Wikipedia and intelligence disinfo?

On this day in 1998 President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, after having ceased to comply with UN weapons inspectors on October 31, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan offering to facilitate the inspections ... Read on

Aussie diplomat Richard Butler was head of the WMD inspection team (UNSCOM), and he made it clear in his 2000 book Saddam Defiant, that he and UNSCOM were told to get out of Iraq not by Hussein but by the USA (read on). Ever since then (December 16, 1998) the media and politicians have spun a lie. Now, even Wikipedia seems entangled in this extraordinarily widespread disinfo campaign:

See the Richard Butler article in Wikipedia; it rather obviously and disingenuously tries to paint Butler as a dishonourable man, while at the same time downplaying his activism against the Iraq invasion. It goes to great pains, too, to give as much of an impression as possible that Iraq had WMDs!

It is the most elaborate POV (point of view) article I have ever seen at Wikipedia in years. What is behind it? While I respect this free online encyclopaedia very much, as readers will know, it would be tremendously naive to think that intelligence agencies do not lean on it heavily, inserting false or biased information -- disinformation is the name of their game and Wikipedia is a cheap and easy way to spread the memes of the authoritarians.

See also the March 6, 2000 article, 'There They Go Again: The Washington Post's Iraq Tall Tale' on this very topic, which shows that people have been trying to dispel the disinfo far longer than I, who have only been at it for a mere thirty months. I really hope that people with more time than I will get in and dismantle and rewrite the Wikipedia article, and also I hope that my brief article UNSCOM weapons inspectors were not expelled from Iraq will be passed around the Net along with the article just mentioned, to try to rectify this false information which is now incredibly well entrenched. The falsity serves Bush's oil-neocon cabal, so that's where it was probably invented.

See also the Wilson's Almanac article Colin Powell lied to the UN ... it took more than two years, but Colin Powell said his behaviour was a "blot" on his record, and the assertions in our scoop article, disputed by so many, were finally and fully vindicated. Hey, CIA, how about a job? I'm unemployed, you know.

Tagged: unscom, disinfo, disinformation, propaganda, richard+butler, cia, iraq, war, peace, progressive, wmd, wmds