GUN OWNERSHIP IN IRAQ
by Gary North
I have twice seen the same film clip on CBS news: an
Iraqi citizen buying what looks like a machine gun
(Kalashnikov), and another citizen trying out a semi-
automatic pistol's slide action. Both times, the voice-
over warned of Iraqis preparing to defend themselves.
Nobody mentions the obvious: unless the film clip was
staged, Saddam Hussein lets Iraqis buy guns and ammo.
This testifies against the theory that Saddam fears an
organized uprising. If he fears assassination -- his
supposed use of look-alikes in public -- he doesn't fear it
enough to impose complete gun control.
He claims that he has no weapons of mass destruction.
In a recent article posted on the generally hawkish World
Net Daily, physicist Gordon Prather cites long-suppressed
evidence from a top Iraqi defector that there are no WMD in
Iraq. The defector was General Hussein Kamal. He was
Saddam Hussein's son-in-law. He was assassinated when he
later returned to Iraq.
Separately, Kamal was interviewed by Rolf Ekeus,
chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq
and Chief Inspector Maurizio Zifferero of the
International Atomic Energy Action Team, both
established by the U.N. Security Council to
implement UNSC disarmament resolutions.
Newsweek has obtained the U.N. document, verified
its authenticity and reports in its current issue
that Kamal told the same story to the CIA and to
the Brits.
Immediately after the Gulf War ceasefire, but
before the U.N. inspectors had arrived in Iraq,
Kamal said he ordered the destruction of all
chemical and biological weapons stocks and the
missiles to deliver them. . . .
The UNSCOM-IAEA inspectors -- and hence all U.N.
Security Council members -- have known for at
least four years that, as best the U.N.
inspectors could subsequently discover, Kamal did
tell the truth, when, in response to the question
posed by UNSCOM inspector Nikita Smidovich:
Smidovich: Were weapons and agents
destroyed?
Kamal: Nothing remained.
Smidovich: Was it before or after
inspections started?
Kamal: After visits of inspection teams. You
have an important role in Iraq with this.
You should not underestimate yourself. You
are very effective in Iraq.
So, according to Kamal, himself, not only were
all chembio "weapons and agents destroyed", but
U.N. inspectors had been "very effective" in
ferreting out what the Iraqis had done.
worldnetdaily.com
This information was kept secret until NEWSWEEK
published it on February 24 of this year. You might think
that this story would have been front-page news in every
newspaper in the world. It wasn't.
As I have repeatedly said, the coming war in Iraq
isn't about al-Qaeda. It's also not about weapons of mass
destruction. It's about the control of the price of oil at
the margin and placing U.S. troops in the Middle East to
keep the pipelines open.
321gold.com
If Iraq has no WMD, then the invasion should be a
cakewalk. But there is a wild card: the willingness and
the ability of Iraqis to defend themselves from attack,
house by house.
Urban warfare is no picnic if the residents are
willing to die, taking an invading soldier with them, one
by one. (Unless, of course, the invader uses gas.)
This raises the issue of the distribution of guns in
Iraq.
HITLER'S GUN CONTROL LAW OF 1938
The media's talking heads constantly cite the
government's accusation that Saddam is another Hitler. In
one crucial sense, he is nothing like Hitler. Nazi
Germany's 1938 gun control law was signed into law on March
18, 1938.
The following information is posted on the Web site of
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, a pro-
Second Amendment organization. If you want to know why
there are Jewish supporters of this organization, which has
been around a long time, read the following. You may be
amazed.
Until 1943-44, the German government published
its laws and regulations in the
'Reichsgesetzblatt,' roughly the equivalent of
the U.S. Federal Register. Carefully shelved by
law librarians, the 1938 issues of this German
government publication had gathered a lot of
dust. In the 'Reichsgesetzblatt' issue for the
week of March 21, 1938, was the official text of
the Weapons Law (March 18, 1938). It gave
Hitler's Nazi party a stranglehold on the
Germans, many of whom did not support the Nazis.
We found that the Nazis did not invent "gun
control" in Germany. The Nazis inherited gun
control and then perfected it: they invented
handgun control.
The Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 replaced a Law on
Firearms and Ammunition of April 13, 1928. The
1928 law was enacted by a center-right, freely
elected German government that wanted to curb
"gang activity," violent street fights between
Nazi party and Communist party thugs. All firearm
owners and their firearms had to be registered.
Sound familiar? "Gun control" did not save
democracy in Germany. It helped to make sure that
the toughest criminals, the Nazis, prevailed.
The Nazis inherited lists of firearm owners and
their firearms when they 'lawfully' took over in
March 1933. The Nazis used these inherited
registration lists to seize privately held
firearms from persons who were not "reliable."
Knowing exactly who owned which firearms, the
Nazis had only to revoke the annual ownership
permits or decline to renew them.
In 1938, five years after taking power, the Nazis
enhanced the 1928 law. The Nazi Weapons Law
introduced handgun control. Firearms ownership
was restricted to Nazi party members and other
"reliable" people.
The 1938 Nazi law barred Jews from businesses
involving firearms. On November 10. 1938 -- one
day after the Nazi party terror squads (the SS)
savaged thousands of Jews, synagogues and Jewish
businesses throughout Germany -- new regulations
under the Weapons Law specifically barred Jews
from owning any weapons, even clubs or knives.
The site goes on to show that the 1938 German law was,
passage by passage, copied into the U.S. Gun Control Act of
1968.
The parallels between the Nazi law and GCA '68
will leap at you from the page. For example, law
abiding firearm owners in Illinois, Massachusetts
and New Jersey must carry identification cards
based on formats from the Nazi Weapons Law.
The article goes on to identify the most likely
political suspect in having copied the Nazi's code into
ours. He was a Democrat and a liberal. His son now holds
his seat in the Senate. Click through.
jpfo.org
Of special interest to Jews is the extension of the
gun control law, which was signed into law on November 11,
1938. Historians will recall the previous evening: Kristal
night, when the windows of stores owned by Jews were
smashed by the Nazis. Highlights of the law include:
#1 Jews (#5 of the First Regulations of the
German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935,
Reichsgesetzblatt 1, p. 1332) are prohibited from
acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and
ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing
weapons. Those now possessing weapons and
ammunition are at once to turn them over to the
local police authority.
#2 Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew's
possession will be forfeited to the government
without compensation.
jpfo.org
This story is well known within the Second Amendment
movement. It was JPFO's Aaron Zelman who first gave wide
publicity to the 1938-1968 connection. His book translates
the 1938 law and then compares it, passage by passage, to
the 1968 act.
Needless to say, liberals have not acknowledged the
error of their ways in continuing to support the 1968 Act
and its subsequent modifications. The 1938-1968 connection
has been tossed down the memory hole. But JPFO keeps
dredging it back up. The Web now helps keep the story
alive.
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-----------------------
AN ARMED CITIZENRY
From what the U.S. media report, citizens of Baghdad
are armed. An armed citizenry threatens American troops.
For a decade, the U.S. military has trained to deal with
urban occupation, but a real-life situation has yet to
occur.
If their city is still standing, they may defend their
homes from invading forces. If they don't defend, then
some of them may later use their guns to shoot occupying
troops. It's one thing for Iraqis to approve of Saddam's
removal by the U.S. It's another thing entirely to think
that they will submit to long-term occupation of their
country by U.S. troops.
There is no democratic tradition in Iraq. The
peaceful succession of elected governments is not part of
Iraqi tradition.
If Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, he has
hidden them well. His son-in-law thought they had been
destroyed, we now learn. If they really were destroyed,
then casualties to U.S. troops will be imposed by defending
troops and armed citizens.
This raises the question of legitimacy. For two
centuries, the United States has gained enormous
international legitimacy as the world's beacon of freedom.
(Switzerland has freedom, but it is a closed society --
closed to immigrants.) This nation has been seen as
defending the rights of the oppressed. But an invasion of
a nation across the planet and without the ability to
inflict damage on this nation will be seen by a billion
Muslims and maybe an equal number of non-Muslims as an
unwarranted extension of our military power: the reversal
of Woodrow Wilson's heralded right of national self-
determination.
Cooperation is not a free resource. It is most
inexpensively gained through voluntarism. When it must be
coerced, it gets very expensive for the coercer. This is
why all empires eventually contract or are overthrown.
The world cooperates with us through market exchange.
