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Dave Zweifel: Another Iraq story gets debunked
By Dave Zweifel
03/06/06 "Capital
Times" -- -- In November 2001, just two months
after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, two
high-profile U.S. journalists Chris Hedges of the New York Times and
Christopher Buchanan of PBS' "Frontline" were ushered to a meeting
in a Beirut hotel with a man identified as Jamal al-Ghurairy, an
Iraqi lieutenant general who had fled Saddam Hussein.
The high-ranking Iraqi military officer claimed he had witnessed
terrorist training camps in Iraq where Islamic militants learned how
to hijack airplanes. About 40 foreign nationals were based there at
any given time, he said.
"We were training these people to attack installations important to
the United States," he told the journalists at the meeting arranged
by the Iraqi National Congress.
Reporter Hedges and producer Buchanan found Ghurairy to be very
convincing, worried for his life and very insistent that his face
couldn't be shown on camera. He was accompanied by a well-organized
entourage.
A story appeared a couple of days later on the front page of the
Times and then "Frontline" followed with a report on public
television. The stories generated numerous editorials and op-ed
pieces and, of course, became the topic of the week on cable talk
shows.
Now, the liberal investigative magazine Mother Jones has exposed the
"general" as a fake.
"The story of Saddam training foreign fighters to hijack airplanes
was instrumental in building the case to invade Iraq," a detailed
report in the March-April issue says. "But it turns out that the
Iraqi general who told the story to the New York Times and
'Frontline' was a complete fake a low-ranking former soldier whom
Ahmed Chalabi's aides had coached to deceive the media."
The Mother Jones investigator, Jack Fairweather, was even able to
track down a Lt. Gen. Ghurairy in Iraq. He interviewed him in
Fallujah and this Ghurairy said he had never left Iraq, nor had he
ever spoken to the U.S. journalists.
According to the magazine, the Ghurairy tale was one of 108 stories
the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi, who was exiled from Iraq,
planted in the American and British media between October 2001 and
May 2002. Chalabi is the figure on whom the Bush administration
relied for much of the Iraqi intelligence about weapons of mass
destruction and Saddam's supposed connection with the 9/11
terrorists.
After the war started, the Bush neocons had a falling out with
Chalabi, discovering that much of the information he had provided
was fabricated. They also accused him of spying on the U.S. for
neighboring Iran. He has had a resurgence in Iraq, though, and is
now the deputy prime minister in the new U.S.-sponsored government
and apparently back in favor with the Bush people.
He obviously had a major role in helping sell the war to the
American people. Thanks to the deceptions, which a compliant
American press didn't uncover, some 69 percent of the American
public believed that Saddam had a role in the 9/11 attacks.
Just how hookwinked Americans were is underscored by this Mother
Jones expose.
Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times. E-mail:
dzweifel@madison.com
Published: March 6, 2006
Copyright 2006 The Capital Times
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