[R-G] 20 lies

[Dale Wharton]

//news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008
The Independent . 13 July 2003

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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20 lies about the war
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by Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker

1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks

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.

2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together

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.

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.

3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a
"reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme

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."

4. Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop
nuclear weapons

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.

5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological
weapons from the first Gulf War

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.

6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry
chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would
threaten British forces in Cyprus

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.

7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox

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.

8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors

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."

9. Previous weapons inspections had failed

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.

10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors

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."

11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45
minutes

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.

12. The "dodgy dossier"

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.

13. War would be easy

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.

14. Umm Qasr

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.

15. Basra rebellion

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.

16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch

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.

17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons

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.

"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."

18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of
WMD

"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.

19. Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis

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."

Instead Britain cosponsored a Security Council resolution
that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues.
There is no UN-administered trust fund.

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.

20. WMD were found

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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