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

To: Neocon who wrote (155995)	1/12/2005 9:20:44 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<The US made a case for UN action.> Far from it. Cheney went out to tell other countries that the US was preparing to act unilaterally and that other countries should fall in line. None did, except Britain, and Blair did so while pressing Bush to at least try to go through the UN. Bush told the rest of the world, "you are with us or you are with the terrorists". Resentment towards US arrogance and unilateralism grew rapidly. The US then began a military build-up in preparation to invade and began to make poorly substantiated, unfounded and in some cases completely bogus statements about Iraqi WMDs and told the UN to back a US invasion or become obsolete. UN inspections resumed and the US made it clear that they would not wait beyond the time when US troops were ready to strike and pressured the Security Council to bless the invasion. The Security Council did not want to back US unilateralism and they did not want to work to a timetable set to US military convenience. Other countries wanted more evidence of Iraq WMDs and asked for inspections to continue for at least a few more months. The US preferred unilateral invasion over delay and working through the UN. Bush, Rice, Cheney, and Powell, took turns misrepresenting the WMD evidence against Iraq and making sensational comments without any foundation -- mushroom clouds and the like. The US tried to strongarm other countries on the Security Council to sign-off on the invasion and they refused to do so. In short, the US, far from working through the UN, pursued a unilateral policy and tried to get the UN to give its blessing to add a veneer of legitimacy. The veneer was not so much a US desire, although polling in the US clearly showed that the US public wanted Bush to go through the UN. The desire to see Bush go through the UN came from Blair, who was willing to put his political neck on the line but wanted to be able to say (and probably he believed it) that he was the only one actively engaging the US to neutralize US unilateralism. The US did not work through the UN -- the US usurped the UN and treated other countries like flunkies that could be pushed around at will to force support for US policy.