False intelligence

THE TRUTH now emerging about the US-UK claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which presented an urgent threat to the world is quite amazing. It exposes a degree of deception, manipulation of intelligence information, disregard for the truth and straight-faced hypocrisy among the leadership of these two nations — the self-acclaimed champions of moral and ethical values — that leaves us quite flabbergasted. Some two months after the total devastation of Iraq by invading "coalition forces," no WMDs have been found and both the Bush and Blair governments are now at their wit's end to justify their justification for the massive invasion — that Hussein possessed chemical and nuclear WMDs that posed an imminent terrorist threat to the US and other countries of the world.

Indeed, we almost feel a sense of embarrassment for the mounting criticism of these eminent personages who run the affairs of the two most powerful nations of the world, traditional bastions of freedom, democracy and righteous principles. The fact is, because of the enormity of what they have done, because they have destroyed a country and terrorised its entire population deliberately and calculatingly, on the basis of entirely false information, they cannot now admit their horrible mistake; they have no choice now but to insist on their version of the "truth" and to brazen out their "magnificent victory" over Iraq as an act of freeing the people from the throes of a brutal dictator. Conveniently enough, there is no mention of the fact that when Saddam was committing his atrocities against the Kurds he was the darling of the US getting their support, not their odium, for his war against the Iranians.

The stories now coming out of the intelligence sector of both countries have begun to reveal a web of intrigue, of government officials pressuring the agencies to come up with positive reports about the Iraqi regime's WMDs inspite of the fact that the agencies were sceptical, even doubtful, about the "evidence" that Saddam then had such weapons. Mr Blair's insistence that the Iraqi dictator had the capability of launching WMDs within 45 minutes is now the subject of considerable ridicule. The British press has dubbed the PM's report "the dodgy dossier" chunks of which, it was discovered, had come from a student's 2002 thesis which itself leaned heavily on documents more than a decade old. The so-called comprehensive presentation which US Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the UN Security Council has also been shown to be similarly flawed, based on false and outdated information. Interviewed on a satellite television news station on Saturday, Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to the White House, was unable to explain in any convincing way the glaring error of the intelligence information on which Mr Bush and his team of warmongers allegedly acted; the most she could offer was the history of the existence of such weapons and their arrival at the final picture by "a joining of the dots." Those who, like this newspaper, have been horrified by the pulverising invasion of Iraq, the killing of innocent thousands, the consequent demolition of the country and agony of the Iraqi people — which, by the way, has hardly been relieved so far — must be reconciled to the existence of goodness and honesty in the world by the pressure now being placed upon those responsible for this horrendous act of terrorism to explain their totally unjustified invasion of that Middle East country. Members of the UK parliament the US Congress are calling for investigations; but while we are pleased with such a reaction we know that the culprits, and their might-is-right philosophy, will eventually emerge unscathed.