Powell's Presentation
It was like something out of Beckett
By Robert Fisk
Sources, foreign intelligence
sources, "our sources," defectors, sources, sources, sources.
Colin Powell's terror talk to the United Nations Security Council yesterday
sounded like one of those government-inspired reports on the front page
of The New York Times - where it will most certainly be treated withdue
reverence in this morning's edition. It was a bit like heating up old
soup.Haven't we heard most of this stuff before? Should one trust the
man? GeneralPowell, I mean, not Saddam.
Certainly we don't trust
Saddam but Secretary of State Powell's presentation was a mixture of
awesomely funny recordings of Iraqi Republican Guard telephone intercepts
à la Samuel Beckett that just might have been some terrifying
littleproof that Saddam really is conning the UN inspectors again, and
some ancientmaterial on the Monster of Baghdad's all too well known
record of beastliness. Iam still waiting to hear the Arabic for the
State Department's translation of "Okay Buddy" - "Consider
it done, Sir" - this from the Republican Guard's"Captain Ibrahim",
for heaven's sake - and some dinky illustrations of mobile bio-labs
whose lorries and railway trucks were in such perfect condition that
they suggested the Pentagon didn't have much idea of the dilapidated
state of Saddam's army.
It was when we went back
to Halabja and human rights abuses and all Saddam's old sins, as recorded
by the discredited Unscom team, that we started eating the old soup
again. Jack Straw may have thought all this "the most powerful
and authoritative case" but when we were forced to listen to Iraq's
officer corps communicating by phone - "yeah", "yeah",
"yeah?", "yeah..." - it was impossible not to ask
oneself if Colin Powell had really considered the effect this would
have on the outside world.
From time to time, the words
"Iraq: Failing To Disarm - Denial and Deception" appeared
on the giant video screen behind General Powell. Was this a CNN logo,
some of us wondered? But no, it was CNN's sister channel, the US Department
of State.
Because Colin Powell is supposed
to be the good cop to the Bush-Rumsfeld bad cop routine, one wanted
to believe him. The Iraqi officer's telephoned order to his subordinate
- "remove 'nerve agents' whenever it comes up in the wireless instructions"
- looked as if the Americans had indeed spotted a nasty new little line
in Iraqi deception. But a dramatic picture of a pilotless Iraqi aircraft
capable of spraying poison chemicals turned out to be the imaginative
work of a Pentagon artist.
And when General Powell started
blathering on about "decades'' of contact
between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of
State.Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden
- "decades"ago - was working against the Russians for the
CIA, whose present day directorwas sitting grave-faced behind General
Powell. And Colin Powell's new version ofhis President's State of the
Union lie - that the "scientists" interviewed by UNinspectors
had been Iraqi intelligence agents in disguise - was singularly unimpressive.
The UN talked to scientists, the new version went, but they were posing
for the real nuclear and bio boys whom the UN wanted to talk to. General
Powell said America was sharing its information with the UN inspectors
but it was clear yesterday that much of what he had to say about alleged
new weapons development - the decontamination truck at the Taji chemical
munitions factory, for example, the "cleaning" of the Ibn
al-Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25 November - had not been given
to the UN at the time. Why wasn't this intelligence information given
to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General Powell's beloved UN resolution
1441 demand that all such intelligence information should be given to
Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the Americans, perhaps, not
being "pro-active" enough?
The worst moment came when
General Powell started talking about anthrax and the 2001 anthrax attacks
in Washington and New York, pathetically holding up a teaspoon of the
imaginary spores and - while not precisely saying so - fraudulently
suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 2001 anthrax
scare.
When the Secretary of State
held up Iraq's support for the Palestinian Hamas organisation, which
has an office in Baghdad, as proof of Saddam's support for "terror''
- there was, of course, no mention of America's support for Israel and
its occupation of Palestinian land - the whole theatre began to collapse.
There are Hamas offices in Beirut, Damascus and Iran. Is the 82nd Airborne
supposed to grind on to Lebanon, Syria and Iran?
There was an almost macabre
opening to the play when General Powell arrived at the Security Council,
cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his great arms around them.
Jack Straw fairly bounded up for his big American hug.
Indeed, there were moments
when you might have thought that the whole chamber, with its toothy
smiles and constant handshakes, contained a room full of men celebrating
peace rather than war. Alas, not so. These elegantly dressed statesmen
were constructing the framework that would allow them to kill quite
a lot of people, the monstrous Saddam perhaps, with his cronies, but
a considerable number of innocents as well. One recalled, of course,
the same room four decades ago when General Powell's predecessor Adlai
Stevenson showed photos of the ships carrying Soviet missiles to Cuba.
Alas, today's pictures carried no such authority. And Colin Powell is
no Adlai Stevenson.
World reaction
Iraq
A "typical American
show complete with stunts and special effects" was Iraq's scathing
dismissal of General Powell's presentation. Mohammed al-Douri, above,
Iraq's UN ambassador, accused the US of manufacturing evidence and said
the charges were "utterly unrelated to the truth.
"No new information
was provided, merely sound recordings that cannot be ascertained as
genuine," he said. "There are incorrect allegations, unnamed
sources, unknown sources."
Lt-Gen Amir al-Saadi, an
adviser to Saddam Hussein, said the satellite pictures "proved
nothing". On the allegation that Iraq had faked the death certificate
of a scientist to shield them from UN inspectors, he added: "If
[General Powell] thinks any of those scientists marked as deceased is
still in existence, let him come up with it."
Britain
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary,
left, praised General Powell for his "powerful and authoritative
case". He said the presentation "laid bare the deceit practised
by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and worse, the very great danger it
represents.
"Secretary Powell has
set out deeply worrying reports about the presence in Iraq of one of
Osama bin Laden's lieutenants, al-Zarqawi, and other members of al-Qaida,
and their efforts to develop poisons.
"The recent discovery
of the poison ricin in London has underlined again that this is a threat
which all of us face. "Saddam is defying every one of us ... He
questions our resolve and is gambling that we will lose our nerve rather
than enforce our will."
France
France called for the number
of inspectors to be tripled and the process beefed up. Dominique de
Villepin, the Foreign Minister, above, said inspections should continue
but under "an enhanced regime of inspections monitoring".
Iraq must also do more to co-operate including allowing flights
from U-2 spy planes. "The use of force can only be a final recourse,"
he said.
China
China said the work of the
inspectors should continue. Tang Jiaxuan, the Foreign Minister, said
immediately after General Powell's presentation: "As long as there
is still the slightest hope for political settlement, we should exert
our utmost effort to achieve that."
Russia
Inspections should continue,
Igor Ivanov, the Foreign Minister, above, said. More study was needed
of the evidence presented by General Powell, he added. Meanwhile, inspections
"must be continued".
Germany
The Powell presentation and
the findings of the weapons inspectors "have to be examined carefully",
said Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister. "We must continue to
seek a peaceful solution."
Israel
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Foreign
Minister, left, said: "We've known this a long time. We've shared
intelligence with the US, and I think the US has shared some of that
today." General Powell "laid bare the true nature of Saddam
Hussein's regime, and I think he also exposed the great dangers ...
to the region and the world".