MAYDAY:4 of Tony Blair's techniques of deceit
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Reselect http://reselect.org.uk/deceit.html
A resource file for Labour Party members who disagree with their MP's
stance over the Iraq crisis
4 of Tony Blair's techniques of deceit
1. Portraying inspections as ineffective.
One key method that the UK government has used to justify an invasion
has been to portray the weapons inspections as of little value in
preventing the development of Iraq's weapons, if Iraq is not fully
cooperating.
The argument that Iraq is not cooperating flies in the face of the
assessment of the inspectors themselves: Hans Blix reported to the
Security Council on 7 March 2003 that "the numerous initiatives,
which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some
long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as 'active',
or even 'proactive'". Since the re-entry of weapons inspectors in
November 2002, Iraq has:
* begun to destroy all of its al-Samoud II missiles under UN
supervision (inspectors report that 72 of the 120 missiles were
destroyed in just over two weeks alone, up to 17 March);
* it has prohibited through a presidential decree any production
or retention of weapons of mass destruction;
* it has provided evidence on its past production of VX nerve
gas that have allowed the inspectors to conclude that the 1.5
tonnes of VX repeatedly invoked by the Prime Minister could not
have existed after 1991;
* it has begun to excavate a site at which it claims to have
destroyed much of its anthrax stocks in 1991, a claim that is
now being verified by UN inspections teams;
* it has enabled the UN nuclear inspectors from the International
Atomic Energy Agency to conclude that "After three months of
intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or
plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme
in Iraq" (IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, statement to
the Security Council, 7 March 2003); and
* it has enabled prompt access to every site in the country chosen
by inspectors, who have yet to report being delayed on any of the
550 inspections they have carried out at over 350 sites throughout
Iraq (Twelfth Quarterly Report, 28 February 2003, para.12).
It is difficult to see how any of this could be dismissed as
insubstantial by the UK Government.
A more serious claim is that absolute Iraqi compliance is required
for verifying Iraq's disarmament. However much other cooperation is
going on, the argument runs, there could be large-scale production
of chemical or biological weapons going on under the noses of the
inspectors. To back up this point, the Prime Minister has repeatedly
invoked the past history of inspections in Iraq, particularly the
inspection of Iraq's biological facilities prior to 1995.
Example: Tony Blair wrote in the Independent on Sunday: "[..] the
UN has tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm
peacefully. And if he doesn't co-operate then no number of
inspectors and no amount of time is going to ensure it happens in
a country almost twice as big as the UK. The UN inspectors found
no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons programme
- which he claimed didn't exist - until his lies were revealed
by his son-in-law. Only then did the inspectors find over 8,000
litres of concentrated anthrax and other biological weapons,
and a factory to make more."
("My Christian conscience is clear over war", 2 March 2003)
Mr Blair's statement is entirely false on at least 4 accounts.
In summary:
Blair: inspectors didn't know about the biological programme until
Kamel's defection.
Fact: not only did the inspectors know about it, but the Government of
Iraq had already admitted having an offensive biological weapons programme
before the defection.
Blair: inspectors found 8,000 litres of anthrax after Kamel's defection.
Fact: inspectors never found any anthrax stocks, which Iraq declared were
destroyed in 1991.
Blair: inspectors only found the anthrax factory after Kamel's defection.
Fact: the factory had been under inspection for almost four years prior
to the defection.
Blair: Kamel declared that Iraq has an offensive biological weapons
programme.
Fact: Kamel declared that Iraq had already destroyed all its biological
weapons.
In detail:
(a) that UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive
biological weapons programme - which he claimed didn't exist -
until his lies were revealed by his son-in-law". The son-in-law
referred to is Hussein Kamel, who defected to Jordan on the night
of 7 August 1995. Before Kamel's defection, the weapons inspectors
from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) already had
extensive information on Iraq's biological weapons programme,
and Iraq had admitted its existence.
