WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq
Monday night’s 15-minute
speech by President Bush, setting a 48-hour deadline for war against Iraq, went
beyond the usual distortions, half-truths, and appeals to fear and backwardness
to include a remarkable number of barefaced, easily refuted lies.
The enormous scale of the
lying suggests two political conclusions: the Bush administration is going to
war against Iraq with utter contempt for democracy and public opinion, and its
war propaganda counts heavily on the support of the American media, which not
only fails to challenge the lies, but repeats and reinforces them endlessly.
Without attempting to be
exhaustive, it is worthwhile listing some of the most important lies and
contrasting Bush’s assertions with the public record. All of the false
statements listed below are directly quoted from the verbatim transcript of
Bush’s remarks published on the Internet.
Lie No. 1: “My fellow
citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision.”
The decision for war with
Iraq was made long ago, the intervening time having been spent in an attempt to
create the political climate in which US troops could be deployed for an
attack. According to press reports, most recently March 16 in the Baltimore Sun, at one of the
first National Security Council meetings of his presidency, months before the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Bush expressed his
determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his willingness to commit US
ground troops to an attack on Iraq for that purpose. All that was required was
the appropriate pretext—supplied by September 11, 2001.
Lie No. 2: “For more than a
decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable
efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war.”
The US-led United Nations
regime of sanctions against Iraq, combined with “no-fly” zones and provocative
weapons inspections, is one of brutal oppression. The deliberate withholding of
food, medical supplies and other vital necessities is responsible for the death
of more than a million Iraqis, half of them children. Two UN officials who
headed the oil-for-food program resigned in protest over the conditions created
in Iraq by the sanctions. The CIA used the inspectors as a front, infiltrating
agents into UNSCOM, the original inspections program. The CIA’s aim was to spy
on Iraq’s top officials and target Saddam Hussein for assassination.
Lie No. 3: “The Iraqi regime
has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly
defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament...”
Iraq has never “defied” a
Security Council resolution since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. It
has generally cooperated with the dictates of the UN body, although frequently
under protest or with reservations, because many of the resolutions involve
gross violations of Iraqi sovereignty. From 1991 to 1998, UN inspectors
supervised the destruction of the vast bulk of the chemical and biological
weapons, as well as delivery systems, which Iraq accumulated (with the
assistance of the US) during the Iran-Iraq war, and they also destroyed all of
Iraq’s facilities for making new weapons.
Lie No. 4: “Peaceful efforts
to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again because we are not
dealing with peaceful men.”
According to the Washington Post of March 16, referring
to the 1991-1998 inspection period: “[U]nder UN supervision, Iraq destroyed 817
of 819 proscribed medium-range missiles, 14 launchers, 9 trailers and 56 fixed
missile-launch sites. It also destroyed 73 of 75 chemical or biological
warheads and 163 warheads for conventional explosives. UN inspectors also
supervised destruction of 88,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, more
than 600 tons of weaponized and bulk chemical weapons agents, 4,000 tons of
precursor chemicals and 980 pieces of equipment considered key to production of
such weapons.”
Lie No. 5: “The Iraq regime
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
The Washington Post
article cited above noted that CIA officials were concerned “about whether
administration officials have exaggerated intelligence in a desire to convince
the American public and foreign governments that Iraq is violating United Nations
prohibitions against chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and long-range
missile systems.” The article quoted “a senior intelligence analyst” who said
the inspectors could not locate weapons caches “because there may not be much
of a stockpile.”
Former British Foreign
Minister Robin Cook, who resigned from the Blair government Monday in protest
over the decision to go to war without UN authorization, declared, “Iraq
probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of
the term.” Even if Iraq is concealing some remnants of its 1980s arsenal, these
would hardly deserve Bush’s lurid description, since they are primitive and
relatively ineffective. “Some of the most lethal weapons ever devised” are
those being unleashed by the United States on Iraq: cruise missiles, smart
bombs, fuel-air explosives, the 10,000-pound “daisy-cutter” bomb, the
20,000-pound MOAB just tested in Florida. In addition, the US has explicitly
refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons.
Lie No. 6: “[Iraq] has
aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda.”
