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CounterPunch
February
12, 2003
Powell's Evidence
Unravels
Old, Thin and Unpersuasive
by MARIA TOMCHICK
Only two days after Colin Powell made his presentation
to the U.N. Security Council, the evidence he provided is unraveling.
Through interviews with experts, intelligence sources, and an
examination of the physical evidence, reporters are piecing together
facts that refute all of his major claims.
Powell's presentation was full of allegations
with few sources given. He did, however, provide some data, including
satellite photos, taped phone conversations, film footage, diagrams,
and the unattributed testimony of defectors and tortured detainees.
None of this evidence holds up to close scrutiny.
First, the satellite photos: blurry images
of buildings with trucks parked outside of them. Powell didn't
explain to his audience that all of the sites--every single one
of them--have been under constant U.N. monitoring for months,
including the munitions bunkers at Taji. Nor did he say that
British reporters had visited the Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine
Institute in September of last year and described run-down buildings,
empty refrigerators, and piles of rubbish--two months prior to
the date when Powell's grainy photo supposedly shows the site
being "cleaned up."
Jonathan Tucker, a former weapons inspector
specializing in biological and chemical weapons, told the Washington
Post that the photos appeared to be blurred to conceal the full
capabilities of U.S. spy satellites. Those of us who are more
suspicious of the Bush administration's policies suspect that
the photos were blurred for another reason: to hide details that
would poke holes in Powell's case. For example, the "before"
and "after" photos of the al-Musayyib site are not
to the same scale, so it's impossible to tell if Powell's allegation
that the site had been recently bulldozed and graded is really
true, nor can we tell if the "forklift" and "bulldozer"
are really vehicles, and not just shrubbery or storage tanks.
Even basic logic tells us that something
is wrong with these photos. Why does he show us pictures of empty
cargo trucks? Surely, with the billions of dollars the U.S. has
spent on satellite technology and aerial reconnaissance, the
CIA can find a photo or two of cargo trucks filled with dirt
or with missiles piled in them. In fact, he ought to be able
to tell us the destination for the chemically-tainted dirt, biological
munitions, and missiles. Of course, Powell didn't mention that
the U.S. has already provided such a list to the U.N. weapons
inspectors, who've visited these sites and found nothing so far.
The same is true for the photos of the
missile sites and the missile test stand. Again, these are sites
that are under constant U.N. monitoring. U.N. inspectors have
examined the test stand five times, studied its specifications,
and regularly monitor tests at the site. So far, they've reported
no problems. Powell showed a photo of the short-range missile
workshop at al-Musayyib, supposedly depicting "increased
activity," including piles of missiles and cargo trucks.
Reporters visited al-Musayyib two days after Powell's speech.
They noted that canisters and missile components were being shipped
in and out of the site every day, and that U.N. inspectors had
visited the site 10 times since late November. Missile canisters
at the site bore U.N. inventory stickers.
The taped conversations that Powell played
to the Security Council are of the same quality as the photos.
Vague to the point of meaningless, they are devoid of the detailed,
mundane statements you'd expect from the day-to-day management
of weapons of mass destruction. Where are statements like: "Which
canisters are leaking? Tell the technicians to stay away from
them" or "Tell the drivers not to drive the mobile
labs on Route 27, because there's a traffic jam today"?
If the U.S. has been monitoring Iraqi phone lines and military
transmissions for months, as Powell asserts, there's very little
to show for it.
Much of Powell's evidence is outdated.
Most of his data on Iraq's nuclear program dates to the 1980s,
including his assertion that Iraq has attempted to buy uranium
from Africa. There is only one source for enriched uranium in
Africa: South Africa. The former apartheid government of South
Africa--an ally of the Reagen administration--sold enriched uranium
to Iraq in 1989; however, the South African government turned
over its nuclear program to U.N. monitors in 1993. Currently
all of South Africa's weapons grade material is under the oversight
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the same U.N.
commission that destroyed Iraq's nuclear capability in the mid-1990s.
The IAEA declared on January 27th that there are no signs that
Iraq has restarted its nuclear program.
There are other sources for uranium in
Africa. The Congo, Niger, Botswana, and Gabon all mine raw uranium
oxide. But that ore must be refined before it can be used in
a nuclear weapon. This is where the aluminum tubes come into
play. Experts with the IAEA also told the U.N. Security Council
on January 27th that the aluminum tubes were completely unsuitable
in both size and composition for use in nuclear centrifuges;
they are, however, perfectly suited for use in conventional missiles,
as Iraq has claimed.
Even analysts within the Bush administration
disagree about the aluminum tubes. The CIA thinks they're meant
for nuclear use, while nuclear experts at the Department of Energy
scoff at the idea.
