Powell's Presentation By Robert Fisk

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

It was like something out of Beckett


Sources, foreign intelligence sources, "our sources," defectors, sources,
sources, sources. Colin Powell's terror talk to the United Nations Security
Council yesterday sounded like one of those government-inspired reports on
the front page of The New York Times - where it will most certainly be
treated with due reverence in this morning's edition. It was a bit like
heating up old soup. Haven't we heard most of this stuff before? Should one
trust the man? General Powell, I mean, not Saddam.

Certainly we don't trust Saddam but Secretary of State Powell's presentation
was a mixture of awesomely funny recordings of Iraqi Republican Guard
telephone intercepts à la Samuel Beckett that just might have been some
terrifying little proof that Saddam really is conning the UN inspectors
again, and some ancient material on the Monster of Baghdad's all too well
known record of beastliness. I am still waiting to hear the Arabic for the
State Department's translation of "Okay Buddy" - "Consider it done, Sir" -
this from the Republican Guard's "Captain Ibrahim", for heaven's sake - and
some dinky illustrations of mobile bio-labs whose lorries and railway trucks
were in such perfect condition that they suggested the Pentagon didn't have
much idea of the dilapidated state of Saddam's army.

It was when we went back to Halabja and human rights abuses and all Saddam's
old sins, as recorded by the discredited Unscom team, that we started eating
the old soup again. Jack Straw may have thought all this "the most powerful
and authoritative case" but when we were forced to listen to Iraq's officer
corps communicating by phone - "yeah", "yeah", "yeah?", "yeah..." - it was
impossible not to ask oneself if Colin Powell had really considered the
effect this would have on the outside world.

From time to time, the words "Iraq: Failing To Disarm - Denial and
Deception" appeared on the giant video screen behind General Powell. Was
this a CNN logo, some of us wondered? But no, it was CNN's sister channel,
the US Department of State.

Because Colin Powell is supposed to be the good cop to the Bush-Rumsfeld bad
cop routine, one wanted to believe him. The Iraqi officer's telephoned order
to his subordinate - "remove 'nerve agents' whenever it comes up in the
wireless instructions" - looked as if the Americans had indeed spotted a
nasty new little line in Iraqi deception. But a dramatic picture of a
pilotless Iraqi aircraft capable of spraying poison chemicals turned out to
be the imaginative work of a Pentagon artist.

And when General Powell started blathering on about "decades'' of contact
between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of State.
Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden -
"decades" ago - was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present
day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell. And Colin
Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie - that the
"scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi intelligence agents
in disguise - was singularly unimpressive. The UN talked to scientists, the
new version went, but they were posing for the real nuclear and bio boys
whom the UN wanted to talk to. General Powell said America was sharing its
information with the UN inspectors but it was clear yesterday that much of
what he had to say about alleged new weapons development - the
decontamination truck at the Taji chemical munitions factory, for example,
the "cleaning" of the Ibn al-Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25
November - had not been given to the UN at the time. Why wasn't this
intelligence information given to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General
Powell's beloved UN resolution 1441 demand that all such intelligence
information should be given to Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the
Americans, perhaps, not being "pro-active" enough?

The worst moment came when General Powell started talking about anthrax and
the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, pathetically holding up
a teaspoon of the imaginary spores and - while not precisely saying so -
fraudulently suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 2001
anthrax scare.

When the Secretary of State held up Iraq's support for the Palestinian Hamas
organisation, which has an office in Baghdad, as proof of Saddam's support
for "terror'' - there was, of course, no mention of America's support for
Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land - the whole theatre began to
collapse. There are Hamas offices in Beirut, Damascus and Iran. Is the 82nd
Airborne supposed to grind on to Lebanon, Syria and Iran?

There was an almost macabre opening to the play when General Powell arrived
at the Security Council, cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his great
arms around them. Jack Straw fairly bounded up for his big American hug.

Indeed, there were moments when you might have thought that the whole
chamber, with its toothy smiles and constant handshakes, contained a room
full of men celebrating peace rather than war. Alas, not so. These elegantly
dressed statesmen were constructing the framework that would allow them to
kill quite a lot of people, the monstrous Saddam perhaps, with his cronies,
but a considerable number of innocents as well. One recalled, of course, the
same room four decades ago when General Powell's predecessor Adlai Stevenson
showed photos of the ships carrying Soviet missiles to Cuba.

Alas, today's pictures carried no such authority. And Colin Powell is no
Adlai Stevenson.

World reaction

Iraq

A "typical American show complete with stunts and special effects" was
Iraq's scathing dismissal of General Powell's presentation. Mohammed
al-Douri, above, Iraq's UN ambassador, accused the US of manufacturing
evidence and said the charges were "utterly unrelated to the truth.

"No new information was provided, merely sound recordings that cannot be
ascertained as genuine," he said. "There are incorrect allegations, unnamed
sources, unknown sources."

