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Iraq: Why Did The USA Want "Regime Change"? Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and was a Threat

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This was a smokescreen to deceive public opinion and provide a reason for regime change.

• In February 2001, Colin Powell, the USA Secretary of State made a speech in which he said of Saddam Hussein: "He is not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction".

  In July 2001, Condaleeza Rice (the USA National Security Adviser) stated in a TV interview about Iraq: "We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

• In January 2003, the United Nations weapons inspectors stated that there was no evidence that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. A few days later, Geoff Hoon, UK Secretery of Defence, stated his country's right to use nuclear weapons against Iraq: "We have always made it clear the we would reserve the right to use nuclear weapons".

• Several other countries have nuclear weapons: Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea and South Africa apart from the "big five" of USA, UK, France, China and Russia. Of these nuclear states, Pakistan, North Korea and China are not democracies.

  The USA, UK and France (as well as the old USSR) have tested their weapons in the open, often on other peoples' territories, producing radioactive pollution. India and Pakistan have performed underground tests. In 2002, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf publicly stated that he was prepared to employ nuclear weapons against India over their conflict in Kashmir. In 2003, North Korea threatened to use nuclear weapons on USA troops if it was attacked.

  The USA is the only country to have used nuclear bombs on population centres; it has done so on two occasions: the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

• More than 300 tons of Depleted Uranium, another weapon of mass destruction, were fired by USA and UK aircraft and tanks during the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq. Many of the rounds were solid uranium which, inhaled or ingested, causes cancer. In a country where dust carries everything, children are especially vulnerable. From 1992 to 2003, Iraq has been denied specialist equipment that would allow its engineers to decontaminate its southern battlefields. It has also been denied equipment and drugs that would identify and treat the lung, blood, bone and kidney cancers which, it is estimated, will affect almost half the population in the south.

  The USA and UK did not rule out the use of depleted uranium in the 2003 invasion and there is some evidence of its use by the USA.

• In February 2003 the USA Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, authorised the use of toxic gases in any war against Iraq. He went on to criticise the "straitjacket" imposed by bans in international treaties on using these types of weapons in warfare. Rear Admiral Stephen Baker admits that USA special forces in the region have gases that can "neutralise people". He added: "I would think that if they get the chance to use them, they will".

  The use of these weapons would violate the Chemical Weapons Convention. Professor Julian Perry, an authority on the Convention, stated that "Legally, speaking, Iraq would be totally justified in releasing chemical weapons over the UK if the [USA and UK] use them in Baghdad".

• The USA armed Iraq during the 1980s when they were fighting Iran. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, it began a war that would last for 10 years killing over 1,000,000 people. The USA opposed United Nations condemnation of the invasion and removed Iraq from its list of "nations supporting terrorism". Iraq was financed by Saudi Arabia and armed by the UK and USA. Between 1985 and 1989, private companies from the USA exported the following biological agents to Iraq after obtaining licenses from the USA Department of Commerce:
  • Bacillus Anthracis, the cause of the often fatal disease, anthrax.
    
  • Clostridium Botulinum, a toxin source.
    
  • Histoplasma Capsulatum, a disease that attacks lungs, brain, heart and spinal chord.
    
  • Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that damages major organs.
    
  • Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing illness.
    
  • Clostridium Tetani, a bacteria causing tetanus.

  Other exports included the precursors to chemical warfare agents, production facilities and equipment for filling warheads with chemicals. Most of the weapons that the USA is apparently concerned about actually came from the West.

• In December 2002, the USA government confiscated the 12,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration given to the United Nations, saying they contained "sensitive information" which needed "a little editing". What is being hidden? The original Iraqi documents listed 150 USA, UK and other foreign companies that supplied Iraq with its nuclear, chemical and missile technology, many of them in illegal transactions. In 2000 Peter Hain, then a UK Foreign Office Minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of lawbreaking UK companies.

• In February 2003, the USA gave a presentation to the United Nations attempting to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat. The evidence included a dossier (Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation) supplied by the intelligence services of the UK government. A few days later, this document was shown to have been copied from a 10 year old student PhD thesis on the internet complete with the original spelling and grammatical mistakes. One passage had been altered from "aiding opposition groups" to "supporting terrorist organisations".

  In a 2003 UK enquiry, government emails indicated that another dossier about Iraq's weapons threats was exagerated to prepare public opinion for the invasion. The version of the dossier dated 19 September 2002 was entitled Iraq's Programme for Weapons of Mass Destruction. The published title was Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

  In March 2003, one of the weapons inspectors, Dr Mohamed Al-Baredi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported to the United Nations Security Council that several UK and USA reports about Iraq's nuclear capabilites were fake.

  Refering to a UK story that Iraq was attempting to smuggle uranium out of Niger, Dr Al-Baredi said: "...the IAEA has concluded... that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have, therefore, concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded".

  Another story put out by the UK concerned high strength aluminium tubes that Iraq had attempted to purchase. Dr Al-Baredi confirmed that these tubes were not suitable for a uranium enrichment program as stated by the USA. He added that none of Iraq's declared high strength magnets could be used to enrich uranium.

  The USA accused Iraq of manufacturing nuclear weapons at a complex called Tuwaitha. The IAEA concluded that Tuwaitha "now conducts civilian research in the non-nuclear field".

• The USA military budget for 2001 was $ 343,000 million. This is 69% greater than that of the next five highest nations combined. Russia, which has the second largest military budget, spends less than one sixth of the USA budget. Countries described by the USA as "an axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba and Sudan) spend $ 14,400 million combined (4% of the USA budget) with more than half of this amount accounted for by Iran. In addition the USA has used chemical and nuclear weapons on several countries (including Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia)

  The USA has a military presence in 120 countries around the world. This includes the storage of nuclear weapons in Europe and the Pacific.

• In 2001, the USA unilaterally withdrew from the Intercontinental Balistic Missile Treaty signed in 1972. The USA also refuses to allow biological inspections on its own territories in defiance of the 1972 Biological Warfare Convention. In 1999, The USA rejected a nuclear test ban treaty.

• During the USA war in Vietnam, a herbicide called Agent Orange was sprayed over the country. This substance was banned in the USA, because it contained Dioxin, a deadly carcinogenic (cancer producing) poison. This chemical weapon, which can be considered a weapon of mass destruction, was dumped on almost half of South Vietnam. Today, as the poison continues to move through water and soil and food, children continue to be born without palates and chins and scrotums or are stillborn. Many have leukaemia. No compensation has ever been paid and no United Nations condemnation has been heard against the perpetrators.

• Between 1967 and 1969 the USA sprayed Agent Orange over 23,607 acres (95km²) in the border region between North Korea and South Korea. In previous years over 500 people from 36 countries (including Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) were trained in the use of chemical and biological warfare at the USA army's Chemical School at Fort McClellan in Alabama. The International Red Cross verified that USA-trained pilots from Egypt had dropped canisters of poison gas over Yemen in 1967. Over 150 villagers died after gagging, coughing and bleeding.

• If Iraq was such a threat, why were the USA and UK able to bomb the country unopposed for 10 years?

  George Tenet (director of the USA CIA) wrote to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq was unlikely to attack the USA with either conventional or weapons of mass destruction in the near future.

• If Iraq was such a threat why did its neighbours not think so? International Law allows for countries under threat to put their concerns to the United Nations Security Council. This is the only legal way of dealing with alleged rogue states.

  Most of Iraq's neighbours are more concerned about the USA's weapons and the West's presence and influence in the region. USA battle ships patrol the Persian Gulf - no Iranian ships cruise off the USA coast. The USA has military bases in Turkey, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia - no Arab or Turkish soldiers are stationed on USA soil. USA weapons are sold to Israel and used against civilians - when USA civilians are attacked it is labelled as "terrorism". The UK has listening posts in Cyprus - no Cypriot equivalent exists in the UK.

• A classified report, prepared by a CIA official, Stephen C. Pelletiere, about the gassing of Kurds in Halabja which was used as propaganda against Iraq, is released to the USA newspaper, the New York Times. "That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas."

• In May 2003 after the invasion of Iraq and the securing of the oil wells by the USA and UK, the USA Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, conjectured: "It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy them prior to the conflict."

  Finally, in an interview in the July 2003 issue of magazine Vanity Fair, the USA Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, admitted "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on".

  Over a year after the invasion of Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, even by the 1200-strong, USA appointed, Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The leader of the ISG, David Kay, eventually resigned over the issue. The UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, stated in 2004, that these weapons "may never be found". After a senate hearing in the USA in 2004, several senators stated that "had we known what we know now, we would not have voted for the war".

• In May 2003, a secret UK government memo was leaked to newspapers. It shows that discussions were under way a full year before the invasion of Iraq to change the regime and blame it on WMD. Part of the text appears below:

  SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

  DAVID MANNING
  From: Matthew Rycroft
  Date: 23 July 2002
  S 195 /02

  cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

  IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

  Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

  This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

  John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

  C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.