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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Duncan Baird who started this subject3/4/2003 10:05:47 AM
From: Alighieri  Read Replies (1) of 1574761
 
Discrediting weapons inspections signals American bad faith

03/03/2003

Regarding United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq, the Bush administration is in an awkward position of its own making. Inspectors were sent back into Iraq as a result of President Bush's dramatic appeal last autumn. At the time it was considered a diplomatic coup.

Now that they are there, the administration is saying that whatever inspectors accomplish won't be enough to counter its intention to invade Iraq. This is causing many U.N. members to ask: If their work is to be dismissed, why did the Bush administration want them to return in the first place?

It's another example of war strategy created on the fly, rather than being carefully thought through. When one's own actions initiate a process as complex as international weapons inspections and begin to produce results -- even meager ones -- it seems shallow and petulant to claim the process has no meaning.

U.N. inspectors inside Iraq have found some banned missiles and are demanding they be immediately destroyed. Iraq is reluctantly agreeing to comply with help from international teams that will verify the destruction. These weapons may not be the ones the Bush administration is worried about, but their destruction cannot be discounted as an ignoble ploy. That also discredits the inspections proceeding according to rules agreed upon by the United States.

The wise response would be to congratulate the inspectors, acknowledge the missiles' destruction and refocus on finding and destroying the chemical and biological agents we suspect are still hidden.

There is growing sentiment, including among Americans, that the inspections the United States re-established should continue until it is absolutely clear that they are no longer productive.

The Bush administration is behaving like a trial lawyer who asks a witness a question without anticipating a contradictory answer. The administration is looking for a trigger to start a war. It hoped that Iraq would refuse to re-admit inspectors. Then it hoped Iraq would refuse to allow unfettered access, including to presidential palaces. Then it hoped Iraq would refuse to allow scientists to be interviewed. Then it hoped Iraq would refuse to allow its scientists to leave the country to be interviewed. None volunteered when asked.

Then it hoped that nothing would be found, proving that Iraq was hiding weapons. Then it hoped Iraq would refuse to destroy banned weapons.

This may indeed be a game, but it's a game President Bush started and now doesn't want to finish. That makes the United States look insincere at best, and bad-faith users of the United Nations at worse. That is not how American foreign policy should function.
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