- Just after Wolfowitz's bizarre and crass pronouncement
that growing numbers of deaths of occupation troops and Iraqis are evidence
that "US efforts are succeeding" in that chaotic country, there
were other surreal utterances by his commander-in-chief concerning struggles,
success, leadership and all those good things. It is always a matter for
deep suspicion when the name of Winston Churchill is mentioned by a politician
because you know that the person who dredges it up has his back to the
wall and is desperately seeking justification for some particularly sleazy
activity. In Britain the ploy is rarely used because the public laugh at
it, but it seems the desire to be linked with Churchill is still an obsession
in the Oval Office.
-
- Bush leapt at the chance to talk about Churchill at a
Library of Congress exhibition of the great man's memorabilia last week
but instead of sticking to historical fact, which would have been appropriate
and dignified, he couldn't resist bringing Churchill up-to-date with the
topsy-turvy tawdry world of Bush. "In some ways, our current struggles
or challenges are similar to those Churchill knew . . .We are the heirs
of the tradition of liberty, defenders of the freedom, the conscience and
the dignity of every person . . . I see the spirit of Churchill in Prime
Minister Tony Blair."
-
- Pass the sick bag, Alice.
-
- The "current struggles or challenges" (why
the 'or'?) in no way resemble those faced by Churchill's Britain. It is
absurd to try to draw parallels between the war on Iraq and the war against
the Axis Powers of fascism (a real Axis, unlike the silly axis of evil
nonsense) that Churchill waged so fiercely with the total backing of his
friend Roosevelt. The Bush 'war on terror' can in no way be compared with
any war declared in recorded history, for nobody has ever started a war
without having an objective to be attained. Many conflicts took a long
time -- but the 'war on terror' can never be won, because terrorism can
never be eradicated. There will be no Yorktown, no Waterloo, no D-Day in
the Bush Crusade.
-
- For Bush to exclaim, in his peculiar whining cadences,
that "I see the spirit of Churchill in Prime Minister Tony Blair"
has probably reduced the British prime minister's domestic approval rating
by a couple of points, as well as causing much amusement in Britain, but
one wonders if Bush realises how far his own utterances are from anything
Churchill ever said.
-
- One main point at issue for the moment is the Bush administration
posture about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The evidence appears
to show that they did not exist save in the febrile minds of the zealots.
Yet in May last year Bush declared that "You remember when Colin Powell
stood up in front of the world and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile
labs to build chemical weapons? They're illegal. They're against the United
Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two . . . And we'll find
more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the
banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found
them."
-
- Of course one can imagine Winston Churchill making a
speech that might be a trifle cavalier with the truth. It was he, after
all, who invented the term 'terminological inexactitude' to define a lie.
But in the case of Bush's statement there was no shade of grey, because
Bush assured the world that banned weapons were discovered in Iraq, and
there was no equivocation about his pronouncement. Let me emphasise that
the president of the United States of America said to you and me and the
whole world, with his hand on his heart, that "We found them",
meaning that his investigators had discovered weapons of mass destruction.
So why, then, has he agreed on an inquiry? His intelligence organisations
told him, he says, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Then he announced that weapons had been discovered. So what's all the fuss
about? Surely, if the president of the United States believes something
to be true, there is no need for him to have an inquiry into whether it
is true or not?
-
- Perhaps we should pay more attention to Britney Spears.
After all, she is the expert on political and international affairs who
has advised the American people that "Honestly, I think we should
just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should
just support that." She supports marriage, too. But perhaps not the
marriage of truth with power that is incumbent on 'her president', because
that particular hitching seems to have suffered a fatal divorce. Fatal
for truth, that is, because his power to try to deceive the world remains
undiluted.
-
- When Bush announced on 27 January that Saddam Hussein
had refused to allow UN inspectors into Iraq, many of us imagined he had
simply misspoken. The shoulders were shrugged. After all, he's not the
sharpest knife in the drawer, and if he doesn't have a prepared speech
in front of him or been briefed down to the wire on matters likely to be
raised by the press, he can get himself into tangles. What he said was
"And then we went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming
resolution, 1441, unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, "You
must disclose and destroy your weapons programs," which obviously
meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance--it was his
choice to make--and he did not let us in." .
-
- No matter the problems Bush seems to have with conveying
his thoughts in answer to unscripted questions it is difficult to see how
"he did not let us in" could be interpreted as meaning "he
did let us in". In fact Iraq not only accepted entry of UN inspectors
but was prepared to allow them to be accompanied by US intelligence officials
to examine the alleged sites of weapons of mass destruction. Here is the
Guardian (UK) of 23 December 2002 on the offer : "We have told the
world we are not producing these kind of weapons, but it seems that the
world is drugged, absent or in a weak position," President Saddam
Hussein said. At a press conference in Baghdad yesterday, General Amir
al-Saadi [see below], scientific adviser to the president, issued a challenge
to the US and British intelligence to offer up hard evidence that Iraq
has any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. "We do not even have
any objections if the CIA sent somebody with the inspectors to show them
the suspected sites," General Sadi said.
