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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (2579)	1/21/2003 12:52:31 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

The Bush Administration dismissed the idea immediately. <<< Given the current U.S. concern to ensure that Iraq's non-conventional weapons capacity be destroyed, it is worth recalling another rejected Iraqi offer. On April 12, 1990, Saddam Hussein, then still a friend and ally, offered to destroy his arsenal of chemical and other non-conventional weapons if Israel agreed to eliminate its chemical and nuclear weapons. Again in December, the Iraqi Ambassador to France stated that "Iraq would scrap chemical and mass destruction weapons if Israel was also prepared to do so," Reuters reported. Responding to the April offer, transmitted by a group of U.S. Senators, the State Department said it welcomes Iraq's willingness to destroy its arsenals but opposes the link "to other issues or weapons systems" (State Department spokesman Richard Boucher). Note that the other weapons systems are left unmentioned; the phrase "Israeli nuclear weapons" cannot be pronounced by any U.S. official, because acknowledgement of their existence would raise the question why all U.S. aid to Israel is not illegal under amendments to the foreign aid act from the 1970s barring aid to any country engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons development. >>> zmag.org Tom

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (2579)	1/21/2003 12:53:50 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

<<< In early January 1991, Iraq apparently offered to withdraw from Kuwait in the context of regional negotiations on reduction of armaments, an offer that State Department officials described as serious and negotiable. But we know no more about it, because the US rejected it without response and the press reported virtually nothing. It is, however, of some interest that at that time -- right before the bombing -- polls revealed that by 2-1 the US public supported the proposal that Saddam had apparently made, preferring it to bombing. Had people been allowed to know any of this, the majority would surely have been far greater. Suppressing the facts was an important service to the cause of state violence. >>> zmag.org Tom