[A-List] US cnsored 8000 pages of Iraq Report

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

[Apparent by now, isn't it, that these people will just tell great big lies
and dare anyone to challenge them.  Their desperation is matched only by
their hubris.  They are the Axis of Arrogance.  -SG]

Published on Sunday, December 22, 2002
by The Sunday Herald
America Tore Out 8000 Pages of Iraq Dossier
by James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot

THE United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages of Iraq's
11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitized version to
the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council.

The full extent of Washington's complete control over who sees what in the
crucial Iraqi dossier calls into question the allegations made by US
Secretary of State Colin Powell that 'omissions' in the document
constituted a 'material breach' of the latest UN resolution on Iraq.

Last week, Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan accepted that it was
'unfortunate' that his organization had allowed the US to take the only
complete dossier and edit it. He admitted 'the approach and style were
wrong' and Norway, a member of the security council, says it is being
treated like a 'second-class country'.

Although Powell called the Iraqi dossier a 'catalogue of recycled
information and flagrant omissions', the non-permanent members of the
security council will have no way of testing the US claims for themselves.
This will be crucial if the US and the UK go back to the security council
seeking explicit authorization for war on Iraq if breaches of resolution
1441 are confirmed when the weapons inspectors -- this weekend
investigating 10 sites in Iraq, including an oil refinery south of
Baghdad -- deliver their report to the UN next month.

A UN source in New York said: 'The questions being asked are valid. What
did the US take out? And if weapons inspectors are supposed to be checking
against the dossier's content, how can any future claim be verified. In
effect the US is saying trust us, and there are many who just will not.'

Current and former UN diplomats are said to be livid at what some have
called the 'theft' of the Iraqi document by the US. Hans von Sponeck, the
former assistant general secretary of the UN and the UN's humanitarian co-
ordinator in Iraq until 2000, said: 'This is an outrageous attempt by the
US to mislead.'

Although the five permanent members of the security council -- the US, the
UK, France, China and Russia -- have had access to the complete version,
there was agreement that the US be allowed to edit the dossier on the
ground that its contents were 'risky' in terms of security on weapons
proliferation.

Yesterday, US President George W Bush announced that a planned trip to
several African countries, scheduled for January, had been canceled. As he
gave the go-ahead to double the current 50,000 US troops deployed in the
Gulf by early January, he used his weekly radio address to say that 'the
men and women in the [US] military, many of whom will spend Christmas at
posts and bases far from home' were the only thing that stood between
'Americans and grave danger'.

An equally pessimistic view of the immediate future came from the Vatican.
Pope John Paul II promised the Catholic church would not cease to have its
voice heard and would offer prayers 'in the face of this horizon bathed in
blood'.

Despite the prayers, the US military isn't expecting peace. Yesterday,
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, was asked
if US forces were ready if called upon immediately. General Myers simply
said: 'You bet.'

The language coming from Baghdad was equally gung ho. The Iraqi newspaper
Babel, owned by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, likened US and UK
political leaders to ruthless Mongol conquerors of the past.

©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd

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