Also outdated is Powell's evidence relating
to Iraq's chemical weapons program. For example, the film footage
of a Mirage jet conducting a test spraying was obtained by UNSCOM
in the mid-1990s. Jonathan Tucker, whom I cited above, reminded
the Washington Post that the quantities of chemical weapons that
Powell says Iraq posses are "at the margin of significance
from a military standpoint." And Powell doesn't highlight
distinction between warheads that contain chemicals and empty
weapons shells. Pundits and reporters alike toss around the "30,000
chemical munitions" figure as if it were a fact; in truth,
U.N. inspectors are searching for 30,000 empty shells.
Other parts of Powell's presentation
fall under the category of stale evidence: allegations of spray
tanks mounted on MIG-21 jets (bombed during the Gulf War), chemical
experiments on prisoners (done in the 1980s--these were Iranian
prisoners of war), and all of his information on unmanned aerial
vehicles (Powell's photo of a single, tiny unmanned aerial vehicle
on skateboard wheels is a much-ridiculed UNSCOM picture from
the mid-1990s).
Equally ridiculous is the British report
on Iraq's infrastructure and concealment of weapons, which Powell
waived authoritatively before the Security Council. The report
caused a scandal in Britain when the press found out that British
intelligence plagiarized most of the report from two articles
posted on the Internet. One article was published in Jane's Intelligence
Review in 1997, and the other source was an article based on
a graduate student's doctoral dissertation, which in turn was
based on documents seized during the Gulf War.
And then there's the diagram of mobile
bioweapons labs. Laboratories that can produce the amount of
biological agents needed to make bioweapons have to have a constant
supply of electricity, sterile water, refrigeration, heat, nutrients,
glassware, special air filters, sophisticated equipment, hundreds
(if not thousands) of trained personnel, and buildings constructed
with rooms that have multiple doors and barriers to maintain
adequate bio-containment. Nobody slings around glass slides and
petri dishes full of anthrax cultures in the back of a truck.
Powell's diagrams showed no means of bio-containment at all,
no way to provide electricity, no air filtration, and an unworkable
setup for personnel.
Powell also said these labs used a 24-hour
production cycle, beginning work on Thursday night and finishing
on Friday night, to take advantage of U.N. inspector's unwillingness
to work on the Muslim holy day. Raymond Zilinskas, microbiologist
and former U.N. inspector, told the Washington Post: "You
normally would require 36 to 48 hours just to do the fermentation.
The short processing time seems suspicious to me." Zilinskas
also pointed out that the diagrams showed no means of disposing
of huge quantities of highly toxic waste that are a routine by-product
of bioweapons labs. The diagrams struck him as "a bit far-fetched."
Powell's source was an Iraqi defector
who claimed to have worked on the mobile bioweapons labs. Defectors,
however, often exaggerate their stories in order to obtain immunity
and citizenship in the U.S. At least one defector whose testimony
Powell cited in his presentation, Khidir Hamza, has been debunked
as a fraud. Other defectors, including Saddam Hussein's relatives,
are not recent emigrants.
Equally suspect is the testimony of tortured
detainees. Many of the captured Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay suffer from mental illnesses, including depression, post-traumatic
stress disorder (which can bring on hallucinations), and schizophrenia.
Human rights groups are concerned that these illnesses are a
result of the conditions at Guantanamo; fourteen of the Guantanamo
detainees have tried to kill themselves. Al Qaeda prisoners in
Pakistan, Syria, and other countries are currently being tortured,
and prisoners held in rented U.S. bases in Afghanistan and on
Diego Garcia may also be subject to "pressure" that
violates international law. Confessions obtained from torture
are notoriously unreliable. For example, Abu Zubaida, the "top-ranking"
Al Qaeda prisoner in Pakistan cited by Colin Powell, is the source
for last year's multiple false alarms regarding terrorist attacks
on banks and other public facilities in the U.S.
Powell's main sources for the link between
Iraq and Al Qaeda are tortured detainees. Intelligence evidence
on this topic is practically nonexistent. The New York Times,
for example, sent a reporter to interview Kurds in northern Iraq
about Ansar al-Islam and Powell's photo of the poisons training
camp. They wrote: "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...Kurds also questioned whether Mr. Powell
was mistaken or had mislabeled the photograph. Khurmal, the village
named on the photo, is controlled by Komala Islami Kurdistan,
a more moderate Islamic Group."
The Los Angeles Times reports: "Lawmakers
who have attended classified briefings on the camp say that they
have been stymied for months in their efforts to get an explanation
for why the United States has not launched a military strike
on the compound near the village of Khurmal." They go on
to point out "the facility is in an area where the United
States already has a considerable presence."
