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The US case for war in Iraq is clouded with propaganda and misinformation

By Phillip Knightley - posted Thursday, 2 October 2003


Dombey points out that more than 50 countries would be able to build an atom bomb given sufficient fissile material. All it would require would be a research institution with a good physics department and an army familiar with explosives. "Every major Arab country and every EU country, except perhaps Luxembourg, can call on these assets." But how do you deliver it? A gun-type bomb is too big to fit into a missile and a compact bomb for a missile has to be tested to see if it will work. The Iraqis may have been working on these problems for years but there is not the slightest indication that they have solved them.

Meanwhile, the disinformation war and the dirty tricks campaigns to convince us that we are about to be nuked by Saddam Hussein go on. It is quite possible that the African uranium story was another CIA operation along the lines of the capacitors "destined for Iraq" found at Heathrow airport in 1990. It turned out these had been planted by the FBI.

Or take the case of the website called Asia Times Online. Last November 14 Asia Times Online ran a feature quoting, it claimed, from an interview on the Arab TV channel al-Jazeera. In the interview, one Mohamed al-Asuquf, "third in command of al-Qaeda", said there were terrorist plans for a nuclear attack on the US.

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But there was no such interview on al-Jazeera and the name Mohamed al-Asuquf appears to have been made up. Yet the story not only appeared on Asia Times Online but was also picked up and reproduced around the world. Owning up to having been duped, Asia Times Online said the story had come from "a usually reliable source" in Singapore but did not reveal his or her identity. I suggest that source was almost certainly a Western intelligence officer.

There are other compelling reasons not to allow ourselves to be stampeded by disinformation into a war with Iraq, and many questions which the Australian government cannot or does not want to answer. What, for instance, are our war aims? Britain and the United States have announced what they want to achieve. What is Australia after? All military manuals emphasise that war aims must be achievable and should be related to the degree of risk the aggressor is prepared to accept.

History suggests that the decisive aims Britain and America have set out - the invasion of Iraq, the subjugation of its armed forces, and the overthrow of its government - have often resulted in a strategy of annihilation, heavy casualties and prolonged conflict. Annihilation is the American way of war with which it has an historical - some say psychological - affinity: Gettysburg, the Indian wars, the weight of superior fire power in the two World Wars and Korea, the body counts in Vietnam and the events in Somalia. (see The American Way of War, by R. F. Weigley, Macmillan, New York, 1973.)

And once the Iraqi forces are destroyed, what then? Occupation forces require one soldier or police officer for each 500 locals, plus one supervisor for each ten policemen. To control the 23 million Iraqis, that would mean a force of about 50,000. How many would Australia contribute? How many years would they have to stay there? How long would the domestic electorate tolerate a protracted occupation of another, far away country.

If our war aim is to ingratiate ourselves with Washington, then we should be told and the risks spelt out. The main one is, of course, that foreign policy imperatives of super powers change. If we hope that by leaping to do America's bidding now, America will be there for us if, God forbid, we ever need her, then we may end up being terribly disappointed - betrayed and abandoned as Britain abandoned us when it suited her in 1942.

Then there's the moral issue. Tying Australia to America's war aims without reservation could well tie us to a strategy of annihilation and the merciless destruction of Iraq's armed forces, no doubt with weapons that include depleted uranium that will poison the country and usher in another round of 'Gulf War syndrome'.

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And what about Iraq's civilians? Iraq is a nation of kids - nearly half its population being children and teenagers. Is waging war on them when they had no say in bringing Saddam Hussein to power, and no chance to get rid of him, really the way for a great nation like Australia to behave?

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This article was first published in The Diplomat, Canberra, February Issue.



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About the Author

London-based Phillip Knightley is the author of The First Casualty (Prion), a history of war correspondents and propaganda.

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