Bush Admin Tore 8,000 Pages Out Of Iraq
WMD Report By James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot The Sunday Herald -
UK 12-22-2
- The United States edited out more than 8000 crucial
pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a
sanitised version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations
security council.
-
- The full extent of Washington's complete control over
who sees what in the crucial Iraqi dossier calls into question the
allegations made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that 'omissions'
in the document constituted a 'material breach' of the latest UN
resolution on Iraq.
-
- Last week, Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan
accepted that it was 'unfortunate' that his organisation had allowed the
US to take the only complete dossier and edit it. He admitted 'the
approach and style were wrong' and Norway, a member of the security
council, says it is being treated like a 'second-class country'.
-
- Although Powell called the Iraqi dossier a 'catalogue
of recycled information and flagrant omissions', the non-permanent
members of the security council will have no way of testing the US
claims for themselves. This will be crucial if the US and the UK go back
to the security council seeking explicit authorisation for war on Iraq
if breaches of resolution 1441 are confirmed when the weapons inspectors
-- this weekend investigating 10 sites in Iraq, including an oil
refinery south of Baghdad -- deliver their report to the UN next
month.
-
- A UN source in New York said: 'The questions being
asked are valid. What did the US take out? And if weapons inspectors are
supposed to be checking against the dossier's content, how can any
future claim be verified. In effect the US is saying trust us, and there
are many who just will not.'
-
- Current and former UN diplomats are said to be livid
at what some have called the 'theft' of the Iraqi document by the US.
Hans von Sponeck, the former assistant general secretary of the UN and
the UN's humanitarian co- ordinator in Iraq until 2000, said: 'This is
an outrageous attempt by the US to mislead.'
-
- Although the five permanent members of the security
council -- the US, the UK, France, China and Russia -- have had access
to the complete version, there was agreement that the US be allowed to
edit the dossier on the ground that its contents were 'risky' in terms
of security on weapons proliferation.
-
- Yesterday, US President George W Bush announced that a
planned trip to several African countries, scheduled for January, had
been cancelled. As he gave the go-ahead to double the current 50,000 US
troops deployed in the Gulf by early January, he used his weekly radio
address to say that 'the men and women in the [US] military, many of
whom will spend Christmas at posts and bases far from home' were the
only thing that stood between 'Americans and grave danger'.
-
- An equally pessimistic view of the immediate future
came from the Vatican. Pope John Paul II promised the Catholic church
would not cease to have its voice heard and would offer prayers 'in the
face of this horizon bathed in blood'.
-
- Despite the prayers, the US military isn't expecting
peace. Yesterday, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs
of staff, was asked if US forces were ready if called upon immediately.
General Myers simply said: 'You bet.'
-
- The language coming from Baghdad was equally gung ho.
The Iraqi newspaper Babel, owned by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday,
likened US and UK political leaders to ruthless Mongol conquerors of the
past.
-
|
The Mulindwas
communication group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in
anarchy"
|