The Breakdown of a Lie\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Breakdown of a Lie\r\n<\/p>
Revolutionary Worker #1208, July 27, 2003<\/i>, \r\nposted at rwor.org<\/p>\r\n
In September 2002, the U.S. government started a campaign to whip up a war \r\nwith Iraq. When she was asked what \"smoking gun\" evidence the U.S. had against \r\nIraq, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice argued on September 8, \r\n2002: \"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.\" Such ominous \r\nphrases were repeated over and over for six months, including by Bush in his \r\nmajor Cincinnatti war speech.<\/p>\r\n
The fear of nuclear attack they generated is a major reason why some sections \r\nof people in the U.S. supported a war. In October 2002, Congress voted to give \r\nBush the power to launch his war. And, according to Time<\/i> magazine, over \r\n180 members of Congress explicitly cited the threat of Iraqi nuclear weapons as \r\na reason for their yes vote.<\/p>\r\n
The charges were a lie. In March 2003, just before the U.S. invasion started, \r\nUN inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the only \r\npublic \"evidence\" for the charge that Iraq had tried to buy raw uranium was \r\ncrude cut-and-paste forgeries riddled with factual errors. Someone<\/i> \r\nmanufactured \"evidence\" to suggest that Iraq was buying raw uranium \"yellow \r\ncake\" from the African country of Niger--and the British and American \r\ngovernments were using<\/i> these forgeries to justify their war plans. Most \r\npeople did not notice the exposure of this forgery--it was reported in the small \r\nprint of the mainstream media. And meanwhile the general public was fed a river \r\nof war hype and hysteria.<\/p>\r\n
But now, after the war, it is hard for the U.S. government to hide that they \r\nhave not been able to produce any sign of these alleged weapons. And so there \r\nare mounting questions around the world, especially in Britain, about all the \r\nclaims of \"evidence\" and \"certainty\" about danger from Iraq. The scandal is \r\nthreatening to topple Britain's Prime Minister Blair.<\/p>\r\n
On July 6, a career U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson IV revealed in a prominent \r\npiece in the New York Times<\/i> editorial pages that he had traveled to Niger \r\nin February 2002 to investigate this claim of Iraqi uranium purchases. He \r\nreported to his superiors (including Vice President Cheney) that \"it was highly \r\ndoubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.\"<\/p>\r\n
Niger is an African neocolony heavily dominated by France. Among the things \r\nWilson reported is that Niger's uranium is tightly controlled by a foreign \r\n\"consortium\" that includes representatives from Germany, France, and Japan. No \r\nnegotiations for raw uranium yellow cake could have gone down without their \r\nknowledge.<\/p>\r\n
The day after Wilson's column blew the whistle, the Bush White House had to \r\nadmit (finally, reluctantly) that the Niger charges were false. And after they \r\nadmitted it was untrue, they quickly started saying it really didn't matter, and \r\nperhaps it really was true.<\/p>\r\n
On July 13, Condoleeza Rice said, \"It is unfortunate that this one sentence, \r\nthis sixteen words, remained in the State of the Union. But this in no way has \r\nany effect on the president's larger case about Iraqi efforts to reconstitute \r\nthe nuclear program and, most importantly, the bigger picture of Iraq's \r\nweapons-of-mass-destruction program.\"<\/p>\r\n
In fact, there is<\/i> no \"larger case\" documenting Iraqi nuclear efforts. \r\nThe Bush team inserted the Niger charge and the aluminum tube fantasies into \r\ntheir speeches because they had nothing else<\/i> , and because hyping nuclear \r\nfears seemed the single most<\/i> potent argument to convince many people to \r\nsupport the war.<\/p>\r\n
After insisting they had hard reliable \"evidence\" (before the war), they are \r\nnow reduced to lame and unbelievable \"maybes.\" British Prime Minister Blair \r\nliterally made the British parliament gasp when he recently argued that his \r\nNiger charges are \"not beyond the bounds of possibility.\" Secretary of State \r\nPowell tried a similar argument, saying that Bush's claims about Iraqi \r\nnegotiating were, at the time, \"not totally outrageous.\" ( CBS News<\/i> , \r\nJuly 12)<\/p>\r\n
