------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 20, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
WAR, LIES AND AUDIOTAPE By Fred Goldstein With millions around the world expected to take to the streets on the weekend of Feb. 15-16 in the growing movement against a war on Iraq, the Bush administration is waging a carefully orchestrated, full-scale campaign to overcome the opposition. The latest phase began with Gen. Colin Powell's presentation of unsubstantiated accusations, falsifications and distortions at the UN Security Council on Feb. 5. Then came the "Code Orange" scare announced by Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge. Next came the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet about the growing threat of terrorism at home and the link between Al-Qaeda and the government in Iraq. This was topped off by a government-encouraged media barrage about an alleged new Osama bin Laden audiotape. Each segment was punctuated by aggressive assertions by Bush. In Secretary of State Powell's performance, much acclaimed by the big business media, he repeatedly cited unnamed sources, pointed to photographs and drawings that showed nothing, and made assertions that contradicted the findings of the UN inspection teams headed by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei. To top it off, Powell offered as "evidence" the findings of a special British "intelligence report" that it was soon discovered had been plagiarized from a British postgraduate student's 1990 article in the Middle East Review of International Studies and two other articles in Jane's Weekly. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer on the faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University, gave a preliminary analysis of Powell's speech. Powell had showed photos of the al-Taji munitions facility with a small shed and a truck adjacent to the bunker, claiming they were a "signature item" for chemical bunkers. This is "wholly implausible," pointed out Rangwala, "because a picture of a truck and a shed reveal nothing about the contents of the adjacent bunker." (www.casi.org.uk) Powell played an audiotape that he said was a conversation between Iraq officials about covering up nerve agents According to Rangwala, the person said, "remove the expression nerve agent," referring to a report, not to nerve agents themselves. Powell spoke of tons of the chemical VX now in Iraq that could fall into the hands of terrorists. Iraq admitted in 1995 that it had produced 3.9 tons of VX before the Gulf War, but said it had since unilaterally destroyed the 1.5 tons that remained. UNSCOM inspectors have visited the sites where Iraq said it disposed of the chemical and reported in January 1999 that "traces of VX were found in samples taken from the sites." It found no evidence of any recent production. According to an International Institute of Strategic Studies dossier of September 2002, "Any VX produced by Iraq before 1991 is likely to have decomposed over the past decade." Powell based his claim that Iraq has produced missiles with a range greater than 1,000 kilometers on development at the al-Rafah/Shahiyat liquid-propellant engine static test stand. "These sites have repeatedly been visited by UNMOVIC inspection teams since the very first day of inspections," says Rangwala, and the UNMOVIC report of January 2003 stated the site was "still abandoned." Powell's claim that Iraq has mobile biological weapons production facilities was based upon the testimony of a defector, Adnan Saeed al- Haideri, who never mentioned such facilities in his first press conference in December 2001. He only did so after a debriefing by the U.S. and a three-week debriefing by a representative of the Iraqi National Congress, the puppet exile organization being promoted by the Pentagon. Many of the sites named by al-Haideri were inspected and found not to contain weapons. There are numerous other examples in this preliminary critique that show Pow ell's speech to be completely fraudulent. But this did not stop the monolithic media machine from reading from the script about how Powell "made his case," "hit a home run," "was quite convincing," etc., etc, ad nauseam. Commentators on all the networks and cable channels, as well as the editorial page writers, ignored the fact that the presentation was based entirely upon the unsubstantiated assertions of an imperialist government official whose obvious task was to manipulate public opinion in order to smooth the increasingly bumpy road to war. U.S. IN OPEN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW To be sure, the U.S. government, as well as all the states that collaborate in the so-called "disarmament" of Iraq, are violating the fundamental right of a formerly colonial people to self-determination, sovereignty and the right of self-defense against imperialist intervention. The U.S. government, by attempting to overthrow the Iraqi government, is openly violating international law, the UN Charter, as well as the right of a people to be free of imperialist oppression. It would make perfect sense for the Iraqis to maintain whatever defense capability they could hold on to in the face of the extraordinary threat that they are now under. But the repeated claims by the U.S. war makers that somehow the people of the world have to fear Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is nothing but a big lie. It is in the same vein that the Code Orange and the scare testimony by the FBI and CIA should be viewed. This is not about truth. It is not about facts. It is about creating war hysteria. Whether the Osama bin Laden tape is authentic or not, Powell knew about it and departed from previous government policy by encouraging the networks to broadcast it. This switch in government policy is based on the calculation that, since the speech was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Washington could claim ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. By implication, Hussein would be linked to Sept. 11 or to a future attack. Powell, having read a transcript of the tape, knew that the speaker, presumably bin Laden, denounces Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party as "socialists." But he was relying on the media machine to minimize this detail and find a way to further demonize the Iraqi leader by association with bin Laden. This has become a propaganda trump card for an administration desperate to bolster the sinking support for its unprovoked war of aggression against the Iraqi people. In fact, in his testimony Feb. 11 to the Senate intelligence