Posted on 10/11/2002 11:44:30 AM PDT by LibertarianInExile
If anyone doubted George Bush's intention to go to war with Iraq, that doubt should have been removed when the United States said it would "thwart" the return of the arms inspectors to Iraq until it got a new Security Council resolution.
Of course, the resolution the United States wants is just a rubber stamp to start the war. It is designed to force the Iraqis to reject it and thus provide the international cover that Bush wants for his invasion.
The meeting between the Iraqis and the arms inspectors in Vienna was quite successful. The Iraqis agreed to everything. They brought four years' worth of records and turned them over to the United Nations.
It's a shame that so many of the television commentators are so ignorant that they all, with only one exception that I saw, misreported the meeting in Vienna. They kept saying the Iraqis kept the presidential palaces "off-limits." That is factually incorrect.
Hans Blix, the head of the U.N. inspectors, has made it quite clear that his organization works for the Security Council, and since the only resolutions that exist are old ones, those are the ones he must be bound by. Among those is a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 1998 by the secretary general and Saddam Hussein. It says simply that before the presidential palaces are inspected, Iraq must be given 24 hours' notice, and a diplomat must accompany the inspectors. That certainly doesn't mean that they are off-limits. They are all available for inspection under the conditions the United Nations agreed to.
So, as things stand now, the inspectors can go back, all the housekeeping details have been agreed to, and they can start their work by Oct. 15. The Iraqis, so far as we know, will honor their agreement in regard to unconditional access. If the president had been sincere about his concern for weapons of mass destruction, he'd presumably be happy. Instead, he intends, if he can, to wreck the present agreements and force through an insulting, war-provoking resolution. He wants war, not inspections, and destruction, not disarmament.
By the way, another point of ignorance on the part of TV smiley faces: A couple of them seemed to think that if the president is opposed to the agreement, then it is null and void. Hans Blix works for the Security Council, not for George Bush or Colin Powell. Unless the Security Council tells him differently, he's sending his inspectors to Iraq whether Mr. Bush likes it or not.
So what is the United States going to do? Send F-15s to shoot down the U.N. plane? Without a majority on the Security Council, the United States cannot stop the inspectors from returning to Iraq. Maybe it will get a resolution, and maybe it won't. I hope the United States doesn't.
For too long the United States has bullied the United Nations, using blackmail and threats in order to win votes from little countries. We have used the United Nations when it suited our purposes and ignored it when it didn't. I, too, hope the United Nations shows some backbone and tells Mr. Bush: "Either obey international law or take a hike. And by the way, pay your back dues on the way out."
It's a fact that there has been no evidence produced that Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction. The worst-case scenario for Iraq is if it's really true that it doesn't have any. You can't prove a negative. If Iraq has some, it can produce them; if it does not, Iraq is out of luck. Bush and his warmongers will never believe either the Iraqis or the inspectors. Bush wants his war, and he will have it, come what may.
Those resolutions have not worked. Why? Because they have no enforcement mechanism. A new resolution with a self-contained enforcement clause is essential because otherwise, the Iraqis will continue the whipsaw pattern of the last decade.
...and you are calling us cowardly.
It is a computer - I am not going to reach through and grab you!
I am in Texas.
From what I have heard, the servers for this board are in Kalifornia.
You are...someplace else, safely anonymous, whether you use your normal handle or create a throw-away handle to post this.
Bug us? You ignorant POS, where have you been for the last year other than face down in Noam Chomksy's lap? No wonder leftists like you have to spout this crap where you can remain nearly anonymous - in public you'd probably run into the butt kicking you really need or something like this (at least around here):
Wildey .475 Mag Pin Gun
It is really cool to set up worse case straw dogs, then tear them down with glib Constitutional and pseudo Conservative arguments.
If all of this noise is bothering the little Globalist minds such as the author and, I guess, yourself, can you imagine it's effect on Iraq and others?
The author is delusional. The U.S. has, in fact, been on the receiving end of bullying from the "small nations" in the UN - recall the recent brouhaha over the Human Rights committee - and has done little in retaliation but decline to pay its dues for a time. The UN has no backbone, basically, or it wouldn't have allowed Saddam to flout its demands for inspection (16 at last count), and certainly telling the U.S. both to leave and to pay back dues would be not an act of chutzpah, it would be an act of high comedy.
In Iraq the U.S. is doing the UN's dirtywork for it and will absorb the criticism that might better be directed that way. This isn't, of course, altruistic, inasmuch as the U.S. will be the principal target of whatever Saddam gains as a result of the failure of the UN to back up its resolutions.
Personally, I'm getting a little impatient with the attitudes the author articulates here. I wouldn't cry if Bush told them to pound sand, told Saddam he could do whatever he liked to any of his neighbors or to the EU, but face nuclear annihilation if he is even suspected of falling afoul of U.S., not world, interests, and let it all go. If the globally self-righteous don't wish to deal with that "evil madman" Bush let them have their preference and deal with the real thing.
P7M13 - thanks for the ping.......
Getting a majority on the Security Council isn't the big deal Reese thinks it is.
These votes are for sale. Russia wants support for its war against the Chechens, and repayment of Iraq's debt, and a share of the oil concessions. They have said this explicitly. France wants a share of the oil concessions. China wants our previous support for the Chinese Turks withdrawn. And so on. UN approval does not represent moral authority.
Quite the opposite. Not going to the UN means not having to bribe the Security Council, meaning that unilateral action is inherently, potentially, more moral. To get UN approval we have to mortgage Iraq's future income to the hyenas. If we go in alone, Iraq is free to make its own deals and starts with a clean slate.
But don't worry, we'll go with the UN, and everyone will get their cut.
And by the way, pay your back dues on the way out
If we pay our back dues, and then bill the UN for the cost of executing UN mandates (a decade sitting on Iraq, 7 years occupying Bosnia) I think the UN owes us money. Hey, if we get UN authorization, we can even bill the UN for the cost of overthrowing Saddam. Sweet.
A lot of people here seem to be hearing impaired and oblivious to the events of the past few weeks. The above words are straight from the president's mouth. Bush is not going half-cocked into battle. The president has appealed to the UN and there has been a debate in Congress. The Iraq issue has been thrashed out in every mainstream and non-mainstream media outlet in this country. This whine that there has been no debate or no inclusion of our allies is a pure fallacy.
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