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3/10/2003 02:35:00 AM | Justin Check out this piece on the recent discovery of forged US evidence on Iraqi weapons programs. Following the progress of U.S. intelligence on illegal Iraqi weapons, I've begun to detect a certain trend of "facts" having a rather short half-life, once released from the hermetic and ideological sealing of The Bush and Blair Administration's intelligensia: none of their evidence seems able to withstand the least public scrutiny. First it was the theory of aluminum rod importation for use in centrifuges; then it was the embarrassing plagiarism and recasting of old student’s political papers into “proven” British intelligence; now, the Bush Administration has been forced to retreat from its claimed proof of the Iraqi regime’s efforts to procure uranium from Niger, in the wake of the weapons inspectors’ discovery that the documents supplied by the US and British were in fact forgeries. "We fell for it," admits one US government official. Apparently, the giveaways were obvious, with some documents messing up the names and offices of many government officials (mistakes with which Mr. Bush can no doubt sympathize... For that matter, might such name butchering even be evidence of his handywork?). The real question is how could such blatent inaccuracies make it through the sophisticated truth filtering of US intelligence? The only explanation I can come up with is that they’re looking at the evidence that comes to them through “ideology goggles”, and seeing only whatever is convenient to their own political ends. I’m concerned that the Bush Administration may have actually surpassed the Iraqi leader in the fine and dangerous art of Lie Proliferation. Why does the Bush Administration continue to spout aluminum tube theories in their rhetoric, after they are discredited by the UN's independent experts? Why does Bush publically accuse Iraq of continuing to *create* Al-Samouds even as Iraq is publically *destroying* them, without bothering to present any evidence supporting their claim to the inspectors for verification? Do they think they can just hurl out unsupported accusations, banking on the notion that they will have sunk into the American mind by the time they are disproven? Could this game actually be working? If only all these brinksmen -- including Bush, Saddam, Sharon, Milosevic, the whole racquet (we can even add Arafat to emphasize our neutrality) -- who exhibit the tendency to embark suddenly on ill-considered land-grabbing escapades at the expense of the people they represent, could simply be sent to colonize Mars... There they might freely indulge their habits on land that was not already inhabited, and spare us all their personal troubles. perma link |
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