The U.S. Big Lie: Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction'
By John Catalinotto
The big lie is that the U.S. invaded to
destroy Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." By the end of May
and early June this lie began coming back to haunt the Tony
Blair government in Britain and then the Bush administration
here.
WMDs was the main reason George W. Bush gave to Congress
last September and October for needing a clear go-ahead for war
with Iraq. He told the United Nations on Sept. 12 that, "Right
now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used
for the production of biological weapons."
This falsehood continued up to the eve of the war. In his
March 17 talk giving Saddam Hussein two days to leave Iraq,
Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments
leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and
conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Bush also hinted broadly that Iraq was somehow behind the
Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
According to polls, some 40 percent of the U.S. population
believed Iraq had some responsibility for this attack. Most of
the rest of the world knew the "Iraq connection" was fiction.
Bush never spelled out this ridiculous charge, but just let it
hang in the air.
Now, U.S. and British troops have had two months since the
seizure of Baghdad to freely look wherever they want within
Iraq. They have found no WMDs. Captured al-Qaeda operatives
have told the CIA their organization had nothing to do with the
Iraqi government.
This lack of evidence for the war's alleged main cause has
turned into a major scandal for British Prime Minister Tony
Blair. Here in the U.S. the media have only begun to give it
publicity, and have been quite gentle with Bush and Co.
Wolfowitz admits ploy
In an attempt to deflect criticism over this issue, U.S.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz--one of the most
outspoken war mongers--has as much as admitted that the WMD
charge was an administration ploy.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Wolfowitz
said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with
the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue
that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass
destruction, as the core reason."
Stories about disagreements between members of the
"intelligence community" and the Bush administration have
surfaced. These are all pro-imperialist agents who want the
U.S. to crush any obstacles in its path. But the agents felt
their role was being abused by the Bush administration, which
told them in essence, "We need this war. Come up with the
intelligence to justify it."
The U.S. spies were all anonymous and vague about this. But
the United Nations weapons inspectors, whose information wasn't
classified, were more frank in their critiques of Bush and
Blair.
On June 5, chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix,
due to retire this June, criticized Britain for "jumping to
conclusions" that Iraq posed a serious threat to world
security.
Bernd Birkicht, a former UN weapons inspector, said he
believed the CIA had invented intelligence on WMDs to provide
the legal justification for the war. "We received information
about a site," he told the British Guardian, "giving the exact
geographical coordinates, and when we got there we found
nothing. Nothing on the ground. Nothing under the ground. Just
desert."
The alleged decontamination trucks that Colin Powell showed
to the Security Council in satellite photographs turned out to
be fire engines, he said.
Speaking to Info-radio Berlin-Brandenburg, Birkicht said:
"If something should be found now, then I would have the
opinion that it was not there before [the war]." (Junge Welt,
June 6)
On June 8, Bush administration spokespeople were all over
the Sunday television news programs trying to talk their way
out of the lie.
Behind the lie
In the U.S. corporate media, even as they question the WMD
excuse, most look for other ways to justify the war. They hope
a few weapons are discovered, to give the Bush administration a
way out and to give the U.S. a chance to regain some
credibility on the world scene.
It's no secret now that within days after Sept. 11, 2001,
the most aggressive elements in the U.S. ruling class, inside
and outside the Bush administration, met privately to activate
plans for an invasion of Iraq, which had been their goal for a
long time. From the earliest days they demanded that the
intelligence services "find" something to pin on Iraq that
would justify such a war. Workers World wrote about this
"Wolfowitz cabal" in September and October 2001.
This grouping was determined to lead the U.S. into war with
Iraq. They aimed to slaughter the Iraqi people should they
resist. They planned to place young U.S. workers on the front
lines of battle where they would risk their lives to expand the
empire of the U.S. rich.
After "terrorism" and "dictatorship" failed to carry the day
as excuses for war, they settled on what Wolfowitz called the
bureaucratic compromise of WMDs. It was a "big lie" by
committee.
It is not the first time Washington has used a big lie to
justify a war. From the provoked sinking of the battleship
Maine in 1898 to the Bay of Tonkin incident in 1964, the U.S.
has used deception to mobilize popular support. The media now
reporting the WMDs as a possible lie could just as easily have
questioned it back in September or in March.
The only difference now is that the takeover of Iraq--which
seemed such a brilliant imperialist success in mid-April--is
starting to look more like chaos.
The U.S. is unable to set up a stable puppet government. The
Iraqis hate Washington so much that the only stable regime
would be an anti-U.S. one.
Instead of being crushed by the Pentagon's military defeat
of the Ba'ath regime, Iraqi resistance has continued. U.S.
occupying troops are under fire. U.S. youths, deceived by Bush
into thinking they were liberating a country and then going
home, are forced to remain as an oppressive police force and a
legitimate target of every Iraqi freedom fighter.
If the controversy remains confined to the corporate media,
the Bush gang will just push its way through to the next
war.
The next necessary step is for the anti-war movement to use
the scandal of the WMD big lie to mobilize for an end to the
U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Reprinted from the June 19, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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