On January 12, the Iraq Survey Group — Washington's "weapons inspectors" charged with discovering the vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that the White House claimed Saddam Hussein's regime possessed — announced that the search for Iraqi WMDs had been abandoned, with no sign of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons or the capability to produce such weapons. The ISG's results have come as a surprise to no-one — not even the most blinkered supporters of the "coalition of the willing".
The fiction that Iraq posed a threat to other countries in the Middle East (especially those bastions of "democracy" and "human rights" like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel) or the West because of its vast arsenal of WMDs was long ago quietly retired by the warmongers. The spectacle of Colin Powell and his ilk with their slide presentations "proving" the imminent danger that Hussein would wipe out half the western hemisphere with his stores of anthrax has been replaced with strident proclamations from Washington, Canberra and London about making Iraq safe for democracy — a cause that apparently involves flattening large parts of it.
February 4 will mark the second anniversary of Prime Minister John Howard's declaration in parliament that the "Australian government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons and that Iraq wants to develop nuclear weapons". "Our goal is disarmament", he claimed. We want to see Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction ... Most of all, we want the conflict resolved without resort to military force."
Even the limited inquiries into the pre-war "intelligence failures" that the Coalition government has been forced to hold reveal evidence of a conspiracy to deceive the Australian public over the threat from Iraqi WMDs. For example, the 2004 parliamentary inquiry into the pre-war assessments of Australian intelligence agencies revealed that the Office of National Assessments changed its assessment of Iraqi WMD capabilities over the space of a single day.
On September 12, 2002, the ONA had assessed that there was no conclusive evidence that Iraq had revived its WMD programs. But on September 13, the office's analysts were singing a different tune after the office of Alexander Downer requested material for a speech by the foreign minister in support of a US-led invasion to "disarm" Iraq.
Since the US, Australia and Britain began their war for oil using WMDs as a pretext, around 100,000 Iraqis have died either directly or indirectly as a consequence, according to a study published by the British medical journal the Lancet on October 29. And that figure barely scratches the surface of Iraqi suffering — countless Iraqis have been maimed by the West's "democratic" bombing, an unknown number have been abused by the US's "democratic" torturers in Abu Ghraib and other hell holes, and the majority of Iraqis have suffered near-constant humiliation at the hands of the "democratic", "freedom-loving" imperialist armed forces that occupy their country.
The chance of an apology from Howard over the WMD fibs is as likely as one from his partners in the "coalition of the willing", US President George Bush and British PM Tony Blair — no chance at all.
The warmongers' WMD lies may have been finally put to rest, but their campaign of deceit lives on. Howard, Blair and Bush would now have us forget that they tried to pull the wool over our eyes and believe them when they say that the foreign armies occupying Iraq are helping move the country towards democracy.
While the Australian government may like to close the chapter on its WMD claims, Iraqis are still living with the consequences of Howard and Bush's lies in the form of the brutal military occupation of their country. Iraqis' loathing of the invaders' presence is so pronounced that even the pro-US quislings that comprise the Iraqi puppet government have been forced to call for a timetable for an end to the occupation.
It's the duty of supporters of Iraqis' right to determine their own affairs without foreign interference to call on the Coalition government to bring home the Australian troops stationed in Iraq and end Australian complicity in the criminal occupation.
From Green Left Weekly, January 26, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.