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Articles on this page: John Maus: The Reason for War The Politics of Oil Back from Baghdad |
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Andy Driscoll: The War Phil Steger: Reflection |
A View from
the Bridge
Many hundreds of activists have joined the Lake Street "Bridge Vigil in the last weeks. The Vigil is part of the activities of the Twin Cities Campaign to Lift Sanctions against Iraq and is in its fourth year. Wednesdays 4:30-5:30 pm (winter).
I wonder who is prepared to answer the question: if you're
all damned into
believing that Iraq harbors and was always prepared to use "weapons
of mass
destruction" (in quotes because we're dropping them ourselves
now) - why
have none of our forces been hit with any of them anywhere in
that entire
theatre of battle?
It's because they haven't had any for years as truth-tellers have been trying to persuade us for many months now. The WMD case has all along been a ruse to extract a leader from his country without invitation and without provocation. And to get at that oil. Oil prices dropped after three days of fighting, despite several oil wells being set ablaze.
The interesting thing about this war is that it's already
put the lie to any claim of Iraq threatening the security of this
or any other country. Had there been any real threat, we would
by now surely have encountered a far
more resistant and destructive force than anything they've unleashed
so far.
No. None of it was true. Nothing Bush uttered about Iraq
was true except that it is governed by a narcissistic menace,
a threat to his own people, to be sure. But, in the wake of the
war's early onset, the previous failure of
inspections to unearth the unprovable negatives leveled by the
administration and the failure of a 12-year effort to force a
rebellion, the United States stands in the eyes of the world a
hated bully - all because the country we claimed had all those
dangerous weapons has crumbled in front of our advancing columns
with token resistance.
A bully who cannot lie enough to convince wiser nations to engage this peanut country which has not been a threat to anyone since its stupid march into Kuwait 12 years ago.
As we roll over women and children with our firepower, as we destroy an ancient city for no reason whatsoever, as we shift our national paradigm to aggressor nation, know this: nothing about what we're doing deserves an ounce of patriotism. It deserves only our shame for inflicting an unnecessary holocaust on an innocent people just to ferret out a man who has embarrassed us time and again, a man we once armed with the very weapons we claim he now hides - but strangely isn't even using to defend his life and people.
It will survive as the shame of the nation for the first
half of this new century and we can only pray that a regime change
in our own polity will restore our national dignity and alliances
for a safer and secure planet
after the purge.
Peace Now. Andy Driscoll Saint Paul
Understanding the politics of oil:
The White House says that oil has nothing to do with their
desire to go to war and overthrow Saddam Hussein. I have tried
to compile some evidence that people can use to that clearly indicates
that oil has a central role in
explaining the actions of the Bush adminiswtration, allies like
France and Russia, the Iraqi opposition, and even Saddam Hussein.
--John
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Is it Oil or WMD? I. Does the US face an oil crisis? The document "Strategic Energy Policies For the 21st
Century" presented to VP Cheney in April 2001 says the central
dilemma for the US administration is that 'the American people
continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice
or inconvenience'. It targets Saddam Hussein as a threat to American
interests because of his control of Iraqi oil fields and recommends
the use of military intervention as a means to fix the US energy
crises. Neil Mackay,Sunday Herald (Scotland), October 7, 2002. When will the world run out of oil? That's the wrong question,
according to experts who say it's much more important to ask
when global oil production will reach its peak and begin to decline.
