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Robert Fisk:

You wanted to believe him -  but it was like something out of
Beckett

The Independent | 06 February 2003

Sources, foreign intelligence sources, "our sources," defectors, sources,
sources, sources. Colin Powell's terror talk to the United Nations Security
Council yesterday sounded like one of those government-inspired reports on
the front page of The New York Times - where it will most certainly be
treated with due reverence in this morning's edition. It was a bit like
heating up old soup. Haven't we heard most of this stuff before? Should one
trust the man? General Powell, I mean, not Saddam.

Certainly we don't trust Saddam but Secretary of State Powell's
presentation was a mixture of awesomely funny recordings of Iraqi
Republican Guard telephone intercepts à la Samuel Beckett that just might
have been some terrifying little proof that Saddam really is conning the UN
inspectors again, and some ancient material on the Monster of Baghdad's all
too well known record of beastliness. I am still waiting to hear the Arabic
for the State Department's translation of "Okay Buddy" - "Consider it done,
Sir" - this from the Republican Guard's "Captain Ibrahim", for heaven's sake - and some
dinky illustrations of mobile bio-labs whose lorries and railway trucks
were in such perfect condition that they suggested the Pentagon didn't have
much idea of the dilapidated state of Saddam's army.

It was when we went back to Halabja and human rights abuses and all
Saddam's old sins, as recorded by the discredited Unscom team, that we
started eating the old soup again. Jack Straw may have thought all this
"the most powerful and authoritative case" but when we were forced to
listen to Iraq's officer corps communicating by phone - "yeah", "yeah",
"yeah?", "yeah..." - it was impossible not to ask oneself if Colin Powell
had really considered the effect this would have on the outside world.

From time to time, the words "Iraq: Failing To Disarm - Denial and
Deception" appeared on the giant video screen behind General Powell. Was
this a CNN logo, some of us wondered? But no, it was CNN's sister channel,
the US Department of State.

Because Colin Powell is supposed to be the good cop to the Bush-Rumsfeld
bad cop routine, one wanted to believe him. The Iraqi officer's telephoned
order to his subordinate - "remove 'nerve agents' whenever it comes up in
the wireless instructions" - looked as if the Americans had indeed spotted
a nasty new little line in Iraqi deception. But a dramatic picture of a pilotless Iraqi
aircraft capable of spraying poison chemicals turned out to be the
imaginative work of a Pentagon artist.

And when General Powell started blathering on about "decades'' of contact
between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of State.
Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden -
"decades" ago - was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present
day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell. And Colin
Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie - that the
"scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence
agents in disguise - was singularly unimpressive. The UN talked to
scientists, the new version went, but they were posing for the real nuclear
and bio boys whom the UN wanted to talk to. General Powell said America was
sharing its information with the UN inspectors but it was clear yesterday
that much of what he had to say about alleged new weapons development - the
decontamination truck at the Taji chemical munitions factory, for example,
the "cleaning" of the Ibn al-Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25
November - had not been given to the UN at the time. Why wasn't this
intelligence information given to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General
Powell's beloved UN resolution 1441 demand that all such intelligence
information should be given to Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the
Americans, perhaps, not being "pro-active" enough?

The worst moment came when General Powell started talking about anthrax
and the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, pathetically holding
up a teaspoon of the imaginary spores and - while not precisely saying so -
fraudulently suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 2001
anthrax scare.

When the Secretary of State held up Iraq's support for the Palestinian Hamas
organisation, which has an office in Baghdad, as proof of Saddam's support for
"terror'' - there was, of course, no mention of America's support for
Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land - the whole theatre began to
collapse. There are Hamas offices in Beirut, Damascus and Iran. Is the 82nd
Airborne supposed to grind on to Lebanon, Syria and Iran?

There was an almost macabre opening to the play when General Powell arrived
at the Security Council, cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his great arms
around them. Jack Straw fairly bounded up for his big American hug.

Indeed, there were moments when you might have thought that the whole
chamber, with its toothy smiles and constant handshakes, contained a room
full of men celebrating peace rather than war. Alas, not so. These elegantly
dressed statesmen were constructing the framework that would allow them to
kill quite a lot of people, the monstrous Saddam perhaps, with his cronies,
but a considerable number of innocents as well. One recalled, of course,
the same room four decades ago when General Powell's predecessor Adlai Stevenson
showed photos of the ships carrying Soviet missiles to Cuba.

Alas, today's pictures carried no such authority. And Colin Powell is no Adlai
Stevenson.

World reaction

Iraq

A "typical American show complete with stunts and special effects" was Iraq's
scathing dismissal of General Powell's presentation. Mohammed al-Douri,
above, Iraq's UN ambassador, accused the US of manufacturing evidence and
said the charges were "utterly unrelated to the truth.

"No new information was provided, merely sound recordings that cannot be
ascertained as genuine," he said. "There are incorrect allegations, unnamed
sources, unknown sources."

Lt-Gen Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to Saddam Hussein, said the satellite pictures
"proved nothing". On the allegation that Iraq had faked the death
certificate of a
scientist to shield them from UN inspectors, he added: "If [General Powell]
thinks any of those scientists marked as deceased is still in existence, let him
come up with it."

Britain

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, left, praised General Powell for his
"powerful and authoritative case". He said the presentation "laid bare the
deceit practised by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and worse, the very great
danger it represents.

"Secretary Powell has set out deeply worrying reports about the presence in
Iraq of one of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants, al-Zarqawi, and other members
of al-Qaida, and their efforts to develop poisons.

"The recent discovery of the poison ricin in London has underlined again that
this is a threat which all of us face.  "Saddam is defying every one of us
... He questions our resolve and is gambling that we will lose our nerve
rather than enforce our will."

France

France called for the number of inspectors to be tripled and the process beefed
up. Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, above, said inspections should
continue but under "an enhanced regime of inspections monitoring". Iraq must
also do more to co-operate - including allowing flights from U-2 spy planes.
"The use of force can only be a final recourse," he said.

China

China said the work of the inspectors should continue. Tang Jiaxuan, the
Foreign Minister, said immediately after General Powell's presentation: "As
long as there is still the slightest hope for political settlement, we
should exert our utmost effort to achieve that."

Russia

Inspections should continue, Igor Ivanov, the Foreign Minister, above, said.
More study was needed of the evidence presented by General Powell, he added.
Meanwhile, inspections "must be continued".

Germany

The Powell presentation and the findings of the weapons inspectors "have to
be examined carefully", said Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister. "We
must continue to seek a peaceful solution."

Israel

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Foreign Minister, left, said: "We've known this a long
time. We've shared intelligence with the US, and I think the US has shared
some of that today." General Powell "laid bare the true nature of Saddam
Hussein's regime, and I think he also exposed the great dangers ... to the
region and the world".