http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=4849By Bouthaina Shaaban
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, June 05, 2004
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Politicians and the media exchange statements and articles about what happened and what is happening in Iraq, and whether it was possible to avoid a war that has proved to be disastrous on all levels, as well as unjust for Iraqi people.
Perhaps most important in this regard was the US Secretary of State Colin Powell's declaration that the information he received about weapons of mass destruction and the alleged mobile chemical laboratories in Iraq - on which he based a detailed survey presented to the United Nations Security Council early in 2003 - was not accurate.
But the important question that should be pondered in such a case is who are the people who deliberately gave misleading information and what were their objectives? Is it not highly likely that they could give other misleading information about other issues and other countries, and thus lead the United States toward further disastrous ventures incurring more calamities on the world? It is not a phenomenon that can be bypassed. When misleading information is delivered to the decision-makers of the world's military and economic superpower - deliberately or not - and is adopted by that sole superpower's administration as a basis to wage wars against nations, occupy countries, consequently commit war crimes, violate people's rights and sovereignty and violate international legitimacy, such a phenomenon should be questioned and investigated. Otherwise the whole world will be in real chaos.
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In the same line of thought falls the US president, administration, and war generals' denial of the war crimes being committed. This includes Bush's continuous justification of Israeli crimes against Palestinian children and the demolishing of Palestinian houses being described as an act of "self-defense." All of this, and many other similar sayings and acts, are nothing but part of a mentality and a policy of a neo-anti-Semitism targeting Arabs. It is a mentality and a policy that is waging a war of elimination, committing massacres, torture, rape and punishments in Palestine and Iraq systematically and in harmony with this new campaign of hatred. Most important of all is that the true nature of the so-called free press has been revealed. Now it is imperative that the media should return to reality and discover by itself the victims of neo-anti-Semitism and the systematic criminal campaigns of torturing Arabs, eliminating them, violating their rights and lands, and distorting their history and culture.
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