UNSCOM inspector William Scott Ritter, Aug. 31, 1998. Link.
Of course, four years of no inspections whatsoever = we have no evidence that that friend to all, Saddam Hussein, has any of the aforementioned WMD.
And that’s a lovely Catch-22 you’ve created there. We can’t attack until we know with certainty that Iraq has WMD. And we can’t know that with certainty because Iraq has never complied with its surrender terms at the end of the Gulf War.
And that’s the reason why the U.S. is justified in doing whatever it deems necessary. That and the growing threat Iraq poses to the U.S. and its interests, that anyone with a brain can recognize, given what Iraq did in the past, and the lack of any inspections whatsoever over the past several years.
If someone is working toward these capabilities, and you give them years to do their thing, they are going to be further along in those aims. Right?
Never let common sense supercede your dislike for Bush, though.
(You can, for a change, check out the 8 or so links I provided in Avalonian’s thread.) Gee, you always liked Human Rights Watch as a source before …
August 1998?
That was before Ritter resigned from UNSCOM?
He has been sending quite different messages since that resignation, hasn’t he? link from July 2001
I think what’s happened is that Blair’s persuaded Bush to give a sop to the UN. The “with us or against us” rhetoric in Bush’s post 9-11 speechifying has merely been extended (in a speech which, by suggestion of yojimbo and concurrence by myself, was the first truly presidential performance we’ve seen from the fellow).
He implied the following: there’s a huge moral reason for doing Iraq. We’re going to do it. Agree with us or you’re irrelevant (and we’re out of here).
It’s going to happen, whatever the UN thinks. And God help the UN if it votes “no”.
Say he gets what he was asking for. Hussein complies, and lets the inspectors back. What then? There is a dichotomy between “regime change” and “enforcing UN resolutions”. We know the former is what Bush desires. Will he be satisfied with the inevitably diluted response of multilateral action? Of course not.
I’m starting to think that, since it’s inevitable, “If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly”. Mind you, remember where that got Macbeth…
BTW, I loved the expression on the Iraqi ambassador’s face when GWB read out the charges against Iraq.
Uhm, hasn’t Iraq already made ouvertures for a return of weapon inspectors? In July and this month
Why haven’t these offers been persued?
Is it because maybe those WOMD are just a pretext for invasion and we wouldn’t want to loose the last justification there is for war?
Oddly enough, this is exactly what the Better Half said not 10 minutes ago, when we were discussing this, and now here you are saying it again. Spooky, huh?
The non-return of a captured flier/hostage would play very well in Peoria, no question…
Also, I still maintain that once he’s handed the mess back to the UN, he can’t very well take it back again, like, “Well, I said you guys could handle this problem, but I don’t like the job you’re doing, so give it back to me, I’ll handle it myself…” I don’t think the the UN works like that–I think he’s going to have to work with them from now on, having handed the thing over. I don’t think the UN, or world opinion, would go for him just waltzing in and saying, “Okay, you had your turn, now move over”, especially since nobody except Tony Blair seems too keen on letting W bomb Iraq in the first place. I think the rest of the world will be delighted to say to him, “Nope, sorry, you said the UN could handle it, so why don’t we all just sit here and let the UN handle it…”
And I don’t agree that France, Germany, et al, count as “poodles”. I think they’re perfectly capable of saying “no” to George if they really want to.
I think people are overestimating how much clout the U.S. really has in the UN, seeing it (incorrectly, IMO) as nothing more than a bunch of U.S. yes-men. I think collectively they’ve got more gumption than that, and I think if George does try to take “the Iraq problem” away from them, they’ll tell him to go jump in the lake.
If the U.S. really does swing as big a stick in the UN as some people think it does, then how come it wasn’t able to muster up more votes against these Palestine resolutions? Time after time, it’s “nay” for Israel and the U.S., and “yea” for everybody else in the whole wide world. (Sometimes the U.S. abstains, leaving Israel all by its lonesome. Once Israel even abstained.) You’d think that if Uncle Sam really did have a couple of poodles on leashes, that at least France and Great Britain would have voted with him.
DDG, your wife is an extraordinarily perceptive and intelligent woman.
Its all the Security Council that counts, not the General Population.
Russia can be bought, perhaps, but it will be close, they have some strong ties to Iraq. A free hand in Georgia and with the Chechens might do it. However, Our Leader has the advantage of being able to peer into Vlad (the Impaler) Putin’s soul. Good chance of squeeking out an abstention. Expect to hear incontrovertible evidence proving Al Queda is in Chechnya quite soon.
Similar with China. Toss them Nepal, and some trade concessions, good chance for positive vote, sure bet for abstention.
Tony “the Poodle” Blair. Got him, body and soul. Yes vote.
France is prickly, stubborn, and unpredictable. Maybe yes, maybe no, who cares, as long as the previous two are nailed in place.
Vote: two yes, maybe one no, two abstention, motion is carried with majority of votes cast, cry havoc, let slip dogs of war.
“Yeeeee-haw, Uncle Dick! I’m a Leader of Men!”
Shit like this makes the Baby Jesus puke His little guts out.
Mayday, mayday, Rice-a-roni through nose, send help…
Um, yes, my husband IS extraordinarily perceptive and intelligent, thank you for noticing, Elucidator.
