In the process of researching the latest news regarding the Plame Affair, I came across this link to a late 2003 article. It lays out, in considerable detail, 50 false stories that were planted in the media in the lead-up to and first days of the war in Iraq.
It’s fascinating, depressing, and frightening. I remember most of the stories, but many of them I had forgotten.
This one is particularly troubling, and sheds new light on Galloway’s recent appearance before Senator Coleman’s committee:
The White House claimed that these aluminum tubes were proof that Iraq was attempting to produce nuclear weapons. US intelligence agents knew the
truth: the tubes were useless for nuclear processing.
In Britain, Labor Member of Parliament George Galloway became an open skeptic of Tony Blair’s rhetoric. In a bold attempt to avoid war, Galloway
had gone to Iraq to interview Saddam Hussein in hopes of promoting a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
Galloway’s skepticism began to gnaw away at Bush-and-Blair’s broad-brush claims that Hussein was only months away from building a nuclear bomb or that he was capable of launching a WMD attack within 45 minutes.
Galloway soon found himself under attack. Government officials leaked a packet of supposedly “classified documents” to the Daily Telegraph. The
papers, which were represented as having been seized from Iraq’s Foreign Ministry, suggested MP Galloway had accepted “payoffs” from the Iraqi
government.
At he same time, in the US, a “retired general” contacted the Christian Science Monitor on April 25, with similar documents showing that Hussein had given Galloway $10 million.
Galloway’s reputation was seriously sullied. It wasn’t until June 20, that the Monitor disclosed that the “general’s” incriminating documents were
forged. The documents released in Britain also turned out to be forgeries.
Update [2005-7-3 15:34:29 by BooMan]: Thanks to Paul Rosenberg for this link to the original article.
