[D66] John Kerry’s “Colin Powell moment”

[Nord]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/27/pers-a27.html

On the eve of war with Syria
John Kerry’s “Colin Powell moment”
27 August 2013

Yesterday US Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on national 
television to deliver a lying statement aimed at preparing public 
opinion for an impending US-NATO attack on Syria. It was his very own 
“Colin Powell moment.”

On February 5, 2003, Powell, then the Secretary of State in the Bush 
administration, made an infamous presentation before the United Nations. 
For two hours, armed with photos, graphs, and audio tapes, the chief 
diplomatic officer of the United States made the case for war against 
Iraq. He claimed that the evidence he presented showed that Iraq had 
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which it was about to unleash on the 
world.

The media and politicians of both parties hailed Powell’s performance, 
declaring that the former general had made an overwhelming case that 
Iraq had enormous WMD programs. Six weeks later, bombs fell on Iraq as 
the US invasion began.

Powell’s speech was a pack of lies. Not one of his claims about 
yellowcake uranium from Niger, aluminum tubes, or mobile weapons labs 
was true. At the time, the WSWS wrote that the brief for war was “a 
diplomatic charade laced with cynicism and deceit… predicated on a 
colossal lie: that the coming invasion is about Iraqi weapons of mass 
destruction and Baghdad’s supposed threat to US security and world 
peace.” And so it proved to be.

The speech ten years later by Kerry was no less dishonest, no less 
cynical. Indeed, by comparison, Powell’s presentation was a masterpiece 
of detail.

Kerry’s entire case against the Syrian regime consisted of a general 
moral denunciation of chemical weapons. Describing “gut-wrenching 
images” of casualties from the alleged chemical weapons attack on 
Ghouta, he said: “The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing 
of women and children and innocent bystanders, by chemical weapons is a 
moral obscenity.”

The United States government and its allies in Britain, France, and 
Germany are in no position to lecture the world on the “moral obscenity” 
of chemical warfare or anything else. A complete documentation of the 
war crimes and atrocities carried out by American and European 
imperialism would fill many volumes.

Washington has poisoned entire Iraqi cities with depleted uranium and 
white phosphorus. Earlier, it dropped 75 million liters of Agent 
Orange—a chemical weapon—on Vietnam, affecting millions of people. The 
US is the one country in the world that has used nuclear weapons on 
defenseless cities—not once, but twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
Together with the European imperialist powers—who pioneered the use of 
poison gas—they are collectively responsible for the deaths of millions 
of people.

While invoking the “moral obscenity” of indiscriminate killings with 
chemical weapons, the Obama administration continues to fund the 
Egyptian military junta, which over the last month has slaughtered 
thousands of unarmed protesters in the streets.

Kerry could not present a single fact, beyond his own lurid allegations, 
to justify the claim that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces 
carried out a chemical attack in Ghouta.

Instead, he said: “Our understanding of what has already happened in 
Syria is grounded in facts, informed by conscience, and guided by common 
sense … Chemical weapons were used in Syria. Moreover, we know that the 
Syrian regime maintains custody of these weapons. We know that the 
Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets.”

Such arguments prove nothing. Though Kerry preferred not to mention it, 
it is well known that US-backed opposition militias have access to 
chemical weapons and have used them. Opposition groups have posted 
YouTube videos bragging of their ability to manufacture poison gas, and 
UN officials have repeatedly stated that investigations inside Syria 
showed that opposition forces, not the Assad regime, were responsible 
for previous chemical attacks.

The CIA, which has been transformed into a heavily-armed global 
paramilitary organization, has access to such weapons and could easily 
make them available to the opposition.

Kerry’s claim that his accusations against Syria are grounded in “common 
sense” is false: common sense, applied to the situation in Syria, leads 
one precisely to the opposite conclusion.

The opposition is on the run, losing the war; their only hope is massive 
military intervention by their backers in the US, Europe, and the Middle 
East. The chemical weapons attack—previously described as a “red line” 
by the Obama administration—provides the desired pretext for this 
intervention.

In another remarkable statement, Kerry gave a back-handed acknowledgment 
that Washington does not intend to offer proof of its allegations 
against Assad. He stated, “as Ban Ki-moon said last week, the UN 
investigation will not determine who used the chemical weapons, only 
whether such weapons were used, a judgment that is already clear to the 
world.” That is to say that, regardless of what the investigation shows 
about the identity of the attackers, Washington will seize upon it as a 
pretext to attack the Syrian government.

After demanding that Syria allow “unrestricted” access to investigate 
the alleged attack, Kerry responded to the government’s acquiescence to 
this demand by declaring that it doesn’t matter anyway, since it was 
“too late to be credible.” All the demands are simply intended to pave 
the way for war. Short of opening up the country to foreign occupation, 
there is nothing the government could do to satisfy the ultimatums of US 
imperialism.

Only months after his 2003 speech on Iraq, it was clear that Powell had 
lied through his teeth. In the months ahead, Kerry, the one-time 
anti-Vietnam war protester, will also be caught up by the web of lies 
underlying the US war drive against Syria.

Alex Lantier