Damn the Truth, Full Speed Ahead: The Litany of Excuses to Attack Iraq

Another Shot in the Foot

By Charley Reese

I’ve often thought that the United States does not really need any foreign foes, since our own politicians are so adept at shooting us in the foot when it comes to really looking out for national security.

President Bush, out of deference to the Israeli lobby, happily ignored the conflict in the Middle East. A few people tried to warn him that the Arab world has changed significantly since the 1990s. Today, Arabs are served by Arab satellite television and watching the Israelis brutalizing the Palestinians was creating boiling anger not only against Israel but its accomplice, the United States. Oh, pooh on the Arab people, the administration said. Their opinions don’t count even in their own countries.

Wrong. Except for Iraq, there are dictatorships but no totalitarian governments in the Middle East. They might not follow the Anglo-Saxon form of democracy (sorry, but that’s what it is, even if most Americans today are so poorly educated they don’t know it). But they have various forms and means for consulting their people. All dictators know that there is always a line in the sand that they cannot cross without facing a rebellion. King Abdullah of Jordan, for example, sometimes disguises himself and goes out alone to see how his government is treating the people. I don’t see George Bush doing that. In Saudi Arabia, they have councils of representatives from different tribes.

So when Mr. Bush decided to attack Iraq, he was surprised to find all the Arab leaders saying that they won’t support an attack on Iraq as long as the United States continues to allow the Israelis to trample on the rights of the Palestinians. He sends the vice president overseas, and Dick Cheney gets the same message. To save face, Cheney comes back and slyly resurrects the old canard that Arab leaders say one thing in public and the opposite in private. Notice, however, that Cheney did not say that any Arab leader either said or implied that he would support an attack on Iraq in private. No, Cheney, a master of double talk—as all experienced politicians are—said that in private “they expressed concern about Saddam Hussain.” Hell, they’ve been expressing concern about him in public for years. But Cheney wanted to leave the impression that they secretly support the U.S. policy. They don’t. Neither, for that matter, do most of the European countries.

So Bush belatedly discovers the Palestinian conflict and rushes people over to end it by at least restarting the peace process. Now he’s discovering, though not yet admitting it publicly, that Israel’s idea of partnership is for the United States to do what it says while it refuses to adopt any suggestions we make. Look, here are the facts: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the day he took office that he would not negotiate a final settlement with the Palestinians. And during his entire time in office, he has refused to meet with Yasser Arafat and has engaged in a campaign to discredit Arafat and to break the spirit of the Palestinians. When the Saudi peace plan was proposed, he rejected it immediately. Israel, he said and still says, will never withdraw to the 1967 boundaries. Well, no withdrawal, no peace; no peace, no Arab cooperation with the U.S. scheme to overthrow Saddam.

We are in the beginning of payback time for our hypocritical policy of exempting Israel from every one of the ideals that we laboriously preach. Self-determination is a must for Albanians in Kosovo—not for Palestinians. Refugees have a right to return or receive compensation—but not Palestinian refugees. Countries must obey U.N. Security Council resolutions—but not Israel, which sits in defiance of more than 60. Countries that routinely violate human rights deserve sanctions—except Israel. Countries that assassinate political enemies are state sponsors of terrorism—but not Israel.

Countries must not use American-donated weapons for offensive purposes—except for Israel. People who commit war crimes must be put on trial—unless they are Israelis.

I could go on and on, for the sins against the Palestinians are practically endless. Americans are about to learn a basic truth enunciated by writer Ayn Rand: We can avoid reality, but we cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Bush is on dangerous ground. He’d better kick the Israel-first cabal out of his administration and replace it with people whose only interest is in America’s welfare.

Saddam Did Not “Gas His Own People” at Halabja

By Andrew I. Killgore

“The New York Times reported a Bush administration official who reviewed intelligence on the poison gas deaths of Kurdish civilians at Halabja in 1988 concluded that ‘there probably wasn’t an attempt by either side (Iran or Iraq) to kill the villagers, but instead they were fighting over the territory.’ He said casualties of civilians were probably closer to hundreds rather than thousands killed, as earlier reported.”—Michael Wines, New York Times, April 28, 1991

“…It seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment [of Halabja] that had actually killed the Kurds.”

—Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II and Lief R. Rosenberger of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College, Carlisle, PA (from a 1990 Pentagon report sent to Sen. Jesse Helms by Jude Wanniski)

Led by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, defense policy adviser Richard Perle and Zionist op-ed meister William Safire, America’s Israel First cabal desperately is promoting diversionary tactics on behalf of Israel. Anything goes so that the chosen state never will have to confront its horror-of-horrors—having to say yes or no to Middle East peace.

