Vanishing Weapons of Mass Distruction

[jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The following article appears in the June 7, 2003, issue of the email
Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter, published in New Paltz, N.Y., by the
Mid-Hudson National People's Campaign/IAC and sent via
jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
??????????????????????

THE VANISHING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

By Jack A. Smith

The Baghdad government's supposed mighty arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) ? the alleged existence of which constituted the Bush
administration's principal pretext for the preemptive pummeling  of Iraq
? has vanished like the snows of yesteryear.  And for the first time the
U.S. mass media is beginning to ask pointed questions about President
Bush's rationale for launching a preemptive war, creating a new
opportunity for peace forces.

In the months leading up to the invasion March 19, the White House
charged that Iraq's actual WMD included 30,000 warheads capable of
delivering chemical and biological agents (some of which, according to
President Bush, could target the U.S.);  500 tons of mustard, sarin and
VX chemical warfare nerve agents; and biological weapons that included
38,000 liters of botulism toxin and 25,000 liters of anthrax.  In
addition, Bush charged, Iraq's "homicidal dictator" had started a
campaign to build nuclear weapons and might be able to produce one
within a year.

Now, after months of renewed UN inspections, and nearly three months of
intensive searching by thousands of invading U.S. soldiers (including
all the hundreds of sites where Washington insisted the weapons were
secreted), all that has been found, according to a CIA-Defense
Intelligence Agency report last week, are two empty trucks in northern
Iraq that may or may not, at one time or another, have been used as
mobile laboratories to develop biological weapons.  

"Critics are not convinced," understated the liberal British daily
Independent May 30.  "No biological agents were found on the trucks and
experts point out that, unlike the trucks described by Colin Powell, the
Secretary of State, in a speech to the UN Security council, they were
open sided and would therefore have left a trace easy for weapons
inspectors to detect.  One former UN inspector said that the trucks
would have been a very inefficient way to produce anthrax."

So far, not a trace of  chemical, biological or nuclear weapons has been
located in Iraq.  President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
under increasing domestic and international pressure to substantiate
their frequent claims, sought to portray the empty trucks as evidence of
WMD, but no one appeared convinced.

The absence of proof that Iraq was in recent possession of WMD ? a fact
exposed many months before the war by the international antiwar and left
movements, and a topic of considerable speculation in a number of
foreign newspapers ? has finally penetrated the consciousness of sectors
of the U.S. corporate mass media. 

The New York Times, in calling for a thorough investigation by Congress
and the White House, noted editorially May 26 that there are "dark hints
that the [administration's WMD] data may have been manipulated to
support a preemptive war."

Writing in the Times June 3, columnist and MIT economist Paul Krugman
emphasized that if the Bush administration's repeated claims about Iraqi
WMD were fraudulent, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst
scandal in American political history ? worse than Watergate, worse than
Iran-Contra....  In that case, our political system has become utterly,
and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted."

The White House is hardly unaware that the most dangerous weapon of all
to its own political interests may be the eventual revelation that it
concocted the WMD story in order to obtain congressional and public
approval for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.   It must either
locate the weapons (in fact or by planting false evidence) or invent a
plausible explanation for their disappearance.

Adopting a "what me worry?" facade, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
who less than two months earlier said "We know where they [WMD] are,"
ruminated before the assembled media May 28 that "it is also possible"
that the government of President Saddam Hussein "decided to destroy them
prior to a conflict," a proposition that immediately raises two
questions: 

(1) How long before the war ? several years, as the Baghdad government
has long maintained (thus contradicting months of administration lies
that Washington possessed proof the weapons still existed), or days as
Rumsfeld implied? 

 (2) And in the unlikely case that it was days, (a) why would the Iraqi
authorities destroy their only effective military defense capabilities
immediately before an inevitable "shock and awe" terror bombardment and
a massive invasion? Or, (b) how could they have disposed of such as huge
storehouse of volatile weaponry so quickly and especially secretly when
U.S. spy satellites and electronic surveillance systems infiltrated
every inch of Iraqi territory, every telephone, every fax machine, and
every internet connection?  This doesn't even mention spies on the
ground, bribes to induce scientists or participants in the "destruction"
to talk, or post-evanescence detection endeavors.  After all, it
shouldn't be impossible for Pentagon technology to discover at least a
trace of residue just days or weeks after a million pounds of chemical
nerve agents, among other weapons, were buried or went up in smoke.

