Mark McCarty spent three years at UC San Diego School of Medicine before leaving to pursue a career in applied nutrition. For a number of years, he was Research Director at Nutrition 21, where he contributed to the development of organic selenium and chromium picolinate as health-promoting supplements. He is currently serving as a consultant to Pantox Laboratories and to several companies in the nutritional supplements industry, and is President of NutriGuard Research, of which he was a cofounder. At present, his chief research focus is management type 2 diabetes and obesity, for which he is developing a novel therapeutic strategy known as "hepatothermic therapy". He is the author of over 90 articles in the MedLine-cited biomedical literature.

In addition to his work in the fields of health and nutrition, McCarty is also an outspoken social activist. Several of his recent essays are reproduced below:

Colin Powell's talk to the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Crying Wolfowitz

Into the Fiery Furnace

Memo: Powell Talk to CSIS, March 6, 2003

by Mark F. McCarty, mccarty@pantox.com

The recent talk by Colin Powell to the Center for Strategic and International Studies proved to be the mélange of lies, and of unverified claims by questionable "humint", that one would expect in light of his recent presentation to the UN Security Council. Here are a few points that strike me:

• "…[Saddam] caused them to leave in 1998" Powell repeats the traditional canard that Saddam kicked UNSCOM out in 1998. In fact, they were withdrawn on orders of President Clinton, so that Iraq could be bombed for 72 hours by the U.S. and British.
• "No one has seriously claimed that Iraq provided a currently accurate, full and complete declaration on December 8th when they met the 30-day schedule. No one has stood up to defend them." In fact, Blix has noted that, aside from finding a handful of empty ammo shells, UNMOVIC has so far found nothing that contradicted Iraq's declaration.
• The declaration "repeated the biggest lie of all, the claim that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction." If in fact Iraq has such weapons, Powell has presented no verifiable evidence to demonstrate this.
• "In 1995 or thereabouts, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who knew a lot, defected, and he spilled the beans. He let it be known that the Iraqi regime had VX gas." This is an outright lie. Hussein Kamel indicated that Iraq had manufactured some weaponized VX gas prior to the Gulf War. Kamel also indicated - as has recently come out - that this VX was destroyed unilaterally and surreptitiously by Iraq in 1991.
• "In its voluminous declaration of December 8th, Iraq flatly stated that it had no such missiles." Another bald lie. Iraq's declaration forthrightly noted that the al Samoud missiles had exceeded the 150 km limit in some of its test firings.
• "They were clearly trying to upgun these missiles so that they would go far beyond their prohibited range." In fact, a minority of test flights went no more than about 20% beyond the permissible range - when launched without a payload or guidance system. The functional significance of such a violation is obscure, and it is extremely hyperbolic to claim that the Iraqis were attempting to go "far beyond their prohibited range." Characteristically, Powell does not tell us how trivial their violation was.
• Powell then makes a number of unverified statements derived from "human intelligence". He claims that Iraq is hiding some of its al Samouds, and intends to re-initiate production of the missiles. (Produced in subterranean caverns by gnomes, perhaps?) He states that "the Iraqi regime is still moving weapons of mass destruction materials around the country to avoid detection." He states that "the Iraqi Intelligence Service transported chemical and biological agents to areas far away from Baghdad, near the Syrian and Turkish borders, in order to conceal them…" He indicates that, in early February, "the Iraqis were moving prohibited materials every 12 to 24 hours", and that, now that U-2 overflights threatened to spoil that game, "Iraq was transferring banned materials in old vehicles and placing them in poor, working class neighborhoods outside the capital." He states that "senior Iraqi officials continue to admit in private what they continue to deny in public, that Iraq does, indeed, possess weapons of mass destruction." We are informed that "Saddam Hussein has issued new guidance to key officials saying everything possible must be done to avoid discovery of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." Furthermore, "Iraqi security officials have required scientists who have been invited to interviews with the inspectors to wear concealed recording devices." Powell presents not a shred of verifiable evidence to back up any of these claims of "human intelligence", nor does he give us any details regarding who has made these statements, or what their level of credibility might be. If these informers know so much, it's surprising that intelligence tips provided by the U.S. to UNMOVIC were recently characterized as "garbage after garbage after garbage" by one inspector.
• "But unfortunately, the inspection effort isn't working. Why? Because it was never intended to work under these kinds of hostile circumstances." How about the alternative possibility that it "isn't working" because there is nothing left to find? UNSCOM inspectors during the 1990s founds thousands off tons of chemical weapons, without any great effort by the Iraqis to be proactive. In fact, UNMOVIC inspectors state that the Iraqis seem to be more cooperative this time than during the prior inspection regime.
• "Consider what could happen if Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who has no scruples and no mercies, concludes that the governments of the world will not condone military action under any circumstances, even as a last resort, as at least one member of the Security Council feels?" What straw man is this? Even the supposedly dovish French have made it clear that the military option is open if Iraq proves highly uncooperative.
• "Dismantling terrorist networks with nodes in Iraq would also be a priority." In fact, the documented "terrorist nodes" in Iraq are in northern Iraq, under the protection of the no-fly zones. Where are the "terrorist nodes" in Saddam's Iraq?
• "Saddam's Iraq is Exhibit A of the grave and growing danger that an outlaw regime can supply terrorists with the means to kill on a massive scale." In fact, there is no credible evidence that Saddam has ever intended to work with terrorists in this way. One could level such charges against any of a dozen or more countries who possess chemical or biological weapons, in the event that we decided we didn't trust them. The anthrax used in the U.S. terrorist episode appears to have come from U.S. military labs.
• "The one thing that [members of the Security Council] all agree on is that there is no doubt that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and the capability to develop them, or else I don't think we would have gotten a 15-0 vote [on Resolution 1441]." That's a whopper. The U.S. strong-armed the members of the Security Council into supporting the rather draconian Resolution 1441 because they realized this resolution was probably the only feasible way to prevent the U.S. and Britain from plunging headlong into a unilateral invasion of Iraq. In fact, at least several key member of the Council harbor doubts about the continued existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Thus, in their joint Memorandum to the Security Council of February 24th, France, Russia and Germany state: "While suspicions remain, no evidence has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field." Furthermore, Hans Blix has several times, in his reports to the Council, indicated that he has no conclusive evidence that Iraq either does or does not possess such weapons.
• "[Saddam] has not demonstrated a willingness to answer the questions that have been out there for so many, so many years." In fact, recent excavations by the Iraq represent a good faith effort to document their longtime contention that they destroyed their biological weapons and VX back in 1991.