These days, the cabal’s chosen devil incarnate is Iraqi President Saddam Hussain. “Saddam gassed his own people” is one favorite refrain, repeated recently even by President George W. Bush.

If only the U.S. would attack Saddam, drive him from power, carve Iraq into three parts—and throw the whole Persian Gulf area into chaos—now, that would provide the perfect diversion. In that wartime atmosphere Israel could expel “masses” of Palestinians—as Israel’s then-minister of foreign affairs later lamented that Israel had not done when the world’s attention was diverted by China’s Tiananmen Square crisis.

The New York Times quote above demonstrates that the Saddam-gassed-his-own-people charge is false. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, in the fomenting of which the United States had a hand, was in its final year, and the two sides were fighting over Halabja. Former Time magazine correspondent Donald Neff told the Washington Report that The New York Times had all but buried the Halabja item. Nevertheless, it was there.

Nearly a decade ago, on Nov. 19, 1992, Neff wrote a letter to The Washington Post chiding it for continuing to promote the inflammatory he-gassed-his-own-people line. Not surprisingly, his letter was not published. In its fanatical support of Israel, The Post has become quite a dishonest publication.

The Iran-Iraq war, or the genesis of it, actually began in 1972, when this writer was a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Intelligence officers at the embassy assured me, although I did not believe them, that the U.S. was not encouraging and supplying militarily an ongoing Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq.

In fact, Israel, the U.S. and Iran, Israel’s new populous, non-Arab but Muslim Middle East ally, were cynically using Iraq’s Kurds to put pressure on Saddam Hussain, Iraq’s newly emerged strongman, whose profoundly evil image—one richly deserved for other heinous deeds, but not for Halabja—had not yet been perfected.

Under pressure, Saddam agreed to cede Iraq’s joint control over the Shatt al-Arab River—its only real outlet to the sea—to Iran. That goal having been achieved, the troika’s aid to the euchred Kurds ceased immediately—and Saddam’s army exacted a truly horrific vengeance against them. What happened to the Kurds should cause former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, father of the Kurdish revolt, sleepless nights, if he were able for a moment to stop thinking how clever he is.

Saddam obviously thirsted for revenge against Iran for supporting the earlier Kurdish revolt, for when Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Iran fell in 1978-1979, Saddam attacked the following year. Eight years later—with a million Iranians and Iraqis dead, and the U.S. having eventually cast its lot with Iraq to assure that Iran didn’t win—the war ended in a draw.

Yes, Saddam Hussain truly is a wicked man. Unfortunately, the United States is hardly clean handed in the Persian Gulf.

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Saddam Hussain Did Not Expel U.N. Weapons Inspectors

By Scott Ritter

As the secretary-general of the United Nations prepares to sit down once more with representatives of the Iraqi government to discuss, among other issues, the possible return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq, it is useful to reflect on the reasons such a dialogue is necessary to begin with. Weapons inspectors have not been in Iraq since mid-December 1998. Since their departure, there has been no end to the speculation as to what mischief Saddam Hussain and his scientists have been up to, with rumors running rampant about stockpiles of deadly chemical and biological agents, a resurrected nuclear weapons programs, and secret missile factories. Setting aside the technical merits (or lack thereof) for such speculation, the fear factor engendered by this rhetoric is further inflamed by a bit of popular mythology spread by those advocating confrontation with Iraq over the issue of weapons inspectors—namely, that it was Saddam Hussain who expelled the inspectors back in December 1998.

This mythology is useful since it reinforces the logical construct that Saddam wanted the inspectors removed so he could reconstitute his lethal arsenal without the inconvenience of the prying eyes of international monitors. However, like all myths, this one isn’t true. It wasn’t Saddam Hussain or the Iraqi government who gave the boot to weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). Rather, it was the United States. In the person of former President Bill Clinton, Washington ordered the inspectors removed from Iraq on the eve of Operation Desert Fox, a unilateral 72-hour aerial bombardment of Iraq conducted without the approval of, or even in consultation with, the U.N. Security Council, which—in theory at least—was the organization overseeing the work of UNSCOM.

