IraqGate: Voices are getting louder worldwide

Iraqgate- ex-Spy in Australia: "WMD was not prime motive"

Today probably marked the largest volume of critical reports against the "hyped" evidence on Iraq ever, among them Andrew Wilkie (former australian Officer), who "told the Federal Government that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction threat was not the prime motive for the United States going to war against Iraq" (Sidney Morning Herald).

GFP took a deeper look and compiled the most important articles from today...

Right now, the main emphasis is on at least 13 different subjects, most of them already mentioned in the last few weeks:

1) Ex-Officials continued to talk -among them former british officials and former US State Department Greg Thielmann (Bureau of Intelligence and Research)

2) Former Intelligence Officials speak against an evidence -among them Robert Baer (ex-CIA), Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS, i.e. Eugene Betit, Ray McGovern or Ray Close), Andrew Wilkie (Australian Intelligence) and others...

3) Alastair Campbell's (UK's communications and strategy chief) confirmation, that their dossier, produced last March, was "shelved" and his personal apology to Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, for "discrediting the service". Campbell recently was attacked by many Parliament Members:

David Blunkett admited publicly that "Downing Street was wrong to publish the "dodgy dossier"".

The manipulated and plagerized UK dossier on Iraq was in reality 12 years old.

4) UN-Inspectors talk: Bernd Birkicht ("Manipulation"), Peter Franck ("Powell lied"), Jörn Siljeholm "Garbage" , "completely erroneous" or "US lied", even Hans Blix ("Weapons may not exist") and former UN-Inspector Scott Ritter ("Bush should be impeached") talked about rigged evidence, including the Satellite Images, which had been presented by Colin Powell in February 2003

5) The Waldorf Astoria Meeting in NY ("I won't read this. This is bulls**t" -Colin Powell)

6) The fake evidence on the Iraq-Niger Uranium Program.

Who Lied To Whom? (Seymour Hersh)

7) Cheney's and PNAC's "multiple" visits (Feith, Libby, Wolfowitz) to the CIA

8) "Confirmations" on Oil as the real reason for the War (Wolfowitz, Woolsey and others...)

9) The September 2002 DIA report of Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, who came to the conclusion, that they "could not pin down the location of any chemical weapons facilities in Iraq"

10) Criticism on the general political aftermath in Iraq (No Government yet, Critical Voices on "Profiteers from War" (Bechtel, KBR, Oil-Industry etc...), New Killings of US- and German Peace-Soldiers, Protests, Discrediting Shiites, Kurds and other minorities, two Sex-Scandals (POW Sex Abuse and a Child Porn Probe, Investigations on "Case Hotel Palestine" and pending lawsuits in Le Hague by Greek lawyers, British lawyers, German teachers and others against Tommy Franks + Co.

11) Various other new critical voices, among them Intelligence Historian John Prados,who wrote in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that the "CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq", FindLaw-Columnist John W. Dean, who thinks that President Bush could be impeached because of his lies or PNAC Member William Kristol, who thinks, that "Bush Made Misstatements on Iraq WMDs".

12) Criticism of the Media, for example on Judith Miller (NY Times) and her main "source", INC Chief Ahmed Chalabi.

Finally, 13) a pending investigation on Bush and Intelligence in the United Kingdom (recently dismissed by the House), in Spain, Australia and United States (Sen. Carl Levin (D) "Nation's Credibility is on the line", Senator John Warner (R), Jay Senator John Warner (D), supported by many other Democrats and Republicans)

Yesterday Condoleeza Rice described all these voices as "revisionists".

An overview on the latest:

The latest smoking gun today was described in the Sidney Morning Herald (Australia), in which former ONA officer (Australia's Office of National Assessments), Andrew Wilkie "told the Federal Government that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction threat was not the prime motive for the United States going to war against Iraq"

The most press on "IraqGate" is still in England.

The Guardian concentrated today on "untold stories of those who died during the war on Iraq".

The Independent was more aggressive and mentioned some MP's, who said, that "the Prime Minister and Alastair Campbell should be forced to appear before a parliamentary committee to explain why the intelligence dossier produced in March last year was shelved.

The six-page report, from the Joint Intelligence Committee staff, said there was no evidence Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991.

It was written in the same month that Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications and strategy chief, told journalists in America the Government would produce evidence within two weeks proving Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. The report was delayed, but six months later Tony Blair said Saddam was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons."

