- US media had suggest that Secretary of State Colin Powell
was playing down what he would present to the UN Security Council about
Iraq's alleged deceptions, weapons of mass destruction, and support for
terrorism, so that when he made his revelations, they would have all the
greater impact. Having heard Powell's presentation, it is now clear he
was playing things down because his hand was in fact so weak.
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- Powell's multi-media presentation was a rag-bag of old
allegations, which the United States has been making for years, some of
them based on information Iraq has itself provided to UN inspectors. Other
claims were based on audio recordings and satellite images, and still more
were based on unverifiable claims from unidentified human witnesses and
"defectors." Powell all but admitted the weakness of his case
by continually saying "these are facts, not assertions," at moments
when he was providing the most sensational yet least supported claims.
He also resorted to the comic book tactic of calling Saddam Hussein an
"evil genius" for having succeeded in hiding what the US says
is a vast arsenal, not only from UN inspectors, but from the world's only
super power. Let's look more closely at some of the "new" elements
in the American case for an immediate attack on Iraq:
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- The Audio Tapes
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- Powell played what he said were intercepted conversations
between Iraqi officers who were discussing ways to conceal prohibited materials
from UN inspectors. None of the three recordings, if real, amounted to
a "smoking gun." If they were real, they could be incriminating
in a certain context, but they could also have been taken out of a context
in which they were entirely innocent.
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- The evidentiary value of the alleged recordings is close
to nil. First, the recordings could easily have been faked, as the United
States has a history of doing. In 2001, US public radio's "This American
Life," broadcast recently declassified tapes from a clandestine radio
station set up by the CIA in the 1950s to help provoke a coup against the
democratically-elected government of Guatemala. The radio station, which
broadcast completely fake "opposition" voices, is credited with
helping bring a repressive American client regime to power. (Program broadcast
on 30 November 2001. See www.thislife.org for details.)
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- More directly related to current events, New York's Village
Voice newspaper reported late last year how, during the 1990s, a Harvard
graduate student celebrated for his convincing impersonation of Saddam
Hussein was hired by the high-powered, US government-linked public relations
firm, the Rendon Group, to make fake propaganda broadcasts of Saddam's
voice to Iraq. The student received three thousand dollars a month for
his troubles. "I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi
resistance, the CIA, or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones
calling the shots," the report quotes the ersatz Saddam saying, "but
ultimately I realized that the guys doing spin (sic) were very well funded
and completely cut loose." ("Broadcast Ruse: A Grad Student Mimicked
Saddam Over the Airwaves," The Village Voice, 13-19 November 2002)
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- In 1990, another Washington public relations firm, hired
by Kuwait, helped win support for the first Gulf War by fabricating claims,
presented to Congress, that Iraqi troops threw Kuwaiti babies out of incubators.
(see "The Lies We Are Told About Iraq," The Los Angeles Times,
5 January 2003)
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- Those taken in by that deception, will want to be more
skeptical this time around. It also doesn't help US credibility that the
Pentagon has repeatedly over the past two years stated that it would use
deception and black propaganda to achieve its policy goals.
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- Satellite Imagery
-
- Powell relied on satellite images in order to support
the claim that Iraq is still producing and hiding chemical weapons. He
said, for instance, that some of the images he showed were of the Iraqis
"sanitizing" the "Al-Taji chemical munitions storage site"
before UN inspectors arrived
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- Again, it is impossible to tell if the satellite photos
displayed by Powell are real, fake, old or new. But even if they are real,
current photos of Iraq, they are by themselves of no conclusive value.
The New York Times reported that American officials recently gave the UN
inspectors satellite photos of "what American analysts said were Iraqi
clean-up crews operating at a suspected chemical weapons site." But
when the inspectors went to the site, they "concluded that the site
was an old ammunition storage area often frequented by Iraqi trucks, and
that there was no reason to believe it was involved in weapons activities."
("Blix Says He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War," The New York Times,
31 January 2003)
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- For all we know the incident referred to in The New York
Times is probably the same used goods Powell tried to sell to the Security
Council. Only the inspectors can tell us otherwise.
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- Mobile Units
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- Powell claimed, based on uncorroborated hearsay from
"defectors," that Iraq has an elaborate system of mobile laboratories
used for producing biological weapons. With no hard evidence, Powell was
reduced to displaying "artists impressions" of what these laboratories
supposedly look like, a tactic routinely used by American supermarket tabloids
to produce pictures to accompany the latest stories of landings and abductions
by space aliens.