Iraq had from 1992 admitted to a small "defensive" biological
research programme; it submitted a declaration to UNSCOM
in May 1992 which provided an inadequate account of this
programme. However, it was only from mid-1995 -- prior
to the defection of Hussein Kamel -- that Iraq admitted
to an offensive biological weapons programme. Iraq's
disclosure came from the fact that the weapons inspectors
had already determined that Iraq had in all probability
such a programme. Far from demonstrating the ineffectiveness
of inspections, the events of 1995 that Mr Blair describes
actually demonstrate how inspections worked effectively to
force Iraq to admit its weapons programmes.
In UNSCOM's 20 June 1995 report, the inspectors stated: "the
only conclusion that can be drawn is that there is a high risk
that Iraq purchased [items and materials required to produce
biological warfare agents] and used them at least in part for
proscribed purposes - the production of agents for biological
weapons" (para.17). UNSCOM declared that "Iraq's failure
to account for its military biological programme leaves one
of its essential obligations unfulfilled" (para.18). Thus,
before Kamel's defection, the weapons inspectors were able
to gauge that Iraq likely had a biological weapons programme
that it had not adequately declared.
This report prompted the Iraqi government to acknowledge
its offensive biological weapons programme. UNSCOM later
reported: "Upon the Executive Chairman's arrival in Baghdad
on 30 June 1995, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said that
his Government had reviewed carefully the Commission's report
of June 1995. While it had found the report to contain both
negative and positive elements, it had concluded that the
positive elements were such that Iraq would now address the
issue of its biological weapons programme. The following day,
on 1 July 1995, Iraq made a brief oral presentation in the
course of which it acknowledged an offensive biological weapons
programme, including the production of a number of biological
agents, but denied the weaponization of such agents." (para.11
of UNSCOM's 11 October 1995 report).
In cooperation with UNSCOM, Iraq produced a new declaration
over the course of July 1995, and submitted it on 4
August 1995 - three days prior to the defection of Hussein
Kamel. Although this declaration was found to be inadequate
by UNSCOM, the inspectors acknowledged its significance:
"Because of the acknowledgement that Iraq's programme was
offensive in nature, it was considered a breakthrough in the
stalemate that had existed between the Commission and Iraq. The
Commission initiated verification efforts, including analysis
by the Commission's and visiting experts of various portions
of Iraq's declaration; inquiries with States concerning
supplier information; detailed assessment of the new [full,
final and complete disclosure] and correlation with information
available to the Commission."
In summary, even before the defection of Saddam Hussein's
son-in-law:
* the inspectors had already determined that Iraq had an
offensive biological weapons programme.
* Iraq had admitted having an offensive biological
weapons programme.
* inspectors were able to assess the accuracy of Iraq's
claims about the extent of its biological weapons
programme.
Therefore, far from demonstrating the ineffectiveness of
inspections, the biological weapons saga demonstrates how
concerted action by inspectors can cause hidden programmes
to be revealed - even without the threat of force hanging
over Iraq.
(b) that, after Kamel's defection, "[o]nly then did the inspectors
find over 8,000 litres of concentrated anthrax and other biological
weapons". This claim is entirely false. Weapons inspectors did
not find any biological weapons in the aftermath of the Kamel
defection; in fact, they never found any stocks of anthrax in Iraq.
In 1995, Iraq declared that it had produced 8,445 litres of
concentrated anthrax at al-Hakam, its main biological weapons
facility, from 1989 up to December 1990. This quantity is
recorded in the 1990 annual report of the facility, which
UNMOVIC have taken to be a "credible document" (UNMOVIC,
"Unresolved Disarmament Issues", 6 March 2003, p.96). This
is presumably the source of the Prime Minister's claim.
