Weapons Of Mass Destruction - The Lies They Told US
On February 5th 2003 the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, addressed the United Nations Security Council. In a long speech he told it's members unequivocably that Iraq represented a 'clear and present danger' to US security and listed these threads under 29 different sub-headings. Not one of those claims has proved to be even remotely true. Nor were any of the other claims made by representatives of both the US and British governments that were squarely aimed at galvanising the public into support for a war that the establishment had been wanting for years. (For more information on this, check out my previous article PNAC - Neo-Conservatism and the Second Gulf War).
So, without further ado, let's look at just some of the lies we were told about Iraq and it's posession of these so-called weapons of mass destruction :
We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Ari Fleischer, US Press Secretary - Press Briefing January 2003.
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Dick Cheney, Vice US President - Speech August 2002.
We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary - ABC Interview March 2003.
25,000 litres of anthrax ... 38,000 litres of botulinum toxin ... materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent ... upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents ... several mobile biological weapons labs ... thousands of Iraqi security personnel ... at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors.
George Bush, US President - State Of Nation Address January 2003.
I have absolutely no doubt at all that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair, British Prime Minister - Address to House June 2003.
The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.
George W. Bush, US President - Ohio Speech Oct 2002.
The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.
Ari Fleischer, US Press Secretary - Press Briefing April 2002.
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
George Bush, US President - Speech to UN September 2002.
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George Bush, US President - Address To Nation March 2003.
I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found....But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.
Ari Fleischer, US Press Secretary - Press Briefing March 2003.
I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country. Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, ``Oh, well, there's actually another site,'' and we'll find it there, I'm not sure.
General Tommy Franks, US Commander in Chief Central Command - Fox News March 2003.
I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Colin Powell, US Secretary of State - To Reporters May 2003.
It turns out we were all wrong...
David Kay, senior US weapons inspector - BBC News January 2004.
Those mobile 'chemical labs' ...
We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents.
George Bush, US President - Camp Sayliya, Qatar, July 2003.
I would put before you Exhibit A, the mobile biological labs that we have found. People are saying, "Well, are they truly mobile biological labs?" Yes, they are.
Colin Powell, US Secretary of State - Fox News Interview July 2003.
But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them. (Refering to the 'mobile biological weapons labs')
George Bush, US President - Interview May 2003.
An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.
The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.
British Newspaper Report - The Observer June 2003.
The Iraq survey group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles.
Tony Blair, British Prime Minisrer - Interview, December 2003.
I don't know where those words (quoted above) come from but that is not what (Iraq Survery Group chief) David Kay has said...It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It sounds like someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down.
Paul Bremer, interim Iraqi Governor (not knowing that the words he disagreed with were made by Tony Blair) - BBC News December 2003.
We are back into this old spin again. We are back into seeing what we saw right through the last six or seven months. It has been described by an MoD intelligence officer in the Hutton inquiry as 'overegging the information'....
A prime minister should use language in relation to intelligence material with great care.
Hans Blix, former chief UN Weapons Inspector, refering to Tony Blair - Guardian Poltics December 2003.
And slowly the truth is revealed...
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
George Bush, US President - State Of Union Speech January 2003.
A former ambassador told ABCNEWS that almost a year before Bush's speech, he informed the CIA the information was not credible. The ambassador, who asked not to be identified, said that the CIA asked him in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger.
After spending eight days in the west-central African nation, the ambassador said he told the CIA that the information about the uranium was "bogus and unrealistic."
ABC News - ABC News June 2003.
What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say. The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field....Evidence has been distorted and the public has really been misled on issues that helped inform the decision about war and peace.
Greg Thielmann, former US State Department head - BBC Today Programme, January 2004.
Meanwhile the BBC has been told that the US government "twisted, distorted, simplified" intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in a way that led Americans to "seriously misunderstand what the threat was.
Greg Thielmann, director of the Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the US State Department until his retirement last year, said President George W Bush's administration had "seriously misled" US citizens over the weapons threat.
His comments followed those from former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill who claimed that Mr Bush had planned the invasion of Iraq from the moment he came to power.
Greg Thielmann quoted by BBC News - BBC News Online January 2003.
Saddam and Bin Laden. Best of friends?
We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
George Bush, US President, - Ohio Speech October 2002.
There is not - you know, I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.
Colin Powell, Secretary of State, regarding ties with Saddam and Al Qaeda - Press conference, January 2004.
...al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq...
...Any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, including al-Qaida.
British Joint Intelligence Committee in a report handed to Tony Blair a month before the invasion of Iraq - The Guardian September 2003.
There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation.
Greg Thielmann, former State Department Intelligence - Boston Globe July 2003.
