John — Iraq lies from A-Z
Topic(s): Iraq | Comments Off on John — Iraq lies from A-ZComplinents of Shobak
Here’s a brief inventory from the London Independent of some of the lies told w/r/t
the war…
The lying gameAn A-Z of the Iraq war and its aftermath, focusing on
misrepresentation, manipulation, and mistakes
01 June 2004
A Mohammed Atta. The Bush administration claimed that a meeting between the lead hijacker of the 11 September attacks and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer proved a connection between al-Qa’ida and Saddam Hussein. But there is no evidence such a meeting took place.
B Bush and Blair: The two leaders have reacted strongly to all suggestions they
misled their respective electorates over the war, and maintain time will prove they were right to go to war. Both, though, are suffering poll difficulties, as problems in Iraq become worse, and each needs speedy improvement to shore up his position.
C Ahmed Chalabi. The leader of the Iraq National Congress, who is a member of the Iraq Governing Council, is now accused of having duped the Bush administration, as well as the media, into believing that Saddam Hussein represented a direct threat to US and British security.
D Dollars. Between 1992 and the US raid on Ahmed Chalabi’s home last week, the US
government channelled more than $100m (£55m) to his Iraqi National Congress. The
money may have been a motivating factor for defectors to say what they thought the
Americans wanted to hear. That funding has now been stopped.
E Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
exposed as unfounded many of the claims put into the public domain by the US
administration. The head of the UN weapons inspectors, Hans Blix, also challenged
the White House claims.
F The claim that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within
forty-five minutes of an order was a key plank of the Government’s pro-war argument
and appeared in its September dossier of 2002. We now know that the discredited
claim – which applied only to battlefield munitions in any case – came from the
party of the caretaker prime minister of Iraq: Iyad Allawi.
G Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent on the BBC’s Today programme, reported that
the Government had “sexed-up” Iraq’s weapons capabilities. On one occasion, he
suggested that it had done so deliberately. Events since suggest that case for war
was exaggerated. Gilligan lost his job in the fall-out.
H Khidir Hamza. The man known as Saddam’s bombmaker is now acknowledged to have
tricked the administration into believing he had more knowledge of Saddam’s nuclear
programme than he actually did.
IWas Ahmed Chalabi an agent for Iran, which used him as part of a plan to manipulate
the US government into overthrowing Saddam Hussein? Washington is holding an urgent
investigation into the claim.
J The Joint Intelligence Committee was accused of allowing itself to be manipulated
by Downing Street in the run-up to the war, and of firming up conditional language
in the key September dossier on weapons of mass destruction.
K David Kelly, the MoD weapons specialist at the heart of last year’s controversy,
committed suicide three days after he denied to the Foreign Affairs Committee that
he was Gilligan’s source.
L Langley. The CIA headquarters, which was regularly visited by the US
Vice-President Dick Cheney as he sought to pressure the intelligence services into
exaggerating the Iraqi threat for political reasons.
M Mobile biological labs. The alleged discovery of biological mobile labs for the
production of biological weapons was held up after the war as proof that Iraq
continued its illegal weapons programme. But the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans
Blix, said there was no proof of their use.
N The Iraqi scientist Hamdi Shukuir Ubaydi buried documents related to Iraq’s
nuclear programme in his garden, and they were found last June in the search for WMD
after the war last June. However there was no confirmation of the US claim that they
were the “smoking gun” the Americans were looking for.
O Oil-for-food scandal. The recent accusations that Saddam diverted billions of
dollars from a UN humanitarian programme, and paid countries for political support,
came from documents distributed by aides of Ahmed Chalabi. US and UN investigations
will attempt to uncover the truth.
P The Pentagon hawks, Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and senior adviser
Richard Perle took their country to war on a false prospectus.
Q The Daily Mirror published photographs which it claimed showed members of the
Queen’s Lancashire Regiment abusing one of its Iraqi prisoners. The photos have now
been dismissed as fakes. But the regiment remains under investigation over the death
of Baha Mousa, who died in custody.
R Karl Rove, president Bush’s political adviser, is accused of “outing” the CIA
undercover agent Valerie Plame amid the furore over the Niger uranium claim. A grand
jury is investigating the leak.
S Bush and Blair insist there will be a transfer of “full sovereignty” to a
caretaker government. But the appointment of Iyad Allawi, who has close US and
British links, as Prime Minister raises questions over its independence.
T The New York Times last week issued a mea culpa for failing to question a Bush
administration leak relating to aluminium tubes reportedly being used in Iraq’s
nuclear weapons programme. The IAEA demolished the claim, a key prop of the White
House case for war.
U Iraq’s alleged attempt to smuggle uranium from Niger was used by the allies as
proof that Iraq was still attempting to build a nuclear weapon. While the Bush
administration now admits the relevant documents were forged, the Blair government
is still sticking to the claim.
V Iraq was said to hold stocks of VX gas, the deadliest chemical agent known to man.
Not a single millilitre has been found.
W World Trade Centre. According to opinion polls, a majority of Americans still
believe Saddam Hussein played a role in the 11 September attacks, a view long
propagated by the Bush administration, particularly Dick Cheney.
X Camp X-Ray, now Camp Delta, is the US prison at Guantanamo where prisoners from
Afghanistan were flown. But its practices were adopted at Abu Ghraib jail in
Baghdad. The ensuing scandal has tarnished Bush’s presidency.
Y Yesterday, denials by Dick Cheney that he no longer had any association with the
Halliburton oil services company, where he was formerly CEO, were under new
scrutiny.
Z Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused of beheading the American Nick Berg , was said to be
the link between Saddam and Bin Laden. No such link has been proved.