© the eyeranian

Their New Gameplan

I love reading the stuff conservative columnists put out there. It gives you a pretty good idea as to what the neocons next "game" is going to be about. Jeff Jacoby of Boston Globe for example recently wrote a very interesting piece, called "Where's the smoking gun?". Although at first it may sound like he is questioning the rationale used by the Washington hawks to start a war (and open a huge can of worms) in Iraq, it is actually a piece to the contrary. Jacoby's basic argument can be summed up this way; so what if we never find any WMD's in Iraq or that they may have actually been honest about destroying what they had. As he says: "It was not to find a ''smoking gun'' that the United States went to war. It was to crush one of the bloodiest tyrannies the modern world has known." (continued...)

American politicians are very lucky. Lucky that their constituents have very brief attention spans and short memories. Wasn't it our Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell that addressed the United Nation's Security Council in an attempt to gain their approval of this invasion based on Iraq's violation of Resolution 1441, a resolution to "disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction"? First he played the tape of "two senior officers" discussing how to hide their WMD's. The he claimed "We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities." He even showed satellite pictures of a "weapons munitions factory" and even "chemical bunkers", these were bunkers that "indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions" equipped with everything including "decontamination vehicles" (where did the vehicles go?). He then quoted unknown sources to clain existance of "mobile production facilities". There was also modified "aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets" filmed while spraying "2,000 liters of simulated anthrax" as well as "spray tanks to be mounted onto a MiG-2". Let's not forget "chemical complex called "Al Musayyib", many with pictures and/or video and audio tapes.

Powell then moved to "weaponry": "550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents." and "6500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq War". 25,000 liters of Anthrax and "four tons of the deadly nerve agent VX". Powell also said ""Our conservative estimate is that Iraq has stockpiles of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent ... enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets" and "equipment that can filter and separate microorganisms and toxins involved in biological weapons; equipment that can be used to concentrate the agent; growth media that can be used to continue producing anthrax and botulinum toxin; sterilization equipment for laboratories; glass-lined reactors and specialty pumps that can handle corrosive chemical weapons agents and precursors; large amounts of thionyl chloride, a precursor for nerve and blister agents; and other chemicals such as sodium sulfide, an important mustard agent precursor." The list went on.

Then came the nuclear weapons (!!) and a very scary slide to show the range of his missiles. Not the ones he has, but the ones he may develop. The ones that could easily reach Israel (oh no!), test facilities,  his "unmanned aerial vehicles", and of course Iraq's connection to terrorists, particularly Al-Qaeda operatives. and on and on and on...

So, where are all these equipment, weapons, tankers full of nasty stuff, sprayer tankers, decontamination vehicles, modified planes, chemical bunkers and factories? Apparently we can't find them! With all our "solid sources", satellite pictures and sophisticated equipment, we haven't been able to find a fraction of all this. Sounds strange and the hawks know it too. Accordingly the campaign to downplay all these accusations has already started. Jacoby's article is just another piece of this carefully crafted public relations campaign to muddy the waters and hide the deception we were all sold.

As if Powell knew it back then already he tried several times during his address to gain some credibility. Reminded me of when as a kid we'd swear to anything, as long as we knew it may prevent a parent's fury. This is him, doing just that: "Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries." and then "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources". Doesn't he already sound like a liar?

Well, he probably is.

Read the following exchange from the Nightline with Ted Koppel television show, with Koppel interviewing James Woolsey, ex-chief of the CIA (with some possible role in the new Iraq administration??) on this very topic:

TED KOPPEL: The only problem I have with the, the nexus among those, those three categories that you cite is that one of the categories, which would seem to be the most important one, the weapons of mass destruction, hasn't yet materialized.

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, I think we have to realize that the weapons of mass destruction that they find could be a few petri dishes. We've never been looking in this case for things, big things like nuclear reactors. It's all canisters of VX nerve gas or vials of anthrax. And the only way we're ever going to find this, since most of anything that's left is almost certainly buried very secretly, is by what we tried to get Hans Blix to do and he never did, question people who were engaged in the program, the weapons programs.

TED KOPPEL: When you talk, Mr. Woolsey, as you do, about the odd petri dish here or there, that's not quite consistent with that compelling argument that the Secretary of State made before the UN Security Council where, indeed, he was talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of this material that was out there. Where is it?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, that was all indicated by the inspectors in 1998. Because, they had evidence based on Saddam's, on the biological weapons program, Saddam's son-in-law's defection, the son-in-law that he eventually killed, of manufacture of thousands of liters of anthrax and other, weapons.

TED KOPPEL: But as you remember, the Secretary of State was making a compelling argument that this wasn't just based on old information, that we had fresh information that indicated that that material existed. Where is it?

JAMES WOOLSEY: We had current evidence of several French trucks that had been turned into biological weapons laboratories. Much of this may have been destroyed in the days, at the beginning of the war. That one can't change history but one probably can find evidence of what still exists, which I imagine is some of the weapons and what they destroyed and how they destroyed it. I think this will come out as we get access to more and more of these scientists and technicians who were part of the program.

TED KOPPEL: If indeed it turns out that the weapons either did not exist or were destroyed before the war began, should there be a trace of embarrassment? Or does the new justification serve anyway?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Not at all. I think there will be evidence that there were substantial biological and chemical weapons stocks, some after '98 and before the war. And exactly when they were destroyed, possibly right at the beginning of the war, I think shouldn't affect this at all. I think that it is, I think the Administration deserves credit in this for being pretty careful about what they said. And the Secretary of State's presentation before the Security Council was a careful presentation. If the Iraqis destroyed much of that in the opening days of the war, so be it. We'll find some evidence to that effect.

What do you think?

Posted by Pedram at April 28, 2003 10:20 PM