By Charlie Reese
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/bushwonttakeyes12oct02.shtml
Oct. 8, 2002
If anyone doubted George Bush's intention to go to war with Iraq,
that doubt should have been removed when the United States said it would
"thwart" the return of the arms inspectors to Iraq until it got a new Security
Council resolution.
Of course, the resolution the United States wants is just a rubber
stamp to start the war. It is designed to force the Iraqis to reject it
and thus provide the international cover that Bush wants for his invasion.
The meeting between the Iraqis and the arms inspectors in Vienna was
quite successful. The Iraqis agreed to everything. They brought four years'
worth of records and turned them over to the United Nations.
It's a shame that so many of the television commentators are so
ignorant that they all, with only one exception that I saw, misreported
the meeting in Vienna. They kept saying the Iraqis kept the presidential
palaces "off-limits." That is factually incorrect.
Hans Blix, the head of the U.N. inspectors, has made it quite clear
that his organization works for the Security Council, and since the only
resolutions that exist are old ones, those are the ones he must be bound
by. Among those is a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 1998 by the
secretary general and Saddam Hussein. It says simply that before the presidential
palaces are inspected, Iraq must be given 24 hours' notice, and a diplomat
must accompany the inspectors. That certainly doesn't mean that they are
off-limits. They are all available for inspection under the conditions
the United Nations agreed to.
So, as things stand now, the inspectors can go back, all the housekeeping
details have been agreed to, and they can start their work by Oct. 15.
The Iraqis, so far as we know, will honor their agreement in regard to
unconditional access. If the president had been sincere about his concern
for weapons of mass destruction, he'd presumably be happy. Instead, he
intends, if he can, to wreck the present agreements and force through an
insulting, war-provoking resolution. He wants war, not inspections, and
destruction, not disarmament.
By the way, another point of ignorance on the part of TV smiley
faces: A couple of them seemed to think that if the president is opposed
to the agreement, then it is null and void. Hans Blix works for the Security
Council, not for George Bush or Colin Powell. Unless the Security Council
tells him differently, he's sending his inspectors to Iraq whether Mr.
Bush likes it or not.
So what is the United States going to do? Send F-15s to shoot
down the U.N. plane? Without a majority on the Security Council, the United
States cannot stop the inspectors from returning to Iraq. Maybe it will
get a resolution, and maybe it won't. I hope the United States doesn't.
For too long the United States has bullied the United Nations,
using blackmail and threats in order to win votes from little countries.
We have used the United Nations when it suited our purposes and ignored
it when it didn't. I, too, hope the United Nations shows some backbone
and tells Mr. Bush: "Either obey international law or take a hike. And
by the way, pay your back dues on the way out."
It's a fact that there has been no evidence produced that Iraq has any
weapons of mass destruction. The worst-case scenario for Iraq is if it's
really true that it doesn't have any. You can't prove a negative. If Iraq
has some, it can produce them; if it does not, Iraq is out of luck. Bush
and his warmongers will never believe either the Iraqis or the inspectors.
Bush wants his war, and he will have it, come what may.
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