-- an investigation that reveals very much. But I think we really need to take a hard look at how not just the intelligence failures I've enumerated occurred, but how this particular one did. Because it could turn out to be one of the worst in our history.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Your experience with evaluating intelligence-- you understand from your experience evaluating intelligence, this is tough stuff.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Very.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: It often is inconclusive. And you have to use powers of critical thinking to figure out what is the right thing to do.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: And you have to listen to dissent. You must. You can't squelch dissent. You can't put dissent in an obscure footnote on page 495 of an intelligence annex. You must listen to dissent.

You must-- I-- I today regret the fact that I didn't listen better to the Intelligence Bureau and the State Department. The-- the Intelligence Bureau and the State Department at this time we were preparing Secretary Powell dissented on one key issue. And they essentially said there was no active nuclear program in Iraq.

And they were right. And the rest of the intelligence community was wrong. But the rest of the intelligence community did not take that dissent, massage it, compete it in the world of ideas in the intelligence community. It simply footnoted it and relegated it to that footnote. To that qualification, if you will.

INR was right. The rest of the intelligence community was wrong. Now INR was wrong about bio and chem. They said the same thing the rest of the intelligence community said. That he did have active bio and chem programs. But they were right about the most important weapons of mass destruction Saddam could have had, the one that backed up, for example, Dr. Rice and the Vice President and the others who talked about mushroom clouds. And I did not listen to INR. And the Secretary of State did not listen to INR. And as it turns out we should have.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: In the case if pre-war intelligence are we just talking about not listening to dissenting views?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think that's a big part of it, but it's larger than that. A good friend of mine who was probably one of the most respected INR intelligence personnel that we had at the State Department and who indeed has gone on to join John Negroponte as one of his principle subordinates, once told me that what was missing was competition. And that struck me, because that's what we believe in in America.

You know business, education. Competition is an essential ingredient of what we do. There is no competition in the intelligence community. In other words leaders don't listen to various parts of the intelligence community debate one another.

Instead it's a conformist community. And the DCI and-- at that time presided over the conformity. In other words, if-- you had a dissenting view, that dissenting view might make it into a footnote. It might make it into a qualifying paragraph. But the intelligence community, speaking through the-- director of Central Intelligence, was going to have a conformist view.

And that view was going to be collected from the community, but it was going to be a conformist view. And there's-- it's absurd to think that the director for Central Intelligence, or now the National Director of Intelligence, is not influenced by the politics around-- him or her.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, that's a key question here. Is it just a-- an issue of there's a dominant view in the intelligence community and the competing views aren't heard? Or are you concerned that the view of the intelligence community that, for instance, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, is in a sense being imposed from the top?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think there's a certain amount of politicization of intelligence. I-- don't think you can escape it because of human nature. Particularly if you have a DCI like George Tenent who is frequently in the presence of the President.

Then he is going to absorb during those meetings what the President wants. What the President is looking for. What the angle of attack the President has is. And he's going to search for intelligence that will support that angle of attack.

That's just the nature of human beings. So it's absurd for someone to say that the intelligence is not politicized at all. Of course it is. It has to be. It has to conform to the leader's wishes-- to a certain extent. And what you need in this competitive community I've described is people who will stand up to power and tell truth to power. And say, "No, that's not right," to the Vice President of the United States, for example.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We now know from published reports that Vice President Cheney and his right hand man, Lewis Libby, went over to the headquarters of the CIA about 10 times in late 2002 and early 2003. We don't know what was said. What do you think was going on?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, if the Vice President was exercising his right as one of the leaders of this country to go to one of its intelligence agencies and to-- check on how they're doing and to make sure that they're doing their jobs properly and so forth, I find it difficult to believe that took 10 times. And as I've said, it's absurd to think that intelligence isn't somehow politicized at times.

It's equally absurd for the Vice President to assert that his trips out to the agency were not bringing undue influence on the agency. That's preposterous. Anytime a leader of his stature visits a single agency that many times, he is, by simply the virtue of his position, bringing undue influence on that agency.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: So you can imagine a scenario where the Vice President's over there kind of CIA?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I-- could imagine that scenario easily.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: I've never met the Vice President. He's the kind of guy who could lean on somebody?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Absolutely. And be just as quiet and taciturn about it as-- he-- as he leaned on 'em. As he leaned on the Congress recently-- in the-- torture issue.



DAVID BRANCACCIO: We've been talking grand policy. The then director of the CIA, George Tenent, Vice President Cheney's deputy Libby, told you that the intelligence that was the basis of going to war was rock solid. Given what you now know, how does that make you feel?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It makes me feel terrible. I've said in other places that it was-- constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life.

