Posted on 02/01/2003 4:01:36 PM PST by MadIvan
From bugging inspectors to hiding papers in mosques, Iraq is said to be running rings round the UN, writes Nicholas Rufford
Downing Street has assembled a document designed to paint a picture of Saddam Hussein’s regime systematically deceiving United Nations weapons inspectors.
The unpublished briefing portrays an operation by Saddam’s security services that is running rings around United Nations inspection teams.
It claims spies monitor the UN teams’ every move and conversation, enabling incriminating material to be moved from any facility about to receive a visit from the inspectors.
In a phrase that seems to have been crafted more by Downing Street spin doctors than by sober-minded intelligence officials, the report notes: “Saddam and his inner circle control the state infrastructure of fear.”
It says houses, farms and mosques are used as hiding places and that the Iraqis are using sophisticated equipment to deceive the inspectors. There are claims that ground-penetrating radar is being used to test whether packages hidden underground could be detected by similar UN devices.
The briefing will be crucial in building up the American and British case that Saddam’s non-co-operation with UN inspectors is a “material breach” of his international obligations.
However, the report is likely to prove vulnerable to critics who will point out that it gives almost no details of what Saddam may be hiding in breach of UN resolutions.
Critics will argue that its findings contrast with those of Hans Blix, the chief inspector. He told the UN last week that Iraq was not actively obstructing his teams, but was failing to give evidence that it had got rid of its weapons of mass destruction.
The British report, entitled Iraq — Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation, states plainly: “Iraq has deliberately hampered the work of the weapons inspectors and is now engaged in a campaign of obstruction.”
It continues: “The regime has intensified efforts to hide documents in places where they are unlikely to be found, such as private homes of low-level officials and universities . . .
“There are prohibited materials and documents being relocated to agricultural areas and private homes or hidden beneath hospitals and even mosques.”
Some of the methods said to be used are hardly surprising for an experienced police state such as Iraq. Surveillance equipment has been installed in all the hotels and offices used by the UN, while all phone calls are said to be tapped.
When the teams leave for their inspections, their drivers are intelligence agents and security officers stationed by roadsides give notification about where the motorcades are heading.
In addition to their picture of Saddam as willing to resort to anything to outwit the UN, the British and Americans are using the confessions of senior Al-Qaeda figures to show the Iraqi regime’s willingness to sponsor terrorism.
The main confession comes from a leading Osama Bin Laden apparatchik who has told Sudanese authorities that in the 1980s, before he joined Al-Qaeda, he trained Syrian fundamentalist fighters at a camp just outside Baghdad.
The man has said that he worked at the Al-Rashdiya camp near Baghdad, now a Republican Guard headquarters. The camp trained hundreds of fighters from Syria’s fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
The source, who once ran Bin Laden’s business interests in Khartoum, was named in a New York courtroom in February 2001 as a member of Al-Qaeda’s executive board.
One of his alleged trainees is Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, now under arrest in Spain and suspected of being head of the Spanish cell of Al-Qaeda.
Another graduate of Al-Rashdiya was Mustafa Sitmirian Nasar, a 44-year-old Syrian who was named in the New York trial two years ago as running a group trying to buy uranium in Africa on behalf of Bin Laden.
A separate thread being followed for connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam’s regime runs through northern Iraq. Abu Musab Zarqawi, a middle-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is said to have had medical treatment in Baghdad then travelled to the Kurdish north and visited Ansar al-Islam, a small Muslim militia linked to Bin Laden.
US intelligence officials suspect Zarqawi has helped with work on chemical weapons. He has also been linked to the murder of the American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan last October and to the recently uncovered ricin plot in London.
Hitler didn't attack British territory to provoke the Second World War. He attacked Poland.
The point is, that many naysayers in the British government and the peace movements of the time said many of the same things - "war is unpredictable" and so on. Well that's true. Well done. But that doesn't mean that wars should not be fought, nor that there aren't legitimate reasons to fight.
Saddam Hussein has invaded two of his neighbours in the past, is obviously hiding WMD, trying to obtain WMD, funds terrorism. He is a nasty piece of work who should be taken out. And it is clear that just hitting him with a few cruise missiles will not do the job.
Yes going in is unpredictable. Going anywhere is unpredictable. Which makes your perfect prescience that it will all turn out badly all the more curious.
Regards, Ivan
Don't be ridiculous, 'Principled.'
You know very well that people from Perth and everywhere else in Australia do not support this war.
For a fact-based and thorough explanation of why the Left "thinks" as it does, you might want to take a look at my latest article for United Press International. Click the first link, below.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest column for UPI, "Historians against History (HAH!)" (Now up on UPI wire, and FR.)
As the politician formerly known as Al Gore has said, my book, "to Restore Trust in America"
Well, it should, Congressman.
NEVER underestimate them. They're as dangerous as a pet cobra.
Clear to who?
I think that's the ideal exit strategy, on this one. Saddam taken out, the Left undercut, and $50 billion saved.
Byron, think about the recent past. Since when has a cruise missile campaign taken out any regime?
Ivan
I see revisionism in your past, or is it future? This is the most unilateralist thinking there is. Change the resolutions, by yourself, 12 years after they were signed and sealed...then pretend it was that way all along.
The standing arrangement set forth by the UN in each and every (all 16 or so) resolutions is that the burden is upon Saddam to proove his compliance.
The very resolution that stopped the Gulf War was signed on the agreement of a losers burden to be placed upon Saddam.
In the end the Tomahawk alone theory won't work. It will just add more complexities to the problem but not remove it.
I say take the place over and set up a government that is moderate so that the Iraqis can have their own country and resources (in the long run). We are not trying to subjigate them, just eliminate a threat. If we do it right, the Iraqis can stay right where they are at, and then everyone is happy.
Your over simplified version will cause more problems than it fixes.
Well, it hasn't be used. But President Reagan used a similar tactic (if not weapon) on a similar dictator, Muammar Ghaddafi.
And he's been quiescent ever since.
Oh no he hasn't! Haven't you been seeing what he's been up to in Zimbabwe, for example?
Ivan
Yes, it is. The reality is, that's the only way we're going to get everyone onside. Thirty three percent domestic support is too risky to go to war on.
(As to the rest of your post, I suggest you've been viewing way too many Chuck Norris movies.)
Nope.
That figure includes those who support a war stamped rubberstamped by the UN. But the president has said he'll go to war with or without UN approval. AND use nuclear weapons, if he thinks they're appropriate. How many Americans do you think support him wholeheartedly, on that last one?
In a phrase that seems to have been crafted more by Downing Street spin doctors than by sober-minded intelligence officials...
However, the report is likely to prove vulnerable to critics who will point out (note that he doesn't wait for the critics to point it out, he does it for them)
Critics will argue that its findings contrast with those of Hans Blix
Some of the methods said to be used are hardly surprising (so it's OK for Saddam to do it because it comes as no surprise?)
That comment is totally absurd.
Some of you newbies scare me, you really do. Your worshipful devotion to the president, your clinging to the State as a security blanket....it's very un-American. And it's VERY un-Free Republic. I suggest you go and read Jim's statement of beliefs on the FR homepage, bootyist.
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