BY ROHAN PEARCE
"Well, the problem with guns that are hidden is that you can't see their smoke", White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told journalists at a January 9 press briefing. Fleischer was responding to the interim report delivered to the United Nations Security Council that same day by Hans Blix, the head of the team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq.
Blix told the Security Council: "In the course of these inspections, we have not found any smoking gun. However, we are getting more and more information, better knowledge about the situation. [But] the declaration, regrettably, has not helped very much to clarify any question marks of the past."
Fleischer told his audience, "We know for a fact that there are weapons" in Iraq. However, the UN weapons inspections, conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), have not only failed to uncover the weapons that the US continually alleges that Iraq possesses, but have torn to shreds much of the supposed "justification" for war on Iraq.
Before the resumption of weapons inspections on November 27, the propaganda machinery of the US, British and Australian governments represented every rumour and speculation about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs as a fact. Even if not always able to make specific accusations, a general impression of Iraqi "guilt" was created with the assistance of the corporate media. Since the entry of the UN weapons inspectors, allegations made by Downing Street and the White House have been proved false.
'Zilch'
As an unnamed inspector, quoted in the January 2 Los Angeles Times, put it: "If our goal is to catch them with their pants down, we are definitely losing... We haven't found an iota of concealed material yet... By being silent, we may create the false illusion that we did uncover something, but I must say that if we were to publish a report now, we would have zilch to put in it."
"If we'd found a shed full of Scud missiles, don't you think we would have reported it to the [Security] Council?", an anonymous UN official told the January 3 Washington Post.
On September 6, Fleischer had told journalists that a UN report, which included aerial photographs of sites in Iraq released by the IAEA, was "troubling'. "Given the fact that Saddam Hussein has thrown weapons inspectors out of Iraq, it is not surprising that Saddam Hussein may seek to develop nuclear weapons and may be making progress... that's the whole problem with not having the inspectors there".
On October 7, Bush claimed that "satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past".
The IAEA images were seized on as "proof" of a revitalised Iraqi nuclear program. However, inspections of the photographed facility by IAEA experts on December 4 revealed that no weapons-related activity was taking place at the site — further proof that the mountains of "evidence" about Iraqi weapons programs being proffered by the US and British governments are a mountain of lies.
Indeed, this is how the December 5 British Independent described the state of most the "suspect" facility: "Twisted pieces of metal rise from the rubble, rainwater lies in craters gouged into the earth, a scorched chimney leans into a jagged wall."
Another example of now discredited accusations was contained in the US state department's briefing paper, A Decade of Deception and Defiance, released as background to Bush's September 12 UN address. The briefing paper alleged that the Iraqi regime "is seeking to purchase chemical weapons agent precursors and applicable production equipment, and is making an effort to hide activities at the Fallujah plant, which was one of Iraq's chemical weapons production facilities before the Gulf War. At Fallujah and three other plants, Iraq now has chlorine production capacity far higher than any civilian need for water treatment, and the evidence indicates that some of its chlorine imports are being diverted for military purposes."
An October report by the CIA, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, claimed that the Iraqi government has "expanded chlorine output [at the Fallujah plant] far beyond pre-Gulf war production levels — capabilities that can be diverted quickly to [chemical weapons] production. Iraq is seeking to purchase CW agent precursors and applicable production equipment and is trying to hide the activities of the Fallujah plant."
However, a December 9 inspection by UNMOVIC revealed that the chlorine plant isn't even in operation.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's infamous "dossier", released on September 24, claimed that the Iraqi regime "has built a large new chemical complex, Project Baiji, in the desert in northwest Iraq at al Sharqat... Intelligence reports indicate that it will produce nitric acid which can be used in explosives, missile fuel and in the purification of uranium".
The US defence department also noted the construction of the complex in their October 8 briefing, Iraqi Denial and Deception for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Ballistic Missile Programs. Inspections by the UN in 1994 had revealed that the plant was merely the major supplier of nitric acid for Iraqi industry. The site was inspected UNMOVIC on January 2; no evidence was found to support the assertions by the British and US governments.
