| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"Marvin The Paranoid Android" |
| Date: |
16 Apr 2007 09:32:24 AM |
| Object: |
A Trip Down Memory Lane -- May 1 2003 -- The Missing WMD |
Enjoy the trip ..
-- Marvin
----------------------------------
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20WMD.txt
1 May 2003
The Missing WMD
By Gwynne Dyer
The favourite fantasy headline of British comedian Spike
Milligan
was: 'Archduke Franz Ferdinand Found Alive! First World War a
Mistake!'
We are unlikely to see a similar headline in any American paper soon,
but
in the rest of the world the continued failure of the US and British
occupation forces in Iraq to find any of the 'weapons of mass
destruction'
that were the alleged reason for their invasion is both a diplomatic
disaster and a joke in very bad taste.
Tony Blair ran into both phenomena and came away severely
shaken
when he visited Moscow last Tuesday. The British prime minister
thought he
had a good personal relationship with the Russian president, but
Vladimir
Putin is a former intelligence officer, and like his American and
British
counterparts he was outraged at the way the US and British governments
misrepresented the intelligence they got from their own agencies in
order
to justify their war. Unlike the people at the Central Intelligence
Agency
and MI5, however, Putin was free to speak -- and did he ever.
Putin openly mocked Blair for the failure of the 'coalition'
to
find any of the fabled WMD even weeks after the end of the war: "Where
are
those arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, if indeed they ever
existed?
Perhaps Saddam is still hiding in an underground bunker somewhere,
sitting
on cases of weapons of mass destruction, and is preparing to blow the
whole
thing up and destroy the lives of thousands of Iraqis." The Russian
journalists at the press conference roared with laughter -- maybe it
loses
something in translation -- but Blair looked distinctly grim. He is
going
to have lots more practice at that.
Two months ago, Blair talked a reluctant parliament into
supporting
the attack on Iraq by warning of Iraqi WMD ready to strike on 45
minutes'
notice, and President George W. Bush warned of "mushroom clouds" if
the US
didn't invade Iraq. It was all so desperately urgent, so hair-trigger
dangerous, that Washington and London couldn't wait for the United
Nations
arms inspectors to finish their job; they had to bypass the UN and
invade
right away. So many thousands of Iraqis (2,500 civilians and perhaps
10,000 soldiers) were killed, 137 US and British soldiers died,
looters
destroyed most of Iraq's cultural heritage while 'coalition' troops
stood
idly by -- and nobody has found any WMD.
The rest of the world never really believed the White House's
justification for war anyway. As UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix
said
in late April, Washington and London built their case for going to war
on
"very, very shaky" evidence, including documents that subsequently
turned
out to have been faked -- and with the war now over, Washington isn't
even
bothering to insist that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United
States
any more. "We were not lying," a Bush administration official told
ABC
News on 28 April. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."
The real reason for the war, according to the ABC report, was
that
the administration "wanted to make a statement" (presumably about what
happens to countries that defy US power). Iraq was not invaded because
it
threatened America, but because "Saddam had all the requirements to
make
him, from (the administration's) standpoint, the perfect target." The
assumption, at the White House and the Pentagon, was that everybody
else
could be bullied into forgetting the lies about WMD and accepting the
fact
of American control of Iraq.
They probably could be if the occupation turned out to be a
brilliant success that produced a happy, prosperous, united and
independent
Iraq, but that does not seem likely. Instead, it is going sour very
fast,
with US troops shooting civilian demonstrators, the Shia majority
seeking
an Islamic state, and the beginnings of a guerilla resistance to the
foreign occupiers. Even if the US were willing to let the United
Nations
have a role in occupied Iraq, the desire of other powers to get
involved in
any way in this proto-Vietnam is waning from day to day.
Washington continues to insist that the UN weapons inspectors
will
not be allowed back in, which means that the rest of the world is
unlikely
to believe the US and British forces even if they do claim to have
found
something. And frankly, hardly anyone in Britain believes in Iraqi
WMD any
more either -- not even former cabinet ministers.
On 22 April, former foreign secretary Robin Cook said he
doubted
that there was a single person in the intelligence services who
believed
that a weapon of mass destruction in working order would be found in
Iraq,
and accused the White House of trying to bridge the credibility gap by
"re-inventing the term 'weapon of mass destruction' to cover any
artillery
shell with a chemical content, or any biological toxin, even if it had
not
been fitted to a weapon." Even on that preposterous definition, they
have
not found any WMD in Iraq yet -- and as former British defence
secretary
Doug Henderson said on 18 April: "If by the turn of the year there is
no
WMD then the basis on which this (war) was executed was illegal."
The post-9/11 patriotic chill still prevents any senior
American
politician from questioning the existence of Iraqi WMD in public, but
this
issue is not going to go away. As the situation in Iraq deteriorates
and
the American body count rises, questions about how America got talked
into
this mess will keep coming back, and sooner or later they will have to
be
answered.
.
|
|
| User: "John Lemke" |
|
| Title: Re: A Trip Down Memory Lane -- May 1 2003 -- The Missing WMD |
16 Apr 2007 11:41:55 AM |
|
|
On Apr 16, 10:32 am, "Marvin The Paranoid Android"
<marvinparanoidandr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Enjoy the trip ..
-- Marvin
----------------------------------
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20WMD.txt
1 May 2003
The Missing WMD
By Gwynne Dyer
And here's how these lying, spinning punks answer questions. "It
wasn't a lie, it was just a matter of emphasis." And they think
people are dumb enough to swallow or respect a "rational" argument.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