It also cooperates by allowing U.S. troops inside their
borders: an estimated 130 countries. But a pre-emptive
strike against a nation that must defend itself from a
superpower will not be seen as a legitimate act. If Saddam
doesn't use WMD against us, then the Administration will
find itself removed permanently from the high moral ground.
If Saddam doesn't use WMD, the Administration will
lose face. It will be seen as an aggressor nation. If
there is widespread armed resistance by Iraqi citizens, it
will cost the United States more than the lives of our
troops.
At that point, international cooperation will
dissipate -- not overnight, but steadily. People don't
like bullies. They will take steps to increase their
ability to resist.
The Administration will soon be in Catch-22. If our
troops enjoy a cakewalk, then the justification for going
in -- Iraq's WMD -- will evaporate. If Iraq does use WMD
(VX gas), then our troops will have a tough time of it.
The cost of victory will be higher than in 1991. If
citizens resist at the cost of their lives, morale will
collapse in the military. Warriors do not gain honor by
killing people who are merely defending their homes.
THE PRICE TAG
How much will it cost to win in Iraq? Lawrence
Lindsey was the Administration's senior economic advisor
when he estimated $100 billion to $200 billion. Then he
was sacked. Career-wise men learn. With no evidence
presented, the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget now says $50 billion to $60 billion. Here is a NEW
YORK TIMES story (Jan. 2).
Bush Administration Official Lowers Estimate of
Cost for War With Iraq
BY ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON -- The administration's top budget
official estimated Monday that the cost of a war
with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to
$60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier
estimates from White House officials.
Mitchell Daniels Jr., the director of the
Office of Management and Budget, also said that
there was likely to be a deficit in the fiscal
2004 budget, though he declined to specify how
large it would be. The Bush administration is
scheduled to present its budget to Congress on
Feb. 3.
Daniels would not provide specific costs for
either a long or a short military campaign
against Saddam Hussein. But he said the
administration was budgeting for both, and that
earlier projections of $100 billion to $200
billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence Lindsey,
President Bush's former chief economic adviser,
were too high.
Daniels' projections place the cost of an
Iraq war in line with the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
which cost nearly $60 billion, or about $80
billion in current dollars. But the United States
paid for only a small portion of that conflict,
with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Japan bearing the
brunt of the costs. This time, diplomats say,
Americans would likely bear most of the costs. .
. . .
The budget director's projections Monday
served as a corrective to figures put forth by
Lindsey in September, when he said that a war
with Iraq might amount to 1 percent to 2 percent
of the gross domestic product, or $100 billion to
$200 billion.
Lindsey was criticized for putting forth such
a large number, which helped pave the way for his
ouster earlier this month.
sltrib.com
According to the most recent report from the Treasury,
the Federal budget deficit for fiscal 2003 is $97.6 for the
first four months. A year ago, the figure was a surplus of
$8.4 billion. (AP story, Feb. 24).
The war has not yet begun.
There are lots of predictions about the de-
stabilization of Arab governments if the U.S. invades. I
don't pretend to know how accurate these forecasts are.
Some things are obvious. Most Muslims are opposed, and
these are the people the terrorists recruit.
CONCLUSION
The stock market will not do well if there is strong
resistance in Iraq. The voters are not prepared for a
drawn-out war, which would imply civilian resistance. But
starving out civilians by quarantining Baghdad will win
America no laurels. It will win the undying hostility of a
billion Muslims.
Americans expect another 1991. But the price of
obtaining this will be the Administration's loss of
legitimacy in the eyes of the world -- immediately -- and
the eyes of swing voters (2004). Another 1991 will mean
that there were no WMD. It will mean that the war was
about stealing oil and avenging a father's decision to quit
on the battlefield.
Costs somewhere between 1991's costs and the de-
stabilization of the entire region are likely. If costs
are low, the President loses legitimacy: "No WMD after
all." If they are high, he will also lose legitimacy: "He
failed to warn us!" He needs a Goldilocks solution: just
right. How many dead American troops are too many? In my
view, one. But I'm obviously an extremist. When it comes
to the Middle East, and also the Balkans, I concur with
Bismarck's assessment of the Balkans: "Not worth the life
of one Pomeranian grenadier." |
