The system behind the lies
'The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a U.S. [CIA] military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels', he added. 'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasising reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.' Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq', writes the Sunday Herald. [News from May 1st 2005: 'The secret Downing Street memo' surfaces, which states how Blair is told in July of 2002 that 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy' by the Americans. Nevertheless, Blair kept insisting on telling lies with Bush. Read all about the memos in this article of DeepJournal].

Spies: This is the world of George Orwell
'In a staggering attack on the OSP, former CIA officer Larry Johnson told the Sunday Herald the OSP was 'dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace', adding that it 'lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam'. He added: 'It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality. They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignore anything contrary. They should be eliminated.' Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an 'imminent threat' to the West was 'laughable and idiotic'. He said many CIA officers were in 'great distress' over the way intelligence had been treated. 'We've entered the world of George Orwell,' Johnson added. 'I'm disgusted. The truth has to be told. We can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war'.

Lies and deceit to mask true motives
In the U.S., the intelligence services are also getting back at the leaders. From last Saturday's NRC newspaper [also refer to this Sunday Herald-article]: '[According to] an American [DIA] defense report that was leaked to the media  [...] that was distributed in September 2002 during the administration of George Bush, there was at that time "no reliable information" to show that Iraq actually had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons'. '“I am absolutely convinced that with time, we’ll find out they did have a weapons program"', so said Bush yesterday in an article from MSNBC. '[... The] reason why the Americans were so sure that Iraq has at least the raw materials and components for weapons of mass destruction [is because] American concerns, universities and politicians, among them Bush Sr. himself, had been involved in the arms trade with Saddam', writes Stan van Houcke in this month's Humanist. 'That is also why the Bush administration removed more than 3000 pages [8000 pages according to the Sunday Herald] from the 12,200 page arms report that Iraq presented to the United Nations. Only thereafter did the non-permanent members of the Security Council receive the report'. The entire Humanist article [PDF, Dutch] is about oil being the motive for the war with Iraq.

Which country's turn is it now?
In one of his strips, the cartoonist Kamagurka has George W. Bush say (June 5th): 'Okay, attacking Iraq was a bit exaggerated. But where North Korea is concerned...'. It is difficult to say who will be the next victim of the battle for oil and the Pax Americana. Syria is a good candidate as I wrote earlier, but now that the Americans are going to leave Saudi Arabia, that country could easily become the victim of destabilization attempts due to the new American position in Iraq. Perhaps the destabilizing bomb attack in the Saudi capitol of Riyad is a stabilization attempt by the Saudi intelligence services to keep the country from being suspected. And of course North Korea remains a good candidate. All the countries on Bush's list are continually being prodded and everyone is staying on the alert, awaiting the fall of the sword.