False trails to justify war

by Alan Simpson

Consider the following words carefully: "The time for military action has 
not yet arisen. However, there is no doubt at all that the development of 
weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat, not 
just to the region but to the wider world. After 11 September, we proceeded 
in a calm and sensible way and we shall do so again, but we must confront 
the issue of weapons of mass destruction".

This was Prime Minister Tony Blair's first parliamentary answer to 
questions about Iraq, following his Texas hoedown with President Bush.

For all the Downing Street spin that "nothing has been decided", the 
language is about "when" to go to war, not "whether", was unavoidable, 
sensible or legal.

The press who followed Tony Blair to Texas came back in no doubt about US 
intentions -- Bush wants to be in Iraq by the end of the [Northern] summer 
-- and Blair will support him and everything else is cake dressing.

The military calculations will doubtless take time. Getting 250,000 troops 
into the region -- let alone the country -- will take time.

No-one, apart from Kuwait, will be on side with the US and British troops 
this time and the logistics are going to be a nightmare.

But it is the politics of the process that really stink and have to be 
challenged.

I have little time for Saddam and believe that that he should be held to 
account, particularly for his persecution of Iraqi Kurdish and Shia 
communities.

But then I also believe that Ariel Sharon should be tried for war crimes 
relating to the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.

Both men are heads of state. Both are brutal tyrants.

Yet only one is to be "taken out". Only one faces sanctions. Only one is to 
be bombed.

It is a matter of hypocrisy and double standards not lost on the Muslim and 
Arab world.

The more you look at the evidence about Iraq, the stronger is the case for 
removing the sanctions rather than restarting the war.

For over 10 years since the war officially ended, Britain and the US have 
bombed Iraq as part of the peace.

It has cost around US $100 million and brought death and suffering to tens 
of thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly children.

A better way of protecting them would have been through the aid and 
inclusion programs of a post-war settlement.

What we have been consistently told is that Saddam's weapons of mass 
destruction (WMD) stood in the way of this.

But a careful reading of official reports from the United Nations Special 
Commission (UNSCOM) and others makes clear how little truth there is in 
such a claim.

It also nails the lie of Downing Street claims that this is still the 
compelling reason to go to war on Iraq.

As early as 1995, UNSCOM executive chairman Rolf Ekeus and UNSCOM inspector 
Scott Ritter reported that disarmament of Iraq's chemical weapons had 
almost been completed.

In April 1998, the UN Security Council received a report from the 
International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), which confirmed that Iraq's 
nuclear weapons program had been eliminated "efficiently and effectively" 
with Iraqi cooperation.

There is no mention of this in British Government statements, not that the 
IAEA continues to have open access to Iraq [but] reports that its latest 
inspection in January this year was carried out with full Iraqi compliance.

All that Parliament gets is the fatuous claims of tub-thumping ministers 
that Iraq "could develop a nuclear weapon within five years".

Tissues of deceit cloak ministerial statements about a search for a 
solution to the debacle of the hidden war on Iraq.

Neither the Prime Minister nor junior lackeys fare much better when they 
get to biological weapons.

In March 1999, the UN Security Council reported that "the declared 
facilities of Iraq's biological weapons program have been destroyed and 
rendered harmless".

Ritter has gone further than this, claiming in June 2000, that Iraq had 
never been able to develop an effective delivery mechanism for biological 
weapons and had no production capacity to do so.

The only other dimension to the WMD argument goes back to the so-called 
"supergun" and long-range missiles.

In March 1999, however, UNSCOM also reported that, after 817 of its 819 
longer-range missiles had been destroyed, "Iraq does not possess a 
capability to indigenously produce" any such weapons.

Even the Blair/Bush denunciation of Iraqi non-cooperation looks a little 
shabby against UNSCOM comments that "the majority of [weapons] inspections 
were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance".

Non-cooperation was recorded in only five out of the 427 inspections before 
inspectors were withdrawn on US instructions.

And the five instances themselves resulted in minor delays -- not refusals.

Hard facts will not stand in the way of the war that Bush intends to wage.

They should, however, determine where the rest of us decide to stand. Iraq 
is no angel and should not be dressed up as one.

It played cat-and-mouse with the inspectors during the early 1990s. It 
would not allow US U-2 spy planes to fly over the country and only 
permitted intermittent inspections of presidential sites.

Given that the US administration was supplying the data that it gathered to 
Israeli security services being trained for a commando assassination 
attempt on Saddam Hussein, it is not surprising that he was less than 
enthusiastic about this degree of cooperation.

Even so, the Briefing Report that went to the US Congress in November last 
year summed up the current situation: "There is no hard evidence that Iraq 
is reconstituting banned WMD programs."

In the absence of a case for war, a new coalition must be formed to put the 
case for peace.

With or without support from the US administration, the West must:

* Open up a direct dialogue with Iraq, with a partial lifting of sanctions 
immediately and the mapping of a path to full removal in exchange for 
security guarantees and reinclusion in the international community;

* Ask Russia, China or France to initiate discussions with Middle East 
countries about a wider framework for security, stability and social 
justice within the region;

* Begin the process of removing the UN headquarters from its detention 
without trial in the US;

* Look at the basis of a new international architecture of rules-based 
justice, independent of -- or non-dependent on -- the US.

It is clear that the current US administration has taken the view that 
international treaties are for softies.

It has withdrawn from the ABM treaty, rejected Kyoto, blocked the 
Biological Weapons Convention and, through its Star Wars program, will soon 
breach the Outer Space Treaty.

It requires the UN to remain silent and supine in the face of its imperial 
whims.

We stand at the edge of a period of global anarchy rather than global 
justice. Gun law threatens to overrun international law.

The presumptions of an untrammeled military power will soon unleash an 
anguish of suicide bombers whose lives cannot be threatened, because they 
will have already lost theirs.

It is time to return to genuine internationalism, rather than lurch into 
the mire of Anglo-Texan creationism.

* * *

For details of UNSCOM inspections and Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction, e-mail Labour Against The War at latw@gn.apc.org

Alan Simpson is a journalist on the Morning Star, Britain's 
socialist daily