October 28, 2002
IRAQ AND ARMS INSPECTORS: THE BIG LIE - PART 1
Introduction
To read the 34 short pages (pp.20-54) at the heart of former
chief UN arms
inspector Scott Ritter's book, War On Iraq (Ritter and William
Rivers Pitt,
Profile Books, 2002), is to understand the utter fraudulence
and staggering
immorality of the proposed war on Iraq. In these pages, Ritter
describes
exactly how and why Iraq has been "fundamentally
disarmed", with 90-95% of
its weapons of mass destruction eliminated. Of nuclear weapons
capability,
for example, Ritter says:
"When I left Iraq in 1998... the infrastructure and
facilities had been 100%
eliminated. There's no doubt about that. All of their
instruments and
facilities had been destroyed. The weapons design facility had
been
destroyed. The production equipment had been hunted down and
destroyed. And
we had in place means to monitor - both from vehicles and from
the air - the
gamma rays that accompany attempts to enrich uranium or
plutonium. We never
found anything." (p.26)
Ritter explains how UN arms inspectors (Unscom) roamed the
country
monitoring Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear facilities,
installing
sensitive sniffers and cameras and performing no-notice
inspections:
"We blanketed Iraq - every research and development
facility, every
university, every school, every hospital, every beer
factory..." (p.38)
Are we seriously to believe that a country that permitted such
thorough,
intrusive and effective inspections leading to 90-95%
disarmament just four
years ago, is suddenly hell-bent on secretly developing weapons
of mass
destruction now? How could this be when, as Ritter says, such
efforts would
be easily detectable by modern technology? Thus on the
reconstruction of
Iraq's chemical weapons capability, Ritter says:
"If no one were watching, Iraq could do this. But just as
with the nuclear
weapons programme, they'd have to start from scratch, having
been deprived
of all equipment, facilities and research. They'd have to
procure the
complicated tools and technology required through front
companies. This
would be detected. The manufacture of chemical weapons emits
vented gases
that would have been detected by now if they existed. We've
been watching,
via satellite and other means, and have seen none of this. If
Iraq was
producing weapons today, we'd have definitive proof, plain and
simple."
(p.32-3)
Relying on public ignorance of the true extent of Iraqi
cooperation with
arms inspectors, and the true extent to which inspectors were
successful in
disarming Iraq, warmongers argue that Iraq must have something
to hide
because it "kicked out" the inspectors in 1998 and
has since refused to
permit their return. This is a crucial lie, which, as we will
see in the
two-part Media Alert that follows, the media has played a
central role in
protecting.
Unscom arms inspectors were withdrawn in December 1998 at a
sensitive time
in US politics, as Bill Clinton faced impeachment over the
Monica Lewinsky
affair. Clinton launched a 4-day series of strikes, Operation
Desert Fox,
the day before his impeachment referendum was scheduled, and
called them off
two hours after the vote. Ritter notes that just prior to the
strikes,
"Inspectors were sent in to carry out sensitive
inspections that had nothing
to do with disarmament but had everything to do with provoking
the Iraqis."
(p.52)
In a report published on the second day of bombing, Ritter was
quoted as
saying:
"What [head of Unscom] Richard Butler did last week with
the inspections was
a set-up. This was designed to generate a conflict that would
justify a
bombing." Ritter said US government sources had told him
three weeks earlier
that "the two considerations on the horizon were Ramadan
and impeachment".
Ritter continued:
"If you dig around, you'll find out why Richard Butler
yesterday ran to the
phone four times. He was talking to his [US] National Security
adviser. They
were telling him to sharpen the language in his report to
justify the
bombing." (Quoted, New York Post, 17 December, 1998)
Arguing that Butler deliberately wrote a justification for war,
a UN
diplomat, described as "generally sympathetic to
Washington", said:
"Based on the same facts he [Butler] could have said,
There were something
like 300 inspections [in recent weeks] and we encountered
difficulties in
five.'" (Washington Post, 17 December 1998)
Around this time it emerged that CIA spies operating with arms
inspectors
had used information gathered to target Iraq during Desert Fox.
The role of
the CIA in corrupting the arms inspection regime was one of the
main reasons
for Ritter's resignation in 1998.
The basic conclusions are clear: Iraq cooperated in the
"fundamental
disarmament" of 90-95% of its weapons of mass destruction.
The United States
nevertheless manufactured a conflict for cynical reasons in
December 1998.
Inspectors were then not kicked out, as claimed, but were
withdrawn by
Butler to protect them from bombing. The Iraqis subsequently
refused to
allow arms inspectors - accurately described by them as
"spies" who had
participated in the bombing of their country - to return.
