Posted on 04/02/2003 4:29:57 PM PST by Smogger
Could this war have been prevented? Yes, say some [inspectors]. But with a surprising argument: Germany, France and Russia made war unavoidable with their purported peace politics. Gerhard Schroeder's categorical 'no' to military deployment was simply "crazy." "We might have been able to fulfill our mandate," one hears in the hotel lobby.... The 120 inspectors noticed soon, though, that they would not reach their goal without the full cooperation of Iraqis. But they waited in vain to be approached. A warning presentation by Hans Blix on January 15 in the Security Council didn't change things. Iraq made its first concessions when Secretary of State Colin Powell presented sensational pictures, videos, and tape recordings of mobile bioweapons labs, rocket launching ramps, and munitions bunkers. And as the American threat of war became more and more clear and found more support.... Blix delivered a more conciliatory situation assessment on February 14. This was the basis for Germany, France and Russia to speak of "functioning inspections" and to increasingly distance themselves from America and Great Britain. The governments in Berlin, Paris, and Moscow felt confirmed in the conviction that their peace strategy would lead to success. The inspectors in Baghdad saw things completely differently: their position was suddenly weakened.... The officials in Baghdad only became more cooperative when military pressure increased. Rhetoric never impressed Saddam Hussein, the inspectors say, the deeper the quarrels split the international community, the surer he felt more himself.... Success was less a question of time than one of the credible threat of the use of force. [emphasis added] "Where," the inspectors ask today, "were the teeth?" More time, the demand of Germany and France for inspections, would have been well and good. But: "They should have sent their own troops and ships."...
(Excerpt) Read more at pages.prodigy.net ...
Uh, this argument has been presented countless times around here over the past few months. Not so suprising to freepers.
Even some of the French stowaways will climb out of their ratholes in the hold just before the ship lands, wait and see.
Leni
Biting the US in the butt.
This was from the inspectors.
This was from the inspectors.
A whole new idea occured to me. The current assumption is that France, China, Russia and Germany had been trying to scuttle the inspection process because they have been involed in multi billion dollar contracts with the Iraqi defense industry and would lose what was owed to them if the inspections continued. This is a plausable, reasonable assumption.
But wait, what if they had different reasons for scuttling the inspection process? Another reasonable explanation is that they SUPPORTED Saddam's dream of conquest of the mideast. From their point of view, it would be easier to control the hords of Islamic fundamentalists with one regime in charge of the whole empire--providing that that regime was absolutly brutal enough--than it would be to control them as individual states. Saddam would fill the vacuum after the fall of the Soviet Union. And with Saddam in control of the Arab world, the US would have one more threat chipping away at its superpower status. Perhaps they are more afraid of the US political and economic might than they would be of an Iraqi empire.
Has anyone else thought along these lines without the super thinking power derived from a handy-dandy tinfoil hat?
We need to get it through some peoples' thick skulls that all this 'ANTI-WAR' hoo-haw MADE WAR MORE LIKELY, not less.
Peace through strength. It is a fundamental lesson, taught, most recently, by the great Ronald Reagan, who in the teeth of of all those 'nuclear freeze' marchers and America-hating Europeans, brought down the greatest oppressor the world has ever known.
Yes, that is a central point that I forgot to make.
A power vacuum tends to get filled. The old Soviet Union: USSR. The new Soviet Union: Russia, China, France and Germany.
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