The crux of the matter is this - if there were indeed airtight, verifiable evidence available to the world community that Saddam was now hiding a substantial inventory of viable chemical or biological weapons that did indeed pose a grave threat to the world - that Saddam was, in effect, spitting in the face of the UN - then Powell's contention that Saddam is incorrigible and undeserving of further inspection efforts would be not unreasonable. In fact, there presently is no such evidence. Between 1995 and 1998 UNSCOM was unable to uncover any further chem/bio weapons, despite an intense effort. In the several months that UNMOVIC has now worked in Iraq, presumably with access to the best intelligence that the U.S. and Britain can provide, nothing worrisome has come to light other than a handful of undeclared empty ammo shells. The failure of the vaunted "humanint" relied on by Powell in his talks to guide the inspectors to any suspicious findings at all should raise some doubts in the minds of reasonable people regarding the credibility of the informers on whom Powell relies. And the fact that Powell himself frequently resorts to lies and distortions in his presentations does not speak well of his own credibility on these issues.

Crying Wolfowitz

by Mark F. McCarty, mccarty@pantox.com

How many Americans know that, since 1995, UN inspections have failed to uncover a single chemical or biological weapon in Iraq? I would bet that if you quizzed Americans on the truth or falsity of this absolutely valid statement, not one in ten would acknowledge it as true.

And yet the Bush administration expects us to believe that Iraq is sitting on a vast horde of horrible illegal weapons that makes their Al Samoud missile system - the most substantial armament which they overtly possess - look like "the tip of an iceberg"!

The failure of inspectors to find chem/bio weapons over the last 8 years evidently implies that all of the "human intelligence" provided by Iraqi defectors during that time - as well as any suspicions engendered by satellite surveillance - have come up absolutely dry. Not one of these "intelligence tips" has enabled anyone to find a single banned weapon in Iraq, or has pinpointed a site where such weapons were produced after UNSCOM left Iraq in 1998. As one UN inspector recently put it (off the record): the tips provided by the U.S. have been "garbage after garbage after garbage".

This is not because inspections are inherently futile. From 1991 through 1994, UNSCOM inspectors found and destroyed thousands of tons of chemical agents and weapons armed with these chemical agents. But since 1995 - nothing!

