In a world of information made of often negligible news, but which follow one another at the speed of light, it would be worth every now and then to return to stories of the immediate past and to wonder how they ended up.
This is a sort of newspaper-book core drilling through which it is possible to understand in depth the meaning of some events, apparently banal but which have changed the course of history.
We all remember the story of Assad's alleged chemical attacks according to which dozens of people would have been killed by the Syrian president who had practically won the war.
Now I'm not here to dwell on this episode widely denied even on this head (v.articolo); what interests me is rather to reconnect with the mother of all the hoaxes on chemical weapons.
In the collective imagination of all of us, the image of the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell remained indelible, while, during a speech to the UN Security Council, she began to shake a little phial of dubious content.
What contained that test tube in the end has never been known: bicarbonate, flour, anthrax ... And in fact it does not make much difference because apparently no one took care to verify.
Likewise, no one even bothered to check whether the statements Powell was referring to those present and second to the whole world corresponded to the truth.
The US secretary of that day decided to do all-in and nobody went to see his bluff.
To ensure a good result, the bluff must be led to the end, until exasperation. There is no compromise. You can not bluff halfway up and then tell the truth. We must be ready to expose ourselves to the worst possible risk: the risk of appearing ridiculous.
Cit. Titta Di Girolamo in "The consequences of love".
From that moment on, the lives of millions of Iraqis were no longer the same.
Contributing to the compilation of the US intelligence files on the alleged weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein and on the alleged ties of the rais with al-Quada, was in the 2001 Ahmed Chalabi (photo).
Of Shia religion, belonging to one of the most prominent families in Baghdad, Chalabi had successfully completed his studies in the USA earning a degree from MIT and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago.
He soon became an important businessman, before the 2003 war he joined the "Project for the New American Century".
His contribution to the intelligence dossier was based on the revelations of an Iraqi defector whose code name was "Curveball" which referred to chemical weapons factories set up on mobile rails.
The consequences of that dossier were soon visible to everyone.
Less noteworthy are the impressive numbers of that invasion, which today we can safely define as totally unjustified and arbitrary: 650000 victims, among civilians and soldiers, in the Iraqi population; about 4500 victims among US soldiers, which must be added about 600000 units registered as disabled; 1700 billions of dollars spent adding 590 billions of disability and health care costs to war veterans.
The question that could be asked at this point is: who tells us that it was Chalabi himself who provided the American intelligence with false evidence of weapons of mass destruction?
The answer is very simple: himself.
After being referred to by the US as the post-Saddam man, after a cover story on Time that called him the "Iraqi George Washington", Chalabi had started a slow but irreversible downward parabola that had taken him from the Bilderberg benches in the 2006 until accusation by the French intelligence to act on behalf of Iran in the 2012.
Depressed and demoralized by the rise of ISIS in his country in the 2015 he was convinced to empty the bag in a river interview given to a journalist from France 5.
At the precise request of the journalist Chalabi, he replied that he had given US intelligence names and references to build Saddam's chemical weapons dossier.
The day after that interview, Chalabi was found dead in his hotel room. The report spoke of heart attack. As soon as I received the news the French journalist picked up her papers in a hurry and jumped on the first plane to Paris.
Maybe the story of the dossier was just a taste of what Chalabi could have revealed to the foreign press about the recent history of his country; or maybe it was just a coincidence.
Even if we never know what exactly contained that little phial, as no one will tell us if Chalabi actually died of natural causes, one thing is certain today: as Tarek Aziz said the US would have invaded Iraq even if Saddam had delivered the last of the Kalashnikovs.
(photo: web / US Army)
