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August
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August
2, 2003
Who
Forged the Letters that Sucked Us into War?
Israel,
Yellowcake and the Media
By JERRY KROTH
Can you name a country in the Middle East suspected
of developing nuclear weapons, refusing to open itself to international
inspection, and one that probably possesses chemical and biological
weapons of mass destruction?
Iraq, perhaps, Iran, maybe, but most
definitely Israel. Indeed, while its official spokespersons still
deny it, Israel is thought to possess as many as 240 nuclear
weapons along with awesome biological weapons.
During Bush's successful ejaculatory
tweaking of American war hysteria over Iraq which aroused 73%
of the American electorate to ignore world opinion, flout the
UN, and support going off to war, not a single levelheaded American
journalist seemed at all interested in this obvious oversight.
It was as if Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction
had nothing to do with Israel's arsenal. Gosh, what an irrelevancy!
The left incriminated that the reason
the Bush couldn't stop salivating over the prospect of invading
Iraq was for its oil: ah yes, greedy Republicans, Texas oil magnates,
Halliburton, insider wheeling and dealing. Sounds good, but was
there anyone opining that the real reason we invaded Iraq was
to keep Israel as the sole nuclear power in the Middle East?
The discussion never moved in that direction. And it did not
move there probably because the issue was never put on the table.
George Will was too busy quarrying into somber ethical issues
like whether "French" fries and kisses should be rethought,
and Dianne Sawyer couldn't tear her investigative self away from
the Dixie Chicks long enough to even think about it.
Now I know how paranoid 'media conspiracy'
sounds---but isn't it curious how in all the words that flowed
off those deeply embedded lips of Ted Koppel, he never mentioned
Israel's nuclear weapons or its biological capabilities in all
the time he was dressed up like a soldier? Isn't that taking
don't-ask-don't-tell to a new level entirely?
Today with Niger's yellowcake and David
Kelley's death, the media are all flummoxed about what Bush knew
or didn't and whether Blair used 'sexed up' intelligence. "Did
the Bush or Blair administration lead their countries into war
using faulty intelligence?" That is how the media from CNN
to Michael Eisner's executive producers are trying to reframe
and define the issue for us. Hmmm! Is that really the issue Michael?
Hold on! Hans Blix, even before we went
to war, said those Iraqi letters seeking to buy yellowcake uranium
were false. They were more than false, he said; they were forgeries!
Those letters which made it into the State of the Union message
to stir up American testosterone and gather up enough mojo for
us to launch our first Tomahawk. . . they were forgeries!
The tainted letters surfaced in Italy.
They used the Iranian word 'hemisphere' instead of the proper
Iraqi word "dome," and Blix said the documents were
not written by an Iraqi at all.
Now fantasize for a moment the world
learned that it was Iran that was behind the forged letters.
What was their gain? To bring the US war machine right to their
own borders? Not a very interesting theory.
What would it mean if Israel's Mossad
forged them? Well, it would show that Israel falsely dragged
Britain and the U.S. into invading its major adversary and with
yellowcake all over its face, relations with that country just
might be in for some serious review.
What if the CIA falsified the documents?
Well, if George knew they were forgeries and presented such mendacity
to the American public as the basis for invading a foreign country,
charges of treason and impeachment would be nipping at his coattails.
Similarly if the forgery came from Tony Blair's camp, whilst
beseeching his citizenry to go off to war, another government
collapse and charge of treason would likely be the outcome.
It is not a question of using faulty
intelligence, but of using forgeries to lead a country off to
war, no small issue by any means, but the biggest curiosity of
our time is that the source of the forgery is not of interest
to any of the mainstream media. It is not the focus of 60 Minutes
or 60 Minutes II. Barbara Walters is too interested in how tall
Senator John Kerry is. Stone Philips has too many serial killers
deal with, and Dan Rather is thinking too much these days of
Laci Peterson. No one is interested!
Now I don't favor the thought that our
corporate media giants collectively conspire to keep things under
wraps. I can't help but observe that tonight Ted Koppel will
suit up as master of ceremonies of that pseudo-intellectual circus
he hosts where one guest shouts down his opponent yelling and
screaming high decibel epithets---kind of like a Jerry Springer
show for the slightly scholarly---and whatever tonight's topic,
we can be quite sure it will not deal with America's increasingly
long list of taboo subjects:
Does Israel have hydrogen bombs? Did
the U.S. ever secretly test Israeli nuclear weapons on American
soil? And, of course, the most recent question to add to the
list:
Who forged the letters that sucked us
into this war?
Jerry Kroth,
Ph.D.is an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at Santa
Clara University. Kroth is the author of one of the most popular
recent stories on the CounterPunch site: Symbol
and Synchronicity in the Crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
He can be reached at: anya@sj.znet.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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