Scott Ritter, former UN Special Commission inspector, claims that Richard Butler, former chief UN weapons inspector, "deliberately planned UN inspections in 1998 to orchestrate a confrontation between Iraq and the UN so the United States could carry out its threats to bomb Iraq." Ritter makes the allegations in a documentary film, "In Shifting Sands . . . the Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq," shown to journalists at the UN reported Ronni Berke (CNN, July 19).

Ritter's revelation should come as no surprise. The alleged pretext for bombing Iraq, was just one more act of deadly deception, by the U.S. and its allies, designed to rally the public against the "enemy." Some examples:

The annual commemoration of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, invariably includes these words from the speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." But, few Americans know, and they're seldom told, that, "The U.S. believed that war with Japan was inevitable, and that 'the United States should provoke it at a time which suited U.S. interests.' Analysts recommended an eight point plan designed to provoke a Japanese attack," according to Robert Stinnett, writing in Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. The plan included military provocations, and a recommendation to "Completely embargo all trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo by the British Empire."

The embargo was in place, and the U.S. had made several provocative military moves, at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Britain and France had their plan for taking back the Suez Canal after it was nationalized by President Nasser of Egypt on July 26, 1956. "France secretly enlisted the help of Israel," writes James Bamford in Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century. Mr.Bamford was Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and has written investigative cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

"The intrigue involved Israel launching a war against Egypt," writes Mr. Bamford. Then, once Egypt began defending itself, England and France would go in as 'peacekeepers.' As part of the 'peace,' the canal would be taken from Egypt and kept by Britain and France. Israel would capture the Sinai from Egypt." The plan was agreed to by Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, defense minister Shimon Peres, and armed forces chief Moshe Dayan, and Britain's prime minister, Anthony Eden.

Following the failed, Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 17, 1961, by 1,300 members of a CIA-supported counter-revolutionary Cuban exile force, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) drew up and approved plans for "launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba." Mr. Bamford writes:

"Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan . . . called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer [Chairman JCS] and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."

Accidents, writes Mr. Bamford, were to be used to advance U.S. interests. Had the February 20, 1962 launch of John Glenn--the first American to orbit the earth, later a U.S. presidential candidate--not been successful, the JCS were prepared to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext for war.

"The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale [U.S. general in charge of Operation Mongoose--covert operations against Cuba] that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, 'the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic].' This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, 'by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.'"

In 1963, writes Mr. Bamford, the JCS proposed secret U.S. attacks on Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. "Both were members of the British Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war against Castro."

The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, that sparked the Vietnam War, was also deliberately provoked. "Restless from a decade of peace," writes Mr. Bamford, "out of touch with reality, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were desperate for a war, any war."

In the 1960s, as Britain was dismantling its colonies, the U.S. conspired with Britain to receive secretly, gratis, and for 50 years, the Chagos Archipelago. Between 1965 and 1973, to clear the largest island in the archipelago, Diego Garcia, for a listening post for the U.S. National Security Administration, every man, woman, and child was physically removed from the islands, and placed bewildered and frightened, on the islands of Mauritius and Seychelles, wrote a British writer, Simon Winchester.

While falsely blaming their "enemies," the U.S. government, and American "free press," have covered-up for their "friends."

Three days after Israel launched its June 5, 1967, surprise attack on Egypt, it carried out a deliberate and sustained attack on the USS Liberty, with the objective of leaving no survivors.

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, in a memo dated June 8, 1997 wrote, "I am confident that Israel knew the Liberty could intercept radio messages from all parties and potential parties to the ongoing war, then in its fourth day, and that Israel was preparing to seize the Golan Heights from Syria despite President Johnson's known opposition to such a move."

Mr. Bamford describes the attack:

"Within the first few hours Israeli , jets pounded twenty-five Arab air bases ranging from Damascus in Syria to an Egyptian field loaded with bombers, far up the Nile at Luxor. Then using machine guns, mortar fire, t,anks, and air power, the Israeli war machine overtook the Jordanian section of Jerusalem as well as the west bank of the Jordan River and torpedo boats captured the key Red Sea cape of Sharm al-Sheikh."

Based on declassified transcripts of radio communications, survivor accounts, and interviews with others in the chain of command on the day ot the attack, Mr. Bamford writes:

"On the morning of June 8, the Israeli military command received a report that a large American eavesdropping ship was secretly listening only a few miles off El Arish. At that same moment, a scant dozen or so miles away, Israeli soldiers were butchering civilians and bound prisoners by the hundreds, a fact that the entire Israeli army leadership knew about and condoned, according to the army's own historian. . ..

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"At the time, Israel was loudly proclaiming--to the United States, to the United Nations, and to the world--that it was the victim of Egyptian aggression and that it alone held the moral high ground. Israel's commanders would not have wanted tape recordings of evidence of the slaughters to wind up on desks at the White House, the UN, or the Washington Post."

The Gulf War of January 16, 1991, is yet another example of U.S. deception. "Iraq's war against Iran may have cost as much as $500 billion," write Alan Geyer and Barbara G. Green in Lines in the Sand: Justice and the Gulf War. Postwar economic problems and reconstruction costs were $280 billion or more. Saddam Hussein was in a position to be manipulated.

In a July 25, 1990 meeting with U.S. ambassador April Glaspie, Saddam Hussein was informed, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Meanwhile, the U.S. encouraged Kuwait to continue its slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Ever since the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s, the U.S. had been seeking an opportunity to dominate the Middle East. Now the public had to be rallied to the "just war."

A high point of the public relations campaign against Iraq, was the testimony of a Kuwaiti refugee, before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 15, 1990, who told of Iraqi troops removing over 300 babies from incubators in Kuwait City hospital, and dumping them on the floor to die. On January 6, 1992, John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, revealed that "Nayirah," the alleged refugee, was the daughter of Saud al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and that Hill and Knowlton, a large public relations firm, had helped prepare her testimony, which she had rehearsed before video cameras in the firm's Washington office.

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Copyright 2001 Enver Masud - All Rights Reserved. An edited version of this article is scheduled to appear as a book review in the August 2001 issue of Impact International published in England.