"LIES" ABOUT THE WAR THE BIGGEST LIE OF ALL

By Con George-Kotzabasis


The following article is an extract from my book published in Melbourne on May 2004, titled Unveiling The War Against Terror. The essay was written on October 2003.


In the practical decisions of life it will scarcely ever be possible to go through all the arguments in favor of or against one possible decision, and one will therefore always have to act on insufficient evidence. Werner Heisenberg German physicist and founder of the Principle of Uncertainty.


A chirping sound and fury of a swarm of crickets from their grassy, weedless, "manicured estates" of politics, the media, academes, and bishoprics are endeavoring to muffle the sound of reason as to why America and its staunch and historically insightful allies went to war against Saddam Hussein.

The critics of the war in their impassioned fiery endeavor to impugn and discredit the Bush, Blair, and Howard governments, are far from being morally and intellectually hampered from using meretricious arguments to make their case against the war. The English essayist Chesterton observed, 'where is the best place to hide a leaf? His answer was ‘in a tree'. The opponents of the war observe, 'where is the best place to hide the truth? Their answer is ‘in a lie'. Hence, they fabricated the biggest lie of all, with the aim to conceal the truth about the war. After their lugubrious doomsday cries and forecasts about hundreds of thousands of casualties, of humanitarian disasters, floods of refugees, and bogged-down Vietnams, all of which failed to materialize, either in Afghanistan or Iraq, they now "pin-up" their arguments on the Americans' unsuccessful efforts to find weapons of mass destruction ( WMD ), and on the inability of its armed forces to win the peace in Iraq. As if these two goals could be accomplished in parallel with the ending of major combat operations, in a regime which brutally oppressed its own people for thirty years, and which practiced the concealment of its development of WMD in the form of an exact science. And which, despite its swift defeat in the war, it still has a paladin of sturdy supporters, whose lament of losing power is inevitably transformed into a vigorous opposition to the American-led coalition forces.

The peaceniks, desperate to find a straw to save themselves from intellectual drowning in this ocean of failed predictions and "displaced" conceptions, have now concocted this lie, that the American, British, and Australian administrations were mendacious to their peoples about the imminent threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the civilized world. In this forlorn effort to justify their position, brazenly and shamelessly distort David Kay's report to Congress about Hussein's WMD, by focusing on the present fact that no such weapons were found, and triumphantly deduce from this, that Hussein was not an imminent threat against the West. But in this ignominious exercise, they totally disregard the other crucial elements of his findings, that clearly substantiate, that the regime retained intact an infrastructure that could develop WMD at short notice.

The eminent columnist of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, in his column of the ...Post on 10 October wrote, that Iraq maintained 'an infrastructure ( laboratories, equipment, trained scientists,detailed plans ) that could "break out" and ramp up production of [ WMD ] when needed... Just in Time... That David Kay found the infrastructure but as yet no finished product'. And again, as reported in the Washington Post on 7 October, David Kay had found strains of organism in a scientist's home that could be used to produce biological agents. He had also found documents for resuming uranium enrichment efforts for the development of nuclear weapons, and a clandestine network of laboratories that contained equipment for continuing chemical-biological weapons research, as well as SA-2 surface-to-air missiles which could be transformed into ballistic missiles with a range of 250 miles, exceeding the 150 miles range which Iraq was allowed to have by the U.N. .

This is the thundering truth about Hussein's secret program to activate the development of WMD, whenever his regime thought it would be safe to do so, that the critics of the war are vainly attempting to muffle and still. The ABC presenter of the 7.30 Report, Kerry O'Brien, in his interview of the U.S. Ambassador, Tom Schieffer, was picking selectively from the Kay report to make his flimsy case about the unnecessariness of the war in Iraq - who obsessively and indefatigably has been doing since even before the commencement of hostilities in Iraq - and leaving out the key elements of the report which verified without any doubt, that the Hussein regime had the capability to develop and produce WMD at a time of its own choosing.

