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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (46450)	9/23/2002 8:31:02 PM
From: margie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

On CSPAN Now: How Iraq was armed by the West, House Armed Services Committee hearing about new legislation trying to liberalizeU.S. Dual Use Export Policy. Amazing. That is how Saddam Hussein was armed; with many U.S. companies involved in arming Saddam. The U.S. commerce Department provided the export licences, 771, according to Henry Gonzales The proposed legislation would make it easier for Iraq to import materials for nuclear weapons. We can't loosen controls on export of sensitive material and then smash Iraq for benefitting from it. Gary Milhollin is testifying now about the export of sensitive technology. Mulhollin is the director of Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms. Website is iraqwatch.org There is no question that U.S. exports contributed to Saddam's nuclear program. Dr. Hamza said that 80 to 90% of their nuclear program came from the US in legal dual use exports, licensed by the Commerce Department. The US Commerce Department was pursuing a policy of seeking Trade over National Security. As Milhollin says: It is not a matter of trade now; it is a matter of body bags now. And the US is the country least willing to acknowledge it. They still haven't. German firms sold as much as all the other countries combined.But the Germans did acknowledge it. Dr. Hamza former leader of Iraq's nuclear program will testify next.

To: LindyBill who wrote (46450)	9/23/2002 8:49:15 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 281500

Bill, I generally like these Reason pieces. Their writers generally know how to do the evidence and argument bit. This one is also well done, not my position, but well done until the last two paragraphs. George W. Bush may not share his father's instinctive sympathy with the United Nations and other international bodies. But he seems to realize, as his father did in 1990, that international bodies charged with defending the peace (the League of Nations, the United Nations) become positive threats to peace if their hollow pronouncements become the skirts for ambitious dictators to hide behind. So the younger Bush has, in effect, offered to put American power at the U.N.'s service, not just for America's sake, but to save the U.N. from a dangerous impotence. It only looks that way from Bush's point of view; not from almost any other place in the world right now. The author needed to bring that perception into the argument. Perhaps he could have maintained that last sentence but I doubt it. Bush wants the UN as cover not to save it. We all know that. The last paragraph is simply a gratuituous hit that could have been left out and the article could well stand alone. But we just have to take another hit at the lefties. And it comes of as a whine. The Kyoto global-warming agreement, the International Criminal Court agreement, and all the other multilateral agreements by which the self-styled "international community" sets such store would, even taken together, do much less to strengthen enlightened internationalism than would concerted action to make the U.N.'s Iraq resolutions stick. The United Nations and its friends had better think hard before snubbing the lifeline Bush has just thrown them, because they may not get another.