A rational person confronted with these facts might be led to two tentative conclusions:

• As of 1995, Iraq had indeed been disarmed of its "weapons of mass destruction", and
• The defectors who maintain that substantial caches of these weapons still exist in Iraq are either repeating mere rumors, are delusional, or are overtly lying.
• Of course, proponents of these defectors would maintain that the Iraqis have simply become fiendishly clever in hiding their armaments - driving them around the country in trucks, producing them in hard-to-locate mobile labs, hiding them in obscure neighborhoods or in subterranean vaults. While it is credible to claim that such tactics could be used to hide armaments, is it credible that they would be so effective that, over the last 8 years, not a single chemical or biological weapon has been found - not a single one! That would require a rather diabolical degree of cleverness, not to mention a great deal of luck.

Furthermore, if defectors have first-hand knowledge about the production or existence of these weapons - in particular, weapons allegedly produced since 1998 - why have they been unable to pinpoint a single site in Iraq where these weapons have been produced or stored? UNMOVIC has ultrasensitive techniques for detecting mere traces of chemical and biological weapons - sending in a cleaning crew a few days before inspectors arrive would be unlikely to succeed in deceiving them. If defectors have direct knowledge that weapons are being stored in underground vaults, how is it that they are unable to tip off the inspectors as to the location of a single one of these vaults? If they know that bio/chem weapons are being hidden in "poor neighborhoods", how is it that they are unable to tell us which poor neighborhood? If these weapons are being driven around in trucks - what model and make of truck?

Some defectors apparently have provided relatively detailed plans for mobile labs allegedly used to make biological weapons over the last few years. Biological weapons experts have examined these plans and concluded that, for a number of reasons, they appear to lack credibility. Furthermore, they have strongly questioned the assertion that Iraq was able to make batches of anthrax in 24-hour cycles - 36-48 hours is said to be the minimal realistic time for making meaningful quantities of anthrax. It should be noted that inspectors have been on the lookout for mobile biological weapons labs since 1995 - but, despite whatever tips they received, have never found one.

No doubt there are many rumors flying around about Iraq's alleged hidden weapons. One Iraqi scientist, speaking recently in the Philippines, noted that he had heard rumors that Iraq was now making chemical weapons underground. One gets the strong impression that administration officials may be pumping Iraqi defectors for such rumors - and then passing them off to the public as verified facts!

Of course, it is clear that some Iraqi defectors are just out and out liars. For example, one of the defectors providing "intelligence" on Iraq's mobile labs - Adnan Saeed al-Haideri - also stated that, during the last few years, he personally visited twenty sites where Iraq was making chem/bio weapons. The failure of UNMOVIC to find any sites of recent chem/bio weapons production, surely brands this "intelligence source" as a liar. Another well known notorious liar is Khidre Hamza, who has tried to pass himself off as the head of Iraq's nuclear weapons development effort, and who has maintained that Iraq currently has nuclear weapons (which are effectively hidden by being driven around Iraq in trucks - weapons in trucks seem to be an idée fixe among many defectors, quite possibly because it is next to impossible to prove such an assertion wrong). The fact that Hamza is a demonstrable liar has not prevented him from being presented to the public as an authority, as in the recent Senate hearings chaired by Joe ("I'm for Israel - period!) Biden.

The fact that "intelligence" trotted out by the Bush administration has failed to pinpoint a single suspicious finding on the ground in Iraq probably comes as no surprise to a number of veteran American intelligence analysts. Much if not most of this "intelligence" emanates from a newly created branch of the Pentagon organized by Paul Wolfowitz, acting under the authority of Donald Rumsfeld. This organization was set up soon after September 11th because traditional CIA channels of intelligence were not telling Rumsfeld what he wanted to hear; in particular, the CIA was throwing cold water on Rumsfeld's inherently absurd belief that Saddam was in league with Osama bin Laden. This new unit has mastered the art of recruiting Iraqi defectors - many of them presented and coached by the quite dubious Iraqi National Congress - and pumping them for assertions that can be used to demonize Saddam's Iraq. Many intelligence experts express grave reservations about the credibility of claims emanating from defectors who have every reason and encouragement to invent slanders against Iraq. There is a very genuine fear that, in effect, Wolfowitz is finding defectors who will tell him the lies he wants to hear - and then passing these lies to the public as fact. Or, more damningly, he may be pumping defectors for rumors which he then passes off as fact. For a more detailed analysis of these most disturbing developments, see: www.prospect.org/print/V13/22/dreyfuss.r.html, www.prospect.org/print/V13/21/dreyfuss.r.html, and www.msnbc.com/news/867733.asp?0cv=CB20.

Many thoughtful readers by now may have asked - well, what about all of the "unaccounted for" weapons which Hans Blix has discussed? In the first place, it is crucial to recognize that all of these "unaccounted for" weapons were manufactured prior to the Gulf War in 1991. Many knowledgeable experts have stated that any chemical or biological weapons made by Iraq before the Gulf War would now be so decayed as to be useless - with the exception of mustard gas, a comparatively weak and antique weapon that hardly qualifies as a "weapon of mass destruction". (In other words, any country which would use the fact that some of these weapons are "unaccounted for" as a casus belli is just looking for a pretext for war, rather than acting out of a genuine concern for the world's safety.) Secondly, the inability of Iraq to provide documentation proving and quantifying its claimed surreptitious destruction of various weapons - notably VX and biological agents - in 1991, may be a natural consequence of the fact that the purpose of destroying these weapons was to hide from the world the fact that these weapons had ever been produced; given this motivation, it is hardly likely that Iraq would have taken pains to produce documentation regarding this destruction that could later be found by inspectors. Iraq no doubt is guilty of poor record keeping - but the fact that Iraq has poor documentation regarding the production and subsequent disposition of some of its former weapons hardly proves that such weapons still exist - as Blix has repeatedly acknowledged. The fact that none of these pre-Gulf War weapons have turned up over the last 8 years is good reason to suspect that in fact none of these weapons still exist; and Iraq is now performing excavations which may well confirm their claim to have destroyed many of these weapons.

Given these facts, why is it that nearly everyone in the U.S. - not excluding most of the fervent opponents of the war now in the offing - believes that Saddam is still sitting on a large cache of banned weapons? I suspect that virtually everyone believes this because - virtually everyone believes this! Humans are a pack animal - most of us unthinkingly follow the herd. Everyone in Salem Massachusetts used to believe that witches were assaulting their town. Why? Because all the neighbors believed it. With respect to Iraq, we've been subjected to such a steady drumbeat of unverified assertions, distortions, and outright lies from administration spokesmen for so long that it is only human nature to conclude that this emperor has a most regal wardrobe! Even most people who were dubious about many or most of Powell's assertions in his presentation to the UN security council, ended up convinced that Saddam was hiding banned weapons - simply because they were overwhelmed by the number of Powell's charges. (All too many people have forgotten a basic principle of arithmetic - one hundred times nothing is still nothing!) Most people have been too intellectually lazy to investigate for themselves what Blix means when he refers to "unaccounted for" weapons - the administration encourages us to believe that these weapons necessarily still exist and are being hidden by Saddam. And it simply doesn't occur to most Americans - who instinctively prefer to trust their President - that the "human intelligence" we're being fed on a regular basis may in reality just be "garbage after garbage after garbage." Furthermore, constant assertions by politicians and their media lapdogs that Iraq must "disarm", or that we are going to war to "disarm" Iraq, of course tacitly imply that Saddam is hiding banned arms. Unfortunately, it doesn't occur to most people to ask how dropping bombs will magically cause these supposed weapons to appear, when the best efforts of weapons inspectors armed with the latest intelligence have proved futile in this regard!

One more point should be made: even if all of the "intelligence" provided by Wolfowitz and cohorts is indeed utter rubbish, this does not in itself prove that Saddam has not resumed chem/bio weapons production over the last 4 years. He would have to be almost suicidally brazen to do so, given the fact that detection of such a project would almost certainly precipitate his downfall and death. Nor is it clear why he would need such weapons, given the fact that conventional explosives do a more than adequate job of killing and maiming. But such a possibility does exist, and it is appropriate for UN inspectors to continue with highly intrusive and thorough inspections, as is their intent. If Saddam has been truthful in stating that no chem/bio weapons have been produced in Iraq since 1991, nothing but exoneration will flow from such inspections. Honorable and rational men are certainly within their rights to harbor suspicions about Saddam's activities over the last 4 years. But mere suspicions must never be considered adequate grounds for unprovoked wars of conquest - such a precedent would return international affairs to a chaotic "might makes right" basis that the UN was created to supercede.

It is not unlikely that someday there will be an international war crimes tribunal which
will look into the factors and individuals which propelled us into the illegal, brutal and potentially ruinous war of aggression upon which we are about to embark. If a U.S. President can be impeached for dissembling about a private sex act that really was nobody's business but his own, what should we do to individuals who tell outright lies - or who pass off mere rumors to the public as fact - in the service of fomenting a gross crime against humanity?

