Terror Gets Its Props
Anthony Lappé, February 6, 2003
"Dodgy tapes, grainy videos, great rhetoric. Where's the proof?" - headline
London Mirror, Feb. 6, 2003
"Powell's Case Against Iraq: Piling Up the Evidence," - headline The New
York Times, Feb. 6, 2003
"Iraq: Failing To Disarm – Denial and Deception" - graphic, U.S. State
Department AV Club
Buy Microsoft stock. PowerPoint will be selling off the shelves after
Powell's multi-media tour de force yesterday at the UN. "Voluminous,
thorough, shocking," are the adjectives the "objective" American media are
using to describe the U.S. Secretary of State's 90-minute exposé.
The presentation was right out of an episode of "24"; damning phone
intercepts ("Clean out all of the areas… make sure there is nothing
there.''"), dramatic surveillance video (a French-built fighter takes off),
and numerous incriminating satellite photos of alleged WMD-related trucks
pulling up to alleged WMD-related buildings. But by far the most dramatic
moment came when Powell whipped out a small vial of fake anthrax, reminding
the nation: "Less than a teaspoon of dried anthrax shut down the U.S.
Senate." Iraq, he said, had thousands of liters of the stuff.
The stunt was one of the most audacious uses of a visual aid since George
Sr. produced an actual baggie of crack in a televised address to the nation
in September 1989. The crack, a monster Ziplock's worth, purchased for
$2,400 by undercover DEA agents in Lafayette Park across the street from
the White House, was meant to underscore the out-of-control nature of the
drug menace. Even the sacred home of our commander in chief wasn't safe
from the scourge.
What Bush failed to mention, and what most of the mainstream media never
reported, was that the drug bust was a staged event. Agents lured the
teenage seller from a DC neighborhood to the park for theatrical purposes:
making the bust a half-truth symbolic of the former CIA head's duplicity.
It was VP Bush's own shock troops, you might remember, the Contras, who had
been sending thousands of tons of cocaine into America with the help of
their friends in the basement of the White House and in the backrooms of
Langley. Much of the operation is documented in the U.S. Senate's own Kerry
Report and has been recounted by numerous U.S. government whistleblowers
(see GNN's own little multi-media presentation we call "Crack the CIA").
For his part, Powell milked the specter of the white dust to great effect,
because, in a way, he had to. The ex-General knows as well as anyone that
fear is the only real way to sell a war, and that a terrorist attack on
American soil is the only thing we're really scared of (not the abstract
notion of battle thousands of miles away).
Does it matter that every U.S. law enforcement official involved in the
anthrax letters case has said the suspect is most likely domestic, and that
he/she appears to have stolen the spores from a U.S. government lab?
Does it matter that the U.S. government's own reports have stated that
Saddam's anthrax vials could very well be stamped Made in America? The
Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs revealed in 1994
that under Reagan and Bush Sr. the U.S. government and major U.S.
corporations sold everything from anthrax to VX nerve gas to West Nile
fever germs to Iraq right up until March 1992.
The report summarized: "These biological materials were not attenuated or
weakened and were capable of reproduction ... It was later learned that
these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those
the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological
warfare program."
Does it matter that a letter from CIA director George Tenet (who was
sitting behind Powell during his presentation) to Senator Bob Graham,
Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in October stated:
"[Iraq] for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist
attacks with conventional or ... chemical and biological weapons against
the United States," but if "Saddam should conclude that a U.S.-led attack
could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained
in adopting terrorist actions."?
Or does it matter that the BBC is reporting today an even more inconvenient
development? The news organization says a leaked classified document
written by British defense intelligence officers three weeks ago concluded
that, "there has been contact between the two [Iraq and Al Qaeda] in the
past. But [the document] assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered
due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies."
Even The New York Times reported Sunday that sources inside U.S.
intelligence agencies said, "they were baffled by the Bush administration's
insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network,"
they were upset that "the intelligence is obviously being politicized" and
that "we've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know
what, we just don't think it's there." The UN's Hans Blix has also said he
has seen no evidence Iraq had or planned to supply weapons to Al Qaeda.
Now, of course, there could be new evidence, like what the Times is
reporting today: an intel breakthrough that has revealed "a cell of Al
Qaeda operating out of Baghdad was responsible for the assassination of the
American diplomat Laurence Foley last October."
The story could be true. Al Qaeda, after all, has cells in more than 40
countries, according to U.S. intelligence. For all we know, they're camped
out in Lafayette Park.
Anthony Lappé is Executive Editor of GNN.tv
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