Issue #1

Attack Iraq?

Why no—The not-often-discussed basics

The popular bumper sticker says Attack Iraq? No! This is a good sentiment. I have one of these on my own car. But with the blizzard of pro-war propaganda being hurled at us from the president and media mouthpieces, it is easy to get sidetracked into a debate about presence of weapons in Iraq and lose sight of the real reasons to oppose this war.

Here are my top five reasons why this war is wrong and must be stopped:

1. Slaughter. War will mean death and destruction for hundreds of thousands of innocents, an outrageous number of poorly-armed Iraqi forces, and some

number of U.S. and allied troops. Leaked U.S. battle plans propose a mega-salvo designed to produce “Shock and Awe” amongst the stunned Iraqi populace in order to coerce them to renounce their military defenses and give up their country to the invading Americans. Even if the world situation eventually reaches the promised land of a democratic Iraq with benevolent long-term American support (a dubious prospect), the scars of this slaughter will haunt America, Iraq, indeed the world, forever.

2. This U.S. attack on Iraq will be a war of aggression, with or without U.N. approval. There is no chance the Iraqi regime is now a threat to anyone outside its borders. Iraq is a severely weakened country with military power and weaponry far inferior to the American forces surrounding it. It is many times weaker than it was when it invaded Kuwait in 1990 after its population has been assaulted by more than a decade of brutally drawn economic sanctions. The super-hyped dangers of hidden Iraqi weapons promulgated by U.S. President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are easy to sell to a fairly large portion American public because of lingering fear from the 9/11 attacks. But almost no one outside of heavily propagandized America has any unusual alarm about weapons Saddam Hussein may or may not have. Powell, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice and Cheney themselves seem not really concerned about Iraqi weapons. If the weapons were of genuine concern to these administration figures, they would not have participated in allowing Hussein to get weapons during the 1980s (see chronology). Nor would they now have such confidence in a quick prosecution of a war.

What these U.S. officials rarely say in public but do really want is an opportunistic taking of the country in order to realign the region for American and Israeli advantage, insure basing and fuel supplies far into the future for the military itself, and to consolidate and increase U.S. power in the management the region’s energy riches and political landscape (see Why War? The role of oil).

No reasonable argument for self defense against an Iraqi attack on the U.S. exists because there is no such attack. America will create for itself a source of great shame if we ignore the fundamental precepts of international law by failing to recognize that we have no moral and legal right to invade and occupy another sovereign country. Americans recognize this and that accounts for enhanced anti-war sentiment in polls when they are asked if they would support a war without U.N. approval. But the U.N. cannot legalize the war. It still will be wrong, even if the U.S. can bribe and twist arms in order to force a war resolution through the Security Council.

“It is clear that launching a war of aggression is a crime that no political or economic situation can justify,” according U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson. Nazis convicted at Nuremberg were hung in part for planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression.

3. U.S. taking of Iraq will increase, not lessen, the chance of terrorism against Americans. Even Colin Powell admits that this war would elevate the threat, though he says the period of danger would be brief. I disagree. Bush is in the process of whipping up such strong anti-American sentiment throughout the world that pathetically weak Iraq is near the back of the line of potential attackers who will remain angry for a long, long time. In the run-up to the attack, the terrorism threat is being played like an accordion with the flood of alerts and news of bin Laden tapes and al-Qa'ida connections to Hussein. Listen to the din carefully and you will hear the dissonance: Powell tells the U.N about al-Qa'ida in Iraq, but there are disclaimers on the terror alerts that want to direct us away from thinking there is a link to the coming war. In reality, there is no proof of direct connection between al-Qa'ida and Iraq. Colin Powell’s exposition on the subject is highly suspect (see below and Robert Fisk, “You Wanted to Believe Him”). Still, the deep reasons for going to war do include a below-board strategy for throttling Saudi-based anti-Americanism. Cheney has spoken in public about the “regional advantages” in combating terrorism from a war on Iraq. He means that taking Iraq will demonstrate to the Saudis that they have less oil leverage and that they better pacify their more out-of-control elements. Unfortunately, the anger generated by this approach will leave America the target of terror for years to come.

