The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
[Main archive index/search] [List information] [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Homepage]
News, 05-12/02/03 (1) POWELL PRESENTATION * Only by Swallowing Big Lies Can Powell Justify a War * US claim dismissed by Blix * US recycles human test claims * Highlights of Powell's Presentation * Kurds Puzzled by Report of Terror Camp * Ritter dismisses Powell report * Inspectors: Powell case is circumstantial * U.S. inaction on camp questioned * Vatican: Powell evidence unconvincing * Responding to Colin Powell * Media Tour Alleged 'Poison Site' in Iraq * Reporters on Ground Get Iraqi Rebuttal to Satellite Photos POWELL PRESENTATION NO URL (sent through list) * ONLY BY SWALLOWING BIG LIES CAN POWELL JUSTIFY A WAR by Robert Scheer Los Angeles Times, 3rd February We know in advance that Colin Powell's performance will be flawless. His military career has prepared him well to execute the orders of his commander in chief, no matter what his doubts as to their morality, efficacy or logic. Making a seamless case for preemptive war on Iraq to the United Nations, the secretary of State can draw on his decade of wartime experience in which he publicly justified the deaths of more than a million Vietnamese, tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians. It took two decades for Powell, in his autobiography "My American Journey," to acknowledge that all the destruction brought down upon Indochina by the U.S. was based on an uneducated, unfocused and enormously costly policy that he and other military leaders had known to be "bankrupt." But duty, apparently, required they not tell the public the truth. "War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support," he wrote, summarizing Vietnam's lessons. Does anybody outside of the extremist claque of think-tank warriors bending the president's ear really think we are at the point of "last resort" with Iraq, a poor country half a world away that is already divvied up into "no-fly" zones, crawling with U.N. inspectors and still shattered economically and militarily from two previous wars? Or that the American people, so divided and apathetic in polls on the subject, "understand and support" why we would start a firestorm in Baghdad and then send our young men and women to fight in its streets? Regardless of Saddam Hussein's record of cruelty and regional power ambitions, as a military man Powell should be employing a straightforward equation: Does the target pose a direct threat to U.S. security? In the case of Iraq in 2003, the answer can be yes only if Powell is prepared to swallow a trio of Big Lies, the first of which is that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction that pose a real threat to the U.S. or our allies. "There is no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s," said the U.N.'s chief nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei. Less clear is whether Iraq has made at least token efforts to replenish stocks of biological and chemical weapons. In any case, Iraq can deliver payloads only to regional enemies, and the most likely target, Israel, is armed with nuclear weapons. However, Powell has gone way beyond these facts, claiming U.N. inspectors found that Iraq was concealing and moving illicit material. The U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, categorically denied this in an interview last week with the New York Times, part of a comprehensive rebuke to White House exploitation and media misinterpretation of his balanced, dispassionate report. Similarly, Powell and the president have employed an irresponsible pattern of exaggeration and innuendo in an attempt to link Iraq to Al Qaeda. This shameful canard molds a few extremely fuzzy and circumstantial bits of proto-evidence into an absurdly convenient "proof" that taking over Iraq will help prevent anti-American terrorism. In a New York Times report Sunday, sources inside U.S. intelligence agencies "said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network," they were upset that "the intelligence is obviously being politicized" and that "we've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there." Blix also said there was no evidence Iraq had or planned to supply weapons to Al Qaeda. All of which brings us to the most outrageous Big Lie of the Bush administration: that delaying an invasion to wait for the U.N. to complete inspections would endanger the U.S. The fact is that for more than a decade the military containment of Iraq has effectively neutered Hussein, and there is no reason to believe that can't continue. Of course, there is a case to be made for keeping up pressure on Iraq to cooperate further with the U.N. It is, however, counterproductive to transparently lie to a skeptical world and immoral to denigrate the inspection process because we are afraid it will undermine our cobbled-together rationale for going to war. As Powell knows from his Vietnam experience, lies have a way of catching up with you. Years from now, if the U.S. is still spending billions trying to micromanage the Middle East and reaping its rewards in blood, Bush will be marked indelibly, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon before him, as a leader who went to war on a lie. