Clinton's Other War
When it comes to the continuing conflict in Iraq, the
administration can't seem to get its story straight, and the
media can't seem to get the story at all.
by j.j. richardson
April 6, 1999
Most of the United States' attention is now focused on the
NATO bombing of Kosovo. But just because a new war has
started doesn't mean the old one is over. On Friday, the U.S.
bombed an Iraqi communications control facility and an Iraqi
radio relay station -- one more incident to add to the eighty-plus
that have occured over the past three months. However, the
media seemingly lost interest in this tired conflict months ago,
after the dramatic headlines and night-glow images of Operation
Desert Fox had subsided.
Newspapers have generally
relegated their coverage of the
more recent U.S./British
bombing "incidents" to a few
paragraphs in the international
section. And Time and
Newsweek have largely ignored
the ongoing campaign, which has
inflicted more damage than
December's intensive four-day
bombing blitz.
Neither magazine, amazingly, bothered to report the January 25
missile attacks on civilian areas that wounded nearly 100 people
and killed ten children. Newsweek didn't even mention the current
conflict with Iraq in its March 8 issue devoted entirely to
"Americans at War." (The magazine did have the audacity to
claim, though, that "America has not started a war in this
century." Perhaps Vietnam was just a decade-long police action.)
The media's relative silence is disturbing, but hardly surprising: the
U.S. government's attempt to defeat Iraq through a slow-moving
war of attrition just doesn't make for good copy. Combine that
fact with the Clinton administration's bumblingly inconsistent spin,
and the result is an American public that has remained mostly in
the dark about its government's past, present, and future actions
in Iraq.
The UNSCOM spy revelations
We know now that United States intelligence operatives used the
cover of UNSCOM inspections to spy on the Iraqis -- a charge
that the Iraqis had long alleged. The day before the Boston Globe
and The Washington Post reported, on January 6, that "U.S.
intelligence agencies, working under the cover of the United
Nations, carried out an ambitious spying operation," the Clinton
administration refused comment on the issue. The day the story
broke, UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler stated at
the United Nations in New York that "we have never conducted
spying for anybody" and insisted that UNSCOM did not possess
any eavesdropping equipment.
After the papers broke the story, the Clinton administration
acknowledged that the United States had received intelligence
information about Iraq from UNSCOM inspectors. However,
State Department Spokesman James Rubin asserted that "it is my
understanding that at no time did the U.S. work with anyone at
UNSCOM to collect information for the purpose of undermining
the Iraqi regime."
The next day, Kenneth Bacon of the Defense Department
attempted to "clarify" matters:
Bacon: In order to do its job, UNSCOM asked about 40 different
countries at various times to support its mission...so we responded
to UNSCOM's request.
Q: Despite the fact that you say that UNSCOM had to be
increasingly aggressive about its job...that increased aggression
did not include spying?
Bacon: It had to work hard to gather information...
Q: Where do you draw the line between spying and just
gathering information?
Bacon: I don't. There's no need to. UNSCOM was a disarmament
agency, not a spy agency.
Then the story changed again. On March 2, The Washington Post
reported that U.S. intelligence services "infiltrated agents and
espionage equipment for three years...to eavesdrop on the Iraqi
military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency that it used to
disguise its work." (Unfortunately, only articles printed within the
last two weeks are readily available on the Post's Web site. You
have to pay a small fee to download it.) U.S. officials had
apparently "considered the risk of discrediting an international
arms control system by infiltrating it for their own
eavesdropping...[and] they deemed the risks worth running."
Even while printing these revelations, most newspapers did not
address their implications: The justification for bombing Iraq had
been thrown into question. The December bombing blitz was
precipitated by the release of Butler's report stating that Iraq was
not satisfactorily complying with UNSCOM inspections -- partially
because they believed UNSCOM was a front for U.S. spying
operations. UNSCOM was a front for U.S. spying operations. We
bombed them anyway.
The Debate Over The "No-Fly" Zones
Despite being caught once using a U.N. operation to conceal its
actions, the U.S. continues to veil its Iraq policy behind the
authority of the United Nations. In a January 5 press briefing,
State Department Spokesman Rubin explained that U.S. and
British enforcement of
"...the no-fly zones [is] very important to protect the
people of Iraq from its dictatorship, which has so
blatantly and completely brutalized and terrorized it.
We have been enforcing no-fly zones since 1991. The
coalition created them in accordance with [U.N.]
