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Gulf War I disinformation

geggy

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-Pentagon lied that Iraqi forces stood at Saudi border

Before launching the Gulf War, Bush Sr. claimed that an Iraqi juggernaut was threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

The St. Petersburg Times acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, and found no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border, just empty desert.

After the war, Gen. Colin Powell admitted that there had been no massive build up. A US senior commander told Newsday after the war, "There was a great disinformation campaign surrounding this war."

-False testimony about Iraqi atrocities

Before the motion for war, members of Congress were presented with the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah. She described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die." Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited."

Nayirah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait hospital. She had been coached, along with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story, by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war.

-Pentagon lied about strength of Iraqi troops

After the war, the House Armed Services Committee issued a report on lessons learned from the Persian Gulf War. It concluded that at the start of the ground war in February, the US faced only 183,000 Iraqi troops, less than half the Pentagon estimate.

-CIA forged documents were presented to the UN Security Council

In Saddam's Bombmaker, scientist Khidhir Hamza describes a bogus story planted by the CIA in the Sunday Times on 2 April 1995. The story reported that Hamza had confirmed a secret Iraqi weapon programme, and claimed that he had been kidnapped in Greece and probably assassinated. The CIA had planted the story and documents in order to smoke him out, and it worked. Hamza contacted the US Embassy in Budapest was brought to the US.

A week later, Madeline Albright quoted the CIA-forged documents at the UN Security Council in order to prevent any relaxation of the regime of sanctions on Iraq.

-FBI planted capacitors found at Heathrow in 1990

The capacitors destined for Iraq found at Heathrow in 1990 turned out to have been planted by the FBI.
 
Perfect examples that the US govt are capable of going any lengths in creating false pretext for war.
 
Geggy:

What were Iraqi troops doing in Kuwait? Oh, that's right, they were INVADING A SOVEREIGN NATION. And the government (the LEGITIMATE government) asked the UN to get the Iraqis out. Which they did. Not JUST the US, but a coalition.

You might want to read a little history before you start with this nonsense. Even I know you're full of (rule8) and I'm not anything remotely close to an expert on this subject.
 
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Perfect examples that the US govt are capable of going any lengths in creating false pretext for war.
Bravo, did you discover that all by yourself? If you want to discuss politics, there's a whole subforum dedicated to it.
 
Damn, Geggy! If this is true, they should fire Bush Sr. as president immediately!
 
Ha! Yes, a very clever way for Bush to... Uhm... Well, he was able to spend a lot of money fighting a war... and... What exactly did he get out of it?
 
Why, if the US engaged in a disinformation campaign in the early nineties, there can only be one logical conclusion: THE GOVERNMENT BLEW UP THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE BUILDINGS! Genius!

The current administration is dishonest, that is true. But to extrapolate that to believe that they are so evil that they murdered 3,000 of its own innocent civilians? You might as well believe that Godzilla destroyed the WTC buildings, because it's about as huge a leap of faith.
 
Gulf War I was caused by the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, that part wasn't faked.

But, more importantly, after driving Iraq out of Kuwait, we left. We didn't stay in Iraq. We didn't capture Bagdad. We didn't even destroy the Republican Guard (Schwarzkopf wanted another 24 hours and Bush wouldn't give it to him). So what was the point of all that faked evidence?
 
This took my eye, geggy,


geggy said:
The capacitors destined for Iraq found at Heathrow in 1990 turned out to have been planted by the FBI.

as surely such chicanery abroad would be in the hands of the CIA, not the FBI. It seems that was right, although the chicanery was different to that which you have read:


How The Iraqis Tried to Obtain Capacitors For Nuclear Bomb Triggers In 1989.
Dennis Zogbi April 14, 2003

The first time I heard the story of Iraq’s effort to obtain capacitors for nuclear bomb triggers was at a Capacitor & Resistor Technology Symposium (CARTS) in the early 1990s.

James Kowalsky, President of CSI Technologies, who played a key role in the story, captivated the audience as he spoke.