Readers might like to compare the above account with the
versions presented
by the US/UK governments. George W. Bush said of Iraq in his
State of the
Union Address:
"This is a regime that agreed to international inspections
- then kicked out
the inspectors." (George W. Bush, State of the Union
Address, January 29,
2002)
Tony Blair, naturally, has followed the Bush line:
"Before he [Saddam Hussein] kicked out the UN weapons
inspectors three years
ago, they had discovered and destroyed thousands of chemical
and biological
weapons.... As they got closer, they were told to get out of
Iraq." (Blair,
leader, 'The West's Tough Strategy On Iraq Is In Everyone's
Interests,' The
Express, March 6, 2002)
Note the deceptiveness of the phrase, "As they got
closer". In fact
inspectors were not getting uncomfortably close to hidden
horrors, as Blair
implies; they were 5% short of 100% disarmament. We spend our
time well when
we recall Ritter's version, and then reflect on the brazen
mendacity of our
'elected' leaders.
The Media and The Strange Case of the Vanishing Spooks
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently produced a
remarkable
piece titled: 'What a difference 4 years makes: News coverage
of why the
inspectors left Iraq'. (www.fair.org)
The piece consists of ten paired
examples of mainstream media quotes from 1998 and 2002,
covering the
withdrawal of weapons inspectors from Iraq. Without fail, the
quotes from
1998 report that inspectors were withdrawn, while the quotes
from 2002
assert that they were "thrown out", or otherwise
forcibly expelled. This
pair of quotes was taken from the Washington Post:
"Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in
anticipation of a
military attack, on Tuesday night - at a time when most members
of the
Security Council had yet to receive his report."
(Washington Post, 12/18/98)
"Since 1998, when U.N. inspectors were expelled, Iraq has
almost certainly
been working to build more chemical and biological
weapons." (Washington
Post editorial, 8/4/02)
We thought it would be interesting to conduct a similar
investigation of the
UK press. Consider the following quotes from The Guardian, all
from last
month:
"The inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998, amid Iraqi
allegations that
some inspectors were spying for the United States and
countercharges that
Iraq was not cooperating with the teams." (Mark Oliver,
'UN split over Iraqi
arms offer', September 17, 2002)
And:
"Unlike previous inspectors, who were seconded to the UN
by governments, the
Unmovic staff are employed directly by the UN - a move intended
to address
Iraqi complaints that the earlier inspections were used as a
cover for
spying." (Brian Whitaker and David Teather, 'Weapons
checks face tough
hurdles', The Guardian, September 18, 2002)
And again:
"For its part Iraq claimed Unscom was full of spies."
(Simon Jeffery, 'What
are weapons inspection teams?', The Guardian, September 18,
2002)
What is so remarkable about these references to "Iraqi
allegations",
"complaints" and "claims", is that they
directly contradict The Guardian's
own reporting of events just three years earlier. Consider this
March 1999
report by Julian Borger:
"American espionage in Iraq, under cover of United Nations
weapons
inspections, went far beyond the search for banned arms and was
carried out
without the knowledge of the UN leadership, it was reported
yesterday. An
investigation by the Washington Post found that CIA engineers
working as UN
technicians installed antennae in equipment belonging to the UN
Special
Commission (Unscom) to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military."
(Julian Borger, 'UN
"kept in dark" about US spying in Iraq', The
Guardian, March 3, 1999)
Note that this was not an "Iraqi allegation", it was
an allegation made by a
leading national US newspaper, the Washington Post. Earlier
that year, The
Guardian had reported another non-Iraqi source:
"United Nations arms inspectors in Iraq had secret
intelligence-sharing
deals not only with the United States but with four other
countries, a
former inspector said yesterday. Britain is likely to have been
one of the
four.
"Scott Ritter, a former American member of the Unscom
weapons inspection
team, said the UN body agreed to provide the five countries
with information
it collected in return for intelligence from their sources. His
claims will
fuel the controversy surrounding Unscom's activities, with US
officials
admitting it was infiltrated by American spies." (Richard
Norton-Taylor,
'Arms inspectors "shared Iraq data with five
states"', The
Guardian, January 8, 1999)
Again, this was a US and UN claim backed up by US officials
"admitting it
[Unscom] was infiltrated by American spies."
Even more disturbing is the performance of individual
reporters. In January
1999, The Guardian's Ian Black co-authored a piece, stating:
"International disarray over Iraq deepened last night
after United States
officials acknowledged that American spies participated in the
work of
United Nations weapons inspectors tracking down Baghdad's
weapons of mass
destruction... [T]he admission that US intelligence agencies
provided
information and technology to the UN Special Commission, Unscom,
confirmed
long-standing suspicions in Baghdad and appeared to knock
another nail into
Unscom's coffin." (Mark Tran and Ian Black, 'UN spies
scandal grows,
American officials admit Iraqi data aided air strikes', The
Guardian,
January 8, 1999)
Five months later, Black reported merely that Unscom had been
"discredited
by allegations of US spying." (Black, The Guardian, June
17, 1999) In fact,
of course, Unscom had been discredited by +admissions+ of US
spying.
