Facts refute war-makers' charges
Answers to those much-repeated lies
By Greg Butterfield
In their headlong rush to war against Iraq, President George
W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Co. have told
big lies and repeated them frequently.
These lies get front-page headlines and prime time. Even
when they are refuted by expert authorities, the same
newspapers, television and radio networks either ignore them
altogether or consign the infor mation to an obscure place or
time, seldom to be repeated.
So as a public service to the millions of people who oppose
the war, who are on the front lines and spreading the anti-war
message at work or home, in school or the barracks, Workers
World has brought together some of Washington's most egregious
lies--and facts to refute them.
The truth is that the Bush administration and Corporate
America are liars and aggressors. The anti-war movement needs
to understand that the Iraqi people have every right to defend
themselves from those who would rob their sovereignty.
Otherwise the movement risks barreling down the losing road
embodied in the slogan "win without war"-that is, conceding to
Bush's argument that Iraq "should" be disarmed and
re-colonized, just in a different way.
THE CHARGE:
Iraq is about to produce
nuclear weapons, or already has them.
"A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons
program appears to have been fabricated, the UN's chief nuclear
inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question
U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions,"
wrote the March 8 Washing ton Post.
"Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping
for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed 'not authentic'
after careful scrutiny by UN and independent experts, Mohammed
ElBara dei, director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, told the UN Security Council.
"ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration
claim-made twice by the president in major speeches and
repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday-that
Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use
in centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
"Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned
weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using
advanced radiation detectors," the Post reported.
The IAEA chief said flatly, "There is no indication of
resumed nuclear activities."
The Post added, "Doubts about [the] claims began to emerge
shortly after UN inspectors returned to Iraq last November." By
January, the IAEA had concluded that the 81-mm tubing sought by
Iraq wasn't suitable for nuclear weapons production, and was
intended for use in conventional artillery rockets.
Just what the Iraqis had said all along.
David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute
for Science and International Security, said, "Despite being
presented with the falseness of this claim, the administration
persists in making misleading arguments about the significance
of the tubes."
Powell was forced to acknowledge that documents provided by
British intelligence purporting to prove that Iraq had been
trying to buy uranium were fakes. But he then claimed the
United States had "new" evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons
program. Will anyone get the chance to examine it before the
bombs start falling?
THE CHARGE:
Iraq has other weapons
of mass destruction.
To the Bush administration's dismay, on March 7 UN weapons
inspection chief Hans Blix reported that Iraq was "proactively"
cooperating with inspectors. He said the inspections could be
fully completed and would "not take years, nor weeks, but
months."
So far there was no evidence that Iraq held proscribed
weapons, said Blix.
In February, the world learned how the famous "British
dossier"-an intelligence report purporting to show that Iraq
was building and hiding weapons of mass destruction--was a
fraud, cobbled together from speculative articles posted on the
Internet.
The 19-page report, earlier presented by Blair with great
authority and gusto, included four pages lifted from an article
in the September 2002 Middle East Review of International
Affairs. Its author, Arab-American graduate student Ibrahim
al-Marashi, had never even been to Iraq.
Six more pages came from articles in 1997 and 2002 issues of
Jane's Intelli gence Review.
"I found it quite startling when I realized that I'd read
most of it before," Glen Rangwala, a lecturer at Cambridge Uni
ver sity, told Britain's Channel 4.
"Apart from passing this off as the work of its intelligence
services," Rangwala said, "it indicates that [Britain] really
does not have any independent sources of information on Iraq's
internal policies."
More damning evidence comes from an unlikely
source--defector Hussein Kamel, Iraq's former weapons chief.
The Bush administration frequently cites Kamel, who defected to
the U.S. in 1995, when it claims Iraq has weapons of mass
destruction.
But the March 3 issue of Newsweek revealed that Kamel "told
CIA and British intelligence officers and UN inspectors in the
summer of 1995 that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its
chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to
deliver them."
The admission backs up testimony by former UN weapons
inspectors-including Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine-that
Iraq was free of WMDs by the mid-1990s.
Newsweek goes so far as to admit the report "raises
questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq
still exist."
Recently, the White House charged that Iraq's al-Samoud 2
missiles violate their UN-authorized range of 95 miles, and
therefore qualify as weapons of mass destruction. The missiles
exceeded their range in 17 out of 40 test firings.
Baghdad agreed to destroy the missiles as a show of good
faith to the UN. So far Iraq has destroyed over 25 percent in
full view of inspectors. But U.S. officials scoff and send more
troops to kill or be killed.
"The U.N. weapons inspectors' verification of Iraq's
destruction of missiles, private meetings with Iraqi weapons
scientists, visits to locations where biological and chemical
weapons were destroyed in 1991 and a series of unfettered
flights by U2 spy planes have been met with a shrug and sneer
in Washington," said Robert Scheer in a March 4 Los Angeles
Times commentary.
"The arrogance is breathtaking," Scheer continued. "We have
demanded that a country disarm-and even as it is doing so, we
say it doesn't matter; it's too late; we're coming in.
"Put down your guns and await the slaughter."
THE CHARGE:
Saddam Hussein collaborated in
the 9/11 attacks. He's Osama bin Laden's ally.
