Posted on 06/17/2003 1:50:54 AM PDT by kattracks
Tony Blair's enemies have behaved in a shocking manner over the liberation of Iraq and its elusive weapons of mass destruction. Opponents of the war predicted all manner of disasters - millions of refugees, famine, thousands of deaths in battle, and revolution on "the Arab street" throughout the region. None of these horrors happened. Instead, it is obvious that the coalition has indeed freed Iraqis from a monster and created a new reality in the Middle East - one which just might offer the region hope.All that is unbearable to those who preferred the Saddam status quo. So they have used the missing weapons to turn on Mr Blair with self-righteous fury. They declare that the war was "a monumental blunder" (Robin Cook) and that we have been "duped" (Clare Short). This is opportunistic, irresponsible and self-serving rubbish.
Such weapons in the hands of rogue states or terrorists are one of the greatest threats to the world. Throughout the 1990s the UN weapons inspectors showed that Saddam Hussein was constantly trying to create and conceal such weapons. And over 12 years he mocked the UN, while he tyrannised and impoverished his own people. Before September 11 the threat of his covert and illegal programmes was judged bearable. Not so after 9/11.
Last November the entire UN security council voted unanimously that Saddam now be given a "final opportunity" to cooperate fully with the UN and surrender his illegal weapons. Were all the council members, including Russia, China and France "duped" by the CIA and British intelligence? Of course not.
In December Saddam submitted a 12,000-page report on his weapons which was a tissue of old lies. It was quite clear that he was not taking his "final opportunity" to cooperate fully with the UN.
Was this a man to whom we should indefinitely have given the benefit of the doubt on such a dangerous matter? He had already invaded two neighbours, killed more than a million Muslims in his war with Iran, used chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurds of Halabja, and tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands more.
Slobodan Milosevic was a Sunday school teacher compared with Saddam Hussein. But we did not give him the benefit of the doubt over Kosovo, which we also invaded without a UN resolution - with the support of Mr Cook and Ms Short.
I am surprised that we have not yet found his WMD. But remember that they were always well hidden in the 1990s. And for Saddam, survival at any cost was always the priority. After resolution 1441, he may well have destroyed weapons in the hope that the inspectors would give him a clean bill of health, UN sanctions would be lifted (as his friends in Paris, Moscow and elsewhere had urged) and he could start again.
There are other huge issues which Mr Cook, Ms Short et al shamefully gloss over. The first is that Iraq has been liberated. Why do Blair's critics in the press and parliament not look at the mass graves that are uncovered day by day, and say: "If only we had done this before, thousands of these dead people might still be alive today"?
Iraq's political and social reconstruction is clearly difficult and dangerous. But, despite the predictions, the US-led invasion has not created massive humanitarian, refugee, health or food crises. What it has created is a chance. Iraq never had any chance under Saddam.
Furthermore, the coalition has removed a cancer from the heart of the Middle East. Israel no longer has to fear an attack by Saddam with unconventional weapons. The world no longer has to fear that Israel might respond to such an attack with its own nuclear weapons. Without the removal of Saddam, there would not even have been a glance at the road map.
As last week's violence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza shows, the chances of the road map working are still pitifully slim. But without Saddam's removal the entire Middle East would have been frozen in its horror.
Sadly, Mr Cook and Ms Short are unable to forgive Mr Blair for seeing through the hypocrisy of the left and for allying himself on this occasion with Saddam's only effective enemy, the United States, the great satan of the left, as well as of Islamist terrorists.
I believe that the record and subsequent investigations will show that the government and the intelligence agencies acted properly in the face of a deadly, if unquantifiable, threat from Saddam. The record will also show that Mr Cook and Ms Short have behaved in a manner which should shame even them.
· William Shawcross is writing a book on the allies and Iraq.
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