Even this fact isn’t seen as shocking by most. The U.S., so the argument goes, was justified in ordering the UNSCOM inspectors removed for their own safety. Repeated Iraqi obstruction of the inspectors’ work, up to and including the critical denial of access to an UNSCOM inspection team trying to gain entry to an arms cache in downtown Baghdad, made the continued work of the inspection teams impossible. Iraq’s repeated flouting of its disarmament obligation, and its demonstrated unwillingness to part with its prohibited weapons, made it a menace to international peace and security that no longer could be ignored. The U.S. therefore had no choice but to bomb Iraq, destroying the very arms factories Saddam was trying to preserve.

A convincing piece of fiction, but fiction nonetheless. To begin to dismember this particular story, one needs to go back to the summer of 1996, where UNSCOM inspectors (I was the deputy of this team) were stopped outside several military barracks associated with Saddam Hussain’s security. Rolf Ekeus, the distinguished Swedish diplomat who had headed UNSCOM since 1991, flew into Baghdad to resolve the stand-off. The solution came in the form of the so-called “Modalities for the Inspection of Sensitive Sites,” which required Iraq to provide immediate access to any site designated for inspection, with the proviso that the inspection team would be limited in size to four inspectors (unless something of a proscribed nature was discovered, in which case the site was fair game for as many inspectors as deemed required).

Richard Butler and Sandy Berger mapped out a strategy regarding Iraq.

The sensitive site modalities held for over two years, until early October 1997. Ekeus had left UNSCOM that June, replaced by the Australian Richard Butler. Butler had taken an immediate dislike to the concept of sensitive site modalities, encouraged in no small part by his deputy, Charles Duelfer, a senior State Department official on secondment to UNSCOM. The U.S. had opposed the concept of inspection modalities all along, and had been looking for an excuse to get rid of them. On Oct. 1, 1997, when the Iraqis stopped an inspection team that I was heading from entering an area it deemed as presidential, Butler made a decision that further obstructions of this sort would not be tolerated.

In close consultation with Washington, Butler moved to eliminate the sensitive site modalities. When the matter was raised with Tariq Aziz during consultations in December 1997, however, the best Butler could do was to negotiate an increase in the number of inspectors allowed during the initial entry of a site, from four to whatever the chief inspector felt was necessary to do the job. These new modalities were tested in March 1998, when I led an inspection team that gained access to some of the most sensitive sites in Iraq, including the Ministry of Defense (which was entered with a team of 18 inspectors). Intervention by Kofi Annan secured inspector access to presidential sites in April 1998.

Fast forward to August 1998. The Iraqi government, displeased with what it described as Butler’s pro-U.S. bias, limited its cooperation with UNSCOM inspectors to those sites subjected to monitoring work. All other inspection activity was halted. Baghdad justified its decision by stating that inspections were being used as a front for the collection of intelligence by the United States. On Oct. 31, 1998, Iraq shut down all inspection activity inside Iraq, stating that there could be no further cooperation with UNSCOM until economic sanctions were lifted, UNSCOM brought under the full control of the Security Council, and Richard Butler removed from his position.

Precipitous Actions

On Nov. 10, 1998, acting under instructions from the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Butler ordered UNSCOM inspectors to evacuate Iraq, prompting speculation of an imminent U.S. military strike. Butler’s precipitous actions angered many in the Security Council, especially Russia and France, who felt the Council should have been consulted before such an action was taken—especially in light of the fact that the removal of the inspectors opened the door for an American attack, something many in the Council wished to avoid. In this instance, diplomacy prevailed, and UNSCOM was permitted to return to work in Iraq to carry out the full range of its inspection activities. Behind the scenes, however, loomed the ever-present threat of American military power should Iraq fail to comply.

According to U.S. government officials, on Nov. 30, 1998, Richard Butler met with Sandy Berger, the Clinton administration’s national security adviser, and the two men mapped out a strategy regarding Iraq. Berger was under pressure from the Department of Defense to bring an end to the cycle of crises regarding Iraq, which was straining U.S. military resources. The Pentagon had a window of opportunity to strike Iraq in mid-December 1998, made possible by the overlapping of military units on rotation in the Persian Gulf. After mid-December, the Pentagon warned, it would be reorganizing its military posture in the Persian Gulf to one that supported containment of Iraq, versus confrontation.

With Berger facing one last opportunity for decisive military action, Butler was instructed to organize inspection activity designed to provoke Iraq into breaking its agreement to cooperate fully with UNSCOM. Deliberately controversial inspection sites would be selected, using intelligence provided by the U.S. and Great Britain. The most provocative act, however, would be left to UNSCOM: without consulting the Security Council, and acting at the behest of the United States, Richard Butler declared that the sensitive site modalities were null and void.