Remember those blaring headlines claiming Iraq was behind
the anthrax scare in late 2001?
When word leaked out that the anthrax came from a U.S.
military facility in Maryland, the story virtually disappeared
from the corporate media.
There's no evidence tying the Iraqi government to the events
of Sept. 11, 2001, either. But that hasn't stopped Bush &
Co. from repeating this big lie over and over, hoping people
will believe it.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, outlining his opposition
to Bush's current strategy in a March 8 New York Times column,
admitted, "American efforts to tie Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist
attacks have been unconvincing."
The March 9 New York Times, in a lead editorial titled
"Saying No to War," declared: "Despite endless efforts by the
Bush administration to connect Iraq to Sept. 11, the evidence
simply isn't there. The administration has demonstrated that
Iraq had members of Al Qaeda living within its borders, but
that same accusation could be lodged against any number of
American allies in the region."
The stereotyped presentation of Arab people by the U.S.
media bolsters the false idea that all Arabs have the same
outlook and are united in some grand "terrorist" conspiracy.
But of course, this too is a lie. There are distinct class,
ideological and political differences in the Arab world, as
there are everywhere. Bin Laden, a religious fundamentalist,
has little in common with Saddam Hussein, a bourgeois
nationalist.
In February, attempting to whip up war hysteria, the U.S.
corporate media aired portions of a tape recording purportedly
made by Osama bin Laden. But some parts of the tape were
censored out, like the following comment about Saddam Hussein's
Ba'ath Socialist Party government:
"The socialists are infidels wherever they are, either in
Baghdad or Aden. ... Such war which may take place these days
is similar to the war between Muslims and Romans, when the
interests of the Mus lims came along with the interest of the
Persians, who both fought against the Romans." (Reported by
Alexander Cock burn in The Nation, March 3)
Black journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal
remarks: "If this is a 'link,' then General [Ariel] Sharon and
President [Yasir] Arafat are 'linked,' if only by mutual hatred
and antagonism."
THE CLAIM:
The war isn't about oil profits.
It's a war of democracy vs. dictatorship.
"There are lots of business opportunities embedded in this
war," gushed Michael Renner of WorldWatch Institute, a
corporate think-tank. "It represents the larger oil and energy
issues at stake."
Iraq has proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels--second
only to Saudi Arabia. And some experts believe there's more
waiting to be discovered.
Renner continued, "Regime change in Baghdad would reshuffle
the cards and give U.S. and British companies a good shot at
direct access to Iraqi oil fields for the first time in 30
years-a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars."
The March 8 San Francisco Chronicle broke the news that
Kellogg Brown & Root Services "has won a Pentagon contract
for advice on rebuilding Iraq's oil fields after a possible
war." Kellogg Brown & Root is owned by Halliburton, the
company headed by Dick Cheney before his 2000 appointment as
vice president by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The contract was disclosed in the last paragraph of a
Defense Department statement...," the Chronicle reported. "The
statement calls for proposals on how to handle oil well fires
and for assessing other damage to oil facilities."
Halliburton, the parent business, is also one of five
companies bidding for a $900-million government contract to
"rebuild Iraq," reported the March 10 Wall Street Journal.
The winning bidder would be responsible for repairing
"economically important" roads and bridges, portions of the
country's electrical grid, and other things U.S. and British
monopolies need to get the oil profits flowing.
Creating democracy? Try old-fashioned, racist, out-and-out
colonialism.
The Pentagon's war plan-dubbed "Operation Shock and
Awe"-would drop 3,000 to 4,000 bombs and cruise missiles on
Baghdad and its civilian population during the war's first 48
hours. Children under 15 make up half of Iraq's population.
They will be the main victims of this "democratic" war.
And what's to follow? Bush plans to replace the Iraqi
government with a colonial regime under the command of Gen.
Tommy Franks and an as-yet-unnamed civilian "governor." This
plan has even raised the hackles of the compliant "Iraqi
opposition" allied with Washington.
We can look to Afghanistan, a nearby country already
occupied by the Pentagon, for further clues: mass graves;
bombing of civilian targets without reproach; prisoners of war
spirited away to Guantanamo or another Pentagon base, denied
their rights under international law and even tortured to the
point of death.
What will become of the great strides made by women in Iraq?
Even after 12 years of war and sanctions, Iraqi women still
enjoy freedom and rights unknown in neighboring U.S. satellites
like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
THE CLAIM: War will boost the economy.
As war fever was heating up, the official U.S. unemployment
rate jumped to 5.8 percent in February. Some 308,000 jobs were
lost--the biggest monthly drop since immediately after
9/11.
John Challenger, chief executive officer of the outplacement
firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said, "It is probably no
coincidence that job cuts jumped 151 percent last October,
which is about the time that the war messages from Washington
really began in earnest.
"Since then, job cuts have averaged more than 139,000 per
month."
The world has come to a verdict on all these charges. It is
indicting the U.S. government, not Iraq, for monumental war
crimes--some already executed, others even more horrendous that
are ready to be perpetrated, unless popular resistance succeeds
in stopping the White House and Pentagon.
Reprinted from the March 20, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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