In all likelihood, this story has been retold many times since then and has probably morphed into various forms.
Recent Events


Given the current war in Iraq, it seemed to be a timely opportunity for me to retell the story…


In 1989, a London-based distributor approached Kowalsky’s company, CSI Technologies, wishing to purchase a large volume of pulse discharge capacitors. CSI is a producer of specialty film capacitors.

The specifications, including dielectric, voltage requirements, capacitance value, specialty terminals, and single-shot usage suggested the application was defense related.

The large volume requirements were unusual (in the thousands of pieces), but the specifications spoke for themselves – the capacitors seemed to be for nuclear bomb triggers!

CSI subsequently contacted U.S. Customs and the Central Intelligence Agency, and a “sting operation” was set in motion. During this process, CSI learned that the ultimate customer of the capacitors was the University of Technology in Baghdad.

A meeting was set up in London. In attendance were CSI employees, U.S. Customs agents pretending to be CSI employees, a representative from the London distributor, and two representatives of the ultimate customer (Iraq). During the meeting, the Iraqi representatives said that the capacitors were to be used in air conditioners. That could be a legitimate reply - power film capacitors are used for motor run applications in air conditioners - however the specifications for these particular capacitors suggested otherwise. Moreover, before the meeting was over, the Iraqi’s lowered the volume of the order from thousands of pieces to just a few pieces.

CSI ultimately built the capacitors under the direction of U.S. Customs and the CIA and shipped them to London, and when the Iraqi’s took possession of them at Heathrow Airport, they were all arrested.

Epilogue

An official United Nations report includes a photograph of Saddam Hussein holding a power film capacitor in his hand in 1996. It is believed that the capacitor was manufactured in Iraq, based upon an American design. Coincidently, a similar photograph in the March 21 edition of Time Magazine
http://www.ttiinc.com/object/ME_Zogbi_20030414.html
 
-False testimony about Iraqi atrocities

Before the motion for war, members of Congress were presented with the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah. She described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die." Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited."

Nayirah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait hospital. She had been coached, along with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story, by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war.

So, exactly how does a Kuwaiti propaganda piece qualify as one of the "Perfect examples that the US govt are capable of going any lengths in creating false pretext for war."?
 
So, exactly how does a Kuwaiti propaganda piece qualify as one of the "Perfect examples that the US govt are capable of going any lengths in creating false pretext for war."?

You know, now that Horatius mentions this, I remember learning that the Kuwaiti government (in exile) had trumped up this story. I'm not sure what evidence exists that anybody in the Bush administration knew it was fake at the time.
 
Trumped up or no, the point remains that the Kuwaiti government wouldn't have BEEN in exile had Saddam not invaded Kuwait. That invasion was the cause of Gulf War I, not any US pretext.

I totally agree, I was just pointing out (yet another) CT logical inconsistency and quotemine.

When this is the best they have, and is so easily shown to be irrelevant, the rest of their conclusions can pretty safely be discarded.
 
Kuwait and US were both allies and involved in an oil business relationship. Saddam invaded kuwait because he wanted their oil. In an attempt to convince the congress and the american public, US and kuwait collarborated in propaganda campaign to sell the war. Do you think the congress and the american public would approve of sending soldiers to a war to protect and die for the oil?
 
Do you think the congress and the american public would approve of sending soldiers to a war to protect and die for the oil?
I don't see why this is in the conspiracy section of the forum, geggy. There's an open public debate now on this very subject.
 
Kuwait and US were both allies and involved in an oil business relationship. Saddam invaded kuwait because he wanted their oil. In an attempt to convince the congress and the american public, US and kuwait collarborated in propaganda campaign to sell the war. Do you think the congress and the american public would approve of sending soldiers to a war to protect and die for the oil?

geggy, I don't know hold you were in 1991 but I was 27. Everyone I knew back then, myself included, knew the war was about protecting Middle Eastern oil and NOT about liberating Kuwait from Saddam. Everyone knew Bush was filled with BS propaganda, such as the Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of their incubators. Do some research, you might even see me (I'm the cute one on the right) in a few of those NO BLOOD FOR OIL! protest pictures.

I certainly didn't approve of the war, but as I tell my foreign friends who like to hold me personally responsible for how the American government operates, "I didn't vote for Bush, he doesn't consult me before making decisions and he doesn't respond to my emails."
 

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