WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

Thoughts on US Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council - 5th February 2003
by
Grant Wakefield
6th Feb. 2003

It is still difficult for me to understand why it is exactly that newspaper editors think they are acting in the public's best interests to support war. I refer specifcally to THE SUN's headlines today in the UK, so perhaps that's to be expected. 'Undeniable' evidence, they say, of Iraqi deception of the weapons inspectors, and all the reason we need to go to war. They even have a certain 'Captain Stevenson' to act as a war liason officer - a member of staff in their office wearing combat gear and a helmet, ready to take your calls in support of the British troops. I dropped him a line and asked that he support the troops by not allowing them to die for a lie.

It's hardly likely that anyone at that newspaper will ever read this, and, even if they did, ever print it. But Colin Powell's ably presented speech yesterday was by no means the 'undeniable' evidence required to go ahead and kill tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. Persuasive in some respects, but certainly not 'undeniable,' certainly not enough to condemn an already suffering people to oblivion.

The following points should be borne in mind.

American governments, British governments, and Iraqi governments have something very close in common. They all lie.
If we are to assume that Powell's evidence is correct, then the lie that the Iraqi government is currently engaged in is hiding what was left of their WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) program that UNSCOM failed to find, and anything else they have possibly been able to procure and/or produce since UNSCOM left. Why would they do a thing like this? Perhaps as a last hope of any possible deterrent to a fully armed and nuclear capable Israel to their North West. After all, the Israeli military have a saying: "The Arabs have the oil, but we have the matches." Which lie is the most dangerous then? Iraq playing cat and mouse with inspectors, or the US plunging the region and the world into chaos, death and retribution over a man who was their firm ally for years?

Iraqi WMDs are totally useless to Iraq in any conflict with an outside state, especially with the US
This may seem a rather confident comment given Powell's evidence. But it's not the quantity, quality, delivery system or anything else that matters in this question. The fact of the matter is that Iraq would be attacked with nuclear weapons if it EVER used any form of WMD against the US or a western power-ally. Hence no comdemnation of their use against Iran....that was fine. But Hussein's deputy Tariq Aziz was warned by former Secretary of State James Baker in January 1991 that if WMDs were even attempted to be utilised: "Our response will be unrestrained." Aziz was left in no doubt what he was talking about. The only occasion in which Iraq would even consider WMD use is if they had nothing to lose, for example, if they were about to be attacked with nuclear weapons, a situation which, astonishingly, has not been ruled out in more hawkish circles. When Israel unilaterally attacked Iraq's Osirac nuclear reactor in 1981, an act that if committed against the US would most certainly constitute a declaration of war, it resulted in Iraq doing absolutely nothing at all for fear of Israeli reprisals, for which they had no deterrent. The US was the principle supplier of Israel's nuclear weapons programme, and did so in breach of the Non Proliferation Act of 1970 and their own Foreign Aid Act.

WMDs, despite their high 'fear' factor, have resulted in far less deaths than conventional weapons
The worst single chemical warfare attack in history, as we are constantly reminded by Blair and Bush, was made by Iraq on the town of Halabja, March 16th 1988, after the town was captured by the Iranians and Kurdish separatists. Between 4000 and 5000 died; as many as 10,000 were injured, half of them very seriously. The allied standard incendiary bombing of the German city of Dresden during WW2 killed, in a single night, 80,000 people, and wounded almost as many. Compare this to the US nuclear attack on Nagasaki which killed 40,000. Admittedly Hiroshima suffered losses of 100,000. However, If all single use WMD devices' death tolls are added together, they do not even come close to the death toll attributable to US enforced sanctions on Iraq - the single largest weapon of mass destruction yet devised.

The stated aims of the US are not the stated aims of the UN Security Council
Leaving aside who really calls the shots in the UN, it's really very simple. The UN wants to disarm Iraq. The US wants to change the regime. This is not a secret. High US officials have repeatedly stated that regime change is their policy. And yet this does not even enter in to Powell's presentation as a point of discourse. His entire rationale for seeking UN authority for military strikes is one of Iraq's failure to disarm. This elementary and most essential point seems to have been missed by almost every nerwspaper today, even those with a so-called anti-war bias. What the American administration wants is not what the UN wants. Just a few days ago I saw Powell on television announcing that "...the US reserves the right to act with or without a new resolution..."

