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Cunning Runt
Location: Taking a mulligan
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by zen_tom
Good call Seaver - I'd like to see evidence of that treaty, please post a link.
Either way, considering that Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction and the US waging a war based on that issue, subsequently using them themselves, doesn't make the action any less hypocritical does it?
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Oh, please.
Google "United Nations Security Council Resolution 687."
You also might read The Harvard Salient
Quote:
The Harvard Salient
October 22, 2004
Misreporting Duelfer
Although proving no WMD's did exist, report provides verification of weapons program
By Andrew M. Trombly, Staff writer
If news headlines were the standard by which we judged truth, President Bush would be sitting in The Hague right now awaiting his war crimes trial. After all, the blurbs that appeared from the major media outlets concerning the recently released final report on Saddam’s programs for the development of weapons of mass destruction seemed to unequivocally verify the popular criticisms of the war in Iraq. “US Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms In 90’s,” blared the New York Times on October 6, while FOX News followed close behind with “No Iraq WMD’s Made After ‘91” on October 7. Before we start picketing outside the White House, though, we would do well to analyze the actual report, released by chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer and his multinational team after an exhaustive period of investigation in Iraq. In reality, Duelfer’s report provides more verification of the need for action against Saddam Hussein than it does criticism.
Before delving into the report’s content, however, let us dispense with the obvious: Duelfer and his team indeed found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Though this finding seems to confirm Saddam’s acquiescence to his international commitments, it is not as transparent as it might seem. For there are two types of disarmament, each with directly opposite intentions even as they display similar outward characteristics. The first is that in which a nation’s leadership is genuinely interested in complying with its obligations and makes every reasonable effort to do so. The second, however, is that in which the leadership is primarily concerned with assuming a deceptive facade of compliance when its true objective is to rid itself of international observation, opening the door for further procurement of weapons.
Duelfer’s report places the designs of Saddam’s regime squarely within the realm of this second variety. Indeed, the very first line of the report seems to be the report’s most significant finding: “[Saddam Hussein] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted.” Unfortunately, however, our nation seems so focused on justifying the war merely on the basis of whether or not Saddam possessed stockpiles of illicit weapons that the critical importance of this finding seems to have been overlooked.
If the war were only a Boolean matter of “weapons” or “not weapons,” then no impetus for the war would have existed in the first place. As we so often hear, North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states also have weapons of mass destruction, and many of these nations are suspected of having connections with terrorist organizations. That is deplorable, but it is also irrelevant. Many point to these examples as further evidence that Bush’s policy is misguided, but they ignore the uniqueness of Iraq’s situation. These nations did not annex their neighbors, lose a war, and agree to a cease-fire that forced them to unconditionally and absolutely abandon their weapons development programs. Iraq did.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 – the official version of the ceasefire that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War – was a solemn and significant commitment on Iraq’s part to disarm or else. (Recall that the elder George Bush selected this alternative over marching U.S. troops into Baghdad during the first Gulf War, hoping that Saddam would come to his senses.) It was not drawn up between two parties with similar security interests; rather, it was the set of terms of surrender that was mandated by the victors to the losers. Saddam played a malicious gamble when he illegally invaded Kuwait, and he lost.
The resolution demanded some very specific actions from Saddam. First and most immediately, he was required to “unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of [its weapons of mass destruction].” As we have now discovered, Saddam seems to have satisfied that end of the bargain, even if he did so covertly and deceptively. Resolution 687, however, made an additional and equally compelling demand: for Saddam to “unconditionally undertake not to use, develop, construct or acquire any [weapons of mass destruction.]” In short, the Iraqi dictator was expected to divorce himself from any and all weapons programs he was executing, irrevocably and permanently. There was no room for haggling on this issue. What is the point, after all, of forcing a vicious dictator solely to destroy his existing weapons if he is simply going to rebuild them within a few months or years?
It is this second stipulation that makes Duelfer’s report vindicate the present Administration’s perception of the security threat that Saddam’s Iraq posed. If Saddam were truly committed to obeying the terms of his cease-fire commitment, he would have absolutely abandoned his programs of weapons procurement. The report paints a very different picture of his true strategy. For example, Duelfer’s team concluded, “Based on available chemicals, infrastructure, and scientist debriefings, that Iraq at [the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion] probably had a capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard within three to six months.” Furthermore, reports Duelfer’s team, “Senior Iraqis – several of them in the Regime’s inner circle – told ISG [Duelfer’s organization] they assumed Saddam would restart a nuclear program once UN sanctions ended.” Such discoveries demonstrate Saddam Hussein’s blatant disregard for his cease-fire obligations and his persistence in pursuing options that would threaten global security.
Perhaps the scariest point to ponder, though, is how close Saddam came to blindsiding the world with his strategy of deception. Says the report, ““Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime . . . by the end of 1999.” Simply put, the world was ignoring the perpetual complaints of inhibition and obstruction from the UN inspectors in Iraq in favor of brushing the whole matter under the carpet. To those who claim that sanctions “were working” to keep Saddam at bay, consider the number of countries that remain under foreign sanctions permanently; there are none. Saddam knew that the will of the world would be drained if he temporarily placed his weapons programs in a dormant state. It was only a matter of time, and he had all the time in the world.
It took the shocking tragedy of September 11 to expunge the complacency and apathy of the 90’s from the world’s consciousness. Certainly, it is unfortunate that the path to war was laden with such inaccuracy, but much of this can be attributed to the hide-and-seek games that Saddam played with the inspectors during the last decade, culminating in the four years after the 1998 expulsion of the weapons inspectors in which the world hadn’t the faintest notion of what he was up to. Many of the surface points that the Administration presented were either exaggerated or false, an unacceptable fact with which the nation must come to terms. Surface points do not form the central justification for war, however. Instead, the main justification – which Duelfer’s report verifies – was the intolerable threat that Saddam Hussein posed to global peace. He was given more than a decade’s worth of second chances to change his ways. He refused, and regime change was the only option left.
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But still, we hear the mantra: Bush lied! Bush lied! |