MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE

UNCLAS HARARE 001439 SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/PDPA FOR DALTON, MITCHELL AND SIMS IRAQ PD FOR SMITH, PINESS AND ROOKARD NSC FOR JENDAYI FRAZER LONDON FOR GURNEY PARIS FOR NEARY NAIROBI FOR PFLAUMER E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL KPAO KMDR ZI SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE ¶1. Under headline "White House in crisis over Iraq invasion lies" the government-controlled daily "The Herald"(07/15) carried the following op-ed by Patrick Martin on page 6, in which he argues that the on-going muddle surrounding the contents of President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech regarding Iraq is "a major political crisis for the Bush administration" that could "create the conditions for a far more explosive movement of mass opposition." Excerpts: ¶2. "The admission by the White House on July 7, 2003 that Bush's State of the Union speech contained false allegations about Iraqi nuclear weapons programs has touched off a major political crisis for the Bush administration. . .Even if one were to accept the convoluted White House account of how flagrant misinformation was incorporated into the State of the Union speech, it amounts to a devastating self-indictment of the ¶U. S. Government. . .No amount of lying can conceal two facts: no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, although Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons was the principal pretext of the invasion; and the U. S. occupiers, far from being welcomed as liberators by the Iraqi people, face a combination of guerilla attacks and widespread popular hostility. The latest exposure of Bush's Iraq invasion lies is a crisis, not only for the administration, but for the entire U. S. political establishment. . .Equally culpable is the American media, which has uncritically accepted one lie after another from the White House, Pentagon and CIA, and served as a propaganda arm of the government in attempting to mobilize political support for the war on Iraq. . .Today, the gap between the Bush administration's rationale for an unprovoked war on the one hand, and the grim reality in Iraq combined with the unraveling of the administration's lies on the other, are creating the conditions for a far more explosive movement of mass opposition." SULLIVAN