Oil production tends to accelerate, experts say, until about
half of the oil is drained from oil Individual oil fields have a production peak, and any group
of oil fields No one disputes there will be serious repercussions when global
oil Most expert analysis have put the EUR at between 1800 and
2200 billion One of the exceptions to these estimates is the U.S. Geological
Survey "The United States seeks to exagerate the world's oil
to reduce OPEC's World production will peak sometime from 2003 to 2017 with most experts predicting that it will peak this decade. When production peaks the world will face serious social and economic consequences. An AP report of January 8, 2003 staes: OPEC officials have
said the group This would seem to be a good indication that we are nearing
the world oil The only significant oil fields now in production that have
not passed their II. Is Saudi Arabia a problem for the US? The US is so dependent on Saudi oil that it ignored Saudi
funding of the Some analysts, such as Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil
official, assert III. Is Iraq oil crucial for US and UK oil companies? US and UK companies long held a three-quarter share in Iraq's
oil The dominant private companies (ExxonMobil and Chevron-Texaco
of the US, Royal Dutch-Shell and BP of Britain and the Netherlands,
TotalFinaElf of France), sell close to 29 million barrels per
day in gasoline and other oil products. But production from
fields owned by these "super-majors" came to 10.1 million
b/d in 2001, or just 35% of their total sales volume. Calculated
from OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2001(Vienna:2002) Table
77. Although these oil corporations have poured many billions
of dollars into discovering new fields outside the Middle East,
their proven reserves stood at just 44 billion barrels in 2001,
4% of the worlds total and sufficient to keep producing oil for
only another 12 years at current rates. Thus the oil-rich Middle
East, and particularly Iraq, remains key to the future of the
oil A. Iraq's oil is so coveted by the big companies because of three factors: 1) Iraq's oil is generally of high quality because it has
a low sulfer and 2) Iraq's oil is plentiful. The proven reserves of 112.5 billion barrels is 11% of the
world total but 3) Exceptionally low production costs yield a high per barrel profit. According to Oil and Gas Journal, Western oil companies estimate
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B. Estimating Profits in Iraq. Using an average price of $25 per barrel and assuming a level
of Iraqi C. Effects of U.S.-dominated Iraq on Other Oil Producer Governments A U.S. government in Baghdad - or a U.S. military occupation
government- would doubtless hand out upstream production concessions
to U.S.-UK companies that would set an important precedent in
he world oil industry, tipping the balance of power in favor
of the companies and away from the Even before Iraq had reached its full production of 8 million
barrels or The US-UK companies strongly favored the sanctions, as a means to hold their competitors at bay (and hold down excess production on the world market), but weakening sanctions in the late 1990s threatened their future prosperity. The companies are nervous but enthusiastic about Washington's war option, for it seems to be the only means left to oust their rivals and establish a dominant presence in the fabulously profitable future of Iraq oil production. Business news agency Reuters, in a story datelined December 15, 2002, put the matter bluntly when it wrote "Iraq's crude reserves, the world's second largest after Saudi Arabia, are at the center of a tug-of-war between countries hoping to grab a share of Baghdad's oil wealth once the United Nations sanctions are lifted." Because of the enormous value of oil concessions and the high "rent" that results from low-cost fields, oil concessions are rarely allocated on a purely "market" basis. The companies typically win the most lucrative concessions through their host governments' political and military power. The US-UK would find it very politically difficult to create
an indigenous post-Saddam government that would agree to a sweetheart
deal for the US-UK companies. For this reason, the US-UK have
announced that they are planning a military government that will
"purge" Iraqi politics of its Baathist and nationalist
elements and remain in power more than a year or as long as necessry.
Though the US-UK official pronouncements speak about "human
rights" and "democracy" it would appear that the
main goal of the war and None of this suggests a conspiracy or a coincidence. This
is how capitalism works. The government sees its primary role
to defend and extend American corporate interests. "For
globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty
superpower that it is....The hidden hand of the market will never
work without a hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish without
McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is
called the United States Army, Air IV. Is Iraqi oil crucial for US' s geopolitical strategy? In testimony to Congress in 1999, General Anthony C. Zinni,
Commander in chief of the US central Command, testified that
the Gulf Region, with its huge oil reserves, is a "vital
interest" of "long standing" for the United States
and that the US "must have free access to the region's resources."
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, April 13, 1999. U.S. oil consumption is expected to increase by one-third
over the next two decades. The administration's National Energy
Policy Development Group, led by Vice President Cheney, acknowledged
in a May 2001 report that U.S. oil production will fall 12% over
the next twenty years. As a result, U.S. dependence on imported
oil-which has risen from one-third in 1985 to more than half
today- is set to climb to two-thirds by 2020. The Cheney report
confirms that "by any estimation, Middle East oil producers
will remain central to world oil security." The report projects
that Persian Gulf producers alone will supply 54-67% of world
oil exports in 2020. National Energy Policy Development Group
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Bush administration officials have denied that oil is one
of the reasons The pursuit and protection of Middle Eastern oil has, of course, always been a significant factor in U.S. security policy. In 1980, then President Jimmy Carter made explicit what had long been stated informally: that any hostile effort to impede the flow of Persian Gulf oil would be regarded as an "assault on the vital interests of the United States," and, as such, would be "repelled by any means necessary, including military force." This principle, dubbed the Carter Doctrine, was later given as the reason for American intervention in the 1991 Gulf conflict and for the subsequent buildup of U.S. forces in the region. The "National Security Strategy of the United States
of America" published on September 17, 2002 asserts the
US government's intention to preserve America's supremecy as
the paramount world power. By 2020, the United States will import
65% of its energy resources. This dependancy is the Achilles
heel for American power. Unless Persian Gulf oil can be kept
under American control, our ability to remain the dominant world
power would be put into The military-diplomatic web site Stratfor.com recently published a blunt assesment of the real American interests at stake in a new Persian Gulf war. Stratfor.com has close ties to forces within the Bush administration and generally articulates its strategic outlook. The internet site cited three overriding goals: seizing control of Iraqi oil, transforming Iraq into a base for further American military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, and carrying out a bloodbath that traumatizes the Arab population and cements American-Israeli domination of the region. On eve of US war against Iraq: the political challenge of 2003, January,6, 2003. http://ww.wsws.org/articles/2003/jan2003 "Oil is much too important to be left in the hands of
the Arabs" Henry
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Reflection by Phil Steger (below)
Back from Baghdad by John
Maus
This was my first trip to Iraq and although I had seen many videos,
read books and heard accounts from people who had visited Iraq,
I was not prepared for seeing the desperate poverty and humiliation
that sanctions have imposed on the majority of the Iraqi people.
I had to confront the reality that the women and children reduced
to begging in the streets and the children dying in hospitals
and the deplorable living conditions were all because of twelve
years of the most pervasive sanctions ever placed on a country
in this century.
On our first day in Baghdad we visited the Amariyah bomb shelter
where over 400 innocent civilians, mostly women and children,
had been incinerated by two US bombs on February 13th, 1991. This
was like visiting a giant tomb. The impressions of the charred
bodies on the walls made an indelible impression on my memory.
I heard the story of the Iraqi children who had visited the shelter.
When asked for her reaction one girl said that she hoped their
military would stay strong to make sure that no one could ever
do this to them again. I couldn't help but think of the similar
reaction that the people in this country had after 9/11. It seemed
to me that , just like that Iraqi girl, many people including
the congress and the media were acting out of fear rather than
reason. I think that is extremely important for us Americans to
recognize when our leaders are using fear to manipulate us. Almost
every day we hear a reference to Saddam Hussein"s efforts
to develop weapons of mass destruction even though no one has
any evidence of this kind and Scott Ritter, who led the UNSCOM
weapon's inspection team in Iraq says that it is highly unlikely
that Iraq presents any threat to the US.
However, we did find one weapon of mass destruction that has already
been responsible for the death of many thousands of Iraqis, mostly
children and the elderly and we managed to bring a sample back
with us. This is a bottle of a biological weapon of mass destruction.
It is dirty water. Phil got it from the tap at the Al Amara hospital.
Documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency prove that, contrary
to the Geneva Convention, the US government intentionally used
sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after
the Gulf War. The US government knew the cost that civilian Iraqis,
mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. The complete
story by Thomas Nagy was published in the September 2001 Progressive
and the documents themselves can be found on the internet. There
are those who argue that as long as Saddam Hussein is in power
there must be a policy of containment which includes some form
of so called "smart sanctions". We witnessed firsthand
the the fundamental problems of sanctions of any kind. I heard
the same message at all three UN agencies that we visited, the
UNDP,UNICEF and UNOHCI. The people of Iraq have become almost
completely dependent on the food rations they receive through
the Oil for Food program. Under the Oil for Food program the money
from oil sales is deposited in a UN escrow account and used to
pay for contracts for food and other humanitarian supplies. Contracts
must be approved by a 15 member committee. The government of Iraq
is then responsible for distribution which was described as "flawless"
by the UNICEF director. I heard that Iraq had a bumper wheat crop
of 1.5 million bushels. Unfortunately no locally produced goods
are allowed under the OFF program. As a result of this program
the economy remains collapsed and cut off from the world. The
Iraqi Dinar has been devalued by 600,000 percent. It is as though
the entire country is a giant refugee camp.
The Oil for Food program dwarfs any other UN program and it is
the only so called "humanitarian program" that is paid
for entirely by the country it is supposed to benefit. The food
distribution entails some 410,000 metric tons per month. This
is about 100 times the amount of the entire World Food Program.
Carel de Rooy, UNICEF Iraq Country Director has recently warned
of the "nightmare scenario" that could emerge if the
monthly food basket that is distributed to all Iraqi families
is interrupted. Without rapid intervention, chaos, malnutrition
and even famine could result.