Acknowledgement and admission had already become allegation.
Three years
later they have become "Iraqi allegations".
Three years after their January 1999 piece, Black's co-author,
Mark Tran,
also made reference to the spying issue:
"Iraq itself has stoked war fever. By rejecting a return
of UN weapons
inspectors to Iraq and calling them "western spies"
for extra measure,
Baghdad seems to be almost daring Mr Bush to attack."
(Tran, 'Greasing the
wheels of warfare', The Guardian, March 12, 2002)
Tran appears to suggest that there was something provocative
about Iraq
describing UN weapons inspectors as "spies",
+despite+ having himself
described them as "spies" in 1999. Again there is no
acknowledgment of UN/US
admissions of spying.
Julian Borger was lead author of an article in March 2002 that
reported
Iraqi claims of spying:
"Iraq's vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, last night
said his country
would not allow UN weapons inspectors to return.
"'Iraq's rejection of the teams of spies to return back to
Iraq is firm and
won't change,' Mr Ramadan was quoted as saying by the official
Iraqi News
Agency INA. 'Iraq is fully convinced that there is no need for
them to
return. They had carried out vicious spying activities in Iraq
for more than
eight years.'" (Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor,
'Bush in new
warning to Iraq,' The Guardian, March 11, 2002)
Given Borger's own report on the Washington Post's revelations
three years
earlier, his and Norton-Taylor's response to these allegations
is truly
remarkable:
"UN weapons inspectors withdrew at the end of 1998 after
confrontations with
the Iraqi regime over access to Saddam Hussein's palaces and
other
restricted sites." (Ibid)
Not a word about the fact that "American espionage in
Iraq, under cover of
United Nations weapons inspections, went far beyond the search
for banned
arms", as Borger had himself reported in 1999. The silence
in response to
the Iraqi vice-president's fierce and repeated allegations
reads as a
contemptuous dismissal of claims deemed unworthy of comment.
In similar vein, an Observer overview of Western relations with
Iraq since
1920, submits this entry for 1998:
"Iraq ends all co-operation with the UN Special Commission
to Oversee the
Destruction of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (Unscom). US
and Britain
launch Desert Fox, a bombing campaign designed to destroy
Iraq's nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons programmes." ('From friend
to foe', The
Observer, March 17, 2002)
There is no mention of claims of deliberate US provocation, of
a conflict
manufactured for domestic political reasons. Again, the
infiltration of
inspectors by CIA spies has been airbrushed from history. There
is no
mention of the fact that the information gained by the spies
was then used
to blitz Iraq. US military analyst William Arkin suggests that
the primary
goal of Operation Desert Fox was to target Saddam Hussein's
internal
security apparatus using information gathered specifically
through Unscom.
(see Milan Rai, War Plan Iraq, Verso, 2002) One might think
that this would
be significant in an honest appraisal of why Iraq is reluctant
to readmit
inspectors on the basis of "unfettered access - any time,
any place,
anywhere", as the US/UK have been demanding. But for our
utterly compromised
'free press', truth of this kind is deemed mere pro-Iraqi
propaganda, best
quietly omitted.
This year (as of October 24) the words 'Iraq and inspectors'
have been
mentioned in 497 Guardian/Observer articles. We managed to find
some half a
dozen articles confirming that arms inspectors had been
infiltrated by CIA
spies in 1998. These generally make brief mention of the
presence of spies,
or report that spies merely "passed on secrets" to
the US and Israel,
omitting to mention that the information was used to launch a
major military
strike against Iraq.
This, to be sure, is only one example of how the US/UK media
act as a
filtering system for power, ensuring that the public is
presented with the
right facts and the right ideas at the right time.
In Part Two, 'What a Difference 3 Years Makes: UK News Coverage
of Why the
Inspectors Left Iraq', we will show how reporting throughout
the UK media
has closely mirrored the deceptive performance of the US media,
as reported
by FAIR.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion
and respect for
others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge
readers to
maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger. We suggest a letter
along these
lines:
Dear Mr Rusbridger
Please could you explain why your team of journalists has
consistently
airbrushed the 1998 CIA infiltration of Unscom weapons
inspectors from
history? Despite themselves confirming UN/US admissions of the
presence of
spies in 1999, your reporters have often either ignored these
admissions
altogether, or described them merely as "Iraqi
allegations". Despite some
497 articles mentioning Iraq and arms inspectors this year,
there appears to
have been only a handful of articles in the Guardian/Observer
paper
confirming the presence of spies in Unscom. The fact that US
spies used
information gained to target Iraq during Operation Desert Fox
is surely
vital in understanding why Iraq is resisting the return of arms
inspectors
able to go "any time, any place, anywhere", as the
US/UK are demanding.
Write to Julian Borger:
Write to Brian Whitaker:
Write to Ian Black: