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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (15093)	4/16/2002 10:33:30 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 27714

Rumsfeld: Iraq Checks Not Worthwhile Tuesday, April 16, 2002 WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld strongly doubts that sending new U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq would be worth the effort — a view not officially shared by the State Department. Speaking to reporters Monday about the prospect of resuming efforts to inspect for evidence that Iraq is illicitly developing nuclear weapons and means to deliver them, Rumsfeld made clear that he thinks Iraq inevitably would find ways to deny access or deceive the inspectors. To lift the veil of secrecy from Saddam's work on weapons of mass destruction would require an inspection system that is "enormously intrusive" — more so than anything tried in the past, Rumsfeld said. "I just can't quite picture how intrusive something would have to be that it could offset the ease with which they have previously been able to deny and deceive, and which today one would think they would be vastly more skillful, having had all this time without inspectors there," Rumsfeld said. His remarks contrasted sharply with comments made separately by State Department spokesman Philip Reeker, who told reporters it is the Bush administration's policy to insist that Iraq permit unfettered inspections. "Iraq has to comply fully and unconditionally with all applicable United Nations Security Council resolutions, including the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, and cooperate fully with them," Reeker said. He gave no indication the State Department shares Rumsfeld's view that inspections cannot succeed. Rumsfeld did not say what should be done if effective inspections should prove impossible. In the past he has endorsed the view that if the goal is to stop Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction, then military action would be more effective than diplomacy. In January 1998, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who is now deputy secretary of defense, signed an open letter to then-President Clinton, stating it was nearly impossible to adequately monitor Saddam's weapons programs. They said the only acceptable strategy is to "eliminate the possibility" that Iraq could use or threaten to use a weapon of mass destruction, and this would require military action. "Everyone knows" Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is pressing ahead with a nuclear program and striving to improve and expand his chemical and biological weapons arsenal, Rumsfeld said on Monday. Amid growing speculation that the United States may launch a military offensive in Iraq to oust Saddam, the Iraqi government is negotiating with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on a resumption of weapons inspections, which ended in 1998 after Saddam refused to cooperate with the inspectors' demands. Rumsfeld said U.N. inspections in Iraq that began after the 1991 Gulf War were inadequate. "For the most part," he said, "anything they found was a result of having been cued to something as a result of a defector giving them a heads-up." In the years since inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the Iraqis have only increased their ability to hide their work, he said. He cited an "enormous amount" of equipment that Iraq has acquired "enabling them to become more mobile, enabling them to go underground to a greater extent than they had been previously." In a related matter, Rumsfeld denied a Washington Post report that Wolfowitz had asked the CIA to investigate the performance of Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, chairman of a U.N. team formed to resume weapons inspections in Iraq. Blix previously headed the International Atomic Energy Agency. Rumsfeld would not say whether Wolfowitz had asked the CIA for information on Blix but said there was no request for an investigation. A U.S. government official who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity said Wolfowitz asked the CIA to assess Blix's leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency is responsible for monitoring atomic energy programs of member countries, including Iraq. In a response delivered in January, the CIA told Wolfowitz that Blix performed as well as he could within the rules governing inspections of Iraqi nuclear power plants, the official said. At U.N. headquarters in New York, spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan was concerned by the Post report. "If it happened the way the article described, I think it would be an attempt at intimidating an international civil servant, and that, of course, would be unacceptable," Eckhard said. Reeker said the State Department has full confidence in Blix. foxnews.com

To: lorne who wrote (15093)	4/17/2002 9:08:57 AM
From: haqihana	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27714

lorne, If this sort of thing will help keep the Palestinians in check, and allow us to monitor their activities better, that is a slight plus, but I do not believe it will be very effective. The Palestinians, as most of those Middle Eastern nations of Islam, are very sneaky, and such and they turn such an agreement around to their advantage. Personally, I would just let the Israelis' do what they have to do to get rid of them. The 1948 accords allotted that land to the Israelis, or it was won when Israel was attacked by a neighboring nation, so they should be allowed to do what is necessary to keep it. Before the land was allotted to Israel, and was populated by the Palestinians, it was a barren desert, and the Arabs just sat their on their camels bemoaning the fact without getting off their butts and doing something about it. When the Israelis' took over, the started their coop farming (kibutz?) system, irrigated the land, and made the desert bloom with food crops. Israel has been a better steward of the land than the Arabs ever have.