Posted on 06/22/2003 2:57:17 AM PDT by Elkiejg
The "Don't touch Saddam" lobby has transformed into a hunting party to chase British Prime Minister Tony Blair out of office. The claim is that Blair (and President Bush) "lied" about the reasons for the war against Saddam. A few months before the war, Blair published a dossier on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). At the time, some of us realized that the dossier contained many flaws. But that didn't mean that there was no justification for going to war against Saddam. His WMD program was only one of many issues between Saddam and the United Nations.
From August 1990 (when Saddam invaded Kuwait) to March 2003 (when the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq), the United Nations' Security Council passed 18 resolutions related to the Iraqi dictator's policies and behavior. Saddam's possession of WMD was one of those issues. Others included:
Saddam was asked to stop threatening Iraq's neighbors and fomenting instability in the region. He did not. Between 1990 and 2003, Iraq took threatening action against Kuwait on 61 separate occasions. Tehran, for its part, reported to the U.N. 218 instances in which Iraq violated the terms of its 1989 cease-fire with Iran. Any survey of Iraqi propaganda under Saddam would show it as a means of fomenting hatred against many Arab governments, thus acting against the region's peace and stability.
The various resolutions also demanded that Iraq abandon claims against Kuwait once and for all. The National Assembly, Saddam's rubber-stamp parliament, passed a draft bill to abandon such claims - but the Revolutionary Command Council, the regime's highest organ, never gave final approval. Senior officials missed no opportunity to promise an eventual "reunification" of Kuwait with Iraq.
Various resolutions also demanded that Saddam stop violating the human rights of the Iraqi people and put an end to three decades of brutal repression. We now know that his henchmen were executing real or imagined opponents until April 8, just hours before the first U.S. troops entered Baghdad. By some estimates, Saddam's death machine murdered more than 100,000 Iraqis between 1991 and 2003. (This includes those killed when he quelled the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq.)
The discovery of mass graves, the testimonies of thousands of former political prisoners and other evidence now available show that Saddam violated all the relevant U.N. resolutions.
Several resolutions demanded Saddam account for what happened to foreign nationals who vanished in Iraq in 1990-91. These included more than 600 Kuwaitis, kidnapped by the Iraqis in August 1990. For over a decade Saddam prevaricated, refusing to provide information, and dismissed the issue as irrelevant.
Saddam also violated the resolutions and agreements related to the oil-for-food program. In some cases, he and his entourage embarked on criminal operations such as hoarding, smuggling food and medicine out of Iraq, and creating a black market. Many items imported by Iraq under the program were subsequently smuggled and sold in Jordan and Iran.
It is important to recall all this to show that the case of taking action against Saddam was not exclusively based on the issue of WMD. Finding and getting rid of such weapons in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and South Africa took 18 to 30 months, even though those governments all actively cooperated with the U.N. It is fanciful that similar results could be achieved in Iraq in a few weeks.
Not finding the WMDs in a fixed timeframe does not mean they never existed. British and Spanish governments have been looking for weapons caches of Basque and Irish terrorist groups for 35 years and have found little. But everyone knows those groups have arms.
On the other hand, the Philippines government still finds weapons caches left by the Japanese over half a century ago.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian journalist and author of 10 books on the Middle East.
Interesting stuff.
"In terms of what kind of economic system they wish to establish, as you point out, the Ba'athist Party was a socialist party. I think it's very hard to imagine any strong support in this country for a return to that economic system, which has left the country really flat on its back, and which does not really provide a model for getting the kind of vibrant private sector which I think most Iraqis now realize is a sine qua non for a stable economy and stable economic growth. So if they choose socialism, that will be their business. My guess is that's not going to happen." ~ Amb. Paul Bremer: Briefing on Coalition Post-war Reconstruction and Stabilization Efforts, June 12, 2003
Committee of the Missing (Saddam's victims may number eight million)
Newsweek via MSNBC.com ^ | 5/8/03 | Rod Nordland
Committee of the Missing
One local institution in Baghdad is up and running, documenting thousands of dead, and giving some small comfort to the living. It’s serious work, by serious men
May 8 — The raised living room of the posh villa in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyah neighborhood has a splendid view of the Tigris, date palms on the opposite bank, narrow wooden boats plying against the lazy current. But the view is through a picture window that has been broken out, jagged shards of glass framing the scene.
IN THE SPACIOUS COURTYARD under the window, a procession of people file in, reading the lists posted on the insides of the garden walls. It’s a strangely quiet throng, although from time to time a woman wails or a man shouts in pain. The names on the lists: those known to have been executed by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Under the window, a knot of people gathers to get the attention of the Committee for Missing Persons, convened now in that living room. One man holds up three black-and-white photos of young men. He doesn’t say anything. A woman named Saad Jaber Abadi clutches a picture of her brother, Atta, to her chest. “He was a brave son of Iraq, an athlete in international competitions, a runner. They just told us he’s been hanged, but we never got the body.”
Attempts to get the "international left" to acknowledge that which is good and condemn that which is evil are so frustrating because the moral foundation of leftism is evil, by any rational measure. Acceptance of human slavery in service to the state is not for the common good, but instead serves a much greater evil.
One need only taste once of the fruits of Marxism to know the vile nature of the tree that bears it, nourished by the blood of its tens of millions of victims. To accept Marxism as "social justice" is to feed yet another lie and pay homage to the King of Lies. Those who do so forfeit their souls.
As a famous fictional character once aptly observed: "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."
Thus, attempts to bring reason to those who have abandoned it are noble, but ultimately, unlikely to succeed.
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