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LIES, DAMNED LIES AND TERROR WARNINGS<br><br> By John Pilger<br><br> ON November 7, the day before the United Nations Security Council voted on a<br> resolution that made an American and British attack on Iraq more than<br> likely, Downing Street began issuing warnings of imminent terrorist threats<br> against the United Kingdom.<br><br> Cross-Channel ferries, the London Underground and major public events were<br> all said to be "targeted".<br><br> The anonymous Government sources described "emergency security measures"<br> that included a "rapid reaction force of army reservists" and a squadron of<br> fighter jets "on constant standby". Plans were being drawn up to "evacuate<br> major cities and deal with large numbers of contaminated corpses". Police<br> snipers were being trained "to kill suicide bombers" and anti-radiation<br> pills were being distributed to hospitals. By November 11, Tony Blair<br> himself was telling the British public to be "on guard" against an attack<br> that could lead to "maximum carnage".<br><br> Curiously, the national state of alert for a likely attack, colour-coded<br> amber, which such a grave warning would require, was never activated. It<br> remains on "black special", which is just above normal. Why?<br><br> That was more than two weeks ago, and urgent questions remain unanswered.<br> Now health service teams are to have smallpox vaccinations to "meet the<br> threat of a germ warfare attack"; and the Foreign Office has produced a<br> remarkable video suggesting that Britain is about to attack Iraq because of<br> its concern for that country's human rights record. (This must mean Britain<br> will soon attack other countries because of their human rights records, such<br> as China, Russia and the United States).<br><br> The absurdity of all this is becoming grotesque, and the British public<br> needs to ask urgent questions of its Government.<br><br> Where is the evidence, any evidence, for a national "alert" that borders on<br> such orchestrated hysteria? And what explains its uncanny timing with the<br> latest American and British machinations at the UN on Iraq?<br><br> Lying as government strategy is known as black propaganda. The British<br> invented its modern form. Josef Goebbels, the Nazis' propaganda chief, was<br> full of admiration for the British model. Since September 11, 2001, every<br> attempt by black propagandists in Whitehall and Washington to justify an<br> unprovoked attack on Iraq by linking the regime in Baghdad with al-Qaeda<br> terrorism has failed.<br><br> FIRST, there was the charge that Iraq was responsible for last year's<br> anthrax scare in the United States, then it was claimed that Mohamed Atta,<br> one of the alleged September 11 hijackers, had made contact with Iraqi<br> intelligence in Prague. Both claims have been proven false, along with<br> stories planted in newspapers by American intelligence that Iraq has been<br> training al-Qaeda terrorists at a secret base.<br><br> Surmounting the truth that the secular Iraqi regime actually fears and<br> loathes Osama bin Laden and his Islamic militants has always been difficult<br> for American and British propagandists - even though George W Bush currently<br> babbles nonsense about "exporting this evil al-Qaeda threat to the world".<br><br> Blair is more careful; but his implied message is the same: that the<br> "scourge" of world- wide terrorism is linked to Saddam Hussein, whose<br> demonology must now rival that of the "baby-eating Boche" during the First<br> World War, an early triumph of black propaganda.<br><br> These deceptions and outright lies are aimed at the great majority of the<br> British people who, as the polls show, are opposed to attacking Iraq, a<br> country that offers them no threat. However, if you frighten the public with<br> apocalyptic warnings about evacuating cities and incessantly link Iraq,<br> September 11 and the Bali bombing, then people may change their minds and be<br> ready for war - or so the propagandists bargain. "It's a softening up<br> process," says a former intelligence officer familiar with the black art, "a<br> lying game on a huge scale".<br><br> It is also an indication of the Blair government's desperation. Blair knows<br> that, however successful his enfeeblement of parliamentary democracy, public<br> opinion matters and, at times, has unforeseen power.<br><br> So as an antidote to the "softening up" of public opinion, I offer this<br> pocket guide to the current lying game:<br><br> What Bush and Blair want us to forget...<br><br> THE LOVE AFFAIR<br><br> THE present Iraqi regime is a product of the Ba'athist Party, which the CIA<br> helped bring to power. The CIA officer in charge of the operation described<br> it as "my favourite coup". During the 1980s, America and Britain supplied<br> Saddam Hussein with every weapon he wanted, often secretly and illegally.