[Peace] Fwd:[ANSWER]: Answering Bush's War Propaganda on Iraq (1 of

[jencart]

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BUSH'S "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" HOAX:
BIG LIE MASKS REAL MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR

PART 1:
ANSWERING BUSH'S WAR PROPAGANDA

The tasks facing the new international anti-war movement  include developing a popular and effective answer to the  White House propaganda machine. Bush and the Pentagon are  working non-stop to demonize the victims of their planned  attack, while creating a credible pretext for war.

Working people in the United States, and especially the 
youth, must be able to learn the real causes for the 
coming conflict and learn how to respond to the Pentagon's  lies. Otherwise people will be susceptible to the pro-war  hype and frenzy that are being cynically generated to 
prepare public opinion for war.

The main argument used by the White House to scare up  support for an invasion is that "Saddam Hussein must be  prevented from acquiring or developing chemical, 
biological or nuclear weapons--a.k.a. weapons of mass 
destruction."

The White House has focused on this bogus argument because  it has no other. Every effort was made to connect Iraq to  the Sept. 11 attack and later to the anthrax attacks in 
the autumn of 2001.

But there was no evidence of a connection, so Bush simply  broadened the scope of the "war on terrorism" by 
proclaiming that Iraq, Iran, north Korea and other "evil"  countries would be considered terrorist and subject to 
preemptive military attacks.

What made them terrorists? Bush said they were "trying to  acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Iraq certainly did possess and use chemical weapons in the  1980s. Both Iraq and Iran used such weapons against each  other in that brutal and reactionary war. But these 
weapons were not "frightening" to the U.S. at the time of  their use.

Donald Rumsfeld, the current secretary of defense, was  meeting in Baghdad with Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi  leaders in December 1983 and March 1984, and improving  U.S.-Iraqi relations on behalf of the Reagan 
administration when the allegations concerning chemical  weapons surfaced. But this was when the U.S. was 
encouraging Iraq's war effort as part of a strategy to 
weaken and exhaust the Iranian Revolution.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq did not use chemical or 
non-conventional weapons, but the U.S. did. It dropped 
tons of depleted uranium weapons all over Iraq.

It is important to deconstruct the piece of propaganda 
regarding "weapons of mass destruction." It is the only 
pretext available to the war-makers and it needs to be 
answered effectively.

The facts are very crucial to understanding the duplicity  of U.S. strategy. The U.S. is employing a classic Catch-22  public relations technique aimed at demonizing Iraq before  an uninformed and unsuspecting public.

BACKGROUND TO OPERATION DESERT FOX

Iraq agreed in 1991 to let in UN weapons inspectors--a 
condition imposed by the United States at the end of the  Gulf War. The U.S. insisted that economic sanctions would  be lifted only after inspectors verified that Iraq was 
free from non-conventional weapons.

But for the last four years it has been the U.S. 
government that has worked hard at manipulating the UN so  that there would be no inspectors in Iraq, thus 
eliminating any chance of ending sanctions.

After the U.S.-dominated team carried out 9,000 
inspections over nearly eight years, Iraq demanded in 1998  that the UN/U.S. economic sanctions be ended. Most 
governments in the UN favored lifting sanctions.

The demand to end the sanctions was gaining irresistible  momentum.

This prompted the Clinton administration to withdraw the  weapons inspectors on Dec. 12, 1998, on the pretext that  Iraq was not "ful