Saddam Hussein’s imaginary WMD: Will the press ever admit its role?
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Written by Solomon Hughes


There is plenty of mainstream media vitriol nowadays aimed at ‘fake news’ and conspiracy theories from amateur outlets — outrageous when it has never owned up to the pro-war nonsense it published about Iraq.


Next year is the 20th anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, so after Christmas we will see lots of newspaper articles looking back on the start of the ugly war built on lies.

That means this year is the anniversary of when the lies about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) were spread, because it took at least a year to push the propaganda needed for war.

But I don’t think we will see so much “20 years on” reflection in the media about the spread of those lies, because the media itself did the spreading. The British media like to talk about the British and US governments spreading lies about Iraq, but has always avoided taking responsibility for its own, even wilder lies.

Let’s take one example. Around 20 years ago the Spectator claimed Nelson Mandela’s South Africa was helping Hussein build nuclear weapons. It was a completely mad claim made without evidence. But neither magazine nor author has ever reflected on, or faced any consequence for, spreading this dangerous “fake news,” which was part of a huge “conspiracy theory” — supposedly two ills the media likes to fight.

The basic story about Hussein’s WMDs was this elaborate conspiracy theory: Hussein was importing materials to make nuclear weapons, nerve gases and germ bombs. He would share materials made in his secret subterranean factories with al-Qaida terrorists. It was unhinged stuff.

Hussein was pictured like a James Bond villain with underground bases, secretly working with his sworn enemy, Osama Bin Laden, to attack the West. This elaborate chain of lies was an attempt to link Hussein to the September 11 terrorist attacks and justify a war.

Literally none of it was true. Hussein didn’t have WMDs and wasn’t in league with al-Qaida. But this fake tale was made to look more substantial by a big patchwork of ludicrous stories, including this contribution from the Spectator.

South Africa’s ANC government, like many, opposed the drive to war. So, Mark Steyn, a right-wing columnist who is still a figure in that world — he now presents a show on GB News — set out to discredit South Africa.

Steyn wrote a substantial, two-page article in the Spectator on October 5 2002, with the outlandish claim South Africa was helping Iraq enrich uranium to produce nuclear weapons.

He wrote: “Mr Mandela’s country has been busy selling aluminium tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Hussein. The first secretary of the South African embassy in Jordan is serving as the local sales rep to Iraqi procurement agents.

“Thanks to these sterling efforts, they’re bringing significantly closer the day when the entire Middle East, much of Africa and even Europe will be under the Husseinite nuclear umbrella and thus safe from Bush’s aggression.”

Enriching uranium in powerful centrifuges is a crucial part of making nuclear bombs. But there was no evidence here. South Africa was not selling aluminium tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Iraq, which was not making atomic weapons.

Iraq did once have a nuclear weapons programme, including during the years when Iraq was a western ally. But this programme had been entirely dismantled in 1992, after the first Gulf War, as Hussein’s government repeatedly stated.

Steyn produced no proof for his tubular tall tale or his other claim that South Africa’s embassy in Jordan was helping arm Iraq. It was made-up rubbish.

The tale was slightly related to a more mainstream, but also fake story. The US government claimed an Iraqi attempt to import many aluminium tubes from China in 2001 showed it wanted to use them in uranium enrichment for a nuclear bomb.

All serious experts could see Iraq actually did have a military use for the tubes — for battlefield rockets — that was nothing to do with WMD. But at least the widely repeated fake US story involved real tubes.

The Spectator “scoop” was a complete fantasy. It added to the WMD panic that helped start the war — but then simply disappeared from the record. Neither Steyn nor the Spectator ever referred to it again. The story isn’t even on the Spectator website.

Steyn is still taken seriously despite writing “fake news” — he was recently interviewed on Radio 4 Today as an “expert.” The Spectator itself trundles on.

Steyn trying to bring Mandela into the WMD fake stories was an outlier. But media promotion of stories too absurd for any government dossier was common in more supposedly “respectable” outlets.

Take, for example, the Observer splashing on “evidence linking Iraqi intelligence to the September 11 hijackers,” asserting “several apparent links between Iraq, the September 11 hijackers and bin Laden’s al-Qaida network” including multiple meetings between Iraqi intelligence officers and the hijackers and a claim foreign terrorists were “training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands” inside an old Boeing 707 on a secret Iraqi government base near Baghdad. All fantasies based on unconvincing claims by pro-war propagandists.

Or the BBC Panorama programme promoting fake tales from an Iraqi fraudster — who had been rejected by the CIA — claiming he helped build underground WMD storage sites “hidden away in heavily populated areas, even under a hospital in Baghdad.”

Or the Times promoting a supposed former Iraqi nuclear scientist who had been “Saddam’s bomb-maker” saying Iraq “could be in a position to make three nuclear weapons within the next few months.” Only the “scientist’s” stories were fake. He had already been linked to another set of forged documents and fake nuclear claims exposed by the International Atomic Energy Authority in 1995.

These are just a sample of the fake tales of Hussein’s weapons pumped out by the media, 2002-3. They went well beyond any official government claim and were based on transparently unconvincing “evidence” — usually just unchecked assertions by Iraqi “exiles.”

The media felt happy to tell any lies about an “official enemy” like Iraq, were unembarrassed when it led to a bloody war, and has never even admitted it published “fake news,” let alone tried to understand why or stop itself from doing it again.



https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/...t-its-role
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