- Since September 11, 2001, Bush's administration policies
in the claimed "war on terrorism" have mutated the global threat.
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- Much of the violence we have now has resulted from the
Bush administration's steadfast refusal to define terrorism.
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- In the Bush lexicon, terrorism is a catch-all term for
interpreting diverse conflicts, from separatist movements to paramilitary
activity to arms and narcotics trafficking. The failure to define terrorism
has enabled the White House to label almost anybody opposed to its policies
as a terrorist organization.
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- And below is an A-Z of the Iraq war and its aftermath,
bringing more focus on misrepresentation, manipulation, mistakes, and scandals.
A Mohammed Atta. The Bush administration claimed that a meeting between
the lead hijacker of the 11 September attacks and a senior Iraqi intelligence
officer proved a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. But there
is no evidence such a meeting took place.
B Bush and Blair: The two leaders have reacted strongly to all suggestions
they misled their respective electorates over the war, and maintain time
will prove they were right to go to war. Both, though, are suffering poll
difficulties, as problems in Iraq become worse, and each needs speedy improvement
to shore up his position.
C Ahmed Chalabi. The leader of the Iraq National Congress, who is a member
of the Iraq Governing Council, is now accused of having duped the Bush
administration, as well as the media, into believing that Saddam Hussein
represented a direct threat to U.S. and British security.
D Dollars. Between 1992 and the U.S. raid on Ahmed Chalabi's home a couple
of weeks ago, the U.S. government channeled more than $100m (£55m)
to his Iraqi National Congress. The money may have been a motivating factor
for defectors to say what they thought the Americans wanted to hear. That
funding has now been stopped.
E Mohamed El Baradei, the Egyptian head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, exposed as unfounded many of the claims put into the public domain
by the U.S. administration. The head of the UN weapons inspectors, Hans
Blix, also challenged the White House claims.
F The claim that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within
forty-five minutes of an order was a key plank of the Government's pro-war
argument and appeared in its September dossier of 2002. We now know that
the discredited claim - which applied only to battlefield munitions in
any case - came from the party of the caretaker prime minister of Iraq:
Iyad Allawi.
G Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent on the BBC's Today programme,
reported that the Government had "sexed-up'' Iraq's weapons capabilities.
On one occasion, he suggested that it had done so deliberately. Events
since suggest that case for war was exaggerated. Gilligan lost his job
in the fall-out.
H Khidir Hamza. The man known as Saddam's bomb maker is now acknowledged
to have tricked the administration into believing he had more knowledge
of Saddam's nuclear programme than he actually did.
I Was Ahmed Chalabi an agent for Iran, which used him as part of a plan
to manipulate the U.S. government into overthrowing Saddam Hussein? Washington
is holding an urgent investigation into the claim.
J The Joint Intelligence Committee was accused of allowing itself to be
manipulated by Downing Street in the run-up to the war, and of firming
up conditional language in the key September dossier on weapons of mass
destruction.
K David Kelly, the MoD weapons specialist at the heart of last year's controversy,
committed suicide three days after he denied to the Foreign Affairs Committee
that he was Gilligan's source.
L Langley. The CIA headquarters, which was regularly visited by the U.S.
Vice-President Dick Cheney as he sought to pressure the intelligence services
into exaggerating the Iraqi threat for political reasons.
M Mobile biological labs. The alleged discovery of biological mobile labs
for the production of biological weapons was held up after the war as proof
that Iraq continued its illegal weapons programme. But the chief U.N. weapons
inspector, Hans Blix, said there was no proof of their use.
N The Iraqi scientist Hamdi Shukuir Ubaydi buried documents related to
Iraq's nuclear programme in his garden, and they were found last June in
the search for WMD after the war last June. However there was no confirmation
of the U.S. claim that they were the "smoking gun" the Americans
were looking for.
O Oil-for-food scandal. Allegation that Saddam diverted billions of dollars
from a U.N. humanitarian programme, and paid countries for political support,
this was documents distributed by aides of Ahmed Chalabi.
P The Pentagon hawks, Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and senior
adviser Richard Perle took their country to war on a false prospectus.
Q The Daily Mirror published photographs showing members of the Queen's
Lancashire Regiment torturing and abusing the Iraqi detainees. The photos
have now been dismissed as fakes. But more photos were released afterwards
and nothing proved they're unreal.
R Karl Rove, Bush's political adviser, was accused of "outing"
the CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame amid the furore over the Niger uranium
claim. A grand jury is investigating the leak.
S Bush and Blair insist there will be a transfer of "full sovereignty"
to a caretaker government. But the appointment of Iyad Allawi, who has
close U.S. and British links, as Prime Minister raises questions over its
independence.
T The New York Times last issued a mea culpa for failing to question a
Bush administration leak relating to aluminium tubes reportedly being used
in Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. The IAEA demolished the claim, a key
prop of the White House case for war.
U Iraq's alleged attempt to smuggle uranium from Niger was used by the
allies as proof that Iraq was still attempting to build a nuclear weapon.
While the Bush administration now admits the relevant documents were forged,
the Blair government is still sticking to the claim.
V Iraq was said to hold stocks of VX gas, the deadliest chemical agent
known to man. Not a single milliliter has been found.
W World Trade Centre. According to opinion polls, a large number of Americans
still believe that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave a hand in
the 11 September attacks, a view long propagated by the Bush administration,
particularly Dick Cheney.X Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta, is the U.S. prison at
Guantanamo where prisoners from Afghanistan were flown. But its practices
were adopted at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad. The ensuing scandal has tarnished
Bush's presidency.
Y Yesterday, denials by Dick Cheney that he no longer had any association
with the Halliburton oil services company, where he was formerly CEO, were
under new scrutiny.
Z Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused of beheading the American Nick Berg , was
said to be the link between Saddam and Bin Laden. No such link was ever
proved.
U.S. policy in Iraq is a clear example of a growing tendency on the part
of the Bush administration to apply military solutions to political problems
and ignoring major issues.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=526965
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