This time I'm scared: US propaganda fuelled the first Gulf war. It will fuel
this one too - and the risks are even greater
Maggie O'Kane
Thursday December 5, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,854148,00.html
I have a picture from the last Gulf war. It was taken in the basement of the Al
Rashid hotel, the night the war started. The look on my face is one you might
expect of a 28-year-old reporter at the centre of one of the biggest stories of
my lifetime: earnest, excited and thrilled to be in Baghdad.
Eleven years later, I'm on maternity leave and the news of an impending second
Gulf war follows me around the kitchen. This time, I feel only a sense of
intense danger as the Middle East lurches towards a possible chemical and
biological war.
The chances of Saddam Hussein using chemical and biological weapons if attacked
are, according to the testimony of the CIA to the US Senate intelligence
committee on October 7, pretty high - a scenario that even one of greatest
hawks in US history, Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to
George Bush senior, says would lead to meltdown in the Middle East. As of
December 7, when Iraq is expected to produce its definitive dossier, there
should be no illusions: no matter what Baghdad discloses, America and almost
certainly Britain are going to war. The material breach, if it does not
happen by itself, will be manufactured, so wringing consent for the second Gulf
war just as consent was manufactured with breathtaking cynicism in 1991.
There were two glaring examples of how the propaganda machine worked before the
first Gulf war. First, in the final days before the war started on January 9,
the Pentagon insisted that not only was Saddam Hussein not withdrawing from
Kuwait - he was - but that he had 265,000 troops poised in the desert to pounce
on Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon claimed to have satellite photographs to prove
it. Thus, the waverers and anti-war protesters were silenced.
We now know from declassified documents and satellite photographs taken by a
Russian commercial satellite that there were no Iraqi troops poised to attack
Saudi. At the time, no one bothered to ask for proof.
No one except Jean Heller, a five-times nominated Pulitzer prize-winning
journalist from the St Petersburg Times in Florida, who persuaded her bosses to
buy two photos at $1,600 each from the Russian commercial satellite, the Soyuz
Karta. Guess what? No massing troops. You could see the planes sitting wing
tip to wing tip in Riyadh airport, Ms Heller says, but there wasn't was any
sign of a quarter of a million Iraqi troops sitting in the middle of the
desert. So what will the fake satellite pictures show this time: a massive
chemical installation with Iraqi goblins cooking up anthrax?
The US propaganda machine is already gearing up. In its sights already is Hans
Blix, the chief weapons inspector. He's too much of a softie for Saddam, the
former CIA director James Wolsey told the Today programme last week. His work
is of limited value. He was Kofi Annan's second choice.
What next? Blix's granny is Iraqi? He has a drugs problem?
Meanwhile, in Britain, Jack Straw's new human rights dossier on Iraq is timed
to coincide with the build-up. Convenient, eh? The second tactic used to get
consensus for war in 1991 was another propaganda classic: dead babies. Then,
the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington, Nijirah al-Sabah,
tearfully described how, as a volunteer in the Al Adnan hospital in Kuwait
City, she had watched Iraqi soldiers looting incubators to take back to
Baghdad, pitching the Kuwaiti babies on to the cold floor to die.
Except it never happened. The Filipina nurses, Frieda Construe-Nag and Myra
Ancog Cooke, who worked in the maternity ward of the Al Adnan hospital, had
never seen Ms al-Sabah in their lives. Amnesty admitted they had been duped.
Middle East Watch confirmed the fabrication, but it was too late: a marginal US
Congress had been swung to vote for war. George Bush senior mentioned the
incubator babies seven times in pre-war rallying speeches. It was months
before the truth came out. By then, the war was over.
This time, we have yet to see what propaganda will be used to rally consensus
for the second Gulf war by proving a material breach. It is highly likely
that Saddam Hussein maintains at least some chemical and biological capacity.
In a war in which his own survival is unlikely (and already rumoured to be ill
with cancer) Saddam Hussein has nothing to lose. If he knows his fall is
imminent, what terrible legacy might he choose to leave behind? What better
present to his extremist Arab brothers than an attack on Israel? And how will
the US, Britain or Israel respond if their troops or cities come under chemical
or biological attack?
I n 1995, the Washington-based Defense News reported on the outcome of the then
highly classified Global 95 Wargame, a high-level military exercise enacted at
the US Naval
