I saw yesterday that Hans Blix, in a BBC interview alleged that the US and Britain “falsified” evidence of WMD, and deliberately hindered the UN weapons inspectors.
This was on the CBC website, as well as the BBC. I also saw it in the “crawl” at the bottom on CNN.
It strikes me that if an internationally respected figure such as Dr. Blix is making such volatile charges as these, there would be SOME official response. So far, nothing.
Also, the story seems to have faded into the background.
I really don’t want to get into the veracity of “proofs” (Uranium letters, aluminiun tubes etc.), but where the heck is the press on this story.
You’d think they would be all over this like a fat kid on a candy.
What gives?
So the question is… Are the press doing a reasonable job here?
On reading the BBC article linked by xenophon, I see no accusation by Blix of either of the charges referenced by Rooster. Perhaps we need a transcript of the interview.
According to Rooster’s link, the comments came in a closed door session.
I will speculate however that the CBC link is poorly written when it says, “Washington falsified evidence” instead of “Washington provided falsified evidence”. In fact, the linked article quotes Blix as saying, “Who falsifies this?”, which would lead one to believe that he didn’t accuse the US of the falsification itself.
And if that is the accusation, it is old news, probably in reference to the Nigerian Uranium report, debated heartily here in previous threads.
American officials tried to discredit the work of inspectors in Iraq to further their own case for war, the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has charged.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Blix said American officials leaked suggestions that inspectors had deliberately suppressed information to the media in an attempt to undermine their work in Iraq.
Mr Blix said that in the run-up to war, the US had seized on his alleged failure to include details of a drone and cluster bomb found in Iraq in his oral presentations to the Council.
“The US was very eager to sway the votes in the Security Council, and they felt that stories about these things would be useful to have, and they let it out,” he said.
"And thereby they tried to hurt us a bit and say that we had suppressed this.
“It was not the case, and it was a bit unfair, and hurt us. [We] felt a little displeased about it.”
He also reiterated his disquiet at how documents the International Atomic Energy Agency “had no great difficulty finding out were fake” managed to get through US and UK intelligence analysis.
Also disturbing, he said, was the question of who was responsible for the falsification.
Some evidence definitely WAS faked, regardless of what anybody thinks the truth is. The most well-known example was the documentation ‘showing’ Iraq had attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, which the IAEA deemed a forgery – and one of extremely poor quality at that. But it’s not known who did the faking. Could be MI6, Mossad, the CIA, or a number of others. But the general opinion I’ve read seems to be that somebody should’ve caught it. Perhaps someone saw the document, realized it could be powerful evidence, and didn’t listen to questions about its authenticity.
There’s a difference between simply mentioning a story, and fully investigating it. As the OP states, there has been no official response to this. Wouldn’t you think that GW would want to respond to UN officials basically inferring the US intelligence community is either woefully incompetant or is a bunch of liars? The only reason the administration wouldn’t want to discuss the matter is because the accusation is probably true. Open and objective journalism means death to this administration - hence why the story was basically buried.
What I wouldn’t give for a modern day Woodward and Bernstein…
Bull. Unflattering charges against the administration are made by the press constantly. I don’t see why they would “bury” this one, and not the others. Further, I can’t expect the WH to bother refuting every claim that’s made about its many alleged evils, especially those that the press doesn’t seem to eager to press, anyway. If a local paper claimed (falsely) that you had sexual relations with a goat, would you go on national TV and make a big deal about how you never even looked at a goat in that way? Or would you consider that maybe that would just make things worse?
Jeff
To gain American public support for America joining WWII, FDR fibbed about an unwarranted attack on one of our ships by a German airplane - when it was actually acting in self-defense, as our ship fired first. So, not with out precedent to blur the facts to create support for a war that the average American might oppose, but which in the end spreads our ideals.
** sivispacem** key difference the US didnt declare war on Germany because they fired on a plane, what FDR did was nothing more then propaganda. The WMD and the atomic threat especially were used to start this war and were presented to the international community as the justification for the war.
Wasn’t trying to justify the administration’s actions, just adding a historical precedent. Because it’s happened before doesn’t make it any less grave.
We also nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. For some reason, I don’t find such a precedent as compelling guidance to future action by our government. So what was your point?
Let’s not hijack this thread with a debate about the wisdom of nuking Japan, my point was merely that “hey, it’s happened before, could have happened again.” I wasn’t aware every post on a GD thread had to argue vehemently one side or the other.
I would kind of think, given the importance these things were supposed to have to the war drive, that refutations of them would receive more attention than they did. That is, they SHOULD have; I’m not surprised they didn’t. Because as I alluded to above, it wasn’t just the uranium thing. Pretty much everything Powell said in his presentation to the UN was refuted [like the oft-repeated claim that Iraq was buying aluminum tubes to refine uranium for nukes] or, at least, had more to the story he failed to mention that put things in a different light.
World opinion didn’t change after that presentation, only American opinion did (America, to me, was the only target audience anyway). But it’s a sadly longstanding principle in the media that the refutation of a well-publicized charge does not necessarily receive as much attention as the charge itself. You can’t blame the government for that, there are a number of reasons for it. It’s stupid, though. Let me give an example from recent history as I try to confine myself to the point:
One: MSNBC says Geraldo Rivera has been kicked out of Iraq because he revealed information about troop movements and locations. Volume: very loud.
Two: On FOX, Rivera slams his former employers, calls them rats, liars, backstabbers, and (I think) Bee Gees fans. Volume: very loud.
Three: MSNBC starts running ads saying they’d never do the things Geraldo did. Very loud.
Four: FOX starts running ads blasting MSNBC over the Peter Arnett thing and saying they’re not patriotic enough. Still very loud.
Five: Geraldo leaves Iraq and goes to Kuwait. Why? Because the government really did ask him to leave for exactly the reasons MSNBC reported, meaning they were telling the truth in their story. But that was very quiet compared to his vigorous, aggressive denial.
The government – I think because he works for FOX, but it’s just my theory – then changed it from an order to ‘a request,’ and a few days later lets Geraldo back into Iraq after he promises never to do that again. This part, of course, was also rather quiet, the facts overshadowed by the shouting.