Wherever we visited I could see the results of this program. At
the hospitals I saw children suffering from treatable diseases
caused by bad water because there is a lack of funds to rebuild
the water system. Infant mortality today is 107 per thousand live
births as compared to 47 at the end of the eighties. Under five
mortality is 131 per thousand, compared to 56 a decade ago. This
translates into about five thousand children a month who die because
of the sanctions. A hospital director said that before theGulf
War the mortality rate for childhood leukemias was 20%. Now it
is 90 to 95% because of lack of medicines and hospital equipment.
One angry mother said "what crime have these children done
to deserve this punishment?"
The almost total lack of investment and a real money economy has
resulted in an unemployment rate that hovers around 60%. A school
teacher's salary has fallen to about $5 a month. Children have
resorted to begging or selling small items on the street to help
support their families. We met Paiman, a smiling thirteen year
old girl selling chiclets. Ramzi, one of our tour leaders, told
us that she was the only support for her family and that she had
been jailed three times for begging. The educational system has
deteriorated to the point where many families are unwilling to
send their children to schools that are unfit for education. There
is a reported attitude that people no longer view education as
useful or necessary , given the number of highly qualified graduates
driving taxis or working odd jobs. Sytar, the wonderful man who
drove for us, was an engineer.
Despite all the hardships, the Iraqi people welcomed us with their
generous hospitality wherever we went. They would always insist
on fixing tea for us which they shared from their rations. Would
Americans be as hospitable if the situation were reversed?
According to UNICEF's 2002 report the sanctions are not only ineffective,
they violate the rights of children. "The past decade has
witnessed the emergence of a large body of wasted, stunted and
impoverished children in violation of the right to life and survival."
I would suggest that instead of the kind of "regime change"
that the administration proposes we need to change from a "sanctions
regime" to a "reinvestment and rebuilding regime."
Iraq needs massive investment to rebuild its industry, its power
grids and its schools and it needs cash in hand to pay for its
engineers, doctors and teachers. The people of Iraq need to be
empowered in order to successfully initiate any change in their
government. Our country was founded on "self determination".
We owe Iraqis the same opportunity for "self determination".
I would like to comment on the threat of Saddam Hussein and WMD.
I believe that Saddam is a brutal dictator and I believe the people
of Iraq and the world would be better off without him. At the
same time I do not intend to demonize the US, but only speak the
truth as I see it. The question should be asked: Why is Saddam
such a threat today but not last year or in 1990?
Despite reports that Iraq was using Chemical weapons against Iran,
the Reagan administration aggressively pursued expanded arms sales
to Iraq, whilst at the same time covertly supplying arms to Iraq's
adversary,Iran, in what was later exposed as the "Iran-Contra
Scandal". After Iraq launched a chemical attack against the
Kurdish town of Halabja, killing over 4,000 residents, the US
Senate voted to cut off all financial assistance toIraq. But officials
lobbying for the Reagan administration killed the bill in the
house and US arms sales to Iraq continued right down to the invasion
of Kuwait. The Bush administration approved $4.8 million worth
of advanced technology products between July 18 and August 1,
1991. Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons during the
Gulf conflict but a 1994 Senate subcommittee hearing revealed
that US based corporations had been key suppliers of the toxins
and spores Iraq had used to build up its chemical and biological
arsenal. By 1998, after the most comprehensive weapons inspection
program in modern history, UNSCOM arms inspectors reported that
Iraq was "qualitatively disarmed". Iraq was demanding
that sanctions be lifted and most of the governments in the UN
favored lifting sanctions. On December 12, 1998 Clinton withdrew
the weapons inspectors on the pretext that Iraq was not "fully
cooperating". Clinton then argued that the US had no choice
but to bomb Iraq because it was blocking meaningful inspections.
In fact, the United Nations Special Commission-UNSCOM- cited only
five "obstructions" to the 423 inspections conducted
between Nov 18-Dec 12, 1998. One was a 45 minute delay before
allowing access . Another was Iraq's rebuff to a demand by a US
inspector that she be able to interview all the undergraduate
students in Baghdad University Science Department. Two other cases
had to do a request to inspect establishments on Friday which
is the Muslim holy day. Since the establishments were closed Iraq
asserted that the inspections must be held another day or that
an Iraqi official would accompany the inspectors-in accordance
with an agreement between UNSCOM regarding Friday inspections.
