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5 février 2003 — Colin Powell présente ses preuves, ou bien ses “preuves” c’est selon, — aujourd’hui, ce soir pour nous. Il y a un étrange aspect dramatique, théâtral, dans cette présentation annoncée, commentée, pesée, étiquetée, etc, avant même d’avoir eu lieu ; et, d’autre part, un aspect manufacturier, lorsqu’on apprend (JT de la deuxième chaîne française de télévision, le 4 février à 20H00) qu’on débattait encore hier à la Maison-Blanche pour savoir quelles “preuves” seraient les bonnes, comment il faudrait les présenter, quel aspect leur donner, etc., — bref, quelles “preuves” choisir pour quel effet obtenir, comme s’il s’agit, finalement, de fabriquer cette chose qu’on appelle “preuve” selon les circonstances. Tout cela, reflet évident du temps historique.
En attendant Colin Powell, nous présentons quelques remarques inédites et/ou rappels de déclarations, et une analyse du groupe FAIR. De façon schématique :
• D’une part, quelques extraits de récentes déclarations (GW, Powell) sur les preuves.
• D’autre part, une analyse du groupe FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) sur l’emploi de certains termes à propos de l’Irak, comme celui de Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
Les extraits présentés ici ont été réunis par un de nos lecteurs. Ils étaient accompagnés du commentaire suivant, fait au lendemain du discours sur l’état de l’Union du 28 janvier :
La presse internationale dans son entièreté présente les événements, et notamment le discours sur l’état de l’Union, comme un engagement de Bush à fournir des “preuves” en février (le 5). Il ne s'agit en fait que d'un accord pour que des “données” soient déclassifiées. Ces données sont des “informations” ou des “renseignements” des services US. Il n'y a nulle part, que ce soit dans le discours de Bush ou dans la conférence de presse de Powell à Davos (deux jours avant le discours sur l' état de l'Union) le mot/l’expression “preuve”, “va prouver...”, etc.
On s'enferre dans l'approximation la plus invraisemblable compte tenu de l'enjeu. Il est même étrange de voir la presse la plus engagée aux côté des faucons favorables à une invasion de l'Irak ne pas réaliser qu'elle crée une exigence de “preuves” pour le 5 février. Si celles-ci sont inexistantes ou insuffisantes, c'est l'ensemble de cette politique et ceux qui la promeuvent — au premier rang Bush lui-même — qui verront leur crédibilité (encore) entamée.
Pratiquement rien dans le discours Bush sur l’état de l’Union. Uniquement ce passage :
« (...) Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's legal — Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups. »
Powell maintenant, dont l’intervention durant sa conférence de presse est présentée de cette façon par les services officiels : « Secretary of State Colin Powell said on January 26 that the United States has “a number of intelligence products” on Iraqi programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, and “we hope in the next week or so to make as much of this available in public as possible.” »
Voici les extraits concernant les “preuves”, de la conférence de presse Powell à Davos le 26 janvier :
« QUESTION: (...) And when I say “put it on the table'' I'm thinking of the 26 photographs Adlai Stevenson showed at the Security Council back in '62.
» SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.
» QUESTION: Is there any such thing? Can we expect anything like that? Or is it just conclusions and inferences?
» SECRETARY POWELL: I think some of them are hard conclusions. I touched on a few of them. But they really don't satisfy the public yet because we say there's a gap, but you can't see the gap, and it doesn't have the same power as if I was able to suddenly produce a building and inside the building are the missing chemicals. So I very much understand what you mean by a ''Stevenson moment.'' We talk about it a lot.
» We do have a number of intelligence products that convince us that what we are saying is correct, convince us that they are doing these things, and we hope in the next week or so to make as much of this available in public as possible. Whether there will be a ''Stevenson'' photo or ''Stevenson'' presentation that would be as persuasive as Adlai Stevenson was in 1962, that I can't answer.
» Stevenson had a much easier task, I think. I mean, all he had to prove was that there were Russian missiles in Cuba, et voila! There were Russian missiles in Cuba. And we all remember the famous exchange when the Russian Ambassador responded, ''I am not in an American court, Mr. Stevenson.'' But the fact of the matter is he was in something worse than an American court; he was in the court of public opinion and everybody could see it. I would love to have that kind of material to present, and we are seeing what we can do, what we might find in the next couple of weeks.
