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10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq
By Christopher Scheer, AlterNet
June 27, 2003
"The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and
the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic
weapons." George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati.
There is a small somber box that appears in the New York Times every
day since the start of the war. Titled simply "Killed in Iraq," and
lists the names and military affiliations of those who most recently
died on tour of duty. Wednesday's edition listed just one name:
Orenthal J. Smith, age 21, of Allendale, South Carolina.
The young, late O.J. Smith, almost certainly named after the legendary
running back, Orenthal J. Simpson, before that dashing American
hero became a fugitive in a double-murder case. Now his namesake
has died in far-off Mesopotamia in a noble mission to, as our
president put it on March 19, "disarm Iraq, to free its people and
to defend the world from grave danger."
Today, more than three months after Bush's stirring declaration of
war and nearly two months since he declared victory, no chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons have been found, nor any documentation
of their existence, nor any sign they were deployed in the field.
The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of cowardice,
is belatedly drawing attention to the unconscionable level of
administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that when it
comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional
lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth.
What follows are just the most outrageous and significant of the
dozens of outright lies uttered by Bush and his top officials over
the past year in what amounts to a systematic campaign to scare the
bejeezus out of everybody:
LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its
nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which
are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." President Bush,
Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
FACT: This story, breathlessly leaked to and reported by Judith
Miller in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney.
Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the
tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. One intelligence
analyst, who was part of the tubes investigation, angrily told The
New Republic that, "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza
Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium
centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."
LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
FACT: This whopper was based on a document that the White House
already knew to be a forgery thanks to the CIA. Sold to Italian
intelligence by some hustler, the document carried the signature
of an official who had been out of office for 10 years and referenced
a constitution that was no longer in effect. The ex-ambassador who
the CIA sent to check out the story is pissed: "They knew the Niger
story was a flat-out lie," he told the New Republic, anonymously.
"They [the White House] were unpersuasive about aluminum tubes and
added this to make their case more strongly."
LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons." Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the
Press."
FACT: There was and is absolutely zero basis for this statement.
CIA reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear
weapons program.
LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts
between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." CIA Director George
Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in
that evening's speech by President Bush.
FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between
Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s, but found no proof of a
continuing relationship. In other words, by tweaking language, Tenet
and Bush spun the intelligence180 degrees to say exactly the opposite
of what it suggested.
LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in
bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists
could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any
fingerprints." President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked or produced. Colin
Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place in a camp in
northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated
was later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by
Allied war planes.
LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has
a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could
be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad
areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these
UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United
States." President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles, and Iraq is 6000
miles from the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's drone-building
program wasn't much more advanced than your average model plane
enthusiast. And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a scary way
to say "plane"?
LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have
chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them
and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the
command and control arrangements have been established." President
Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.
FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces,
there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being
deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.
LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile
of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is
enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." Secretary of State
Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that not one drop of this
massive stockpile has been found, but, as previously reported on
AlterNet, our own intelligence reports show that these stocks if
they existed were well past their use-by date and therefore useless
as weapon fodder.
LIE #9: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around
Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements
to the press.
FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were found, not to the east,
west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise.
LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the
UN prohibited." President Bush in remarks in Poland, published
internationally June 1, 2003.
FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck
trailers that the CIA claimed were are potential mobile biological
weapons lab. But British and American experts including the State
Department's intelligence wing in a report released this week have
since declared this to be untrue. According to the British, and
much to Prime Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are
actually exactly what Iraq said they were, facilities to fill weather
balloons, sold to them by the British themselves.
So, months after the war, we are once again where we started with
plenty of rhetoric and absolutely no proof of this "grave danger"
for which O.J. Smith died. The Bush administration is now scrambling
to place the blame for its lies on faulty intelligence, when in
fact the intelligence was fine, it was their abuse of it which was
"faulty."
Rather than apologize for leading us to a preemptive war based on
impossibly faulty or shamelessly distorted "intelligence" or offering
his resignation, our sly madman in the White House is starting to
sound more like that other O.J. Like the man who cheerfully played
golf while promising to pursue "the real killers," Bush is now
vowing to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons
programs, no matter how long it takes."
On the terrible day of the 9/11 attacks, five hours after a hijacked
plane slammed into the Pentagon, retired Gen. Wesley Clark received
a strange call from someone (he didn't name names) representing the
White House position: "I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home
saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored
terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told
Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But I'm willing to say
it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence.'"
And neither did we.
Christopher Scheer is the managing editor of AlterNet.org. He can
be reached at feedback@alternet.org