NEW YORK - `We were all wrong,' David Kay, the White House's chief weapons
hunter and longtime war booster, admitted last week. There were no weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq, as the US and Britain had long alleged.
Claims Iraq had nuclear weapons, death rays, vans of death, drones of death,
mobile germ labs, poison gas factories, hidden weapons depots, long-ranged
missiles, links to al-Qaida - all were false. The only thing real: Iraq's
oil.
President George W. Bush fevered warnings that Iraq posed an `imminent
threat' to all mankind were nothing more than hot air.
If Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction(wmd's), as it long insisted, we
must draw one of two conclusions.
1. President George Bush, and Secretaries Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld,
lied outrageously about the global threat they claimed Iraq posed, and
gravely deceived Congress and the American people. The real reason for the
Iraq adventure was oil piracy and promoting Greater Israel.
2. Or, they were misinformed almost beyond belief and must be judged totally
incompetent to lead a great nation.
If Bush and his team of chest-thumping, self-proclaimed national security
experts were truly so misinformed about Iraq's weapons and capabilities,
then they launched a war by mistake, and presided over the two biggest
nationals security fiascos since Pearl Harbor: the 9/11 attacks and the
invasion of Iraq.
Bush's plans announced this week for an investigation of intelligence
leading to the war is nothing more than a whitewash designed to defer this
explosive issue until well after elections.
President Saddam Hussein, whom Bush repeatedly branded a `liar,' was in fact
telling the truth all along when he said all of Iraq's old weapons systems
had been destroyed. It was Bush and Blair who were not telling the truth.
So, take your pick. The Iraqi war either was the Mother of All Lies, or the
Mother of All Fiascos.
Confronted by these ugly facts, Bush tried to re-brand the unprovoked war
against Iraq by claiming it was justified because Saddam was such a horrid
man. What arrant hypocrisy. When Saddam committed his worst deeds - the
1980's - he was a close US ally, secretly supported by Washington and London
with arms, intelligence, technicians, and cash.
Now, the White House is trying to blame CIA for the Iraq fiasco. CIA
director George Tenet certainly wronged his agency and nation by not going
public to debunk White House war propaganda over Iraq.
But active and retired CIA officers kept warning the public and media
(including this writer) that intelligence on Iraq had been deeply corrupted
and politicized by a cabal of pro-war neo-conservative ideologues in the
Pentagon and Vice President's office. They were ignored.
A shadowy Pentagon intelligence unit, the Office for
Special Projects, was created by pro-Israel neo-conservatives to whip up
war fever against Iraq. The OSP fed fake or wildly exaggerated reports from
Israeli intelligence to the White House and Pentagon, which were then
trumpeted by neo-conservative media.
A former senior Israeli intelligence official recently confirmed his nation
had been a `full partner' in generating `flawed' intelligence supplied to
pro-war factions in US and British intelligence. In other words, Israel's
far right Likud Party fed fake intel to Likud's American supporters embedded
in the Pentagon, Vice President's Offcie, and National Security Council.
This column has maintained for the past ten years that a campaign of lies
and disinformation was being waged against Iraq. Though I detested Saddam,
whose brutal secret police threatened to hang me, I was incensed to see
western democracies fabricating war propaganda worthy of Nazi propagandist,
Dr Goebbles.
I watched with disgust as so-called `Iraq experts' and neo-conservative
propagandists, few of whom had ever been to Iraq, warned night after night
on US TV about the `deadly threat' from Iraq. Genuine Mideast specialists
were systematically excluded from US media commentary. As one reader just
noted, the US media was not `embedded,' it was in bed with the government.
By challenging war propaganda, I became the object of viscous attacks by
fellow journalists and media pundits in the US and Canada. Each week, I was
flooded by hate email.
I even left twice weekly shows at TV Ontario - after nine years - after the
station producers tried to censor my views on Iraq and kept prompting a
pro-war, neo-con party line on TVO's programs.
`Don't be on the losing side,' a close friend warned last year. `Why risk
your career and reputation by insisting Iraq has no wmd's and saying the US
invasion was wrong and illegal'
Why? Because I knew Iraq had no wmd's and no means of delivering them, and
I passionately hate propaganda of all kinds - worst of all, when it comes
from democratic governments.
`Do you feel vindicated,' a radio show host asked me last week . . . `you
predicted a year ago that no wmd's would be found in Iraq.'
Not vindicate. Just dismayed. Dismayed by the continuing widespread
indifference - or even approval - by many Americans of the aggression
against Iraq that violated international law and basic norms of civilized
behavior. Dismayed by the cowardly attitude of the US Congress and the
mainstream media. And deeply concerned by growing hatred for the US around
the globe.
Too few Americans seem troubled their president either lied or blundered
them into a horrible mess in Iraq, so far costing 523 Americans dead, nearly
10,000 casualties, and US $200 billion for 2003-04, not to mention the
deaths of thousands of Iraqis, and current the nightmarish mess in Iraq.
The war fever, and hatred of Muslims and foreigners fostered by the Bush
Administration continues to grip America. I am not comparing the US in 2004
to Nazi Germany, but one begins to understand how Germans, another educated,
highly civilized people, were driven in the 1930's by a campaign of fear and
lies into supporting a policy of aggression, religious hatred, and racism.