The timing and use of Powell's presentation
Any long time researcher of the Iraq situation will tell you that there is a very specific pattern to the timing of these kinds of presentations and attendant media coverage. The Oil-For-Food programme in Iraq is reviewed by the UN every ninety days, and if progress is perceived to have been made with disarmament, then the programme is re-activated for another ninety days pending the next review. This process has been going on from its very inception in March 1991 up until the present day. Researchers have noticed that in the period 7 to 10 days before each standard review, US and UK goverment press conferences have suddenly to drawn attention to Iraq in many ways, usually their human rights record or some highly questionable statement about Iraq's efforts to acquire some type of weapon. One of the funniest was in mid-2000 when the US claimed Iraq was buying bulk amounts of PlayStation 2 consoles in order to use the processing chips inside for some missile guidance program. The head of Sony finally wrote to the US State Department to refute this ridiculous claim, and the story died immediately after the review of Oil-For-Food. Another story that suddenly turned up was that Saddam was smuggling baby milk meant for Iraqi children suffering under sanctions. The baby milk in question actually turned out to be talcum powder, and Iraq was returning it to the exporting country due to its' poor quality, as it was regularly being ripped off by unscrupulous exporters who knew that Iraq had no legal recourse. Do you remember these stories? They are just two of many spurious claims made by the US and UK governments when they want to manipulate public opinion, and given the huge anti-war feeling, particularly in the UK, the timing of Powell's speech could not be more prescient. On the very same day a 65 year old Palestinian woman was bulldozed to death in her own home by the Israelis. The report I saw consisted of four columns on page 12 of The Independent. Powells speech occupied the entireity of the front page and pages 2 and 3, and no-one was being killed by Iraq.

The credibility of the UN is very much at stake, but for almost completely the opposite reason the US says it is
A tried and tested propaganda technique to win over anti-war sceptics is that Iraq is manipulating and defying the UN, thus damaging its credibility. To some extent this is true in their continual refusal to come 100% clean about disarmament. However, the real credibility of the UN resides in its ability to function as a world body, concerning itself with security concerns of the whole world, and not just individual member states. This is where the US has no par. The US holds the record in the UN for veto-ing Security Council resolutions, that is, rendering them void. The UK comes in second, Russia a surprisingly distant third. The US even voted against an SC resolution calling on all states to uphold international law. The current US Ambassador to the UN is John Negroponte. During the 1980's he was the State Department's point-man in Honduras for the organisation and supply of the Contras who were armed and trained by the US to attack Nicaragua, and in doing so were specifically ordered to ignore the Nicaraguan army and to attack 'soft targets', meaning schools, health clinics, peasant co-operatives and so on. Another former US Ambassador was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who sent a cable to Henry Kissinger on 23rd January 1976 reporting that "...considerable progress [has been made] toward a basic foreign policy goal, that of breaking up the massive blocs of nations, mostly new nations, which for so long have been arrayed against us in international forums and in diplomatic encounters generally." In his memoirs Moynihan recalled that was tasked with the job of rendering the UN powerless to stop Indonesia's brutal invasion, supported and armed by the US, of East Timor in 1975, a task he recalls that "...I carried out with no inconsiderable success." To obtain 'yes' votes for SCR 678 that enabled the first Gulf war, the US bribed member states to the tune of 23 BILLION dollars, including Syria, a state that was at the time on their list of 'sponsors of terrorism.' The argument that Iraq is damaging the UN's credibility is farcical in this context. In the UN General Assembly the US has voted against some truly remarkable resolutions, including the right of individual nations to select their own political and economic systems.