4. U.S. taking of Iraq does not appear to be the end of the imperial designs of U.S. planners. An extended, dangerous period of escalation of application of U.S. power in an attempt to hold and control its expanding spoils of war can be expected. Despite their arrogance and hubris, Bush and his team should not have much confidence that the chaos of the post-invasion period can be kept benign.There is great uncertainty about the controllability of forces that could be unleashed as America commits to new global management requirements far beyond its present substantial deployments. Current U.S. planning envisions a three-phase transition of Iraq from American military administration to some form of American-style government led by current Iraqi exiles. This process will be highly problematic and will probably require considerable force to pacify the disparate populations within Iraq. Beyond Iraq, the U.S. intends to insure that the behavior of Saudi Arabia and other countries with strategic resources align with its hegemonic goals, thus inviting a radical anti-american response.

5. This war will perhaps be the worst cynical betrayal of the fighting men and women in the military in U.S. history. The American people need to know that it is only the peace movement that truly supports the troops. The only troop support that means a damn thing is stopping the war in the first place. This is a strong statement given the experience of Vietnam and the first Gulf War, but I believe that this is true. Our troops will be thrown into a battlefield where they will be exposed to deadly toxins. The deleterious effects on our troops and the Iraqi population of extensive use of depleted uranium munitions in the first Gulf War is only now coming to light. The new war will feature a ten-fold increase in the release of these toxins. A great deal of information on the suffering of our own veterans may be found at this website: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/. The imperialism of Bush and his lieutenants is a BETRAYAL of the troops and the American people, while they engender a false image that American troops do not care about human life. This image of our troops as storm troopers enforcing imperial policy, like it or not, will take a quantum leap in currency after an attack on Iraq. We will have lost any remaining legitimacy we have in using our military might against actual terrorists (not that I agree this has been the U.S. aim at any point, but post-9/11 legitimacy in the eyes of the world will have been squandered totally). None of this weight do I want our great country, our troops, and all of our people to have to bear.

Who Deceives?

Powell’s credibility collapse leads to diplomatic disaster

Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to the UN February 5 to give evidence of Iraq’s refusal to fully disclose its weapons. His exposition was impressive and breathtaking. The picture he painted indeed was a scary one: Iraq has trucked out its weapons ahead of the UNMOVIC inspectors, lied in its declaration, maintained mobile bio-weapons labs, sought components necessary for the construction of nuclear bombs, and consorted with and provided camps for poison-spreading al-Qa'ida terrorists in an alleged desire to conduct unspecified attacks. Powell’s bottom line conveys yet again that the United States cannot take the chance that some of these scary weapons will be used in or against America. Could any listener to these formidable complaints fail to conclude that a major U.S. war against Iraq is therefore justified?

On February 14, Powell returned to the Security Council to attempt a belittling of the UNMOVIC weapons reports given by Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. But by this time, Powell’s credibility had been shattered. Shortly after Powell’s first presentation, it had been discovered that a major MI6 intelligence report from the U.K., on which part of the presentation was based, was cribbed directly off of the internet from a decade-old graduate student’s paper concerning confiscated 1980s Iraqi documents (that described a period of heavy U.S. support). This disclosure had an enhancing influence on the massive worldwide anti-war demonstrations held on February 15.

Discovery of hijinks continued when a piece by John Barry in Newsweek detailed the debriefing of Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel. He defected in the mid-1990s with extensive documentation of Saddam's destruction of biological and chemical weapons.

Kamel has been repeatedly cited as a credible source by George Bush, Tony Blair and leading administration officials. He was cited by Powell in his February 5 presentation to the UN Security Council:

"It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX... The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law."

