April 17, 2003
LONDON - A California superior court judge sent me the following quotation, which is well worth pondering.
`We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we most not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.'
This declaration was made by US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, America's senior representative at the 1945 Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the tribunal's chief prosecutor.
Those now exulting America's conquest of Iraq should ponder Judge Jackson's majestic words. Particularly now that the Anglo-American justifications for invading Iraq are being revealed as lies or distortions.
Every nook and cranny of Iraq are yet to be searched, but so far nothing incriminating has been discovered to validate lurid claims made by George Bush and Tony Blair. Let's review the big ones:
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President Bush: `The Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.' Iraq, Bush warned, was intent on attacking the US. Fact: `no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq' - Mohamed el-Baradei, chief of the UN nuclear weapons inspection agency (IAEA). March 2003. The same for gas and germs.
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Secretary of State Colin Powell's claims made before the UN, backed up by a dossier from British Intelligence, that Washington and London had a long list of sites in Iraq containing weapons of mass destruction (wmd's). When inspected by the UN, and, later, by US troops, none contained any wmd's. Part of London's damning dossier on Iraq was revealed to have been plagiarized from a ten-year old graduate thesis.
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`Iraq is trying to procure uranium,' thundered Colin Powell at the UN. `Iraq building nuclear weapons' trumpeted US media. Washington and London claimed Iraq imported yellowcake uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons. In March, 2003, UN experts concluded the documents purportedly confirming the uranium sales were `not authentic' and, in fact, `crude fabrications.' One veteran intelligence agent told me the documents were `laughable' and a plant by those seeking war against Iraq.
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The notorious aluminium tubes. Bush: `Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminium tubes for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.' The uranium to be enriched was, of course, the same fictitious uranium from Niger. Fact: UN inspectors found the tubes were for short-ranged, 81mm artillery rockets.
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Iraq was an ally of al-Qaida. No terrorist links have so far been found. Just a retired Palestinian thug, Abu Abbas. The notorious Ansar al-Islam `terror and poison camp' turned out to be mud huts occupied by motley Islamists who regularly denounced bin Laden.
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The mobile germ warfare trucks — aka `Winnebagoes of Death' — Powell warned about turned out to be mobile food inspection labs. Iraq's `drones of death' that Bush actually claimed with a straight face might fly off ships to attack the US with pestilence were, on inspection, two rickety model airplanes, only one of which was able to fly a few kilometers.
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The Bush Administration concealed from Americans that in 1995 Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, had told UNSCOM (then UN arms inspection agency for Iraq) and CIA that he had personally supervised destruction of all of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons (mostly supplied by the US and Britain in the 1980's). Gen. Kamel was head of Iraq's strategic weapons program. Glen Rangwala, of Camridge University, who exposed London's plagiarized Iraq dossier, obtained the transcript of the Kamel interview.
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Saddam's brutal rule justified invasion. But why was it acceptable when Saddam was a US ally in the 1980's, but not today? What about all the other nasty dictatorships Washington supports?
And so it went. A torrent of lies and propaganda deceiving Americans into believing Iraq was armed to the teeth with wmd's, somehow responsible for 9/11, and intending, as Bush repeatedly claimed, to attack the US. UN inspectors found no wmd's. So far, neither have US occupation forces.
No nukes. No poison gas and dispersing systems. No Scud missiles. No al-Qaida camps. Just lots of palaces filled with hideous Mesopotamian baroque furniture and a ruined, destitute nation. The US has refused to re-admit UN inspectors to Iraq. Two teams of US intelligence specialists are sifting through the wreckage of Iraq.
Cynics suspect the US will shortly `discover' a smoking gun to justify the invasion, even if one must be created. Otherwise, why would the US refuse to allow UN inspectors to join the hunt? Doing so would authenticate any future US claims.
No one, least of all this writer who spent much harrowing time in Iraq under Saddam's brutal, sinister, megalodespotism, mourns him. But in its lust to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration, and Tony Blair, deeply discredited their own nation's moral standing, credibility, and democratic ideals by outrageously misleading their own people and whipping them into mass hysteria to justify an imperial war.
Foreign Correspondent