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: A hoax? That's quite a word.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, let's face it, it was. It was not a hoax that the Secretary in any way was complicit in. In fact he did his best-- I watched him work. Two AM in the morning on the DCI and the Deputy DCI, John McLaughlin.

And to try and hone the presentation down to what was, in the DCI's own words, a slam dunk. Firm. Iron clad. We threw many things out. We threw the script that Scooter Libby had given the-- Secretary of State. Forty-eight page script on WMD. We threw that out the first day.

And we turned to the National Intelligence estimate as part of the recommendation of George Tenent and my agreement with. But even that turned out to be, in its substantive parts-- that is stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals and production capability that was hot and so forth, and an active nuclear program. The three most essential parts of that presentation turned out to be absolutely false.



DAVID BRANCACCIO: You've said that Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld managed to hijack the intelligence process. You've called it a cabal.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Decision--

DAVID BRANCACCIO: And--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: -- making process.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: The decision making process.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Right.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, let me get it right. You've said that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld somehow managed to hijack the intelligence decision making process. You called it a cabal.

And said that it was done in a way that makes you think it was more akin to something you'd see in a dictatorship rather than a democracy. Now those are strong words. Why a cabal?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, the two decisions that I had the most profound insights into and which I have spoken to are the decision to depart from the Geneva Conventions and to depart from international law with regard to treatment of detainees by the Armed Forces in particular. But by the entire US establishment, now including the CIA and contractors in general.

And the post-invasion Iraq-- planning, which was as inept and incompetent as any planning I've witnessed in some 30-plus years in public service. Those two decisions were clearly-- made in the statutory process, the legal process, in one way and made underneath that process in another way. And that's what I've labeled secret and cabal-like.

Now let me hasten to add that I've taught the national security decision making process in the nation's war colleges for six years. I'm a student of that process. I will teach it again-- starting in January. This is no aberration. It's been done before. It was done with regard to the Bay of Pigs with John F. Kennedy. It was done with regard to Watergate with Richard Nixon. It was done with regard to Iran-Contra with Ronald Reagan.

It was done to a certain and rather lasting effect-- with regard to Vietnam by Lyndon Johnson and others. So you-- it's not anything new. And it's been done many times before. That is to say, decisions have been made elsewhere than in the Oval Office in other presidencies.

Normally nothing happens as long as the decision is effective, it's well executed and it produces success. It's when the decision produces failure that historians, politicians, Congressmen, American citizens want to know why. And in this case I think both decisions did produce failures and so they're going to want to know why. And-- we're seeing some of the investigations and-- looks into those decisions now to decide why they were failures.



DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's an argument that swashbuckling executives, Defense Secretary and the Vice President making executive decisions without involving the bureaucracy is very efficient, gets the--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: --job done.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: But you're saying that--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: This is the argument that's marshaled by presidents from Truman on. Although I will say that Truman and Eisenhower were probably the two least apartment to do this sort of thing.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well think about it. Involving, just for starters, the entire National Security Council on, for instance, evaluating the intelligence that-- would help inform a decision to go to war in Iraq. And that's going to slow things down. They're going to be dissenting opinions. You're never going to get that war done.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: You mean kind of like what our founding fathers-- intended when they put the Constitution together? Checks and balances, dissent would be listened to and so forth and so on.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're thinking that--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Ferdinand Eberstadt was a bright man who participated in these debates that were roiling — I mean truly roiling around Truman and then around Eisenhower as we try to implement the National Security Council and tried to implement the other parameters of the act, including the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency. And other putting together the National Defense, national military establishment and then turning it later in an amendment to the act into the Defense Department. Many debates occurred that are just like the debates we're having today.

And Ferdinand Eberstadt, remember now that the 1947 Act in part at least was passed to prohibit ever having another Franklin Roosevelt. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was also passed to prohibit having 12/16 years of one man. But I think any critic of Roosevelt would've said even people who, as my father used to say-- "Roosevelt ah terrible man. Terrible man." They might've hated his policies but they never would've accused him of being anything other than brilliant.

Ferdinand Eberstadt now, remember that history. Ferdinand Eberstadt writes to Walter Lippmann and he write-- he writes I believe in 1953 if I recall Walter Lippmann being-- that columnist who didn't mind commenting on anything. And Ferdinand says to Lippmann, "I understand that this may be a more effective process, that a few men making a decision maybe a more effective process, a secretive process may be very efficient." But suppose we get a dumb man?

