Lessons in How to Lie About Iraq

[Bantu_Kelani]

This is an interesting article about the Amerikkkan media propoganda machine.   Here are a couple of paragraphs from it ....

"What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'. (What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair Campbell be but a prime example of this?)"

"An example of this process is one highlighted by Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other, consolidated public and congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf war. We recall the horrifying stories, incessantly repeated, of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of their incubators and left to die while the Iraqis shipped the incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were told.

The story was brought to public attention by Nayirah, a 15-year-old 'nurse' who, it turned out later, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Nayirah had been tutored and rehearsed by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency (which in turn received $14 million from the American government for their work in promoting the war). Her story was entirely discredited within weeks but by then its purpose had been served: it had created an outraged and emotional mindset within America which overwhelmed rational discussion.

As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war entailed many similar deceits: false linkages made between Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch weapons that didn't exist, of nuclear programs never embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these allegations were discredited as they were being made, not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were retold."

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0817-01.htm

[Ayinde]

By Rep. HENRY WAXMAN, www.counterpunch.org

Controversy is growing over President Bush's use of forged evidence in his State of the Union address. Indeed, the issue is fast becoming a whodunit. Who inserted the fabricated claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from an African country into the statements of the President and other Administration officials?

Currently, the White House is saying a speechwriter, not the butler, did it. But even a quick look at the record reveals that's just another fiction. With potentially grave national security implications at stake, it's essential we find out what really happened.

To rebuild the trust that has been lost, we need open congressional hearings and an independent commission to investigate.

Key Questions Remain Unanswered

I've been investigating the Niger hoax since March. From the beginning, I have asked whether this was a failure of our intelligence experts, or a knowing manipulation of intelligence by the White House. With each new revelation, it becomes more likely this is a case of deception, not incompetence.

The most recent revelation is this: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's top deputy, Stephen Hadley, received written warnings about the Niger hoax from the CIA last October, but supposedly forgot that he had ever read them. This new admission contradicts several months' worth of White House statements.

The Idea That the Perpetrator Was a Speechwriter Is Not Plausible

As noted above, the current White House explanation is that a speechwriter was responsible. But that's not plausible.

Rather, the evidence reveals that, during the six crucial months between September 2002 and March 2003, there was a concerted campaign to promote the unsubstantiated uranium claim.

The campaign began on September 24, 2002, when the White House officially embraced the British dossier asserting that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. In December, the State Department used the evidence as a cornerstone of the U.S. response to Iraq's arms declaration, stating in a widely publicized "fact sheet" that the Iraqi declaration "ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger."

Then, in January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz reiterated the claim. Indeed, in a January 23 New York Times op-ed, Ms. Rice cited it as the leading example of Iraqi duplicity.

Then, Mr. Hadley himself used the claim in a February 16, 2003 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. As late as February 20-just two weeks before U.N. inspectors revealed the evidence to be a fraud-U.S. officials continued to use it.

Clearly, this wasn't the work of a single speechwriter. Nor was it the work of CIA Director George Tenet, who repeatedly tried to debunk the uranium claim. So who was responsible? And how high does this reach into the upper atmosphere of the White House?

A Failure of Candor After the Forgery Was Disclosed

Events since March 7, when the International Atomic Energy Agency disclosed the forgery, have also been extremely disturbing.

It's apparent now that the White House has not been candid about what it knew about the Niger claim. For months, a wide cast of senior officials-including Ari Fleischer, Ms. Rice, and the President himself-have professed that no one in White House was told about the CIA's doubts. Given the latest developments, that explanation is demonstrably false.

There would seem to be just two remaining options: either there was a knowing attempt to mislead the public or there was a stupefying level of incompetence.

Congressman Henry A. Waxman has represented the Los Angeles area of California since 1974. He is the Ranking Minority Member on the House Committee on Government Reform and a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. This essay originally appeared on Findlaw.

http://www.counterpunch.org/waxman08212003.html