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News :: International Relations |
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Colin Powell Is Flawless -- Inside A Media Bubble |
Current rating: 0 |
by Norman Solomon
(No verified email address) |
06 Feb 2003
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He moves from high-level meetings to speeches to news conferences where tough questions are rare. And when Powell appears as a guest on American media outlets, he doesn't need to worry that he'll encounter interviewers who'll challenge his basic assumptions. |
There's no doubt about it: Colin Powell is a great performer, as he showed yet again at the U.N. Security Council the other day. On television, he exudes confidence and authoritative judgment. But Powell owes much of his touted credibility to the fact that he's functioning inside a media bubble that protects him from direct challenge.
Powell doesn't face basic questions like these:
* You cite Iraq's violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions to justify the U.S. launching an all-out war. But you're well aware that American allies like Turkey, Israel and Morocco continue to violate dozens of Security Council resolutions. Why couldn't other nations claim the right to militarily "enforce" the Security Council's resolutions against countries that they'd prefer to bomb?
* You insist that Iraq is a grave threat to the other nations of the Middle East. But, with the exception of Israel, no country in the region has made such a claim or expressed any enthusiasm for a war on Iraq. If Iraq is a serious threat to the region, why doesn't the region feel threatened?
* You say that the Iraqi regime is committed to aggression. Yet Iraq hasn't attacked any country for more than 12 years. And just eight days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the U.S. envoy to Baghdad gave what appeared to be a green light for the invasion when she met with Saddam Hussein. An Iraqi transcript of the meeting quotes Ambassador April Glaspie: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America." Mr. Powell, why don't you ever mention such information?
* Washington tilted in favor of Iraq during its war with Iran in the 1980s. Like other U.S. officials, you emphasize that Saddam Hussein "gassed his own people" and used chemical weapons against Iran, but you don't talk about the intelligence data and other forms of assistance that the United States provided to help Iraq do those things. If the history of Baghdad's evil deeds is relevant, why aren't facts about U.S. complicity also relevant?
* When you warn that the U.N. Security Council "places itself in danger of irrelevance" if it fails to endorse a U.S.-led war on Iraq, aren't you really proclaiming that the United Nations is "relevant" only to the extent that it does what the U.S. government wants?
If Colin Powell faced such questions on a regular basis, his media halo would begin to tarnish. Instead, floating inside a media bubble, he moves from high-level meetings to speeches to news conferences where tough questions are rare. And when Powell appears as a guest on American media outlets, he doesn't need to worry that he'll encounter interviewers who'll challenge his basic assumptions.
Tacit erasure of inconvenient history -- including his own -- is integral to the warm relationship between Powell and U.S. news media. There's a lot to erase. For instance, in January 1986, serving as a top aide to Pentagon chief Caspar Weinberger, he supervised the transfer of 4,508 TOW missiles to the CIA, and then sought to hide the transaction from Congress and the public. No wonder: Almost half of those missiles had become part of the Iran-Contra scandal's arms-for-hostages deal.
As President Reagan's national security adviser, Powell worked diligently on behalf of the contra guerrillas who were killing civilians in Nicaragua. In December 1989, Powell -- at that point the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- was a key player behind the invasion of Panama.
The Gulf War catapulted Powell to the apex of American political stardom in early 1991. When he was asked about the Iraqi death toll from that war, Powell said that such numbers didn't interest him.
At the U.N. on Feb. 5, in typical fashion, Powell presented himself as an implacable foe of terrorism -- much as he did on Sept. 11, 2001, when he denounced "people who feel that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose." While aptly condemning the despicable hijackers who murdered thousands of people on that day, Powell was also using words that could be applied to a long line of top officials in Washington. Including himself.
At this point it seems that only a miracle could prevent the Bush administration from going ahead with its plans for a horrific attack on Iraq, sure to kill many thousands of civilians. The U.S. leaders will demonstrate their evident belief that -- in Colin Powell's apt words -- "with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose." To the extent that the media bubble around them stays airtight, Powell and his colleagues are likely to bask in national acclaim.
