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

To: BubbaFred who wrote (6798)	2/9/2003 11:30:33 AM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

Walker's World: Speech Powell didn't make By Martin Walker UPI Chief International Correspondent washtimes.com WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- The problem with Secretary of State Colin Powell's United Nations speech, and the reason why so many members of the Security Council refused to be convinced by his satellite photos and bugged telephone calls, was that Powell answered the wrong question. Top Stories • Rumsfeld jabs 'old Europe' • Blacks turn to home-schooling • Orthodoxy riled over 'St. Rasputin' • CONTINENTAL DIVIDE Powell thought he was supposed to assemble a watertight case that would prove that Saddam Hussein and his regime were cheating the U.N. inspectors by playing hide-and-seek with their chemical and biological weapons and ongoing nuclear development program. In this, Powell largely succeeded. Any fair-minded judge would conclude, and the U.N.'s chief inspector Hans Blix had already said, that Saddam Hussein was not complying with the U.N. Resolution 1441 demanding that Iraq come clean and demonstrate full compliance with the U.N. demand for disarmament. But that was not the question that Powell really needed to answer. The case that France and Russia and China, and much public opinion in the United States as well as Europe wanted to hear, was why do we need to go to war? Have we not won already? Is not Saddam Hussein already contained by the U.N. inspections and by the new watchfulness of the international community? As France said, if the Bush administration needs more reassurance that Saddam Hussein can be effectively disarmed and controlled without war, why not just double or triple the number of inspectors? And as Russia said, if the White House needs more reassurance, here is an offer of Russian spy planes to beef up the monitoring over the skies of Iraq? Powell made the case that Saddam runs one of the world's most abominable regimes, that he maintains links with all kinds of terrorist groups, probably including al Qaida, and that he constantly and cunningly cheats the inspectors. Powell did not make the case that this requires a war. The case is not that difficult to make. We know from the last round of inspections in the 1990s that there is absolutely no guarantee that they will find everything. The inspectors were searching Iraq thoroughly for three years, and it was not until Saddam's son-in-law defected in 1994 that he steered the inspectors to the disused chicken farm that hid the entry to the biological warfare labs that they found one of Saddam's secret crown jewels. Three years of inspections had failed miserably -- and Saddam now knows how the inspectors work and has had years to perfect his new hiding places. If France and Russia are so confident that inspections will contain Saddam, the burden on proof is on them -- in the teeth of the available historical evidence. The second argument against relying on inspections in that they will have to go on for years, and the will of the international community to maintain and permanent and costly inspection regime is a lot weaker than the will and endurance of Saddam Hussein to outlast the U.N. We all know what happened last time, as those same U.N. Security Council members who now call for more inspections were last time calling for an easing of sanctions so that French and Russian oil companies could dip their hands into the Iraqi honey pot. If we rely now on inspections, then in one or two or three years time as the United Nations gets strapped for funds and Lukoil and Total-Elf-Fina start pressing for those oil concessions once more, the inspection regime will soften as Saddam's nasty hardware accumulates. The third argument against relying on inspections is that to enforce them, we will have to maintain the U.N. sanctions against Iraq, and the sanctions have been a public relations disaster. Most of the Arab world, and a great deal of decent and compassionate public opinion in the United States and Europe, believe that sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi babies. There is no point in protesting that the U.N. sanctions allow Saddam to sell oil, so long as the funds are used to buy food, medical and humanitarian supplies and clearly civilian goods. There is no point protesting that Saddam quite happily lets Iraqi babies die in order to make a propaganda point against the sanctions regime. There is not even much point in protesting that some of the countries that argue hardest for inspections and sanctions are home to companies that have been quietly side-stepping the sanctions in order to sell to Saddam. The fact is that sanctions are unpopular, leaky and very hard to sustain. That is the case that Colin Powell should have made against Iraq last week. It is the case that will now have to be made after Hans Blix's next report on Feb. 14. It is a case that ought to sway some crucial elements of public opinion, even if France, Russia and China will be making their decisions not on the merits of any argument but on very different calculations of commercial self-interest, giving George Bush a black eye, and what's in it for me. But it is still a case that the world needs to hear. (Walker's World -- an in-depth look at the people and events shaping global geopolitics -- is published every Sunday and Wednesday.)

