{"id":349152,"date":"2018-02-21T03:24:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T02:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-russian-meddling-fraud-weapons-of-mass-destruction-revisited\/"},"modified":"2018-02-21T03:24:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T02:24:32","slug":"the-russian-meddling-fraud-weapons-of-mass-destruction-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-russian-meddling-fraud-weapons-of-mass-destruction-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"The Russian meddling fraud: Weapons of mass destruction revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>The Russian meddling fraud: Weapons of mass destruction revisited<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    20 February 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>Fifteen years ago, on February 5, 2003, against the backdrop of worldwide mass demonstrations in opposition to the impending invasion of Iraq, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell argued before the United Nations that the government of Saddam Hussein was rapidly stockpiling \u201cweapons of mass destruction,\u201d which Iraq, together with Al Qaeda, was planning to use against the United States.<\/p>\n<p>In what was the climax of the Bush administration\u2019s campaign to justify war, Powell held up a model vial of anthrax, showed aerial photographs and presented detailed slides purporting to show the layout of Iraq\u2019s \u201cmobile production facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was only one problem with Powell\u2019s presentation: it was a lie from beginning to end.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Rp6WuTSTyS8?t=5s?rel=0&amp;hd=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The <em>World Socialist Web Site<\/em>, in an editorial board <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2003\/02\/powe-f06.html\">statement<\/a> published the next day, declared the brief for war \u201cthe latest act in a diplomatic charade laced with cynicism and deceit.\u201d War against Iraq, the WSWS wrote, was not about \u201cweapons of mass destruction.\u201d Rather, \u201cit is a war of colonial conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq\u2019s oil resources and the assertion of US global hegemony.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The response of the American media, and particularly its liberal wing, was very different. Powell\u2019s litany of lies was presented as the gospel truth, an unanswerable indictment of the Iraqi government.<\/p>\n<p><em>Washington Post<\/em> columnist Richard Cohen, who rushed off a column before he could have examined Powell\u2019s allegations, declared, \u201cThe evidence he presented to the United Nations\u2014some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail\u2014had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/02\/20\/pers-f20.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 The Russian meddling fraud: Weapons of mass destruction revisited 20 February 2018 Fifteen years ago, on February 5, 2003, against the backdrop of worldwide mass demonstrations in opposition to the impending invasion of Iraq, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell argued before the United Nations that the government of Saddam Hussein was rapidly stockpiling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-349152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}