Posted on 09/17/2002 8:30:24 AM PDT by xsysmgr
"The inspectors don't have a chance."
It's not a Pentagon hawk speaking out of a zeal to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq who insists that this is so. Instead, it's a former U.N. weapons inspector who speaks, simply, out of experience.
Richard Spertzel was in Iraq 40 times as a U.N. inspector, but has a clear-eyed assessment of his handiwork. Before they ended altogether in 1998, inspections "were not very effective," Spertzel says, "and there's no reason to believe that conditions have changed — if anything they've gotten worse."
The "international community," and many Democrats in Congress, want a return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, which is like insisting that we return to searching for needles in haystacks owned by a farmer who hates us and will do anything to obstruct our work.
Spertzel's recent testimony, together with that of another former inspector, David Kay, before the House Armed Services Committee makes for an unflattering picture of inspections, by those who know them best.
There are three unalterable conditions — the nature of Saddam's regime, of international politics and of Iraq itself — that make effective inspections nearly an impossibility.
Totalitarian dictatorships are not given to punctiliously respecting the rules of the international order and forswearing weapons. They are built — inherently, necessarily — on lies and force.
"We know that you're lying, so why are you doing it?" Spertzel remembers asking an Iraqi official at one point. "The answer came back, very haughtily, 'It's not a lie when you're ordered to lie.'"
Iraqi officials weren't subtle in their defiance. In one incident, officials denied inspectors hunting for documents access to a site, then kept them in a standoff until a fire started on the asphalt roof of the building — supposedly a janitor had suddenly decided to burn trash.
Can't the United Nations just crack down? Probably not.
If it seems that Saddam will retain power indefinitely, some of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the "Big Five" responsible for the inspections regime — will maneuver for his favor, as a way to get advantages not on offer to his harder-line critics.
As Spertzel puts it, "Iraq is able to exploit its oil potential to gain friends." Saddam realized in the 1990s that he could split the coalition against him by enticing France and Russia with oil contracts.
When Kofi Annan said in 1998 that "I can do business with Saddam," he meant it as a metaphor for his diplomatic work. France and Russia mean it literally.
By 1997, Saddam had exploited the split in the Big Five to weaken the inspections regime, and by 1999, the United Nations had passed new rules that stated Iraq didn't need to eliminate its weapons, it only needed to demonstrate "cooperation" (of course, Saddam defies even this vague, minimal standard).
So, even if inspections are tightened now, they will inevitably be subverted or explicitly softened again at the behest of powers that, when they look at Saddam sitting atop billions of barrels of oil, see dancing dollar signs.
Finally, there's the extent of Iraq's industrial capacity. Iraq is not Senegal. It's a relatively advanced country with industrial capacities that can be easily turned from legitimate, peaceful uses to noxious, military ones.
Its nuclear program, for instance, wasn't a whim, but a massive effort costing $20 billion and involving 40,000 people. The know-how and related capacities don't just vanish.
"Nuclear weapon secrets are now Iraqi secrets well understood by Iraq's technical elite," says Kay, "and production capabilities necessary to turn these 'secrets' into weapons are part and parcel of the domestic infrastructure of Iraq, which will survive even the most Draconian of sanctions regimes."
Spertzel thinks that inspections — through the questions asked by inspectors, and the opportunity for contact with top-flight experts from around the world — perversely increase Baghdad's knowledge of weapons technology.
All of this makes clear that only one new inspection process makes sense: Remove Saddam first, inspect later.
Leni
Annan will lead the UN to its new state of IRRELEVANCY. (He already has, its just no one's admitting it yet.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.