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11 May 2003 World War III Revisionism
If ever Americans and British do not find evidence of Saddam's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" or of Saddam's (six ?) doubles (in French : sosies), this will be the best possible evidence that those WMDs and those doubles really existed. Remember the witchcraft trials, the Nazi war criminals trials or the Revisionists trials. In the past centuries (especially from 1450 to 1650), according to some experts, there were allegedly sixty possible traces on the body of a witch that she had intercourse with Satan but, finally, it seems it was decided, in spite of descriptions made by those naive experts, that the best possible evidence of such an intercourse was that Satan had erased every trace; otherwise he would not have been Satan. In the last century (especially from 1945), the same thing happened with the Nazi gas chambers and with the witnesses of the gassings of the Jews. There was allegedly a lot of evidence and testimonies but, finally, it seems it was decided, in spite of demonstrations made by naive experts, that the best possible evidence was that Hitler had ordered the destruction of all those chemical slaughterhouses and the killing of all the witnesses; otherwise he would not have been Hitler. As Simone Veil already put it in 1983 : "Everyone knows that the Nazis destroyed those gas chambers and systematically eliminated the witnesses" (France-Soir Magazine, 7 May 1983, p.47). At the beginning of this very century (especially from 2002), it seems we'll have the same scenario with Saddam's WMDs, and his doubles. If that is the case, the lies (and the liars ?) should be the same, and Revisionism of WW 3 practiced by Revisionists of WW 2 should be an easy job.
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US rivals turn on each other as weapons search draws a blank
One key argument for war was the peril from weapons of mass destruction. Now
top officials are worried by repeated failures to find the proof - and US
intelligence agencies are engaged in a struggle to avoid the blame
Paul Harris and Martin Bright in London, Taji and Ed Helmore in New York
The Observer | May 11, 2003
The Iraqi military base at Taji does not look like a place of global
importance. It is a desolate expanse of bunkers and hangars surrounded by
barbed wire and battered look-out posts. It is deserted apart from American
sentries at the gate.
Yet Taji, north of Baghdad, is the key to a furious debate. Where are
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Was the war fought on a platform of
lies? Taji was the only specific location singled out by Secretary of State
Colin Powell in his address to the UN when he argued that evidence compiled
by US intelligence proved the existence of an illegal weapons programme.
'This is one of 65 such facilities in Iraq,' Powell said. 'We know this one
has housed chemical weapons.'
But The Observer has learnt that Taji has drawn a blank. US sources say no
such weapons were found when a search party scoured the base in late April.
By then it had already been looted by local villagers. If Taji ever had any
secrets, they are long gone. That is bad news for Britain and the United Stat
es. The pressure is building to find Saddam's hidden arsenal and time is
running out.
Last week the US flew 2,000 more experts into Iraq. The Iraq Survey Team will
join 600 experts already there. Organisations in Iraq hunting for weapons now
include teams from the US and British armies, the CIA, the FBI and the
Defence Threat Reduction Agency. Yet at more than 110 sites checked so far
they have found nothing conclusive. It has been an exercise in false alarms.
Suspect white powder at Latifiyah was only explosives. Barrels of what was
thought to be sarin and tabun nerve agents were pesticides. When a dozen US
soldiers checked a suspect site and fell ill, it was because they had inhaled
fertiliser fumes. Each setback ratchets up the political pressure. Infighting
between government departments and intelligence agencies is becoming vicious
on both sides of the Atlantic. Having fought a war to disarm Iraq of its
terrible weapons, neither the US nor Britain can admit that Iraq never had
them in the first place. The search for weapons of mass destruction cannot be
allowed to fail.
The search is especially vital for The Cabal. In the brave new world of
post-11 September America, this tight group of analysts deep in the heart of
the Pentagon has been the driving force behind the war in Iraq. Numbering no
more than a dozen, The Cabal is part of the Office of Special Plans, a new
intelligence agency which has taken on the CIA and won. Where the CIA
dithered over Iraq, the OSP pressed on. Where the CIA doubted, the OSP was
firm. It fought a battle royal over Iraq and George Bush came down on its
side.