---
Eric
Margolis is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and broadcaster, and
author of War at the Top of the World - The Struggle for
Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet which was reviewed in The
Economist, May 13, 2000
Rep. Henry A. Waxman, "Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public
Statements on Iraq," U.S. House of Representatives, March 16, 2004 (Alternate Source)
[ "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said. "We all said,
'But no, no, al-Qaida is in Afghanistan.'"--"Ex-Adviser: Iraq Considered After 9/11," Mlive.com, March
20, 2004]
[Gen. Hussein Kamal - Saddam's son-in-law - had defected to Jordan in 1995,
carrying with him thousands of documents on Iraq's "weapons of mass
destruction" program. Kamal was extensively interrogated by the CIA, and by
Rolf Ekeus of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq and Maurizio Zifferero of
the IAEA Action Team.
Basically, Kamal claimed all Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and the
makings thereof had been destroyed.--Gordon Prather, "What do you mean 'we' were wrong?, World Net Daily, March
20, 2004]
[Mohammed ElBardei said he was concerned about the disappearance of nuclear
material from the occupied country.--Hossam Al-Sayed, "Parts Of Iraqi Nuclear Reactor 'Resettled': Sources,"
IslamOnline.net, April 19, 2004]
Dana Priest and Dafna Linzer, "Panel
Condemns Iraq Prewar Intelligence: Senate Report Faults 2002 Estimate
Sent To Hill, Accuses the CIA of 'Group-Think' ," The Washington Post, July
10, 2004
[In February 2002, Graham writes, Gen. Tommy Franks, then conducting the war against the
Taliban in Afghanistan (and later to speak in prime time on behalf of Bush's candidacy
at the Republican National Convention in New York), pulled the senator aside to explain
that important resources in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, such as Predator drones, were
being quietly redeployed to Iraq. "He told me that the decision to go to war in Iraq had
been made at least 14 months before we actually went into Iraq, long before there was
authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a
resolution of support," Graham tells Salon.--Mary Jacoby, "Sen. Graham: Bush covered up Saudi
involvement in 9/11," salon.com, September 8, 2004]
[The U.N. chief weapons inspector, Demetrius Perricos, said his agency
shares the U.S. belief that the there is no evidence Iraq ever resumed
its weapons-of-mass-destruction program after the 1991 Persian Gulf
War.--Colum Lynch, "UN Security Council Dissolves Unit Looking for
Iraqi Arms," Washington Post, June 30, 2007]
[When Saad Tawfiq watched then-US Secretary of state Colin Powell's
presentation to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he shed bitter tears
as he realized he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for
nothing. As one of Saddam Hussein's most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that
the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons programs in 1995 - and he had told his handlers in US intelligence
just that.--"Saad Tawfiq told his handlers that saddam had shut down
wmd program," Agence France Presse, February 5, 2008]
[Then, in 1995, Gen. Hussein Kamal - director of Iraq's nuke, chem-bio and
missile programs and Saddam Hussein's son-in-law - defected to Jordan.
Kamal was "debriefed" in Jordan by Rolf Ekeus, Chairman of UNSCOM and Chief
Inspector Maurizio Zifferero of the IAEA.
It turned out that shortly after the Gulf War cease-fire, Kamal - at Saddam
Hussein's direction - had ordered the destruction of all Iraqi chem-bio
weapons, the makings thereof and the missiles to deliver them. He also
ordered the destruction of those facilities - that had not already been
destroyed in the Gulf War - associated with Saddam's attempt to produce
fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Quoth Kamal; "Nothing remained."
A military aide who defected with Kamal supported Kamal's assertions.
Furthermore, Kamal had brought thousands of supporting documents with
him.--Gordon Prather, "Scott Ritter:
Reflections," antiwar.comh, March 22, 2008]
[Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American
intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, told the Guardian he
fabricated tales of mobile bio-weapons trucks and clandestine factories in
an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled
in 1995. . . .
Curveball claimed he was first exposed as a liar as early as mid-2000, when
the BND travelled to a Gulf city, believed to be Dubai, to speak with his
former boss at the Military Industries Commission in Iraq, Dr Bassil Latif.
The Guardian has learned separately that British intelligence officials were
at that meeting, investigating a claim made by Curveball that Latif's son,
who was studying in Britain, was procuring weapons for Saddam.
That claim was proven false, and Latif strongly denied Curveball's claim of
mobile weapons trucks and another allegation that 12 people had died during
an accident at a secret bio-weapons facility in south-east Baghdad.--Martin
Chulov and Helen Pidd, "Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war,"
Guardian, February 15, 2011]
[ . . . who is the United States to say that a country should or shouldn't
have nuclear weapons? When did the countries of the world appoint America to
be the world's policeman or guardian? Why does the United States tolerate
the massive amount of nuclear weapons stockpiled in France, China, Russia,
Israel, India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom? Shouldn't the United States
invade those countries as well? Isn't every county in the world justified in
obtaining nuclear weapons to protect themselves against the one country that
was the first and only country to actually use them -- the United States of
America?--Laurence M. Vance, "What If Iraq Had Weapons
of Mass Destruction?," fff.org, February 23, 2011]
