[A-List] Powell's "proof" is all smoke and mirrors [Toronto Sun] - Deadly Game of Finding Hussein [LATimes]

["Ralph Johansen" <michele@xxxxxxxx>]

Powell's "proof" is all smoke and mirrors
By Eric Margolis, Contributing Foreign Editor
The Toronto Sun
February 9, 2003

American Secretary of State Colin Powell used the UN Security Council last
Wednesday to make Washington's case for war against Iraq. The widely
respected Powell delivered a weighty indictment based on a mosaic of
circumstantial evidence obtained by U.S. intelligence.


Powell's philipic encouraged those favouring war. Skeptics dismissed it as a
farrago of dubious claims.

A good defence attorney would have had most of Powell's charges thrown out
of court. France, Germany, Russia and China concluded Powell's indictment
showed the need for stronger, continued inspections rather than war.

Powell's charges (and some plausible explanations):

Recorded conversations - Iraqi officers discussing removal of a "modified
vehicle" and deleting references to nerve gas from documents. If genuine,
and not spliced, these radio intercepts suggest Iraq may have been hiding
some biowarfare arms, or was racing to eliminate any residues or evidence of
its 1980s weapons program in advance of UN inspections.

(Considering the U.S. military loses tens of millions worth of weapons and
supplies each year, and the Los Alamos centre has misplaced large amounts of
nuclear materials, it's not implausible that Iraq has bits and pieces of
chemical arms scattered about, such as the empty 122-mm rockets recently
discovered in a bunker, that escaped its UN-mandated inventory.)

Satellite imagery - ammo storage bunkers which Powell claimed were used for
chemical weapons that were moved out prior to inspection.

(UN inspectors examined them and found nothing suspicious. "Sniffers" used
by inspectors can detect the past presence of chemical and biological
weapons.)

The infamous mobile biological weapons labs mounted on trucks - a.k.a.
"Saddam's vans of death." Powell claimed defectors reported there were 18 of
these cruising around Iraq.

(Defector information is always suspect. UN chief arms inspector Hans Blix
said his men had examined some of the "death trucks" and found they were, in
fact, mobile food-testing labs.)

Some 100-400 tons of chemical agents, including four tons of VX nerve gas,
and some biological weapons, originally supplied in the 1980s by the U.S.
and secretly developed by British technicians, were still unaccounted for.

(This remains a major question. Iraq says it destroyed them, but lacks
proper documentation. They may be hidden. But most were made in the 1980s,
and may be degraded or inert from age. Nerve gas and germs are weapons of
mass destruction. Mustard gas, the bulk of Iraq's chemical weaponry, is not,
being no more lethal than napalm or the fuel-air explosives the U.S. and
Russia are using in Afghanistan and Chechnya.)

Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.

(UN nuclear inspectors have repeatedly contradicted U.S. claims. They
concluded the notorious aluminum tubes Powell said were for
uranium-enrichment centrifuges were actually conventional 122-mm rocket
artillery casings.)

According to UN Resolution 687 after the Gulf war, Iraq is permitted
missiles with a range of 150 km. The U.S. charges Iraq is testing missiles
that have flown 14-20 km farther.

(This is nothing unusual when testing a new propellant system. Powell also
accused Iraq of developing a 1,200-km missile that could reach Israel, based
on photos of an enlarged test stand. Iraq may have a dozen or so old Scud
missiles hidden away.)

Iraq is dragging its feet on private interviews of its nuclear scientists.

(True. Hawks in the Bush administration and Israel say the only way to
ensure Iraq never builds strategic weapons is to jail all of its 10,000
military scientists and technicians - who also face the wrath of Saddam if
they appear to turn over incriminating evidence.)

Powell claimed he had proof positive Iraq was linked to al-Qaida through
Ansar al-Islam, a small, 600-man Islamist group in the Kurdish region of
northern Iraq (not under Saddam's control), and through a "deadly terrorist
network" led by one Abu Musa al-Zarqawi.

(The first charge was immediately dismissed by Ansar's leader, Mullah
Krekar, a longtime, bitter foe of Saddam. And al-Zarqawi turned out to be an
unknown nobody, not on any FBI wanted list. His name came from suspects
being tortured in Jordan. Many reputable experts on terrorism scoffed at
Powell's overblown charges.)

