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Pilger's Proof of WMD Lies
Thu Sep 25 19:29:26 2003
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Pilger's Proof of WMD Lies

- - Top Ten Surprises In Bush's Address To The United Nations

Journo claims proof of WMD lies
By Paul Mulvey in London
September 23, 2003

AUSTRALIAN investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie that could cost George W. Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them.

A television report by Pilger aired on British screens overnight said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.

But after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil.

Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."

Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." Powell boasted this was because America's policy of containment and its sanctions had effectively disarmed Saddam.

Pilger claims this confirms that the decision of US President George W Bush - with the full support of British Prime Minister Blair and Howard - to wage war on Saddam because he had weapons of mass destruction was a huge deception.

Pilger interviewed several leading US government figures in Washington but said he did not ask Powell or Rice to respond to his claims.

"I think it's very serious for Howard. Howard has followed the Americans and to a lesser degree Blair almost word for word," Pilger told AAP before his program was screened on ITV tonight.

"All Howard does is say `well it's not true' and never explains himself.

"I just don't believe you can be seen to be party to such a big lie, such a big deception and endure that politically.

"It simply can't be shrugged off and that's Howard's response.

"Blair has shrugged it off but Blair is deeply damaged. It's far from over here, there's a lot that is going to happen and much of it could wash onto Howard.

"And it's unravelling in America and Bush could lose the election next year.

"I've not seen political leaders survive when they've been complicit in such an open deception for so long."

Howard last week dismissed an accusation from Opposition Leader Simon Crean that he hid a warning from British intelligence that war against Iraq would heighten the terrorist threat to Australia.

In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of Bush's father and ex-president, George Bush senior.

McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction "was 95 per cent charade."

Pilger also claims that six hours after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to "hit" Iraq and allegedly said "Go Massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

He was allegedly talked down by Powell who said the American people would not accept an attack on Iraq without any evidence, so they opted to invade Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden had bases.

Pilger claimed war was set in train on September 17, 2001 when Bush signed a paper directing the Pentagon to explore the military options for an attack on Iraq.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7350504%5E2,00.html

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- - Top Ten Surprises In Bush's Address To The United Nations
For another resource :-) check this following URL link for the
"Top Ten Surprises In President Bush's Address To The United Nations"
From the David Letterman Show 9/23/03
http://tinyurl.com/ola3


3) Top US Censored Stories of the Year

Project Censored [http://projectcensored.org] is an organization with its headquarters at Sonoma State University in California. Its primary objective: "..is to explore and publicize the extent of censorship in our society by locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for one reason or another. Thereby, the project hopes to stimulate responsible journalists to provide more mass media coverage of those issues and to encourage the general public to demand mass media coverage of those issues or to seek information from other sources."

Following are the top four of its list of 25 most censored stories for 2002-2003:

1. The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance

Sources: The Sunday Herald (9/15/02), Harper's Magazine (10/02), Mother Jones (3/03), Pilger.com (12/12/02)

Project Censored has decided that the incredible lack of public knowledge of the US plan for total global domination, represented by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) represents the media's biggest failure over the past year. The PNAC plans advocated the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and other current foreign policy objectives, long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Chillingly, one document published by the PNAC in 2000 actually describes the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" to persuade the American public to accept the acts of war and aggression the administration wants to carry out. "But most people in the country are totally unaware that the PNAC exists," said Peter Phillips, a professor at Sonoma State, "and that failure has aided and abetted this disaster in Iraq."

According to Project Censored authors. "In the 1970s, the United States and the Middle East were embroiled in a tug-of-war over oil. At the time, the prospect of seizing control of Arab oil fields by force was considered out of line. Still, the idea of Middle East dominance was very attractive to a group of hard-line Washington insiders that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol and other operatives. During the Clinton years they were active in conservative think tanks like the PNAC. When Bush was elected they came roaring back into power.

In an update for the Project Censored Web site, Mother Jones writer Robert Dreyfuss notes "There was very little examination in the media of the role of oil in American policy towards Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and what coverage did exist tended to pooh-pooh or debunk the idea that the war had anything to do with it."

2. Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberties

Sources: Global Outlook (Winter 2003), Rense.com (2-11-03 & Global Outlook, Volume 4), Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org) Corporate Media partial coverage: Atlanta Journal-constitution (5/11/03/), The Tampa Tribune (3/28/03), Baltimore Sun (2/21/03)

While the media did cover the Patriot Act, and the so-called Patriot Act II, which was leaked to the press in February 2003, there wasn't sufficient analysis of some of the truly dangerous and precedent-setting components of both acts. This goes especially for the shocking provision in Patriot II that would allow even US citizens to be treated as enemy combatants and held without counsel, simply on suspicion of connections to terrorism.

3. US Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq UN Report

Source: The Humanist and ArtVoice (March/April 2003), first covered by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Story three is the shockingly under-reported fact that the Bush administration removed a whopping 8,000 of 11,800 pages from the report the Iraqi government submitted to the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The pages included details on how the US had actually supplied Iraq with chemical and biological weapons and the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction. The pages reportedly implicate not only Reagan and Bush administration officials but also major corporations including Bechtel, Eastman Kodak and Dupont and the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture.

4. Rumsfeld's Plan to Provoke Terrorists

Source: CounterPunch (11/1/02)

Moscow Times columnist and CounterPunch contributor Chris Floyd developed this story off a small item in the LA Times in October 2002 about secret armies the Pentagon has been developing around the world. "The Pro-active, Preemptive Operations Group (or "Pee-Twos') will carry out secret missions designed to 'stimulate reactions' among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by US forces," Floyd wrote. "The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant justification for whatever level of intervention-conquest-raping that you might desire."

For the complete list and links of the "Top 25 Censored Stories," see:
http://projectcensored.org/publications/2004/index.html

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase
a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
– Benjamin Franklin

"Will we stand by as the Administration formulates
a second more dangerous "PATRIOT Act" because,
in the President's words, 'the first bill didn't go far enough'?
Or will we step back from this atmosphere of fear
and work to restore our basic freedoms and rights?
With the introduction of the True Patriot Act,
I say we take back our Constitution."
– Dennis Kucinich
(September 25, 2003)
http://www.flybynews.com./cgi-local/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1064522858,43417,

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