"We told you so" department
weapons of mass deception ?
No "wmds"
found; they were a pretext
to justify invasion of iraq, says hans blix
AN IN-DEPTH RESEARCH REPORT
"U.S.:
IRAQ HAS NO WEAPONS OF
MASS DESTRUCTION"
Last
fall Real News 24/7 was one of only a precious handful of websites around the
world to bring its readers info about the hushed-up speech by Bush military
advisor Richard Perle (left) before British Parliament, in which he revealed
the United States' plan to invade Iraq regardless of United Nations weapons inspection
team findings. A blanket of secrecy covered this address, so that no major
American media source (and very, very few in the United Kingdom) carried the
story, despite its self-recommending newsworthiness.
Invading
Iraq not a response to 9/11 attacks, In
January 1998 a letter President Bill Clinton received a letter from an
organization called the Project for the New American Century, which had
for its members such ideological soul mates of Perle as
Vice President Dick Chaney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
and top deputy Paul Wolfowitz. The letter
urged Clinton to "enunciate a new strategy…[that]
should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime
from power."
Consistent
with this knowledge, UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix (right)
has accused the US and UK of
"planning the war 'well in
advance' and 'fabricating' evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign."
The
whole issue of weapons,
he said, was artificial and appealed to only as the pretext needed to go to war. "Weapons of Mass Distraction"
White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer: "We continue to have
high confidence that the weapons of mass destruction will be found. Iraq is a
regime that was a master at hiding it, and there are thousands and thousands of
sites where it could be hidden, and they will be pursued as increasing evidence
comes along." (In other words, this is searching for the needle in not one, but
many haystacks: Time enough for the notoriously porous collective memory of the
American people to forget why were told invasion was necessary in the first place!) Weapons
of Mass Destruction Were a Fantasy From the Start"
London-based columnist Gwynne Dyer
writes:
"The rest of the world never really
believed the White House's justification for war anyway. As U.N. chief weapons
inspector Hans Blix said in late April, Washington and London built their case
for going to war on 'very, very shaky' evidence, including documents that
subsequently turned out to have been faked—and
with the war now over, Washington isn't even bothering to insist that Saddam
Hussein posed a threat to the United States any more."
WEAPONS
HUNT A
PBS Online Newshour Report featuring remarks from
President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a scientific
advisor to Saddam Hussein, a US solider in the field and others. "Where
are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" ''If
the Iraqis did not use them…to defend an
invasion of their own country," asks Charles Pena of the Cato
Institute, "when were they ever going to use them, and how were they a
threat to the United States? 'That's the question that has to be asked and is
being glossed over.''
In a televised address to the nation on March 17, two days before launching the
Iraqi War, President George Bush (right) stated:
"Intelligence
gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
But for the all "conclusive proof" that the Bush Administration offered to the
public in the months leading up to the invasion, including an aerial view of a
purported weapons factory unveiled at a press briefing by Secretary of State
Colin Powell (right, with Bush), today, a nearly two months after the war
began, no concrete leads have ever ever found.
Mirage of Iraqi WMDs
With heightened apprehension, I listened to
Vice President Cheney's claim on MSNBC that the U.S. does not accept the results of the
International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) extensive inspections nor its
failure to find any evidence of a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The
IAEA explicitly exposed the fact that a uranium procurement document provided by
British and American intelligence as a piece of evidence proving Iraq's nuclear
weapon capability was, in fact, a planted forgery. Cheney provocatively claimed,
on the day before Bush's 48 hours ultimatum to invade Iraq, that U.S.
intelligence had proof otherwise. My last retort to that incredible plain lie
was that some bogus evidence might be planted once U.S. forces were on the
ground in Iraq."
"WHERE
ARE THEY, MISTER PRESIDENT?" asks
former Presidential candidate
and founding editor of The
American Conservative magazine, Patrick Buchanan
(left), echoing a question on the minds of many Americans:"
Backpedaling
on Weapons While US officials are adept at equivocation and
misdirection concerning the weapons issue, they're not alone in this deceit.
"Backpedaling is also seen from President’s Bush’s chief ally, Prime Minister
Tony Blair of Britain," writes Sheldon Richman for the Future of Freedom
Foundation. "His government was quoted the other day claiming that it was never
said that Hussein had unconventional weapons in a ready-to-use state, only that
he had the means of making such weapons. That is a bald-faced lie. When Blair
spoke to Parliament many months ago to unveil his supposed “smoking gun” dossier
on Hussein’s misbehavior, he asserted that the terrible weapons could be ready
to use on 45 minutes’ notice.
LOOK WHAT WE FOUND!
"Oh, it's just another of those mobile
'chemical-bio-warfare labs.' Never mind."
This is a weapons lab? No
one in the photo seems terribly concerned (where, for example, are the bio-suits
or bio-hazard containers?)—if this
was, indeed, a lab, clearly, it has been long abandoned.