Iraq has claimed that this material was then disposed of in
1991 as follows: 4,975 litres were filled into missiles and
bombs, which were destoyed in July 1991 in al-Nibai desert
and al-Azaziya respectively (remnants at both sites have been
uncovered by weapons inspectors, together with traces of
anthrax spores); and 3,412 litres were detoxified and then
dumped at the bulk disposal site at al-Hakam, also in 1991
(again which inspectors verified as containing the remnants
of anthrax spores). 52.5 litres were declared as wasted when
filling the missiles and bombs. There remain questions about
whether all of the 8,445 litres declared were disposed of in
this way (and about the relatively small quantity declared as
wasted), and about whether Iraq actually produced more anthrax
at another facility in Iraq (see this full discussion of the
anthrax issue). However, at no time have weapons inspectors
found any evidence to contradict the account that all of
Iraq's stocks of anthrax were destroyed in 1991. They have
also never found any stocks of anthrax in the country.
(c) that, after Kamel's defection, "[o]nly then did the inspectors
find [...] a factory to make more." The factory referred to is
al-Hakam, the site that was the main production facility for
anthrax before the Gulf War. The argument put foward by the Prime
Minister, that inspectors had not even found al-Hakam before
Kamel's defection in August 1995, is simply false:
(i) it was already under monitoring by the weapons
inspectors, who had visited al-Hakam for the first time in
September/October 1991 (UNMOVIC, "Unresolved Disarmament
Issues", 6 March 2003, p.160). Inspectors had installed 16
cameras at 3 locations within al-Hakam factory by April 1995
(para.86 of UNSCOM's 10 April 1995 report). UNSCOM had already
recorded - before Iraq's extensive disclosure in July 1995 and
Kamel's defection on 7 August 1995 - "the production facility
at the Al Hakam site has long raised concerns relating to its
original intent, as opposed to its current use. [...] certain
design features of the Al Hakam facility were [..] more
consistent with the requirements of a biological warfare
agent facility." (para.74 of UNSCOM's 10 April 1995 report).
(ii) Iraq had already "acknowledg[ed] an offensive programme
that included the production of large quantities of two
[biological] warfare agents at the Al Hakam facility" on
1 July 1995, prior to the defection of Kamel (para.71 of
UNSCOM's 11 October 1995 report).
(d) that Hussein Kamel revealed that Iraq possessed "an offensive
biological weapons programme" at the time. This is a claim that has
been repeatedly made by officials from the British and American
administrations. It was shown to be false when the transcript
of Kamel's first interview with weapons inspectors was leaked
first to Newsweek magazine, and then to a British academic. In
the interview, according to the transcript, Kamel claimed:
"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons -
biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed" (p.13).
When pressed specifically on anthrax, Kamel claimed:
"nothing remained" (p.7).
Conclusion. In order to justify the moves towards war, Tony Blair
has claimed that weapons inspectors are not adequate to deal with the
threat of Iraq's weapons. This is clearly not the case: the Security
Council's own panel on disarmament concluded that in the period from
1991 to 1998, with weapons inspectors in place, "the bulk of Iraq's
proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated" (para.25 of the
Report of the First Panel established by the UN Security Council,
27 March 1999). Since November 2002, weapons inspectors in place in
Iraq have dealt effectively with the vast majority of the claims that
Prime Minister Blair and President Bush had made about Iraq's weapons
(a full inventory is here). In the face of overwhelming evidence, the
Prime Minister has resorted to simple falsehoods to substantiate his
position. Whether this is a result of his own ignorance or the outcome
of a systematic policy of deliberate deceit is an open question.
2. Using falsified documents to make claims about Iraq's weapons.
One key plank of Tony Blair's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction was the claim that Iraq had recently attempted to
import uranium from Africa ("Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The
assessment of the British Government", 24 September 2002, p.25). In the
House of Commons of 24 September 2002, he declared that "we know that
Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from
Africa". This was a claim that hit the headlines on the following day.
Even President Bush took up the British claim. In his State of the
Union address (28 January 2003), he said: "The British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa."
After repeated appeals by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), documents were supplied to it by governments - reportedly
the US and UK - to substantiate the claim that Iraq had attempted
to purchase uranium from Niger, in west Africa. On 7 March 2003,
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the IAEA, declared that
these documents were fake.