Suppose we get people who can't make good decisions as FDR was pretty good at. I'm worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we've designed than I would a dictate from a dumb strongman. And that dumb strongman is his felicitous phrase.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're worried that we not have come to that but that we're heading down this path of--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh I think it's come to that. I think we've had some decisions at this administration that were more or less dictates. We've had a decision that the Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a few other very selected administration lawyers doesn't pertain the way it has pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the Constitution.

And these people marshal such stellar lights as-- Alexander Hamilton. They haven't even read Federalist Six. I'm sure they haven't. Where Alexander Hamilton lays down his markers about the dangers of a dictate-issuing chief executive. This is not the way America was intended to be run by its founders and it is not the interpretation of the Constitution that any of the founders as far as I read the Federalist Papers and other discussions about their views would have subscribed to. This is an interpretation of the constitution that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: And if the system were shown to work that might be one thing. But-- in the case of recent US for--

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Dictatorships work on occasion. You're right. Dictatorships do work but I-- I'm like Ferdinand Eberstadt. I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators.

I’ve seen you around. I’ve seen you driving your gas guzzling SUV with the “Support Our Troops” ribbon on the back. I’ve seen you wearing your pro-war/pro-bush t-shirts as you walk right past me in my Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt as if I don’t exist. And I’ve seen you at anti-war rallies and meetings where I often speak, as you wave your American flag and call me a traitor. In this country we have freedom of speech. But you owe me and every other veteran of this war the respect of listening to our experience.

Your magnet says “support our troops,” but what have you done for us? Not a penny of the proceeds go to us, instead they go to sweatshops in China. You say that I am not supporting the troops when I say that they should come home. But I am, because I know that there was no threat to our nation from Saddam Hussein, I know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and I know that we were not welcomed in Iraq as liberators. I know that the Iraq war was not worth fighting. I know, because I fought there. You say I’m confused. But what do you know about Iraq? You’ve never been there.

You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don’t support the troops. Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to Iraq unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn’t even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.” Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making Iraq a democracy, but yet the “insurgency” worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.

At present, 2,241 of my brothers and sisters in arms have died. In some way, they may be the lucky ones. Over sixteen thousand others have been wounded in this war, thousands more than planned. The term wounded sounds sterile, bland, and inoffensive. But, in reality, many of them have been so horribly damaged that medical science had to create a new word to describe their wounds: polytrauma. These people would have died in earlier wars, but because of the gallant efforts of brave doctors and medics, they get to live. They get to live with teams of ten or more doctors just trying to get their broken, mangled bodies through another day, as their families look on in horror. They get to live in a physical and emotional hell, not able to recover and not able to voice the pain they feel or the psychological demons they face. All the while suffering with a Veterans Administration under funded by nearly three billion dollars and unable to care for them in the manner they deserve.

So which one of us supports the troops? You, who has never set foot in Iraq and wants to leave my brothers and sisters there until they complete whatever the undefined mission of the week is, or me, the veteran of this war who has seen the carnage of battle, the rampant indifference of my countrymen, and just wants to bring my brothers and sisters home alive and care for them when they get here?

Keep coming to the rallies. Maybe I’ll get through your thick skull eventually. But remember I waved my flag in Baghdad, so you can sit down, shut up, and listen to me.

Author’s note: Charlie Anderson served in Iraq with the Marine Corps’ Second Tank Battalion. He is the Southeast Regional Coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He can be contacted at iraqvet4peace@yahoo.com

After four months and 26 witnesses, prosecutors in the Saddam Hussein trial have offered little credible testimony directly linking the former leader to the killings and torture for which he's charged.

But legal experts familiar with the case say the best may be yet to come documents allegedly tying Saddam to the crackdown that followed an assassination attempt against him 23 years ago in Dujail, a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad.

Without compelling evidence, a guilty verdict against Saddam may not provide closure for victims of Saddam's atrocities. But the experts caution that the documents which include hand written notes, interrogation orders and death sentences handed down by the Revolutionary Court may not alone be enough to win a conviction.

What is needed, they said, is to establish a clear chain of command that would show Saddam would have known what happened to the more than 140 Shiites killed and the others tortured after the 1982 attempt on the former ruler's life in Dujail, north of Baghdad.

The evidence to date mostly testimony from people who were arrested and allegedly tortured has pointed to a brutal crackdown but has not showed that Saddam played a direct role. Saddam and the seven co-defendants, charged in the Dujail killings, could face death by hanging if convicted.

"The testimonies we have heard so far are moving but they are not enough and that's causing us concern," said Nehal Bhuta, a Human Rights Watch lawyer following the Saddam trial.

"What is needed is evidence linking each of the eight defendants to what happened or evidence that Saddam could not have not known," he said by telephone from New York.

