We all know how Iraq bit the dust, or at least we should. It was, to a large extent, the result of a "sexed up" dossier on Saddam's alleged ability to fire WMDs at the UK within 45 minutes. One of the chief architects of this, then Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) John Scarlett, has recently been honored with a Knighthood for his duplicity, I believe he said something like: 'thank you your highness, just doing my job.'

That's the short story, the longer one, with the boring details of how the great British and world public were spoon fed this BS, involves the second oldest profession in the world - intelligence agents moonlighting as journalists or vice versa - and to be honest, these guys deserve to be number one, because they really give prostitutes a bad name.

But first, here's a quick synopsis of the manure you were fed a few short years ago:

Back in December 2003, it was revealed that the origin of the 45 minute 'Iraqi death from above' story was one Lt-Col al-Dabbagh who was, he claims, head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the Iraqi desert in the lead up to the US massacre (sorry "war") in March 2003. Dabbagh said that cases containing the alleged WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of 2002.

Before we get into his claim, you should know that, in 2002, Col. Dabbagh spent quite a while spying for the Iraqi National Accord (INA) from within Iraq, and it was through this organisation that Dabbagh funneled his claims about Saddam's WMDs. The Iraqi National accord is a "London-based exile group" set up in 1990 to lobby (and the rest) for the overthrow of Saddam.

And that's it. Go back to your homes. There's nothing more to see here.

Just kidding.

Actually, the INA was established by Ayad Allawi, and since its creation has received significant funding from the CIA and MI6. You will remember (actually, you probably won't) that for a time, Allwai was the Iraqi puppet government's interim prime minister and is currently a prominent member of the Governing Council in Baghdad. He was also the "intelligence report" supremo, being responsible for some of the more unbelievable claims of the US and British governments in its campaign to convince the world that there really was ANY just reason to invade Iraq.

For example, it was Allawi that made (made: 1. to create, fabricate) the link between Saddam and "al-qaeda" when he stated that Saddam had ordered mythical 9/11 "hijacker" Mohammed Atta to be trained in Iraq in the December 15, 2003 Indian Express.

Allawi refused to disclose how and where he had obtained the document but insisted that the document was genuine. He said:
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with Al Qaeda,' Allawi said. 'But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with Al Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
Well, alright then! Just because someone is being paid by the CIA and MI6 doesn't mean it's a lie, does it? Well, yes actually.

You see, Allawi's document, supposedly written by the chief of the Iraqi intelligence service, doesn't say exactly when Atta was supposed to have actually flown to Baghdad to undergo 'Jihad' training, but the memo is dated July 1, 2001.

And right there's the minor problem, as Newsweek's Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff dared to say:
"'The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta's movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period -- making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn't begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.'"
Atta simply could not have been in Iraq at the time claimed by Allawi and his "document", because Atta was probably hanging out at the international officer's club of Maxwell USAFB in Alabama, eating pork chops, and talking with USAF officers about strippers, and his plans to fly a plane into the WTC tower.

Basically, CIA/MI6 mouthpiece Allawi was lying. I know, tell you something new. Well, did you know that Allawi is a qualified doctor? Yes indeed, he even has a certificate to prove it:
Early this year, a vivid article by one of [Allawi's] former medical school classmates, Dr Haifa al-Azawi, published in an Arabic newspaper in London, was hardly noticed, despite what it revealed of the [new Iraqi interim] Prime Minister's character and qualifications.

Describing Allawi as a "big, husky man", she wrote: "[He] carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it, terrorising the medical students." And of his medical degree, she wrote: "[It] was conferred upon him by the Baath party."
What else...let's see, according to a September 2004 edition of the Economist:
"The chairman of the council's security committee, Ayad Allawi, has begun creating a new version of the feared secret police. Iraq may well need a counter-insurgency force, but Mr Allawi's rivals accuse him of recruiting former torturers to man a new apparatus of oppression."
Yes indeedy, that'll be them thar 'Iraqi death squads' we've all been hearing so much about, the ones associated with them thar evil t'rrists 'al-Qaeder in Iraq'. Indeed, Allawi seems to know quite a bit about the type of terror tactics currently being used by "death squads" in Iraq.

In 2004, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald stated:
Since The New Yorker published its profile, there has been a raft of more troubling claims and assessments of the past and present conduct of the man (Allawi) anointed by Washington to nurture a civilised, Western-style democracy in Iraq.

A group of former CIA agents told The New York Times that in the mid-1990s the CIA had backed an Allawi campaign of car bombs and other explosive devices intended to destabilise Iraq; and a US-backed coup attempt in 1996 ended in failure after it was infiltrated by Saddam - apparently after some of the plotters had blabbed to The Washington Post.
Then there was the kidnapping of Italian humanitarian worker Simona Torretta in Baghdad in 2004:
Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as "sir".

Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam.

Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that "about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away".

And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister.
Not to forget:
US Media kills a Troubling Story that the Rest of the World Saw

"Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum- security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center...