Sitting silently behind Powell was Central Intelligence Agency chief George
Tenet. His agency has contradicted White House claims that Iraq had nuclear
capability and posed an imminent threat to the U.S. or anyone else. In a
recent article, former CIA Iraq desk chief Stephen Pelletiere cast doubt on
the charge, repeated by Bush and Powell, that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish
citizens in the town of Halabja.

Faked intelligence

Note: America's two most recent major wars - Vietnam and the Gulf - began
with release of faked "intelligence" information: the non-existent Gulf of
Tonkin attack in 1964, and doctored photos of a non-existent Iraqi invasion
buildup on the Saudi border in 1990.

A more neutral observer might have concluded the U.S. was exaggerating
scraps of uncorroborated information, while Iraq was trying to appear
co-operative while still hiding some of its most sensitive military secrets.

Polls show most people around the globe remain skeptical of Powell's
charges. Starting a war that could kill tens of thousands on the basis of
vague audio intercepts, photos of empty buildings and defectors' tales makes
no sense. Further inspections, not war, is the right answer.

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_feb9.html

Raw Data Rarely Produce Certainty
By William M. Arkin
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for
Opinion. E-mail: warkin@xxxxxxxx

February 9 2003

SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. -- Three weeks ago, I arrived home to a message on my
answering machine from an official in the Bush administration. Shortly after
the Gulf War in 1991, I had photographed an elaborately camouflaged building
 in Iraq. Now the White House wanted permission to use it in a publication
it was putting out on Saddam Hussein's regime called "Apparatus of Lies."

On Wednesday, as I watched Secretary of State Colin L. Powell present an
unprecedented cache of intelligence material to the United Nations, I
thought of that telephone message. Among the pieces of evidence Powell used
to buttress his case that Iraq was flouting U.N. resolution was a photograph
he said showed a "poison and explosives factory" at Khurmal in northeastern
Iraq. I've had too much experience with U.S. intelligence to believe that
Powell's photo was fabricated or doctored. Neither was the secretary
deliberately misrepresenting evidence. His own integrity is a sufficient
safeguard against that.

Nonetheless, I believe Powell's presentation on the Khurmal camp reflects
the possibility that the Bush administration -- and its least hawkish senior
official -- may have slipped unknowingly into what was once brilliantly
called the "wilderness of mirrors." How difficult it can be to navigate that
wilderness is illustrated by the story of the photograph I took more than a
decade ago on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The picture showed a camouflaged building ripped open in an aerial attack
during the Gulf War. Two days after the building was bombed, CNN broadcaster
Peter Arnett visited the site and aired an Iraqi claim that it had been a
plant for manufacturing infant formula. The U.S. government flatly denied
any wrongdoing. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called the
installation a "production facility for biological weapons ... hidden behind
a facade of baby-milk production."

"It is not an infant formula factory," Powell, then chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said. "It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are
sure -- and we have taken it out."

Of that we are sure?

"Regrettably, there were a number of people in the West and the Middle East
who actually believed [Iraq's] story," Defense Intelligence Agency officer
John Yurechko told journalists at a Pentagon briefing last fall. Twelve
years earlier, his agency had come to the conclusion that the "baby-milk
plant" at Abu Ghraib was one of 13 suspected sites involved in Hussein's
biological weapons program. Yurechko used my photograph to illustrate the
Iraqi deception.

The plant became a target in part because imagery analysts noted that a
chain-link fence atop a concrete wall surrounded the four-acre compound.
Guard towers marked out the perimeter and there was a security checkpoint at
the entrance. "The unusual security measures at the plant make it highly
suspect," the DIA wrote at the time.

But the DIA and the intelligence community were by no means certain, a fact
documented in now-declassified reports written in 1990 and 1991. Interviews
with key analysts and other officials confirm the ambiguities reflected in
those contemporaneous documents.

The possibility that Abu Ghraib was linked to biological weapons had been
raised as early as April 1988, documents show, but hard evidence was
lacking. Two months after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Armed Forces
Medical Intelligence Center, a unit of the DIA, did not include the plant on
its list of suspected sites.