Beween Dec16-19, 1998, US and British warplanes dropped more than
1,000 missles and and bombs on Iraq. Two weeks later officials
publicly admitted that the weapons inspectors were intelligence
agents who provided Pentagon bombing planners with bombing coordinates.
(New York Times, Jan. 7,1999)
BACK TO TOP
Reflection:
the moral debate over war by
Phil Steger
There is a debate over whether to go to war on Iraq. It is a debate that is starting to bring out the brilliant, tactical thinking, and shrewd, political thinking of some of the best, most powerful minds in the U.S. and the world. But none of this thinking demands as much from the heart and mind, or tests the will as much as the moral thinking that is being done, and that needs to be done, around this monumental and seemingly immovable problem; a problem that ties together war, famine, sanctions, starvation, repression, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, civil war and the potential for a clash of civilizations that could spill over every border into a knot with no discernible ends.
The stakes are extraordinarily high. Iraq, a country singularly rich in resources, history and culture, is also a tortured and violent state that has oscillated between bloody repression and bloody revolution since its was cookie-cuttered into a nation by the British after World War I. The one ruler who rose to bring stability to the internal struggles of this artificially and externally manufactured nation and to bring an impressive and even enviable standard of living to most of those within the country, did so through jaw-dropping violence, cruelty and cold, calculated murder; and he did so while seeking weapons of mass destruction in order to back his foreign policy with the same, cold threat of annihilation that backs his domestic policy.
At the time this ruler was in ascendancy, after he assassinated his own predecessors and oversaw the executions of thousands and thousands of potential rivals, he found himself courted by every Western industrial democracy in the world, the strongest and coziest of which was the United States. Every arms exporter, oil importer in the world wooed him, going nearly so far as to carry his books home from school. Russia, China, England, France, Germany and the United States helped this man knit together dreadful delivery systems of mass death chemical, biological and nuclear. The beacon of freedom and democracy shone that light in the eyes of its own citizens to blind them to their new ally's use of some of these upon children, women and men in Iran, and civilians in his own country. It fed arms and weaponry to both sides in a war that lasted nearly ten years and consumed more than 900,000 lives, carefully weighing its aid so as not to give one side too much and so draw this apocalyptic war to too-soon an end.
Jubilant after having won this war, largely as a result of his willingness to use mustard gas against just about anybody, and feeling he had the whole world on his side, or at least the most powerful nation in the world, the Iraqi ruler indicated that he was going to give freer reign to his ambitions and told the US ambassador to his country that he was going to invade the Kingdom of Kuwait. The ambassador said, essentially, "Who cares? That's your business." He stroked his mustache and proceeded with his plans.
Then all hell broke loose for him and for the 23 million people in his country whose political freedoms under a ruler with such power were reduced to, "Be quiet and obey, or die." In 100 days, the United States led a coalition force that demolished from the air practically every electrical station, sewage treatment and water purification center in the country, and just about every neighborhood they stood in or near. They obliterated the Iraqi army in battles US pilots likened to, "shooting fish in a barrel". They used 390 tons of weapons made from radioactive, nuclear waste that disintegrated tanks and bodies and spread tons of radioactive particles over the entire southern part of the country, particles that entered the blood, bones and placenta of those that survived the bombardment. And meanwhile, all imports of equipments, medicines and foods were shut off; the oil that provided the revenue for paying the technicians, doctors and engineers, that paid for the ball bearings, gears and pumps that cleaned the water, removed the sewage, cooled the home, ran the respirators was plugged up and made to sit in the ground.
And the children died. A medical research team from Harvard University published a report in the New England Journal of Medicine that presented sound reasons to believe that in the six months after Operation: Desert Storm, over 46,000 children under the age of five died from dehydration and diarrhea as a direct result of the loss of drinkable water that the airstrikes caused. Follow-up investigations by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in 1994 and 1995, and by UNICEF in 1997, supported not only these claims, but provided additional evidence that the causes of those deaths continued unameliorated, knocking down as many as 5000 children every month, before, or just after, they had learned to walk.
And while the country's children, its economy, its culture, its development were bled to death bit by bit, the people of power sat by in Washington and Baghdad with eyes narrowed and jaws clenched to the death of so many kids, each absolutely entrenched in the conviction cynical or naïve that they were not responsible for these deaths, their enemy was. And so it has continued to this very moment.