But the chief prosecutor maintains that he has the evidence to win a conviction that will be accepted not only by those Iraqis who are eager to see Saddam hang but also international legal institutions that have been skeptical of an Iraqi trial from the start.

Prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi told The Associated Press that the case's 800-page dossier includes documents showing Saddam ordered interrogations, executions and in some cases clemency.

"We have many such documents that we plan to present later in the trial," he said.

However, defense lawyers, as well as some foreign legal organizations monitoring the trial, say about a third of the documents are illegible after so many years.

Trial testimony so far has linked Saddam's half brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, to the torture of Dujail residents in the Baghdad headquarters of Mukhabarat, or intelligence agency, that he led at the time. Some witnesses testified that Ibrahim had personally tortured them.

"Barzan is practically the top defendant in this case," said al-Mousawi.

Saddam's former deputy, Taha Yassin Ramadan, also has been implicated by witnesses in the reprisal destruction of Dujail fruit orchards shortly after the attempt on Saddam's life.

Marieka Wierda, a legal expert with the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice, said Saddam's defense could argue that his security forces were not acting on his orders when they detained and tortured hundreds.

"But the prosecution could counter that by showing that torture was a widespread practice at the time and Saddam could not have possibly not known about it," Wierda said.

Both she and Bhuta from Human Rights Watch believe the best case scenario for the prosecution would be to produce a senior member of Saddam's regime to testify against the former ruler and others in exchange for immunity.

Saadoun Shaker, who was interior minister at the time, may be one possibility. His name was mentioned by a Saddam defense lawyer as a prosecution witness. Al-Mousawi, the prosecutor, was believed to have been referring to Shaker when he told the AP last week that a senior official of the former regime would be among the witnesses.

Al-Mousawi refused to identify the witness and played down his significance.

In theory, Shaker's job should have given him an insight into internal security matters and authority over the police force. However, testimony given in court suggested that police were not involved in the Dujail crackdown, with only Mukhabarat intelligence agents, Baath militiamen and elite army units loyal to the regime.

The absence so far of a "smoking gun" incriminating Saddam has not escaped his defense lawyers.

"It's all hearsay," said attorney Khamis al-Obeidi. "All witnesses were children in 1982, some as young as 6. Their testimonies are clearly rehearsed and don't incriminate President Saddam," he told the AP.

For example, a video filmed the day of the assassination attempt and played during the trial's first session Oct. 19 only showed the former president addressing a cheering crowd at Dujail and ordering aides to detain and interrogate four suspects.

In a disposition videotaped Oct. 23, Wadah Ismael al-Sheik, who led the interrogations department of the Mukhabarat at the time, said he had not heard anything directly from Saddam about the Dujail incident.

However, he also said that Saddam decorated Mukhabarat officers, including himself, who worked on the case. The witness died of cancer shortly after the recording.

But witnesses maintained that Saddam, as head of state, bore the ultimate responsibility.

"When a lot of people are jailed and tortured, who takes that decision?" a witness told the court Dec. 6 after recounting her own torture and imprisonment. "Was he (Saddam) not the ruler while thousands were jailed and tortured?" asked another witness the following day.

Saddam, who has often launched into his own defense, varied his tactics in response to allegations by the witnesses that he was ultimately responsible for what happened.

"If Saddam was found out to have laid a hand on a single Iraqi, then everything he (a witness) says is correct," Saddam told the court Dec. 5. "Was it not the right of Saddam Hussein to have his agencies pursue those who fired at him?"

Is Mr. Smith so phobic as to suggest that Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Syria were so smitten with Hitler that they blindly jumped aboard the Nazi train? He suggests that the "war on terror" is something left over from unfinished business in the Second World War. I would suggest that Mr. Smith examine the history of the era more closely, with an unbiased eye towards the force of Zionism and the role of the imperial Western influences in the area.

Iran made slow, creeping moves towards democracy until the 1950s when the populist Mohammed Mossadegh came to power. His move to nationalize the Anglo Iranian Oil Company led to a sequence of events regarding sanctions, military exercises and threats, and covert activity that has in no small part created the tensions of today's Iran.

Iran was a British/Russian dessert, not Nazi. If the devil himself could have removed the British from Iran, he would have gained popular support. In fact, once Eisenhower gained power, the CIA /British were happy to have Fazlollah Zahedi and Bakhtiari, two Nazi collaborators, fill the void. Sad, but very true.