On British television tonight Prime Minister Tony Blair told interviewer Jeremy Paxman that even if a second UN resolution was not granted for military strikes, the US and UK must strike anyway on the basis of the first resolution, as not to do so would undermine the credibility of the UN. Also featuring on the news tonight is that the British parliament will not be allowed to put the matter to a vote. Such is, as George Monbiot states in the title of another article on this site, the logic of empire.

Selective enforcement and wording of UN resolutions
Iraq, say the US and UK, is a country that has defied the will of the world for 12 years. This is partially true, as Iraq disarmament is still unresolved. However, the '12 years' statement is very misleading. Iraq co-operated to a very large extent with the former inspections body UNSCOM until late 1998, and was frequently praised by various members of that organisation, in particular its chairman Rolf Ekeus and its Chief Field Officer Jaako Ylitalo. There is, however, another country in the Middle East that not only posesses a huge stockpile of WMDs, including approximately 200 nuclear weapons, but has point blank defied 57 separate UN resolutions over the past 35 years, refuses to allow any weapons inspections of any kind whatsoever, has invaded and occupied neighbouring states and killed at least four times as many people in these actions than did Iraq in its attack on Kuwait. This country, of course, is Israel. And no-one has ever advocated the bombing of that country to force it to comply with UN resolutions. Indeed Isreal receives approximately 10 billion dollars a year in aid from the US. The wording of SCRs 242 and 312 could hardly be more specific: "....demands the unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories...." The wording of SCRs in regard to Iraq are uncommonly vague, citing "...material breaches..." with "...severe consequences..." or in the case of SCR 678 "....to restore international peace and security in the area...." - a term that even fomer UK Prime Minister John Major conceded was "....impossible at this time to determine in detail precisely what this may mean..." In each case of a perceived breach by Iraq the US has always led military strikes, with by far the highest percentage of troop presence.

Powell's 'sources' are very questionable in light of the fact that US 'intelligence' has lied spectacularly in the past
Much of Indochina was destroyed by the US between 1965 and 1973, a catastrophe that stemmed from a total lie: the 'Gulf of Tonkin Incident'. In August 1964 a US navy ship was reported to have been in 'international waters' when, unprovoked, they were fired upon, in the Gulf of Tonkin, by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This report prompted a Congressional vote of 97-2 enabling President Lyndon Johnson to bypass a declaration of war by Congress, and led to the slaughter of anywhere between 2 and 5 million people. The ship in question, the USS Maddox, was not in international waters. It was in Vietnamese territorial waters engaged in electronic surveillance following a co-ordinated campaign of CIA attacks on Vietnamese coastal installations. It was not hit by torpedos. It was not hit by anything. It never happened. Fast forward to the testimony given by 15 year old 'Nayirah', described as a 'Kuwaiti escapee,' which was instrumental in swinging the Congressional vote for the Gulf war. Recall her famous testimony that Iraqi soldiers had entered a Kuwaiti hospital, removed 300 premature babies and left them to die as they made off with the incubators? This testimony was part of a 10 million dollar campaign orgainsed by America's largest public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton Inc, in which they were granted unprecedented access to the UN Security Council chambers. The story came up seven times in the Congressional debate. The final vote was 52-47. In March/April 1991 'Nayirah's claims were investigated by Middle East Watch and Human Rights Watch and found to be totally false. 'Nayirah' was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US and Canada. A story in late 2001 that received very scant attention was that members of the US Special Forces were working for CNN. The CIA and others have a long history of planting false stories in the press and of manufacturing 'evidence'. The Cambridge University anti-sanctions group, CASI, have recently produced a fascinating analysis of the third in the series of UK government documents on Iraq's alleged efforts to deceive the inspectors. Given the degree to which the British government will engage in outright falsification and exagerration, and given that the UK are the US' principle ally, it is vital to accept the possibility that the US may be lying.

What is very telling is that Powell referenced this report during his presentation, serving to undermine his credibility considerably.