For an in-depth analysis of Colin Powell's role in setting the media agenda for a war on Iraq in 2003, go to http://www.accuracy.org/unilateral.pdf -- an excerpt from "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You," a new book by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, just published as a paperback original by Context Books. For the prologue to the book and information on how to order, go to: http://www.contextbooks.com/newF.html
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See also:
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/index.html
http://www.fair.org/
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Mr. Powell, You’re No Adlai Stevenson |
by Stephen Zunes
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
06 Feb 2003
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Already, pundits are comparing Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech at the United Nations to the dramatic presentation in 1962 by U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson before the same body. There, the former Illinois governor showed the world incontrovertible proof of Soviet efforts to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. Though not everyone agreed with the Kennedy Administration’s quarantine and brinkmanship, there was no dispute that the American allegations against the Soviets were valid and the threat was real.
By contrast, despite 40 years in advances in surveillance technology, Powell was unable to emulate Stevenson’s historic challenge to the Soviet threat. Indeed, while it was an eloquent speech, Powell fell way short of proving that Iraq had anything that could seriously threaten the security of its neighbors, much less the United States. Evasiveness and paranoia by an isolated dictator does not a security threat make.
One major problem was that most of Powell’s accusations were based upon the word of anonymous sources. Given the propensity of U.S. administrations of both parties to fabricate and exaggerate threats to justify previous foreign wars such as the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident off the coast of Vietnam and the supposed “rescue” of American medical students in Grenada there is an understandable reluctance by many to blindly accept such accusations.
Indeed, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has rejected many of Powell’s claims. For example, the respected Swedish diplomat has insisted that there is no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories, of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived, or that his organization has been infiltrated by Iraqi spies.
The weakest part of Powell’s presentation was his effort to link the decidedly secular Iraqi regime with the fundamentalist Al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden has referred to Saddam as “an apostate, an infidel and a traitor to Islam.” Reports cited by Powell attempting to link Saddam to affiliated groups like Ansar al Islam has come almost exclusively from anti-Saddam Iraqis in exile hoping that establishing such a link could encourage U.S. military action to oust the dictator; as a result, they are not generally considered credible. In reality, Ansar al Islam's stated goal is to overthrow the secular Baathist regime in Baghdad and replace it by an Islamist state. The efforts to tie alleged Al-Qaeda figure Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi to the Iraqi regime have also been based largely on unattributed sources. That he received medical treatment in Baghdad is no more proof of direct involvement by the Iraqi regime in his activities than the presence of scores of Al-Qaeda leaders in allied countries like Saudi Arabia as proof of state collusion either. Ansar al Islam fighters and their Al-Qaeda supporters have been seen only in autonomous Kurdish areas beyond Iraqi government control.
Indeed, Powell’s claim that there had been “decades” of contact between Saddam and al-Qaeda was particularly odd, given that the terrorist network is less than ten years old.
Furthermore, none of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi, none of Al-Qaeda’s leaders are Iraqi, and none of the money trail has been traced to Iraq. (The same cannot be said of Saudi Arabia, but the kingdom is considered an important U.S. ally.)
Perhaps Powell’s strongest arguments came in regard to some strong circumstantial evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime was not fully cooperating with the strengthened inspections regime implemented under UN Security Council resolution 1441. Virtually everybody already assumed this was the case, however, particularly since Hans Blix gave his mixed assessment of Iraqi cooperation the previous week.
Such evasiveness alone does not meet the resolution's definition of material breach. Even if Saddam Hussein has been keeping one step ahead of the inspections and squirreling away the proscribed materials somewhere, it is highly unlikely that with inspectors on the ground and spy satellites in the air they could be deployed in such a way to be an offensive military threat to anyone. In short, even if Saddam Hussein is not completely disarmed, he is functionally disarmed. The use of military force under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter is based upon the need to maintain world peace and security, not to enforce largely technical violations.