No one, not even US
government, seriously believes there is a significant connection between the
Islamic fundamentalists and the secular nationalist Ba’athist regime in Iraq,
which have been mortal enemies for decades. The continued assertion of an Al
Qaeda-Iraq alliance is a desperate attempt to link Saddam Hussein to the
September 11 attacks.
It also serves to cover up
the responsibility of American imperialism for sponsoring Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism. The forces that now comprise Al Qaeda were largely
recruited, trained, armed and set in motion by the CIA itself, as part of a
long-term policy of using Islamic fundamentalists as a weapon against left-wing
movements in the Muslim countries. This policy was pursued from the 1950s and
was escalated prior to and during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which
ended in 1989. Osama bin Laden himself was part of the CIA-backed mujaheddin
forces in Afghanistan before he turned against Washington in the 1990s.
Lie No. 7: “America tried to
work with the United Nations to address this threat because we wanted to
resolve the issue peacefully.”
The Bush administration went
to the United Nations because it wanted UN sanction for military action and it
wanted UN member states to cough up funds for postwar operations, along the
lines of its financial shakedown operation for the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Bush’s most hawkish advisors, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and
Vice President Cheney, initially opposed going to the UN because they did not
want diplomacy to slow down the drive to war. They only agreed after Secretary
of State Colin Powell argued that the pace of the US military buildup in the
Persian Gulf gave enough time to get the UN to rubber-stamp the war.
Lie No. 8: “These
governments [the Security Council majority] share our assessment of the danger,
but not our resolve to meet it.”
This is belied by virtually
every statement on Iraq issued by the governments of France, Russia, China,
Germany and other countries opposed to military action, which have repeatedly
declared that they see no imminent threat from Iraq. Bush brands his opponents
on the Security Council as cowards, as though they were afraid to take action
against Saddam Hussein. These countries were, in fact, increasingly alarmed—by
the United States, not Iraq. Insofar as they summoned up resolve, to the shock
of the Bush administration, it was to deny UN support for the war that
Washington had already decided to wage.
Lie No. 9: “Many nations,
however, do have the resolve and fortitude to act against this threat to peace,
and a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce the just demands of the
world.”
Only three nations are
contributing military forces to the war: 250,000 from the US, 40,000 from
Britain, and 2,000 from Australia. The other members of the “broad coalition”
are those which have been bribed or browbeaten to allow the US to fly over
their countries to bomb Iraq, to station troops, ships or warplanes on their
territory, or provide technical assistance or other material aid to the war.
None will do any fighting. All are acting against the expressed desire of their
own population.
Lie No. 10: “The United
Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will
rise to ours.”
Bush defines the UN body’s
responsibility as serving as a rubber stamp for whatever action the United
States government demands. In relation to the UN, however, the United States
does have definite responsibilities, including refraining from waging war
without Security Council authorization, except in the case of immediate
self-defense. Under Article 42 of the UN Charter, it is for the Security
Council, not the US or Britain, to decide how Security Council resolutions such
as 1441 are to be enforced. The US decision to “enforce” its interpretation of
1441 regardless of the will of the Security Council is a violation of
international law.
Lie No. 11: “If we must
begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule
your country and not against you.”
The widely reported US
military strategy is to conduct an aerial bombardment of Iraq so devastating
that it will “shock and awe” the Iraqi people and compel the Iraqi armed forces
to surrender en masse. According to one press preview, US and British forces
“plan to launch the deadliest first night of air strikes on a single country in
the history of air power. Hundreds of targets in every region of Iraq will be
hit simultaneously.” Estimates of likely Iraqi civilian casualties from the
immediate impact of bombs and missiles range from thousands to hundreds of
thousands, and even higher when the long-term effects are included.
Lie No. 12: “As our
coalition takes their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need.”
This is particularly
cynical, since the immediate consequence of Bush’s 48-hour ultimatum was the
withdrawal of all UN humanitarian aid workers and the shutdown of the
oil-for-food program, which underwrites the feeding of 60 percent of Iraq’s
population. As for medicine, the US has systematically deprived the Iraqi
people of needed medicine for the past 12 years, insisting that even the most
basic medical supplies, like antibiotics and syringes, be banned as “dual-use”
items that could be used in a program of biological warfare.
