The Office of Special Plans began work in October 2001 to gather [or manufacture] "evidence" of Iraq's alleged WMD proliferation and supposed "connections" [meetings/support] to alQaeda. Feith was in charge of this group. These guys were meeting with the discredited Iranian from Iran-Contra! Sy Hersh writes about some of this, I think, in "The Stovepipe", and there are other sources , but I can't gather them now. One of the first public mentions was Bush's Jan 29, 2002 "axis of evil" SOTU speech, where he said something like "these regimes [including Iraq] could give WMD to terrorists", which I would count as aiding. The emphasis at first was to hype up the WMD lies, but they were really glad when Abu Zubayda started saying that there was an "operational relationship" between Iraq and alQaeda while they were torturing him. It also seems like they leaned on the Czheck PM or misrepresented something he said.

The break in at the Niger Embassey in Rome which was the genesis of the forged Yellowcake documents happened in January 2001. I don't think anyone has ever found out who forged those documents. The Unger article talks a lot about that.

but what the law requires.

a simple "yes" would have been sufficient. :-}

N/T

GG: Until John Yoo wrote that memo, where was the lack of clarity about whether or not these things were illegal? Where did that lack of clarity or debate exist? They found some right-wing ideologues in the Justice Department to say that this was okay, that's what you're endorsing.

The lack of clarity existed only in the rhetoric of Bush and the Cheney Gang. They created it. Then they fed that notion to the media corpse, and they gobbled it up hook line and sinker and spread it around.

Suddenly we were hearing/reading the words "Geneva Conventions" and "vague" in the same sentence many times a day. No one thought it important to voice the fact that for the previous five decades, the US Military and Justice Departments knew [and still know] exactly what the words of the Geneva Convetnitons mean.

"[...] I didn't get the feeling he understood what John Yoo was talking about, just what he was "trying to do". And he refuses to back away from the function of lawyers. He treated Glenn's statements that this was not the function of Justice Department lawyers as some kind of idealism. That one was weird."-- ondelette

Yes. He should read this:

Principles to Guide the Office of Legal Counsel

December 21, 2004

http://www.acslaw.org/files/2004%20programs_OLC%20principles_white%20paper.pdf