Powell’s claims that Iraq could spray anthrax from one its F-1 Mirage jet fighters could sound alarming until one realizes that no Iraqi military aircraft could even get as far as the border without being shot down by U.S. planes or the sophisticated anti-aircraft systems of neighboring states.
The Secretary of State did not bother mentioning that the seed stock for Iraq’s anthrax was sold to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980s by the United States. Nor, in his reference to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons during that period, did he mention that U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officials helped Iraq target Iranian troop concentrations in the full knowledge that the Iraqi army was using these banned weapons. Neither did Powell acknowledge that the United States covered up for the Halabja massacre when thousands of Kurdish civilians died in an Iraqi chemical weapons attack by falsely claiming that Iran was responsible.
Furthermore, despite the U.S.-sponsored UNSC resolution 1441 that calls that all relevant intelligence information be given immediately to UNMOVIC, key accusations made by Powell were in reference to a series of alleged incidents some months earlier about which Blix and his associates were apparently never informed.
While no one can dispute Powell’s assertions of human rights abuses by the Saddam Hussein, most of the examples he gave were from over a decade and a half ago, when the United States was supporting the regime. Furthermore, few in the Security Council believe that a representative of the same government that has supported thugs from Suharto to Pinochet is genuinely appalled at Saddam’s human rights record.
Similarly, a government that has blocked enforcement of scores of Security Council resolutions when they have involved such allies as Indonesia, Israel, Morocco and Turkey -- including UN Security Council resolution 487, which calls on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- is hardly one to complain that the United Nations “places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will.”
It is doubtful, then, that the UN Security Council would authorize the use of force under these circumstances, though there is a decent chance that, in part as a result of Powell’s speech, they would be willing to ratchet up the pressure against the Iraqi dictator. For example, France has called for tripling the number of inspectors and enhancing the monitoring of Iraqi activities.
Even assuming that all of Powell’s accusations are true, however, he was simply unable to make the case that war -- with all its horror and potential unintended consequences -- was the best solution. As the British newspaper The Independent editorialized (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0206-05.htm), “ The policy of containment and sanctions, pursued for 12 years, has been frustrating and messy; but it has constrained Saddam. General Powell did not tell us why we must abandon it.”
Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism http://www.commoncouragepress.com
http://www.commondreams.org/ |
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US Releases Revised Iraqi Satellite Image |
by mcnuts
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 3
07 Feb 2003
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Many of you may have seen or heard U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's slide presentation today to the UN Security Council attempting to justify the impending US war on Iraq.
One of the slides featured what the US purported to be a "Chemical Weapons Decontamination Vehicle". Attached to this email is a revised version of the slide that has just been released that includes not only the original picture presented by Powell, but also a recently de classified picture obtained by "human sources" that provides a true close up of the potential vehicle of mass destruction. |
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British Intel Report Cited By Powell To U.N. Plagiarized Grad Student |
by Mike Ruppert
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Feb 2003
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Feb. 6, 2003, 2230 hrs, PST, (FTW) - A story is sweeping the world tonight and it says a great deal about those who are forcing the world into a war it does not want. The famed dossier presented by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his Parliament was plagiarized from two articles and a September 2002 research paper submitted by a graduate student.
Worse, the Iraq described by the graduate student is not the Iraq of 2003 but the Iraq of 1991. So glaring was the theft of intellectual property that the official British document even cut and pasted whole verbatim segments of the research paper, including grammatical errors, and presented the findings as the result of intense work by British intelligence services.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell both praised and quoted that same British report in his presentation at the United Nations yesterday.
It is important that readers see and understand the enormity of this violation of public trust for themselves. The story was first broken by Britain's Channel 4 today and it is appearing in more papers and web sites by the hour. The following links lead directly to the Channel 4 story, to the British "intelligence" report and to the original student paper.
