| [NOTE: This thread is meant as a followup to SI's Don't Start the War thread. It's created anticipating that President Bush seems set to enter America into a fog of war. This header will be rewritten if the Iraq War begins. Hopefully, it'll immediately become irrelevant, and see very few posts.]
WHEREAS the way the current table is set it appears President Bush is going to force war on the Iraqi people;
AND WHEREAS America's sons and daughters who are serving in the military will be placed in grave danger by being ordered to fight in an unnecessary, immoral and illegal war;
AND WHEREAS the very vast majority of the world's population and the very vast majority of world's leaders do not want this war and have overwhelmingly demonstrated opposition;
AND WHEREAS the case for war has not been made by the Bush Administration, and this war does not meet the doctrine of a just war;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the very vast majority of our military sons and daughters be brought home, that their courageous efforts be replaced with the full involvement of the United Nations (UN), that the UN establish permanent weapons inspectors and peacekeepers into Iraq and that a long term and comprehensive policy of containment, not war, immediately take effect.
Important considerations:
THE INTELLIGENCE
Dubious claims erode US credibility
By John Donnelly and Elizabeth Neuffer
Boston Globe Staff
3/16/2003
WASHINGTON -- Questionable US and British intelligence assertions about purported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have undercut the Bush administration's credibility in building a case before the UN Security Council, according to analysts and some diplomats.
The most serious blunder, put forth by British intelligence and cited by President Bush in his State of the Union address, involved an assertion that Niger, the West African country, had sold tons of uranium to Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, as well as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, acknowledged late last week that the documents were forged, six days after top UN nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said his team had found the documents to lack authenticity.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked the FBI on Friday to investigate whether the US government had been involved in the creation of the Niger documents to build support for administration policies. An investigation, Rockefeller said in a letter to the FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, should ''at a minimum help to allay any concerns.'' Powell has denied any US involvement.
But other US charges -- on Iraq's use of aluminum tubes for a nuclear program, drones that might be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons, mobile biological labs, and chemical bunkers -- have come under sharp attack among UN officials or diplomats. In addition, Bush's report of a poison plant in northeast Iraq was found by numerous reporters visiting the site to have been a dilapidated collection of buildings.
At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of any US claim regarding Iraq.
''When you hear anything that Iraq is not cooperating, I suggest you double-check it,'' said Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov.
Doubt about US interpretations of intelligence is one of the reasons that Security Council members have been clamoring for a set of ''benchmarks,'' or tests, by which to measure Iraqi disarmament, diplomats say.
Two US officials, however, defended in interviews the government's claims that Iraq was busily building secret programs for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. On the discredited Iraq-Niger uranium connection, one senior US official said the CIA never fully trusted the report, which was given to the United States and Britain by an agency from an unidentified third country.
And the officials could not explain why Bush said on Jan. 28, ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''
In his next sentence in the State of the Union address, Bush made another assertion since disputed: ''Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.''
ElBaradei says his teams have found no evidence that those tubes were used for anything but missile production.
Still, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity: ''Those points individually, even if all true, fall far short of exonerating the Iraqi regime. We have reams and reams of documents on unaccounted-for biological or chemical materials.
''There's still the regime's defiance of 17 UN resolutions, its brutal treatment of its people, its threatening posture toward its neighbors -- all of it still stands,'' the US aide said. But former US military and intelligence officials say the challenged US claims have hurt the administration's case. The analysts said the administration probably pushed forward some unproven intelligence because of public pressure to make its case.
''They want it too badly,'' said Jay C. Farrar, a former senior Pentagon and National Security Council official. '' `Intel' is not evidence. Intel is information, and it's information that is the best available. But it is not foolproof.''
Patrick G. Eddington, a CIA analyst on Iraq in the 1990s, said the United States may be depending too much on the word of senior Iraqi defectors. He said the Niger claim was the most damaging. ''It looks like they are trying to set up Iraq,'' he said. ''I think there is enough information there to make their case. You never need to embellish.
''I think it's a matter of the administration's desperation to make some kind of a case.''
Four other allegations have been questioned, including the following:
US officials said that in his report of March 7, the UN weapons chief, Hans Blix, should have emphasized the discovery of a drone aircraft that the United States says could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. On Wednesday Iraqi officials wheeled out a drone that a reporter said was ''more like a large school science project than a vehicle capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons.''
A US official, however, said that the drone represented only ''what the Iraqis chose to show.'' Previous UN weapons inspectors, the official said, had discovered drones that might possibly fly for up to 300 miles.
