WMD inspectors were withdrawn, not expelled by Saddam

1998 Richard Butler (pictured), Australian diplomat and head of UNSCOM, the UN weapons inspection team withdrew the team from Iraq, to protect his staff from the air strikes that the US and UK governments were threatening. According to Butler, UNSCOM was ordered out of Iraq by the USA, not expelled by Saddam Hussein as so often asserted.

Within hours, Operation Desert Fox began: the US and UK began pre-emptively bombing Iraq – hundreds of cruise missiles raining down on the population, marking the start of strikes to punish the Baghdad government. An avalanche of US and British propaganda was published by a mostly unsuspecting world media, justifying the aggression and ignoring the destruction of Baghdad’s utilities and the deaths of many innocent civilians and service people. On ABC's This Week (September 27, 2003), Colin Powell (USA Secretary of State under George W Bush) publicly lied that the Bill Clinton administration had "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out." ...

Tagged: iraq, unscom, usa, uk, war+on+terror, wmd, disinfo, disinformation, bush