[mobglob-discuss] Ten appalling lies about Iraq

[Bella]

Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

By Christopher Scheer, AlterNet
June 27, 2003

"The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the
world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."
– George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati. 


There is a small somber box that appears in the New York Times every
day. Titled simply "Killed in Iraq," it lists the names and military
affiliations of those who most recently died on tour of duty.
Wednesday's edition listed just one name: Orenthal J. Smith, age 21, of
Allendale, South Carolina. 


The young, late O.J. Smith was almost certainly named after the
legendary running back, Orenthal J. Simpson, before that dashing
American hero was charged for a double-murder. Now his namesake has
died in far-off Mesopotamia in a noble mission to, as our president put
it on March 19, "disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the
world from grave danger." 


Today, more than three months after Bush's stirring declaration of war
and nearly two months since he declared victory, no chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons have been found, nor any documentation of
their existence, nor any sign they were deployed in the field. 


The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of cowardice, is
belatedly drawing attention to the unconscionable level of
administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that when it
comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional
lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth. 


What follows are just the most outrageous and significant of the dozens
of outright lies uttered by Bush and his top officials over the past
year in what amounts to a systematic campaign to scare the bejeezus out
of everybody: 


LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are
used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." – President Bush, Oct. 7,
2002, in Cincinnati. 


FACT: This story, leaked to and breathlessly reported by Judith Miller
in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney.
Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the
tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. One intelligence
analyst, who was part of the tubes investigation, angrily told The New
Republic: "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice
saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She
said that on television. And that's just a lie." 


LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." –
President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address. 


FACT: This whopper was based on a document that the White House already
knew to be a forgery thanks to the CIA. Sold to Italian intelligence by
some hustler, the document carried the signature of an official who had
been out of office for 10 years and referenced a constitution that was
no longer in effect. The ex-ambassador who the CIA sent to check out
the story is pissed: "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," he
told the New Republic, anonymously. "They [the White House] were
unpersuasive about aluminum tubes and added this to make their case
more strongly." 


LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons." – Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the
Press." 


FACT: There was and is absolutely zero basis for this statement. CIA
reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons
program. 


LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts
between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." – CIA Director George
Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that
evening's speech by President Bush. 


FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam
and al-Qaeda in the early '90s, but found no proof of a continuing
relationship. In other words, by tweaking language, Tenet and Bush spun
the intelligence180 degrees to say exactly the opposite of what it
suggested. 


LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in
bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists
could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any
fingerprints." – President Bush, Oct. 7. 


FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked or produced. Colin
Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place in a camp in
northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated was
later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied war
planes. 


LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a
growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used
to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are
concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned
aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." – President
Bush, Oct. 7. 


FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles, and Iraq is 6,000
miles from the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's drone-building
program wasn't much more advanced than your average model plane
enthusiast. And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a scary way to say
"plane"? 


LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have
chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and
that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and
control arrangements have been established." – President Bush, Feb. 8,
2003, in a national radio address. 


FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces,
there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being
deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war. 


LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile
of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough
to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." – Secretary of State Colin Powell,
Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council. 


FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that not one drop of this massive
stockpile has been found, as previously reported on AlterNet our own
intelligence reports show that these stocks – if they existed – were
well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder. 


LIE #9: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around
Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." –
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to
the press. 


FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were found, not to the east,
west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise. 


LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN
prohibited." – President Bush in remarks in Poland, published
internationally June 1, 2003. 


FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck
trailers that the CIA claimed were potential mobile biological weapons
lab. But British and American experts – including the State
Department's intelligence wing in a report released this week – have
since declared this to be untrue. According to the British, and much to
Prime Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are actually
exactly what Iraq said they were; facilities to fill weather balloons,
sold to them by the British themselves. 


So, months after the war, we are once again where we started – with
plenty of rhetoric and absolutely no proof of this "grave danger" for
which O.J. Smith died. The Bush administration is now scrambling to
place the blame for its lies on faulty intelligence, when in fact the
intelligence was fine; it was their abuse of it that was "faulty." 


Rather than apologize for leading us to a preemptive war based on
impossibly faulty or shamelessly distorted "intelligence" or offering
his resignation, our sly madman in the White House is starting to sound
more like that other O.J. Like the man who cheerfully played golf while
promising to pursue "the real killers," Bush is now vowing to search
for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter
how long it takes." 


On the terrible day of the 9/11 attacks, five hours after a hijacked
plane slammed into the Pentagon, retired Gen. Wesley Clark received a
strange call from someone (he didn't name names) representing the White
House position: "I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You
got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This
has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told Meet the Press
anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But – I'm willing to say it, but what's
your evidence?' And I never got any evidence.'" 


And neither did we. 


Christopher Scheer is the managing editor of AlterNet.org. He can be
reached at feedback at alternet.org 


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