<br> The relationship was known cynically in Washington as "the love affair".<br><br> When Blair and Bush incessantly refer to Saddam "using chemical weapons<br> against his own people", specifically the Kurdish village of Halabja in<br> 1988, they never explain that Britain and America were accomplices.<br><br> Not only did both governments secretly and illegally approve the sale of<br> chemical weapons' agents, officials in Washington and Whitehall tried to<br> cover up the Halabja atrocity, with the Americans even faking a story that<br> Iran was responsible.<br><br> And while the gassing was going on, Saddam Hussein was being congratulated<br> on his wise leadership by David Mellor, a Foreign Office minister, whose<br> turn it was to sit at the feet of the dictator. Almost as a reward, the<br> Thatcher governments gave Saddam £340million of British taxpayers' money in<br> export credits. When Bush and Blair call Saddam "a threat to his<br> neighbours", they never mention that George Bush Senior, as head of the CIA<br> and later President, pushed Iraq to attack Iran and supplied crucial<br> intelligence to the Iraqi military that ensured the war went on for eight<br> years. The result was millions of dollars in profits for American and<br> British arms firms, and a million young men dead on both sides. A<br> congressional investigation, long forgotten, described this as a "great<br> crime".<br><br> HYPOCRISY UNLIMITED<br><br> ON September 12, George W Bush appeared before the UN General Assembly and<br> asked dramatically: "Are Security Council resolutions to be honoured or cast<br> aside?"<br><br> The answer came a few weeks later when the Security Council passed<br> Resolution 1435, which demanded that "Israel immediately cease measures in<br> and around Ramallah including the destruction of Palestinian civilian and<br> security infrastructure" and withdraw its "occupying forces from Palestinian<br> cities towards the positions held prior to September 2000".<br><br> The resolution was passed 14-0 with one abstention, the United States.<br> Israel dismissed it; and nothing happened. This was no surprise. The<br> Israelis have defied at least 40 Security Council resolutions and scores of<br> General Assembly resolutions: a record of dishonouring and "casting aside"<br> the law (to quote Bush) unequalled by any nation since the UN was founded.<br><br> Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s, Israel's defiance is rewarded with<br> all the weapons and fighter aircraft it wants. Just as Britain used to<br> supply Saddam with the means of making chemical bombs, so the Blair<br> government currently supplies the Israeli regime of Ariel Sharon with<br> chemical warfare technology. This includes "PCPs" which can easily be turned<br> into lethal sarin nerve gas which, next to nuclear weapons, is the most<br> feared weapon of mass destruction.<br><br> THE REAL REASON FOR ATTACKING IRAQ<br><br> AMERICA burns a quarter of all the oil consumed by humanity. A study<br> sponsored by the US Council on Foreign Relations says that "the American<br> people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or<br> inconvenience". Transport in the United States alone burns 66 per cent of<br> America's petroleum.<br><br> One estimate is that the world's oil reserves will begin to decline within<br> five to 10 years at the rate of about two million barrels a day. In the<br> Middle East, the only country capable of significantly increasing its<br> production is Iraq, once described by Vice President Cheney as "the great<br> prize".<br><br> At present, America depends on Iraq's neighbour Saudi Arabia, not just for<br> oil but for keeping the price of oil down. However, Saudi Arabia is the home<br> of al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the alleged September 11<br> hijackers.<br><br> THE grievance against the Americans for their imperial interventions in the<br> Middle East is said to be deepest in the country that was invented by<br> British imperialism and has since been maintained by the US as an oil<br> colony.<br><br> If America installs a colonial regime in Baghdad, certainly its dependence<br> on Saudi Arabia will be dramatically eased, and its grip on the world's<br> greatest oil market will be tightened. The price, for the people of the<br> region, for Americans and the rest of us, will be an enduring turmoil<br> similar to that of Palestine, exemplified by last week's terror bombing of<br> an Israeli hotel in Kenya.<br><br> This is the hidden agenda of the "war on terrorism" - a term that is no more<br> than a euphemism for the Bush administration's exploitation of the September<br> 11 attacks and America's accelerating imperial ambitions. In the past 14<br> months, on the pretext of "fighting terror", US military bases have been<br> established at the gateways to the greatest oil and gas fields on earth,<br> especially in Central Asia, which is also coveted as a "great prize".