For the US, the debate has always been about weapons of mass destruction. Saddam has had them. He has used them. He may have them still. He is trying to get more of them. He will use them against the US, our allies or our interests, if he gets them. Or, at least, his very possession of them will give him a power in the region that the free world cannot afford him to have. This has been the US's issue since the end of the Gulf War. It has been the Security Council's issue, as well. To cut into this progression and to prevent it, the Security Council, hard driven by the US, has used the combination of sanctions with weapons inspections. Resolution 687 called for the imposition of sanctions until the total elimination of all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction programs was witnessed and attested to by the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM).
Weapons inspections were intended to open up the dark, dirty basements in which the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and its programs were being hidden and developed. Sanctions, it was believed, would inhibit, though not prevent, the Iraqi government from developing its programs further, while, ostensibly, putting pressure upon the Iraqi populace to overthrow their ruler. Inspections, though they were never totally complete, kept the Iraqi regime in a frantic game of moving and hiding the most valuable and secret of what remained of what they had, and kept them from developing anything further. Sanctions, on the other hand, applied so much pressure on the Iraqi people that they simply gave under the weight, the middle-class disappearing into poverty, and the poor simply being crushed.
Perhaps those who designed this policy thought that it actually might work. They had the formal agreement of cooperation from the Iraqi ruler, who, sensing his own destruction in the hairs on the back of his neck, both from the Allied forces and the widespread violent uprising sending up plumes of smoke from the South and North, seemed willing to sign away his own soul in order to get his gunships and Republican Guards back, along with a guarantee that he'd be left in power.
Not surprisingly, however, the Iraqi ruler sought to confound
the weapons inspections process the moment they were begun. The
Iraqi government lied about and hid the bulk of its weapons and
programs from the inspectors. Only intelligence, determination
and technical expertise on the part of the inspectors and its
director, Rolf Ekeus, moved the process of Iraqi disarmament forward.
Additionally, the ruler rebuffed continued efforts on the part
of the UN to offer humanitarian assistance to Iraqi citizens suffering
under the sanctions. The principles they cited as justification
for their refusal were sound, in principle:
1) The damage done by sanctions can only be undone by full redevelopment.
Humanitarian assistance can only put a band-aid on a body that
needs both extensive surgery and rehabilitation.
2) To accept the kind of humanitarian assistance needed to simply
stabilize the destruction of life under sanctions would require
involving the UN intimately, and unduly, in the day-to-day affairs
of a sovereign nation.
The US refused to consider the lifting of sanctions in exchange
even for full Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspections on the
grounds that a legitimate ruler, if faced by a superior force
that threatens to destroy all of the children of that ruler's
country if he doesn't step aside, or sacrifice sovereignty, would
abdicate rather than cause those deaths. In a rarefied, abstract,
and self-referencing loop of logic, both the Iraqi and the US
governments' reasoning make sense. When 5000 real children really
die every month, the logic of both sides is revealed simply as
a grotesque game of chicken with children's lives. How many can
die in front of your very eyes until you blink?
The weapons inspections component of all of this concluded in 1998 after the Iraqi government offered convincing evidence that US members of UNSCOM were delivering intelligence that they were privileged to gather under the Security Council resolution only insofar as it pertained to disarmament and that they were only to deliver to the UNSCOM itself, to the governments of Israel and the United States. The US said this was simply an effort of the Iraqi government to evade its responsibilities by muddling up its clear obligation to submit to unfettered inspections, and pressured the Security Council to withdraw its inspectors. Citing Iraqi recalcitrance, US President Clinton ordered the 1998 Operation: Desert Fox bombing that made no impact on Iraq's weapons programs, but only succeeded in doing some superficial structural damage, while killing scores of innocent civilians and ensuring that the Iraqi Government would reject any further demands to admit inspectors. One high-level inspector has even claimed that the Clinton Administration pressured the new UNSCOM director Richard Butler into ordering a confrontation with the Iraqi government in order to open the way for the Desert Fox bombing. After the bombing, the US government admitted to receiving intelligence from American weapons inspectors in violation of the Security Council inspections mandate.
And so here we are.
ACTION Letters to Congress on Middle East Peace Talking points at www.cmep.org You can reach your representative via the Capitol Switchboard, 202/224-3121 or online at www.house.gov/house/Member. You can find H.Con.Res.253 and list of cosponsors at the Library of Congress' Web site http://thomas.loc.gov/