Lie No. 13: “We will tear
down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is
prosperous and free.”
The goal of the Bush
administration is to install a US puppet regime in Baghdad, initially taking
the form of an American military dictatorship. It is no exaggeration to say
that the US government has been the leading promoter of dictatorships around
the world, from Pinochet of Chile to Suharto of Indonesia to Saddam Hussein himself,
who, according to one recent report, got his political start as an
anti-communist hit-man working in a CIA-backed plot to assassinate Iraq’s
left-nationalist President Qasem in 1959.
A classified State
Department report described by the Los Angeles Times of March 14 not only
concluded that a democratic Iraq was unlikely to arise from the devastation of
war, it suggested that this was not even desirable from the standpoint of
American interests, because “anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that
elections in the short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled
governments hostile to the United States.”
Lie No. 14: “Should Saddam
Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure
has been taken to avoid war and every measure will be taken to win it.”
This combines a lie and a
brutal truth. The Bush administration has taken every possible measure to
insure that war takes place, viewing the resumption of UN weapons inspections
with barely disguised hostility and directing its venom against those countries
that have suggested a diplomatic settlement with Iraq is achievable. In
prosecuting the war, the Bush administration is indeed prepared to use “every
measure,” up to an including nuclear weapons, in order to win it.
Lie No. 15: “War has no
certainty except the certainty of sacrifice.”
There will be colossal
sacrifices for the Iraqi people, and sacrifices in blood and economic
well-being for the American people as well. But for Bush’s real constituency,
the wealthiest layer at the top of American society, there will be no
sacrifices at all. Instead, the administration is seeking a tax cut package of
over $700 billion, including the abolition of taxation on corporate dividends.
Major US corporations are in line to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in
profits from the rebuilding of Iraqi infrastructure shattered by the coming US
assault. These include the oil construction firm Halliburton, which Vice
President Cheney headed prior to joining the Bush administration, and which
continues to include Cheney on its payroll.
Lie No. 16: “[T]he only way
to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the full force and might of
our military, and we are prepared to do so.”
Every aggressor claims to
deplore the suffering of war and seeks to blame the victim for resisting, and
thus prolonging the agony. Bush is no different. His hypocritical statements of
“concern” for the Iraqi people cannot disguise the fact that, as many
administration apologists freely admit, this is “a war of choice”—deliberately
sought by the US government to pursue its strategic agenda in the Middle East.
Lie No. 17: “The terrorist
threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam
Hussein is disarmed.”
No one, even in the American
military-intelligence complex, seriously believes this. US counter-terrorism
officials have repeatedly said that a US conquest and occupation of Iraq, by
killing untold thousands of Arabs and Muslims and inflaming public opinion in
the Arab world and beyond, will spark more terrorism, not less.
Lie No. 18: “We are now
acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five
years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be
multiplied many times over.”
This is belied by the record
of the past twelve years, which has seen a steady decline in Iraqi military
power. Saddam Hussein has never been a threat to any “free nation,” if that
term has any meaning, only to the reactionary oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf
and to neighboring Iran, all ruled by regimes that are as repressive as his.
Lie No. 19: “As we enforce
the just demands of the world, we will also honor the deepest commitments of
our country.”
The demands of the world
were expressed by the millions who marched in cities throughout the world on
February 15 and March 15 to oppose a unilateral US attack on Iraq. Bush seeks
to have it both ways—claiming to enforce previous Security Council resolutions
against Iraq (“the just demands of the world”), while flagrantly defying the
will of the majority of the Security Council, the majority of the world’s
governments, and the vast majority of the world’s people.
Lie No. 20: “Unlike Saddam
Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human
liberty... The United States with other countries will work to advance liberty
and peace in that region.”
For “the Iraqi people,”
substitute “the Egyptian people,” “the people of the Arabian peninsula,” “the
Pakistani people” or those of other US-backed dictatorships, not to mention the
Palestinians who live under a brutal Israeli occupation that is supported by
Washington. Does the US government believe that any of them are “deserving and
capable of human liberty?” When the parliament of Turkey, under the pressure of
popular opposition, voted to bar the US from using Turkish territory to invade
Iraq, the Bush administration appealed to the Turkish military to pressure the
government into overturning this democratic decision.
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