- Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth
were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath...
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- 1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks
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- A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader
of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the
main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the
Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant
stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful
that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed
the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed
Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.
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- 2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together
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- Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam
and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by
a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were
no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological
conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.
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- Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members
were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When
US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.
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- 3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted"
nuclear weapons programme
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- The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting
to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were
forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State
of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate
intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information
is now "under review".
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- 4. Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop
nuclear weapons
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- The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy
high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges,
needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the
International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery
rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security
Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.
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- 5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological
weapons from the first Gulf War
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- Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the
whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which
could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological
toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had
the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the
time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the
point of uselessness years ago.
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- 6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry
chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British
forces in Cyprus
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- Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these
missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being
any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed
that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus
last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously.
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- 7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox
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- This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following
month the UN said there was nothing to support it.
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- 8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors
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- According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans
Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 litres of anthrax. Tony
Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons
programme" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This
is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction,"
he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained
weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would
take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I
am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were
weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly
were not."
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- 9. Previous weapons inspections had failed
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- Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had
"tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully".
But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important
elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons
programmes has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors
"found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons programme"
until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to
its biological weapons programme more than a month before the defection.
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- 10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors
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- Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed
inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with
other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors'
journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix
said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all
without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access
to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no
case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the
inspectors were coming."
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- 11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction
in 45 minutes
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- This now-notorious claim was based on a single source,
said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been
produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim
in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which
meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.
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- 12. The "dodgy dossier"
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- Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier
was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about
the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish
intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed
without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair
Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff,
but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi
intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990,
two years before it was created.
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- 13. War would be easy
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- Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged
by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces;
that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq
would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon
official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy,
but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian
clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general
complained.
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- 14. Umm Qasr
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- The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was
announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control
- by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael
Boyce, chief of Britain's defence staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed
by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced,
somewhat prematurely.
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- 15. Basra rebellion
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- Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's
second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days,
long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than
wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was
also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth.
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- 16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch
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- Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital
in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good"
story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until
her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and
stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained
in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local
medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces
pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops
opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but
made sure the whole episode was filmed.
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- 17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons
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- As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of
reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican
Guard units were authorised to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General
James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards
that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around
Baghdad before the war were wrong.
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- "It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered
weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've
been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border
and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether
or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains
to be seen."
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- 18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location
of WMD
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- "I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons
are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts,
I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April.
Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said
interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed
to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and
claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues
are beginning to wear thin.
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- 19. Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis
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- Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people
falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that
they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through
the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm
"the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people".
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- Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution
that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered
trust fund.
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- Far from "all oil revenues" being used for
the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's
oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
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- 20. WMD were found
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- After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George
Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological
laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we
believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said
Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the
banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found
them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production
of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that
they were exported by Britain.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008
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