On the other hand, there were reports that the plant had never been used to
produce infant formula. And, after poring over debriefings and importation
records, the DIA concluded that it contained "dual use" equipment that could
be used for biological weapons. This included five 27,000-liter processing
tanks, drying equipment and cold-storage facilities -- equipment that could
also be used to produce infant formula.

Sifting through other evidence, analysts came to the conclusion that Iraq
had obtained industrial fermenters and high-efficiency particulate filters
that "could easily be used for [biological weapon research] and production."
This esoteric gear had gone missing inside the country. Was it at Abu
Ghraib? Imagery analysts detected an air-handling and filtration system at
the plant, and in December 1990 the roof was painted in a mottled camouflage
pattern, which further aroused suspicion. "If it was merely a baby formula
plant," the DIA wrote in a report after the 1991 attack, "they could have
made it obviously civilian, and [the] DIA's judgment about the facility
might have been different."

In other words, U.S. analysts classified the facility a possible bioweapons
facility based on accumulated fragments of information. The Interagency
Working Group, established to look more closely at evidence regarding Iraqi
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, concluded on Dec. 17, 1990, that
the plant "may be involved" in biological weapons production.

As the pressures of impending war mounted, the facility was moved onto the
target list. When it was hit, Iraqi officials claimed a propaganda victory.
And the DIA could offer nothing certain, only strong suspicion. The plant
was "apparently never used" to produce infant formula, it concluded. In a
Feb. 6, 1991, position paper, the agency said the plant "was correctly
identified as a suspect facility."

Powell did not back down. "There was a body of evidence to suggest we knew
what we were doing," he told USA Today in March 1991. "Some of the so-called
baby powder that was around could not have been made there. We saw the
packages and read the labels. It was made by a company that was not, to the
best of our knowledge, doing business in Iraq."

Powell may well be right that the baby-milk story was an elaborate Iraqi
hoax. On the other hand, anyone who has spent time in Hussein's Iraq knows
that industrial facilities are commonly surrounded by security fences. As
for the camouflage, in trips to Iraq after Desert Storm, I saw countless
facilities painted like the baby-milk plant: food storage warehouses, oil
tanks, flour mills. Facility managers all said the same thing: Orders from
Baghdad had said the facilities should be painted, and painted they were.

In the end, of course, Iraq was proven to have an enormous biological
weapons program. And U.N. inspectors who visited the baby-milk site after
the war found evidence that three engineers from Iraq's bioweapons program
had been assigned to the facility in 1989.The inspectors placed the plant on
a monitoring list because the dual-use equipment meant it still could be
turned to development and production of biological agents.

What is the lesson to be learned here? What do my photograph of the
bombed-out factory and the Bush administration's desire to republish it now
have to do with the secretary of State's appearance at the U.N. or the
question of whether the United States should go to war with Iraq? Simply
this: The photograph and the story of the "baby-milk factory" illustrate the
tension that almost always exists between intelligence and decision-making.
It arises from the difference between interpretation and certainty.

Gathering, collating and assessing information is what the intelligence
community does. As Powell's presentation demonstrated, the information
normally comes in bits and pieces from all sorts of sources: an account from
an agent, an extracted confession, captured documents, images from spy
satellites, snippets of intercepted communications. Intelligence analysts
spend their careers studying how best to assemble those fragments, assess
their reliability and judge what they mean.

Making decisions to act on such evidence -- sending troops and planes into
battle, giving weapons inspectors more time, opting for a cunning diplomatic
maneuver -- is what leaders do, from Powell and President Bush on down.

Between intelligence and policy lies a no-man's land. In a perfect world,
intelligence would supply decision-makers with incontrovertible facts. But
in the real world, even in the ultrasophisticated, high-tech world of the
U.S. intelligence community, that kind of "fact" is scarce. What must be
relied on instead is interpretation.

Some members of the intelligence community already express skepticism about
the specifics Powell used to make his case, questioning the strength of the
information pointing to a "terrorist poison and explosives factory" with
links to both Baghdad and Al Qaeda.

