Mark Phillips: The American Question

3/8/03: Sleaze factor, part 1.

Busted.

Turley notes,

Two sets of fake evidence of supposed Iraqi nuclear intentions were exposed as forgeries today by senior U.N. nuclear experts:

1. "Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed 'not authentic' after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council." "Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -- including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said."
2. "ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment" "ElBaradei's report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. The IAEA chief said investigators had unearthed extensive records that backed up Iraq's explanation. The documents, which included blueprints, invoices and notes from meetings, detailed a 14-year struggle by Iraq to make 81mm conventional rockets that would perform well and resist corrosion. Successive failures led Iraqi officials to revise their standards and request increasingly higher and more expensive metals, ElBaradei said." "Moreover, further work by the IAEA's team of centrifuge experts -- two Americans, two Britons and a French citizen -- has reinforced the IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were ill suited for centrifuges. 'It was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program,' ElBaradei said."

Furthermore, "ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors. 'There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities,' ElBaradei said."

Those with historical memories of previous administrations -- and previous wars -- may find these reports disquietingly familiar. The American people were manipulated into war in Vietnam via falsified evidence, manufactured incidents, and dishonest argumentation. We were told that "North Vietnam" and "South Vietnam" were two independent countries, which they weren't. That North Vietnam had invaded South Vietnam, which it hadn't. That South Vietnam was a freedom-loving democracy, which it wasn't. That North Vietnamese boats had attacked our Navy, which they hadn't. That we were fighting for the "independence" of South Vietnam, which we weren't. That the Vietnamese people were "terrorists", which they weren't. That our miraculous technology would give us victory, which it didn't. That we were winning, which we weren't, and which we didn't. We were shown murky and trumped-up photos of North Vietnamese boats "attacking" our Navy, which they hadn't. We were told that American POWs were held in "tiger cages", which they weren't -- although prisoners of the South Vietnamese dictatorship were, by the tens of thousands. These were some of the factual and ideological manipulations which America's rulers used to rally support for their extraordinarily brutal, unethical and unwise policy.

It's happening again today. Iraq is neither a threat to America nor its neighbors. The strategy of containment is effective. While Americans are right to support removal of the Ba'ath Party dictatorship, that removal should be by the Iraqi people themselves, with our support. There is no cause for war with Iraq.

Today's revelations underscore the fact that the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq is in conflict with its real motives. The attack on Iraq is not about weapons of mass destruction; neither is it about Saddam Hussein. It's about the strategic elimination of all opponents of U.S. interests in the region.

And it presages wider war. Before the War on Islam ends in inevitable defeat, Americans will fight in the Philippines, Indonesia, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran, and heaven knows where all else. There will be a draft. We'll kill unnumbered masses of innocents, as we killed 2-3 million Vietnamese. We'll destroy whole regions of the world. And we'll lose.

The antiwar movement is a political and cultural expression of everything which is best in the American people. But it has too narrow a perspective. The Iraq war will end quickly. We need to prepare for what follows.

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