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. First, 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.
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