The Inspection Ploy

New York Times ^ | March 4, 2002 | By WILLIAM SAFIRE

[vannrox]

The Inspection Ploy

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON -- As predicted here, Saddam Hussein — faced with the certainty of a U.S.-led overthrow of his brutal regime — has restarted the business of postponing the attack until he can finish making weapons of mass destruction.


The Iraqi dictator is taking advantage of a tiny opening George W. Bush gave him. The U.S. president warned of what diplomats delicately call "regime change" in Baghdad unless Saddam acceded to the U.N.'s demand that its inspectors be allowed back into Iraq.


That ultimatum — U.N. inspections or else — leaves Iraq the chance to find a little wiggle room on the alternative to "or else." Accordingly, Saddam has begun the drawn-out process of negotiating who will do the inspecting and who will not. He wants months of wrangling over the makeup of the U.N. team, to be followed by another negotiation over where the selected inspectors can go and where they must not, and yet another about how long a warning Iraq's germ doctors get before a "surprise inspection."


Though widely unreported, Iraqi gaming of the Security Council began last Friday. Saddam's man at the U.N., Muhammad al-Douri, said that Iraq would not permit the return of the inspectors chosen by the U.N., led by chief inspector Hans Blix, because Iraq was certain that group was compromised by U.S. spies.


However — here comes the delaying gambit — Saddam is inviting Prime Minister Tony Blair to send in British inspectors. Blair has already claimed to have evidence of a dangerous Iraqi weapons buildup; what, asks Saddam, could be fairer or more reasonable than to let Britain see for itself that all such evidence is false?


Unless Secretary General Kofi Annan shows unexpected spine in his Thursday meeting with Saddam's man, that gambit would buy Iraq more time. Saddam expects Britain's media to press Blair to seize this chance to gain control of Bush's actions. Three other members of the Security Council, France, Russia and China — all ardent believers in Saddam's continuance in power — would lean on the U.S. not to be so bellicose as to insist the U.N. hold fast to its stand.


Saddam can count on the Saudi ruler, Prince Abdullah, to issue another vision: that failing to go along with Saddam's "compromise" would show the world that America is using a concern for his nuclear and germ buildup merely as an excuse to invade a peace-loving Arab nation.


In the U. S. Senate, Daschle Democrats — eager for some popular way to criticize Bush's war on terror — will worry aloud about "insulting our closest ally" by not deeming Britain capable of conducting intrusive inspections.


What should Bush do?


1. He should get on the hook to our special relation in London to make certain that Blair does not allow Saddam and his appeasers to drive a wedge between the two nations leading the war on terror.


2. He should tell Kofi Annan that to allow the makeup of the U.N. inspection team to be dictated by Saddam would make a mockery of Security Council authority.


3. He should inform the other permanent members of the Security Council that the only inspection team that can prevent U.S. action against Iraq is the team — augmented by U.S. surveillance equipment — that Saddam now refuses to accept.


4. He should send Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld to the Senate's Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees to urge nail-nibbling Democrats not to be fooled by Saddam in his long-expected attempt to jerk us around again.


5. He should send Saddam a much more specific ultimatum, this time with less wiggle room: unless the team chosen by the U.N., with U.S. participation, is on the ground in Iraq, absolutely unencumbered, by a date certain — that's it.


Even if forced to accept the experienced U.N. team, Saddam — needing a few more months to weaponize his germ arsenal — is sure to employ the same rope-a-dope with which he harassed previous U.N. inspectors. He will penetrate the team's communications, enabling his mobile laboratories to scatter in advance of inspection. He will raise objections to searches of pristine mosques and sovereign palaces and charge American inspectors with espionage.


Let's not get taken in again. Nuclear-bound Iraq has had three years unobserved. Time is on Saddam's side.

[vannrox]

A nicely written editorial.

[Texaggie79]

[Free the USA]

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