Lt-Gen Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to Saddam Hussein, said the satellite
pictures "proved nothing". On the allegation that Iraq had faked the death
certificate of a scientist to shield them from UN inspectors, he added: "If
[General Powell] thinks any of those scientists marked as deceased is still
in existence, let him come up with it."

Britain

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, left, praised General Powell for his
"powerful and authoritative case". He said the presentation "laid bare the
deceit practised by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and worse, the very great
danger it represents.

"Secretary Powell has set out deeply worrying reports about the presence in
Iraq of one of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants, al-Zarqawi, and other members
of al-Qaida, and their efforts to develop poisons.

"The recent discovery of the poison ricin in London has underlined again
that this is a threat which all of us face.

"Saddam is defying every one of us ... He questions our resolve and is
gambling that we will lose our nerve rather than enforce our will."

France

France called for the number of inspectors to be tripled and the process
beefed up. Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, above, said
inspections should continue but under "an enhanced regime of inspections
monitoring". Iraq must also do more to co-operate ­ including allowing
flights from U-2 spy planes. "The use of force can only be a final
recourse," he said.

China

China said the work of the inspectors should continue. Tang Jiaxuan, the
Foreign Minister, said immediately after General Powell's presentation: "As
long as there is still the slightest hope for political settlement, we
should exert our utmost effort to achieve that."

Russia

Inspections should continue, Igor Ivanov, the Foreign Minister, above, said.
More study was needed of the evidence presented by General Powell, he added.
Meanwhile, inspections "must be continued".

Germany

The Powell presentation and the findings of the weapons inspectors "have to
be examined carefully", said Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister. "We must
continue to seek a peaceful solution."

Israel

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Foreign Minister, left, said: "We've known this a
long time. We've shared intelligence with the US, and I think the US has
shared some of that today." General Powell "laid bare the true nature of
Saddam Hussein's regime, and I think he also exposed the great dangers ...
to the region and the world".


Powell's Case
By Phylliss Bennis

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security
Council on February 5 wasn't likely to win over anyone not already on his
side. He ignored the crucial fact that in the past several days (in Sunday's
New York Times and in his February 4th briefing of UN journalists) Hans Blix
denied key components of Powell's claims.

Blix, who directs the UN inspection team in Iraq, said the UNMOVIC
inspectors have seen "no evidence" of mobile biological weapons labs, has
"no persuasive indications" of Iraq-al Qaeda links, and no evidence of Iraq
hiding and moving material used for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) either
outside or inside Iraq. Dr. Blix also said there was no evidence of Iraq
sending scientists out of the country, of Iraqi intelligence agents posing
as scientists, of UNMOVIC conversations being monitored, or of UNMOVIC being
penetrated.

Further, CIA and FBI officials still believe the Bush administration is
"exaggerating" information to make their political case for war. Regarding
the alleged Iraqi link with al Qaeda, U.S. intelligence officials told the
New York Times, "we just don't think it's there."

The most compelling part of Powell's presentation was his brief ending
section on the purported al Qaeda link with Iraq and on the dangers posed by
the al Zarqawi network. However, he segued disingenuously from the accurate
and frightening information about what the al Zarqawi network could actually
do with biochemical materials to the not-so-accurate claim about its link
with Iraq--which is tenuous and unproven at best.

A key component of the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda link is based on what Powell
said "detainees tell us...". That claim must be rejected. On December 27 the
Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had acknowledged detainees
being beaten, roughed up, threatened with torture by being turned over to
officials of countries known to practice even more severe torture. In such
circumstances, nothing "a detainee" says can be taken as evidence of truth
given that people being beaten or tortured will say anything to stop the
pain. Similarly, the stories of defectors cannot be relied on alone, as they
have a self-interest in exaggerating their stories and their own involvement
to guarantee access to protection and asylum.

In his conclusion, Powell said, "We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we
wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace." It is certainly at least partially
true that the UN resolution was an effort to "preserve the peace," although
it is certainly not true that the U.S. wrote 1441 to preempt war. Rather,
the Bush administration intended that the resolution would serve as a first
step toward war.

Finally, the "even if" rule applies. "Even if" everything Powell said was
true, there is simply not enough evidence for war. There is no evidence of
Iraq posing an imminent threat, no evidence of containment not working.
Powell is asking us to go to war--risking the lives of 100,000 Iraqis in the
first weeks, hundreds or thousands of U.S. and other troops, and political
and economic chaos--because he thinks MAYBE in the future Iraq might rebuild
its weapons systems and MIGHT decide to deploy weapons or MIGHT give those
weapons to someone else who MIGHT use them against someone we like or give
them to someone else who we don't like, and other such speculation. Nothing
that Powell said should alter the position that we should reject a war on
spec.



(Phyllis Bennis <pbennis at compuserve.com> is a Middle East analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and a senior analyst at the
Institute for Policy Studies.)


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Nello

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