- GENEVA (IslamOnline.net &
News Agencies) -- The United States and Britain should admit they lied
when claiming the ousted Baghdad regime had weapons of mass destruction,
Scott Ritter, a former U.N. senior weapons inspector in Iraq, said in an
interview published here Friday, June 6.
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- Ritter, speaking to the Swiss daily Le Temps, called
on U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
to "have the courage to be held responsible" for telling lies
to the public into backing the conflict, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
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- An outspoken critic of Bush's handling of the conflict,
the ex-Marine said the two leaders should "explain frankly and honestly
why they went to war."
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- They should "admit their lies", he said.
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- Ritter's comments were published in French.
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- "If this is a noble crusade to liberate the world
from a crazy dictator, admit it," he said.
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- But, Ritter added, Saddam Hussein could not have destroyed
a possible arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) "without
leaving traces... (U.S. Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld has furnished
no proof of their supposed destruction, just as he has never furnished
the slightest proof of their existence".
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- Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Marines
once dubbed a "cowboy" by U.N. officials for what they called
his intrusive inspection procedures, headed up the inspections team in
Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
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- He resigned in August 1998, citing a lack of U.N. and
U.S. support for his disarmament methods.
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- In his "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem -- Once
and For All", Ritter slammed Bush's policy of regime change as having
corrupted the inspection process in Iraq.
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- He also dismissed U.S. intelligence information purporting
to show the existence of WMDs, saying doubt would now be cast upon any
further declarations made by the U.S. president.
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- "(Bush) says that Iran has weapons of mass destruction.
On the basis of what information? And what about Syria, or North Korea?"
he told the paper.
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- "Big Bluff"
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- Meanwhile, a German member of the U.N. team investigating
Iraq's alleged program of weapons of mass destruction has accused U.S.
authorities of presenting false evidence against the regime, the German
weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reports in its Saturday, June 7, edition.
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- His criticism adds to a growing tide of accusations that
the United States and its key ally Britain deliberately manipulated information
to make it look as if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
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- The fear that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had such arms
at his disposal was one of the chief justifications for the war to topple
him.
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- The German inspector, Peter Franck, was part of the U.N.
weapons inspection team in Iraq from December last year until shortly before
the U.S.-led invasion in March.
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- He told Der Spiegel that U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell did not present truthful evidence to the U.N. Security Council in
a famous February 5 speech.
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- It was "all a big bluff," Franck said.
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- "Basically, it was all a show for the American public.
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- He said Powell used satellite pictures to try to show
that decontamination trucks in front of an ammunition bunker were proof
that Iraq was experimenting with chemical weapons there.
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- However, an earlier visit by U.N. inspectors had already
determined that the trucks were firefighting vehicles.
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- "What Powell said simply wasn't true," Franck
told the magazine.
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- He said U.S. officials exaggerated the numbers of soldiers
and equipment Iraq had at its disposal. A U.N. inspection of an air defense
base showed the United States had over-estimated the number of planes there
by five times.
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- Franck said U.S. officials appear to have concentrated
too much on satellite images, which could be interpreted different ways.
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- London and Washington have strongly denied claims that
they manipulated any evidence.
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- US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted the intelligence
was "good," and promised Thursday that Powell's testimony "will
be proved right."
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- The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has
been under increasing pressure to explain why none of the weapons Iraq
was alleged to have possessed have been found in the six weeks since the
end of the war, despite intense searches of suspect sites.
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- http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-06/06/article08.shtml
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