http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0713-01.htm The
IndependentLondon, Sunday, July 13, 2003 Twenty Lies
about the War
Falsehoods
Ranging from Exaggeration to Plain Untruth Were
Used to Make the Case for War. More Lies are Being
Used in the Aftermath by Glen Rangwala and Raymond
Whitaker 1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September
attacks A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed
Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and
an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis
for this claim, but Czech intelligence later
conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have
been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of
assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which
was so successful that at one stage opinion polls
showed that two-thirds of Americans
[Website note: now, Sept
2003 7 in 10] believed the hand of
Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks.
Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard
the crashed airliners; in fact there were none. 2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working
together Persistent
claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and
Osama bin Laden were in league with each
other were contradicted by a leaked British Defense
Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no
current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims
are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq",
it added. Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida
members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set
up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached
the camp, they found no chemical or biological
traces. 3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a
"reconstituted" nuclear weapons program The head of the CIA has now admitted that
documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to
import uranium from Niger in west Africa were
forged, and that the claim should never have been
in President Bush's State of the Union
address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it
has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office
conceded last week that this information is now
"under review". 4. Iraq was trying to import aluminum tubes
to develop nuclear weapons The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried
to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use
could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich
uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently,
the International Atomic Energy Agency said the
tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The
head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told
the UN Security Council in January that the tubes
were not even suitable for centrifuges. 5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and
biological weapons from the first Gulf War Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to
kill the whole world, it was alleged more than
once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be
smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and
biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart
from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to
produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years,
the time between the two wars. All such agents
would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness
years ago. 6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which
could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a
range which would threaten British forces in
Cyprus Apart from the fact that there has been no sign
of these missiles since the invasion, Britain
downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons
in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also
revealed that chemical protection equipment was
removed from British bases in Cyprus last year,
indicating that the Government did not take its own
claims seriously. 7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to
develop smallpox This
allegation was made by the Secretary of State,
Colin Powell, in his address to the UN
Security Council in February. The following month
the UN said there was nothing to support it. 8. US and British claims were supported by
the inspectors According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons
inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq
had 10,000 liters of anthrax. Tony Blair
said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the
nuclear weapons program" had been well documented
by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same
as saying there are weapons of mass destruction,"
he said last September. "If I had solid evidence
that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or
were constructing such weapons, I would take it to
the Security Council." In May this year he added:
"I am obviously very interested in the question of
whether or not there were weapons of mass
destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there
possibly were not." 9. Previous weapons inspections had
failed Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the
UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get
Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a
Security Council panel concluded: "Although
important elements still have to be resolved, the
bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programs has been
eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors
"found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive
biological weapons program" until his son-in-law
defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to
its biological weapons program more than a month
before the defection. 10. Iraq was obstructing the
inspectors Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed
inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long
arguments" with other Iraqi officials while
evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys
were monitored and notified ahead to remove
surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had
conducted more than 400 inspections, all without
notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that
access to sites has so far been without problems,"
he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing
evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the
inspectors were coming." 11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass
destruction in 45 minutes This now-notorious claim was based on a single
source, said to be a serving Iraqi military
officer. This individual has not been produced
since the war, but in any case Tony Blair
contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had
begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which
meant that they could not have been used within 45
minutes. 12. The "dodgy dossier" Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the
dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence
over the weekend about the infrastructure of
concealment. It is obviously difficult when we
publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that
most of it was cribbed without attribution from
three articles on the internet. Last month
Alastair Campbell took responsibility for
the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by
the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two
Iraqi intelligence organizations, and said one
moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before
it was created. 13. War would be easy Public fears of war in the US and Britain were
assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would
welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing
Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq
would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth
Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two
previous Republican administrations. Resistance was
patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from
irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes.
"This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one
general complained. 14. Umm Qasr The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only
port was announced several times before
Anglo-American forces gained full control - by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among
others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief
of Britain's Defense staff. "Umm Qasr has been
overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in
coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat
prematurely. 15. Basra rebellion Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra,
Iraq's second city, had risen against their
oppressors were repeated for days, long after it
became clear to those there that this was little
more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a
supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also
announced by military spokesman in no position to
know the truth. 16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica
Lynch Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital
in Nasiriya by American special forces was
presented as the major "feel-good" story of the
war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi
troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken
to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It
has since emerged that all her injuries were
sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her
incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff
had tried to return her to the Americans after
Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the
doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire
on them. The special forces encountered no
resistance, but made sure the whole episode was
filmed. 17. Troops would face chemical and biological
weapons As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a
rash of reports that they would cross a "red line",
within which Republican Guard units were authorized
to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General
James Conway, the leading US marine general
in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence
reports that chemical weapons had been deployed
around Baghdad before the war were wrong. "It was a surprise to me ... that we have not
uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward
dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually
every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti
border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.
We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at
the national level, I think still very much remains
to be seen." 18. Interrogation of scientists would yield
the location of WMD "I have got absolutely no doubt that those
weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation
of the scientists and the experts, I have got no
doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in
April [2003]. Numerous similar assurances
were issued by other leading figures, who said
interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries
that searches had failed to supply. But almost all
Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and
claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are
stilling their tongues are beginning to wear
thin. 19. Iraq's oil money would go to
Iraqis Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people
falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil
revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust
fund for the Iraqi people administered through the
UN. Britain should seek a Security Council
resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil
revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people". Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council
resolution that gave the US and UK control over
Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered
trust fund. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the
Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make
deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in
compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in
1990. 20. WMD were found After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair
and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two
trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological
laboratories. "We have already found two trailers,
both of which we believe were used for the
production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair.
Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't
found the banned manufacturing devices or banned
weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now
almost certain that the vehicles were for the
production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just
as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported
by Britain.
David
Irving speaks on the parallels between the
actions in Iraq and those in World War II which
led to the Nuremberg trials, in the United
States this Fall. [Details]
Bush's New War
Lies |