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August
1, 2003
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
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Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
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Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
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Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
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Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Wendell
Berry
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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August
2, 2003
Meet
the Real WMD Fabricator
A Swede Called
Rolf Ekeus
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Week after week Bush and his people have been
getting pounded by newly emboldened Democrats and liberal pundits
for having exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and
his still-elusive weapons of mass destruction. One day CIA director
George Tenet, is hung out to dry; the next it's the turn of Paul
Wolfowitz's platoon of mad Straussians. The other side of the
Atlantic, the same sort of thing has been happening to Tony Blair.
They deserve the pounding, but if we're
to be fair there's an even more deserving target, a man of impeccable
liberal credentials, well respected in the sort of confabs attended
by New Labor and espousers of the Third Way. I give you Rolf
Ekeus, former Swedish ambassador to the United States and, before
that, the executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission
(UNSCOM) on Iraq from 1991 to 1997. These days he's chairman
of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a noted
dovecote of the olive branch set.
In the wake of the first Iraq war it
was UNSCOM chief Ekeus, exuding disinterested integrity as only
a Swede can, who insisted that Saddam Hussein was surely pressing
forward  with the manufacture of weapons of
mass destruction. It was Ekeus who played a pivotal role in justifying
the continued imposition of sanctions, on the grounds that these
sanctions were essential as a means of applying pressure to the
tyrant in Baghdad.
In 1996 Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney
General, and a leading critic of the indiscriminate cruelty of
these sanctions, wrote an open letter to Ekeus beginning thus:
"Dear Mr. Ekeus, How many children are you willing to let
die while you search for 'items' you 'are convinced still exist
in' Iraq? Every two months for the past half year, and on earlier
occasions, you or your office have made some statement several
weeks before the Security Council considers sanctions against
Iraq which you know will be used to cause their continuation
This cruel and endless hoax of new disclosures every two months
must stop. The direct consequence of your statements which are
used to justify continuation of the sanctions against Iraq
is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent and helpless
infants, children and elderly and chronically ill human beings."
Despite many such furious denunciations,
till the day he handed over his job as UNSCOM chief to the more
obviously suspect and disheveled Australian, Richard Butler,
Ekeus continued in the manner stigmatized by Clark and others.
US ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright notoriously said to
Lesley Stahl of CBS, of the lethal sanctions which killed over
half a million Iraqi children, "we think the price is worth
it", but Ekeus was the one who furnished the UN's diplomatic
cover for that repulsive calculus.
It's fortunate for Ekeus's reputation
among the genteel liberal crowd that public awareness of what
he really knew about Saddam's chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons is still slight. In fact Ekeus was perfectly well aware
from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Ussein had no such weapons
of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years earlier,
after the first Gulf war.
Ekeus learned this on the night of August
22, l995, in Amman, from the lips of General Hussein Kamel, who
had just defected from Iraq, along with some of his senior military
aides. Kamel was Saddam's son-in-law and had been in overall
charge of all programs for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons
and delivery systems.
That night, in three hours of detailed
questioning from Ekeus and two technical experts, Kamel was
categorical. The UN inspection teams had done a good job. When
Saddam was finally persuaded that failure to dispose of the relevant
weapons systems would have very serious consequences, he issued
the order and Kamel carried it out. As he told Ekeus that night,
"All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were
destroyed." (The UNSCOM record of the session can ne viewed
at http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf). In similar
debriefings that August Kamel said the same thing to teams from
the CIA and MI6. His military aides provided a wealth of corroborative
details. Then, the following year, Kamel was lured back to Iraq
and at once executed.
Did Ekeus immediately proclaim victory,
and suggest that sanctions could be abated? As we have seen,
he did not. In fact he urged that they be intensified. The years
rolled by and Iraqi children by the thousand wasted and died.
The war party thumped the drum over Saddam's WMDs, and Kamel's
debriefings stayed under lock and key. Finally, John Barry of
Newsweek unearthed details of those sessions in Amman and in
February on this year Newsweek ran his story, though not with
the play it deserved. I gather that when Barry confronted Ekeus
with details of the suppressed briefing, Ekeus was stricken.
Barry's sensational disclosure was mostly ignored.
And Ekeus's rationale for suppressing
the disclosures of Kamel and his aides? He claims that the plan
was to bluff Saddam and his scientists into further disclosures.
Try to figure that out.
For playing the game, the way the US
desired it to be played, Ekeus got his rewards: a pleasing welcome
in Washington when he arrived there as Swedish ambassador, respectful
audiences along the world's diplomatic circuits. To this day
he zealously burnishes his "credibility" with long,
tendentious articles arguing that Bush and Blair had it right.
He betrays no sign of being troubled by his horrible role. He
will never be forced to squirm in hearings by Democratic senators
suddenly as brave as lions. He won't have to wade through raw
sewage to enter the main hospital in Baghdad and watch children
die or ride in a Humvee and wait for someone to drop a hand grenade
off a bridge and blow his head off.
Today he grazes peacefully in the tranquil
pastures of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute. But if we're
going to heap recriminations on Bush and Blair and the propagandists
who fashioned their lies, don't forget Ekeus. He played a worse
role than most of them, under the blue flag of the UN.
Alexander Cockburn is the coeditor of The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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