http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1140.shtml
Focus on Iraq: Powell's UN speech dissected
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 5 February 2003
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.
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.