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Fake news from the heart of the Establishment

SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war

THE “official” story is that fake news is spread by extremists or foreign governments to bamboozle us. Respectable newspapers and government officials will clear it up with “truth.”

But here is one of many examples showing the opposite. It is a small part of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction (WMD) deception, which involved many “mainstream” newspapers and politicians spreading fake news to promote war.

In 1995 the Sunday Times ran a story for three consecutive issues about “a defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist” who vanished in Greece “while trying to reveal details of the secret nuclear weapons programme that president Saddam Hussein has been hiding from United Nations inspectors.” The story suggested Saddam had the scientist abducted and probably murdered in Athens.

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