Powell at the
UN: You Wanted to Believe Him –
But it Was Like Something
out of Beckett
by Robert Fisk
Dissident Voice
February 6, 2003
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 with due
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? General
Powell, 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 little proof that
Saddam really is conning the UN inspectors again, and some ancient material on
the Monster of Baghdad's all too well known record of beastliness. I am 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 director was
sitting grave-faced behind General Powell. And Colin Powell's new version of
his President's State of the Union lie – that the "scientists"
interviewed by UN inspectors 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.
Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign correspondent for The Independent (UK), where this
article first appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy Nation: The Abduction
of Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition)