 |
|
“Bush used the word ‘terrorism’, 30 times in his half hour speech. That’s one ‘terrorism’ a minute”
|
LONDON,
October 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. President
George W. Bush had his Cincinnati speech on “nuclear holy
warriors”, dissected and analyzed by U.K. newspapers on Wednesday,
October 9.
Independent
writer Robert Fisk slammed the speech in am article highlighting all
the points that the listener must ‘forget’ in order to be
convinced of Bush’s war reasons.
“Forget
for a moment that we still can’t prove Saddam Hussein has nuclear
weapons. Forget that the latest Bush speech was just a re-hash of all
the "ifs" and “mays” and “coulds” in Tony Blair’s
flimsy 16 pages of allegations in his historically dishonest
“dossier”.
“Forget
the 14 Palestinians, including the 12-year-old child, killed by Israel
a few hours before Mr. Bush spoke, forget that when his aircraft
killed nine Palestinian children in July, along with one militant, the
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon – a “man of peace” in Mr
Bush’s words – described the slaughter as “a great success”.
Israel is on our side,” said Fisk.
He
said that according to Bush it is important to use the word
“terror” against anyone who opposes Israel or America, be it
Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Yasser Arafat.
“Bush
used it in his speech yesterday, 30 times in half an hour – that’s
one “terrorism” a minute,” he said.
Fisk
said that Saddam Hussein was already using gas against the Iranians in
1983 and that despite that president Ronald Reagan dispatched a
special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, to meet Hussein that year in order to
arrange for the re-opening of the U.S. embassy – in order to secure
better trade and economic relations with the “Butcher of Baghdad”.
“Now
you might think it strange that Mr Rumsfeld, in the course of one of
his folksy press conferences, hasn’t chatted to us about this
interesting tit-bit. You might think he would have wished to enlighten
us about the evil nature of the criminal with whom he so warmly shook
hands. But no,” said Fisk.
In
1988, Fisk said, when Saddam destroyed the people of Halabja with gas,
along with tens of thousands of other Kurds, President Bush senior
provided him with $500m in U.S. government subsidies to buy American
farm products. In the following year, after the genocide was complete.
Bush doubled this subsidy to $1bn, along with germ seed for anthrax,
helicopters, and the notorious “dual-use” material that could be
used for chemical and biological weapons.
Fisk
also said that when Bush Junior promises the Iraqi people “an era of
new hope” and democracy after the destruction of Saddam, “we must
forget how the Americans promised Pakistan and Afghanistan a new era
of hope after the defeat of the Soviet army in 1980 – and did
nothing.”
The
same happened when President Bush senior urged the Iraqis to rise up
against Saddam in 1991 and – when they obeyed – did nothing.
Just
recently, this scenario was replicated in Afghanistan. “We must
forget how President Bush junior promised to “stand by”
Afghanistan before he began his bombings last year – and has left it
now an economic shambles of drug barons, warlords, anarchy and
fear.”
But
according to Fisk, the real reason is oil. “In all of Bush’s 30
minutes of anti-Iraq war talk yesterday – pleasantly leavened with
just two minutes of how “I hope this will not require military
action” – there wasn’t a single reference to the fact that Iraq
may hold oil reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia, that American
oil companies stand to gain billions of dollars in the event of a U.S.
invasion, that, once out of power, Bush and his friends could become
multi-billionaires on the spoils of this war.”
The
Guardian said that U.S. government officials and analysts said that
Bush’s case against Saddam Hussein, relied on a slanted and
sometimes entirely false reading of the available U.S. intelligence.
According
to the Guardian, officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are
being put under intense pressure to “cook” reports which back the
administration’s line.
“Basically,
cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements
and there’s a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence,
especially among analysts at the CIA,” said Vincent Cannistraro, the
CIA’s former head of counter-intelligence, reported the Guardian.
According
to the Guardian, U.S. government experts on nuclear weapons and
centrifuges have suggested that hardened aluminum tubes, which Iraq
has been importing was being used for making conventional weapons
unlike Bush and Blair's repeated claim that it was being imported for
“for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear
weapons.”
“I
would just say there is not much support for that [nuclear] theory
around here,” said a department of energy specialist, reported the
Guardian.
Claims
about Iraq and Al-Qaeda links have also not been supported by U.S.
intelligence, the paper said. Claims about Iraq training Al-Qaeda
members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases have also not been
proven, the paper said.
A
source familiar with the September 11 investigation said: “The FBI
has been pounded on to make this link.”
Bush’s
claims that the Iraqi regime was developing drones, or unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), which “could be used to disperse chemical or
biological weapons across broad areas”, including the U.S., have
also been refuted by U.S. military experts who confirmed that Iraq had
been converting eastern European trainer jets, known as L-29s, into
drones, but said that with a maximum range of a few hundred miles they
were no threat to targets in the U.S, said the Guardian.
