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Bush used misinformation to advance the cause of war
To make the case for war, the Bush administration knowingly used unfounded allegations of Iraqi nuclear weapons production programmes.
- By Adel Safty, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 January 16, 2006
To make the case for war, the Bush administration knowingly used unfounded allegations of Iraqi nuclear weapons production programmes. It also claimed that Iraq had links to Al Qaida. Current and former government officials recently told the New York Times that the Bush administration had based this claim on a confession made by a Libyan prisoner, Ibn Al Shaikh Al Libi. Al Libi was captured in Pakistan and sent by US authorities to Egypt in January 2002.
Al Libi later said that he had fabricated the claim of Iraq-Al Qaida link to escape harsh treatment in Egypt. The CIA withdrew the intelligence based on Al Libi's confession in March 2004.
In November, Democratic Senator Carl Levin made public information showing that a February 2002 government document had concluded that it was probable that Al Libi "was intentionally misleading" his interrogators. The document also showed that the Defence Intelligence Agency had concluded that Al Libi was probably a liar.
Yet, months later, Bush used Al Libi's allegations as solid foundation for his claim of an Iraq-Al Qaida link. In a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 he said: "We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaida members in bomb making and poisons and gases."
Another evidence presented by the Bush administration for an Iraq-Al Qaida link was a meeting that allegedly took place in Prague in April 2001 between September 11 hijacker Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official.
Dubious claim
An investigation by American and Czech officials proved that at the time of the alleged meeting in Prague, Atta was in the US.
Another leading source of dubious claim manipulatively used by the Bush administration was Iraqi engineer Adnan Ihsan Saeed Al Haideri. Al Haideri claimed that he had helped Saddam Hussain's government to secretly bury tonnes of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in private villas and beneath the Saddam Hussain Hospital in Baghdad.
The CIA officer who gave al-Haideri a polygraph test, however, concluded that Al Haideri was lying. Yet Al Haideri's lies would find their way to the American public masquerading as serious information.
Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, who enjoyed close collaborative relations with the CIA, and later with the Pentagon, contacted Judith Miller at the New York Times.
Miller had served as a loyal conduit of the Iraqi National Cong-ress's anti-Saddam propaganda and enjoyed close relationships with influential members of the Bush administration.
She went to Thailand where she interviewed Al Haideri. Given Miller's contacts in the Bush administration, she probably knew that the CIA had dismissed Al Haideri as a fake. Yet, after interviewing him, Miller published a front page story in the Times titled An Iraqi defector tells of work on at least 20 hidden weapons sites (December 20,2001) claiming that "government officials" had described Al Haideri's allegations as "reliable and significant".
The Miller story, repeated by newspapers and television stations around the world, would be used by the Bush administration as "proof" of the existence of illegal weapons. White House documents continued to refer to Al Haideri and his allegations until October 29, 2003, even though the CIA had already concluded that Al Haideri's claims were lies.
In 2004, Al Haideri was taken back to Iraq by the CIA's team looking for weapons of mass destruction, The Iraq Survey Group. The CIA team took Al Haideri to the locations where he had claimed the weapons of mass destruction were hidden. Al Haideri was not able to identify a single site of illegal weapons in Iraq. (Rolling Stone, November 17, 2005)
The manipulative use of information to advance the case for war does not seem to have been the result of mistakes or negligence. Rather, it seems to have been part of a careful campaign of deception and manipulation aimed at engineering support for the war and silencing the war critics.
Recently, the Pentagon admitted that it had hired contractors who bribed Iraqi and Arab journalists to print positive stories about the US occupation of Iraq.
Secretive propaganda
In fact, according to documents revealed to and interviews of former and present government officials with the New York Times, the Bush administration launched a major secretive propaganda war: "The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon after the September 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors." (New York Times, December 10).
Two public relations firms, the Lincoln Group and Randon Group, received contracts from the Pentagon to help in this propaganda operation.
According to Pentagon documents recently obtained by Rolling Stone, Pentagon officials set up, in late 2001, a secret organisation called "The Office of Strategic Influence" whose mission it was to conduct "covert disinformation and deception operations planting false news items in the media and hiding their origins." (November 27).
The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence was also expected to "coerce" foreign journalists and plant false information overseas". Secret documents also showed that it was expected to find ways to "punish" those who convey the "wrong message". (Rolling Stone, November 27, 2005)
Prof. Adel Safty is Unesco Chair of Leadership and President of the School of Government and Leadership, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul. He is author-editor of 14 books including From Camp David to the Gulf, and Leadership and Democracy, New York, 2004.
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