Two days later in an article appearing in Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz ? the leading proponent within the
administration of an invasion of Iraq, a recommendation he had been
making for a decade ? acknowledged that "For bureaucratic reasons we
settled on one issue [to justify the war], weapons of mass destruction,
because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."  "Everyone"
included the contending factions within Washington (mainly between the
extraordinarily hawkish Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Defense Department and the
merely hawkish Powell and his "multilateralist" clique at the State
Department) and London (between Blair's coterie and several dubious
leaders of his Labour party).  

Another reason the White House "settled" on WMD as the required pretext
was that its previous demand for regime-change (i.e., arrogating to
itself the right to violently topple governments that cultivated Bush's
displeasure) was rejected by virtually all other countries.  This meant
that Washington would not have been able to construct its pathetic
"Coalition of the Willing" to convey the impression that several more
countries agreed with the warmongering U.S. and UK.

In another revelation about Wolfowitz, the Guardian (UK) reported June 4
that "Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq."  The
newspaper based its assessment on comments made days earlier  by the
deputy defense secretary at an Asian security summit in Singapore. Asked
why the administration chose to confront Iraq instead of North Korea,
Wolfowitz responded, "Let's look at it simply.  The most important
difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just
had no choice in Iraq.  The country swims on a sea of oil."

Secretary of State Powell may have joined the administration consensus
that Iraq's WMD justified a war ? and his enthusiastic presentation of
"evidence" to the UN earlier this year may have convinced a few more of
the "willing" to join the U.S. pro-war coalition ? but he evidently had
serious problems with some of the "proof" he was supposed present to the
world body.  Reporting on a meeting that took place just before the UN
presentation, U.S. News & World Report revealed last week that Powell
angrily threw away a number of pages, declaring, "I'm not reading this. 
This is bullshit!"  Some pages must have slipped through since the
proofs he did offer to the UN turned out to be false.

Responding to increasing public demands for evidence, the U.S. and Great
Britain are sending additional weapons inspectors to Iraq.  The Pentagon
alone has ordered more than a thousand more specially trained troops and
experts to Iraq to broaden the search.  At the same time, both countries
continue to prohibit the UN's professional arms inspectors from entering
Iraq.  It is obvious that neither Washington nor London wants
independent experts to evaluate any materials their troops and employees
may claim to have found.

Meanwhile, the White House has ordered the CIA and other agencies to
investigate the information-gathering process that led President Bush to
announce as late as March 17 that "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." 
Informed left critics have maintained that the White House manipulated
surveillance information to "prove" that Baghdad possessed a threatening
arsenal of WMD in order to launch a long-planed invasion. They also
speculate that the congressional hearings will result in a whitewash.

Even at this exquisite moment for intervention, the Democratic
"opposition" in Congress remains quiescent, with the stellar exceptions
of elderly Robert Byrd in the Senate and Dennis Kucinich in the House,
along with a couple of dozen other congressional members.   Kucinich,
who functions as the leader of antiwar forces in the House, declared
June 4 that that the Bush administration  has "led this nation into war
based on lies."  At the same time the Ohio congressman announced he
"will use a Resolution of Inquiry to demand the release of the
intelligence that led to the war in Iraq, and to administration claims
that Iraq had tons of biological and chemical weapons, delivery systems,
and a reconstituted nuclear program."   The main Democratic leaders in
Congress and the party's leading presidential contenders have stayed in
the background.

The increasing demand for evidence of WMD has created serious
difficulties for the Bush administration.  A defeat on this issue would
undermine White House plans for endless aggression and intervention. 
Whether a centrist Democratic party ? hell-bent on proving it is just as
"patriotic" and committed to a "national security" war policy as the
rightist Republicans ? has the guts to slug it out with Bush on this
issue is another matter entirely.  It does not appear likely.  As for
the people's forces, June isn't January, February and March, the months
before the war when the peace and left movements attained an apogee of
activism.  

Unless there is a swift resurgence of political struggle on all levels,
from the activist movements to the Democrats, the Bush administration
may well be able to escape censure for leading the U.S. into an unjust,
immoral and illegal war based on fabricated evidence.