In his March 7 report, Blix rebutted Bush administration assertions on mobile biological labs. ''Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities,'' he wrote. ''No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found.''
But the US official said that mobile labs, by definition, would be difficult to find. ''We have first-hand descriptions of these small factories,'' the official said.
On underground laboratories, Blix said: ''Inspection teams have examined building structures for any possible underground facilities. In addition, ground-penetrating radar equipment was used in several specific locations. No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.''
The US official again cited first-hand reports: ''Can anybody be confident that anyone would find an underground lab?''
Powell, in his presentation to the council on Feb. 5, offered several satellite images that he said showed decontamination trucks outside alleged munitions plants. Blix, in oral testimony to the Security Council, expressed doubt.
''We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart,'' Powell said. ''The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection.''
There is a key difference between intelligences services and UN inspectors, Blix said: ''Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly.''
He then added, pointedly, ''Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.''
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Donnelly reported from Washington, Neuffer from the United Nations. Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com
boston.com
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Rumsfeld, Bush Sr. Refused To Back 1989 UN Resolution To Investigate Iraq For Human Rights Abuses
By Jason Leopold
In 1989, the State Department released a report that described in gruesome detail Iraq's violation of human rights, specifically how Iraq's President Saddam Hussein tortured his own people for allegedly being disloyal.
But despite the atrocities outlined in the report, which President Bush now refers to when speaking about his desire to remove Hussein from power, the United States, under the first Bush Administration, refused to vote in favor of a United Nations resolution calling for an inquiry into Iraq's treatment of its population and possibly indicting Hussein for war crimes and human rights abuses.
The two people most vocal about refusing to go along with the U.N. investigation are now lobbying for a U.N. resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq and are highly critical of the countries that refuse to back a U.S. led coalition to use military force to remove Hussein from power. Those men are Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
But in 1989, the first Bush administration refused to join the U.N. in publicly protesting the forced relocation of at least half a million ethnic Kurds and Syrians in the late 1980s, even though the act violated principles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, according to Middle East Watch, a human rights organization.
The Bush and Reagan administrations also declined to punish Iraq when it used poison gas against Iranian soldiers in 1984 and Kurdish citizens in 1988. Moreover, the U.S. did not oppose the fact that Hussein bought 45 American helicopters, worth about $200 million, with assurances they were for civilian use, then transferred them to his military.
Armitage said in 1990 that that "in retrospect, it would have been much better at the time of their use of gas if we'd put our foot down," according to an August 1990 story in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Despite U.S. intelligence reports that showed Iraq's capability of building weapons of mass destruction and its inhumane treatment of its own civilians, the Bush Administration turned a blind eye and instead focused on improving U.S. relations with Hussein. The U.S. removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism in 1983, which reopened the door to federal subsidies and loans to Iraq.
Saddam Hussein "made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world," Rumsfeld said, who, as a Middle East envoy for the Regan Administration, reopened discussions with Saddam in 1983, according to the Daily News story. "It struck us as useful to have a relationship with him."
The current Bush Administration, many of whom served in the Reagan and the first Bush administrations, refuse to acknowledge that their policies toward Iraq at the time backfired and we may be paying a price for it now. But at this point, Iraq does not pose a threat to the U.S. and threats against the nation appear to be purely personal.
Under former Rumsfeld's watch during his years in the Reagan and Bush administrations, he and the former presidents allowed Hussein to build his army and a cache of chemical and nuclear weapons. In fact, many of the hawks that serve in the current Bush Administration assisted Hussein's regime in reaching these goals during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
For example, Judicial Watch said, according to the Daily News story, "that the U.S. extended $270 million in government-guaranteed credit from the Export-Import Bank to buy other American goods, despite repeated failures to make loan repayments on time. Since 1982, Baghdad has become one of the biggest buyers of U.S. rice and wheat, purchasing $5.5 billion in crops and livestock with federally guaranteed loans and agricultural subsidies and its own hard cash."
"Iraq benefited from a thriving grain trade with American farmers, cooperation with U.S. intelligence agencies, oil sales to American refiners that helped finance its military, and muted White House criticism of its human rights and war atrocities," the Daily News story said.
Armitage admitted in 1990 that the Reagan and Bush administrations were well aware of Hussein's brutality, but still, the U.S. was more interested in maintaining a healthy relationship with Iraq because the country's vast oil reserves was beneficial to U.S. interests.
"We knew this wasn't the League of Women Voters," Armitage said, referring to Hussein's regime, according to the Daily News story.
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