Posted on 01/24/2003 3:11:11 PM PST by MadIvan
The burden of proof rests with Iraq, not the US
The West has marched to such dissonant drums this past week that Saddam Hussein may now hope that the steel trap closing around him can yet be sprung. Military preparations are accelerating, not just in the US but in Britain and Australia. In Iraq, UN weapons inspectors have detected the first cracks in Iraq’s armoury of concealment. But far bigger cracks have opened in the UN Security Council, where it is vital that unity be maintained if war is to be averted.
Anti-war protests have been coupled with noisy political rows about what would justify the use of force against Iraq and even, in the case of Germany, whether force should be used whatever Iraq says, does or fails to do about its weapons of mass destruction. Eleven weeks ago, the burden of proof was unequivocally on Iraq to show itself free of these weapons and the capacity to produce them. Since then, merely by leaving UN weapons inspectors to search for what he still refuses to disclose, Saddam has managed to shift the political load back to the US. This frustrating game of pass the parcel has gone on for 12 years. The international debate has regressed to a dangerously confused state. Next week clarity about what Iraq must do needs to be restored.
On Monday Hans Blix reports to the Security Council in his capacity as head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic). President Bush gives his State of the Union address the following day. At issue is whether Iraq is complying with Resolution 1441, unanimously passed by the Security Council on November 8. It is important to be clear what “compliance” means.
For starters, the issue is not whether Iraq is “in material breach” of the obligations laid on it as conditions governing the ceasefire that ended Desert Storm, set out in Resolutions 686 and 687. Saddam has all along been “in material breach” of these resolutions, as 1441 confirmed. On November 8, the Security Council gave Iraq one “final opportunity” to end 12 years of “continued violations” or face “serious consequences”.
First, Iraq was ordered, by December 8, to produce “a currently full, accurate and complete declaration” on all aspects of its outlawed weapons programmes, and all research and production facilities, even those that it might claim were not related to weapons production. This it did not do.
When it expelled UN inspectors in 1998, Iraq had failed to account for massive quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin, VX agent, mobile biological weapons facilities, shells, missile engines and the manufacture of fuel for missiles it claimed not to possess. The 12,000-page declaration Iraq produced on December 7 answered none of those questions, nor others about uranium enrichment. It barefacedly asserted — even though it was as late as 1995 that Saddam’s sons-in-law revealed Iraq’s biological weapons programme — that it has had no prohibited weapons or programmes since 1991.
Secondly, 1441 demanded that Iraq “comply with its disarmament obligations”, and be seen to be doing so within 60 days of the arrival of UN inspectors in Iraq. It was as a means to this end, disarmament, that Iraq was ordered to co-operate with Unmovic.
Disarmament is the test of Iraq’s compliance with 1441. This is disputed by no government, not even Germany’s, and should not need restating. It needs to be restated because the question is not whether UN inspectors have caught Iraq with a “smoking gun”. It is whether Iraq has convinced them that it has ceased to be “in material breach” of UN resolutions. Iraq can do that only by coming clean about its banned weapons and programmes and getting rid of the lot.
The inspectors’ job is to verify Iraq’s willing compliance, not to catch it cheating. The lesson of the past 12 years is that finding material that Saddam’s Special Security Organisation is bent on hiding is a fool’s errand. That is why 1441 put the onus of proof on Iraq. When Iraq still denies that it has any disarming to do, Dr Blix can hardly tell the Security Council that it has complied with Resolution 1441. There will be intense pressure to give Iraq more time. That spells nothing but danger to the world, unless Iraq reverses its refusal to disclose what it has. On November 8 the Security Council set the clock ticking. It cannot stop it now, without threatening its credibility as the guardian of international law and of peace.
Regards, Ivan
Who said we ever were? ;)
Regards, Ivan
My questions are these (some rhetorical):
(1) How is it "rushing" into war after allowing nearly 12 years for compliance?
(2)WHAT are we accomplishing by giving INSPECTIONS more time to work? Inspections are by definition a passive response designed only to see things. It is beyond me how seeing (or not seeing, in this case) "works". By the "LEFT" logic, if inspectors DON'T see anything, then there will be inspections ad infinitum; if they DO find something, then we should have gone to war all along (unless they think that Saddam will give up if we catch his hand in the cookie jar. He hasn't yet, although he has been caught up to the elbow.)
(3) Recently discovered warheads are explained away as having been lost track of given the large number of warheads in Iraq. My question is: Why do so many assume that these were the few that existed (and somehow unaccounted for) rather than the few that were overlooked and weren't hidden?
God Bless President George Bush.
God Bless America.
Channel fogged in; Europe isolated.?
Resolution: A course of action determined or decided upon; action adopted by assembly
The goal of the U.N. resolution 1441 is to disarm Saddam Hussein's Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. It seems many people all over the world have conveniently forgotten in just 11 short weeks the definition of these words.
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