the lying game....war in iraq

[Guest guest]

Wednesday 28 August 2002 The Mirror

 

 

IRAQ: THE LYING GAME John Pilger on the deceit used to justify a war against

Saddam Hussein

 

By John Pilger

 

 

THE Blair government was told in January by the Americans that there was no

justification for attacking Iraq in the " war on terrorism " and that their

main aim was getting rid of Saddam Hussein who stood in the way of the

West's control of Middle Eastern oil wealth.

 

 

THEIR MAN: Saddam

 

This partly explains why Blair abandoned presenting to Parliament a famous

" dossier " in which " the evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass

destruction is simply vast " .

 

The dossier is no more than a stream of warmed-over assertions and

deceptions, supplied by Washington. According to reliable intelligence

sources in another Western country, who were privy to the same

communications, the Central Intelligence Agency has made clear that there is

" no credible evidence " justifying an attack in Iraq.

 

While Blair has continued to repeat propaganda that Iraq is a threat to the

region and to what he calls " civilisation " , the truth has long been an open

secret. On February 5 last, the New York Times reported: " The Central

Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist

operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is

also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or

biological weapons to al-Qaeda.

 

While Blair has claimed that Iraq has rebuilt its arsenal of " weapons of

mass destruction " , those who advise him know full well this is nonsense. And

if Blair himself is not aware of this, this begs the question: what kind of

prime minister is he?

 

They have read the evidence of Scott Ritter, who as senior United Nations

weapons inspector in Iraq for seven years, is uniquely placed to assess how

much of a danger the Iraqi regime represents.

 

RITTER, an American and international authority on weapons disarmament,

personally led the inspections, investigations and destruction of Iraq's

chemical and biological weapons programmes.

 

On July 23, he said: " There is no case for war. I say that, not as a

pacifist, or someone who is afraid of war. I've been to war with the US

Marine Corps. Moreover, I'm a card-carrying Republican, who voted for George

W. Bush for president. More important, I believe in truth.

 

" The UN weapons inspectors enjoyed tremendous success in Iraq. By the end of

our job, we ascertained a 90-95 per cent level of disarmament. Not because

we took at face value what the Iraqis said. We went to Europe and scoured

the countries that sold technology to Iraq until we found the company that

had an invoice signed by an Iraqi official. We cross-checked every piece of

equipment with serial numbers. That's why I can say that Iraq was 90-95 per

cent disarmed. We confirmed that 96 per cent of Iraq's 98 missiles were

destroyed.

 

" As for chemical weapons, even if Iraq had succeeded in hiding stocks of

sarin and tabun nerve agents, these chemicals have a shelf life of five

years; after that they deteriorate and become useless gunk. "

 

Ritter does not deny that Iraq could have begun to reconstitute its weapons

programmes. " But they would have to start from scratch because they don't

have the factories any more, because we destroyed them (including the

research and development plant). If they tried that, the evidence is readily

detectable. The technology is available; if Iraq was producing chemical

weapons today on any meaningful scale, we would have definitive proof to

show, plain and simple; and there is none. "

 

Blair must also be aware of the fact that the international Atomic Energy

Agency reported that it had eliminated Iraq's nuclear weapons programme

" efficiently and effectively " . When he and Bush " demand " the return of the

UN inspectors to Iraq, what they they omit to say is that the inspectors

were never thrown out by Iraq, but ordered out by the UN after it was

discovered they were being used as a cover for American spying.

 

Absurdity is never far away in Bush's world. His Defence Secretary Donald

Rumsfeld argues that the absence of evidence simply confirms that the

nefarious Saddam has cleverly hidden his arsenal in caves and on the backs

of lorries. " The absence of evidence, " says Rumsfeld, " is not evidence of

absence. "

 

The second biggest lie is Iraq's " threat to the region " . Blair and Bush

repeatedly claim this as if they are echoing the fears of regional leaders.

The opposite is true.

 

In March, the Beirut summit of the Arab League sent a clear message that all

22 governments wanted to see an end to the conflict with Iraq, which they no

longer regarded as a threat. Saudi Arabia and Iraq have since re-opened

their common border. Iraq has agreed to return Kuwait's national archives

and to discuss the issue of missing people. Syria and Lebanon have

re-established full relations with Iraq. Jordan's national airline flies

five times a week between Amman and Baghdad. "

 

THE unmentionable truth is that the entire Gulf and Middle East is being

turned upside down, not by any perceived threat from Iraq, but by American

obsessions with replacing Saddam Hussein.

 

He was their man, a thug whose Ba'athist Party was brought to power by the

CIA in what the CIA official responsible described as " our favourite coup " .

Moreover, he was sustained in power during the 1980s by Ronald Reagan,

George Bush Senior and Margaret Thatcher, who gave him all the weapons he

wanted, often clandestinely and illegally; in Washington, the relationship

was known as " the love affair " .

 

When I was in Iraq in 1999, I met an assistant hotel manager whose sardonic

sense of western double standards was a treat.

 

" Ah, a journalist from Britain! " he said. " Would you like to see where Mr

Douglas Hurd stayed, and Mr David Melon - (he meant Mellor) - and Mr Newton, and all the other members of Mrs Thatcher's government... These

gentleman were our friends, our benefactors. "

 

This man has a collection of the Iraqi English-language newspaper, the

Baghdad Observer, from the " good old days " . Saddam Hussein is on the front

page, where he always is. The only change in each photograph is that he is

sitting on his white presidential couch with a different British government

minister, who is smiling a smile uncannily similar to that of his murderous

host.