"the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts,
that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of
recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact
not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific
allegations are unfounded."
He came to this conclusion after examining the "correspondence coming
from various bodies of the Government of Niger", and "compar[ing]
the form, format, contents and signatures of that correspondence with
those of the alleged procurement-related documentation". In other
words, the forgers had ineptly attempted to copy the letter-heads and
signatures of documents from Niger, to make a false case that there
had been a deal on uranium between Niger and Iraq.
There has been no explanation from the UK Government as to the source
of these forgeries, that it reportedly passed onto the weapons
inspectors, and no sign of an apology or an examination of how
crudely forged documents came to be accepted by it as genuine. The
questions are thus unanswered: did the British government knowingly
provide forged documents to the IAEA? And how much of the rest of
the material given currency by Tony Blair is also fabricated?
3. Falsely claiming that speculative information is derived from
intelligence sources.
One consistent thread in Tony Blair's techniques of deceit has been
to claim that information that he is presenting is "derived from
intelligence sources", when in fact that information is either
an exaggerated version of intelligence accounts or is not from
intelligence material at all. Two examples:
(a) On 21 January 2003, Tony Blair told the Liaison Committee of the
House of Commons (made up of the chairpersons of the Commons select
committees) that: "there is some intelligence evidence about linkages
between members of al-Qaeda and people in Iraq." This was a line that
was developed and expanded upon over the following days.
The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said on 29 January 2003:
"the Prime Minister had indicated during his session with the Liaison
Committee last week that Al Qaida operatives were being sheltered in
Iraq." Later that day, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons:
"we do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq."
A Foreign Office spokesman in London went even further, saying: "We
believe that there have been, and still are, some al-Qaeda operatives
in parts of Iraq controlled by Baghdad. It is hard to imagine that
they are there without the knowledge and acquiescence of the Iraqi
Government." He claimed that the Foreign Office had been saying this
"for months".
A week later, a classified British intelligence report, written by
defence intelligence staff, was passed to BBC News Correspondent
Andrew Gilligan. Far from substantiating the charge that there were
"linkages" between al-Qaeda and Iraq, the report states that there
were no current links between the two, and claims that Bin Laden's
"aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq" (see "Leaked
report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link", 5 February 2003). This report,
written in mid-January, had been provided to Tony Blair just prior
to his 21 January presentation at the Liaison Committee.
The indication that the Prime Minister had referred to "intelligence
evidence" of links in his 21 January presentation in the knowledge
that the actual intelligence provided to him was saying the exact
opposite is strengthened by the fact that the UK government has not
made any claims since about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. If there
really had been evidence-based intelligence for links between the two,
members of the Government would be not have refrained from alluding
to it repeatedly since then.
(b) In announcing the release of the third British dossier, entitled
"Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation",
Tony Blair told the House of Commons on 3 February 2003:
"We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the
infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we
publish intelligence reports, but I hope that people have some
sense of the integrity of our security services. They are not
publishing this, or giving us this information, and making it
up. It is the intelligence that they are receiving, and we are
passing it on to people".
The only substantive section of the report - pages 6 to 16 of a
19-page report - is copied directly from publicly available on-line
sources. The most frequent source is an article from an Israeli
journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs, written by a
postgraduate student. The primary source material for that article was
documents captured from Iraq in 1991, and that are thus at least twelve
years old. A secondary source, for more recent material, is a book
by Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector and critic of US/UK policy
on Iraq, and a man whose views are dismissed on the Foreign Office
website as not credible due to his past inconsistency: ironically,
the Government seems to have reprinted many of Mr Ritter's claims
and put them out under their own name.
Other sections of the Government dossier are drawn from summaries
from articles in Jane's Intelligence Review that are posted on the
GlobalSecurity.org website. The dossier is put together in a slapdash
manner (even incorporating the simple grammatical errors from the
pieces), and at one point on p.14 mistakenly reprints the section
about one organisation (General Security) as the second half of a
section about another organisation (Military Security). As a result,
the section on that latter organisation is incoherent.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister has gone on to defend this dossier. He
told an audience on 11 March that the relevant part of the dossier
"was taken from a reference book [sic], but it was entirely accurate,
nobody has disputed its accuracy." That claim to inaccuracy is wholly
untrue: the section on p.14 at the very least is clearly reprinted
from the wrong section of the original article.