But Kamel, who was killed after returning to Iraq in 1996, actually told UN inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq has always claimed.

Those disclosures seemingly have had no effect on weeks of parading administration figures droning on about how “Saddam must disarm immediately.” Then on March 7, Hans Blix threw more of Powell’s case out the window:

”Intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks. In particular, that there are mobile production units for biological weapons. The Iraqi side states that such activities do not exist. Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities has so far been found.”

In other words, Colin Powell probably lied. The only other explanation is that he misinterpreted the intelligence. But there is a problem with the latter charitable explanation — if he wanted real mobile weapons facilities discovered, why was UNMOVIC never provided with the intelligence in real time?

There really is no charitable explanation concerning forged documents about Iraqi uranium imports from Niger. ElBaradei reported on March 7 that his agency had determined that documents said by the United States and Britain to support the allegations, and trumpeted during the fall of 2002 by Bush and Blair, were fraudulent.

"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents — which formed the basis for the reports of these uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger — are, in fact, not authentic," he said.

Even if the fabrications in Powell’s exposition are set aside and we assume Powell is 100% correct about all of the deceptions by Iraq, that only would show Iraq is under extreme scrutiny. Any escalation of its weapons development or attempt to use the weapons would presumably not escape U.S. notice. Powell’s faulty case, even if taken on its own terms, argues against a war if you believe war is a last resort.

Looking at Iraqi weapons in a different way, and getting beyond all of the hand-wringing about Iraqi non-cooperation, it emerges that the U.S. has completely obstructed Iraqi compliance with the Security Council. The excellent analyst, Glen Rangwala (who broke the internet cribbing story), has posted a counter-dossier and an extensive, up-to-the-minute evaluation of claims concerning Iraqi weapons.

Here, Rangwala provides clear analysis supporting the case that the United States in fact has deceived the world with its claims about Iraqi weapons and has failed to fulfill its own responsibilities under U.N. Security Council resolutions. The U.N. weapons inspection regime and Iraqi cooperation with it in reality has gone a long way towards disarming Saddam Hussein, an interpretation of events that is the polar opposite of the usual line found in the U.S. media. Yes, there are officially unresolved issues concerning chemical and biological agents that could be locally very dangerous. And full credence should be given to the possibility that Hussein Kamel correctly reported the destruction of these agents. Above all, there is no way these issues add up to war in the absence of a direct threat from Iraq.

Rangwala writes, “Iraq has repeatedly asked for a clear timetable for the lifting of economic sanctions to be coupled with the weapons inspections system. This is not an unreasonable demand: in fact, it was the agreement made in the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War, and which the U.S. in particular has done so much since 1991 to obscure. The ceasefire agreement - Security Council resolution 687 laid out a political settlement: the weapons inspectorate, an end to the threat of war, a clear timetable to lifting economic sanctions, and the creation of a weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East (entailing the need for the end of Israel's nuclear arsenal).”

In other words, a solution short of war has always been possible—lifting of sanctions and permanent in-country inspections coupled with region-wide peace initiatives. We probably will never know if present day Iraq can cooperate with the international community and heal itself from decades of tyrannical rule because the U.S. will not allow it.

Administration officials are now well-rehearsed in delivering lines like, “Saddam Hussein is a practiced liar, there is no doubt about it. We should take everything he says very skeptically.”

Apparently, the same holds true for Colin Powell and our own administration. Other countries see this clearly as their citizens line up at 80%+ rates against the war. Notwithstanding posturing of the U.S. administration that failure to vote along lines of U.S. will renders the U.N. “irrelevant,” the U.S. still faces three likely vetoes of a war resolution from China, France, and Russia; teetering of the Blair government in the U.K. as it desperately seeks cover for war; even withdrawal of support for the U.S. position in third-world countries like Pakistan and Cameroon. These are no small measures of how badly Powell’s diplomatic disaster has turned out. j