Anthrax, chemicals and nerve gas: who is lying?

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Proud_Syrian, Apr 22, 2003.

  1. Anthrax, chemicals and nerve gas: who is lying?

    Growing evidence of deception by Washington

    By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
    20 April 2003

    www.independent.co.uk

    If US and British forces are scratching their heads at their inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, perhaps they should talk to Scott Ritter, the United Nations weapons inspector who famously quit in 1998, after seven years on the job, and has been a controversial figure ever since.
    For months, Mr Ritter has said Iraq's capability of producing or deploying chemical or biological weapons was 90-95 per cent destroyed on his watch and was very unlikely to have been built up again under international sanctions and the constant surveillance of spy satellites and US and British war planes.

    Iraq's nuclear programme was dismantled at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, he said, and factories to produce chemical or biological agents deactivated shortly thereafter. Any leftover nerve agents would only have a shelf life of five years and would probably be useless by now. The anthrax and botulism toxin that Iraq produced was never weap-onised and, although it was put into warheads at one point, was no more than harmless sludge that "could only kill you if it landed on your head".

    This is the same Scott Ritter who, when he first made these assertions last autumn, was vilified in the US media as "misguided", "disloyal", not to be taken seriously and "an apologist for and a defender of Saddam Hussein". One cable news host, Curtis Sliwa said on air he was a "sock puppet" who "ought to turn in his passport for an Iraqi one".

    Perhaps it's time to give Mr Ritter another chance. It may, in fact, be time to reassess who exactly has been the deceiver and who the dupe in this whole affair. What Mr Ritter and others now allege, with increasing confidence, is a pattern of false information emanating from both Washington and London since last September – lies and distortions that launched a major war and are only now beginning to be widely exposed.

    Exhibit number one is a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last summer. "The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents." he said. "And they continue to pursue the nuclear programme they began so many years ago." Mr Ritter says this is pure fiction.

    Mr Cheney attributed his information to high-level defectors, including Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal. Supposedly, Kamal led UN inspectors in 1995 to a chicken farm stuffed with secret documents on ongoing weapons programmes. Actually, according to Mr Ritter, Hussein Kamal told US intelligence that the weapons had been destroyed, and the chicken farm documents subsequently examined by UN inspectors corroborated that.

    Exhibit number two is the briefing paper issued by Downing Street on 24 September, which first alleged the purchase of uranium for nuclear weapons use from Niger. The documents indicating this purchase have now been exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as glaringly obvious fakes.

    The timing of the nuclear allegation was crucial in persuading the US Congress to grant President Bush full war powers against Iraq a few weeks later. Several angry congressmen who voted in favour now want to know how and why they were misled.

    "This is a breach of the highest order, and the American people are entitled to know how it happened," Henry Waxman of California wrote to the President last month. "I believed that you had access to reliable intelligence information that merited deference... The two most obvious explanations – knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence – both have immediate and serious implications."

    Exhibit number three is the list of dangerous substances that President Bush and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said the Iraqis had not accounted for. Another distortion, according to Mr Ritter. The 15,000 litres of anthrax on the list, for example, was a hypothetical projection of future production at a biological plant that was closed down long ago.

    Mr Ritter has not, of course, been vindicated quite yet. US intelligence may really know something, and significant hidden caches of weapons could still materialise. But the pattern of deception and unsubstantiated allegation is unmistakable, even as the political embarrassment for the Bush administration deepens.
     
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  3. Vortexx Skull & Bones Spokesman Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,242
    At least one WMD was found and the destroyed: the iraqis selling oil in EUROS
     
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  5. Psycho-Cannon Home grown and Psycho Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    744
    ROFL yes quite, its true that this war was not just for oil but all roads seem to lead that way.
    Euro, Bases in the Middle east, Oil Access, They probably also belived their own rhetoric and expected to find WMD and that would give them an incalculable boost at home as far as their ability to lead the American public around by the short and hairy's into supporting anything Dubbya wants to do.

    It is obvious before the war to anyone who wanted to look at this and has even the faintest idea about the production and use of WMD that Iraqi not only was unlikely to have WMD but given the blatant inability of the Americans with all their resources and spies to come up with even half way crediable evidence to the point they had to present such insultingly false and poorly faked evidence that there was no reason for this entire war.

    Not only that but the lengths and tenacity with which the Administration pushed this case, flogging the dead donkey until it was bare of any shred of flesh, should not only worry those around the world but seriously desurb resident Americans.
    Unfortunatly the opposite has happened and a new generation of Blinded by the Flag and Led by the press have risen up to voice unquestioning willfuly ignorant support for anything the current administration decides to come up with.

    Much of the "proof" such as the protection gear against chemical attacks now appears to actually date back to the first Gulf war when both Iraq and Iran were quite happily using Chemical weapons.
    Not only that but despite all the gear given to US troops it appears the equipment they were given to find WMD cant even tell the difference between fertilizer that would be commonplace in the high-intensity agriculture of the Mesopotamian flood plain and Anthrax.

    Also their claims that Iraqi Scientists were only denying the weapons existed and that they have been destoryed were doing so for fear of Saddam have now surrendered to the US Forces when they were put on wanted lists and still hold the same lines they stated before blowing those claims of Saddam keeping them quiet out the water.
    Also even the statments they did get they deliberatly twisted where one Iraqi said that the weapons had been destroyed and lead US forces to a farm where documents were buried proving this, instead they claimed they had claimed this as proof that they were still beind developed and used?

    Not only that but they are refusing to allow back in UN inspectors raising fears they may try to plant or fake evidence but they may not even have to resort to that as they are using the age old tactic of Threats and bribes.

    Rumsfeld announced last week that the US would pay rewards to those Iraqi scientists providing information about weapons of mass destruction, while threatening dire consequences for those who continue to defy the Bush administration. The Los Angeles Times reported April 20, “Iraqi scientists who don’t cooperate may be taken to a detention facility for interrogation and ultimately could be charged with war crimes.”

    In other words, the Bush administration, which in search of a pretext for war claimed to want to protect Iraqi scientists from repression and retaliation, is now using threats of imprisonment, trial and even execution to browbeat these same scientists into parroting a script composed in Washington.
     
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  7. SG-N Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,051
    What a shame for Bush !
    An other mistake...

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  8. shadows technocrat:Teach me Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    223
    Every one lies to an extent. It is almost human nature to shift the blame while under the spot light. We do it. They do it. We did it with the weapons and so did they.
     

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