Into the Fiery Furnace

by Mark F. McCarty, mccarty@pantox.com

Contrary to the view of some pundits, America did not lose the Vietnam war because it was too wimpish to nuke Hanoi. The fundamental problem was that Americans and most Vietnamese had a fundamentally different perspective on what was happening.

Americans were told that our mission was to support a democratically-elected ally in Southeast Asia, a bastion of free enterprise under unprovoked attack by brainwashed Communist automatons. We were told that victory in this arena was absolutely vital if we were to stem a tide of godless Communist brutality that threatened to swamp the Third World.

In contrast, many Vietnamese (correctly) perceived South Vietnam as a puppet state established by the retreating French colonialists. When the government in the south refused to permit internationally mandated nationwide elections that almost certainly would have brought Ho Chi Minh to power, this view was solidified. Vietnamese peasants knew and cared little about communism per se - all that mattered to them was that communist nations had supported their wars of national liberation, while the West had backed the hated French colonialists and now backed the Vietnamese puppets installed by the French. Kicking the U.S. out of Vietnam and unifying their country was an urgent matter of national pride and dignity - a logical extension of their ultimately successful struggle against the French. Like every other self-respecting people, the Vietnamese insisted on their inalienable right to screw their own country up in their own chosen way. Since millions of Vietnamese peasants were willing to put their lives on the line to achieve this goal, they eventually prevailed as Americans could no longer stomach the mounting American death toll.

An analogous dichotomy of outlook plagues our coming involvement in Iraq. Americans have been led to believe that evil dictator Saddam Hussein is sitting on a vast horde of horrible banned weapons that pose a "gathering danger" to the world, which he perversely refuses to surrender in the face of an unequivocal U.N. mandate. We are further told that our purpose in invading Iraq is to seize and destroy these weapons, to crush Saddam's brutal regime, and to bring the blessings of democracy and economic prosperity to the long-suffering Iraqi people - in the process, helping to catalyze "a new birth of freedom" in the Middle East that ultimately will help to solve the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We expect that, after at most a few weeks of combat highlighting the technical wizardly of our unparalleled military might, the minions of Saddam who have not yet been vaporized will throw down their arms, and our brave troops will be greeted by the liberated Iraqis with fervent hosannas.

But most Iraqis don't see things this way. While the average Iraqi may privately deplore the egregious brutality with which Saddam treats perceived political opponents, and the arrogant bravado that drove him to start two catastrophic wars, he has even greater disdain for the American government, which he holds responsible for the strangling sanctions that have reduced his formerly buoyant country to a state of virtual penury. And he further perceives that whatever pitiful remnants of Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical or biological armaments still exist represent no serious threat to the world. Indeed, he strongly suspects that these armaments no longer exist, and that Iraq has been doing the best it can to cope with UN mandates. He views the feigned concern about Iraq's supposed "weapons of mass destruction" as a wholly phony pretext for an unprovoked imperialist war of conquest, the purpose of which will be to install a puppet regime in Iraq that views Israel benignly that that will acquiesce to U.S. wishes regarding the flow of Iraqi oil. More than a few Iraqis, soldiers and civilians alike, will conclude that the sovereignty and dignity of their proud nation is at stake - the nation that many consider the birthplace of civilization - and will be willing to put their lives in severe jeopardy to repel this imperialist design. They will not be fighting for Saddam, but rather for their national honor. And many will also construe their endeavor as a defense of their Moslem faith, under attack by a crusade fomented by ultra-Zionists.

Gentle reader, let's try putting the shoe on the other foot. What if powerful Iraqi hordes had just unleashed an unprovoked attack on this country, with the intent of conquering us and controlling our vast natural resources. Would you be willing to put your life on the line to protect the sovereignty and dignity of our beloved America? You needn't answer, because I know what your answer would be. Should we expect the Iraqis to display less courage and honor in defense of their homeland?

Most Americans are not particularly proficient in history. Other nations seem to have better awareness of the fact that the Age of Colonialism ended quite decisively in the last century. Throughout the world, people stood up to their imperialist masters and demanded the right to control their own destiny. Ultimately, their courage and fortitude prevailed - all of the Empires dissolved into memory.

Iraq is about the size of California, with a population of about 26 million. How many body bags will Americans tolerate as the price for our new Empire? How well will we weather the near-universal condemnation of the world community? How long will it be before we declare "victory", turn tail, and run? And how much death, destruction, starvation and disease will the Iraqis endure before they can count their honor redeemed?

You'd better buckle your seatbelts, America - it's going to be quite a ride.