Bush's own attempt at a defense has been to say the intelligence he receives \r\nis \"darn good\"--which, we assume, is between \"kinda good\" and \"really really \r\ngood.\"<\/p>\r\n
Now, each day of scandal is producing new details about who in the government \r\nwas involved in creating a web of lies about Iraq. Top U.S. officials were, one \r\nafter another, month after month, making speeches charging Iraq with making \r\nnukes. Meanwhile, we now know, U.S. intelligence experts were reporting behind \r\nthe scene that such charges were almost certainly not true.<\/p>\r\n
All this is building as a controversy inside<\/i> the ruling class. The \r\nissue (in their<\/i> inner- ruling class family feud) is whether this war was \r\nhandled right, and whether the people in charge are being careful enough with \r\nso-called \"presidential credibility.\"<\/p>\r\n
One after another, Democratic senators who supported<\/i> the war now \r\ntimidly ask, How did such an obviously false statement about African uranium \r\nmake it into a Presidential State of the Union speech?<\/p>\r\n
Meanwhile the question of whether this war was \"justified\" is being gently \r\nhandled with kid gloves. The Democratic senators carefully repeat that they \r\nstill support both the war and the occupation -- and think it all was justified. \r\nAnd they carefully avoid the word \"lie\" (referring instead to \"errors\" and \r\n\"exaggerations\").<\/p>\r\n
They ask: Who pressured the intelligence services to accept that questionable \r\ncharge in Bush's speech? And they say that, since (in their<\/i> shamelessly \r\npro-war view) this attack on Iraq was well justified, why<\/i> did someone in \r\npower think it was necessary to exaggerate?<\/p>\r\n
Well, in fact, those questions themselves<\/i> are a coverup for this war \r\nand this government-- because the answer to those questions is well documented \r\nand should be rather obvious. The U.S. government lied about reasons for \r\nattacking Iraq because it could not have mobilized support for the war based on \r\nits real motives.<\/p>\r\nLooking over a War Campaign Based on Lies\r\n
\"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass \r\ndestruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.\"<\/i><\/p>\r\n
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul \r\nWolfowitz, Vanity Fair<\/i> , July 2003<\/p>\r\n
The clique around President Bush argued for conquering Iraq for over a \r\ndecade--since 1992 when it became clear that Saddam Hussein was not going to be \r\noverthrown by a military coup after Iraq's defeat in the first Gulf War.<\/p>\r\n
Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and his top \r\nassistant Paul Wolfowitz had planned and lobbied for that war inside the ruling \r\nclass. When the ruling class put these men in supreme power in 2001, and when \r\nthe September 11 attacks happened, they got their chance to carry out their \r\nstrategic plans.<\/p>\r\n
But to win public<\/i> support for this attack on Iraq, they needed to make \r\nthe broad public in the U.S. believe the invasion was an act of defense. They \r\nhad to turn reality upside-down--convince the world that Iraq was about to \r\nattack the U.S., when in fact this U.S. government was preparing to attack Iraq. \r\nThey had to portray Iraq as strong and belligerent, when in reality its military \r\nwas weak and besieged.<\/p>\r\n
\"They just cut the toes to fit the shoes,\" as the saying goes. They lied.<\/p>\r\n
When the Bush government started its public campaign for war, in the summer \r\nof 2002, it claimed over and over that Saddam Hussein could use incredibly \r\npowerful weapons to devastate the U.S. In particular, they had to claim he \r\nprobably had nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons (i.e., the famous \r\n\"weapons of mass destruction\"--WMD)--and that he had the means of delivering \r\nsuch weapons to U.S. soil (including especially \"links to terrorists\" like \r\nal-Qaeda). In fact, many of their charges were not true. And the essence of \r\ntheir case was a Big Lie. (A detailed analysis of these lies is in the four-part\r\nRW<\/i> series \"Lies the Government Told Us,\" available online at\r\n\r\nrwor.org\/resistance.)<\/p>\r\n
The Iraqi government had tried to develop various modern weapons systems in \r\nthe past. It was (and still is) possible that the Iraqi military had some \r\nrudimentary stockpiles or raw ingredients left over from such weapons programs.<\/p>\r\n