-
- It could not be plainer. First of all, Saddam Hussein
stated categorically that Iraq was not producing weapons of mass destruction
; secondly there was an offer made to Washington to send in its own people
with UN inspectors to guide them to the sites that they claimed to have
identified in detail and with great precision. After all Rumsfeld declared
on March 30, 2003, on ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos' that
"We know where they [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They're
in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
What could be clearer than that. So what's all the fuss about?
-
- The fuss, of course, is because much of the mainstream
media, especially in the US, along with the Murdoch press in the UK, were
doing a Britney for a long time. They appear to have trusted the president
in every decision he makes, and only recently seem to have realised that
his conduct may not have been exactly Churchillian in his frenzied determination
to go to war.
-
- Norman Solomon, in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
records that "George W. Bush told a Cincinnati audience on October
7 (New York Times, 10/8/02): "Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq
is rebuilding [nuclear weapons] facilities at sites that have been part
of his nuclear program in the past." When inspectors returned to Iraq,
however, they visited the Al Tuwaitha site and found no evidence to support
Bush's claim. "Since December 4 inspectors from [the] International
Atomic Energy Agency have scrutinized that vast complex almost a dozen
times, and reported no violations," according to an Associated Press
report (1/18/03)."
-
- Now wouldn't it have been simpler for CIA experts to
have accompanied UN inspectors, as offered by Iraq, to see for themselves
that there was nothing at Al Tuwaitha? They could have reported directly
back to Cheney or Rice or even George Tenet. But perhaps this would have
upset plans that were already under way.
-
- Bush appears to be trying to expunge the UN inspections
from recorded history in order to encourage us to forget there was an alternative
to his invasion of Iraq. There was no reaction from Washington concerning
Iraq's offer to accept US intelligence representatives alongside UN inspectors,
except a statement by the CIA that it would make no comment. And now that
people are more interested in the non-reasons for war, the Bush administration
might claim that the offer was only a ploy by desperate Iraq to avoid invasion.
But if that had been so, the obvious riposte was to call the bluff.
-
- Such a claim wouldn't wash, anyway, because UN inspectors
were being given all necessary cooperation by Iraqi authorities who had
every reason to cooperate with the UN or the CIA or anyone else who wanted
to have a look. After all, Saddam Hussein himself stated categorically
that "we are not producing these kind of weapons", so he would
hardly be worried about independent inspectors proving him right. There
is little doubt he welcomed almost any move to show he had no WMD, because
possession of such weapons was the reason -- the only international legal
justification -- given by Bush for his invasion. No weapons : no invasion.
But if Saddam Hussein were proved right, it would mean that George Bush
would be proved to have been wrong.
-
- Saddam Hussein's chief scientific advisor told the world
before he was hustled away by occupation forces, never to be seen again,
that there were no weapons of mass destruction. General Amir Saadi waited
at his home in Baghdad for a week after US forces reached the capital,
and then gave himself up voluntarily. The Washington Post reported that
"The night before he gave himself up, Saadi saw himself listed on
BBC satellite television as one of the men being sought by U.S. forces.
In a recent interview at her home in Baghdad, Helma Saadi [his wife] said
that he told her, "I want to surrender. I want to cooperate. It will
be just a matter of a few hours, and I'll be back." Just hours before
his April 12 surrender, Saadi gave an interview to a German television
reporter during which he said, "There were no weapons of mass destruction,
and time will bear me out." It is the same sentiment he sent to U.N.
chief weapons inspector Hans Blix in a message that arrived at U.N. headquarters
on March 19."
-
- There is a pattern, here, and it doesn't take much to
see why it is an inconvenient one for Bush and the zealots. The Iraqis
told everyone there were no weapons, but nobody in Washington would listen.
The Iraqis wanted UN inspectors and CIA people to visit anywhere in Iraq
in their search for WMD. Bush ignored the Iraqi offer to have CIA analysts
or operatives accompany UN inspectors, then went ahead with the invasion,
claiming that UN inspections were failing. (Now, of course, claiming absurdly
that there were no inspections atall because the Iraqis "wouldn't
let them in".) The day before ordering the invasion Bush said "He
[Saddam Hussein] continues to possess and conceal some of most lethal weapons
ever devised . . . Iraq has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including
al-Qaida . . . Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late
to act, this danger will be removed."
-
- What it comes down to is the question : Do you believe
Saddam Hussein's statement that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction,
or do you believe George Bush's statement that Iraq possessed "some
of the most lethal weapons ever devised"? This is what all the fuss
should be about, but will the Bush inquiry be courageous enough to rock
the boat? Or will it, like Britney Spears, "just trust our president
in every decision that he makes"?
-
- - Brian Cloughley writes about defense issues for CounterPunch,
the Nation (Pakistan), the Daily Times of Pakistan and other international
publications. His writings are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
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- http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley02132004.html
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