2/20/03
IRAQ WAR : LIES FROM THE FIRST BUSH ADMINISTRATION
By J. Parnell McCarter
The best evidence indicates that the first war with Iraq in the early 1990s, led by Bush Sr.’s administration, was predicated on a major lie. Jon Basil Utley explains the nature of that lie at http://www.iraqwar.org/bush.htm , an excerpt of which follows:
“One of the main reasons for America’s going to war against
Iraq in 1990 was because the White House declared that there were satellite
photos showing Iraqi tanks and troops massing on the borders of Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, threatening invasion of Saudi Arabia. The reports fueled
the war hysteria and frightened the Saudis, who then agreed to full cooperation
with US military forces. They were a major reason used to convince the American
people of the justification for war to protect and defend the oil supplies so
vital to the West.
Yet the supposed aerial photos proving the accusation were
never released. First the Pentagon said they had to remain secret because
of the war effort. Then the White House kept hedging and finally the issue died
down with the supposed photos still not released. Iraq all along denied
that it had any intention of threatening Saudi Arabia and was only reuniting
itself with its (claimed) province of Kuwait. See link below about
Russian satellite photos showing no large concentrations of troops.
On February 27, 1991, an article appeared in "IN THESE
TIMES" telling how typical consumers of mainstream news were dazzled and
deluded by the manipulators of images. The article, "Public Doesn't Get
Picture with Gulf Satellite Photos," reported that when president George
Bush began his massive deployment of American troops to the Gulf in August
1990, he claimed that Iraq, which had just entered Kuwait, had set its sights
on Saudi Arabia. On September 11, 1990, Bush addressed a joint session of
Congress, saying, "We gather tonight witness to events in the Gulf as
significant as they are tragic. 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured
into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia".
On January 6, 1991, however, Jean Heller had reported in
the ST. PETERSBURG (Fla.) TIMES that satellite photos taken the same day the
president Bush addressed Congress failed to back up his claim of an imminent
Iraqi threat. In fact, there was no sign of a massive Iraqi troops buildup in Kuwait.
Heller told IN THESE TIMES, "The troops that
were said to be massing on the Saudi border and that constituted the possible
threat to Saudi Arabia that justified the US sending of troops do not show up
in these photographs. And when the Department of Defense was asked to provide
evidence that would contradict our satellite evidence, it refused to do
so".
But the national media has chosen to ignore Heller's story.
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES’ editors approached the Associated Press twice about
running her story on the wire, but to no avail. Likewise, the Scripps-Howard
news service, of which the ST. PETERSBURG TIMES is a member, chose not to
distribute the story…
Jon Basil
Utley is the Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig
von Mises Institute. A former correspondent for Knight/Ridder in South
America, Utley has written for the Harvard Business Review on foreign
nationalism and has been on the board of directors of many conservative
organizations including Accuracy in Media and the Council for Inter-American
Security.”
At Puritan
News Weekly ( http://www.puritans.net/news/
) we have previously reported how significantly the C.I.A. controls and
manipulates mainstream media outlets so as to withhold vital information from
the public. George Bush Sr. formerly
served as director of the C.I.A., so he is especially adept at knowing how to
employ the manipulation. Without that
information the public makes poorly informed decisions, often based upon
deceptive lies.
The
deception has been especially significant in the case of U.S. relations with
Iraq. We have previously reported the illicit financial transactions between
Saddam Hussein and the Bush family relating to the BNL scandal.
Wayne Grytting, the author of
American Newspeak: The Mangling of Meaning for Profit and Power (New Society
Publishers, 2002), has submitted these points for American consideration:
By Wayne Grytting wgrytt@scn.org
Would the Bush Administration mislead us about Iraq? I'd like to believe the President. That's why I'm asking supporters of a new war against Iraq to help out. Could you clear up a few nagging doubts from the last Gulf War that have led critics like Rep. Jim McDermott to question the credibility of our leaders? In case you've forgotten, here is a brief review.
1. The Incubator Babies. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Americans were appalled by reports of at least 312 babies ripped from their life support systems by marauding Iraqi troops. More than any other story, it helped sway public opinion in favor of the war. George Bush Sr. repeated the story endlessly. When the Senate narrowly decided by five votes to authorize an invasion, nine senators referred to these atrocities as a reason for their votes.
Who could not have been moved by the testimony of a 15 year-old Kuwaiti girl known only as "Nayirah," before the Congressional Human the cold floor to die" by indifferent soldiers looting a hospital?
At the time, neither Congress nor the public knew she was actually the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., Saud al-Sabah, and had never been near these hospitals. Nor did the public know this "testimony" had been "facilitated" by a PR firm named Hill and Knowlton and financed by the government of Kuwait.
These facts came out after the war, when hospital employees in Kuwait universally denied this atrocity story. But the tale had done its damage.
2. The Phantom Troops. In September of 1990 the Pentagon reported that 250,000 Iraqi troops with 1,500 tanks stood poised in Kuwait, ready to attack Saudi Arabia. These reports lent a real urgency to our need to send in troops.
One lonely newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times of Florida, pursued this story. They obtained Russian commercial satellite photos of Kuwait and then showed them to military experts. None could find a troop build-up.
Peter Zimmerman, a George Washington University satellite imagery expert reported, "all of us agreed that we couldn't see anything in the way of (Iraqi) military activity in the pictures" despite the fact that the images were "astounding in their quality." They could make out the build-up of U.S. jet fighters but few if any Iraqi military installations near the Saudi border.
The St. Petersburg Times contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney with their evidence of the non-existent invasion force, asking for refuting evidence. Their answer, as Harper's publisher John Macarthur reports in his award winning book Second Front, was "Trust us." The Pentagon would revise its troop estimates way downward -- after the war ended.
3. "Collateral Damage." The Orwellian highpoint of the Gulf War was the discovery of the anti-septic phrase "collateral damage" to cover over the harsh realities of innocent civilian deaths. Thousands died in the bombings, but far more devastating were the effects of our economic blockade after the war. A United Nations investigation found our blockade of Iraq led to the deaths of an estimated half-million young children from disease and malnutrition.
CBS reporter Lesley Stahl had a chance to interview our soon-to-be Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 1996 about this sensitive issue on 60 Minutes. Asked Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"
To this Albright responded, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
One half million dead children. We were never told our nation would exact this kind of a price on another country.
It strikes me there comes a point where the killing of the innocent, even indirectly by withholding medicine, destroys the credibility of the noblest of ideals. I'm not sure exactly when that point comes, but some say it comes after the death of one child.
Supporters of a war against Saddam owe it to us to come out from behind the sanitized walls, to go beyond the language of distancing and denial that produced "collateral damage" and speak directly. If your cause is just, then how many dead Iraqi children is it worth? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? State your figure.
I know this is ancient history. I know George Bush Jr. was not on watch then. But he walks in the footsteps of government officials who have misled and manipulated us. We are not buying swampland again.”
As we have also
reported at Puritan News Weekly, the influence of the Vatican over the
Bush and Clinton Administrations and the C.I.A. is significant. Evidence suggests that the Vatican is
directing these U.S. leaders to take actions which will make America appear
odious in the sight of the world, so as ultimately to justify the destruction
of the U.S. government based in Washington, D.C. by many nations working in
concert with the Vatican.