But the truth is that Iraq was never<\/i> a serious real-world threat to \r\nthe U.S. \"homeland\"--and had not threatened any neighbor for over a decade. Iraq \r\nhad been seriously weakened by defeat in 1991 and by a decade of brutal \r\nsanctions. It had been inspected by hostile teams sent by the UN, and many kinds \r\nof weapons had been publicly destroyed. And everyone watching (including U.S. \r\nintelligence and UN inspectors) knew that Iraq now lacked major components for \r\ncreating and deploying WMDs.<\/p>\r\n
For example, even if Iraq had gotten uranium yellow cake from Niger, it \r\nlacked the massive and sophisticated factories needed to turn raw materials into \r\nbomb components.<\/p>\r\n
But the U.S. government needed<\/i> people to be afraid of Iraq, so they \r\nlied about Iraq's nuclear program. And, as we have documented in these pages, \r\nthey lied about every detail of their \"case\" when they claimed they had \r\n\"evidence\" of significant chemical or biological stockpiles. British Prime \r\nMinister Blair lied when he claimed that the Iraqi military could launch such \r\nweapons \"in 45 minutes.\" And, in particular, they lied about nukes: Iraq had no \r\ncredible nuclear weapons program, no nuclear bomb material, and certainly no \r\nbomb.<\/p>\r\n
The U.S. had zero evidence that Iraq was building nukes, so they crudely \r\ninvented some. Bush promoted the phony Niger claims. Both Bush and Powell \r\nclaimed that some orders for aluminum tubes (designed for mortar-like \r\nbattlefield launchers) had to be for some non-existent nuclear centrifuge that \r\ncould turn yellow cake into enriched uranium. They all lied about the Iraqi \r\nability to \"deliver\" weapons.<\/p>\r\nRagged Cover-ups\r\n
\"It is 16 words, and it has become an enormously overblown issue.\"<\/i><\/p>\r\n
Condoleezza Rice, White House \r\nNational Security Adviser, CNN, July 13<\/p>\r\n
\"The President of the United States is not a fact-checker.\"<\/i><\/p>\r\n
Senior administration official \r\nspeaking to reporters, July 18<\/p>\r\n
As their \"case for war\" unravels, the question is being asked: \"What did the \r\nPresident know, and when did he know it?\" The White House has responded with a \r\nblizzard of lame excuses.<\/p>\r\n
The latest argument is that Bush just wasn't paying close attention to \r\nevidence--he isn't (it is said) some detail-oriented \"fact-checker.\" Apparently, \r\nif Bush didn't bother to study his own arguments for war, no one should blame \r\nhim for mouthing lies approved by others.<\/p>\r\n
CIA Director Tenet then announced he<\/i> was responsible for not \r\nforcefully insisting that the Niger charges be removed from the president's \r\nJanuary speech. But it is leaking out that Tenet's \"confession\" is just a ploy \r\nto protect the top war planners, like Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney, who knew \r\nperfectly well the Niger claims were baseless. Tenet reportedly told senators \r\nthat the White House insisted<\/i> the lie be inserted, despite the evidence \r\nthat it was false.<\/p>\r\n
Meanwhile, government partisans in the media claim that Bush's statement can \r\nbe seen as \"technically true\"--since he said that \"the British government<\/i> \r\nhas learned...\" It is the same \"Clintonian parsing of words\" that Republicans \r\nsay was proof of a government without any \"moral core.\"<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
The U.S. government has declared their right to launch wars \"pre-emptively\" \r\nand even secretly without giving reasons. Going to war, they say, does not have \r\nto be based on anything a country has actually done --<\/i> but can be based \r\non U.S. \"intelligence claims\" of about foreign motives and potential threats.<\/p>\r\n
But now the world can see that all their talk of \"darn good intelligence\" is \r\njust the name for useful lies. They invented<\/i> a justification for an \r\nunjust war. Hyped fears of attack from Iraq were intended to build public \r\nsupport for war--and among some sections of the people it did. And these war \r\nmakers fully intend to cover up this scandal--all the better to make new threats \r\nand launch new wars. Everyone, including especially those who were hoodwinked \r\nand manipulated by these worldclass liars, need to look closely at the facts and \r\nmake sure they can't be fooled again.<\/p>\r\n
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