In fact, the U.S. has a considerable
presence in most of Iraq, via the no-fly zones. The question
of why the U.S. hasn't bombed Khurmal could apply to nearly every
site Powell describes in his speech. The only answer, of course,
is that the U.S. just doesn't have the solid evidence to prove
that those sites contain weapons of mass destruction.
Nor does the U.S. have evidence of a
link between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the supposed mastermind of
Al Qaeda's poison terror cell, and Iraq. The Toronto Globe and
Mail calls al-Zarqawi "A little-known Palestinian who isn't
even on the Federal Bureau of Investigations' most-wanted list."
They also quote British and Israeli intelligence sources who
were not persuaded by Powell's evidence. The New York Times quotes
FBI and CIA sources that are alarmed at the Bush administration's
distortion of the evidence to establish a link that doesn't exist.
Even al-Zarqawi's link to the British
poison terror cell is questionable. British sources refused to
confirm the link, saying only that they are still investigating.
Ironically, al-Zarqawi did have a powerful
sponsor who provided him with a safe house when he was traveling
to and from Afghanistan and who gave him more than $1 million
to finance his network in Europe. But it wasn't Saddam Hussein,
or even a rich Iraqi citizen. It was a member of Qatar's royal
family, a man named Abdul Karim al-Thani. George Tenet, head
of the CIA, is reportedly furious that numerous members of Qatar's
royal family have sponsored terrorists. But the Bush administration
needs Qatar's military bases to launch an attack on Iraq.
An examination of Powell's flimsy evidence
explains why his presentation failed to change the minds of French,
German, and Chinese delegates and, indeed, most of the other
Security Council members. They were right in describing it as
old, thin, and unpersuasive.
Maria Tomchick
is co-editor and contributing writer
for Eat The State!,
a biweekly anti-authoritarian newspaper of political
opinion, research and humor, based in Seattle, Washington. She
can be reached at: tomchick@drizzle.com
Sources for
this article:
"Powell's Address, Presenting 'Deeply
Troubling' Evidence on Iraq," transcript of his speech,
New York Times website, www.nytimes.com,
2/6/03.
Photos, Diagrams, and transcripts of
taped conversations presented by Colin Powell to the U.N. Security
Council, U.S. Department of State website, www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/events/secretary/2003/c8390.htm.
"Iraq takes journalists on tour
to expose Blair 'lies'," Kim Sengupta, The Independent,
9/25/02.
"Suspect plants open their doors;
Iraqis arrange tour of factories named in report," Ewen
MacAskill, The Guardian, 9/25/02.
"Case
Aided by Satellite Images And Intercepted Conversations,"
Joby Warrick, Washington Post, 2/6/03, A28
"Iraq Shows Off Missile Sites to
Rebut U.S. Charges," Nadim Ladki, Reuters, 2/7/03.
"Iraq: Sites Powell Noted Are Monitored,"
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press, 2/7/03.
"S Africa denies Iraq nuclear link,"
Alistair Leithead, BBC news online, 9/26/02.
"African gangs offer route to uranium,"
James Astill and Rory Carroll, The Guardian, 9/25/02.
"US
recycles human test claims," Audrey Gillan, The Guardian,
2/6/03, .
"UK
war dossier a sham, say experts," Michael White and
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, 2/7/03.
"Despite
Defectors' Accounts, Evidence Remains Anecdotal," Joby
Warrick, Washington Post, 2/6/03, A28, .
"All
too human failings of 'human intelligence,'" Jeevan
Vasagar, The Guardian, 2/6/03.
"Suicide attempts by detainees at
Cuba base on the rise," Paisley Dodds, AP reprinted in Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, 2/7/03, A16.
"Kurds
Puzzled by Report of Terror Camp," C.J. Chivers, NY
Times, 2/5/03.
"Ongoing Iraqi Camp Questioned,"
Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times,
2/7/03,
"Terrorism experts doubt bin Laden,
Baghdad link," Timothy Appleby, Toronto Globe and Mail,
2/6/03, A11.
"Bin Laden-Iraq link suddenly emerges,"
Mark MacKinnon and Alan Freeman, Toronto Globe and Mail, 2/6/03,
A11.
"Intelligence
Break Led U.S. to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraqi Qaeda Cell,"
Patrick E. Tyler, NY Times, 2/6/03, .
"Alleged
Al Qaeda Ties Questioned," Walter Pincus, Washington
Post, 2/7/03, A21, .
"Split
at C.I.A. and F.B.I. on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda," James
Risen and David Johnston, NY Times, 2/1/03, .
"U.S. Probes al-Qaida Figure's Iraq
Moves," John J. Lumpkin, Associated Press, 2/1/03.
"Former Top Iraqi Scientist Says
Iraq Has No Nukes," Jeffrey Hodgson, Reuters, 2/3/03. Interview
with Iraqi former Iraqi nuclear expert now teaching in Canada.
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