Enter the Shah of Iran, a man whom Amnesty International described in 1976 as having the "worst human rights record on the planet," and to whom the CIA taught torture techniques that "were beyond belief." This was fascism of the first degree, promoted for the self-interest of the British and later the United States; but all backed by the powers in Israel, who see a moderate, Arab-friendly Iran as a threat to their expansionist ideal. This is the history that is repeating itself in Iran, only this time it is the Iranian Oil Stock Exchange that is the threat.

Nuclear issues are but a hot button to promote fear in order to convince the United States and the West that Iranian-inspired extremism is a major threat to the West. Hitler is just a sure-fire button. The Iranians had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and the Palestinians less. The Christians of the world certainly carry more blame for that vile atrocity than any poor soul in the Middle East and Persia.

At present, the anti-Iranian position is being led by forces in Israel (that have nothing to do with the theology of Judaism) through the neo-con regime in Washington. They can ill afford any friendliness between Iraq and Iran, and expect to fulfil the wishes of their fanatical arm by twisting the history of the era to fit with the goals of today.

When will we ever learn? Terrorism is not some leftover lesson learned from Adolf Hitler. Terrorism is a product of fanaticism and we embraced it in Afghanistan for short-term gain in the late 1970s. We embrace it whenever it fulfils our strategic needs, come hell or high water.

We had better take seriously this tension in Iraq, open some dialogue with Iran, and hold our noses and open some with Hamas, because a popular based movement has arrived there as well. They are no more extreme than the Sunnis we are now breaking bread with, or the mujahadin that we funded and supported in Afghanistan.

If we don't want history to repeat itself, we had better empathize with the enemy. We have done no justice towards them in this century, and we ignore that fact at our peril. Many Israelis realize this, and their press is far more open to discuss it; but for some reason, we never hear their voices. Let us never forget the Holocaust and the vile regime that killed so many innocent people, but we cannot contort the history of Hitler in Europe to promote our version of history in Palestine and Iran.

They have their own self-interests, to be sure, and have blood on their hands as well. Yet the radical forces in Iran would never have come to pass had we justly dealt with the popular movement of the day. Mossadegh looks Gandhi-like by today's standards. The outcome and the consequences are grave, and subscribing to the thesis put forth by Andrew Smith is to put our heads in the sand.

Miles Tompkins lives in Antigonish.

Copyright The Halifax Herald.

Iraq's former trade minister, Mohammed Medhi Saleh -- who would later become known as the Six of Hearts in America's card pack of Most Wanted Iraqis -- became a whistleblower in November 2004.

He told UN investigators that AWB had for years been making payments to a Jordanian trucking company known as Alia, which kicked the money straight back to Saddam's regime.

The news that Saleh is the rat has stunned AWB executives, some of whom have admitted they were frightened of him when he was in power in Iraq.

One executive, Michael Long, met Saleh in Baghdad in 2002. Mr Long told the Cole inquiry last week that he "vividly" remembered the meeting because it was an "extremely imposing and somewhat intimidating environment".

"The minister was dressed in full military regalia," he said. "He was armed. I counted some 17 posters of Saddam Hussein staring down at me." Saleh ordered Mr Long to add a 10 per cent "after-sales service fee" to all future wheat deals.

Saleh was captured by US forces on April 23, 2003, apparently while trying to flee to Jordan.

He was taken into custody -- perhaps to the notorious Abu Ghraib, although the US won't confirm it -- and has since been singing like a bird.

Saleh gave damning evidence to the Iraq Survey Group, a team of more than 1000 people, including dozens of Australians, who went to Baghdad after the war to discover Saddam's secrets.

He also demolished AWB's claim that it did not know it was funding Saddam's regime. Saleh was interrogated by a panel of UN investigators on November 18, 2004. According to a record of the interview, he told the UN that all Iraq's suppliers under the oil-for-food program had "paid kickbacks to the government of Iraq".

He said "AWB made its payments through Alia" and that Alia, a Jordanian trucking company, was a front for Saddam's regime.

Shortly after the interview, UN investigators turned their attention to AWB. They visited the company's headquarters in Melbourne in February and March last year.

By then, the company was already in damage control and had decided to give the UN only "limited co-operation".

The UN interviewed managing director Andrew Lindberg on February 28, Mr Long on March 1 and former chairman Trevor Flugge on March 2. All denied knowledge of the kickbacks.

They were undone by Saleh and, it seems, by Alia's managing director, Othman al-Absi, who also co-operated with the UN.

Mr Lindberg told the UN he had visited Iraq in the "shadow war" in 2002. He met Saleh in Baghdad, where he received a "mandatory lecture" on the evils of the Howard Government.

Nevertheless, Mr Lindberg thought relations were "very good".

Indeed, he believed the trade minister "harboured a special place" for AWB executives.

Apparently, he was wrong.