The OSP is the brainchild of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who set it up
after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was tasked with going over old ground on
Iraq and showing that the CIA had overlooked the threat posed. But its rise
has caused massive ructions in the normally secretive world of intelligence
gathering.
The OSP reports directly to Paul Wolfowitz, a leading hawk in the
administration. They bypassed the CIA and the Pentagon's own Defence
Intelligence Agency when it came to whispering in the President's ear. They
argued a forceful case for war against Saddam before his weapons programmes
came to fruition. More moderate voices in the CIA and DIA were drowned out.
The result has been a flurry of leaks to the US press. One CIA official
described The Cabal's members as 'crazed', on a 'mission from God'.
But for the moment The Cabal and Rumsfeld's Pentagon have won and Powell's
doveish State Department has lost. Tensions between the two are now in the
open.
'Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency because he didn't like the
intelligence he was getting,' said Larry Korb, director of national security
studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'He doesn't like Powell's
approach, a typical diplomat, too cautious.'
Former CIA officials are caustic about the OSP. Unreliable and politically
motivated, they say it has undermined decades of work by the CIA's trained
spies and ignored the truth when it has contradicted its world view.
'Their methods are vicious,' said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of
counter-terrorism. 'The politicisation of intelligence is pandemic, and
deliberate disinformation is being promoted. They choose the worst-case
scenario on everything and so much of the information is fallacious.' But
Cannistraro is retired. His attacks will not bother The Cabal, firmly 'in the
loop' of Washington's movers and shakers. Yet, even among them, continued
failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a growing fear.
The fallout from the war could bring them down.
The warning was there in black and white. Citing 'intelligence' sources, Tony
Blair produced an official dossier that concluded Iraq could fire its
chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so.
It was a terrifying prospect and ramped up the pro-war argument when the
dossier was produced last September. But cold analysis after the war tells a
different story.
Iraq was abandoned by the UN weapons inspectors, then bombed, invaded and
finally brought under US and British military control. During that entire
time the 'button' was never pressed on its weapons of mass destruction. Now
both the pro-war party and the anti-war lobby want to know why. Can this
mysterious lapse be explained or did the weapons never exist?
They could have been hidden. Iraq is the size of California with mountains
and deserts in abundance. Ibrahim al-Marashi, an Iraqi expert whose work was
heavily plagiarised in a now infamous Downing Street dossier published on the
eve of war, has detailed a sophisticated concealment network set up in the
1990s and headed by Saddam's son Qusay. At the heart of the operation was
Saddam's son-in-law and cousin, Hussein Kamil, who defected in 1995 to
Jordan, where he revealed the concealment techniques to Western intelligence
agencies.
But, according to al-Marashit, the main cache of weapons of mass destruction
should have been found in Saddam's home city of Tikrit. But Tikrit has fallen
and as yet nothing has been found, leaving US officials clutching at straws.
Some have gone so far as to suggest that the weapons were hidden so well that
the Iraqis themselves were unable to use them.
A more worrying possibility is that they were looted. Across Iraq - not just
in Baghdad and Basra - practically every government and military facility was
looted long before US or British troops were able to control them. It might
be that the weapons are now on the black market. 'It means the weapons would
now be proliferating, which is exactly what the war was meant to stop,' said
Garth Whitty, a former weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s.
But there are problems with that argument. Barrels of nerve agent are not
easy to sell. The war's critics point to a more obvious conclusion - in the
run-up to the war the Iraqis were simply telling the truth. They had no
weapons of mass destruction.
