U.S. Government

Minneapolis FBI agent Colleen Rowley, who last year exposed the agency's mishandling of warning signs prior to September 11, has written a new letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, warning that "the diversion of attention from al-Qaeda to our government's plan to invade Iraq ... will, in all likelihood, bring an exponential increase in the terrorist threat to the U.S., both at home and abroad. ... It is altogether likely that you will find yourself a helpless bystander to a rash of 9-11s.

"Charlotte Beers, the former advertising executive who has been in charge of the Bush administration's global campaign to enhance the image of the United States among Muslims, resigned today for what she said were health reasons," reports Steven Weisman. Under Beers' supervision, the U.S. State Department produced videos, pamphlets, booklets and other materials, but her efforts were largely seen as ineffective.

The U.S. has already launched psychological warfare operations in Iraq, including "leafleting, radio and TV broadcasts, even personal phone calls and e-mails, as well as secret techniques the public knows little about," reports Michael Kilian. "Since Jan. 18, U.S.

"On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis," FAIR writes. "In a revelation that 'raises questions about whether the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist,' the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims." The CIA denied the Newsweek story.