[casi] Staggering Lies Meet Towering Incredulity

["John-Peter Hopperger" <j-ph@DELETETHISmindspring.com>]

Dear Friends,

Some thoughts about the WsMD problem that just won't
go away.


Staggering Lies Meet Towering Incredulity

What of the imminent danger of Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction? In image after image the fabled WsMD were held
forth by US/UK propagandists as the ultimate justification for
a pre-emptive act of self-defense against Iraq. Where are these
threats to the security of the free world? Having violated the
sovereignty of the Iraqi nation, at an enormous cost of life and
suffering to its people, the invaders should make it their first
priority to demonstrate to the world that the threats were real.

Instead, the focus seems to be on bringing Iraqi politics in line
with the dictates of the invaders' commercial interests. If their
contravening of international law is not even given a veneer of
legitimacy, then the deceivers should not remain unchallenged
in their further attempts to dovetail the remaking of Iraq to their
own agenda as well. Such compounding of criminality must be
met by a storm of planetwide outrage.

Rumsfeld quipped that he did not "quite get the thrust of the
question," when a reporter recently asked whether the rationale
for the invasion should not now be supported with proof of the
existence of WsMD. The choleric defense secretary brought
up the timeworn "nexus between terrorist states and terrorist
groups," and that "some of these weapons could leave the
country," and were they to fall into the hands of terrorists,
it "would be a very unhappy prospect."

On the other side of the Atlantic, the ever certain Toni Blair
displayed unwavering faith. A master of situational rhetoric,
Blair explained that a few weeks of US/UK military presence
in Iraq was not enough time. "The truth is there has been a
six-month campaign of concealment," he said, apparently
invoking an esoteric ratio known only to him. He has no doubt,
however, that WsMD will be found in Iraq, the PM assured.

Mohamed ElBaradei cautioned that WsMD discoveries would
need independent UN verification "to generate the required
credibility." Hans Blix was less veiled in his assessment of
US/UK intent. Iraq's possession of WsMD was merely
a pretext for the invasion, he bluntly pronounced. "There is
evidence this war was planned well in advance. You ask
yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they did
to try and demonstrate that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons,
like the fake contract with Niger."

Worldwide calls for independent verification of discoveries
do not speak well of US/UK credibility. There is universal
acceptance of the idea that Bush and Blair will resort to
fabricating and planting of evidence. Since the invasion,
Special Operations teams have systematically turned the
places inside out that were marked suspect by intelligence.
Other than media hype occasionally bordering on the bizarre,
not a shred of evidence for WsMD was unearthed.

And yet that would be the sole justification to hold forth
against the charge that the US/UK are conducting an
illegal war and that, consequently, every single Iraqi death
at the hands of the invaders must be viewed as murder.
Rationally thinking countries are unwilling to accept the tragic
loss of lives, the enormous suffering and destruction wrought
under a shooed-in rationale, that "Iraqis will be better off
without Saddam Hussein."

It has not escaped the international community that the rationale
the US/UK are toying with suffers from amorphous instability.
Whatever shape it is given to meet a momentary need, it tends
to quickly lose it. First there was "absolute confidence that Iraq
has WsMD." This entailed the inconvenience of having to tolerate
UN disarmament schedules. When UNMOVIC did a good job
disarming Iraq, Bush blurted out, "enough, we don't care if there
isn't even a pocket knife there."

Regime change became the rationale, subliminally connected to
WsMD and terrorists by a convoluted thought process along the
lines of, "Saddam is bad. Terrorists are bad. One bad party will
sooner or later give WsMD to the other, even if there aren't
any to give right now." The argument of the hypothetical future,
in all its unassailable efficiency.

When statesmen like Canada's premier, balked at the regime
change as the rationale for aggression, it was dropped. Now
the astonished world learned via the great "last ditch diplomacy"
ultimatum from the Azores summit, that the US/UK were going
to violate Iraq, even if Saddam did pack his things. The urgency
of finding and destroying the feared WsMD was palpable.

>From now on the war talk was liberally seasoned with noble
hopes of bringing democracy to the oppressed people of Iraq.
The world, with gaping mouth, came to realize that none of the
rationales offered by the US/UK had any permanent meaning.
Costumes for but one factual assertion: "We will take Iraq."
Yet, through it all, "weapons of mass destruction" was the
mantra humming in the background.

Assertions about WsMD are therefore still the logical substance
to test the US/UK policy for legitimacy, no matter how much
Rumsfeld does not "quite get the thrust of the question." The
rush to war, over the objection of the UN and the majority of
nations at large, was fueled by rhetoric that Saddam's WsMD
are a threat of the utmost urgency.

Six weeks after the invasion, we see that the oil fields were
secured with great speed and efficiency, but the alleged real
reason for the rush, has been addressed with little more
than rumors, innuendoes, and one false alarm after another.
Should we now have to accept an unstated admission by
Bush and Blair that they weren't so certain, after all?

Bush, speaking to workers building Abrams tanks in Lima,
Ohio, on Thursday (4-24-03) dropped the first hints of
what may become the new official position about the elusive
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Iraq may have destroyed
them, he told the builders of the tanks that ruined thousands
of Iraqi lives. Unnamed scientists and former Iraqi officials
are now supposed to have said that WsMD were destroyed
"on the eve of the invasion."

How disingenuous! All along Bush has ignored statements
by Iraqi scientists and officials that, yes, the weapons were
destroyed, but back around the time of the first Gulf War.
Imad Khadduri, PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology had
worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from
1968 until his departure from Iraq in 1998.

Khadduri says, "I, having worked with Iraq's nuclear
program for thirty years, reacted with a series of articles
expounding on the fact that Iraq had ceased its nuclear
weapons program at the start of the 1991 war."
(http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1310)

Khadduri also refers to long suppressed statements by
General Hussain Kamel upon his August 1995 defection
to Jordan. Kamel had insisted that Iraq's entire stockpile
of chemical, biological, nuclear and missile weaponry
had been destroyed after the first Gulf War. Kamel's
testimony was known to the US/UK since 1995.
By keeping the bombshell revelations under lock,
Bush and Blair could continue to falsely charge Iraq
with possessing WsMD, and thus maintain the trump
pretext for the invasion to we are witnessing. Glen
Rangwala, who had previously caught Blair red-handed
in plagiarism, posted the UNSCOM/IAEA document
containing the transcript of the Kamel interview.
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf

Another scientist Khadduri remembers from his days in
Iraq's weapons program was senior scientific consultant
to the government. Al Saadi, a chemical engineer had
been part of Iraq's biological weapons program since its
inception in the early eighties. Prior to his recent surrender
Al Saadi said, "I was always telling the truth. Iraq does
not have chemical and biological weapons of mass
destruction. I have nothing to hide. Time will bear me out."

None of these unequivocal statements by real Iraqi scientists
and officials is unknown to Bush, yet he can assert to the
Abrams tank builders that he is just beginning to learn that
the WsMD may have been destroyed! Without cringing,
he told them, "but we know he had them, and whether he
destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find
out the truth. And one thing is for certain, Saddam Hussein
no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction."

In light of the amazing history of deception, "going to find out
the truth" is the last thing the American public should expect
from the leader of the free world. True enough, "Saddam
Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass
destruction," but neither did he before the invasion. But it is
a rather cunning announcement by Bush. On one hand, he
admits that the WsMD may have been destroyed, on the
other, he takes credit for saving the world from the danger.

It seems to me that the only reason for admitting that there
may be no WsMD, is that Bush now needs to convince
the UN Security Council that the conditions for the lifting of
sanctions have been met. Only by showing that there are no
WsMD in Iraq can he succeed in having pertinent resolutions
deactivated. With typically opportunistic flair, he insists on
the exact opposite of what he insisted before.

Lifting of sanctions is of the greatest importance to Bush and
the oil cabals. The same sanctions the US/UK had not budged
on before, regardless of the documented human cost to Iraq's
innocents, have now become a hindrance to their agenda. The
UN is the authorized body to conduct commercial transactions
with Iraq under the Oil-for-Food program. There can be no
serious plunder, price-gouging and profiteering at the moment.
When the idea was to get UN blessings for he attack, Powell
went all out proving to the Security Council the magnitude of
the evidence that Saddam had hidden WsMD all over Iraq.

Now Bush would like nothing better than that Powell's stacks
of satellite images, reams of documents, and spools of phone
intercepts would not be remembered. But the statements!
Blair had previously lied his way through parliamentary debates
in order to salvage backing for the "war" in the face of a rebellion
by his own Labour MP's. He squelched subsequent suggestions
that Iraq may have already disarmed by calling them "palpably
absurd." After the invasion, he said, "we have absolutely no
doubt at all that these weapons of mass destruction exist."

General Tommy Franks, speaking from the Hollywood-type
studio in Qatar confirmed, "there is no doubt that the regime of
Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."
Hans Blix, edged out of a job through constant US harassment,
said, "if they don't find something then you have sent 250,000
men to wage war in order to find nothing."

Perhaps tongue in cheek, the Security Council rightly say:
"Look, you went to all that trouble trying to convince us of
irrefutable evidence for Iraq's WsMD. Now you say they are
not there any longer. We need to go see for ourselves. Kindly
make arrangements for our inspections teams to arrive soon."
It is no big secret that the inspectors are the last people Bush
wants to have snoop around Iraq right now. Tight spot.

If only a SCR could be passed acknowledging compliance on
the sterling word of G.W. Bush alone. But the UN inspectors
know all the bona fide Iraqi scientists. They probably will not
accept the "weapons destruction on the eve of the invasion"
story, simply because whoever Bush dug out from the gutter is
unlikely to have the credentials required by the elitist inspectors.

The only alternative would be to quickly find WsMD and make
a big show out of destroying them. But there is that credibility
problem! President Putin of Russia, speaking for the worl, has
expressed deep distrust of US/UK integrity with regard to any
alleged WsMD finds. (The gall of the man!) It is doubtful that
a homemade inspections team would have credibility.

Without a Formal UN Role any WsMD the US says it found
will be rightly viewed as a transparent plant. On the other hand,
a legitimate UN inspections team consisting of qualified experts
is not likely to lend itself to a US-staged discovery of WsMD
in the same easy way that the seedy elements of Saddam City
lent themselves to the "Dancing in the Streets of Baghdad."

If they were only dealing with the public, it wouldn't be tough.
They know they can count on the public's short memory and
attention span. At least the American public doesn't seem to
have noticed the switch from "protecting the world against
Saddam's WsMD" to "freeing the Iraqis from the dictator."

The public thus is not the problem. It is the Security Council
members, especially those who declined being part of the
glorious Coalition of the Willing.

Best regards,

JPH




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