Resolution 688, as well as Resolution 678 and 687. We
are acting pursuant to those resolutions."
Perhaps Mr. Rubin should read the resolutions.
Resolution 687 (1991) allows for the creation of "a Special
Commission, which shall carry out immediate on-site inspection of
Iraq's biological, chemical and missile capabilities" and clarifies the
sanctions levied against Baghdad.
Resolution 688 (1991) "condemns the repression of the Iraqi
civilian population in many parts of Iraq" and calls for
humanitarian efforts "to address urgently the critical needs of the
refugees."
Only Resolution 678 (1990) could remotely be interpreted to
authorize the no-fly zones. It demands that Iraq "comply fully
with Resolution 660" (which called for Iraq to withdraw its forces
from Kuwait) and "authorizes Member States ... to use all
necessary means" to implement resolution 660 and "all subsequent
relevant resolutions."
However, nowhere in the body of any of the three resolutions is
the concept of a "no-fly" zone introduced. Yet the Clinton
administration continues to use the pretext of U.N. mandates to
justify the bombing runs -- and the major U.S. media outlets do
little more than echo that assertion. Not once in two months of
(rarely) reporting the conflict did Time or Newsweek even
mention that the legality of the no-fly zones has been contested by
Russia and China, two of the five permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council. Instead, the media has characterized all
opposition to the no-fly zones as coming from Iraq, which
"considers" the zones illegal and an infringement of its
sovereignty.
The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998
While continuing to enforce the no-fly zones, the U.S. is also
strategizing new ways to defeat Saddam. Once again, these
actions have been kept mostly out of the public eye. On October
31, President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which
authorizes the president to give up to $97 million in weapons,
"defense services," and military training to Iraqi opposition groups
that are "opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime and are
committed to democratic values." When Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott introduced the bill, he said, "It is time to openly state
our policy goal is the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from
power."
The bill was signed despite widespread concerns -- even within
the Clinton administration -- that it would lead to fractiousness
and instability within Iraq. In an October 22 article in USA Today,
even the region's commanding officer, Marine Corps General
Anthony Zinni (who claims that he was never consulted about the
bill), expressed doubts: "I don't think this has been thought out ...
A Saddam in place and contained is better than promoting
something that causes Iraq to explode, implode, fragment into
pieces, cause turmoil." (Such concerns have put the actual
disbursement of arms and military support on hold, but the policy
remains in place.)
The passage of the bill was barely noticed by the media, despite
the ethical and legal implications of a formal U.S. policy to
remove a sovereign country's leader from power, the dubious
likelihood of such a plan succeeding, and the tremendous
resources committed. Even more disturbing was an article that
appeared in the December 28 issue of U.S. News and World
Report claiming, incredulously, that
" ... there appears to be little intensification of
American efforts to weaken Saddam's grip on the Iraqi
people. Retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, who has
advised some of the Iraqi opposition leaders, says there
have been no efforts to start training opposition groups
... or other steps to bolster their standing."
Surely the passage of a bill -- two months before the publication
of the article -- authorizing almost $100 million in military aid to
Iraqi opposition groups qualifies as "bolstering" their standing. The
article only acknowledged the provisions of the Iraq Liberation
Act in passing: "Administration officials tout a new 'containment
plus' strategy...while working more aggressively with Iraqi
dissidents who might one day depose Saddam." Actually, ousting
Saddam Hussein had become a formalized U.S. foreign policy
objective.
If media reports were misleading, the Clinton administration was
just plain evasive. At a State Department Briefing on October 13,
after Congress had passed the Iraq Liberation Act, spokesman
Rubin fielded a question about how the $97 million would be
spent: "We have an elaborate arrangement that we've briefed
Congress on, on how to spend those funds. And it is a
broad-based arrangement designed to promote and present ... a
Democratic alternative, and to get maximum cooperation between
the various groups." Attempts by the reporter to get Rubin to
further define this "elaborate arrangement" were unsuccessful.
Undoubtedly, the Clinton administration will continue to fumble
and misrepresent its way through future actions against Iraq -- and
the media will continue to miss the story. Unfortunately, the
majority of the American public believes what they read (or
don'tread) in Time and Newsweek. The lesson learned from all of
this? What you do isn't as important as what you say you do,
especially when you're blessed with a complicit press and a
complacent public.
mojones.com
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