During a Dec. 8, 1998 meeting with UNSCOM inspectors in Baghdad, the Iraqis were notified of the nullification of the sensitive site modalities, expressing shock at this declaration. The following day, when UNSCOM inspectors attempted to gain entry to a Ba’ath Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, the Iraqis invited them in, providing the sensitive site modalities applied. The inspectors refused, saying the modalities no longer were in effect. Iraq then denied the team access, and the inspectors were withdrawn from the site.

On Dec. 11, 1998, while inspectors still were working in Iraq, Richard Butler again met with Sandy Berger to discuss how best to frame Butler’s report to the Security Council regarding Iraq’s level of cooperation with the inspectors. Following this meeting, in which both Butler and Berger had decided that the Iraqi blockage of inspectors at the Ba’ath Party site was damning enough to justify a U.S. military strike—despite the fact that, as the two men spoke, Iraq was providing inspectors with immediate access to a series of sensitive security installations. In order to prevent an accumulation of further instances of Iraqi cooperation, Butler, acting on Berger’s advice, ordered the inspection team withdrawn from Iraq.

Berger reported the intended tone of the Butler report to President Clinton, who was at that time overseas, in Israel. Based upon this information, the president, on Sunday, Dec. 13, 1998, gave the orders for a military strike against Iraq. On Monday, in keeping with the script, Butler drafted his report to the Security Council about Iraq’s cooperation with the work of UNSCOM. According to first-hand accounts, throughout the day Butler was in continuous contact with Berger and other U.S. government officials concerning the language of the report, and made several trips to the U.S. Mission for conversations on secure phones. Once the language had been finetuned to U.S. specifications, Butler released the report to the Security Council members and the secretary-general. That evening—again under direct orders from the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and in violation of the assurances he had given France and Russia that no such action would be made without consulting the Security Council—Richard Butler ordered all UNSCOM inspectors withdrawn from Iraq.

Alarmed by Butler’s report, the Security Council convened a session on Dec. 16, 1998. While Butler was formally presenting his report to the Council, the United States, together with Great Britain, launched Operation Desert Fox. Even though the Butler report had yet to be presented to the Council for discussion, it was cited as the basis for the bombing campaign against Iraq. Over 100 targets were struck during the campaign’s 72-hour duration.

Dual Use Sites

The reason for these attacks, according to President Clinton, was to destroy Iraq’s capability to produce chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range ballistic missiles. Only a dozen or so bombed sites, however, could be described as falling into this category. All were sites considered to be dual-use in nature, meaning that they had a stated purpose which was not illegal, but also possessed certain capabilities that could be used for prohibited purposes. For this reason, UNSCOM had since 1994 monitored activity at all of these sites (and hundreds more), making sure no proscribed activity took place. UNSCOM knew in December 1998 that these sites were doing nothing that could be described as being in contravention of Iraq’s disarmament obligation. Nevertheless, they were bombed.

Most of the targets bombed during Operation Desert Fox, however, had nothing to do with weapons manufacturing. They were sites pertaining to the security of Saddam Hussain: palaces, military barracks, security installations, intelligence schools and headquarters. Almost all of these sites had been subjected to intrusive on-site inspection by UNSCOM inspectors (most of these inspections having been led by me), and their activities were well-known and certified as not being related to UNSCOM’s mandate. Citing national security concerns, Iraq had protested UNSCOM’s inspection of these sites, but the modalities for sensitive site inspections applied, and inspectors were granted access. As part of an ongoing cooperation between the CIA and UNSCOM, the information gathered during these inspections was passed to the U.S. government, which then used the data to target its bombs. The purpose of Operation Desert Fox was clear to all familiar with these sites: Saddam Hussain, not Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, was the target.

In the aftermath of Operation Desert Fox, Iraq refused to allow the return of UNSCOM inspectors, citing their close links with U.S. intelligence and the fact that UNSCOM chief Richard Butler was taking direct orders from the U.S. government. Nevertheless, Iraq now is discussing the possibility of the return of U.N. inspectors. Iraq has requested, however, that the Security Council first inform the secretary-general how the Council will prevent U.N. inspectors from being used by Washington for intelligence-gathering purposes. Baghdad also would like to know how the Council is to proceed in a fair and objective manner regarding Iraq when one of its permanent members, the United States, has as its basic policy the removal from power of Saddam Hussain, and has demonstrated its willingness to use weapons inspections as a tool for the facilitation of that policy.

The United States has blocked the Security Council from considering these, and other, relevant questions.

Scott Ritter is a former team leader of UNSCOM weapons inspectors in Iraq.