Going To War
by Charlie Rease
President Bush made it quite clear in his recent State of the Union
speech that the United States is going to attack Iraq, with or
without United Nations support.
At the same time, he practiced the same kind of deceit that he
accuses Saddam Hussein of practicing. His "list" of alleged
violations is a distortion of what the arms inspectors have reported.
The international nuclear-arms inspectors have dismissed the
business about the aluminum tubing and an alleged
nuclear-weapons program. Furthermore, American analysts have
told journalists off the record that the Bush administration is
pressuring the intelligence community to "cook the books" — in
other words, to provide propaganda rather than true intelligence.
Even the former head of the U.N. inspection team, Richard Butler, a
man I don't much care for, has accused the Bush administration of
using a "flagrant" double standard against Iraq. He correctly points
out that other countries, including our allies, and the United States
have these weapons of mass destruction. He said going to war
against Iraq would be a mistake. Nobody can accuse Butler of being
soft on Iraq — Saddam Hussein hates the guy.
Once again, Bush has failed to make the case that Iraq poses an
imminent danger to the United States. His clever line about being
unwilling to trust the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is just
misleading puffery, because Bush's father, former President Bill
Clinton and George Bush himself have done just that for the past
12 years. If Saddam is so eager to supply weapons to terrorists,
why hasn't he done so? The naked fact is that Saddam has not
been tied to a single terrorist incident in the past decade. Providing
financial support to the Palestinians has nothing to do with us and
is not a threat to us.
If George Bush were honest, he would provide the intelligence
information that the rest of the world knows: to wit, that Saddam
and Osama bin Laden hate each other and have publicly
threatened each other.
He has also failed to lay the evidence out that Saddam even has
weapons of mass destruction. Remember, the inspectors don't say
that he has them; they merely say that there are discrepancies in
various reports, so that a certain number of things are
"unaccounted for." For example, Hans Blix said an Iraqi air force
document states that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped, while
the Iraqi declaration states that 19,000 were used. Thus there is a
difference of 6,000 — but it is a difference in numbers, both of
which were supplied by the Iraqi government. Perhaps the air force
did drop 13,000 bombs, and the army, in artillery shells or rockets,
fired the other 6,000. Who knows? Both numbers come from the
Iraqi government. Why believe the smaller and disbelieve the
larger?
The American people should not let Bush get away with the game
of saying "intelligence tells us" or "defectors tell us." He needs to
provide harder evidence than claims by anonymous sources if he is
going to subject the American people to all the risks and dangers
of war and prolonged occupation.
Of course, as I have said before, I don't care if Iraq does have
weapons of mass destruction. Many countries do. Deterrence works.
It worked against the Soviet Union. It has worked against Saddam
Hussein. There is simply no justification for assuming that
deterrence will not continue to work. Americans had better
understand clearly what a dangerous, provocative doctrine Bush is
proclaiming. When he says that mere possession of certain
weapons by governments he doesn't like is sufficient grounds for a
pre-emptive attack by the United States, he is in effect not just
declaring war on Iraq but on a number of countries. That is
madness |
