Foreign Correspondent
INSIDE TRACK ON WORLD NEWS
by international syndicated columnist & broadcaster Eric Margolis

Feb. 10, 2003

NEW YORK - US Secretary of State Colin Powell used the UN Security Council here last week to make Washington's case for war against Iraq. The widely respected Powell delivered a weighty indictment based on a mosaic of circumstantial evidence obtained by US intelligence.

Powell's indictment in the court of world opinion encouraged those favoring war. Skeptics dismissed it as a farrago of dubious claims. A good defense attorney would have had most of Powell's charges thrown out of court. Most of his evidence of Iraq's `crimes' would never have stood up to a rigorous cross-examination.

France, Germany, Russia and China concluded Powell's indictment showed the need for stronger, continued inspections rather than war.

Powell's charges:

• Recorded conversations - Iraqi officers discussing removal of a `modified vehicle' and deleting references to nerve gas from documents. If genuine, and not spliced, these radio intercepts suggest Iraq may have been hiding some biowarfare arms, or was racing to eliminate any residues or evidence of its 1980's weapons program in advance of UN inspections. Considering the US military loses tens of millions of weapons and supplies each year, and the US Los Alamos nuclear center has misplaced large amounts of nuclear materials, it's not implausible that Iraq lost track of bits and pieces of chemical arms scattered about, such as the empty 122mm rockets recently discovered in a bunker, that escaped its UN-mandated inventory.

• Satellite imagery - Ammunition storage bunkers which Powell claimed were used for chemical weapons that were moved out prior to inspection. But UN inspectors examined them and found nothing suspicious. `Sniffers' used by inspectors can detect the past presence of chemical and biological weapons. Nice photos but not very convincing.

• The infamous mobile biological weapons labs mounted on trucks - aka `Saddam's vans of death.' Powell claimed defectors reported there were 18 cruising around Iraq. Defector information is always suspect. UN chief arms inspector Hans Blix said his men had examined some of the `death trucks' and found they were, in fact, mobile food testing labs.

• Powell alleged 100-400 tons of chemical agents, including four tons of VX nerve gas, and some of its biological weapons, were still unaccounted for. A delicate question: in the 1980's, the US quietly supplied Iraq with nearly all its feeder stocks for biological weapons, notably anthrax, botulism, and Q-fever. British technicians secretly fabricated Iraq's biological weapons - for use against Iran, of course.

  The missing biowarfare agents remains a major question. Iraq says it destroyed them, but lacks proper documentation. They may be hidden. But most were made 17-20 years ago, and may be degraded or inert from age. Nerve gas and germs are weapons of mass destruction. Mustard gas, the bulk of Iraq's chemical weapons, is not, being no more lethal than napalm or the fuel air explosive the US and Russia are using extensively in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

• Powell's claims Iraq was developing nuclear weapons were weak. UN nuclear inspectors have repeatedly contradicted US claims. They concluded the notorious aluminum tubes Powell claimed were for uranium-enrichment centrifuges where actually conventional 122mm rocket artillery casings.

  No mention was made that Iraq obtained its nuclear technology in the early 1980's from South Africa, which had obtained it from Israel.

• According to UN Resolution 687 after the Gulf War, Iraq is permitted missiles with 150km range. The US charges Iraq is testing missiles that have flown 14-20 kms further. This is nothing unusual when testing a new propellant system. Powell also accused Iraq of developing a 1,200-km missile that could reach Israel, based on photos of an enlarged test stand. Iraq may have a dozen or so old Scud missiles hidden away. Nothing, in short, that could remotely threaten the US. Photos of an Iraqi Mirage F1 spraying some substance strongly suggests attempts were made to develop a battlefield biological or chemical weapon, though the project went nowhere.

• Iraq is dragging its feet on private interviews of its nuclear scientists, Powell charged. True. Hawks in the Bush Administration and Israel say the only way to ensure Iraq never builds strategic weapons is to jail or kill all of its 10,000 military scientists and technicians - who also face the wrath of Saddam if they appear to turn over incriminating evidence.

• Powell claimed he had proof positive Iraq was linked to al-Qaida through Ansar al-Islam, a small, 600-man Islamist group in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq (not under Saddam's control), and through a `deadly terrorist network' led by one Abu Musa al-Zarqawi. The first charge was immediately dismissed by Ansar's leader, Mullah Krekar, a longtime, bitter foe of Saddam Hussein. Zarqawi turned out to be an unknown nobody, not on any FBI wanted list. His name came from suspects being tortured in Jordan. Most reputable experts on terrorism scoffed at Powell's overblown charges. But the Bush Administration has managed to convince - or mislead - a majority of Americans into believing that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks.

Sitting silently behind Powell was CIA chief George Tenet. His agency has directly contradicted White House claims that Iraq had nuclear capability and posed an imminent threat to the US or anyone else. In a recent article, former CIA Iraq desk chief Stephen Pelletiere debunked false claims, repeated by Bush and Powell, that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish citizens, a key American charge against Saddam Hussein.

Note: America's two most recent major wars - Vietnam and the Gulf - began with release of faked `intelligence' information: North Vietnam's nonexistent attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, and doctored photos of a non-existent Iraqi invasion buildup on the Saudi border in 1990, which panicked the Saudis into admitting and permanently basing US troops in their kingdom.

A neutral observer might have concluded the US was exaggerating scrapes of uncorroborated information, while Iraq was trying to appear cooperative while still probably hiding some of its most sensitive military secrets.

Polls show most people around the globe remain skeptical of Powell's charges. Starting a war that could kill tens of thousands on the basis of vague audio intercepts, photos of empty buildings, and defector's tales makes no sense. Further inspections, not war, is the right answer.