To read the full document produced by CASI please CLICK HERE

Retrospective justification
This was a device used in the case of Kosovo. The US press in particular reproduced almost verbatim claims made by the US State Department that 'genocide' was being carried out by Serbian forces, and that mass graves and death tolls of upwards of 50,000 were being reported from Kosovo. Thus the rationale was presented that to stand by and do nothing would be tantamount to being an accomplice to genocide: 'It will get worse if we don't act now.' After the air strikes finished the US immediately sent FBI forensic teams, accompanied by independent teams from the UN, to investigate the sites of reported mass killings and graves. They could not find anything remotely on the scale as was claimed. Indeed the total pre-air strikes death toll was estimated, following detailed and widepsread investigations, at around 3000 on both sides. The death toll under NATO air strikes rose very considerably to 10,000 as Serbian and KLA attrocities mounted and NATO bombs killed civilians. Indeed the rise in attrocities was a predicted outcome of the strikes, made by none other than General Wesley Clark, head of NATO forces. Of the 700,000 refugees created by air strikes and increased Serb/KLA violence, many died of exposure, illness and starvation, and are now dying from land mines contained in unexploded NATO cluster bombs. The economies of Kosovo and Serbia are in ruins and unemployment is rampant. Nonetheless, the Kosovo campaign was widely praised in the west as a method of reducing the level of violence and ethnic cleansing, when the predicted outcome by its own military leader on the ground was precisely the opposite, and was borne out.

In conclusion: The Carthaginian solution - precedent and responsibility
To deal with a society hell bent on deception, war and domination is to destroy it entirely. This is the Carthaginian solution, and it is invoked very often by the US in regard to Iraq. Because Iraq has scientists it will always be able to pursue its dream of acquiring nuclear weapons. Because it borders Kuwait it will always want to invade. Because it hates America, hates them now that is - not before 1990 -  it will always seek to develop relations with terrorist groups. Therefore it must be destroyed. By this same principle a coalition of Arab States is perfectly entitled to attack Israel, or indeed the US, as they are bent on war and domination, seek to, and acquire, nuclear weapons, and support terrorist groups, like the Contras. Except the reaction to their 'evidence' would be met with howls of rage and derision in the west.

Iraq is the modern Carthage in the eyes of the US, and a new attack will set a terrible precedent. Powell's statement that "...I can not tell you everything I know, but what I can share with you is deeply troubling..." is precisely that. Deeply troubling, because it requires us to accept at completely face value everything the US says, despite their own constantly shifting rationales, history of lying, use of WMDs as justified in their own history, failure to enforce other SCRs that conflict with their interests, and to accept 'evidence' whose sources are for the most part undisclosed, unverified and taken as gospel by the media. But who is the US arming now? Who will it turn against in the future and on what spurious grounds? And if they occupy Iraq, who will they sell oil to? Which countries will the US manipulate by the withholding of energy supplies? When will former allies who don't tow the US line, like Saddam, suddenly outlive their usefulness? When will the US turn on the UK? It was sobering and highly disturbing to see Saddam Hussein, the mass murderer, make this point during his interview with former M.P.Tony Benn.

But how did we get here? It is common knowledge that Iraq and Saddam Hussein was our ally. Common knowledge their human rights abuses and chemical weapons use were the worst in the world. Common knowledge that the West armed him, not widely reported in the less serious press, but common knowledge nonetheless. And whose responsibility is this? The wording of SCR 1441 requires Saddam to pro-actively cooperate with weapons inspections: it is he who must do the running to declare and destroy the weapons and technology we gave and sold him. Yet it is he that we put in power, he that we armed. Does the West bear no responsibility for this situation? Is there no other solution than to murder yet more people? And during the entire length of this debate, some 8 months now, the subject of sanctions has virtually disappeared. Whilst 'we' decide whether we're going to bomb them, Iraqis continue to die at a rate of 167 every day, mostly children.

So why has anyone not put the most perfectly reasonable questions to Colin Powell: why aren't you helping the disarmament effort? Why aren't you sharing this information with Hans Blix and UNMOVIC rather than gathering it, saving it up and presenting it as a case for war? For if he did they could easily defeat the Iraqi attempts at deception and fully disarm them. After all, that's what Powell wants.

Isn't it?

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION INDEX          INDEX