Did US know Iraq had no WMDs? (Boston Globe)

[kpete]

KEVIN MCKIERNAN
Did US know Iraq had no WMDs?
By Kevin McKiernan | March 6, 2006

WHAT IF the Bush administration wasn't entirely convinced before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, but simply invoked those ''mushroom cloud" images to rally necessary public support? One source of such speculation lies in the administration's puzzling prewar failure to supply Iraqi Kurds, Hussein's closest and most likely targets, with gas masks and other promised protection.

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By the time of that Pentagon meeting, Kurdish diplomats had been in Washington since 1991, when a no-flight zone was established to protect Iraqi Kurds. But for those 10 years, Kurdish leaders had been denied all but low-level contacts with US government officials.

With that inside information, I began scouting abandoned Iraqi airfields in northern Iraq to look for likely landing spots for US troops and supplies. I found one near the town of Harir, a long military runway that Hussein's air force had used for refueling during the Iraq-Iran war. Sure enough, according to local witnesses, foreigners speaking English had been seen examining the landing strip in January 2002, the month before.

I then interviewed Dr. Abdullah Saeed, the director of public health for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controlled the western part of the Kurdish region. Dr. Saeed told me that several Americans -- he assumed they were CIA, but had no way of knowing -- had visited him about the same time and had promised that the Kurds would soon be supplied with antitoxins for nerve gas, face masks, and other protective gear.

That was welcome news, Dr. Saeed said, because there were more than 3.5 million Kurds and, unlike Israelis and Kuwaitis, they had no such safety equipment.

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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/06/did_us_know_iraq_had_no_wmds/?p1=MEWell_Pos4

[mediaman007]

1. Great find...another nail in the coffin...

Move along, nothing here, just some graffiti

[Jack Rabbit]

2. It looks like the Boston Globe is catching up with DU

This was a theory floated here almost three years ago:

For some time, many on the Left have been using a working hypothesis about the invasion of Iraq. This morning's accusations and denials by Dr. Rice present no reason to abandon it. Indeed, there is every reason to embrace it tighter.

The hypothesis is elaborate, and may be stated as follows:

• The war against Iraq and the occupation of that nation is colonial.


• The purpose of the war and occupation is:


• To take control of Iraq natural resources and place them in the hands of multinational corporations based in the US which paid the bills for Mr. Bush's political career;


• To assure that the business of reconstructing the infrastructure of a post-Saddam Iraq would go to multinational corporations based in the US which paid the bills for Mr. Bush's political career;


• To impose the neo-liberal economic paradigm on Iraq in order to open markets for multinational corporations based in the US which paid the bills for Mr. Bush's political career and with which native Iraqi businesses cannot compete;


• To initiate the implementation of a grand colonial design put forward in the last decade by a group of rightwing ideologues under the name Project for the New American Century (PNAC).


• The war had nothing to with fighting terrorism, disarming a rogue state of weapons of mass destruction, enforcing UN resolutions or liberating anyone from a brutal dictator.


• Everyone in the Bush administration knew very well they could not sell the war to the American people or to the world for the real reasons.


• In order to sell the war, they alternately claimed the war to be about fighting terrorism, disarming a rogue state of weapons of mass destruction, enforcing UN resolutions and liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator;


• Since those weren't the real reasons for the war, but merely pretexts for public relations purposes, the veracity of facts used to support them were not as important as the impact they had on the public.

As this pertains to the Niger document, the hypothesis would continue that nobody was concerned about it being a forgery because nobody was really concerned whether Saddam was trying to obtain material for nuclear weapons. Regardless of Mr. Bush's personal knowledge of the reliability of the document, the information was seen as something on which to sell the war, not as anything that was an actual concern. The information would be used for public relations.

I stand by that theory, and the recommended redress of grievances.