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8:00-8:01 Billboard:
Ex-Bush National Security Council Member: How Bush Bungled
The War on Terror
Quagmire in Iraq: U.S. Casualties Up To 11,700
8:01-8:06 Headlines
8:06-8:10 One Minute Music Break
8:10-8:44 Ex-Bush National Security Council Member:
How Bush Bungled The War on Terror
INTRO: A year after resigning from the National Security
Council, Flynt Leverett talks about how Bush pulled U.S. special
forces from the hunt for Osama in March 2002 to focus on Iraq,
how the U.S. lost Syria as a source on intelligence on Al
Qaeda and the role of Elliot Abrams in shaping the country's
Middle East policy. We also talk to Col. Patrick Long (Ret.),
former head of the Middle East section of the Defense Intelligence
Agency.
In March 2002, six months after President Bush announced
the war on terror, an unusual military decision was made:
the military's specialists hunting for Osama bin Laden were
reassigned.
According to Flynt Leverett, who was serving in the National
Security Council at the time, the Bush administration pulled
off Arabic-speaking Special Forces and CIA officers from the
hunt and gave them a new assignment: Iraq.
Leverett told the Washington Post last week, "[Richard]
Clarke's critique of administration decision-making and how
it did not balance the imperative of finishing the job against
al Qaeda versus what they wanted to do in Iraq is absolutely
on the money."
He went on to say "We took the people out who could
have caught them. But even if we get bin Laden or Zawahiri
now, it is two years too late. Al Qaeda is a very different
organization now. It has had time to adapt. The administration
should have finished this job."
- Flynt Leverett, from February 2002 to March 2003 Leverett
was Senior Director for Middle East Affairs on President
Bush's National Security Council He is a former CIA analyst
and Middle East specialist. He is now a visiting fellow
at the Saban Center for Middle East studies at the Brookings
Institution.
- Col. Patrick Lang, retired Army officer who served as
head of Middle East and terrorism intelligence for the Department
of Defense during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
8:44-8:45 One Minute Music Break
8:45-8:58 Quagmire in Iraq: U.S. Casualties Up To
11,700
INTRO: Although the number of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq
is rarely mentioned, previous estimates in the media have
ranged between 2,000-3,000. The Pentagon now says that in
the first year of war in Iraq, the military made over 18,000
medical evacuations - representing 11,700 casualties. We speak
UPI’s Mark Benjamin who has been closely following the
hidden U.S. casualties from the Iraq wa
News reports and Pentagon briefings emerge daily announcing
the death of another U.S. soldier in Iraq.
The number of American soldiers killed since the beginning
of the invasion has now topped 600. U.S. authorities have
not bothered to count the Iraqi dead, but some estimates put
the number as high as 10,000.
But what is rarely heard in the U.S. media or from the Pentagon
is the number of wounded U.S. soldiers. Some figures that
have been briefly mentioned in the press fall in the range
of two to three thousand.
But the Pentagon is now reporting that in the first year
of war in Iraq, the military made over 18,000 medical evacuations
- representing 11,700 casualties.
- Mark Benjamin, UPI Investigations editor. He has been
closely following the hidden US casualties from the Iraq
war -- the thousands of servicemen and women who have returned
home injured. Last week he was awarded the American Legion's
top journalism award for 2004 for his reporting last fall
on the plight of hundreds of sick, wounded and injured soldiers
at Fort Stewart, Ga. The troops, many of whom served in
Iraq, were held in hot cement barracks without running water
while they waited, sometimes for months, for medical care.
Link: http://www.upi.com/vaccine.cfm
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu
(RAY MA MU), Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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