To: BubbaFred who wrote (6798)	2/9/2003 12:26:29 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 25898

ROFL!

To: BubbaFred who wrote (6798)	2/9/2003 12:29:52 PM
From: HG	Respond to of 25898

<<<The size of the photos should vary according to the comparative GDPs of the nations>>>> i disagree. it should vary according to the cost/inventory of military arsenal of each nation. why dilute it with economic blabber - isnt it all about might?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (6798)	2/9/2003 12:34:07 PM
From: D.Austin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

I've got a better idea ... Have Ted Turner build a new UN headquarters in France.With a penthouse apartment facing Germany.And remove our flag all together,we know that is out of the question. As pathetic and worthless the UN is,its the only entity that provides worldwide diplomacy. just out.. U.S. officials criticize Franco-German proposal for Iraq COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press Writer Sunday, February 9, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (02-09) 08:54 PST MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- U.S. officials Sunday criticized a French-German proposal to send U.N. peacekeepers to Iraq and increase the number of weapons inspectors to force Saddam Hussein to disarm, calling it an ineffective ploy to delay military action. The plan, as reported Saturday by a German news magazine, was problematic because it required Iraqi cooperation with inspectors and assumed that peacekeepers could be effective in a "difficult environment," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in Munich for a security conference. "It's a plan as far as we can tell whose purpose is to block U.S. military action and not make meaningful inspections -- but we don't know," McCain said. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Washington, said increasing the number of U.N. inspectors would be "a diversion, not a solution." "The issue is not more inspectors. The issue is compliance on the part of Saddam Hussein," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." U.S. officials -- including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- did not hear full details of the plan during the two-day conference, which ended Sunday. French and German defense ministers were not prepared to brief them, giving the appearance of disarray in the recently reinvigorated Franco-German alliance. "Rumsfeld was here for 24 hours meeting with German and French officials and no one told him anything. That was not an auspicious start," a senior U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. Rumsfeld emerged from a 45-minute meeting Saturday with German Defense Minister Peter Struck saying he still knew nothing about the plan, but said inspections could only work if Iraq cooperates. "Inspections are designed to deal with a cooperative country," he said. "It does not take long to know if a country is cooperative." According to the report in Der Spiegel, the plan would call for sending reconnaissance flights, deploying thousands of U.N. soldiers and tripling the number of weapons inspectors. The vigorous U.N. presence would sideline Saddam, allowing subordinates like Tariq Aziz to "gain more influence" without directly toppling the Iraqi leader, the magazine said. The proposal would be presented to U.N. Security Council when it meets Feb. 14 to hear a report from U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. Struck said Germany would be prepared to send U.N. soldiers to Iraq under such a plan. "We could participate, but we must wait to see how many U.N. soldiers the United Nations would want," the defense minister said. Speaking at the security conference, Struck said parts of the media reports on the plan were incorrect but he did not elaborate. Aides in the defense ministry said the reports caught Struck by surprise, indicating he had not been fully briefed himself. "The starting point is the French initiative to increase the number of inspectors in order to give them a better chance to succeed," Struck told the conference, which brought together several hundred top government officials and security experts in the southern German city. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was to discuss the plan later Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Berlin and planned to present details to lawmakers on Thursday. In Munich, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said his country has highly skilled inspectors and reconnaissance plans that could participate in a reinforced inspections regime in Iraq. But some experts at the 39th annual defense conference gave the plan a cold reception. Lord Powell, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said increasing the number of inspectors would not help prove the existence of Saddam's arsenal because "their role is not one of a detective, but one of an auditor." "It is hard to think of anything less helpful," Powell said of the Franco-German proposal. "The effect would be to protect Saddam Hussein. It would provide a shield for him behind which he could go about his activities. And it would greatly highlight the disarray between Europe and the United States."