 

There, in yellowing print, is Douglas Hurd twice - on the couch and on page

two, bowing before the tyrant. And there is the corpulent David Mellor, also

a Foreign Minister, on the same white couch in 1988. While Mellor, or " Mr

Melon " as the assistant manager preferred, was being entertained by Saddam

Hussein, his host ordered the gassing of 5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja.

News of this atrocity the Foreign Office tried to suppress and the US State

Department tried to blame on Iran. " Please give Mr Melon my greetings, " said

the assistant manager.

 

The 1994 Scott Inquiry into Britain's illegal supply of arms to Saddam

Hussein found that deception was widespread among senior British officials

and diplomats. One of those commended by Sir Richard Scott for the honesty

of his evidence was the former head of the Iraq Desk in Whitehall, Mark

Higson, who described " a culture of lying " in the Foreign Office.

 

Nothing has changed under Tony Blair. The Foreign Office has consistently

lied about the inhuman effects of the American-driven embargo on the Iraqi

civilian population. It has lied about the rise in the number of cancers in

southern Iraq, the " Hiroshima effect " of depleted uranium, a weapon of mass

destruction used by British and American forces during the Gulf War. It has

lied about the vast amounts of humanitarian goods denied to Iraq, even

though the UN Security Council has approved them. These include cancer

assessment and treatment, medical equipment, and equipment that would allow

Iraq to clean up its contaminated battlefields.

 

ON the issue of Iraq, the likeness between Thatcher's Tories and Blair's New

Labour is remarkable. In 2000, Peter Hain, a Foreign Office minister and a

zealous supporter of the embargo on the civilian population, blocked a

parliamentary request to publish the full list of the British companies that

had helped to sustain Saddam Hussein in power.

 

Just as the Foreign Office under the Tories tried to hinder reports of

Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds from getting into the media (Foreign

Office officials even questioned the " authenticity " of news photos), their

successors under New Labour have questioned the veracity of United Nations

studies reporting the death of children as a result of the American-driven

embargo; and they play down the prospect of the new humanitarian disaster

awaiting the Iraqi people when the Americans invade. Four years ago, the

Pentagon told President Clinton that, if he invaded Iraq, he should expect

" collateral damage " (civilian deaths) of up to 10,000 innocent people.

 

These days, various Saddam Hussein look-alikes are to be seen being greeted

at the Foreign Office. Several are generals who served under the tyrant and

would, if there was international justice for the West's friends as well as

its enemies, be convicted of war crimes. A new, obedient thug is being

groomed to rule Iraq, the world's second greatest source of oil - the

" prize " on which the insatiable economies of the developed world, especially

the United Sates, rely.

 

Why is there an urgency about this attack? Is it true that the Bush

administration needs something to go right with its rampage against

" terror " . There is another reason, which is seldom reported. This is the

dire state of the world's number one source of oil, Iraq's neighbour, Saudi

Arabia. This medieval throwback is America's most important client in the

region, almost as important Israel; and Washington is losing control.

 

SAUDI Arabia is also the home of al-Qaeda, most of the September 11

hijackers and Osama bin Laden. Its importance to the US is demonstrated in

the close ties of many in the Bush administration with " big oil " and the

Saudi sheikhs. George Bush Senior, a consultant for the giant oil industry

Carlyle Group, has met the bin Laden family on several occasions.

 

Not surprisingly, no American bombs fell on Saudi Arabia; impoverished

Afghanistan was the easy option that America prefers.

 

Because of the American connection with Saudi Arabia, the reaction and

opposition within the deeply fundamentalist kingdom has been growing.

Al-Qaeda probably enjoys support or influence among a majority of the ruling

families. The Americans are desperately urging the caretaker ruler, Prince

Abdullah, to " modernise " - at present, women are not allowed to drive and

you can lose your head for apostasy. But the American pressure is having the

opposite effect; popular support for al-Qaeda is unabated.

 

George W Bush and his own unelected, Christian fundamentalist regime face a

dilemma. An attack on Iraq and conflict in the Middle East would provide a

timely boost for American's military-industry-complex, for which the Senate

has voted an historic increase in expenditure of £24billion. It would also

divert attention from a sick economy and the corporate corruption scandals

in which Bush and his vice-president are immersed up to their necks.

 

However, an attack on neighbouring Iraq could also give al-Qaeda the moment

they have been waiting for and allow it to take over Saudi Arabia through

proxies and control the most important oil fields on Earth. It goes almost

without saying that Bush's dilemma does not include consideration for the

thousands of Iraqis who will die under the American cluster bombs and

depleted uranium tipped explosives.

 

It is naive to expect Tony Blair to say anything about this: to tell us the

truth. However, people all over the world are stirring. A clear majority of

the British people oppose the latest proposed homicidal adventure by the

United States, and the complicity of their own government. Silence is no

longer an option. " Our lives begin to end, " said Martin Luther King, " the

day we become silent about things that matter. "

 

www.johnpilger.com

 

John Pilger's new documentary about the Middle East, Palestine Is Still The

Issue, will be shown on ITV on September 16.

[Guest guest]

Thanks again Fraggle - I'll watch the programme.

 

Jo

 

the lying game....war in iraq

 

 

>

> John Pilger's new documentary about the Middle East, Palestine Is Still

The

> Issue, will be shown on ITV on September 16.

 

 

 

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