'Set-up job'
According to Blix, despite UNMOVIC and IAEA teams inspecting over 230 sites since November 27, not one has contained "the smoking gun" coveted by the White House. Despite this "failure", the rhetoric from the White House has not changed: Saddam Hussein must still stop his "defiance".
A January 5 article in the British Observer noted: "UN weapons inspectors in Iraq fear their work — which has failed to turn up any evidence thus far of weapons of mass destruction — will still be used as an excuse to trigger a US-led invasion of Iraq." The article claimed that some inspectors are convinced "that their mission has become a 'set-up job' and America will attack Iraq regardless of what they find".
The weapons inspectors have come under increasing pressure from the White House to be more "aggressive" in their searches. A December 8 Observer article said that the "Washington hawks" have accused Blix "of not having pursued the first 10 days of investigation with sufficient vigour".
The Bush gang's pressure seems to have had an impact: the January 2 Washington Post described how "[the director of an Iraqi facility] complained that [UN inspectors] stormed into his missile plant like 'a gang'. Another groused about an unannounced visit on New Year's Day, when everyone was off on holiday. Yet another complained ... that the repeated visits were interrupting his staff work."
Despite the provocations, the Iraqi regime has not hindered UNMOVIC or IAEA access to facilities.
Just as Iraq's "vast" stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons have not materialised, nor has the search for evidence of "mobile" biological weapons laboratories that Washington claims are trundling around the Iraqi desert.
Blackmail
It seems Washington is now relying on the provision that allows UN inspectors to take key Iraqi scientists overseas to be interviewed to produce the "evidence" of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons programs to justify launching its pre-planned massive attack. The US has steadily become more insistent that Blix utilise this option. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on December 26 that UNMOVIC inspectors "should give high priority to conducting interviews with scientists and other witnesses outside of Iraq, where they can speak freely".
However, the US government has refused to guarantee asylum for any Iraqi scientists interrogated overseas, leading to speculation that any scientists questioned will be blackmailed into telling the UN what the US wants to hear.
A December 22 Washington Post article revealed that "UN officials say they are concerned that the United States or other governments may refuse asylum requests from Iraqis who have been taken out of the country but failed to supply valuable information on Iraq's secret weapons program." The article quoted an anonymous UN "inspection official": "What if this guy says, 'I want asylum in the United States', and the United States say 'no' because he just repeated the official line [of the Iraqi government]... Then we are stuck in the middle. Are we going to have to send him and his family back to Iraq knowing they most probably are going to be killed or harmed?"
Despite lacking credibility, testimony from Iraqi defectors may be used by Washington as the trigger for war.
Another "justification" the White House might use is the claim, undoubtedly true, that Iraq possesses the materials, no matter how innocuous their present use, that could be used to construct biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
According to the January 3 Washington Post, not finding banned weapons "does not mean that inspectors have not found subtler clues that, added together, might point to violations [of UN Security Council resolutions] — 'precursor' chemicals that could be used to develop weapons, for example, or aluminium tubes that could be used in enriching uranium".
Blair's dossier stated that "there is no definitive intelligence that [aluminium tubes imported by Iraq are] destined for a nuclear program". The IAEA announced on January 9 that the type of tubes imported by Iraq are not suitable for enriching uranium.
Following Blix's January 9 interim report to the Security Council, John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the council, claimed that Iraq had already committed a "material breach" of the council's resolutions by "omitting" details of its past weapons programs. Powell also told NBC News, "If the international community sees that Saddam Hussein is not cooperating in a way that would not allow you to determine the truth of the matter, then he is in violation of the UN resolution... You don't really have to have a smoking gun."
Blix is due to make his next report to the council on January 27.
[Glen Rangwala's research contributed to this article. See <http://middleeastreference.org.uk>.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 15, 2003.
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