Bush and Blair keep their nerve over Iraq Linda S. Heard

Opinion, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Bush and Blair keep their nerve over Iraq

Linda S. Heard

Special to Gulf News | 07-10-2003

If my father were still alive and keeping abreast with the latest on Iraq, he'd be shaking his head with disbelief and saying: "What a cheek!" He was a man who, to my knowledge, never told a lie or broke a promise and hated such duplicity in others.

Admittedly, we sometimes clashed over his rigid principles, but if today's US and British electorates were made up of sticklers for the truth like him, then the Bush-Blair combo wouldn't stand a chance.

Indeed, why are we going around trying to make excuses for them? Have we been so indoctrinated by the formerly supine mainstream media that we can't see the wood for the trees? Perhaps in this fast-moving world we don't have time to absorb and process the masses of information blasting from our television sets and throughout the web and so we rely on sound bites and headlines. Why weren't we so forgiving when it came to the comparatively minor transgressions of Bill Clinton?

In a nutshell, US President George W. Bush and his like-minded cabal, in partnership with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have used every trick within and without the book to dupe their respective publics into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat and had to be forcibly dealt with.

Look at the facts

Let's take a look at the facts. No weapons of mass destruction have been found, unless, of course, we want to count the one phial of botulin recently discovered in the home of an Iraqi scientist – a find it took some 1,200 US-appointed weapons inspectors, members of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) – to unearth at a cost of $300 million.

Did thesehighly-paid experts find any long-range missiles? How about the vast stocks of anthrax the servants of Bush and Blair described in detail along with their gory potential? Even Bush's claim that US forces had uncovered three mobile biological laboratories was refuted by the ISG, which reported that the trailers were unsuitable for biological weapons production.

The inspectors now want a further nine months to continue with their mission, ironic, indeed, when we recall that former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix was condemned for daring to ask for a fraction of that periodto complete his task.

NowFrance, Germany and Russia, which opposed the invasion,are being asked to support a United Nations Security Council resolution designed to provide the allies with cash andtroops in exchange for a token UN role in Iraq, that same international body, which, prior to the war, was chastised and ignored. What a cheek!

We know now that as far back as September 2000, a secret blueprint for US global domination had been drawn up by the neo-conservative think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) made up of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush among others.

The document titled "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century" states clearly: "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussain."

Democratic contender for the forthcoming US presidential election, General Wesley Clark, confirms that the philosophy of the PNAC was still alive and kicking just over a year later in his book entitled "The Clark Critique".

He writes: "I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, and one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. 'Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq', he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan."

We know that prior to the invasion Saddam had no connection with the terrorist attacks on the US but this common knowledge did not prevent the US administration from implying just the opposite when it found it politically expedient to do so.

On June 15, Wesley Clark told NBC anchor Tim Russert that the Bush White House had campaigned to implicate Hussain in the September 11 attacks – beginning on that tragic day.

Said Clark: "I got a call on 9-11… I got a call at my home (the caller) saying 'you have got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussain'. I said, 'But…I am willing to say it, but where is your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

The Bush administration, however, did receive evidence from former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson that claims Saddam was purchasing uranium from Niger were spurious long before Bush incorporated this unfounded slur in his State of the Union speech. When Wilson reported this glaring discrepancy, Bush was forced to retract the 16 erroneous words in his speech. Later, Wilson's wife was "outed" as being a CIA agent to the detriment of her career.

Maintaining the leak was deliberately orchestrated by Bush's advisor Karl Rove, Wilson believes that the "desire to implicate my wife in this was intended to intimidate others from coming forward".

Back in Britain, it is clear from the Hutton enquiry that similar murky methods were used by the Blair governmentto "out" and discredit Ministry of Defence weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, who fell foul of a government seeking to lend credence to Blair's "45 minutes" claim at any cost.

Undeterred, Robin Cook, who resigned his post as Foreign Secretary over the Iraq debacle, is now claiming in his new book that Blair knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction ready for use within 45 minutes. He writes that Blair privately admitted that Saddam had no weapons posing a "real and present danger".

Opposition challenges

Are detractors of the invasion such as Clark and Cook distorting the truth? Or should the veracity of the US and British governments be held up for scrutiny? With both governments facing opposition challenges shortly, it is up to the people to decide.

Richard Green, father of a British helicopter pilot killed in Iraq, has already decided. He wants Blair to stay away from a remembrance service for Britain's war dead next Friday claiming in Britain's Independent newspaper that the Prime Minister had lied to the nation about the need for war and was ultimately to blame for the death of his son. Other grieving relatives expressed similar sentiments. Said Green: "If I have a chance to meet him on Friday, I will tell him to his face." What a cheek! Or is it?

Both Bush and Blair appear impervious to criticism and unless the American and British publics stand up to be counted, it could happen again. As Robin Cook recently warned: "I don't discount the possibility that the neo-conservatives in Washington are planning another intervention. I think next time they come knocking on our door looking for support, they should get a different answer."

I know a good one: "What a bloomingcheek!"

The writer is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. The writer can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).