What was also disclosed was that certain portions of the academic report were altered by the PM Tony Blair to make them more inflammatory. In one cited instance Blair changed "aiding opposition groups" to "supporting terrorists."
The Channel 4 story is at:
http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/stories/20030206/dossier.html
The Official UK intelligence report is at:
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp
The original student research paper is located at: http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html
In the context of merely preventing or slowing a war with Iraq this would be earth shattering news. But in a world that is slowly beginning to feel the pressure of and admit the reality of dwindling global oil supplies the fallout from the story may actually accelerate hostilities. British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be, by tomorrow, facing monumental challenges in both Parliament and from British public opinion that is overwhelmingly opposed to an Iraqi invasion. The event could be enough to topple his government and cause new elections which might well result in a new government that is not mind-melded with the Bush administration.
The Bush administration, faced with its own embarrassment over the issue, cannot wage a successful war without England. The first thought that came to my mind when I saw the story was that George W. Bush must pre-empt this story and make it moot to save not only Blair but himself as well. The only way to do that is to have the war begin before the justified outrage of the electorate which has been treated with utter contempt can make itself felt.
I noticed tonight that the Associated Press and Yahoo news had reported that the 101st Air Assault Division based at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky - the Army's premier "door kickers" - had been given their deployment orders for the Gulf this afternoon. As I have previously reported, the 101st, along with units like the 75th Rangers can be deployed and operational within 96 hours, anywhere in the world. When the 101st heads out you know the war is going to start very soon.
These are incredibly dangerous times, made more so because there is no turning back for the Bush administration. This story is incredible proof of the cynicism, dishonesty and callousness of the tyrants pushing the world toward destruction. And Iraq is merely the first stop on a sequential plan for control of the last remaining oil reserves on the planet. I encourage all who read the information contained in these links to spread it far and wide and also, by whatever means at their disposal, to tell the mainstream press, members of congress and the White House itself that we will not follow; we will not obey; and we will not kill on the orders of those who lie to us and who demonstrate the integrity of thieves and intellectual cowards.
This might be our last chance before the bombs start falling, before young American men and many innocent Iraqi civilians are reduced to blood and ash.
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/020603_plagiarized.html
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DOWNING STREET REPORT IS 'RIP OFF' |
by John Peacock And James Hardy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Feb 2003
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Feb 7 2003
Iraq report 'is a rip-off from the internet'
A Downing Street dossier showing how Iraq has deceived UN weapons inspectors is partly based on a 12-year-old report, it was claimed last night.
The Government is said to have used internet material from several sources, including a student in California, whose work was based on documents captured in 1991 following the first Gulf War.
One expert said: "The Government is trying to build a case for war but, in view of this, what else can we believe?
"Colin Powell used some of this in his publication to the UN. It has got to cast questions over his presentation."
The dossier was branded "cut and paste plagiarism" and includes misquoted phrases, spelling mistakes and wrong punctuation.
A Cambridge University student, who has studied the documents, said: "The Government's report 'Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation,' suggests the UK does not have available information of Iraq's intelligence services."
Cambridge don Glen Rangwala, an expert on Iraq, said the bulk of the Government's 19-page document was copied, without acknowledgement, from an article in Middle East Review of International Affairs by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Dr Rangwala said the public had been led to believe the Government's report was a result of direct investigation, rather than simply copied from pre- existing internet sources.
Examples of misquoting include the phrase "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes", which the Government report puts as "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes". Text from Sean Boyne's "Inside Iraq's Security Network" mentions "10,000-15,000 bullies and country bumpkins recruited from regions loyal to Saddam".
The Government's version deletes "country bumpkins".
Dan Plesch, from the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in London, told Channel 4: "This appears to be obsolete academic analysis dressed up as the best MI6...can produce on Saddam."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The report was put together by a range of Government officials.
"It was drawn from a number of sources, including intelligence material, but it does not identify or credit any sources, neither does it claim any exclusivity of authorship."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12618038&method=full&siteid=50143
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