Iraq Briefing:
Lies, Lies, Lies
1) Truth's Already a Victim of War
2) What the US President wants us
to forget
3) White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'
4) In war,
some facts less factual
5) America's case for war is built on
blindness, hypocrisy and lies
6) Foreign Policy Wrong
7) Eight
Washington Lies About Iraq
8) The lies leaders tell when they want
to go to war
Truth's Already a Victim of War
by Eric Margolis
SAN FRANCISCO - Once the United States overthrows Saddam Hussein
and `liberates' Iraq, it will then proceed to spread democracy, human
rights, and enlightenment throughout the world, but most notably in the
Mideast. So vows Bush Administration's National Security Advisor, Miss
Condoleeza Rice, an academic expert on Soviet affairs, who has drawn up
much of the recently-proclaimed Bush Doctrine of worldwide
intervention.
One hopes her preposterous assertion is simply part of the
Administration's propaganda buildup before invading oil-rich Iraq. Truth
is indeed the first casualty of war. Recall in 1990 the famous
heart-jerker about Kuwaiti babies thrown from incubators by evil Iraq
soldiers, a canard that ignited war fever across America, but turned out
to be a total fabrication. Or White House claims to have photographic
evidence of an impending Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. These claims
were also phony, but they succeeded in stampeding the petrified Saudis
into allowing the US to permanently station military forces in the
kingdom, where they remain to this day.
If Miss Rice truly believes the US will bring democracy to the Mideast,
she must also believe in the tooth fairy. Such naivete is unacceptable
in a senior policy maker.
Robert Fisk: What the US President wants us to
forget
09 October 2002
War against terrorism
Each day now, someone says something even more incredible, even more
unimaginable, about President Bush's obsession with war. Yesterday,
George Bush was himself telling an audience in Cincinnati about "nuclear
holy warriors". Forget for a moment that we still can't prove Saddam
Hussein has nuclear weapons. Forget that the latest Bush speech was just
a re-hash of all the "ifs" and "mays" and "coulds" in Tony Blair's
flimsy 16 pages of allegations in his historically dishonest "dossier".
Forget that if Osama bin Laden ever acquired a nuclear weapon, he'd
probably use it first on Saddam. No. We've got to fight "nuclear holy
warriors". That's what we have to do to justify the whole charade
through which we are being taken now by the White House, by Downing
Street, by all the decaying "experts" on terrorism and, alas, far too
many journalists.
White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'
Bush's televised address attacked by US intelligence
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday October 9, 2002
The
Guardian
President Bush's case against Saddam Hussein, outlined in a televised
address to the nation on Monday night, relied on a slanted and sometimes
entirely false reading of the available US intelligence, government
officials and analysts claimed yesterday.
Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under
intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's
line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some
are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.
In
war, some facts less factual
Sep 6, 2002
Some US assertions from the last war on Iraq still appear
dubious.
By Scott Peterson
Staff writer of The Christian
Science Monitor
MOSCOW When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the
Persian Gulf to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait part of
the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also
threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial
Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no
Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty
desert.
"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist
who broke the story.
America's case for war is built on blindness, hypocrisy and
lies.
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are wilfully ignoring the realities of
the Middle East. The result can only be catastrophic
By Robert Fisk
The Independent - 15 September 2002:
Years ago, in a snug underground restaurant in downtown Tehran, drinking
duq - an Iranian beverage of mint and yoghurt - Saddam Hussein's former
head of nuclear research told me what happened when he made a personal
appeal for the release of a friend from prison. "I was taken directly
from my Baghdad office to the director of state security," he said. "I
was thrown down the stairs to an underground cell and then stripped and
trussed up on a wheel attached to the ceiling. Then the director came to
see me.
" 'You will tell us all about your friends - everything,' he said. 'In
your field of research, you are an expert, the best. In my field of
research, I am the best man.' That's when the whipping and the
electrodes began."
All this happened, of course, when Saddam Hussein was still our friend,
when we were encouraging him to go on killing Iranians in his 1980-88
war against Tehran, when the US government - under President Bush Snr -
was giving Iraq preferential agricultural assistance funding. Not long
before, Saddam's pilots had fired a missile into an American warship
called the Stark and almost sunk it. Pilot error, claimed Saddam - the
American vessel had been mistaken for an Iranian oil tanker - and the US
government cheerfully forgave the Iraqi dictator.
Foreign Policy Wrong
August 9, 2002
Last September, when President Bush declared his war on terrorism, I
said that you can't kill your way out of a terrorism problem. I cited
the Israelis as an example.
Does anyone want to argue with that? Israel is still wracked with
terrorism, despite having reoccupied virtually all of the West Bank and
having killed Palestinians at a prodigious rate. Nor have we solved our
terrorism problem, even though, for the time being, the terrorists are
lying low.
I also said in October that American troops would be in Afghanistan long
enough to realize that Afghanistan's summers are as blazing hot as its
winters are cold. That was when everyone was celebrating the "short"
war. Our troops are still there. Moreover, the Bush administration
doesn't have the foggiest notion of how long they will have to
stay.
We are in this mess because the Bush administration foreign policy is
based on lies. It is based on lies in order to avoid the politically
incorrect truth that our problem with terrorism is solely the result of
our outrageously unjust policy of blind support of Israel. Neither Bush
nor Congress wants to admit this, so they come up with absurd lies that
terrorists are jealous of our freedom and wealth.
Eight Washington
Lies About Iraq
by Jon Basil Utley
7/31/02
IRAQ WAS INVOLVED IN THE 9/11 ATTACK ON AMERICA OR IS CLOSE TO
OBTAINING NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
ANSWER: The War Party in Washington
has mounted a vast campaign in conservative media to attack Iraq again.
See Georgie Anne Geyer column on lobby in Anti-Arab Advocates Risk U.S.
Interests. Saddam is an enemy of Islamic Fundamentalists. Iraqi women
are among the most emancipated in the Moslem world. You never see Saddam
wearing a robe and shouting about Holy War. Iraq has not been a
supporter of "global terrorism," although it does support Palestinian
terrorists against Israel's UN declared illegal settlements on the West
Bank. There is no evidence of Iraqi nuclear ability, nor that it ever
provided chemical weapons to other nations or terrorists.
Robert
Fisk: The lies leaders tell when they want to go to war
'The problem with Arafat is that he has a lot in common with Sharon:
old, ruthless and cynical'
30 March 2002
How much longer can Ariel Sharon pretend that he's fighting in the "war
against terror"? How much longer are we supposed to believe this
nonsense? How much longer can the Americans remain so gutlessly silent
in the face of a vicious conflict which is coming close to obscuring the
crimes against humanity of 11 September? Terror, terror, terror. Like a
punctuation mark, the word infects every Israeli speech, every American
speech, almost every newspaper article. When will someone admit the
truth: that the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a dirty
colonial war which will leave both sides shamed and humiliated?
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