The push to war
I've been reading more about the background to the war with Iraq from the time of the Gulf War. How Bush senior hired public relations consultant John W Rendon to organise anti-Saddam propaganda campaigns within Iraq. In 1992 Rendon helped organise (and named) the Iraqi National Congress which represented the first major attempt for Saddam opponents to join forces. Ahmed Chalabi was appointed head of the group. Chalabi was self-serving and ambitious and made sure to tell the US what they wanted to hear with regard to Saddam's regime. He saw a future for himself.
Fast-forward to 2002 and the push for a new war against Iraq. Chalabi and his lies were still in the picture and the INC provided erroneous reports to support the war. Their motivation had nothing to do with the welfare of the ordinary Iraqi - but over how Iraq's oil riches should be handled. The Pentagon brought relentless pressure to bear on the CIA to support a war with Iraq. The CIA's intelligence conflicted with the INC's. At the CIA, Chalabi was regarded as an "ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organisation". '"The [INC's] intelligence isn't reliable at all" said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA senior official and counterterrorism expert. "Much of it is propaganda... telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions."' In December 2002 Robert Dreyfuss reported that the Bush administration preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over the analysis coming from the CIA.
Of course they did. They wanted a reason to attack - any lies would do. The Bush administration are, by now, experts at using lies for their own ends.
These lies, or "distortions" include the following:
September 7, 2002 - Bush cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that he said proved that the Iraqis were on the brink of developing nuclear weapons. No such report existed. In 1998 the IAEA had issued a report saying "Based on all credible information to date, the IAEA has found no indications of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons..".
September 12, 2002, Bush spoke of Iraq's "continued appetite" for nuclear bombs, referring to the purchase of thousands of aluminum tubes which he said were "used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons". The IAEA said in a January 2003 assessment, the size of the tubes made them ill-suited for uranium enrichment, but were identical to tubes that Iraq had used to make conventional artillery rockets. But Colin Powell repeated Bush's lie in February 2003.
October 7, 2002 Bush warned that Iraq had a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used for "missions targeting the United States". The aircraft actually lacked the range to reach the United States. He also said that "information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected" had said that Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue, implying that the information was current. The nuclear defector, Khidhir Hamza, had retired in 1991 and defected in 1995. UNSCOM investigators described Hamza as "a professional liar".
Spring, 2003, Bush cited alleged documents showing that Iraq had attempted to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger. IAEA looked at the documents and concluded they were crude fakes. Forensic experts agreed.
The lies never stop issuing from Bush's mouth.
More later, from "Weapons of Mass Deception".