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- In an interview with The New York Times, Hans Blix, the
chief UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, denied US claims that the inspectors
had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials
within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery ("Blix Says
He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War," The New York Times, 31 January 2003).
Blix , who unlike the United States, has hundreds of staff on the ground
in Iraq, is in a much better position to know than Powell.
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- Iraq's links with Al-Qaida
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- Powell claimed that Iraq has close links with Al-Qaida
and based this largely on the alleged movements of the threateningly unshaven
gentleman Abu Musab Zarqawi. Prior to Powell's presentation, The Washington
Post noted that Zarqawi, a Jordanian, "appears to be the only individual
named so far to make the link to Iraq after more than a year of major investigations
in which 'a good deal of attention has been paid to what extent a connection
may exist between al Qaeda and Iraq,'" ("U.S. Effort to Link
Terrorists To Iraq Focuses on Jordanian," The Washington Post, 5 February
2003)
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- To make up for the flimsiness of the case, Powell resorted
to building Zarqawi up into a frightening figure in exactly the way the
US in previous years built up Usama Bin Laden. It seems that Usama, who
is still on the loose, and who did not feature as a topic of Mr. Powell's
address, has been replaced in American affections.
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- Powell claimed that Zarqawi (who has now been promoted
by the Americans to the status of "The Zarqawi Network," complete
with flow charts) was training terrorists in a poison-making camp in northern
Iraq. Powell skipped dismissively over a very pertinent fact. Since the
1991 Gulf War, northern Iraq has been out of the control of Saddam Hussein's
government.
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- The United States and United Kingdom have been cruelly
bombing the illegally-declared northern and southern "no-fly zones"
for twelve years, largely to limit the influence of Iraq's government to
the center of the country. Northern Iraq has been ruled by competing Kurdish
factions with United States backing. Since the 1991 Gulf War, the CIA has
been operating freely in northern Iraq, and the United States recently
acknowledged that its special forces are operating in that part of the
country. Powell showed what he said was a satellite photo of the "terrorist
camp." If the United States knows where such a camp lies, and has
forces in the region, why has it not bombed it or attacked it, as it has
bombed so many other installations in northern Iraq? An attack on a "terrorist"
installation in northern Iraq requires anything but an invasion of the
entire country. Furthermore, if the camp even exists, why would the United
States give its occupants notice that it knows where it is, rather than
just taking it out, as, say, it took out a car load of alleged "terrorists"
in Yemen last year? It just doesn't add up.
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- That the US is claiming that Al-Qaida-linked terrorists
are operating in the part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam Hussein rather
undermines the argument that Saddam is backing such people. Powell's only
answer to this major problem in his case was to offer more unsubstantiated
claims that one of Saddam's secret agents is in charge of the whole operation.
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- In the days prior to Powell's presentation, numerous
reports appeared in the American and British press that senior intelligence
officials from the FBI, CIA and even the Israeli Mossad maintain there
is no evidence to tie Iraq to Al-Qaida in any meaningful way. The BBC reported
on 5 February that a top secret, official British intelligence report given
to Prime Minister Tony Blair and leaked to the BBC states that there are
no current Iraqi links with al-Qaida. The BBC added that the intelligence
document "said a fledgling alliance foundered due to ideological differences
between the militant Islamic group and the secular nationalist regime."
("UK report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link," BBC News Online, 5
February 2003)
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- At the present time, it appears that there is a much
stronger case on US-Al-Qaida links dating back to the days when the Reagan
Administration helped recruit men from all over the Arab and Muslim world
to join what it called the "Afghan freedom fighters," than anything
to incriminate Iraq. Mr. Powell said not a word about that.
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- Underlining the weakness of the Anglo-American case,
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC before Powell's address, that
he had "seen no evidence which directly links Iraq to al-Qaeda, but
I would not be surprised if it exists." Is this the sort of shabby
thinking on which decisions about war and peace are made? More importantly,
the Pentagon has brushed aside the lack of evidence, and, to the dismay
of senior CIA and FBI officials, has exaggerated evidence for purely ideological
and political purposes. It is the result of these political deceptions,
not evidence, that was presented to the Security Council by Mr. Powell.
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- Even if there were evidence of an Al-Qaida connection,
the US claims that it wants to go to war to enforce UN resolutions. But
no UN resolutions regarding Iraq say anything about Al-Qaida. Hence, even
the attempt by the US to link Iraq to Al-Qaida must be interpreted as an
act of desperation by an administration that knows it has not made its
case on alleged weapons of mass destruction.