The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the center and he did not carry a gun. But the informants told the newspaper that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence..."
So, after all that, you will be unsurprised to hear that back in 2003, Allawi confirmed that he himself had passed Col al-Dabbagh's reports on Saddam's 45 minute miracle WMDs to both British and American intelligence officers "sometime in the spring and summer of 2002".

Now, I could just leave it there, because we all know that the "45 minutes holy fiery Jihad from above" claim is utter bunk, but I really can't resist showing you just how much bunk for their buck MI6 got.

Get this:
Dabbagh said the WMDs were to be used by Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage".

In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Col al-Dabbagh said that he believed he was the source of the British Government's controversial claim, published in September last year in the intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes.

"I am the one responsible for providing this information," said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq's Governing Council.
'I swear, I am the one! Now where's my fancy office in the Green zone?'
He also insisted that the information contained in the dossier relating to Saddam's battlefield WMD capability was correct. "It is 100 per cent accurate," he said after reading the relevant passage.

The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier.
I really, REALLY LOVE this one. "The secret weapon"?? A "hand held RPG"?? Last time I checked, the distance to the UK from Iraq was slightly more than 300 meters, 300 meters being the effective range of an RPG7. So, go ahead and tell me how Saddam was going to wreak mayhem on the UK...

Didn't think so.

Col. al-Dabbagh continues:
"Forget 45 minutes," said Col al-Dabbagh "we could have fired these within half-an-hour."
Say it ain't so! I mean, 45 minutes is one thing, but half an hour?! That's not even long enough for a god-fearing Christian to make him or herself presentable to meet Jesus at Armageddon! I mean, does anyone think they're gonna get raptured in their sweats? Is there no limit to the evil of these evildoers!?
Local commanders were told that they could use the weapons only on the personal orders of Saddam. "We were told that when the war came we would only have a short time to use everything we had to defend ourselves, including the secret weapon," he said.

The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," he said.

"If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences."
"Terrible consequences" indeed! Imagine the embarrassment of Saddam's fanatical Fedayeen elite guards when they fired their 1970's-chemical-weapon-tipped RPG7s and they exploded in their faces. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq's air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. "Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons," he said.
Ok, so this was back in 2003, but today, Saddam (or someone who looks like him) has not only been caught, he has been tried, sentenced and strung up, and still no one is prepared to talk about the deadly threat that Saddam's WMDs posed to the world. I don't want to get all conspiratorial (because we all know conspiracies don't exist) but d'ya think that means that Saddam never had any WMDs? That the whole thing was concocted by CIA/MI6 and their Iraqi gofers?

While you're thinking it over, let me get back to the original point and the second oldest profession in the world.

You see, it's fine to have disgruntled, gold-digging ex-Iraqi generals to make up stories, and aspiring Iraqi politicians to relay it back to base, but how to get it under the noses of the ever willing-to-be-deceived general public?

Today, the UK Telegraph, the paper that brought us the story about ol' Dabby and the '45 minute threat', is yet again doing its part for the continuing war effort in the form of a piece by veteran UK journalist Con Coughlin, (take note of his first name, there's clue in it), entitled:

N Korea helping Iran with nuclear testing

Basically, the story is that:
"Under the terms of a new understanding between the two countries, the North Koreans have agreed to share all the data and information they received from their successful test last October with Teheran's nuclear scientists"
By which Coughlin means that those Israeli war-mongers were right all along: Iran really is on the brink of being able to rain nuclear terror of biblical proportions on the 'peace-loving' Israeli statelet. So you, the public, should be clamouring for someone to DO SOMETHNG asap!

But hang on a minute - and you can call me picky here if you like - but given that as far back as late 2000, the British Journalism Review exposed the fact that Coughlin gets many of his 'breaking stories' from his MI6 handlers, the very same crowd that procured and disseminated the 45 minute WMD nonsense, is it a good idea to just accept this one at face value? After all, as a gibbering idiot once said: 'fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice....eh....and stuff'.

What are Coughlin's sources? A high-ranking member of the North Korean or Iranian government perhaps? Well, sort of, as Coughlin states:
A senior European defence official told The Daily Telegraph that North Korea had invited a team of Iranian nuclear scientists to study the results of last October's underground test to assist Teheran's preparations to conduct its own - possibly by the end of this year.
Now I know y'all are not well-versed in 'journo-speak', so allow me to translate:

by "a senior European defence official", Coughlin means his MI6 handlers (its just he's not allowed to say), who in turn undoubtedly got their information from an Iranian version of Col al-Dabbagh, and which was passed on by the Iranian equivalent of Allawi, and personally forwarded to you, Joe Q. Public, by way of paragons of vulture like Mr. Coughlin. Of course, the exact details of the source is yet to be revealed, and you can be sure it will be; about 6 months after the US and Israeli military launch another shock and awe on the Iranian people, at which time it will be smugly announced (probably by Coughlin) that Iran had no intention of ever attacking anyone, let alone the means to do so.

In the meantime, just sit back, watch and listen as the torrent of lies and hyperbole come dripping from the fevered finger-tips of mainstream media shills for the CIA, MI6 and the Mossad. People like Con Coughlin.

Just remember not to believe a word of it.