It is inconceivable, that while Iran, Hussein's arch enemy and rival in the region, had plans to develop nuclear weapons, Hussein would not have known this, and had he known it, he would commit geopolitical hara-kiri, by choosing to go into "nuclear hibernation". That he would stop unilaterally and altruistically all his plans to develop the same weapons. Such an action on his part, would strategically have placed him in a most vulnerable position, and would have made him a hostage to his primary foe in the region. Moreover, such conduct would entail, the discarding and abandonment of all his ambitions and grandiose plans to be the new Saladin of the Arab world, which would be completely out of character. This kind of transubstantiation from a ruthlessly ambitious dictator to a votary of the Dalai Lama, would be the mother of all miracles.

This logic just does not click. Yet it is by this reasoning that the opponents of the war are constructing their case against it. As their core argument was and is, that Hussein was never an imminent threat against the West, and crown the "correctness" of their contention on the fact that no WMD have been found. But I dare say, that not before long, this crown will be a crown of thorns around their heads, and there will be no intellectual resurrection from the naivety that nailed them on the "believers" cross of the bloodthirsty dictator. That this sleight of hand artist was able to dupe and blindfold them in regards to the clandestine network of laboratories and scientists he had in place, and could produce WMD on his orders at the appointed time, will be to their eternal shame.

As for the word 'imminent', that also is a spurious invention of the opponents of the war. Neither Bush nor Blair, nor any other senior member of their administrations, ever said that Hussein's regime posed an imminent threat to the free world. What President Bush said, was that Hussein's development and possession of WMD and his links with terrorism, posed a grave and gathering danger against the civilized world. In a world of global terror however, this future gathering danger is not years ahead but too near at hand not to consider it as imminent. Indeed, in a world of unleashed fanatic terror, all the actions that the latter could launch are imminent. The terrorists pose a continuous threat to the world, therefore it would be the culmination of foolishness on the part of those who are been targeted, not to take these threats as imminent. The rogue states too, which directly and indirectly support terrorists, are themselves deeply enmeshed in this web of imminence. On a scale of a continuum of threats, what is imminent? What can happen in one day, in one week, in one month, in one year, to paraphrase the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld? It is this hard question, that the critics of the war are avoiding from answering, as a result of their intellectual flabbiness and lack of moral and political integrity.

Statesmen who face a great portentous danger, as presently posed by an 'emerging nexus between terrorist networks, terrorist states, and weapons of mass destruction', to quote Secretary Rumsfeld, will not await for the elusive perfect intelligence, perfect information, before they take decisive and unrelenting action against a formidable and deadly foe. In the realm of human affairs uncertainty is the absolute sovereign. It is in this context of uncertainty that political leaders, prudently and intrepidly, but not foolhardily, have to make their determining and momentous decisions.

In the case of the war against Iraq, the Bush and Blair governments had to decide on the sort of action they would take on the basis (a) of the information they had received from their intelligence agencies, whose assessments were based on the calculus of probability, not on certainty (the latter being unattainable) that Iraq possessed WMD, and had plans in place to develop nuclear weapons, and that Hussein would not be squeamish in using them, either directly against his enemies, as he had done in his war against Iran and on his own people, or through proxies, i.e., terrorists. And (b) on Hussein's demonstration of his geopolitical ambitions for the region and the ruthless means he would use to achieve them, and the links he had with global terror.

No wise and responsible political leadership, in such critical conditions, would tarry its crucial decisions, until the interminable debates of the experts, as to whether, in the present case, the aluminium tubes were for uranium enrichment or for rocket construction,- and if they were to be used for rockets, the latter could be carrying WMD - had reached majority or unanimous agreement as to their use. ( Even such an agreement could never be foolproof and could only be tested in the real conditions to which it would be applicable. Moreover, as experts in intelligence can make mistakes in their appraisals, so too experts in other fields are not immune from making mistakes.)

This is the resounding truth why Bush, Blair, and Howard, decided to go to war in Iraq. And the latter is not only pivotal to the future defeat of global terror ( if one is serious in defeating global terror, one also has to fight its state sponsors. It is a war on two fronts. ), but also, in its strategic goal to prevent the "apocalyptic" coupling of terror and rogue states.

The ominous and deadly challenge of fanatic terrorism\ demands leaders of Gulliverian stature, not Lilliputians. The imposing lesson of history is, that in hard times, such as our own, it is the "hard men" that prevail. The flaccid and indecisive leaders, who wait for the will-o'-the-wisp of perfect intelligence and information, before they commit themselves to decisive action, are cast aside and thrown among the debris of history.

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