All Spin All The Time 
Published: Jul 09 2003
 

New York-based Russ Baker is an award-winning journalist who covers politics and media.

Viva Nihilism! It must be great working in the Bush White House. Zero accountability. It's All Spin, All the Time. Nothing matters but politics, hence no unfounded claim requires correction or apology. Unless, of course, they are pushed to the end of the plank, as they were recently with the tale about Niger and nuclear materials.

Take those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. Despite the failure of the concentrated might of the U.S. military-intelligence complex to find anything that might qualify in the remotest possible way, the administration labels critics "revisionist historians" and imperturbedly moves on. The initial assertions and touted "discoveries" usually get more attention than does the sound of a balloon deflating. That's why polls find a sizable chunk of the American public still under the impression that WMD have been found.

Whatever Saddam's interest in WMD, the administration didn't know what he had and didn't have solid evidence to make the claims it did -- much less to launch a war over them. For those amateur "revisionist historians" out there, here is a partial, unscientific reconstruction of the claims that fizzled.

THE CLAIM:
"Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bombmaking and poisons and deadly gases... [which] could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." - President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002.

THE FACTS:
The alleged Al Qaeda training camp, which Colin Powell described to the United Nations in February, is later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied warplanes. By late June, Michael Chandler, the head of the U.N. team monitoring global efforts to counter Al Qaeda tells Agence France Press: "We have never had information presented to us -- even though we've asked questions -- which would indicate that there is a direct link."

THE SPIN:
State Dept. spokesman Richard Boucher responds: "Secretary Powell provided clear and convincing evidence of the links between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

THE CLAIM:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush declares in the State of the Union address.

THE FACTS:
In March, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), tells the U.N. Security Council that the documents substantiating the claim of alleged Iraqi efforts to buy uranium in Niger were fakes (and bad ones at that) and that "these specific allegations are unfounded." The unnamed ex-ambassador whom the CIA sent to check out the story tells The New Republic: "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie."

THE SPIN:
Pass the buck, finally 'fessing up in a White House statement delivered on July 7 that Bush should not have used the uranium allegations in his address.

THE CLAIM:
U.S. officials present evidence suggesting that Iraq tried to buy aluminum tubes for use in centrifuges for the uranium enrichment process.

THE FACTS:
IAEA's ElBaradei later reports that extensive investigation "failed to uncover any evidence" that Iraq intended to use the tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets.

THE SPIN:
Powell releases a contradictory interpretation of the tubes, then the matter disappears.

THE CLAIM:
In early April, the Pentagon "confirms" discovery of a biological and chemical weapons storage site near the town of Hindiyah, complete with suspected sarin and tabun nerve agents.

THE FACTS:
Fourteen barrels of liquids are reassessed to be pesticide.

THE SPIN:
Silence.

THE CLAIM:
In early April, a white powder found at a site near Najaf is described as possible chemical agents, and presented as a likely "smoking gun."

THE FACTS:
The powder is an explosive.

THE SPIN:
Silence.

THE CLAIM:
"Biological laboratories described by our Secretary of State to the whole world that were not supposed to be there, that are a direct violation of the U.N. resolutions, have been discovered," Bush tells reporters, on May 29, referring to trailers the administration says are mobile labs.

THE FACTS:
For weeks, numerous independent experts express serious doubts about the trailers' purposes; a classified State Department intelligence memo cited by The New York Times also cautions about premature conclusions.

THE SPIN:
"The experts have spoken and the judgment of the experts is very clear on this matter," says Fleischer. Colin Powell splits hairs in backing the White House: State experts "weren't saying it was not a mobile lab, they just were not quite up in that curve of confidence that the rest of the intelligence community was at..."

THE CLAIM:
"We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." - Vice President Cheney, March 16, 2003 on Meet the Press.

THE FACTS:
After the fighting, an Iraqi nuclear scientist cuts a deal for refuge with the United States. Buried in his garden are documents and parts of a gas centrifuge, which could be used to enrich uranium for bomb-making. But the process of enriching uranium would require hundreds or thousands of precisely machined centrifuges, working together perfectly.

THE SPIN:
The administration declares this evidence that Bush and Cheney were correct in saying that Saddam had never given up hope [italics added] of building nuclear weapons. From "possession" to "hope" in one easy spin.

THE CLAIM:
In his State of the Union address, Bush claimed Iraq had the capacity to produce 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 25,000 liters of anthrax and 500 tons of sarin, mustard gas and VX nerve agent. He said Iraq also had 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical weapons, plus several mobile biological weapons laboratories and an active nuclear weapons development program.

THE FACTS:
Despite coalition troops combing the country, and vast reward monies offered, none of this arsenal has been uncovered.

THE SPIN:
The administration "remains confident" that something substantial will be found.