[A-List] Iraq: Scott Ritter indicts the West

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Criminals the lot of us

The invasion of Iraq was a crime of gigantic proportions, for which
politicians, the media and the public share responsibility

Scott Ritter
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

The White House's acknowledgement last month that the United States has
formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to
a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times.

This decision was taken a month after a contentious presidential election in
which the issue of WMD and the war in Iraq played a central role. In the
lead-up to the invasion, and throughout its aftermath, President Bush was
unwavering in his conviction that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a threat
to the US and the world. The failure to find WMD should have been his
Achilles heel, but the Democratic contender, John Kerry, floundered,
changing his position on WMD and Iraq many times.

Ironically, it was Kerry who forced the Bush administration to acknowledge
that it was WMD that solely justified any military action against Iraq.
Before the US Senate in 2002, secretary of state Colin Powell responded to a
question posed by Kerry about what would happen if Iraq allowed UN weapons
inspectors to return and they found the country had in fact disarmed.

"If Iraq was disarmed as a result of an inspection regime that gave us and
the security council confidence that it had been disarmed, I think it
unlikely that we would find a casus belli."

When one looks at the situation in Iraq today, the only way that it would be
possible to justify the current state of affairs - a once secular society
now the centre of a global anti-American Islamist jihad, tens of thousands
of civilians killed, an unending war that costs almost £3.2bn a month, and
the basic principles of democracy mocked through an election process that
has generated extensive violence - is if the invasion of Iraq was for a
cause worthy of the price.

The threat to international peace and security represented by Iraqi WMD
seemed to be such a cause. We now know there were no WMD, and thus no
justification for the war. And yet there are no repercussions.

The culpability for the war can be traced to those same Senate hearings in
2002, when Colin Powell said:"We can have debates about the size of the
stockpile ... but no one can doubt two things. One, they [Iraq] are in
violation of these resolutions ... And second, they have not lost the intent
to develop these weapons of mass destruction."

Politicians, the mainstream media and the public alike accepted this line of
argument, without debate, thus setting the stage for an illegal war.

UN weapons inspections were never given a chance. Ever since the Clinton
administration ordered them out of Iraq in 1998, the US has denigrated the
efficacy of the inspection process. This was a policy begun by Clinton, but
perfected by Bush in the build-up to war. In October 2002, a month after
Saddam Hussein agreed to the unfettered return of weapons inspectors, the US
defence department postulated the existence of secret production facilities,
protected by a "concealment mechanism" designed to defeat inspectors. Thus,
even if they returned, a finding of no WMD was meaningless.

Inspectors did return, and they found nothing. Iraq submitted a complete
declaration of its WMD holdings, which was dismissed as lies by the Bush
administration. Everyone seemed to accept this rejection of fact.
"Intelligence information" wasassumed to be infallible. And yet it was all
just hype.

There was never any serious effort undertaken by the Bush administration to
find Iraqi WMD. Prior to the invasion, the US military re-designated an
artillery brigade as an "exploitation task force" designed to search for WMD
as the coalition advanced into Iraq.

It did little more than serve as a vehicle for its embedded reporter, Judith
Miller of the New York Times, to recycle fabricated information provided by
Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, creating dramatic headlines
that had no substance. Once Iraq was occupied, Miller was sent home, and the
taskforce disbanded.

A new organisation was created, the CIA-led Iraq survey group (ISG), led by
David Kay. His job was not to find WMD but to spin the data for the
political benefit of the White House. He hinted at dramatic findings, only
to suddenly reverse course once Saddam Hussein was captured. Kay told us
that everyone had got it wrong on WMD, that it was no one's fault. He was
replaced by Charles Duelfer, whose task was to extend the WMD cover-up for
as long as possible. Duelfer was very adept at this, having done similar
work while serving as the deputy executive chairman of the UN weapons
inspection effort.

I witnessed him manipulate reports to the security council, rejecting all
that didn't sustain his (and the US government's) foregone conclusion that
Iraq had WMD.

As the head of the ISG, he was called upon to again manipulate the data. As
it was virtually impossible to conjure up WMD stockpiles where none existed,
he did the next best thing - he re-certified Colin Powell's pre-war
assertion that Saddam Hussein had the "intent" to re-acquire WMD. Duelfer
provided no evidence to support this supposition. In fact, the available
data seems to reject the notion of "intent". But once again, politicians,
the mainstream media and the public at large failed to let facts get in the
way of assertions. The ISG had accomplished its mission - not the search for
WMD, but the establishment of a viable alibi. Its job done, the ISG slipped
quietly away, its passing barely noticed by politicians, media and a public
all too willing to pretend that no crime has been committed.

But, through the invasion of Iraq, a crime of gigantic proportions has been
perpetrated. If history has taught us anything, it is that it will condemn
both the individuals and respective societies who not only perpetrated the
crime, but also remained blind and mute while it was being committed.