Bush: Little Hope Saddam Will Disarm, Prepares U.S. for War

WASHINGTON - President Bush said on Saturday he saw little hope Iraq would disarm peacefully, bracing the American people for war ahead of an emergency summit with allies Britain and Spain.

Bush will travel to Portugal's wind-swept Azores islands, 900 miles west of the European mainland, on Sunday to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for what the White House portrayed as a final diplomatic push for a U.N. resolution demanding that Iraq disarm or face attack.

In preparation for the summit, Bush called Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, telling Berlusconi he was "going the extra mile on the diplomatic front," said Jeanie Mamo, a White House spokeswoman.

Barring a last-minute compromise in the U.N. Security Council, which seems increasingly unlikely, the White House would quickly shift to a war footing.

Once diplomacy is exhausted, administration officials say Bush would address the nation, issuing what amounts to a final ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and giving humanitarian aid workers and others time to leave the country before military action is taken.

"There is little reason to hope that Saddam Hussein will disarm," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "If force is required to disarm him, the American people can know that our armed forces have been given every tool and every resource to achieve victory."

More U.S. warships were en route to the Gulf region, where 250,000 troops are already ready to strike at Saddam over his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Bush spent Saturday at the Camp David presidential retreat, far from the thousands of anti-war protesters who planned to surround the White House.

Aides said Bush has signed off on plans for an "Iraqi Interim Authority" that could quickly take over certain government functions if Saddam is removed from power.

The transitional authority would include Iraqis from each of the country's major ethnic, tribal and religious groups, and would eventually help draft a new Iraqi constitution setting up an autonomous government.

Bush, Blair and Aznar are the sponsors of a U.N. resolution that would set the stage for war on Iraq.

The measure is the subject of a bitter fight among members of the U.N. Security Council and appears doomed to fail due to French and Russian veto threats.

The United States has left open the option of withdrawing the resolution without taking it to a vote.

U.S. officials said the summit, to be held at a U.S. air base at Lajes on the island of Terceira, should not be considered a war council, but rather an effort to find unity on the Security Council in hopes of forcing Saddam to give up power without war.

"Crucial days lie ahead for the free nations of the world," Bush said. "Governments are now showing whether their stated commitments to liberty and security are words alone -- or convictions they're prepared to act upon."

"And for the government of the United States and the coalition we lead, there is no doubt: we will confront a growing danger, to protect ourselves, to remove a patron and protector of terror, and to keep the peace of the world," the president said.

The United States has said it might abandon efforts to get a U.N. vote altogether. It says November's U.N. Resolution 1441 is mandate enough to invade Iraq.

But Blair, facing his greatest political crisis over Iraq, is anxious for U.N. cover to assuage British public opinion, which is opposed to any military action without U.N. approval.

U.S. officials said France, in vowing to veto the resolution, undercut efforts to increase pressure on Saddam to disarm peacefully.

"Sunday is not just to renegotiate the U.N. resolution with ourselves or anybody else," a senior U.S. official said.

"Sunday is to pick up from the dissipation of pressure that has been caused by the French -- the threat to veto anything, all the proposals for God knows long -- and to put some pressure back on Saddam."

The official, who asked not to be named, said the idea was to impress upon Saddam that there is "the nucleus of a coalition that is going to bring diplomacy to a close either way and to make him understand how serious this is."

The locale (the "gray Azores") and the timing and urgency (President Bush suddenly called away form his St. Patrick's Day dinner with the Irish President) and its limited scope (Blair and Aznar) are intriguing.

Why? Why and why?

Perhaps the Spanish or British received the long awaited ultimatum from Saddam Hussein, along these lines: 'there is a biological weapon in Madrid. Pull back now or else a million Spaniards will die'. An ultimatum like this would make sense. Spain has no nukes itself and could not retaliate directly. It would be unclear if the Labor Government would authorize nuclear retaliation without a direct attack on Britain itself. The US would be obliged, under article 5 of NATO, to retaliate against an attack on Spain. But the French would veto it.