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,889133,00.html * US CLAIM DISMISSED BY BLIX by Dan Plesch in New York The Guardian, 5th February The chief UN weapons inspector yesterday dismissed what has been billed as a central claim of the speech the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, will make today to the UN security council. Hans Blix said there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived. In a series of leaks or previews, the state department has said Mr Powell will allege that Iraq moved mobile biological weapons laboratories ahead of an inspection. Dr Blix said he had already inspected two alleged mobile labs and found nothing: "Two food-testing trucks have been inspected and nothing has been found." Dr Blix said that the problem of bio-weapons laboratories on trucks had been around for a while and that he had received tips from the US that led him to inspect trucks in Iraq. The Iraqis claimed that the trucks were used to inspect the quality of food production. He also contested the theory that the Iraqis knew in advance what sites were to be inspected. He added that they expected to be bugged "by several nations" and took great care not to say anything Iraqis could overhear. He said he assumed the US secretary of state would not be indicating sites that the inspectors should visit that he had not told them about. "It is more likely to be based upon satellite imagery and upon intercepts of telephone conversations or knowledge about Iraqi procurement of technical material or chemicals," he said. Dr Blix is travelling to Baghdad for further meetings with Iraqi officials before reporting to the security council on February 14 and March 1. He said the choice for the UN was between continued containment and invasion. Both strategies had problems, but an invasion required 250,000 troops and over $100bn while for containment the numbers were 250 inspectors and $80m. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,889812,00.html * US RECYCLES HUMAN TEST CLAIMS by Audrey Gillan The Guardian, 6th February Colin Powell highlighted the claim that Saddam Hussein had used 1,600 prisoners on death row as guinea pigs for his biological and chemical weapons programme as an indication of how the Iraqi dictator's "inhumanity" had no limits. But last night, it emerged that this part of Mr Powell's testimony to the security council was old news. The controversial claim had resulted in a serious dispute between Iraq and UN weapons inspectors in 1998. Mr Powell told the UN how sources had told US agencies that the regime experimented on humans to perfect its biological and chemical weapons. He said an informant told how 1,600 death row prisoners were transferred in 1995 to a special unit for such experiments. Mr Powell told the assembly: "An eyewitness saw prisoners tied down to beds, experiments conducted on them, blood oozing around the victims' mouths, and autopsies performed to confirm the effects on the prisoners. Saddam Hussein's humanity - inhumanity has no limits." In early 1998, one of three UN weapons inspectors' teams was searching for evidence that Iraqi prisoners were deliberately exposed to chemical and biological agents. Iraq gave documents to the UN admitting it had experimented on animals in 1995 but it denied using humans. Iraq then accused some of the British and American members of the team of espionage and refused the team access to installations where files on suspected experiments were stored. The inspectors were prevented from visiting Abu Gharib jail, near Baghdad, to investigate evidence that prisoners had been sent away for experimentation. The Unscom team, led by American expert Scott Ritter, left Iraq because it had been blocked in its attempts to complete its mission. The obstruction led to the aircraft carrier Invincible being ordered to the Gulf in 1998 in an unsuccessful attempt to put pressure on Iraq, and the inspectors did not return. Five years ago, a scientist who had worked at the Atomic Energy Organisation in Baghdad reported that weaponised chemicals and germs had been tested on Iraqi prisoners, mostly Kurds and Shias in Radwania jail in Baghdad. It was also reported that scientists at Salman Pak, a military complex 50 miles southwest of Baghdad, conducted experiments on Iranian prisoners of war. The claims were always denied by Iraq. Last night, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International said it had no recent reports of such experiments: "We are aware that that did happen, but it happened in the 1980s. Prisoners were being experimented on, but as far as we know it's not something that is actually happening currently. We do know of political prisoners who are being subjected to systematic torture but as far as we know there are no transfers of prisoners for experiments." A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said it had no records of such experiments on its file of Iraqi human rights abuses. http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/feb/05/020502591.html * HIGHLIGHTS OF POWELL'S PRESENTATION Las Vegas Sun (from AP), 6th February Highlights of Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation of evidence Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council: INTERCEPTED CALLS: A telephone call Powell said was between two Iraqi military officers was intercepted last Nov. 26, one day before the resumption of U.N. inspections. "We evacuated everything," one of the officers said. In another call, on Jan. 30, an officer was overheard saying, "We sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there." In another call, one Iraqi commander instructs another to remove any reference to "nerve agents wherever it comes up." Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer show Iraqi-front companies tried to buy machines that can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, Powell said. INFORMANTS: Powell quoted intelligence sources as saying that shortly before the U.N. agreed to send weapons inspectors to Iraq, a missile brigade was hiding rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads were hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection. The sources have said weapons inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives, with Iraq trying to tap all voice and electronic communications. According to Powell, sources also said Saddam Hussein has tried to prevent interviews with Iraqi scientists and in early December Saddam warned all Iraqi scientists that they and their families would face serious consequences if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors. They were forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is punishable by death. Other Iraqi informants, including a former major, a former chemical engineer and a civil engineer, said the country has at least seven mobile biological weapons laboratories mounted on at least 18 road trailers and railroad cars, Powell said. These facilities can produce enough dry biological agent in one month - including anthrax and botulinum toxin - to kill thousands. According to Powell's presentation, another source said Saddam's regime has been experimenting on human beings, including 1,600 death row prisoners, to perfect its biological and chemical weapons. Defectors also told U.S. officials, according to the presentation: -Saddam spent billions of dollars in the 1990s on a clandestine nuclear weapons program that tried to develop techniques to enrich uranium. -In 1995, Saddam embarked on a "crash program" to build a crude nuclear weapon. -Iraq retains a covert force of a few dozen Scud missiles with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers, in violation of U.N restrictions. SATELLITE PHOTOS: Satellite images show a facility that housed four active chemical weapons munitions bunkers until just before U.N. weapons inspectors arrive on Dec. 22, Powell said. In one photo he showed, the bunkers are surrounded by security forces, decontamination vehicles and special equipment to monitor leakage. A second photo of the same facility, taken later, shows the bunkers cleaned out and "sanitized" with the decontamination vehicles and supporting equipment gone. Satellite photos also show Iraq trying to conceal missile stocks, Powell said. One image, identified as a ballistic missile facility, shows five large cargo trucks and a truck-mounted crane moving missiles two days before inspections began. Powell said satellite images show the same routine at nearly 30 sites. Other satellite pictures show a training camp in northeast Iraq established by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden who was granted safe haven in Iraq. Powell said the camp - established in a Kurdish area of Iraq, but with the approval of Baghdad officials - teaches trainees how to use deadly poisons like ricin. Powell said the captured assassin who carried out the murder of American Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October received money and weapons for that attack from Zarqawi. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/international/middleeast/06ANSA.html?ex=10 45550702&ei=1&en=74ae0f77bed509f4 * KURDS PUZZLED BY REPORT OF TERROR CAMP by C. J. Chivers New York Times, 6th February ERBIL, Iraq, Feb. 5 ‹ Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's assertion today that Islamic extremists were operating a poisons training camp and factory in northern Iraq appeared to surprise Kurdish officials, who greeted the claim with a mix of satisfaction and confusion. The officials were pleased to hear an American effort to discredit their Islamist enemies, and to sense momentum toward war to unseat Saddam Hussein. But some also wondered if the intelligence Mr. Powell presented to the United Nations Security Council was imprecise. As part of his presentation to the Security Council, Mr. Powell said a terrorist network run by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an operative of Al Qaeda, had "helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq." As he spoke, a monitor displayed a photograph with the caption: "Terrorist Poison and Explosives Factory, Khurmal." The network that Mr. Powell referred to appeared to be Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group controlling a small area of northern Iraq. Ansar has been accused of dispatching assassins and suicide bombers, of harboring Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan and of training several hundred local fighters. The secular Kurdish government has been battling the group since 2001, and, since December, there have been indications that Mr. Zarqawi may have spent time in Ansar's territory last year. But no Western officials had gone as far with claims of Ansar's danger as Mr. Powell did when he showed a photograph of the Khurmal factory. Mr. Powell also said that Baghdad has a senior official in the "most senior levels" of Ansar, a claim apparently intended to build a case that Baghdad is collaborating with Al Qaeda and, by extension, in a chemical factory. Some here quickly seconded Mr. Powell's opinion. "We have some information about this lab from agents and from prisoners," Kamal Fuad, the Parliament speaker, said. But Mr. Powell's assertion also produced confusion tonight. One senior Kurdish official, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan who is familiar with the intelligence on Ansar, said he had not heard of the laboratory Mr. Powell displayed. "I don't know anything about this compound," he said. Kurds also questioned whether Mr. Powell was mistaken, or had mislabeled the photograph. Khurmal, the village named on the photo, is controlled not by Ansar al-Islam but by Komala Islami Kurdistan, a more moderate Islamic group. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is allied with Washington and has been hosting an American intelligence team in northern Iraq for several months, maintains relations with Komala. It has been paying $200,000 to $300,000 in aid to the party each month, in an effort to lure Komala's leaders away from Ansar. So Mr. Powell's photograph raised a question: Is the laboratory in Komala's area, meaning the Kurdish opposition might have inadvertently helped pay for it, or has the United States made a mistake? "My sources say it is in Beyara," one Kurdish official said. "Not in Khurmal." Ansar has a headquarters in Beyara, a village several miles from Khurmal. Abu Bari Syan, an administrator for Komal Islami Kurdistan, the party that controls Khurmal, took an even stronger stand about Mr. Powell's claim. "All of it is not true," he said. http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=248572 * RITTER DISMISSES POWELL REPORT Japan Today, 6th February TOKYO ‹ Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter on Thursday dismissed U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's allegation before the U.N. Security Council that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction as "unsubstantiated" and based only on "circumstantial evidence." "There's nothing here that's conclusive proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," Ritter, a former U.S. Marine and outspoken critic of Washington's policy on Iraq who participated in U.N. weapons inspections there from 1991 to 1998, told Kyodo News in an interview. "Everything in here is circumstantial, everything in here mirrors the kind of allegations the U.S. has made in the past in regard to Iraq's weapons program," he said. Powell on Wednesday presented what he described as "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that Iraq has been deceiving U.N. arms inspectors and hiding banned weapons. He played intercepted telephone conversations between Iraqi officials and showed satellite photos as part of the U.S. drive to convince the world of the need to disarm Iraq, by military force if necessary. "He just hits you, hits you, hits you with circumstantial evidence, and he confuses people ‹ and he lied, he lied to people, he misled people," Ritter said of Powell. Ritter argued that the United States is giving weapons inspectors too little time to do their job. He said many things in Powell's presentation should be properly investigated, such as a Nov 26 communications intercept in which two senior Iraqi military officers were overheard talking about the need to hide from U.N. weapons inspectors a "modified vehicle" made by an Iraqi company that Powell said is "well known to have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity." "What vehicle? I mean, obviously Colin Powell's concerned, he presented it, so let's find out what the vehicle is ‹ but let's not bomb Iraq based upon that," Ritter said. Ritter also questioned the veracity of Powell's allegation that Iraq still possesses vast amounts of anthrax and described as irrelevant his repeated references to dry powder anthrax contained in envelopes and sent through the U.S. postal system in the fall of 2001, which killed two people and created a national panic. "What anthrax is he talking about?" he said, adding that Iraq is only known to have produced liquid bulk anthrax, which has a shelf life of only three years. He said the last known batch of liquid bulk anthrax was produced in 1991 at a state-owned factory blown up in 1996. "Colin Powell holds up a vial of dry powder anthrax and he makes allusions to the attack in the United States through the letters. That was U.S. government anthrax! It had nothing to do with Iraq," Ritter said. Ritter accused Powell of engaging in "classic bait-and-switch" in his U.N. presentation, catching his listeners' attention with one piece of information and then putting up an irrelevant photograph "to make them think the two are the same when they're not." "I mean, the photographs are real but what do the photographs show," he said. "The Powell presentation is not evidence...It's a very confusing presentation. What does it mean? What does it represent? How does it all link up? It doesn't link up." "Iraq, anthrax, vial, dry powder ‹ what connection do they have? None," he said. Ritter termed a "fabrication" Powell's assertion that Iraq may have 18 trucks from which it can produce biological agents such as anthrax or botulinum toxin, and noted that U.N. inspectors who followed up on such U.S. intelligence based on defectors' testimony were only able to find two trucks used for testing food. "They had nothing to do with biological laboratories. That's what (U.N. chief inspector) Hans Blix says. He says, 'There's no mobile lab."' "You know who came up with the idea of mobile trucks? The inspectors...We sat back one day and said, 'If we were the Iraqis, how would we hide biological production? We'd put them on trucks,"' Ritter said. "So we designed it and we went out looking for them. But the problem is, you look for something that you have no evidence exists, but by postulating the existence you create the perception of existence. Now we look for trucks...and we don't find them," he said. In his presentation, Powell spoke of the futility of trying to find the trucks in question among the thousands that travel Iraqi roads daily without Baghdad voluntarily surrendering the information. Ritter, however, said Powell was merely trying to create an impression that U.N. inspections could never work. "You can never expect the inspectors to find these 18 trucks," he said, because "these trucks don't exist." Defectors' reports, he said, could be misleading, especially those coming from people associated with the opposition Iraqi National Congress, who he said could have been "pre briefed in advance to tell lies." "Are these legitimate defectors or are they deliberately out there falsifying testimony? I don't know. What I do know is I'm not willing to put American lives on the line based on the testimony from an Iraqi defector. I want something a little bit more solid than that," Ritter said. But he stressed he is not arguing that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction ‹ merely that the U.N. inspectors should be given sufficient time to do their job in Iraq and make a final determination based on solid evidence. (Kyodo News) http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12614369&method=full& siteid=50143 * INSPECTORS: POWELL CASE IS CIRCUMSTANTIAL by Naveed Raja Daily Mirror, 6th February Senior weapons inspectors today branded Colin Powell's evidence for war against Iraq "circumstantial" and said America had failed to provide a clear-cut case for military action. But they warned Saddam Hussein of dire consequences if there is not a "drastic change" in co-operation from Iraq. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said of Secretary of State Powell's presentation to the UN: "I don't think there was clear-cut evidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. Very much of it was circumstantial. "We do not contend that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But we cannot exclude that possibility." Dr Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke out after meeting Tony Blair and Jack Straw in Downing Street. Dr El Baradei said: "I think the message coming from the Security Council is very clear: that Iraq is not co-operating fully, that they need to show drastic change in terms of co operation." He added: "The message also coming from the Security Council is that time is very critical, and that we need to show progress in our report due on the 14th of this month. "So our mission, I think, in Baghdad this weekend is crucial and we hope we will secure full 100 per cent co-operation on the part of Iraq." Dr Blix put more pressure on Saddam, accusing Iraqi officials of not cooperating fully with inspectors. "We hope at this late hour they will come to a positive response. If they do not, our reports next Friday will not be what we would like them to be," he said. "We both search for disarmament through inspection. That is the method we stand for and we would like to obtain that." But Dr Blix said Iraq had provided quick access to facilities when inspectors had asked to see them. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/02/07/MN175794 .DTL * U.S. INACTION ON CAMP QUESTIONED by Greg Miller San Francisco Chronicle, from Los Angeles Times, 7th February Washington -- Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where al Qaeda affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with explosives and poisons. But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it? Lawmakers who have attended classified briefings on the camp say they have been stymied for months in their efforts to get an explanation for why the United States has not begun a military strike on the compound near the village of Khurmal. Powell cited its operation as one of the key reasons for suspecting ties between Baghdad and al Qaeda. The lawmakers put new pressure on the Bush administration Thursday to explain its decision to leave the site unharmed. "Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Why have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?" Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session. "I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds, and we have been tracing individuals who have gone in there and come out of there," Powell said. Absent an explanation from the White House, some officials suggested the administration had refrained from striking the compound in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq. "This is it. This is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified. "If you take it out, you can't use it as justification for war." Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the intelligence panel, said she and other members had been frustrated in their attempts to get an explanation from administration officials in closed-door briefings. "We've been asking this question and have not been given an answer," Feinstein said. Officials have replied that "they'll have to get back to us." Asked whether the White House might have rejected hitting the site to avoid complicating its efforts to build support for war against Iraq, she said: "That's an obvious thought. I hope not." A White House spokesman said Thursday he had no immediate comment on the matter. Failing to intervene appears to be at odds with President Bush's stated policy of pre empting terrorist threats, and the Khurmal facility is in an area where the United States already has a considerable presence. U.S. intelligence agents are said to be operating among the Kurdish population nearby, and U.S. and British warplanes already patrol much of northern Iraq as part of their enforcement of a no-fly zone. Several lawmakers and intelligence experts expressed concern that Powell's presentation Wednesday might have cost the United States an opportunity to prevent the spread of toxins. "By revealing the existence of the camp, it's predictable whatever activity is there will probably go underground," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Rancho Palos Verdes (Los Angeles County), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "That may make it harder to track this link of people and poison throughout Europe." Bob Baer, a former CIA officer who worked extensively in northern Iraq, said: "I don't understand why we don't hit it. We shouldn't wait for a war to take these things out." U.S. officials said that the Pentagon and the CIA had considered plans last summer for a covert raid on the compound, but that administration officials decided against it for unspecified reasons. A satellite photo showed by Powell depicted a collection of elongated buildings on relatively bare terrain, a seemingly easy target for U.S. warplanes or missiles fired from a Predator drone. The camp is outside the no-fly zone, but lawmakers said that based on Powell's remarks, the United States would seem to have ample justification for an attack under international law. "It's clear to me there is existing authority," Feinstein said. Several lawmakers cited November's U.S. strike in Yemen, where a CIA Predator fired a Hellfire missile at a carful of al Qaeda operatives, killing six, including a U.S. citizen. In his U.N. presentation, Powell portrayed the Khurmal camp as an international menace, a site where terrorists learn how to work with explosives and the deadly toxin ricin. The camp is in a corner of Iraq controlled by an Islamic extremist group known as Ansar al Islam, which is believed to have al Qaeda ties. But Powell said the camp was actually run by lieutenants of terrorist suspect Abu Musab Zarqawi, a 36-year-old Palestinian linked to a series of terrorist plots in Europe, and the killing of a U.S. Embassy worker in Jordan last year. Senior administration officials said Thursday that while Zarqawi has some ties to Osama bin Laden's group, he is not under al Qaeda's control or direction. "They have common goals," one intelligence analyst said, "but (Zarqawi) is outside bin Laden's circle. He is not sworn al Qaeda." http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news8.htm * VATICAN: POWELL EVIDENCE UNCONVINCING Jordan Times, 7th February VATICAN CITY (R) ‹ Pope John Paul's point man for peace said on Thursday an attack on Iraq would unleash terrorism and kill civilians and called the latest evidence by US Secretary of State Colin Powell unconvincing and vague. In an interview with Reuters, Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's justice and peace department, said the Pope was deeply saddened by the recent turn of events. He also stressed the Vatican's stand that it could not consider any US-led action against Iraq a "just war" and that there were perhaps economic reaons behind the conflict. "I wonder why those who want to make war do not take into account the serious consequences," Martino said. "The reaction in the Muslim world will be enormous. Acts of terrorism will increase dramatically," said Martino, who served as Vatican representative to the United Nations for 16 years. "Even if it is a two, three-day strike, what about later? What about the consequences inside and outside Iraq? "I'm afraid that a war would completely affect the whole area of the Middle East...and will increase refugees, terrorism and endanger the environment," he said. Martino had a lukewarm reaction to evidence against Iraq, including satellite photographs, Powell presented to the UN. "My first impression is that this (Powell's new evidence) is vague," he said. He also described it as "unconvincing." http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2980 * RESPONDING TO COLIN POWELL by Rahul Mahajan Z-Magazine,6th February [.....] What if Iraq isn't cooperating? If Iraq is not cooperating fully with inspections right now, it's important to understand why. The first round of weapons inspections started to fall apart in 1998 for one reason - the United States refused to commit to lifting the sanctions once Iraq was disarmed. This refusal was an abrogation of its own commitment under UNSCR 687. This time, it's even worse. The United States is steadily bombing Iraq, in an escalating pattern that is no longer even vaguely linked to enforcement of the illegal "no-fly zones" but is clearly part of the suppression of air defense with which U.S. wars begin. It is building a massive military presence in the Gulf. And it is declaring openly, to all with the ears to hear it, that it will go to war with Iraq no matter what Iraq does, whether the Security Council is with it or against it. In fact, at least one columnist, Bill Keller ("What to Expect when you're Inspecting," New York Times, November 16, 2002) has pointed out that inspections are a wonderful prelude to war because they "can significantly diminish Saddam's arsenal," thus making it easier for the United States to fight without fear of retaliation and because "inspections immobilize Iraq while we deploy." So Iraq is in the bizarre position of being called on to disarm while being attacked by another country, and then being reviled by the "international community" for partial compliance. It is becoming increasingly likely that the United States will obtain a Security Council resolution authorizing war. And if it does, its main argument will be that it must go to war with Iraq to uphold international law. It's important to understand ahead of time just how obscene that argument is. It's not just because the United States has systematically undermined international law with regard to Iraq, by refusing to acknowledge the basis (disarmament) for lifting the sanctions, by committing repeated acts of illegal aggression against Iraq (like the Desert Fox bombing), and by deliberately making the sanctions bite Iraqi society as hard as possible