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In
the Press This Week
Up in Flames
(May 31 2003 – June
7 2003)
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By
V&A Editorial Staff
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07/06/2003
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From
The New York Times
(June
4 2003)
For
the first time in history, America is searching for the reason we went to
war after the war is over…
Conservatives
are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive
attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam's poised and
thrumming weapons of mass destruction…
In
a Vanity Fair interview, Paul Wolfowitz said another "almost
unnoticed but huge" reason for war was to promote Middle East peace
by allowing the U.S. to take its troops out of Saudi Arabia — Osama's bête
noir. But it was after the U.S. announced it would pull its troops from
Saudi Arabia that a resurgent Qaeda struck a Western compound, killing
eight Americans…
The
Bush crowd practiced bait and switch, leaving many Americans with the
impression that Saddam was involved in 9/11.
When
James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director and current Pentagon adviser,
appeared on "Nightline" five days after 9/11 and suggested that
America had to strike Iraq for sponsoring terrorism, Ted Koppel rebutted:
"Nobody right now is suggesting that Iraq had anything to do with
this. In fact, quite the contrary."
Mr.
Woolsey replied: "I don't think it matters. I don't think it
matters…"
Bomb
and Switch
From
The Independent
(June
1 2003)
Tony
Blair's sensational pre-war claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
"could be activated within 45 minutes" was based on information
from a single Iraqi defector of dubious reliability…
But
one intelligence source said: "The '45-minute' remark was part of the
American intelligence input into the dossier. It was being treated
cautiously by the British, but it was alighted on by the politicos and
blown out of proportion."
Revealed:
How Blair used discredited WMD 'evidence'
From
The Guardian
(June 7 2003)
UN
weapons inspectors yesterday flatly contradicted claims by Tony Blair that
they were given information from "a number of sources" about
Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons.
Officials
at the Vienna-based international atomic energy authority insisted that,
contrary to the prime minister's statement to MPs this week, the only
intelligence about attempts to buy uranium from Niger came from documents
that were found to be forgeries…
The
IAEA quickly realised that the documents - handed over by the US - were
fake. The most glaring mistake was one letter purportedly signed by a
Niger minister who had been out of office for 10 years.
UN
inspectors question claims over Iraqi weapons
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