Say I’m the President of the US, and I got money and people and black helicopters and the whole nine yards. Me & Tony Blair desperately need to find a WMD in Iraq, any WMD. What is my best option in faking one?
The scheme would have to survive close examinations and scientific testing. We can’t just point to GIs digging up jars of talcum powder and claiming it’s anthrax. So we need to get real weapons into Iraq to be “discovered”. They need to be, if not traceable to an Iraqi factory, at least not traceable back to an American or English one. Ideally we could plant a plausible infrastructure capable of producing the weapon, or paperwork pointing to something like this Pakistan-based nuclear network with real hardware that dovetails with the paper trail.
Can this be done? Could we pass off American or British WMDs as Iraqi if they were put in “sanitized” containers? Might we actually have to manufacture some custom WMDs because our existing stockpiles are too well documented or otherwise identifiable?
I’m kind of thinking nukes are too identifiable and traceable to use, unless we happen to have a few Russian or Chinese ones tucked away somewhere. But maybe I’m wrong. Suppose you just pull some competent grand student design off the shelf and have a few physicists and engineers working with a good machine shop. How long would it take to build an "anonymous: bomb from scratch?
Which leaves chemical or bio weapons. I don’t know which would be advantageous to use in terms of contructing the cover story. I’ve heard it claimed in the media that most any chemical plant can turn out chemical weapons – anyone know how true that is?
What’s my nest choice of weapon to plant, and best story to use. Black market buying seems an easier cover story than a “produced by local industry” version,
Best thing to do is assume that the ruse will be discovered and anticipate it with a counterattack. Find someone like Michael Moore and tip him off about the fake weapons. Then when he publishes the information, you denounce his report as another typical liberal attack on America. Then more moderate and credible media sources will be reluctant to verify his story.
Easy enough. Purchase some surplus Soviet arms on the black market through contacts in Pakistan. Get a special Top Secret black ops kinda team to helicopter them in to some old, forgotten factory. Wait a month or two, let the real troops find them, hurry them off for testing. Loudly proclaim that this vindicates you, flood the media with stories, maybe even personal profiles of the “Regular Joe” troops that found em. Ride the wave into office on a re-election, letting the partisan attack dogs on Fox, talk radio, and the blogs crow about your victory. Read the Dope, chuckling over all the “I told you so!” posts.
First of all, there is no journalism in American anymore. Absolutely no effort is required to dupe the US press. Look at how easily they bit the “American troops captured Saddam” story hook, line and sinker.
You give them a video showing some drums somewhere. That’s all it takes. The rest of the world won’t believe it for a second, but they don’t influence presidential elections.
Little Nemo is dead on about having an “anti-cover” story going. That worked for Reagan’s “October Surprise.” Astonishingly simple: have an guy go tell Geraldo that he has all the inside poop on how it’s a sham. The other media “magically” find out the guy’s a fraud. Therefore all claims of being planted can be deemed frauds. Go have a cocktail and relax.
You don’t even need a cover story. Just ignore it. If reporters ask questions, make a few “Ha ha, you’re gonna believe something like that? Why don’t I show ya the aliens at Area 51!? Hyuck hyuck!” jokes. Then you’ll seem personable, too.
Have a spy stage a Mustard Gas attack in downtown Baghdad, against either coalition troops or Iraqi police. Better yet, stage a few of them.
It’ll look like Iraqi rebels had gotten ahold of (ex-Iraqi army) WMDs, or that Al Qaeda was in Iraq and using them. They might deny it, but who would believe them?
If hypothetical-President had done something like this during the main phase of the war against a large concentration of allied troops, the U.S. could have retaliated with nuclear weapons against major Iraqi military installations, and maybe Baghdad itself. And boom-presto, all evidence that the Iraqis didn’t use WMDs is vaporized.
Better yet…during the main phase of the war, have spies/commandoes capture a SCUD field or two, and launch chemical or biological attacks against Israel. The Israelis will retaliate with nukes, vaporizing any evidence that the Iraqis didn’t launch the attacks or possess usable WMDs. And the U.S.’ hands would be relitively clean. (“Don’t blame us, it was the Israelis who fried Baghdad. We tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen…”)
It’s what I would have done…Well, actually, I would have just said outright that the war was mainly about regime change, and not written myself into a corner with the WMD angle.
Like ftg said, all you really have to do is say that you’ve found WMD’s. Fill up a couple of metal drums with water, then get some nerdy-looking guy in a white lab coat to get up there and claim that tests have confirmed that it’s nerve gas or whatever. The news reporters are too dumb to ask the right questions, and they sure as hell aren’t going to open the drums and look for themselves.
Given that one of the Kurdish groups press office issued a release saying that Saddam had been captured the day before the Americans “found” him, yep. It is quite widely known outside the US that the Kurds found him first. They spent a day or two negotiating “favorable terms”, i.e., “your tax dollars at work”. Then they drugged him and put him in that hole. (You did see that Saddam had been drugged, right?) A link.
The thing that has really embarassed the US in the eyes of the world over this is that even though the Kurds told the army just where to look, our soldiers missed him on the first sweep! They had to be told to look for a certain type of material sticking out of the ground and they finally found him on the second sweep.
You can pretty much expect a similar scenario in late October with Osama.
It is astonishing that major English language media overseas report this story and yet not only does the major US media not report the story, they don’t even report that others are reporting it! This is how “well behaved” the US media is.