<br><br> In Afghanistan, the president, Hamid Karzai, guarded by 46 American special<br> forces troops, was employed by a subsidiary of Unocal, the American oil<br> company. The post-Taliban US ambassador is a senior executive of Unocal, and<br> a pipeline to carry lucrative oil and gas across the country from the<br> Caspian Sea will be built by Unocal.<br><br> The majority of Bush's cabinet are from the oil industry, which has made<br> them extremely rich. Bush's father is still a consultant for the huge oil<br> services company, the Carlyle Group, and his personal clients include the<br> family of Osama bin Laden. One of the reasons the Americans attacked<br> Afghanistan was not to liberate women but to liberate the pipeline deal. As<br> the BBC reported on September 18, 2001: "Niaz Niak, a former Pakistani<br> foreign minister, was told by senior American officials in mid-July (2001)<br> that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of<br> October. It was Naik's view that Washington would not drop its war against<br> Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the<br> Taliban. Remember, he said this before the attacks of September 11 had<br> happened.<br><br> Only a pittance of the millions of dollars pledged to rebuild Afghanistan<br> has arrived. As many as 20,000 people, estimates the Guardian, if you count<br> those bombed to death and who starved during the bombing, died so that the<br> West could reconquer Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was no where to be seen.<br><br> SECRETS AND<br><br> CONSEQUENCES<br><br> WHILE Saddam Hussein's crimes against his own people are well known, those<br> of the West in Iraq are generally suppressed. The suffering of ordinary<br> Iraqi people is never mentioned by Bush and Blair, and only rarely by the<br> media. This is not surprising. Under a United Nations blockade that<br> resembles a medieval siege, devised and controlled by the United States and<br> Britain, Iraq is allowed to spend little more than £100 per person on<br> sustaining the life of each of its citizens for one year. This is less than<br> half the annual per capita income of Haiti, the poorest country in the<br> Western Hemisphere. It is less than the amount the UN spends on food for<br> dogs used in Iraqi de-mining operations.<br><br> A recent comprehensive investigation by an American academic, Professor Joy<br> Gordon, has revealed that the United States has placed "on hold" more than<br> $5billion worth of humanitarian goods that should have gone to Iraq. All the<br> goods were approved by the UN and financed from the sale of Iraqi oil. They<br> include flour, medicines, medical equipment, milk production equipment,<br> fire-fighting equipment, water tankers.<br><br> "Over the last three years," wrote Professor Gordon, "I have acquired many<br> of the key confidential UN documents concerning the administration of Iraqi<br> sanctions. What they show is that the United States has fought aggressively<br> throughout the last decade to purposefully minimise the humanitarian goods<br> that enter the country. And it has done so in the face of enormous human<br> suffering, including massive increases in child mortality and widespread<br> epidemics."<br><br> These are the people, more than half of them children, whom Bush and Blair<br> are planning to attack once the UN's weapons inspectors have outlived their<br> usefulness. (In the last three years, the Blair Government alone has spent<br> £1billion illegally bombing Iraq - with America. Shepherds, fishermen, truck<br> drivers are blown to bits with rarely a word in the media. Neither country<br> has a UN mandate to do this; under international law, it is simply an act of<br> piracy.<br><br> THE one connection between international terrorism and Iraq will be the<br> undoubted consequence of an Anglo-American attack. Nothing will do more to<br> convert al-Qaeda from a relatively small gang to a fanatical international<br> jihad, or network. Nothing will do more to create a generation of<br> anti-Western bitterness and recruits for terrorism.<br><br> When Blair warns about the threat of terrorist "carnage" in Britain, the<br> terrible irony of his predictions is that they are likely to be<br> self-fulfilling if he involves the British people in a criminal foreign<br> adventure.<br><br> For this irresponsible act, he will place at risk every British citizen at<br> home and abroad. It will spread fear and foster ethnic division. Such is the<br> true measure of his fawning devotion to great power. The people of Britain<br> should not allow it.
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