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- Iraq and the United States
-
- Closing his speech, Powell sought to "remind"
the Security Council that Saddam has been a horrible monster for more than
two decades. He cited Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1988
as "one of the twentieth century's most horrible atrocities."
He forget to mention, however, that at the time the United States, which
was supporting Saddam in his war with Iraq, instructed its diplomats to
implicate Iran. Powell also forgot to mention that among the long history
of cooperation between the United States and Saddam Hussein's Iraq were
the several meetings that once and future Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
held with Saddam at the request of President Reagan, one of them on the
same day that Iraq was reported to be using chemical weapons against Iran.
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- Nor did Powell point out that the same sort of satellite
evidence that he now uses to indict Iraq was once gladly handed over to
Saddam by the United States to help Iraq deafeat Iran. And in claiming
that there is not a frightening disease in the pharmacology that Iraq is
not capable of creating, Powell forgot to mention that the seed stock to
make anthrax, E. Coli, botulism and other biological agents was exported
to Iraq from a company based near Washington, DC, called the American Type
Culture Collection, under contracts approved by the United States Goverment
in the 1980s. These sales continued even after Iraq was reported to have
used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians. (see Iraq Under Siege,
South End Press, 2000, p.39)
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- Powell also sought to "remind" the Security
Council about Iraq's horrible human rights record. He failed to explain,
however, when the United States found its consicence on this matter which
never troubled it in all the years that it was allied with Saddam. Such
naked cynicism may yet fool some in an American public whose knowledge
of history is notoriously shallow, and whose mass media scarcely dare challenge
any administration's foreign policy, but it will not fool anyone else.
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- Powell was also cynical to criticize Saddam Hussein for
allegedly supporting Palestinian groups. Whether this was simply an attempt
to grasp at further "evidence" is unclear. There are no known
links at all between Palestinian groups fighting Israel's repression and
Al-Qaida, despite the Sharon government's attempts to manufacture them
for American consumption. What is certain, however, is that in the Arab
world, the attempt to use any alleged support for the Palestinian cause
as a justification to invade Iraq can only further alienate and inflame
public opinion.
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- Conclusion
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- Taken together, the smorgasbord of old allegations, show-and-tell
and hearsay that Powell presented would fall disasterously short of proving
a case against an accused person in an American court of law, where the
standard of proof must be "beyond a reasonable doubt." The flashy
presentation did not conceal holes in the American case that a U.S. Navy
battlegroup could sail through with room to spare. The Americans have argued
that the Security Council is not a court of law, and that the standards
of proof are different, and need not be beyond a reasonable doubt. But
early in his presentation Powell himself used judicial language when he
claimed that Iraq had earlier been "found guilty" of "material
breaches" by the Security Council.
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- The American legal system, often held as an example to
the world, applies such strigent standards in order to protect a single
accused person from being wrongly denied his freedom or life. If the United
States attacks Iraq, not one accused person, but thousands of innocent
people may lose their lives. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees
estimates that 600,000 people may be forced to flee their homes, and millions
more may well be exposed to hunger, illness, danger and chaos for years
to come. Is all of this worth it, when, as France's President Chirac once
again underlined on 4 February, that a perfectly viable, non-violent alternative
exists? In response to a reporter's question about criticisms that one
hundred UN inspectors cannot possibly disarm a country the size of Iraq,
Chirac pointed out that the first inspection regime destroyed more Iraqi
weapons than all of the deadly American firepower directed at that country
in 1991 and since. The solution to any shortage of resources, if the inspectors
should complain of one (so far they have not), said Chirac, is to increase
those resources.
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- Powell said that by passing Resolution 1441 putting in
place the inspections last November, the Security Council has given Iraq
a "last chance" to disarm. It appears that it was the United
States that had a last chance to convince the world that what is needed
instead is a US-led invasion of Iraq that could devastate the whole region
for years to come.
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- The early indications, judging from the speeches of the
Chinese, Russian, French and other foreign ministers seated around the
Security Council table, are that the world remains convinced that inspections
should be given a chance to work, Iraq, which presents no immediate threat
to anyone, should urgently do everything possible to cooperate, and as
President Chirac said, "war is always the worst solution."
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- Let us hope that someone in Washington is listening.
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- http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1140.shtml
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