[PEN-L:32793] good article

[Dan Scanlan <dscanlan@xxxxxxx>]

Published on Thursday, December 5, 2002 by the Guardian/UK
This Time I'm Scared
US propaganda fueled the first Gulf war. It will fuel this one too -
and the risks are even greater
by Maggie O'Kane


I have a picture from the last Gulf war. It was taken in the basement
of the Al Rashid hotel, the night the war started. The look on my
face is one you might expect of a 28-year-old reporter at the center
of one of the biggest stories of my lifetime: earnest, excited and
thrilled to be in Baghdad.

Eleven years later, I'm on maternity leave and the news of an
impending second Gulf war follows me around the kitchen. This time, I
feel only a sense of intense danger as the Middle East lurches
towards a possible chemical and biological war.

The chances of Saddam Hussein using chemical and biological weapons
if attacked are, according to the testimony of the CIA to the US
Senate intelligence committee on October 7, "pretty high" - a
scenario that even one of greatest hawks in US history, Brent
Scowcroft, former national security adviser to George Bush senior,
says would lead to meltdown in the Middle East. As of December 7,
when Iraq is expected to produce its definitive dossier, there should
be no illusions: no matter what Baghdad discloses, America and almost
certainly Britain are going to war. The "material breach", if it does
not happen by itself, will be manufactured, so wringing consent for
the second Gulf war just as consent was manufactured with
breathtaking cynicism in 1991.

There were two glaring examples of how the propaganda machine worked
before the first Gulf war. First, in the final days before the war
started on January 9, the Pentagon insisted that not only was Saddam
Hussein not withdrawing from Kuwait - he was - but that he had
265,000 troops poised in the desert to pounce on Saudi Arabia. The
Pentagon claimed to have satellite photographs to prove it. Thus, the
waverers and anti-war protesters were silenced.

We now know from declassified documents and satellite photographs
taken by a Russian commercial satellite that there were no Iraqi
troops poised to attack Saudi. At the time, no one bothered to ask
for proof.

No one except Jean Heller, a five-times nominated Pulitzer
prize-winning journalist from the St Petersburg Times in Florida, who
persuaded her bosses to buy two photos at $1,600 each from the
Russian commercial satellite, the Soyuz Karta. Guess what? No massing
troops. "You could see the planes sitting wing tip to wing tip in
Riyadh airport," Ms Heller says, "but there wasn't was any sign of a
quarter of a million Iraqi troops sitting in the middle of the
desert." So what will the fake satellite pictures show this time: a
massive chemical installation with Iraqi goblins cooking up anthrax?

The US propaganda machine is already gearing up. In its sights
already is Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector. He's too much of a
softie for Saddam, the former CIA director James Woolsey told the
Today program last week. His work is of "limited value". He was Kofi
Annan's "second choice".

What next? Blix's granny is Iraqi? He has a drugs problem?

Meanwhile, in Britain, Jack Straw's new human rights dossier on Iraq
is timed to coincide with the build-up. Convenient, eh? The second
tactic used to get consensus for war in 1991 was another propaganda
classic: dead babies. Then, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in
Washington, Nijirah al-Sabah, tearfully described how, as a volunteer
in the Al Adnan hospital in Kuwait City, she had watched Iraqi
soldiers looting incubators to take back to Baghdad, pitching the
Kuwaiti babies on to "the cold floor to die".

Except it never happened. The Filipina nurses, Frieda Construe-Nag
and Myra Ancog Cooke, who worked in the maternity ward of the Al
Adnan hospital, had never seen Ms al-Sabah in their lives. Amnesty
admitted they had been duped. Middle East Watch confirmed the
fabrication, but it was too late: a marginal US congress had been
swung to vote for war. George Bush senior mentioned the "incubator
babies" seven times in pre-war rallying speeches. It was months
before the truth came out. By then, the war was over.

This time, we have yet to see what propaganda will be used to rally
consensus for the second Gulf war by proving a "material breach". It
is highly likely that Saddam Hussein maintains at least some chemical
and biological capacity. In a war in which his own survival is
unlikely (and already rumored to be ill with cancer) Saddam Hussein
has nothing to lose. If he knows his fall is imminent, what terrible
legacy might he choose to leave behind? What better present to his
extremist Arab brothers than an attack on Israel? And how will the
US, Britain or Israel respond if their troops or cities come under
chemical or biological attack?

I n 1995, the Washington-based Defense News reported on the outcome
of the then highly classified Global 95 Wargame, a high-level
military exercise enacted at the US Naval War college. Global 95
played out a simultaneous threat from North Korea and Iraq. The North
Korean situation was diffused, but Iraq attacked US troops in the
region with biological weapons. Washington replied with a nuclear
bomb on Baghdad. The main observation during the Global 95 experiment
was just how quickly the situation escalated.

But the greatest irony, and most important issue, is that although
the war on Iraq may indeed get George Bush re-elected, it will not
win the war on terrorism. It will instead fuel it.

In 1998, I spent an afternoon with Abu Ziad, an elderly accountant in
Baghdad. He recounted how, at 2am on February 13, 1991, two bombs had
hit the Amiryia bomb shelter near his home. The first pierced the
roof, slicing into the central heating tank and sending gallons of
boiling water pouring over the women and children below. The second
bomb, 15 minutes later, exploded with such force that he never had
the chance to identify the bodies of his wife and four of their five
children: Zena,14, Fuad, 12, Lena, seven and Sadaad, six. He
remembers standing outside the shelter in the early morning and
noticing the ankles of dead women and children marked by the red hot
mattress springs they had fought to climb over to get out of the
shelter before the second bomb dropped.

The Abu Ziads of the second Gulf war will be seen on al-Jazeera TV
giving their heartbreaking testimony to a new generation of
disaffected and dispossessed young Muslim men from Palestine,
Indonesia, the Middle East and Africa. And we can all hear the death
chant of a hundred suicide bombers: Allahu Akbar. It's a high price
to pay for another four years in the White House.

I am not some naive pacifist. I supported intervention in Bosnia, the
war in Kosovo and military intervention in East Timor. Baghdad is a
city where terror hangs in the air in every home. Iraqis literally
dare not speak Saddam Hussein's name. But now he is cornered,
dangerous and possibly dying. Provoking him is criminally
irresponsible and provoking him in order to secure a second
presidential term is unforgivable.

Remember the words of JFK to his brother Bobby, spoken in the
ante-room of the Oval Office the night before the Cuban missile
crisis, now declassified. "I have to do it, Bobby," said John
Kennedy, explaining why he was facing up to the Soviets. "I'll lose
the presidency if I don't." Krushchev had a way out. He ordered the
Soviet ships to turn around. What would have happened if he had
nowhere to turn?

Maggie O'Kane is editorial director of GuardianFilms. She was named
European Journalist of the Year this week for its first documentary,
Looking for Karadzic.
--

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Drop Bush, Not Bombs!
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"During times of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

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