If such an ultimatum were received. Aznar would call Blair, wanting him on board. Blair would call President Bush and they would go somewhere surprising, which no one could have bugged or infiltrated in advance.

This is probably all horeshit and they maybe, even now, playing a round of golf. But I couldn't help thinking it.

Like Father, Like Son

John MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, reminds us that both Bush administrations shared many of the same top officials. "These are all the same people who were running it more than ten years ago," he says. "They’ll make up just about anything-- to get their way."

It’s the same old crew, all right, the wonderful folks who brought us the too-soon-forgotten Iran-Contra scandal.

Obviously, Big Oil is over-represented in Bush Junior’s administration. The Bushistas, including Vice President Dick Cheney (Halliburton Oil), Commerce Secretary Don Evans (Colorado Oil), National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice (Chevron), Secretary of Commerce and State Department official Richard Haas, have served as executives and consultants for international oil firms. They have traded valuable stock in companies that extract, refine, and market petroleum. They have profited from companies that build pipelines, obtain drilling concessions, and provision the industry. Enron used to be busy in all those capacities.

Robert Zoellick, U.S. Trade Representative, served on Enron's advisory council; I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, was a major Enron stockholder; Secretary of the Army Thomas White was an Enron executive for a decade and cashed in millions of dollars in stocks and options before the crash. Karl Rove, Bush Junior’s Gray Eminence, owned about $250,000 worth of Enron stock at the time he conferred with Ken Lay in the White House about Enron’s difficulties with federal regulators.

It’s the same old crew, all right, refusing to negotiate, comparing Hussein to Hitler, accusing him of "gassing his own people" although the preponderance of evidence shows that the Iranians gassed the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War, while the U.S. was supporting the Iraqis.

No one should be surprised that the majority of hawks, the men who want to go to war rather than resort to diplomacy, have never seen military service. They managed to avoid the draft during the Vietnam conflict. Vice President Dick Cheney boasts, "I was smart enough to get five deferments." Bush Junior served in the National Guard, went AWOL for most of his enlistment. and somehow avoided imprisonment. Abrams, Card, Perle, Thompson, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Rove, Perle, etc.--none of them served, and all of them are eager to draw blood in Iraq.

The notable exception is Colin Powell, the only Bushista to have credibility in the realm of tactics, strategy, and diplomacy. Unfortunately, he is in the same position he occupied during Bush Senior’s regime when he repeatedly covered up the Iran-Contra crimes. Against what we hope must be his better judgment, he exercises the same function for Bush Junior.

How sad, then, we were to see Powell standing before the United Nations Security Council with a pathetic show-and-tell presentation. The incriminating aerial photographs of Hussein’s hidden weapons facilities could have been a Hollywood set or a Bakersfield truck stop as far as the audience was concerned. The photos required, Powell hastened to explain, expert interpretation. Sigh. Maybe the Pentagon should buy its photos from Soyuz Karta, the commercial Russian satellite.

Powell made points when he read earnestly from the thick British intelligence dossier, only to be ridiculed days later when the "intelligence dossier" proved to have been cobbled together from decade-old public sources, such as Jane’s Intelligence Review and an unattributed article from the Middle East Review of International Affairs written by a lecturer at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

While Powell was brandishing his vial of simulated anthrax, he failed to mention the significant facts about the anthrax letters. F.B.I. investigators have concluded that the powdered anthrax mailings were a weaponized form of an American strain produced at an American facility. Furthermore, weapons inspectors declare that Iraq has never possessed a dry preparation of anthrax.

No, General Powell. You had your chance and you blew it. Instead of holding up the vial of white powder and announcing that Hussein could do a whole bunch of damage with a teaspoonful of this anthrax stuff, you should have thrown your head back, swallowed it, and declaimed, "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before."

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