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Posted on 09/18/2002 1:30:51 AM PDT by Happygal
YOU'VE got to hand it to Saddam. In one brisk, neat letter to Kofi Annan, he pulled the rug from right under George Bush's feet.
There was the American president last week, playing the role of multilateralist, warning the world that Iraq had one last chance through the UN to avoid Armageddon.
"If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," he told us all in the General Assembly, "it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long range missiles and all related material."
And that, of course, is the point. Saddam would do everything he could to avoid war.
President Bush was doing everything he could to avoid peace. And now the Iraqi regime has put the Americans into a corner. The arms inspectors are welcome back in Iraq. No conditions. Just as the Americans asked.
No wonder the United States was whingeing on about "false hopes" yesterday. No wonder the Americans were searching desperately for another "casus belli" - be sure that they will find one - in an attempt to make sure that their next war keeps to its timetable.
Be sure, too, that Saddam, that master of the post-agreement conditional clause, will have a few surprises for the UN inspectors when they do turn up in Baghdad. But for now, the Americans have been sandbagged. It will take at least 25 days to put the UN inspection team together, another 60 for their preliminary assessment always assuming they are given "unfettered" access to all Iraqi government facilities then another 60 days for further inspections.
In other words, George Bush's latest war has been delayed by more than five months.
What on earth will he find to rant on about during all that time? Will he find another dictator to threaten?
Saddam, of course, must have his own worries. Back in 1996, the Iraqis were already accusing the UN inspectorate of working with the Israelis.
Major Scott Ritter, Iraq's nemesis-turned-saviour, was indeed, as an inspector, regularly travelling to Tel Aviv to consult with Israeli intelligence. Then Saddam accused the UN inspectors of working for the CIA. And he was right. The United States, it emerged, was using the UN's Baghdad offices to bug Iraq's government communications. And once the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 and the United States and Britain launched "Operation Desert Fox", it turned out that virtually every one of the bombing targets had been visited by UN inspectors over the previous six months. But a glance back at George Bush's UN speech last week shows that a free inspection of Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction was just one of six conditions which Iraq would have to meet if it "wishes peace".The other Bush demands, for example, included the "end of all support for terrorism". Does this mean that the UN will now be urged to send inspectors to hunt for evidence inside Iraq for Saddam's previous or current liaisons with guns-for-hire. Remember, it is only a couple of weeks since the repulsive Abu Nidal committed "suicide" in Baghdad.
Then Bush demanded that Iraq "cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans and others". In reality, such a proposal would be both moral and highly ethical, but America's Arab allies would profoundly hope that such monitors were not also dispatched to Riyadh, Cairo, Amman and other centres of gentle interrogation.
Yet even if Saddam was prepared to accede to all these demands with a sincerity which he has not shown in response to other UN resolutions, the Americans have made it clear that sanctions will only be lifted that Iraq's isolation will only end with "regime change". For Mr Bush's sudden passion for international adherence to UN Security Council resolutions an enthusiasm which will not, of course, extend to Israel's flouting of UN resolutions of equal importance is in reality a cynical manoeuvre to provide legitimacy for Washington's planned invasion of Iraq.
My own suspicion fuelled by a long passage of purple prose in the Bush General Assembly speech last week is that the Americans may try for a war crimes indictment against Saddam Hussein. The tens of thousands of Iraqis subject to "summary execution, and torture by beating, burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape" could provide the evidence for any war crimes prosecution.
Indeed, when the Americans sealed off northern Iraq in 1991 to provide a dubious 'safe haven' for the Kurds, they scooped up masses of Iraqi government documents, flew them out of Dohuk in a fleet of Chinook helicopters and squirrelled them away in Washington as evidence for a possible future tribunal.
But even this idea has a hand grenade attached to it.
Today, for example and you will look elsewhere in vain for any mention of this marks the 20th anniversary of the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre, the slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian civilians by Israel's Phalangist militia allies, a bloodbath which Israel's own army watched and noted and did nothing about.
If Saddam Hussein can be charged with war crimes by the West and he should be then why not Mr Sharon?
Why not Rifaat Assad, the brother of the late president of Syria whose Special Forces killed up to 20,000 Syrians in the rebellious city of Hama in 1982?
Why not the Algerian police officers whose routine torture and murder of civilians during the country's dirty war against the Islamist insurgency?
Why not the vicious killers within the Islamist movement in Algeria? Why not the Iranian hangmen who dispatched thousands of prisoners at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988? Why not bin Laden if the Americans could catch him for September 11?
But justice is not what President Bush wants unless it's a useful way of putting America's enemies out of the way, of affecting "regime change" or of prividing a useful excuse for a military invasion which will leave US oil companies including Mr Bush's own buddies in control of one of the world's largest reserves of oil.
Saddam Hussein's own cynicism for he could have given UN inspectors free rein years ago will be matched by Mr Bush's cynicism.
Saddam's letter to Mr Annan was a smart move, as contemptuous as it was inevitable.
Stand by, then, for an equally contemptible response from President Bush
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What a lying, lowlife scumbag...I read that far and gave it up!!
FReegards...MUD
Alright, I lied and read on...there were actually boucoups conditions that made Sodom's "compliance" absolutely bogus!! I hope this Fisk dude goes and gets a personal interview from Sodom sometime in the next month and gets caught up in the crossfire...he won't be missed!!
FReegards...MUD
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Well, send that li'l pencil-necked geek to Richmond and me and jla'll arrange another Welcoming Committee fer yer boy!!
FReegards...MUD
Tomorrow afternoon...hey Jeff, where do ya wanna meet?
FReegards...MUD
Hey there, my FRiend, who you callin' a Geek?! LOL!!
"Just what kind of person can put George W. Bush and Saddam H. on the same scale. I don't believe Fisk makes any differentiation between them, in fact I believe he thinks GW is WORSE!"
Of course he does, he's a Socialist RAT!! Sodom's not as much of a threat to the DemonRATS as Dubyuh is.
FReegards...MUD
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Just like Chamberlain before him, Kofi Annan has a letter. History repeats itself. American action will save the world again...