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True facts and
fallacies
By David Isenberg
The short-lived and controversial Office of
Strategic Influence (OSI), proposed by the Pentagon in
November 2001 and terminated in February 2002, may no
longer exist, but its central tenet - aid to influence
countries overseas to help or at least support the war
against terrorism - lives on. The only difference is
that the propaganda function is now assumed directly by
the White House, and the target is the American public.
To that end, on January 22 the White House's new
Office of Global Communications, which President George
W Bush created by executive order and opened the day
before, released "Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's
Disinformation and Propaganda, 1990-2003". The aim of
the publication is "to reveal the disinformation and
propaganda of the Iraqi regime". The release of the
document coincided with faltering support for the Bush
administration’s push for war. In short, it was the
latest salvo in the administration’s public relations
offensive.
The document details what it views as
Iraq's propaganda and disinformation in four broad
categories: crafting tragedy; exploiting suffering;
exploiting Islam and corrupting the public record.
The 32-page document details what the US says
are Iraq's material breaches of UN Resolution 1441 and
previous resolutions. It lists recent events as breaches
of Resolution 1441, such as:
The discovery on January 16 of previously
undisclosed empty chemical warheads.
The ongoing intimidation of Iraqi scientists.
Numerous chemical, biological and nuclear weapons
stockpiles and programs unaddressed in Iraq's
12,000-page declaration in December.
To those
who have followed Iraq and Saddam Hussein closely over
the year, none of the items detailed are new. Indeed,
the report details several of what might be called
golden oldies of Iraqi deception operations, such as
collocating military assets within the civilian
infrastructure.
Something that is new - as well
as bordering on the surreal - is the issue of dead
babies. The report says "they have staged mass
children’s funerals, and to stage those funerals they
need dead children. There is only one problem, according
to defectors, journalists and participants in these
funerals. To have enough children’s remains to make a
proper show, the regime has to collect and store them. A
BBC documentary that aired on June 23, 2002, exposed how
the Iraqi regime staged these processions. Instead of
burying dead children immediately in accordance with
Muslim custom, Iraqi authorities hold the bodies in cold
storage until enough bodies are available to conduct a
'parade of dead babies'."
Another section deals
with the humanitarian impact of sanctions. The report
correctly points out that Iraq has greatly exaggerated
the number of children who have died as a result of
sanctions. But it minimizes the overall impact of the
sanctions. A fair reading would note that agencies
across the board, such as UNICEF, World Health
Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization and the
World Food Program have documented a serious
deterioration in the physical and psychological well
being of the Iraqi people.
However, at least one
of the claims made in the document is at least arguable,
namely, the section on depleted uranium. The report
claims that in recent years "the Iraqi regime has made
substantial efforts to promote false claims that the
depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have
caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq". That Iraq has
made such claim is certainly true. Whether they are
false is not certain.
The document says
"scientists working for the World Health Organization,
the UN Environmental Program and the European Union
could find no health effects linked to exposure to
depleted uranium". But a 1998 report by the US National
Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine found that
"health effects of natural uranium have been widely
investigated, mostly in occupational settings. While
these studies have either shown no effect or a small
effect as a result of uranium exposure, our committee
found weaknesses in many of these studies. We could not
draw conclusions about exposure to uranium and death
from a number of diseases, including lymphatic or bone
cancer, nonmalignant respiratory illness, and diseases
of the liver and gastrointestinal tract."
Oddly,
the report also cites the January 6 discovery of
previously undisclosed warheads for chemical weapons
discovered by UN inspectors as an example of Iraq lies
and deception. It is odd, because the rest of the Bush
administration has downplayed the discovery, recognizing
that it is far from a smoking gun. And as a threat to
the United States, the discovery is laughable. Artillery
shells have a limited range, measured in miles, so they
can only be a threat to Iraq's citizens and those within
a few kilometers of its borders.
In fact,
although it is not mentioned in the report, it should be
noted that most of what is reported in the media about
what Iraq has or does not have in the way of chemical
and biological weapons suffers from a lack of context.
Consider some of the points made in a recently published
online report "Claims and evaluations of Iraq’s
proscribed weapons".
For example, the report
makes the claim that "Iraq has attempted to purchase
high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed
for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium
for nuclear weapons". But according to the
director-general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency Mohammed ElBaradei’s briefing to the UN Security
Council on January 9, "The IAEA’s analysis to date
indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes
sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent
with reverse engineering of rockets."
Similarly,
with regard to the biological weapons that Iraq is said
to have, nobody ever points out that many of them have
short shelf lives. Botulism toxin and clostridium
perfringens, which cause gas gangrene, are anaerobic
bacilli and have a short shelf life. And Iraq did not
seem to have produced dry, storable anthrax; rather, it
only seems to have deployed wet anthrax agents, which
have a relatively limited life.
(©2003 Asia
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