A massive picture of intelligence misuse has emerged. Aside from Downing
Street's plagiarised dossier, there are allegations that Iraq tried to buy
uranium from Niger. The documents that the accusation were based on were
shown to be false by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but that had not
stopped Britain and America warning of Saddam's nuclear threat. In fact, the
forgeries were obvious. One Niger Minister, whose signature was on a
document, had been out of office for a decade when the forgeries were
produced. A US envoy sent to investigate the claims reported to the CIA in
February 2002 that they were fakes. But the OSP and the White House ignored
him.
Other selective use of intelligence occurred. Much was made of the OSP's body
of Iraqi defectors, but they chose which defectors they wanted to listen to.
Kamil's terrifying description of Iraq's capabilities in the early 1990s and
its efforts to conceal its arsenal was touted as killer proof. The fact that
Kamil also told his interrogators the weapons had later been ordered
destroyed was suppressed.
Other defectors may have had their own agendas. Kamil described one, Dr K
hidhir Hamza, as a 'professional liar' - but told US intelligence what it
wanted to hear and said Iraq was close to building a nuclear bomb. No one now
believes that. But Hamza has now returned to Iraq as part of a Pentagon team
to rebuild the country, in charge of atomic energy. Kamil also returned to
Iraq - but when Saddam was in power. He was executed.
Perhaps the most damning evidence is the lack of intelligence emerging from
captured Iraqi officials. The list is impressive: Huda Ammash, known as 'Mrs
Anthrax'; General Hossam Amin, responsi ble for talks with weapons
inspectors; General Amir Saadi, Saddam's science adviser; General. Rashid
al-Ubaidi, an arms adviser; and Abdul Hwaish, believed responsible for all
Iraq's military capabilities. If anyone knows about the weapons, it is these
people. They have powerful motivation to 'cut a deal' and tell what they
know.'Why is no one coughing?' said Whitty.
In a quiet corner of Baghdad International Airport sits a truck and trailer
painted military green. Its canvas sides have been rolled up to reveal the
pipes and vats of some form of biological fermentation machine. It was stolen
in Mosul two weeks ago then handed over to Kurdish militia when the thieves
realised it was no ordinary truck. The Kurds passed it on to the Americans.
It is the only concrete sign that any weapons of mass destruction may have
existed. The firm which made it has said six others were similarly kitted
out. It has a strong resemblance to the 'mobile bio-weapons labs' described
by Powell to the UN, but is it the smoking gun? Not even the most desperate
Pentagon official goes that far. No trace of biological weapons residue has
been found inside. The truck was apparently thoroughly cleaned out with
bleach before it was stolen.
Yet many experts believe something will be found. Before the 1991 Gulf war,
Iraq did have a massive chemical and biological weapons programme. Some is
probably still lying around. If sufficient quantities can be uncovered,
perhaps it will be enough for a public eager to feel the war was worth it.
Finding nothing is unthinkable.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
US: 'Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction'
By Neil Mackay
The Bush administration has admitted that Saddam Hussein probably had no
weapons of mass destruction.
Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be
'amazed' if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq.
According to administration sources, Saddam shut down and destroyed large
parts of his WMD programmes before the invasion of Iraq.
Ironically, the claims came as US President George Bush yesterday repeatedly
justified the war as necessary to remove Iraq's chemical and biological arms
which posed a direct threat to America.
Bush claimed: 'Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We will find
them.'
The comments from within the administration will add further weight to attacks
on the Blair government by Labour backbenchers that there is no 'smoking gun'
and that the war against Iraq -- which centred on claims that Saddam was a
risk to Britain, America and the Middle East because of unconventional
weapons -- was unjustified.
The senior US official added that America never expected to find a huge
arsenal, arguing that the administration was more concerned about the ability
of Saddam's scientists -- which he labelled the 'nuclear mujahidin' -- to
develop WMDs when the crisis passed.
This represents a clearly dramatic shift in the definition of the Bush
doctrine's central tenet -- the pre-emptive strike. Previously, according to
Washington, a pre-emptive war could be waged against a hostile country with
WMDs in order to protect American security.
Now, however, according to the US official, pre-emptive action is justified
against a nation which simply has the ability to develop unconventional
weapons.