for purely political reasons (see "Economic sanctions as a weapon of mass destruction," Joy Gordon, Harper's, November 2002). It's not just because the United States enforces a double standard, in which itself and favored allies are exempt from legal requirements while states it decided to target are not. It's because this war is a violation of the ultimate international law. It is a "crime against peace," a war of aggression. It was decided on long ago in the White House, and the only reason other countries may vote in support of it is the repeated statements that the war will happen whether they want it or not. It is the United States holding not just Iraq but the entire world hostage. Rahul Mahajan is a member of the Nowar Collective (www.nowarcollective.com). He is author of "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" (April 2002, Monthly Review Press) and the forthcoming "The U.S. War on Iraq: Myths, Facts, and Lies." He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/feb/08/020809659.html * MEDIA TOUR ALLEGED 'POISON SITE' IN IRAQ by Borzou Daragahi Las Vegas Sun, 8th February SARGAT, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the camp in northern Iraq a terrorist poison and explosives training center, a deadly link in a "sinister nexus" binding Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. But journalists who visited the site depicted in Powell's satellite photo found a half-built cinderblock compound filled with heavily armed Kurdish men, video equipment and children - but no obvious sign of chemical weapons manufacturing. "You can search as you like," said Mohammad Hassan, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which controls the camp and the surrounding village. "There are no chemical weapons here." Ansar al-Islam, believed to have ties to al-Qaida, says the camp serves as its administrative office for Sargat village, living quarters and a propaganda video studio. A half-dozen children and some teenagers watched with curiosity as Western journalists arrived in a convoy of white SUVs. A couple of dozen bearded men in black turbans, heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades, watched closely. During his appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Powell displayed a satellite photo of this camp, which was identified as "Terrorist Poison and Explosive Factory, Khurmal." Powell said the camp was run by al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan who were under the protection of Ansar al-Islam here in the autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq in a region beyond Saddam Hussein's control. But Powell maintained that a senior member of Ansar al-Islam was a Saddam agent, implying a tenuous link between Baghdad and the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Western journalists were brought to this camp, with its distinctive polygon-shaped fencing and nearby hills, by the Islamic Group of Kurdistan, a moderate Muslim organization which maintains good relations with Ansar al-Islam. The compound, accessible by a long dirt road, is in a village of several hundred people at the base of the massive Zagros mountains separating Iraq from Iran. Security appeared lax at the compound, whose jagged barbed-wire perimeter matched a satellite photograph Powell displayed in his Security Council presentation. As evidence that the camp serves as a housing area, child-sized plastic slippers could be seen in the doorways. A refrigerator had been turned into a closet and filled with colorful women's clothes. The most sophisticated equipment seen at the site was the video gear and makeshift television studio Ansar says it uses to make its propaganda films. Ansar officials speculated that Powell was misled in his accusations of a poison factory by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two parties governing the autonomous northern Kurdish section of Iraq. Ansar has been at war for two years with the PUK. "Everything Powell said about us is untrue," said a man calling himself Ayoub Hawleri. Other Kurds referred to him as Ayoub Afghani, who manufactures explosives for suicide bombers. "He was just repeating the PUK's lies," Ayoub said. The Patriotic Union said Powell's allegations about the poison laboratory were correct and it was in the Sargat compound in an area accessible only to those who had come from Afghanistan and had "ties to al-Qaida." A PUK spokeswoman said Saturday that Ansar could have moved the facility before the journalists got there. Though Ansar officials allowed the journalists access to the site, they did not permit reporters to talk to anyone except two designated Ansar officials. Hawleri said he was shocked and surprised after watching Powell's speech, which said Ansar harbored Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, a suspected al-Qaida operative and alleged assassin of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan last year. "The first time I even heard of al-Zarqawi was on television," he said. The name on the photo Powell showed to the world was Khurmal, a nearby town that is under the control of Islamic Group of Kurdistan. Islamic Group denies there is such a camp at Khurmal and believes Powell's satellite photo evidence misidentified the site's location. An official at the equivalent of the local social security office said the Sargat compound is in the district of Biyare, near the town of Biyare where Ansar has its headquarters. Before taking journalists to Sargat, Islamic Group took them to Khurmal to show them the camp was not there. Group official Fazel Qaradari said he welcomed the large contingent of Western media to "see for themselves" that there is no such factory in Khurmal. The road to Sargat passes the ruins of numerous villages destroyed by Saddam Hussein in his late 1980s campaign against Iraq's Kurds. Though less well-known than nearby Halabja - a city about 19 miles away where 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical weapons in 1988, the Sargat area also was subjected to chemical weapons bombardment. In the village of Ahmad Awa, headquarters of the Islamic Group's leader, Ali Bapir, residents said they frequently visit Sargat, and although they have been denied access to the compound, they do not believe there are any chemical weapons or al-Qaida operatives in the village. "We're certain that's wrong," said Azad Muhedil, head of the village council. "We have been victims of war and upheaval in the past. The people here are still recovering from chemical weapons." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/middleeast/08BAGH.html * REPORTERS ON GROUND GET IRAQI REBUTTAL TO SATELLITE PHOTOS by Ian Fisher New York Times, 8th February AL MUSAYYIB, Iraq, Feb. 7 ‹ "No smoking ‹ please!" the Iraqi official said, and he meant it. In front of him were actual missiles ‹ five of them, with a scattering of steel cases for the warheads ‹ in a lot at a factory near here. Not just any factory, but one that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell showed the world this week in his presentation to the United Nations Security Council, charging that satellite photos had caught the Iraqis hiding things they did not want weapons inspectors to see. "At this ballistic missile site on Nov. 10," Mr. Powell said at the United Nations on Wednesday, "we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components." To which, Kareem Jabbar Yusuf, the manager of the plant near here, said, "It's all lies." Thus was crystallized, under the sun in the steadily warming desert, the dynamic in the debate over whether to attack Iraq: American accusations, Iraqi denials and pretty much no way for anyone else to know where the truth lies. But what is clear is that Iraq is working vigorously to present its version of events, the day before the two chief United Nations weapons inspectors' scheduled treturn to Baghdad for another round of last-minute talks. After devoting two news conferences this week to rebutting Mr. Powell's accusations that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction, officials here escorted dozens of journalists to two sites that he singled out before the Security Council. These were not the precise, scientific visits that the inspectors, who have gone to both sites several times since November, presumably enjoy. Rather, the scene was one of chaos, with journalists armed with little more knowledge than the transcript of Mr. Powell's speech jostling one another for scraps of Arabic translated on the fly. Officials took reporters to Al Rafah plant, near Faluja, roughly 50 miles west of Baghdad, to view a new testing stand for Iraqi rockets. Under United Nations resolutions, Iraq is permitted to make rockets with a range of no more than 150 kilometers, or about 93 miles. But Mr. Powell alleged that this new testing stand was designed "for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers," or about 745 miles. "These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads," Mr. Powell charged. The new and unfinished stand, which rises in steel and concrete roughly 50 feet, is in fact, as Mr. Powell alleged, much larger than the old stand a few hundred yards away, which Iraq has used to test its rockets for more than a decade. The vent for the exhaust, a concrete channel embedded in the desert, is bigger, too, about 36 yards long, according to the plant's director, Ali Jassim. But, Mr. Jassim said, the explanation is simple. Unlike the old stand, in which rockets are mounted and fired off in a vertical position, the new stand is designed to test the same permitted rockets lying horizontally, and thus the vent must be longer. This design, he said, was safer. "By constructing this facility, we are taking precautions to keep people from getting burnt," he said. As to whether this new stand could be used for rockets that go farther than 150 kilometers, he said that the inspectors visited here five times and made no complaints. Also, an aluminum roof, which Mr. Powell said was meant to conceal activities from satellites, is actually meant to protect the stand, Mr. Jassim said, "from rain and dust." Here at Al Rashid company, the second stop on the tour, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, things look much as they did in the satellite photo taken in November. In front of a building full of the unfinished tail pieces of Fatah missile, surrounded by large earthen bunkers, sat a truck similar to the one in the photo ‹ which Mr. Powell said was used to move components that Iraq wanted to conceal from the inspectors. But the director of this plant, Mr. Yusuf, who showed off the empty inside of the truck, said it was used only to move "mechanical parts" allowed under United Nations regulations. Nothing unusual was happening in November, he said. "Any day they would see constant activity here," he said. "Colin Powell could say any day that there is activity." He said the plant had never been used for any prohibited weapons, including biological or chemical ones. On the eve of a war that seems ever closer, one firm fact, at least, stands out: Both these plants were bombed extensively, either in the 1991 Persian Gulf war or in American-led missile strikes in 1998, after the last weapons inspections were called off. _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk