The whole world in his hands?

Geoff Simons* reviews Richard Butler's book Saddam Defiant

Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat, spent two years as head of the UN 
weapons inspectors in Iraq, charged with the task of destroying Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction.

In early 1999, having antagonised not only the Iraqis but also aid workers 
and many UN personnel including Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, Butler 
decided not to seek another term as UNSCOM head.

He has brought to his work a tunnel-vision bellicosity and callous 
insensitivity that must have delighted Mossad, Madeleine Albright and all 
the other cynical players committed to the destruction of the Iraqi nation.

In his book Saddam Defiant, Butler describes his work over the Iraq 
issue and offers his views.

To say that this book is a cliche-ridden and simplistic distortion of 
reality would be unduly complimentary. It is a farrago of boys-own 
posturing, an alarmist caricature of desperately important political 
matters.

Butler lacks humanity, political insight and, alarmingly enough, pertinent 
knowledge of the subject where he is assumed to have expertise.

He is wrong to say that, if he had been able to report "that all the 
required disarmament actions had been taken by Iraq" and the security 
council had accepted the report, then the sanctions "would have ended 
automatically".

Sanctions would have been maintained on any one of a dozen pretexts, 
whatever Butler had reported.

He is wrong to say that the coalition acted under the authority of Article 
42 of the UN Charter. Article 42 has no practical effect in the absence of 
an enabling Security Council resolution.

The 1991 Gulf War was prosecuted under the assumed authorisation of 
resolution 678, which itself deserves analysis since it does not mention 
force or military measures.

Moreover, since 678 pays no attention to the military staff committee that 
is specified in article 47, it is, in itself, in clear violation of the UN 
Charter. This is one of many reasons why the Gulf War was in violation of 
international law.

Butler is wrong to say that Iraq was allowed to pump some oil for 
humanitarian purposes from the beginning of sanctions.

This option was first addressed by the early Security Council resolution 
706 and 712 as a public-relations exercise to prevent Washington being 
branded as responsible for the starvation of the Iraqi people.

President Bush (the father of the present President Bush — Ed) even went 
so far as to admit as much — resolution 706 was "a good way to maintain 
the bulk of sanctions and not to be on the wrong side of a potentially 
emotional issue".

The soaring rates of diseased and starving Iraqi babies were not judged to 
be good advertising for the virtues of the American Way.

In the event, resolutions 706 and 712 lapsed when Iraq rightly saw them as 
both a propaganda exercise and a means of the US gaining ultimate control 
over the Iraqi economy.

Eventually, resolution 986, which was implemented to pathetically 
inadequate humanitarian effect, was adopted in 1995 and used as the basis 
for the oil-for-food provisions.

Butler is wrong to claim responsibility for blocking or approving 
particular Iraqi import requests. Such decisions were — and still are — 
made by the country representatives on the UN sanctions committee, a mirror 
image of the Security Council.

At most, Butler was only authorised to make recommendations.

His factual errors are compounded by his indifference to the suffering of 
the Iraqi people.

He never seems to realise that he was upholding a system of population 
abuse which even he was driven to admit was harsh and ineffective.

In the context of Butler's complicity in sustaining the genocidal sanctions 
regime, it is bizarre to read his comments on their effects.

"Almost a decade after the sanctions were first imposed, it is clear that 
their main impact has been on ordinary Iraqi people. It is average Iraqi 
men, women and children who have suffered the brunt of sanctions".

He even admits that sanctions can "help to prop up an embattled, tyrannical 
regime".

So is he opposed to US policy? Of course not.

When Madeleine Albright says that sanctions will not be lifted until Saddam 
has gone, Butler is forced to acknowledge that she "shouldn't have made 
this statement", but he doesn't "consider it a blunder".

For Butler, Saddam Hussein is the ultimate demon king, who is keen to 
develop weapons that "Litreally(sic) threaten all life".

Never mind about the Kuwaitis or the Kurds, Saddam is about to extinguish 
the human race!

So Butler tries to scare us with tales of nerve gas in Tel Aviv, VX in New 
York, a nuclear bomb in London.

But then, having published his alarmist volume, Butler soon backtracks 
under questioning.

In interview with (Cosmo Landesman", he is challenged on the phrase "mass 
destruction" and changes his track.

"Actually, I think that you've got a point. Maybe these weapons should be 
called weapons of indiscriminate destruction".

So much for the main theme of Saddam Defiant.

Butler presents a caricature of Iraqi perfidy that bears no relation to the 
real world.

Despite the lies and concealments, desperate ploys of a regime struggling 
against a superpower that is publicly and covertly committed to its 
destruction, there has been massive Iraqi cooperation with weapons 
inspectors.

If Butler had not been so offensively confrontational, he would have 
achieved similar cooperation. On March 24 2000, the International Atomic 
Energy Authority (IAEA) informed Iraq that it was satisfied with how Iraq 
had helped the agency to perform its activities effectively.

Such considerations do not affect the continuation of the sanctions regime, 
which is responsible for millions of casualties, or the endless bombing of 
Iraq on an almost daily basis by US and British warplanes, the direct cause 
of thousands more casualties.

Former US secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali has written in 
Unvanquished that the US and British imposition of no-fly zones have 
no legal justification. Washington and London are in breach of 
international law.

Again, such points carry little weight with US policy makers, policies 
which are slavishly echoed in London.

On January 19 2000, former president George Bush told US airmen in Kuwait 
that they were doing God's work.

The sanctions that Butler criticises are currently killing 7,000 children 
every month.

The London-based Lancet notes the soaring mortality rates, just as 
UNICEF reported on June 14 that children were leaving school in droves to 
help their impoverished families to survive and that the massively under-
resourced schools themselves are collapsing. Sanctions have blocked 
necessary maintenance and the supply of textbooks, paper, pencils, desks 
etc.

Butler is not satisfied with sanctions and the current bombing campaign.

He reckons that "more forceful steps" are necessary to make Saddam comply 
with UN demands, that is, the strategic and commercial policies of 
Washington.

Even now, Butler is incapable of comprehending the broader political 
perspective.

In May, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a lengthy article 
in The New Yorker magazine charging that Barry McGaffery, a top US 
commander in the Gulf War, had committed massacres in Iraq by firing on 
undefended columns including men, women and children.

A week later, an adviser to George W Bush was urging that Iraq be 
dismembered by splitting it into several states.

Iraq has, so far, paid 4.2 billion pounds in war reparations financed by 
oil sales.

Further claims, many from Kuwait, are already in the pipeline at the UN 
Compensation Commission in Geneva. One single claim from Kuwait is for 12 
billion pounds. Interest charges on the Iraqi debts already amount to 190 
billion pounds — which means that sanctions would have to be maintained 
until the year 2125.

Butler's simple-minded and inaccurate hold on reality is well suited to 
current US and British policies on Iraq.

Iraqi oil is being sold to fund the mercenary corporations of the US and 
its allies, while humanitarian shipments to the Iraqi civilian population 
are deliberately delayed through "contract holds" and other ruses.

Where Butler's UN colleagues, the high-ranking Hans von Sponek and Denis 
Halliday, were prepared to resign over the obscenities of the sanctions 
policy, Butler was content to support a system — still in place — the 
cruelties of which he could not deny.

Butler should stop fantasising about possible future apocalypses that might 
be committed by his pantomime devil king and seriously address the 
policies, to which he was a party, that continue to cause thousands of 
Iraqi casualties every month.

* * *

Saddam Defiant: The Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the 
Crisis of Global Security by Richard Butler is published by Weidenfeld 
& Nicholson L20, and Phoenix L7.99.

* Geoff Simons has written six books on Iraq, sanctions and the United 
Nations, five published by Macmillan and one by Pluto. His other Macmillan 
titles cover such topics as Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Vietnam and 
Indonesia.

* * *

Morning Star, January 10, 2001