US embassy cable - 03HARARE1439

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