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CounterPunch
February
6, 2003
Hearsay and Old Allegations
Powell's UN
Speech Dissected
by ALI ABUNIMAH
The
Electronic Intifada
US media had suggested that Secretary
of State Colin Powell was playing down what he would present
to the UN Security Council about Iraq's alleged deceptions, weapons
of mass destruction, and support for terrorism, so that when
he made his revelations, they would have all the greater impact.
Having heard Powell's presentation, it is now clear he was playing
things down because his hand was in fact so weak.
Powell's multi-media presentation was
a rag-bag of old allegations, which the United States has been
making for years, some of them based on information Iraq has
itself provided to UN inspectors. Other claims were based on
audio recordings and satellite images, and still more were based
on unverifiable claims from unidentified human witnesses and
"defectors." Powell all but admitted the weakness of
his case by continually saying "these are facts, not assertions,"
at moments when he was providing the most sensational yet least
supported claims. He also resorted to the comic book tactic of
calling Saddam Hussein an "evil genius" for having
succeeded in hiding what the US says is a vast arsenal, not only
from UN inspectors, but from the world's only super power. Let's
look more closely at some of the "new" elements in
the American case for an immediate attack on Iraq:
The Audio Tapes
Powell played what he said were intercepted
conversations between Iraqi officers who were discussing ways
to conceal prohibited materials from UN inspectors. None of the
three recordings, if real, amounted to a "smoking gun."
If they were real, they could be incriminating in a certain context,
but they could also have been taken out of a context in which
they were entirely innocent.
The evidentiary value of the alleged
recordings is close to nil. First, the recordings could easily
have been faked, as the United States has a history of doing.
In 2001, US public radio's "This American Life," broadcast
recently declassified tapes from a clandestine radio station
set up by the CIA in the 1950s to help provoke a coup against
the democratically-elected government of Guatemala. The radio
station, which broadcast completely fake "opposition"
voices, is credited with helping bring a repressive American
client regime to power. (Program broadcast on 30 November 2001.
See www.thislife.org for details.)
More directly related to current events,
New York's Village Voice newspaper reported late last year how,
during the 1990s, a Harvard graduate student celebrated for his
convincing impersonation of Saddam Hussein was hired by the high-powered,
US government-linked public relations firm, the Rendon Group,
to make fake propaganda broadcasts of Saddam's voice to Iraq.
The student received three thousand dollars a month for his troubles.
"I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance,
the CIA, or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones
calling the shots," the report quotes the ersatz Saddam
saying, "but ultimately I realized that the guys doing spin
(sic) were very well funded and completely cut loose." ("Broadcast
Ruse: A Grad Student Mimicked Saddam Over the Airwaves,"
The Village Voice, 13-19 November 2002)
In 1990, another Washington public relations
firm, hired by Kuwait, helped win support for the first Gulf
War by fabricating claims, presented to Congress, that Iraqi
troops threw Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. (see "The
Lies We Are Told About Iraq," The Los Angeles Times, 5 January
2003)
Those taken in by that deception, will
want to be more skeptical this time around. It also doesn't help
US credibility that the Pentagon has repeatedly over the past
two years stated that it would use deception and black propaganda
to achieve its policy goals.
Satellite Imagery
Powell relied on satellite images in
order to support the claim that Iraq is still producing and hiding
chemical weapons. He said, for instance, that some of the images
he showed were of the Iraqis "sanitizing" the "Al-Taji
chemical munitions storage site" before UN inspectors arrived
Again, it is impossible to tell if the
satellite photos displayed by Powell are real, fake, old or new.
But even if they are real, current photos of Iraq, they are by
themselves of no conclusive value. The New York Times reported
that American officials recently gave the UN inspectors satellite
photos of "what American analysts said were Iraqi clean-up
crews operating at a suspected chemical weapons site." But
when the inspectors went to the site, they "concluded that
the site was an old ammunition storage area often frequented
by Iraqi trucks, and that there was no reason to believe it was
involved in weapons activities." ("Blix Says He Saw
Nothing to Prompt a War," The New York Times, 31 January
2003)
For all we know the incident referred
to in The New York Times is probably the same used goods Powell
tried to sell to the Security Council. Only the inspectors can
tell us otherwise.
Mobile Units
Powell claimed, based on uncorroborated
hearsay from "defectors," that Iraq has an elaborate
system of mobile laboratories used for producing biological weapons.