committee, CIA Director Tenet changed his line on the connection of Iraq to Al- Qaeda, which he previously had declared to be non-existent. This indicated that he, like Powell, is now fully on board with the war. He even included Iran as a base for Al-Qaeda in his testimony. This is in line with Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, and is a threat to Iran. The one overriding fact that Powell, Tenet and Mueller left out of their testimonies is that the U.S. ruling class is absolutely determined to wage this war against Iraq, regardless of nuanced differences over how and when to do it. That is the one truth that explains all the lies, the deceptions and the demagogy of not only the Bush administration, but the entire capitalist media establishment, the leadership of both parties and most of its think tanks. But there is an even broader truth that explains the tempestuous split between the U.S. imperialists and their rivals in Germany, France and Belgium. This attempt to go to war is about oil profits, oil as a strategic resource, and conquering Iraq. But it is also about a lot more than Iraq. This is about subordinating the European imperialist rivals to the will of the U.S. ruling class and the Pentagon. U.S., NATO AND TURKEY The struggle to get NATO to send arms to Turkey was deliberately precipitated by the Pentagon. It demanded that NATO take a position on the question prior to the Security Council showdown over the timing of the war. Instead of working out the matter bilaterally, Bush, Rumsfeld and company demanded that the French and Germans vote in favor of the U.S. war plan. Washington made the commitment to send arms to Turkey and then handed it to the Europeans as an obligation. This was an attempt to underscore that NATO is a mere adjunct to the U.S. war machine, and that if the French or German imperialists have any idea about changing that, they will have to confront the Wall Street-Pentagon superpower. Adding to the antagonism, the French and German governments put forward a proposal to have their spy planes fly over Iraq. In other words, they wanted to establish their military presence and the right to do their own aerial spying on Iraq, without having to be at the mercy of military and intelligence information doled out by the Pentagon from U.S. satellites and U-2 or Predator spy planes. The Iraqis have rejected this encroachment by the so-called "friendly" imperialists. Right now the French have 3,000 troops in the Ivory Coast and the Germans have several thousand in Afghanistan. GOAL OF WAR GOES FAR BEYOND IRAQ How can one explain the extreme aggressiveness, impatience, intolerance and determination of the Bush administration to ride roughshod over everyone in its race to war? Because it regards this war as a vital new stage in expanding and rendering unchallengeable its world domination. Iraq is a step in the restructuring of the entire Middle East under the rule of U.S. imperialism. The present U.S. leaders plan an outright colonial military regime in Baghdad. They have already taken over Afghanistan and put bases in Georgia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere throughout southwest Asia. They are on the borders of Russia and China and surround the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea. Columnist William Pfaff, writing in the International Herald Tribune on Feb. 11, gave a glimpse into the Bush administration's thinking on the current outbreak of rivalry between Germany, France and the U.S. "The neoconservative theory that currently governs official thinking in Washington identifies Europe as the principal future rival and potential challenger of the United States. And Germany, whatever its current difficulties, is the most powerful economy in the European Union, and will remain a leader of Europe no matter what happens," writes Pfaff. The refusal of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to curb criticism of the U.S. and to back down to Washington is a new effort by German imperialism to break the stranglehold of containment by the U.S. overlords, who have dominated Germany ever since the defeat of Hitler in World War II. "What Schroeder has done," Pfaff continues, "is all the more dangerous to Washington because he reflects popular opinion across Europe." The Bush administration is worried that "the core European states might conduct a common policy, with France and Germany at its center. Washington sees this as a threat. ... This explains why the Bush administration is determined to crush Germany's dissent on Iraq." This determination to "crush" the development of a rival center in Europe must be put in the context of the Bush administration's National Security Strategy document issued last Sept. 20. The document asserts the right to preemptive military strikes, virtually declares that national sovereignty is an outmoded concept for oppressed nations, and goes on to make its fundamental assertion: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build up in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States." The German and French imperialists have been working through the European Union to build up a rival force--monetarily, politically and ultimately militarily--to challenge the U.S. To this end they proposed a common European weapons procurement agency that could operate independently of the U.S. This has been frowned upon by Washington. To the extent that this split among the thieves can be deepened, it is to the benefit of the Iraqis and the anti-war struggle. But just as the Iraqis are preparing to defend themselves while trying by every means to expose the U.S. war makers, so the anti-war movement must not forget for one moment that this falling out among thieves cannot deter the empire builders in Washington and the board rooms of Wall Street from pursuing their predatory goals, and that they see the war against Iraq as an essential step in that process. The Soviet Union, despite all its mistakes in relation to the Middle East, served as a genuine deterrent to imperialist aggression. Since its collapse, the Iraqis, like all other colonial and formerly colonial peoples, have had to rely mainly on the futile tactic of maneuvering between the imperialists to avoid war. But the rapid and determined growth of the worldwide anti-war movement, which has arisen in defiance of slander, demonization, intimidation and threats, is bringing about a new day of international solidarity capable of consistently opposing the war aims of Washington. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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