Loose Cannons

Solid lies

"The president of the United States and the secretary of defence would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction ... if they did not have a solid basis for saying it" — White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer, quoted in a December 5 Associated Press report.

Rocket fuel discovered

"A team of nuclear inspectors ... chose distilleries producing the a local spirit named arak and 75-cents-a-bottle gin... The UN statement on the inspections said only that the two plants ... 'proved to be dedicated to the production of alcohol'." — New York Times, December 3, describing a surprise inspection in Iraq.

Iraq to be bombed back onto the map?

"A National Geographic survey found that only 13% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 could identify Iraq on a map... The good news is, after a year-long war in Afghanistan, a whopping 17% of young people can identify that country. And even better, a much larger number were able to identify the Marquesa Islands. Apparently the islands had been featured on the TV show Survivors." — Chicago Tribune, October 21.

From Green Left Weekly, December 11, 2002.

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From GLW issue 520