With no hard evidence, Powell was reduced to displaying "artists
impressions" of what these laboratories supposedly look
like, a tactic routinely used by American supermarket tabloids
to produce pictures to accompany the latest stories of landings
and abductions by space aliens.
In an interview with The New York Times,
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, denied US
claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were
hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq
to prevent their discovery ("Blix Says He Saw Nothing to
Prompt a War," The New York Times, 31 January 2003). Blix
, who unlike the United States, has hundreds of staff on the
ground in Iraq, is in a much better position to know than Powell.
Iraq's links
with Al-Qaida
Powell claimed that Iraq has close links
with Al-Qaida and based this largely on the alleged movements
of the threateningly unshaven gentleman Abu Musab Zarqawi. Prior
to Powell's presentation, The Washington Post noted that Zarqawi,
a Jordanian, "appears to be the only individual named so
far to make the link to Iraq after more than a year of major
investigations in which 'a good deal of attention has been paid
to what extent a connection may exist between al Qaeda and Iraq,'"
("U.S. Effort to Link Terrorists To Iraq Focuses on Jordanian,"
The Washington Post, 5 February 2003)
To make up for the flimsiness of the
case, Powell resorted to building Zarqawi up into a frightening
figure in exactly the way the US in previous years built up Usama
Bin Laden. It seems that Usama, who is still on the loose, and
who did not feature as a topic of Mr. Powell's address, has been
replaced in American affections.
Powell claimed that Zarqawi (who has
now been promoted by the Americans to the status of "The
Zarqawi Network," complete with flow charts) was training
terrorists in a poison-making camp in northern Iraq. Powell skipped
dismissively over a very pertinent fact. Since the 1991 Gulf
War, northern Iraq has been out of the control of Saddam Hussein's
government.
The United States and United Kingdom
have been cruelly bombing the illegally-declared northern and
southern "no-fly zones" for twelve years, largely to
limit the influence of Iraq's government to the center of the
country. Northern Iraq has been ruled by competing Kurdish factions
with United States backing. Since the 1991 Gulf War, the CIA
has been operating freely in northern Iraq, and the United States
recently acknowledged that its special forces are operating in
that part of the country. Powell showed what he said was a satellite
photo of the "terrorist camp." If the United States
knows where such a camp lies, and has forces in the region, why
has it not bombed it or attacked it, as it has bombed so many
other installations in northern Iraq? An attack on a "terrorist"
installation in northern Iraq requires anything but an invasion
of the entire country. Furthermore, if the camp even exists,
why would the United States give its occupants notice that it
knows where it is, rather than just taking it out, as, say, it
took out a car load of alleged "terrorists" in Yemen
last year? It just doesn't add up.
That the US is claiming that Al-Qaida-linked
terrorists are operating in the part of Iraq not controlled by
Saddam Hussein rather undermines the argument that Saddam is
backing such people. Powell's only answer to this major problem
in his case was to offer more unsubstantiated claims that one
of Saddam's secret agents is in charge of the whole operation.
In the days prior to Powell's presentation,
numerous reports appeared in the American and British press that
senior intelligence officials from the FBI, CIA and even the
Israeli Mossad maintain there is no evidence to tie Iraq to Al-Qaida
in any meaningful way. The BBC reported on 5 February that a
top secret, official British intelligence report given to Prime
Minister Tony Blair and leaked to the BBC states that there are
no current Iraqi links with al-Qaida. The BBC added that the
intelligence document "said a fledgling alliance foundered
due to ideological differences between the militant Islamic group
and the secular nationalist regime." ("UK report rejects
Iraqi al-Qaeda link," BBC News Online, 5 February 2003)
At the present time, it appears that
there is a much stronger case on US-Al-Qaida links dating back
to the days when the Reagan Administration helped recruit men
from all over the Arab and Muslim world to join what it called
the "Afghan freedom fighters," than anything to incriminate
Iraq. Mr. Powell said not a word about that.
Underlining the weakness of the Anglo-American
case, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC before Powell's
address, that he had "seen no evidence which directly links
Iraq to al-Qaeda, but I would not be surprised if it exists."
Is this the sort of shabby thinking on which decisions about
war and peace are made? More importantly, the Pentagon has brushed
aside the lack of evidence, and, to the dismay of senior CIA
and FBI officials, has exaggerated evidence for purely ideological
and political purposes. It is the result of these political deceptions,
not evidence, that was presented to the Security Council by Mr.
Powell.
