Real News 24/7 -- Special Report #2

 

 "We told you so" department

weapons of mass deception ?

No "wmds" found; they were a pretext
to justify invasion of iraq, says hans blix

  AN IN-DEPTH RESEARCH REPORT 

"U.S.: IRAQ HAS NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION"  Last fall Real News 24/7 was one of only a precious handful of websites around the world to bring its readers info about the hushed-up speech by Bush military advisor Richard Perle (left) before British Parliament, in which he revealed the United States' plan to invade Iraq regardless of United Nations weapons inspection team findings. A blanket of secrecy covered this address, so that no major American media source (and very, very few in the United Kingdom) carried the story, despite its self-recommending newsworthiness. Invading Iraq not a  response to 9/11 attacks,   In January 1998 a letter President Bill Clinton received a letter from an organization called the Project for the New American Century, which had for its members such ideological soul mates of Perle as Vice President Dick Chaney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,  and top deputy Paul Wolfowitz. The letter urged Clinton to "enunciate a new strategy…[that] should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."

Consistent with this knowledge, UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix  (right) has accused the US and UK of "planning the war 'well in advance' and 'fabricating' evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign."  The whole issue of  weapons, he said, was artificial and appealed to only as the pretext needed to go to war.  "Weapons of Mass Distraction" White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer: "We continue to have high confidence that the weapons of mass destruction will be found. Iraq is a regime that was a master at hiding it, and there are thousands and thousands of sites where it could be hidden, and they will be pursued as increasing evidence comes along." (In other words, this is searching for the needle in not one, but many haystacks: Time enough for the notoriously porous collective memory of the American people to forget why were told invasion was necessary in the first place!) Weapons of Mass Destruction Were a Fantasy From the Start" London-based columnist Gwynne Dyer writes: "The rest of the world never really believed the White House's justification for war anyway. As U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said in late April, Washington and London built their case for going to war on 'very, very shaky' evidence, including documents that subsequently turned out to have been fakedand with the war now over, Washington isn't even bothering to insist that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States any more."  

WEAPONS HUNT  A PBS Online Newshour Report featuring remarks from President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a scientific advisor to Saddam Hussein, a US solider in the field and others. "Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" ''If the Iraqis did not use them…to defend an invasion of their own country," asks Charles Pena of the Cato Institute, "when were they ever going to use them, and how were they a threat to the United States? 'That's the question that has to be asked and is being glossed over.'' In a televised address to the nation on March 17, two days before launching the Iraqi War,  President George Bush (right) stated: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." But for the all "conclusive proof" that the Bush Administration offered to the public in the months leading up to the invasion, including an aerial view of a purported weapons factory unveiled at a press briefing by Secretary of State Colin Powell (right, with Bush), today, a nearly two months after the war began, no concrete leads have ever ever found.

Mirage of Iraqi WMDs With heightened apprehension, I listened to Vice President Cheney's claim on MSNBC that the U.S. does not accept the results of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) extensive inspections nor its failure to find any evidence of a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The IAEA explicitly exposed the fact that a uranium procurement document provided by British and American intelligence as a piece of evidence proving Iraq's nuclear weapon capability was, in fact, a planted forgery. Cheney provocatively claimed, on the day before Bush's 48 hours ultimatum to invade Iraq, that U.S. intelligence had proof otherwise. My last retort to that incredible plain lie was that some bogus evidence might be planted once U.S. forces were on the ground in Iraq." "WHERE ARE THEY, MISTER PRESIDENT?" asks former Presidential candidate and founding editor of The American Conservative magazinePatrick Buchanan (left), echoing a question on the minds of many Americans:" Backpedaling on Weapons While US officials are adept at equivocation and misdirection concerning the weapons issue, they're not alone in this deceit.  "Backpedaling is also seen from President’s Bush’s chief ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain," writes Sheldon Richman for the Future of Freedom Foundation. "His government was quoted the other day claiming that it was never said that Hussein had unconventional weapons in a ready-to-use state, only that he had the means of making such weapons. That is a bald-faced lie. When Blair spoke to Parliament many months ago to unveil his supposed “smoking gun” dossier on Hussein’s misbehavior, he asserted that the terrible weapons could be ready to use on 45 minutes’ notice. LOOK WHAT WE FOUND! "Oh, it's just another of those mobile 'chemical-bio-warfare labs.' Never mind." This is a weapons lab? No one in the photo seems terribly concerned (where, for example, are the bio-suits or bio-hazard containers?)if this was, indeed, a lab, clearly, it has been long abandoned.