'Half Britons say Hutton was "whitewash"', headlines Reuters. Half of the Britons apparently cannot be fooled. The Guardian calls it a 'cover-up'. In the meantime, Blair's colleague
Bush is also busy trying to appear innocent: 'A Senate report says the
CIA is to blame for bad intelligence on Iraq. Critics say there's a whitewash underway', headlines
MSNBC.
The Dutch in the original article has been translated into English by Marienella Meulensteen.
The still confidential report that reached MSNBC in draft, contains strong criticism for the CIA 'for
major “errors in judgment” regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass
destruction programs—mistakes that were greatly compounded by the agency’s
failure to develop reliable on-the-ground sources with direct knowledge of
Saddam’s military capabilities, according to people familiar with the
document'. This, while it is known that the CIA was put under pressure by the White House to produce
nonsensical claims, and that when they were not successful, the White
House even established an alternative information cell, alongside the
similar Office of Special Plans. Both organizations contributed to nonsensical information needed to be able to go to war.
Blair
pulled out all the stops to be able to wage a war
'Hutton's report could
scarcely have been more favorable if it had been drafted, or even sexed
up, by Tony Blair's former spinmeister Alastair Campbell himself', writes The Guardian. Blair
creates a brilliant diversion with the Hutton report,
but we only need to consult DeepJournal to read that he loved being led by the OSP, and even had his own service,
namely Operation Rockingham. It was that one who provided the Joint
Intelligence Committee with the nonsense claims that ultimately led
England into war. Besides, Downing Street asked its own secret service
to brush up the now infamous 45-minute claim:
'Intelligence told Downing Street that the 45-minute claim hadn't been
added in as it only came from one source who was thought to be
wrong. The intelligence services were asked to go back and do a
rewrite even though Downing Street was told the 45-minute claim was
unconvincing', writes the
Sunday Herald. What is more, as we wrote earlier: 'Through disinformation the British secret service M16 has tried to exaggerate the
extent of the Iraqi arms program by means of Operation Mass Appeal
'.
Weapon inspector David Kay
joins the whitewash operation
Weapon inspector David Kay, who could not find anything in Iraq and recently resigned, adds his two cents worth and says 'he doesn’t believe political
pressure was behind conclusions about Iraq’s weapons [...] “We were almost
all wrong", said the inspector, David Kay, noting that intelligence
services in France and Germany, both of which opposed the war, also were
convinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.
invasion', writes MSNBC. While earlier DeepJournal cited the Sunday Herald: 'The
British intelligence source said the best Humint [human intelligence] on
Saddam was held by the French who had agents in Iraq. 'French intelligence
was telling us that there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD
programme. That's why France wanted a longer extension on the weapons
inspections. The French, the Germans and the Russians all knew there were
no weapons there -- and so did Blair and Bush as that's what the French
told them directly. Blair ignored what the French told us and instead
listened to the Americans'.
Condoleezza Rice
expects a white wash
And we don't need to expect too much of Condoleezza Rice in the struggle for the truth. Reuters writes: 'President George W. Bush's national security
adviser has acknowledged some prewar intelligence about Iraq was flawed
but brushed aside calls for launching an independent
investigation'. Thereupon she looks into the future and says that the 'United States may never learn the whole
truth about Iraq's weapons capabilities because of looting'.
The weapons that Saddam
did have, came from the U.S.
The war-crazy sympathizers of Bush and Blair who in retrospect
still are happy with the war against Iraq, can argue that Saddam was
not totally without weapons. In 1983 he already had the benevolent weapon and poison-gas supplier Donald Rumsfeld visit him, and it did not stay there. The Dutch newspaper NRC writes on October 16, 2003: 'The U.S. have discovered that almost
thirty Americans sold weapons to the regime of Saddam
Hussein.
This is according to the The New York Times. Some of those weapons
would have been deployed against the American military during the
attack on Iraq. "It is a shock to discover that Americans at a time of
war have traded with a hostile regime", says Michael Dougherty of
the Bureau of Immigration and Customs, which is leading the
investigation'.
War against Saddam
unjustifiable, says Human Rights
Watch
And again it does not go well for the sympathizers of Bush and
Blair; even their last hope was taken away from them. Because also the
argument that the war was justified because the criminal Saddam
has been removed, has been declared invalid: 'Saddam
not so cruel that war was justified' headlines NRC on January 27 in a quotation of the director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth
Roth. Very
regrettable for the followers of Bush and Blair is that the two
situations in which a war against Saddam would be justified
according to Roth, happened with Saddam being responsible, but
were only possible thanks to the U.S.: namely Saddam's alleged poison-gas attack in Halabja against the Kurds in 1988 and the
crushing of the Kurdish revolt by Saddam, after Bush Sr. summoned the
Kurds thereto in 1991 and subsequently abandoned them.
Good that it was the Kurds who were able to arrest Saddam, sour that the Americans walked away with the honor.
[News added March 17, 2004: Dutch journalist H. J. A. Hofland writes in
the NRC: 'In about fifty years, maybe, the historians will have a
difference of opinion about the question if president Bush and his
government made a wise decision to start the war, or chose the wrong
path. I, who will not be a historian in 2054, vouch for the
latter'].
Suicides by American soldiers in Iraq
Since Bush declared the end of the war in Iraq, 381 American soldiers have been killed, notes the Associated Press. In total, 519
American soldiers died in Iraq. It is unknown if this includes the 21 soldiers who committed suicide. Dying
full of pride for a war that has such a shameful lack of motive
that Washington as well as Londen are busy carrying on a
whitewash operation.
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