The Mystique Of Iraq

The Mystique Of Iraq

For some reason unknown to me, Iraq casts a strange
spell on the members of the Bush family when they
occupy the White House. It seems to corrupt them so
that they resort to lies and elaborate deceptions as their
frenzy for war grows feverish.

The original Gulf War was based largely on lies. There
was the outright lie that Iraqi soldiers had snatched
Kuwaiti babies out of incubators to steal the incubators.
The second big lie was the claim that Iraq was massing
troops for an invasion of Saudi Arabia. Totally false.

Now, another Bush is misleading the American people in
order to dupe them into a war with Iraq. Let me trace
the deceptions of the Bush team. In the first place,
Republican campaign advisers argued that war was
better for Republican chances in November than trying
to campaign on domestic issues. It's quite clear that Mr.
Bush was in somewhat of a fog prior to the terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington. He has blossomed
into a war leader and seems determined to make sure he
never runs out of wars.

The first ploy used to justify war was the claim that Iraq
was developing weapons of mass destruction and
therefore posed an imminent threat to the United States
and, indeed, the world itself. It's important to
understand that in the past, a policy of containment
worked with an enemy that had thousands of weapons
of mass destruction and, unlike Iraq, the means of
delivering them. Yet Bush claims that Iraq, with one or
two nuclear warheads, could blackmail the world. That,
of course, is patent nonsense. It couldn't even blackmail
Israel, which has a nuclear force of 200 warheads and
the rockets and the planes with which to deliver them.

That aside, however, Bush was unable to produce any
new evidence that would support the claim that Iraq
was building weapons of mass destruction. Everything
the administration tossed out as "evidence" was old
stuff. It was flatly unable to prove that Iraq was on the
verge of some new, dangerous venture. So the strategy
shifted.

Bush goes to the United Nations. He has to, since it was
obvious no country except Great Britain was going to
support a unilateral invasion by the United States. Here
the ploy is that Saddam Hussein, by failing to obey U.N.
resolutions, has put the world body in the position of
either enforcing its resolutions or becoming "irrelevant."
What Bush really is saying is, give me a U.N. cover to
attack Iraq, or I'll call you a League of Nations.

There is one flaw in this strategy, which most Americans
have swallowed whole. The country that is the all-time
world-class champion at failing to obey and at defying
U.N. resolutions is Mr. Bush's favorite country, Israel.
There is no way you can logically argue that failure to
enforce about 70 resolutions against Israel does not
jeopardize the United Nations, but failure to enforce 16
resolutions directed at Iraq would and is a just cause for
war. The reason the United Nations has never tried to
enforce its resolutions directed at Israel is that the
United States prevents it from doing so.

Now, much to President Bush's discomfort, Iraq has said
the weapons inspectors can come back without
conditions. This throws a monkey wrench into Bush's war
plans. True, it might be just a trick by Saddam Hussein,
but nothing will be lost or threatened by giving peace a
chance. The truth is that the original inspectors oversaw
the destruction of 90 percent to 95 percent of Iraq's
weapons. It is also true that the United States kept
raising the bar and had furthermore corrupted the
inspection process by using it as a cover for spying.

Finally, let me point out another obvious fact: All over
the world, the United States advocates dialogue as an
alternative to war to settle disputes. Yet not one time
since the Gulf War has the United States even
attempted to conduct a diplomatic dialogue with Iraq.
There is no justification for war with Iraq. The Bushes
would waste every American life lost in an attempt to
satisfy their sick obsession with Iraq.