The Independent (UK)
January 4, 2003

Duplicity of This Fight Against Terror

by Robert Fisk

I think I'm getting the picture. North Korea breaks all its nuclear agreements with the United States, throws out UN inspectors and sets off to make a bomb a year, and President Bush says it's "a diplomatic issue". Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of its weapons production and allows UN inspectors to roam all over the country, and--after they've found not a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids--President Bush announces that Iraq is a threat to America, has not disarmed and may have to be invaded. So that's it, then.

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[THE United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitised version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council.

The full extent of Washington's complete control over who sees what in the crucial Iraqi dossier calls into question the allegations made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that 'omissions' in the document constituted a 'material breach' of the latest UN resolution on Iraq.--James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot --"U.S. Removed 8000 Pages of Iraq Dossier," Sunday Herald, December 22, 2002]

[Sixteen veterans from the Persian Gulf War filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., against 11 chemical companies and 33 banks from throughout the world that allegedly helped Iraq construct and support its extensive chemical warfare program. . . .

These companies and banks, the suit claims, are identified in the official written Iraqi disclosures given to the U.N. weapons inspectors after the war. They essentially expose Hussein's procurement network for building his large chemical weapons arsenal, the complaint alleges. The foreign companies and banks all do business in New York. . . .

Thirty-six percent of the 581,000 retired veterans who served at the height of the gulf war have filed health government claims, while 22 percent of those filing claims either still have those health claims pending or have been denied benefits. Thomas D. Williams, "Gulf War Veterans Sue Banks, Companies," Hartford Courant, August 20, 2003]