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Hardly recent news, but I was wondering how this information might affect people's views on Iraq's weapon programs and UN inspection compliance (or lack thereof, which as you may recall were our primary justifications for invading).
Scott Ritter was a chief weapons inspector for the UN from 1991-98. He became an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq war after resigning from UNSCOM in 98. That year Clinton authorized a 4 day bombing of Iraq weapons facilities known as Operation Desert Fox. Ritter alleged that recon for this bombing was performed covertly by UN inspectors, who insisted on gathering information unrelated to WMD programs
[citing wiki - operation desert fox]
"UNSCOM weapons inspectors were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his 2002 "axis of evil" speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant (2000), it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes."
...
Ritter accused Butler and other UNSCOM staff of working with the US, in opposition to their UN mandate. He claimed that UNSCOM deliberately sabotaged relations with Iraq by insisting on gathering intelligence unrelated to prohibited weapons, some of which was to be used in the forthcoming bombing."
Ritter also alleges Operation Rockingham, the UK wing of the Iraq regime change vehicle, was actively maintaining "the public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance..."
[citing wiki - operation rockingham]
"Operation Rockingham cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when] Unscom was showing the opposite.
For example, Ritter claimed, Rockingham would leak false information to weapons inspectors but then use the inspections as evidence for WMD: "Rockingham was the source of some very controversial information which led to inspections of a suspected ballistic missile site. We ... found nothing. However, our act of searching allowed the US and UK to say that the missiles existed."
A former colleague of Ritter's in UNSCOM was British weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, who died suspiciously of apparent suicide, just days after being named as the inside source for BBC reports claiming the press office of prime minister Tony Blair had knowingly embellished documents with misleading exaggerations of Iraq's military capabilities...anyone else feeling uneasy yet?
[citing wiki - the hutton inquiry]
"A British ambassador called David Broucher reported a conversation with Dr Kelly at a Geneva meeting in February 2003, which he described as from "deep within the memory hole". Broucher related that Kelly said he had assured his Iraqi sources that there would be no war if they co-operated, and that a war would put him in an 'ambiguous' moral position. Broucher had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded, and Kelly had replied, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods.' Broucher then quoted from an email he had sent just after Kelly's death: 'I did not think much of this at the time, taking it to be a hint that the Iraqis might try to take revenge against him, something that did not seem at all fanciful then. I now see that he may have been thinking on rather different lines."
Scott Ritter was a chief weapons inspector for the UN from 1991-98. He became an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq war after resigning from UNSCOM in 98. That year Clinton authorized a 4 day bombing of Iraq weapons facilities known as Operation Desert Fox. Ritter alleged that recon for this bombing was performed covertly by UN inspectors, who insisted on gathering information unrelated to WMD programs
[citing wiki - operation desert fox]
"UNSCOM weapons inspectors were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his 2002 "axis of evil" speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant (2000), it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes."
...
Ritter accused Butler and other UNSCOM staff of working with the US, in opposition to their UN mandate. He claimed that UNSCOM deliberately sabotaged relations with Iraq by insisting on gathering intelligence unrelated to prohibited weapons, some of which was to be used in the forthcoming bombing."
Ritter also alleges Operation Rockingham, the UK wing of the Iraq regime change vehicle, was actively maintaining "the public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance..."
[citing wiki - operation rockingham]
"Operation Rockingham cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when] Unscom was showing the opposite.
For example, Ritter claimed, Rockingham would leak false information to weapons inspectors but then use the inspections as evidence for WMD: "Rockingham was the source of some very controversial information which led to inspections of a suspected ballistic missile site. We ... found nothing. However, our act of searching allowed the US and UK to say that the missiles existed."
A former colleague of Ritter's in UNSCOM was British weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, who died suspiciously of apparent suicide, just days after being named as the inside source for BBC reports claiming the press office of prime minister Tony Blair had knowingly embellished documents with misleading exaggerations of Iraq's military capabilities...anyone else feeling uneasy yet?
[citing wiki - the hutton inquiry]
"A British ambassador called David Broucher reported a conversation with Dr Kelly at a Geneva meeting in February 2003, which he described as from "deep within the memory hole". Broucher related that Kelly said he had assured his Iraqi sources that there would be no war if they co-operated, and that a war would put him in an 'ambiguous' moral position. Broucher had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded, and Kelly had replied, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods.' Broucher then quoted from an email he had sent just after Kelly's death: 'I did not think much of this at the time, taking it to be a hint that the Iraqis might try to take revenge against him, something that did not seem at all fanciful then. I now see that he may have been thinking on rather different lines."
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