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   From: oO@oO.com   
      
         How The World Was Duped:   
         The Race To Invade Iraq   
      
         by Robert Fisk; The Independent; October 04, 2005   
      
     The 5th of February 2003 was a snow-blasted day in New York, the steam   
   whirling out of the road covers, the US secret servicemen - helpfully   
   wearing jackets with "Secret Service" printed on them - hugging themselves   
   outside the fustian, asbestos-packed UN headquarters on the East River.   
   Exhausted though I was after travelling thousands of miles around the United   
   States, the idea of watching Secretary of State Colin Powell - or General   
   Powell, as he was now being reverently redubbed in some American   
   newspapers - make his last pitch for war before the Security Council was an   
   experience not to be missed.   
      
     In a few days, I would be in Baghdad to watch the start of this frivolous,   
   demented conflict. Powell's appearance at the Security Council was the   
   essential prologue to the tragedy - or tragicomedy if one could contain   
   one's anger - the appearance of the Attendant Lord who would explain the   
   story of the drama, the Horatio to the increasingly unstable Hamlet in the   
   White House.   
      
     There was an almost macabre opening to the play when General Powell   
   arrived at the Security Council, cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his   
   great arms around them. CIA director George Tenet stood behind Powell,   
   chunky, aggressive but obedient, just a little bit lip-biting, an Edward G   
   Robinson who must have convinced himself that the more dubious of his   
   information was buried beneath an adequate depth of moral fury and fear to   
   be safely concealed. Just like Bush's appearance at the General Assembly the   
   previous September, you needed to be in the Security Council to see what the   
   television cameras missed. There was a wonderful moment when the little   
   British home secretary Jack Straw entered the chamber through the far   
   right-hand door in a massive power suit, his double-breasted jacket   
   apparently wrapping itself twice around Britain's most famous ex-Trot. He   
   stood for a moment with a kind of semi-benign smile on his uplifted face,   
   his nose in the air as if sniffing for power. Then he saw Powell and his   
   smile opened like an umbrella as his small feet, scuttling beneath him,   
   propelled him across the stage and into the arms of Powell for his big   
   American hug.   
      
     You might have thought that the whole chamber, with its toothy smiles and   
   constant handshakes, contained a room full of men celebrating peace rather   
   than war. Alas, not so. These elegantly dressed statesmen were constructing   
   the framework that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people - some of   
   them Saddam's little monsters no doubt, but most of them innocent. When   
   Powell rose to give his terror-talk, he did so with a slow athleticism, the   
   world-weary warrior whose patience had at last reached its end.   
      
     But it was an old movie. I should have guessed. Sources, foreign   
   intelligence sources, "our sources", defectors, sources, sources, sources.   
   Ah, to be so well-sourced when you have already taken the decision to go to   
   war. The Powell presentation sounded like one of those government-inspired   
   reports on the front page of The New York Times - where it was, of course,   
   treated with due reverence next day. It was a bit like heating up old soup.   
   Hadn't we heard most of this stuff before? Should one trust the man? General   
   Powell, I mean, not Saddam. Certainly we didn't trust Saddam, but Powell's   
   speech was a mixture of awesomely funny recordings of Iraqi Republican Guard   
   telephone intercepts à la Samuel Beckett that just might have been some   
   terrifying proof that Saddam really was conning the UN inspectors again, and   
   ancient material on the Monster of Baghdad's all too well known record of   
   beastliness.   
      
     If only we could have heard the Arabic for the State Department's   
   translation of "OK, buddy" - "Consider it done, sir" - this from the   
   Republican Guard's "Captain Ibrahim", for heaven's sake. The dinky   
   illustrations of mobile Iraqi bio-labs whose lorries and railway trucks were   
   in such perfect condition suggested the Pentagon didn't have much idea of   
   the dilapidated state of Saddam's railway system, let alone his army. It was   
   when we went back to Halabja and human rights abuses and all Saddam's   
   indubitable sins, as recorded by the discredited Unscom team, that we   
   started eating the old soup again. Jack Straw may have thought all this "the   
   most powerful and authoritative case" for war - his ill-considered opinion   
   afterwards - but when we were forced to listen to the Iraqi officer corps   
   communicating by phone "Yeah", "Yeah" , "Yeah?", "Yeah . . ." - it was   
   impossible not to ask oneself if Colin Powell had really considered the   
   effect this would have on the outside world.   
      
     From time to time, the words "Iraq: Failing to Disarm - Denial and   
   Deception" appeared on the giant video screen behind General Powell. Was   
   this a CNN logo? some of us wondered. But no, it was the work of CNN's   
   sister channel, the US Department of State.   
      
     Because Colin Powell was supposed to be the good cop to the Bush- Rumsfeld   
   bad cop routine, one wanted to believe him. The Iraqi officer's   
   telephone-tapped order to his subordinate - "Remove 'nerve agents' whenever   
   it comes up in the wireless instructions" - seemed to indicate that the   
   Americans had indeed spotted a nasty new line in Iraqi deception. But a   
   dramatic picture of a pilotless Iraqi aircraft capable of spraying poison   
   chemicals turned out to be the imaginative work of a Pentagon artist. And   
   when Secretary Powell started talking about "decades" of contact between   
   Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the " General ". Al-Qa'ida only   
   came into existence in 2000, since bin Laden - " decades" ago - was working   
   against the Russians for the CIA, whose present-day director was sitting   
   grave-faced behind Mr Powell. It was the United States which had enjoyed at   
   least a "decade" of contacts with Saddam.   
      
     Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie - that the   
   " scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence   
   agents in disguise - was singularly unimpressive. The UN talked to Iraqi   
   scientists during their inspection tours, the new version went, but the   
   Iraqis were posing for the real nuclear and bio boys whom the UN wanted to   
   talk to.   
      
     General Powell said America was sharing its information with the UN   
   inspectors, but it was clear already that much of what he had to say about   
   alleged new weapons development - the decontamination truck at the Taji   
   chemical munitions factory, for example, the "cleaning" of the Ibn al-   
   Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25 November - had not been given to the   
   UN at the time. Why wasn't this intelligence information given to the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)