Even if there were evidence of an Al-Qaida
connection, the US claims that it wants to go to war to enforce
UN resolutions. But no UN resolutions regarding Iraq say anything
about Al-Qaida. Hence, even the attempt by the US to link Iraq
to Al-Qaida must be interpreted as an act of desperation by an
administration that knows it has not made its case on alleged
weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq and the
United States
Closing his speech, Powell sought to
"remind" the Security Council that Saddam has been
a horrible monster for more than two decades. He cited Iraq's
use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1988 as "one of
the twentieth century's most horrible atrocities." He forget
to mention, however, that at the time the United States, which
was supporting Saddam in his war with Iraq, instructed its diplomats
to implicate Iran. Powell also forgot to mention that among the
long history of cooperation between the United States and Saddam
Hussein's Iraq were the several meetings that once and future
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held with Saddam at the request
of President Reagan, one of them on the same day that Iraq was
reported to be using chemical weapons against Iran.
Nor did Powell point out that the same
sort of satellite evidence that he now uses to indict Iraq was
once gladly handed over to Saddam by the United States to help
Iraq deafeat Iran. And in claiming that there is not a frightening
disease in the pharmacology that Iraq is not capable of creating,
Powell forgot to mention that the seed stock to make anthrax,
E. Coli, botulism and other biological agents was exported to
Iraq from a company based near Washington, DC, called the American
Type Culture Collection, under contracts approved by the United
States Goverment in the 1980s. These sales continued even after
Iraq was reported to have used chemical weapons against Kurdish
civilians. (see Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2000, p.39)
Powell also sought to "remind"
the Security Council about Iraq's horrible human rights record.
He failed to explain, however, when the United States found its
consicence on this matter which never troubled it in all the
years that it was allied with Saddam. Such naked cynicism may
yet fool some in an American public whose knowledge of history
is notoriously shallow, and whose mass media scarcely dare challenge
any administration's foreign policy, but it will not fool anyone
else.
Powell was also cynical to criticize
Saddam Hussein for allegedly supporting Palestinian groups. Whether
this was simply an attempt to grasp at further "evidence"
is unclear. There are no known links at all between Palestinian
groups fighting Israel's repression and Al-Qaida, despite the
Sharon government's attempts to manufacture them for American
consumption. What is certain, however, is that in the Arab world,
the attempt to use any alleged support for the Palestinian cause
as a justification to invade Iraq can only further alienate and
inflame public opinion.
Conclusion
Taken together, the smorgasbord of old
allegations, show-and-tell and hearsay that Powell presented
would fall disasterously short of proving a case against an accused
person in an American court of law, where the standard of proof
must be "beyond a reasonable doubt." The flashy presentation
did not conceal holes in the American case that a U.S. Navy battlegroup
could sail through with room to spare. The Americans have argued
that the Security Council is not a court of law, and that the
standards of proof are different, and need not be beyond a reasonable
doubt. But early in his presentation Powell himself used judicial
language when he claimed that Iraq had earlier been "found
guilty" of "material breaches" by the Security
Council.
The American legal system, often held
as an example to the world, applies such strigent standards in
order to protect a single accused person from being wrongly denied
his freedom or life. If the United States attacks Iraq, not one
accused person, but thousands of innocent people may lose their
lives. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates
that 600,000 people may be forced to flee their homes, and millions
more may well be exposed to hunger, illness, danger and chaos
for years to come. Is all of this worth it, when, as France's
President Chirac once again underlined on 4 February, that a
perfectly viable, non-violent alternative exists? In response
to a reporter's question about criticisms that one hundred UN
inspectors cannot possibly disarm a country the size of Iraq,
Chirac pointed out that the first inspection regime destroyed
more Iraqi weapons than all of the deadly American firepower
directed at that country in 1991 and since. The solution to any
shortage of resources, if the inspectors should complain of one
(so far they have not), said Chirac, is to increase those resources.
Powell said that by passing Resolution
1441 putting in place the inspections last November, the Security
Council has given Iraq a "last chance" to disarm. It
appears that it was the United States that had a last chance
to convince the world that what is needed instead is a US-led
invasion of Iraq that could devastate the whole region for years
to come.
The early indications, judging from the
speeches of the Chinese, Russian, French and other foreign ministers
seated around the Security Council table, are that the world
remains convinced that inspections should be given a chance to
work, Iraq, which presents no immediate threat to anyone, should
urgently do everything possible to cooperate, and as President
Chirac said, "war is always the worst solution."
Let us hope that someone in Washington
is listening.
Ali Abunimah
is co-founder of ElectronicIntifada.net,
where this article originally appeared.
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