Planting WMD in Iraq to justify the illegal invasion

January 16, 2006

Planting WMD in Iraq to justify the illegal invasion

French President Jacques Chirac once said that if the United States didn’t find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it would probably stage a discovery.

According to a recent report by Larissa Alexandrovna, the Office of Special Plans didn’t just present cherry-picked pre-war "intelligence" to the White House and the media. It also dispatched personnel to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, when it was known that there were no WMD in the war-torn country, to examine the possibility of planting such weapons in order to avoid the U.S.‘s embarrassment.

Quoting "three U.S. intelligence sources and a source close to the United Nations Security Council," Alexandrovna says that the OSP planned "off book" missions that were sent by Stephen Cambone, Defense Department intelligence chief, on March 2003. (Cambone now occupies the third post in the Defense Department).

Teams sent to Iraq included "CIA, FBI, Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group." Their primary mission was to probe an allegation made by Ahmad Chalabi that a USN pilot shot down in 1991 and proclaimed KIA soon afterwards was being held as a prisoner of war in Iraq. (This wasn’t true).

The second was to handle the WMD issue, and the third was to capture Saddam Hussein. According to the UN official, one team interviewed several Iraqi intelligence officers in 2004, reportedly telling them: "Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?"

The Iraqi officials knew they were being asked to co-operate with a deceptive plot. But the UN source said that the “guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology."

An article by political author Gary Leupp on www.dissidentvoice.org states that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to probe the OSP, has asked the Pentagon’s Inspector-General to investigate the office and Douglas Feith’s role in the WMD issue. Feith and the other neocons have proved to be shameless providers of disinformation again and again. Somebody from or close to them must have made up the Niger uranium documents.

Before the 2003 invasion, the neocon “disinformationists” had succeeded in convincing the majority of Americans that Saddam’s alleged WMD posed a threat to the world. Knowing that the majority of the Americans has turned against the occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration is still trying to convince the public that victory is still within reach.

The American president recently said: “Some look at the challenges in Iraq, and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day. I don't believe that.

Our military commanders do not believe that. Our troops in the field, who bear the burden and make the sacrifice, do not believe that America has lost". Again, the Americans are asked to trust in Bush’s beliefs -- just like they were asked to trust in his belief about Iraq’s phantom WMD.

Planting WMD in Iraq to justify the invasion wouldn’t make the public believe that Washington won the war. The Americans have now realized that they have been victims of false propaganda. They concluded that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda network or its possession of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The recent report on planting WMD in Iraq to justify the illegal war, and further deceive the U.S. public and the whole world, beats everything we’ve heard so far.

tehrantimes