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Bush's New "Evidence": Just a Crank Call?
BUZZFLASH
READER COMMENTARY
by Dwayne
Eutsey
In a Newsweek "web exclusive" Friday, the newsmagazine breathlessly reported that the Bush administration will release "supersensitive electronic intercepts" of phone conversations between Iraqi officials that the US says will prove Iraq has "repeatedly lied to United Nations inspectors."
To help build support for US plans to invade Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell will use these electronic intercepts in his speech this Wednesday to the UN.
While citing US officials who caution that there may be "some ambiguity about what the Iraqis are referring to in some of the conversations," the article gives the overall impression that the US is about to reveal the smoking gun evidence that thus far has eluded the Bush plan for taking over Iraq's oil reserves.
"Hold on to your hat," the article quotes one anonymous US intelligence official. "We've got it."
Not being privy to these supersecret recordings, of course, I can't say whether this alleged evidence is substantive or all a bunch of hype. Given the Bush regime's track record of "exaggeration", however, I have to say I lean toward the latter right now.
One reason for my skepticism -- aside from the fact that Bush's previous presentations of "evidence" have all quickly turned from "smoking gun" to " stinking dud" -- is an article Buzzflash linked to back in November.
The Asia Times article revealed an alleged campaign to discredit Saddam Hussein led by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firms with close ties to the US government. According the article, the firm hired an Iraqi Harvard graduate student, known for his ability to impersonate Hussein, to "translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq."
The student was paid $3,000 for working with the Rendon Group to record his impersonation of Saddam Hussein, which was then passed off in Iraq as actual recordings of the Iraqi dictator.
The article quotes the student as saying: "We did skits where Saddam would get mixed up in his own lies, or where [Saddam's son] Qusay would stumble over his own delusions of grandeur." The student also said he was never quite sure who was behind the disinformation campaign: "I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance, the CIA or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones calling the shots."
Although the Rendon Group did not confirm nor deny such a campaign existed or who was behind it, the Asia Times article provides an excellent historical overview of how politics and PR joined forces during the last Gulf War to manufacture reality and sway public opinion.
PR firm Hill & Knowlton (for which current Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke once worked) was behind the infamous "baby atrocities" campaign, which fabricated the horror story of Iraqi soldiers wrenching Kuwaiti infants from incubators and leaving them to die.
Asia Times also reminds Americans suffering from political amnesia that the Pentagon flooded major media with lies about a top-secret satellite image supposedly showing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi Arabian border.
But that was then, and this is now. Right? Surely the current administration would never resort to such trickery. Maybe, maybe not. But as you listen this week to the alleged phone conversations of Iraqi officials snickering about fooling UN inspectors, just keep in mind that you may be listening in on one hell of an elaborate crank call.
(Original Newsweek link on http://www.msnbc.com/news/867105.asp)
BUZZFLASH
READER COMMENTARY
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