Conclusion: at least in two cases, the Government has been caught
releasing inaccurate information, seemingly put together for narrow
political purposes, and attaching the tag of "intelligence information"
to these claims to render it more plausible. The dishonesty of
this approach damages the credibility of UK, both in distributing
information to the public in general and also internationally, where
British claims about security threats are no longer taken seriously.
4. Ignoring international commitments
(i) Claims about the legal authority under Resolution 1441 (2002).
The Prime Minister has made the claim that Security Council Resolution
1441 (8 November 2002) provides a legal basis for war. In the House
of Commons on 12 March 2003, when asked about the "legal basis in
international law for war", he replied:
"As the Foreign Secretary has pointed out, resolution 1441 gives
the legal basis for this".
However, the unanimous vote in the Security Council in favour of
SCR1441 was obtained because of a commitment by the US and UK to
return to the Security Council for its assessment of Iraqi compliance,
in the event of allegations of non-cooperation.
Britain's Ambassador to the UN, Jeremy Greenstock said at the Security
Council on 8 November 2002, in his explanation of Security Council
Resolution 1441:
"We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns
about "automaticity" and "hidden triggers" - the concern that
on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action;
that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be
discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response,
as a co-sponsor with the United States of the text we have
adopted. There is no "automaticity" in this Resolution. If there
is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the
matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in
Operational Paragraph 12. We would expect the Security Council
then to meet its responsibilities."
(the paragraph of SCR1441 referred to by Ambassador Greenstock reads:
"Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance
with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation
and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council
resolutions in order to secure international peace and security")
This was the understanding by which the UK managed to secure acceptance
for the resolution. It was endorsed by the Prime Minister, in a
statement from Downing Street, immediately after the resolution was
passed on 8 November:
"To those who fear this resolution is just an automatic trigger
point, without any further discussion, paragraph 12 of the
resolution makes it clear that is not the case."
Now, Mr Blair is claiming that SCR1441 gives him the authority to
launch a war, regardless of the opinions of other Security Council
members. Not only is he contradicting the assessments of other
countries on the necessity for further Security Council authorisation,
he is also contradicting the position stated by himself and the
British Ambassador at the UN at the time of the resolution's adoption.
(ii) Claims about legal authority under Resolutions 678 (1990) and 687
(1991).
As the possibility of further authorisation from the Security
Council receded in March 2003, a significant number of the members
of the Blair government have resorted to arguing that there is legal
authority to invade Iraq on the basis of the resolutions passed at
the time of the Gulf War. Security Council Resolution 678 (1990)
authorised the use of force to liberate Kuwait. Security Council
Resolution 687 (1991) imposed a ceasefire and obliged Iraq to disarm
itself of non-conventional weapons.
Gordon Brown on 16 March 2003 claimed that SCR678 gave the authority
to use force. Brown referred to "Resolution 678 which says that the
international community should take all necessary means to uphold
security and peace. In other words, that Saddam Hussein should
disarm". This is palpable nonsense: SCR678 was about using force to
remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It was not about the disarmament
of Iraq, a topic that was only discussed at the Security Council for
the first time some four months after SCR678 was passed.
Jack Straw on 15 March 2003 claimed that the SCR687 ceasefire is
"conditional" upon Iraq's disarmament of its prohibited weapons. This
is clearly not true. SCR687 makes the ceasefire conditional solely
upon one act, laid out in para.33: that of "official notification
by Iraq to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council of its
acceptance of the provisions above". Iraq gave that notification to
the Secretary-General and the Security Council after the passage of
SCR687, and has not withdrawn it. Any military action by the US/UK
would constitute a violation of that ceasefire.
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