» QUESTION: But in a sense, you were saying that, in your speech that that kind of material is, in a sense, irrelevant because what you seemed to be saying was that we know that there were weapons there, and everybody agrees on that, and it is now up to Iraq actively to demonstrate what it has done with those weapons which undeniably were there. So you're saying that, really, he has got to produce the evidence to justify himself, which seemed a very reasonable statement when you expressed it.
» SECRETARY POWELL: I think it's very reasonable, yeah.
» QUESTION: But do you think that is the kind of position that...
» SECRETARY POWELL: I would...
» Now, what I would also love to see, love to have, but do not at the moment have, are some concrete things. You know, I'd like to have Exhibit A on the ground. Shall we say, a CNN moment? But perhaps that will... (Powell sic) »
By FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), February 4, 2003
While teams of U.N. experts scouring Iraq have yet to find any hidden caches of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, some U.S. journalists seem to have already turned up their own smoking guns. Whether out of excess zeal or simple carelessness, the media's intensive coverage of the U.N. inspections has repeatedly glided from reporting the allegation that Iraq is hiding banned weapons materials to repeating it as a statement of fact.
''The Bush administration is seeking to derail plans by the chief U.N. weapons inspector to issue another report,'' wrote the Washington Post's Colum Lynch (1/16/03), ''fearing it could delay the U.S. timetable for an early confrontation over Iraq's banned weapons programs.''
''Today Mr. Bush left it to his spokesman to answer critics who asked what precise threat Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction pose to America,'' reported NBC White House correspondent David Gregory (NBC Nightly News, 1/27/03).
Tony Blair, wrote Time's Michael Elliot (2/3/03), has declared that ''Britain's troops will fight alongside their American counterparts if Washington judges that Saddam Hussein is not making a good-faith effort to disarm Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.''
Clearly, however, it has not been demonstrated that Iraq continues to hold unconventional weapons, such as the chemical munitions it used in its war against Iran. (Iraq is barred from possessing or developing such weapons under the ceasefire agreement that ended the 1991 Gulf War.) On the contrary, the 1999 U.N. report that led to the establishment of UNMOVIC summarized the state of Iraq's disarmament this way: ''Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated.'' (The report was issued by the U.N.Security Council's disarmament panel, whose members included senior UNSCOM officials, such as its American deputy executive director, Charles Duelfer.)
Rolf Ekeus, who led UNSCOM from 1991 to 1997, agrees with that assessment: ''I would say that we felt that in all areas we have eliminated Iraq's capabilities fundamentally,'' he told a May 2000 Harvard seminar (AP, 8/16/00), adding that ''there are some question marks left.''
Iraq's failure to document its answers to those remaining ''question marks'' formed the basis of Hans Blix's critical January 27 progress report to the U.N.
But while Blix said he could not certify that all of the proscribed materials Iraq once possessed had been destroyed, neither did he find evidence that any remain. In private, some inspectors do not rule out the possibility that Iraq truly is free of banned weapons: ''We haven't found an iota of concealed material yet,'' one unnamed UNMOVIC official told Los Angeles Times Baghdad correspondent Sergei Loiko (12/31/02), who added: ''The inspector said his colleagues think it possible that Iraq really has eliminated its banned materials.''
Yet some major news outlets seem to have made up their minds to thecontrary. The Bush administration, according to CBS's John Roberts (CBS Evening News, 12/29/02), is ''threatening war against Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction,'' while Dan Rather (CBS Evening News, 1/6/03) announced that ''the CIA is being urged to make public more of its intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.''
In a piece about how the United States is winning the debate at the U.N. over Iraq, the New York Times (2/2/03) claimed that ''nobody seriously expected Mr. Hussein to lead inspectors to his stash of illegal poisons or rockets, or to let his scientists tell all.'' On January 27, CNN host Paula Zahn teased the network's upcoming live coverage of the inspectors' ''highly anticipated progress report on the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.''
Through constant repetition of phrases like ''the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,'' the media convey to the public the impression that the alleged banned weapons on which the Bush administration rests its case for war are known to exist and that the question is simply whether inspectors are skillful enough to find them. In fact, whether or not Iraq possesses banned weapons is very much an open question, one which no publicly available evidence can answer one way or the other. As they routinely do in other cases, journalists should make a habit of using the modifier ''alleged'' when referring to Iraq's alleged hidden weapons.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
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