Warning: Long article related to a transcript of an interview with an Iraqi
defector, which the author claims exposes White House lies on Iraqi weapons.
The link to the alleged transcripts is in the article.
Source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/lies-m04.shtml
A small article appeared last week in the US magazine Newsweek that
effectively demolishes one of the Bush administration’s central accusations
against Baghdad: that it has failed to account for large stockpiles of
so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) allegedly produced in the early
1990s.
UN inspection teams have scoured Iraq for more than two months and
unearthed nothing. As a result, unsubstantiated US claims about Iraq’s
hidden weapons have assumed ever-greater importance as a pretext for war.
Every attempt by Baghdad to comply with UN resolution 1441 is greeted with
scornful replies from Washington of “too little, too late” and
denunciations of Iraq’s “pattern of lies and deception”. The only evidence
offered by the US for the continued existence of stores of chemical,
biological and other weapons has been the undisclosed testimony of various
Iraqi defectors.
But what the low-key article in Newsweek revealed was that the Bush
administration has been blatantly lying about the evidence provided by
their chief witness—Hussein Kamel, son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, who was
head of Iraq’s military industrial commission and managed the country’s
weapons programs. Kamel fled to Jordan in 1995 where he was interviewed in
depth by the CIA, British intelligence and UNSCOM weapons inspectors and
provided details of Iraq’s weapons research and production. In 1996 he
returned to Iraq where he was murdered.
Kamel provided extensive information on Iraq’s chemical, biological,
nuclear and missile research and developments programs in the 1980s—prior
to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. A 1999 UNSCOM letter to the UN Security
Council explained the significance of the interviews by stating that its
entire work “must be divided into two parts, separated by the events
following the departure from Iraq, in August 1995, of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel.”
What Newsweek revealed, however, was that Kamel had told his interviewers
that “after the Gulf war, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological
weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.” All that was retained
were research details—blueprints, computer disks and microfiches—and the
molds for missile warheads. In other words, Kamel’s remarks reveal the
opposite of what the Bush administration alleges.
The magazine claims that Kamel’s statements were “hushed up” at the time in
order to allow UN inspectors to bluff Hussein into providing more
information. Even if that were the case, their continued suppression, more
than eight years later, is a case of outright deception. Washington
continues to cite Kamel as “proof” that Iraq has not destroyed its weapons
stockpiles.
In a speech last October, President Bush declared: “In 1995, after several
years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq’s military industries
defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had
produced more than 30,000 litres of anthrax and other deadly biological
agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq has likely produced
two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological
weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.”
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his speech last month to the UN
Security Council on the case for war, claimed: “It took years for Iraq to
finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX.
A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The
admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a
result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law.”
Predictably, Washington and London reacted to the Newsweek revelation with
denials and more lies. Complaining that the magazine had failed to check
with the CIA prior to publication, its spokesman Bill Harlow bluntly
asserted: “It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue.” A British government
source told Reuters: “We’ve checked back and he [Kamel] didn’t say this. He
said the opposite, that the WMD program was alive and kicking.”
Within days, however, a full transcript of the 1995 interview between Kamel
and UNSCOM officials—the basis for the Newsweek story—appeared on the
Internet [http://www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf]. It was made
available by Cambridge University academic Glen Rangwala, who previously
revealed that Blair’s “intelligence dossier” had been plagiarised from a
dated student thesis.
The transcript, which was marked “sensitive,” completely confirmed the
original story. In a three-hour discussion, Kamel methodically answered
questions from former UNSCOM chairman Rolf Ekeus, senior UNSCOM inspector
Nikita Smidovich and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deputy
director Professor Maurizio Zifferero on Iraq’s weapons programs.
A revealing transcript
Questioned on Iraq’s research into various biological weapons, the
following exchange took place:
Kamel: Yes, but I did not recall medical names. However, the main focus was
on anthrax and a lot of studies were done.
Smidovich: Were weapons and agents destroyed?
Kamel: Nothing remained.
Smidovich: Was it before or after the inspections started?
Kamel: After visits of inspection teams. You have important role in Iraq
with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in
Iraq.
Kamel provided details of Iraq’s nuclear research into uranium enrichment
but pointed out that “in the nuclear area, there were no weapons.” In the
course of the discussion, IAEA official Zifferero himself declared:
“Original Iraqi documents indicated that the program had been terminated in
January 1991 due to damage by coalition raids.”
He went on to explain that all 819 long-range missiles, together with nine
of the 11 launchers, purchased from the former Soviet Union had been destroyed.
Kamel was questioned extensively on Iraq’s production of chemical weapons.
Asked about VX, the agent referred to by Powell, he explained that Iraq had
“put it in bombs during the last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not
used and the program was terminated.”
Kamel also pointed to US involvement in Iraq’s chemical weapons program in
the 1980s when Washington was supporting Iraq in its war against Iran.
“Some of the chemical components came from the US to Iraq,” he said. After
the Iran-Iraq war, the factories used to make chemical weapons were turned
over to the production of medicines, pesticides and insecticides.
He made clear that Iraq had not produced chemical weapons during the
1990-91 Gulf War out of fear of massive retaliation by the US. “We gave
instruction not to produce chemical weapons. I don’t remember [the]
resumption of chemical weapon production before the Gulf war. Maybe it was
only minimal production and filling. But there was no decision to use
chemical weapons for fear of retaliation. They realised that if chemical
weapons were used, retaliation would be nuclear.”
He concluded by emphatically declaring: “I ordered the destruction of all
chemical weapons—biological, chemical, missile nuclear were destroyed.”
The transcript conclusively refutes claims that Newsweek simply got it
wrong. Moreover, it demonstrates that Bush, Powell and other White House
officials have consistently lied about what Kamel’s defection revealed and,
with the complicity of UN weapons inspectors, have ensured that his
comments remained secret.
A subservient media has all but ignored the issue. The Newsweek article
last week was a six-paragraph story buried away in its Periscope section.
The scant coverage that has appeared since has all been aimed at belittling
the significance of Kamel’s statements and attacking his reliability.
The British-based Guardian, for instance, described the transcript of the
interrogation as “inconclusive and often misleading” without citing any
passages or explaining why. It highlighted the comments of Rolf Ekeus who
branded Kamel “a consummate liar”. According to the article, Ekeus conceded
that Iraq had “probably eliminated” its biological arsenal but remained
convinced that it had the means to reconstitute it. No evidence was offered.
Ekeus’s comment smacks of a knee-jerk reaction from someone who has been
caught out covering up crucial information. At any rate, Ekeus cannot have
it both ways: Kamel cannot be both “a consummate liar” and a prime witness
at the same time. If his testimony was a pack of lies, it simply
demonstrates that Bush, Powell and others have been basing themselves on
false information all along.
It is more likely, however, that Kamel was telling the truth. As Newsweek
commented, the interview was “a gold mine of information. He had a good
memory and, piece by piece, he laid out the main personnel, sites and
progress of each WMD program.” A military aide who defected with Kamel
filled in the technical data and confirmed Kamel’s statement that Iraq’s
stockpiles had been destroyed. Ekeus is quoted in the article as saying the
information was “almost embarrassing, it was so extensive.”
The record shows that it is the Bush administration, rather than Iraq, that
has been engaged in a pattern of lies and deception. It has systematically
covered up and lied about the evidence provided by one of its prime
witnesses. When the Newsweek article appeared, the CIA denounced it as
false. When the original transcript was produced, the Bush administration
remained silent, relying on a compliant media to bury the truth.
The entire episode is one more demonstration that Washington’s plans to
invade Iraq have nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. They are
aimed at furthering Washington’s strategic and economic interests in Iraq
and the region as a whole.
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