Anyway, but there are other members of the Security Council besides the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, and France. They’re the “permanent members” but there are 10 other members who get 2-year rotating terms.
Mauritius, Norway, Singapore, Colombia, and Ireland all have to leave on December 31, 2002, at which point I suppose five replacements will be elected, to start their terms January 1, 2003.
That leaves, to participate in the potential “Should we bomb Iraq?” debate, besides the five to-be-elected newbies, Mexico, the Syrian Arab Republic, Bulgaria, Cameroon, and Guinea, whose terms aren’t up until December 31, 2003.
So George has to get this many votes:
All it would take is one veto by either China, GB, France, or Russia, and sorry, George, no war.
China’s the one I can’t see going along with the yankee imperialist running dogs. I think it’s questionable whether we even can “toss them Nepal”, which is a very hot and trendy tourist destination recently. Don’t laugh–one Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves movie about Nepalese or Tibetan Buddhists or whatever it was can make a big difference, public opinion-wise. “What, the Bush Administration is going to hand those nice picturesque philosophical Buddhists over to the Evil Godless Communists, the ones who are blocking Google?”
Uh-uh, can’t see it.
And, they also have this:
They can always threaten to kick Iraq out. Now, I dunno how much weight that would carry with Saddam, but it seems to me that he at least likes to pretend to be the ruler of a civilized nation, and civilized nations belong to the UN.
Also, until December 31, 2002, Norway is the chairman of the Iraq/Kuwait Sanctions Committee, with Bulgaria and Mauritius as vice-chairmen. Who can tell whether they might not decide to make their voices heard? It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get out there on the world stage and strut their stuff.
Misthinking on Security Council, quite right, not as cut and dried as I supposed.
Hardly matters. I think the term is “Hobson’s Fork”?
Boiled down, his stance is: The UN must do its duty, if it does, we will have war. If the UN shall fail to do its duty, we will go it alone, and we will have war.
Its a right wing wet dream: degrade the UN, loosen US ties to the UN, and answer critics with wide eyed disingenuity “Well, we went to the UN, what more do you wimps want?”.
Plus, we get a perfectly dandy little war, can’t lose if we tried, and almost all the casualties will Iraqi civilians.
As Bismarckian realpolitik, it would do Kissinger proud. As the behavior of an honorable nation, it is repulsive.
You guys need to catch up with how fast the U.N. is rolling over. Even Egypt has said that it would support military action that had Security Council’s approval. France is on board. Russia is on board.
And if you recall, I mentioned that an American Diplomat was on his way to China on a special mission to seek Security Council backing of China.
I think the administration had this one in the bag long before this speech. Deals have been cut, backroom agreements made, and yesterday Bush said the exacft words necessary to give all the Security Council members the cover they need. And in the end, if they go along with it they are reaffirming the value of multinational governance over unilateralism, which is very much in the interest of every country which is not the United States of America.
Bush made it very clear: Vote to support the declarations you have isued, and you stay in power. You in fact grow in power and legitimacy. But if you don’t, we will essentially withdraw from the U.N., which means you get much less say in how we express our interests throughout the world.
I thought MEBuckner brought up some good points on the previous page, and I would just like to add another: that the Iraqi government’s weapons programs have a potentially destabilizing effect on the regional power balance, even if they don’t successfully develop a nuclear weapon.
I imagine that other states in the region (particularly Iran) are eyeing Iraq’s weapons programs rather nervously. It is not too far-fetched to assume that they may begin similar programs if they feel that Iraq is close to developing such a weapon. In other words, an aggressive nuclear weapons research program in one state will tend to force other states in the same direction – much like an arms race. Given Iraq’s recent history, and its apparent willingness to deploy chemical weapons even against civilian populations, it is in my opinion not unreasonable to demand extensive assurances (that is to say, on-sight inspections) from the Iraqi government to insure that it is complying with the cease-fire agreement, and with the Non-Proliferation Treaty of which it is a co-signatory (isn’t it?). If Iraq refuses, all realpolitik and other such considerations aside, it might actually be in the best interest of the region, and the international community as a whole, to initiate a pre-emptive military strike, even given the fact that such a strike would be, technically, an unprovoked attack. Saddam scares me.
In other words, this may be one of those very rare situations in which US foreign policy actually coincides with broader humanitarian and security concerns (even though it sticks in the throat to write that). I read a linked CounterPunch article I found somewhere in one of these threads; it focused on the hypocritical history of US relations to Iraq, and in particular the role Rumsfeldt has played in that history. I agreed with the article, and I think it’s important that sites like CounterPunch are around to reveal these discrepancies in US policy. But I also think we need to separate the issue of US hypocrisy in general from the issue of what should be done about SH in particular. Right-wing rhetoric in the States polarizes opinion, and in some cases tends to achieve the opposite of its intended effect. Painting Saddam as a direct threat to the US, for example, is a patent exaggeration that causes many, understandably, to reject the idea of a military strike wholesale. The left recoils because they see the war drive as a ploy of the right, instead of as a necessity.
The left here in Sweden also categorically rejects military intervention and sees it as yet another expression of US imperialism and arrogance. I find this attitude to be naive when relating to Iraqi regime. I also note that in taking this position, we lefties risk finding ourselves defending a known human-rights violating, freedom-crushing dictator so that he can, potentially, continue with his aggressive development of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
