What I heard about Iraq
By Eliot Weinberger in the London Review of books:
I heard the president tell Congress: ?The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.?
I heard him say: ?The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or, some day, a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.?
I heard the president, in the State of the Union address, say that Iraq was hiding materials sufficient to produce 25,000 litres of anthrax, 38,000 litres of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and nerve gas.
I heard the president say that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium ? later specified as ?yellowcake? uranium oxide from Niger ? and thousands of aluminium tubes ?suitable for nuclear weapons production?.
I heard the vice president say: ?We know that he?s been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.?
I heard the president say: ?Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.?
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ?Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent. I would not be so certain.?
I heard the president say: ?America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof ? the smoking gun ? that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.?
I heard Condoleezza Rice say: ?We don?t want the ?smoking gun? to be a mushroom cloud.?
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I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ?I don?t believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.?
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: ?The Coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq?s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light, through the prism of our experience on 9/11.?
I heard a reporter say to Donald Rumsfeld: ?Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said they would welcome us with open arms.? And I heard Rumsfeld interrupt him: ?Never said that. Never did. You may remember it well, but you?re thinking of somebody else. You can?t find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said.?
I heard Ahmed Chalabi, who had supplied most of the information about the weapons of mass destruction, shrug and say: ?We are heroes in error . . . What was said before is not important.?
I heard Paul Wolfowitz say: ?For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, as justification for invading Iraq, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.?
I heard Condoleezza Rice continue to insist: ?It?s not as if anybody believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction.?
I heard that the Niger ?yellowcake? uranium was a hoax legitimised by British intelligence, that the aluminium tubes could not be used for nuclear weapons, that the mobile biological laboratories produced hydrogen for weather balloons, that the fleet of unmanned aerial drones was a single broken-down oversized model airplane, that Saddam had no elaborate underground bunkers, that Colin Powell?s primary source, his ?solid information? for the evidence he presented at the United Nations, was a paper written ten years before by a graduate student. I heard that, of the 400,000 bodies buried in mass graves, only 5000 had been found.
I heard Lieutenant-General James Conway say: ?It was a surprise to me then, and it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons. It?s not from lack of trying.?
I heard a reporter ask Donald Rumsfeld: ?If they did not have WMDs, why did they pose an immediate threat to this country?? I heard Rumsfeld answer: ?You and a few other critics are the only people I?ve heard use the phrase ?immediate threat?. It?s become a kind of folklore that that?s what happened. If you have any citations, I?d like to see them.? And I heard the reporter read: ?No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people.? Rumsfeld replied: ?It ? my view of ? of the situation was that he ? he had ? we ? we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that ? that we believed and we still do not know ? we will know.?