Coin Powells' so called daming evidence is a fraud!
Harlequin | 12.02.2003 19:05
The United States and British governments churned out a barrage of claims last week to justify war over the last week. US Secretary of State Colin Powell marshalled his case speaking to the United Nations. The British government produced yet another dossier. Barely had Powell finished speaking and the British document been published before much of their "evidence" fell apart.
The bulk of the British dossier was copied wholesale from an academic paper published last September in the Middle East Review of International Affairs. The article was written by Ibrahim al-Marashi, an Iraqi exile who is now a postgraduate student in the US.
His article is based on documents captured after the 1991 Gulf War It deals with things that happened at least 12 years ago. That did not stop Tony Blair's officials simply copying thousands of words from Ibrahim al-Marashi's thesis, complete with punctuation and grammatical mistakes. They then presented the document as damning "intelligence" evidence.
"This is wholesale deception," said al-Marashi. "How can the British public trust the government if it is up to these sorts of tricks?" Blair's officials also changed the wording and figures in an attempt to bolster their case. The original thesis talked of how, over a decade ago, Iraq had been "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes". Blair's officials changed this to "supporting terrorist organisations".
Much of the rest of Blair's dossier was copied from two articles published in 1997 in the freely available military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review. The original articles were written by journalist Sean Boyne. He was outraged at how Blair's government had used his work. "I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war," he said. "I am against the war."
Blair's shabby dossier was hailed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speech to the United Nations. Powell said, "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom has distributed."
Labour MP Glenda Jackson told the truth about Blair's dossier when she said that the government was "lying". Bush and Blair want war at any price. They are demanding that Iraq hands over any weapons it may use to defend itself from invading US and British forces. Socialist Worker does not know whether Iraq has any of the weapons the US and Britain claim it has.
But we do know that this is a pretext to hide Bush and Blair's real aim. That aim is regime change in Iraq and the installation of a pro-Western regime which will dominate the oil supplies of the Middle East and send a global message about US power.
His article is based on documents captured after the 1991 Gulf War It deals with things that happened at least 12 years ago. That did not stop Tony Blair's officials simply copying thousands of words from Ibrahim al-Marashi's thesis, complete with punctuation and grammatical mistakes. They then presented the document as damning "intelligence" evidence.
"This is wholesale deception," said al-Marashi. "How can the British public trust the government if it is up to these sorts of tricks?" Blair's officials also changed the wording and figures in an attempt to bolster their case. The original thesis talked of how, over a decade ago, Iraq had been "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes". Blair's officials changed this to "supporting terrorist organisations".
Much of the rest of Blair's dossier was copied from two articles published in 1997 in the freely available military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review. The original articles were written by journalist Sean Boyne. He was outraged at how Blair's government had used his work. "I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war," he said. "I am against the war."
Blair's shabby dossier was hailed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speech to the United Nations. Powell said, "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom has distributed."
Labour MP Glenda Jackson told the truth about Blair's dossier when she said that the government was "lying". Bush and Blair want war at any price. They are demanding that Iraq hands over any weapons it may use to defend itself from invading US and British forces. Socialist Worker does not know whether Iraq has any of the weapons the US and Britain claim it has.
But we do know that this is a pretext to hide Bush and Blair's real aim. That aim is regime change in Iraq and the installation of a pro-Western regime which will dominate the oil supplies of the Middle East and send a global message about US power.
Harlequin
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