Is Powell being duped? Since Sept. 11, it has become more and more apparent
that the president and his inner circle possess what they think is
incontrovertible evidence linking Al Qaeda and Iraq. They believe this
evidence shows active plotting is underway to attack the United States with
weapons of mass destruction. War, it follows, is necessary to defend the
U.S.

What drives this chain of reasoning are raw intelligence data showing a
regime determined to deceive. Viewed in the framework of Hussein's evil
record and the well-documented existence of a global terrorist network, the
administration's conclusions are not irrational. Indeed, they may prove to
be correct.

We must understand, however, that even the best intelligence agencies in the
world have not rescued the Bush administration from the uncertainties of a
difficult decision.

The administration is free to add my small photograph to the pile of
evidence, but the real lesson of the picture of the "baby-milk factory" is
that then -- as now -- intelligence data is just that: data. They cannot
tell us which course to take

http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dop%2Darkin9fe
b09&section=%2Fnews%2Fopinion%2Fcommentary

Deadly Game of Finding Hussein
Turning up the shadow warrior could be difficult.
By Chalmers Johnson
[Chalmers Johnson is the author of "Blowback" (Owl Books, 2001) and the
forthcoming book "The Sorrows of Empire: How the Americans Lost Their
Country."]

Los Angeles Times
February 9 2003


It is widely reported that when the war on Iraq is launched, the United
States will bomb into smithereens every one of Saddam Hussein's beautiful,
extravagant palaces, with the aim of killing Iraq's leader no matter where
he may be hiding.

These are the supposedly humane tactics of a civilized nation anxious to
conduct a short war that will bring about a swift "regime change." But what
if the military planners have misjudged the opposition? After all, the bombs
that rained on Afghanistan did not succeed in the death or capture of either
Al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar. ("Where is
Omar?" Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to ask cheerfully at press
conferences, as if he were referring to the children's picturebook "Where's
Waldo?")

Hussein is rumored to have not only many hide-outs and bunkers in addition
to his palaces but also at least three doubles, who look enough like him to
appear in public. A German television network made a scientific study of 450
photographs of Hussein and even found one that shows four "Husseins"
together. So how will we ever know whether the real Hussein is dead? Perhaps
the CIA has obtained a DNA sample, but how does it know whether it came from
the real Hussein? And how can we believe the CIA when it has lied about so
much else?

And what if the Iraqis don't believe us and continue to fight (or turn to
guerrilla actions) in the firm conviction that their leader still exists? Or
perhaps we will capture the real Hussein, only to have him insist he is a
mere double.

Questions such as these prompted me to watch again Akira Kurosawa's
brilliant 1980 antiwar film "Kagemusha." The Japanese term kagemusha means
shadow warrior or look-alike, and the plot concerns three Japanese clans
fighting for supremacy in the 16th century. One of the clan leaders dies,
but his brother has found a double to take his place. This kagemusha is a
thief, saved from crucifixion, who is dressed and taught to behave like a
samurai. Warriors die protecting him. He is finally unmasked not by a human
adversary but by the dead clan leader's horse, which bucks and throws the
impostor, who has tried to ride him.

The film ends with the kagemusha, now back in his rags and driven from the
clan's castle, watching the final battle in horror. (The actual battle of
Nagashino occurred June 29, 1575.) The conquering clan has acquired guns
from the Europeans and deploys its riflemen behind a protective stockade.
The clan that had ousted the kagemusha fights in traditional Japanese style,
with samurai mounted on horseback, followed by ranks of peasants carrying
spears. All are cut down by a barrage of bullets.

So it may be in Iraq, with the superior weapons of the U.S. and Britain
winning the first round. But Kurosawa's masterpiece reminds us that the
price is likely to be bloody -- if not in terms of our dead, then in terms
of theirs. And at the end of the film, the kagemusha picks up a spear on the
battlefield, walks toward the guns of the enemy and is himself killed after
joining in earnest a clan that he had only pretended to lead. Clan loyalties
run deep, and the U.S. and Britain have no notion of the long-term hatreds
they are likely to sow if they go to war in Iraq.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-oe-johnson9feb09,1
,4430442.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dsuncomment