Very interesting story from Die Zeit, The German Blame for the War, found via blogosphere reading. Translated by Thomas Nephew of Newsrack blog:
Die Zeit: "UN inspectors: Schroeder's peace tactics were 'crazy' "
Jeff Jarvis alerted me to this item: German reporters Jochen Bittner and Reiner Luyken recently interviewed UN weapons inspectors now cooling their heels in Larnaka, Cyprus. Their article -- "The German blame for the war" -- in this week's Die Zeit is pretty astonishing. That is, if you equate the business of disarming a bloodthirsty totalitarian dictator with the farce that Blix and certain members of the Security Council made out of it.
The following is a nearly complete translation of the article, lacking only the first paragraph of introductory atmospherics (waves breaking on the beach outside the Flamingo Hotel, inspectors watching CNN, and so forth). The inspectors could only speak anonymously, and were under "strict" orders from New York not to speak with journalists. I've added a few emphases here and there.
Could this war have been prevented? Yes, say some [inspectors]. But with a surprising argument: Germany, France and Russia made war unavoidable with their purported peace politics. Gerhard Schroeder's categorical 'no' to military deployment was simply "crazy." "We might have been able to fulfill our mandate," one hears in the hotel lobby.
When the UNMOVIC (United Nations Ongoing Monitoring and Verification) inspectors opened their headquarters on November 27 last year ... they believed Resolution 1441 was a potent tool to uncover Saddam Hussein's terror arsenal: access to all installations. Unannounced inspections, even of presidential palaces. Interviews with scientists. Absolute freedom of movement, helicopters with high-tech sensors.
The 120 inspectors noticed soon, though, that they would not reach their goal without the full cooperation of Iraqis. But they waited in vain to be approached. A warning presentation by Hans Blix on January 15 in the Security Council didn't change things. Iraq made its first concessions when Secretary of State Colin Powell presented sensational pictures, videos, and tape recordings of mobile bioweapons labs, rocket launching ramps, and munitions bunkers. And as the American threat of war became more and more clear and found more support.
The excessive surveillance of the inspectors by minders of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate (NMD), which UNMOVIC had long objected to, then dropped off. For the first time, three interviews took place with Iraqi scientists with no minders present. The Iraqis also delivered some weapons programs documents that had been demanded in vain until then.
Why no German troops?
Blix delivered a more conciliatory situation assessment on February 14. This was the basis for Germany, France and Russia to speak of "functioning inspections" and to increasingly distance themselves from America and Great Britain. The governments in Berlin, Paris, and Moscow felt confirmed in the conviction that their peace strategy would lead to success.
The inspectors in Baghdad saw things completely differently: their position was suddenly weakened. Documents were held back again. Scientists appeared -- if at all -- only with their own tape recorders. After the conversations they had to deliver the cassettes to the NMD. The hope for greater assertiveness that had grown following Powell's speech diminished again. "After February 14 we didn't get much any more."
In hindsight a clear pattern emerged, from the viewpoint of the UN inspectors: "Saddam Hussein followed every step in the Security Council closely. As soon as divisions appeared, cooperation diminished." [emphasis added] The officials in Baghdad only became more cooperative when military pressure increased. Rhetoric never impressed Saddam Hussein, the inspectors say, the deeper the quarrels split the international community, the surer he felt more himself.
Hans Blix himself got a taste of the revived self-confidence of the Iraqi leadership following February 14. When the chief inspector asked General Amir Al-Saadi, head of the NMD, where 550 mustard gas artillery grenades were that the UN suspected were still in country, the officer claimed baldly that they had been been lost to a fire in the arsenal. But curiously there were no residual traces of that.
"We were dependent on military pressure", an inspector emphasizes. They made no progress without the US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and without the troop deployments to Kuwait. They experienced the diplomatic tug-of-war between Washington and the European peace axis as a historical irony: from their point of view, every demand for a peaceful solution reduced the pressure on Iraq and made peace more unlikely. Success was less a question of time than one of the credible threat of the use of force. [emphasis added] "Where," the inspectors ask today, "were the teeth?" More time, the demand of Germany and France for inspections, would have been well and good. But: "They should have sent their own troops and ships." [emphasis added] In their opinion, installing the kind of traffic monitoring system important to effective control would only have been possible with a united Security Council backing them up. But to threaten force as a last resort, without seriously preparing for it -- in their view, that could not impress Baghdad's dictator.
Many times important details about Iraq were brought to the inspectors unofficially, or they learned more over a confidential coffee-table discussion than from official scientist interviews: this, too, a clear indication that the state apparatus was withholding information systematically. In one-on-one discussions, the UN personnel would hear again and again how the Saddam Hussein regime had ruined the lives of a whole generation. The academic elite, educated in the West and cosmopolitan, had to watch as their children were impoverished materially and spiritually in a totalitarian system.
Saddam Hussein's dictatorship retained one capability despite the destruction of the Iraqi middle class: weapons production. The most visible sign for that were the Al Samoud rockets, which broke the permitted maximum range of 150 kilometers. Their destruction in the first weeks of March was interpreted by many not just as a signal, but as true progress on the way to disarmament. The laconic comment of one inspector: "Too little, too late."
Iraqi concessions, inspectors report, were no longer in any relation to the American pressure. Iraq underestimated the resolve of the superpower. After George Bush announced his last ultimatum, NMD officials surfaced one last time at the Canal Hotel [UNMOVIC headquarters]. But even these papers contained nothing that could have stopped the course of events. [emphasis added]
Bittner and Luyken save what is possibly the most damning quote for last:
Was the mission programmed to fail? No, say the inspectors: a united Security Council might have forced a peaceful disarmament. But even then an ambivalent thought that sounds surprisingly hard coming from an inspector: "How does one best handle a tumor -- with a quick surgical procedure or with long, difficult chemotherapy whose success is doubtful?"
It will be interesting to see how Blix et al spin this: probably countervailing inspector interviews, wistful sighs about "Project Mirage," etc. But this article lays out a pretty solid case against the European position before the war: fundamentally unserious, naive moral preening. (Perfect qualifications to help run Iraq after the war! -- I say let the Pentagon hand that off to Iraqi opposition leaders, not to Turtle Bay types.)
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Translator's note: I usually don't translate an entire article, but this seemed like a "read the whole thing" item; should an English translation with these reporters' bylines appear, I'll link to that right away and up front. Also, I'll use this space to register any edits to the translation, but I think it's pretty accurate.
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