[A-List] US imperialism: Iraq

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Inspection as invasion

The US has been seeking to prevent a resolution of the Iraq crisis for the
past eight years

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 8, 2002
The Guardian

There is little that those of us who oppose the coming war with Iraq can now
do to prevent it. George Bush has staked his credibility on the project; he
has mid-term elections to consider, oil supplies to secure and a flagging
war on terror to revive. Our voices are as little heeded in the White House
as the singing of the birds.

Our role is now, perhaps, confined to the modest but necessary task of
demonstrating the withdrawal of our consent, while seeking to undermine the
moral confidence which could turn the attack on Iraq into a war against all
those states perceived to offend US strategic interests. No task is more
urgent than to expose the two astonishing lies contained in George Bush's
radio address on Saturday, namely that "the United States does not desire
military conflict, because we know the awful nature of war" and "we hope
that Iraq complies with the world's demands". Mr Bush appears to have done
everything in his power to prevent Iraq from complying with the world's
demands, while ensuring that military conflict becomes inevitable.

On July 4 this year, Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United
Nations, began negotiating with Iraq over the return of UN weapons
inspectors. Iraq had resisted UN inspections for three and a half years, but
now it felt the screw turning, and appeared to be on the point of
capitulation. On July 5, the Pentagon leaked its war plan to the New York
Times. The US, a Pentagon official revealed, was preparing "a major air
campaign and land invasion" to "topple President Saddam Hussein". The talks
immediately collapsed.

Ten days ago, they were about to resume. Hans Blix, the head of the UN
inspections body, was due to meet Iraqi officials in Vienna, to discuss the
practicalities of re-entering the country. The US airforce launched bombing
raids on Basra, in southern Iraq, destroying a radar system. As the Russian
government pointed out, the attack could scarcely have been better designed
to scupper the talks. But this time the Iraqis, mindful of the consequences
of excluding the inspectors, kept talking. Last Tuesday, they agreed to let
the UN back in. The State Department immediately announced, with more
candour than elegance, that it would "go into thwart mode".

It wasn't bluffing. The following day, it leaked the draft resolution on
inspections it was placing before the UN Security Council. This resembles
nothing so much as a plan for unopposed invasion. The decisions about which
sites should be "inspected" would no longer be made by the UN alone, but
also by "any permanent member of the security council", such as the United
States. The people inspecting these sites could also be chosen by the US,
and they would enjoy "unrestricted rights of entry into and out of Iraq" and
"the right to free, unrestricted and immediate movement" within Iraq,
"including unrestricted access to presidential sites". They would be
permitted to establish "regional bases and operating bases throughout Iraq",
where they would be "accompanied... by sufficient US security forces to
protect them". They would have the right to declare exclusion zones, no-fly
zones and "ground and air transit corridors". They would be allowed to fly
and land as many planes, helicopters and surveillance drones in Iraq as they
want, to set up "encrypted communication" networks and to seize "any
equipment" they choose to lay hands on.

The resolution, in other words, could not have failed to remind Iraq of the
alleged infiltration of the UN team in 1996. Both the Iraqi government and
the former inspector Scott Ritter maintain that the weapons inspectors were
joined that year by CIA covert operations specialists, who used the UN's
special access to collect information and encourage the republican guard to
launch a coup. On Thursday, Britain and the United States instructed the
weapons inspectors not to enter Iraq until the new resolution has been
adopted.

As Milan Rai's new book War Plan Iraq documents, the US has been undermining
disarmament for years. The UN's principal means of persuasion was paragraph
22 of the security council's resolution 687, which promised that economic
sanctions would be lifted once Iraq ceased to possess weapons of mass
destruction. But in April 1994, Warren Christopher, the US secretary of
state, unilaterally withdrew this promise, removing Iraq's main incentive to
comply. Three years later his successor, Madeleine Albright, insisted that
sanctions would not be lifted while Saddam remained in power.

The US government maintains that Saddam Hussein expelled the UN inspectors
from Iraq in 1998, but this is not true. On October 30 1998, the US rejected
a new UN proposal by again refusing to lift the oil embargo if Iraq
disarmed. On the following day, the Iraqi government announced that it would
cease to cooperate with the inspectors. In fact it permitted them to
continue working, and over the next six weeks they completed around 300
operations.

On December 14, Richard Butler, the head of the inspection team, published a
curiously contradictory report. The body of the report recorded that over
the past month "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites
under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's
cooperation", but his well-publicised conclusion was that "no progress" had
been made. Russia and China accused Butler of bias. On December 15, the US
ambassador to the UN warned him that his team should leave Iraq for its own
safety. Butler pulled out, and on the following day the US started bombing
Iraq.

>From that point on, Saddam Hussein refused to allow UN inspectors to return.
At the end of last year, Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, proposed a means of resolving the crisis.
His organisation had not been involved in the messy business of 1998, so he
offered to send in his own inspectors, and complete the job the UN had
almost finished. The US responded by demanding Bustani's dismissal. The
other member states agreed to depose him only after the United States
threatened to destroy the organisation if he stayed. Now Hans Blix, the head
of the new UN inspectorate, may also be feeling the heat. On Tuesday he
insisted that he would take his orders only from the security council. On
Thursday, after an hour-long meeting with US officials, he agreed with the
Americans that there should be no inspections until a new resolution had
been approved.

For the past eight years the US, with Britain's help, appears to have been
seeking to prevent a resolution of the crisis in Iraq. It is almost as if
Iraq has been kept on ice, as a necessary enemy to be warmed up whenever the
occasion demands. Today, as the economy slides and Bin Laden's latest
mocking message suggests that the war on terrorism has so far failed, an
enemy which can be located and bombed is more necessary than ever. A just
war can be pursued only when all peaceful means have been exhausted. In this
case, the peaceful means have been averted.