In another story, "Wheels Fall Off Iraq WMD 'Mobile Labs'", the Independent cited Cees Wiebes, a leading Dutch expert who spoke to senior intelligence officials on both sides of the Atlantic before the war, who said "many of them told him the WMD evidence was "very, very poor".

The paper also mentioned german UN Inspector Bernd Birkicht, who believed the "CIA had made up intelligence on WMD to provide a legal basis for the war":

"We received information about a site, giving the exact geographical co-ordinates, and when we got there we found nothing," said Mr Birkicht. "Nothing on the ground. Nothing under the ground. Just desert." He added that a "decontamination truck" in satellite photographs presented by Mr Powell to the Security Council was a fire engine. Another leading expert, Dr Richard Aldrich is cited that "as much as 70 per cent of MI6's intelligence comes from the US."

BBC ('Iraq war 'could have been illegal') described, that the Foreign Affairs Select Committee around Lord Goldsmith are going to look into "claims that Iraq's WMD threat had been "sexed up" by Downing Street.

The article also mentioned the lawyer group "Campaign for Nuclear Disarment" (CND) around Philip Shiner, who said in a BBC interview, "that there are no WMD or if they exist it's in nothing like the quantities that suggest that the threat was so clear."

On the website of the CND you will find information, that Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon (Defence Secretary) and Jack Straw have already been served with legal papers on an investigation "for war crimes and crimes against humanity" and refer to another website called IraqWarcrimes.org

The Daily Mirror found out, that some Tories have already "demanded the resignation of Mr Campbell", who is "director of strategy and communications at No10".

Shadow chancellor Michael Howard said: "If the stories are true, there is no doubt at all he should go and go immediately.".

In the United States, some papers mentioned the criticism, a few of them even on Page 1.

Newsday reported in their article "Hunt for Iraqi Banned Weapons Slows", "weapons hunters say they are now waiting for a large team of Pentagon intelligence experts to take over the effort".

Other voices worldwide:

South African Daily News reported on the "shelved dossier" by british MI5-chief Alastair Campbell.

The German DER SPIEGEL picked up today's NY Times story on CIA-leaks from Al-Quaeda leaders, who stated, that there haven't been any ties at all between Iraq and Al-Quaeda.

In yet another title story, DER SPIEGEL reported on four US-Democrats, who decided to use Iraqgate for their election campaign:

Howard Dean ("What did the President know and at which time?"), Dennis Kucinich ("You send us into war, which we shouldn't have started at all"), Carol Moseley Braun ("Billions of Dollars are spent for Iraq, but the main suspects from Sep11th are still not captured") and finally the loudest candidate Bob Graham ("Hoax and Forgery").

Today they got even more support by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, who called for an independent prosecutor on the WMD-evidence.

Almost every progressive and independent newszine on the Internet is covering the "hyped", "manipulated" or even "rigged Iraq Evidence" (MI5 Dossier, Satellite Images etc..), many of them tie it all back to the horrific Sep11th attacks - which also has many problems with evidence and maniplulation of the inteligence agencies - and have come to the conclusion, that this attack was already part of the plan (LIHOP= they let it happen on purpose) or even an inside job, mainly orchestrated by members of PNAC and current members of the National Defense Panel with direct or indirect help by Pakistan and Saudi Arabian Intelligence.

InformationClearing House mirrored the results of a new Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) Knowledge Networks poll, which found, that "59% of those polled correctly said the US has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, 41% said they believed that the US has found such weapons (34%) or were unsure (7%)".

Meanwhile, a test at google using "Iraqgate" has many references to Gulf War 1, while "Iraqgate 2003" reveals the newer articles.

One of the harshest voices among US-Journalists is Paul Krugman (NY Times), who recently said that the scandal blowing up over Iraq is "worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra".

Maxspeak.org is mentioning the "Institute for Policy Studies", which described an Iraq War, a long time ago, even before Sep11th:

"Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured U.S. Government Focus on Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein.".

The document is also described at the Institute for Policy Studies.

To be updated and continued...

Taiwan- THE OBSERVER -Monday, Jun 09, 2003,Page 1

Evidence casts doubt on germ-lab claims

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair face a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that they have repeatedly claimed to be Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are nothing of the sort.

The British intelligence agency MI6, defense officers and technical experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have been ordered to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities, following US analysis which casts serious doubt on whether they really are germ labs.

The British review comes amid doubts expressed by scientists on both sides of the Atlantic that the trucks could have been used to make biological weapons..."

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printed from IraqGate: Voices are getting louder worldwide on 2004-05-06 06:41:06