BY NORM DIXON
US President George Bush delivered his much-anticipated ultimatum to the United Nations on September 12: enforce all Security Council resolutions passed against Iraq since 1990 or a massive US attack on Iraq will be "unavoidable".
While Bush did not set a formal deadline for the UN Security Council to accept his demand, he left UN delegates with no doubt that the gun Washington is holding to that body's head is "locked and loaded" and the clock is ticking.
Bush's message was that France, Russia and China the three permanent members of the Security Council which, together with the US and Britain, can each veto council resolutions can either endorse US military action against Iraq or be bypassed and made irrelevant.
Bush stated that while the US would "work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions ... the purpose of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced the just demands of peace and security will be met or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power."
Bush spent the bulk of his 25-minute address detailing years-old "broken promises" and recycling charges made almost 13 years ago to justify the first Gulf war. "He has proven ... his contempt for the United Nations ... by breaking every pledge by his deceptions and by his cruelties Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself", Bush declared.
Bush referred to 16 Security Council resolutions which he claimed Baghdad was in breach of. Most were motions passed between 1996 and 1998 generally prompted by short-term disputes that were subsequently settled relating to Iraq's lack of cooperation with UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) weapons inspectors who were in Iraq to ensure that its pre-1991 programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as its long-range missiles, were dismantled and destroyed.
No evidence
However, Bush studiously avoided presenting what many have been demanding: evidence to back Washington's persistent assertions that Iraq has retained chemical and biological weapons, has continued to develop them after UN inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 and is on a crash-course to build a nuclear bomb.
The central claim upon which all Bush's allegations rest is that Iraq after almost seven years of intrusive UN inspections was able to retain its capacity to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Washington, London and Canberra, as well as the compliant Western capitalist mass media, continually regurgitate this claim as fact, without offering a shred of evidence.
According to Bush, "Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents ... Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the 150 kilometres permitted by the UN... It has been almost four years since the last UN inspectors set foot in the country. Are we to assume that he stopped when they left?"
On September 13, Scott Ritter who was senior UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq for seven years until 1998 and personally led the inspections, investigations and destruction of Iraq's weapons programs disputed Bush's claims.
Ritter pointed out that weapons inspectors had successfully disarmed Iraq and destroyed its weapons factories. He added that Iraq had not been able to rebuild its military capabilities or its economic infrastructure because of the continuing impact of economic sanctions. In short, Iraq poses no military threat to its neighbours, let alone the US.
At a meeting in Boston on July 23, Ritter provided more details. By 1995-96, 90-95% of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons, the research facilities and factories used to produce them, and its long-range missiles had been destroyed.
He pointed out that it was unrealistic to expect that it could be verified that Iraq had been 100% disarmed, mainly due to the loss of records and the deaths of officials during the 1990-91 Gulf War, as well as the subsequent disruption caused by sanctions. This explains why various quantities of munitions, missiles and chemical agents have remained unaccounted for not because they are cleverly hidden in caves as the Bush administration "hawks" dishonestly insist.
Ritter pointed out that even if Iraq had succeeded in hiding significant stocks of sarin and tabun nerve agents, after five years these chemicals would be "useless gunk".
Bush made fleeting references to Washington's more recent assertions that Baghdad is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Vice-president Dick Cheney has on several occasions claimed that Iraq will develop nuclear weapons "fairly soon" and that the US has no time to wait before launching a pre-emptive strike.
However, Bush's only "evidence" for what has become Washington's central argument for "pre-emptive" military action was contained in two meagre sentences: "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminium tubes to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."
According to Ritter, by 1998 UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors had eliminated Iraq's nuclear weapons programs and enrichment plants "from the face of the Earth".
"The production equipment is gone; the facilities have been levelled", Ritter explained on July 23. "Iraq's means to produce [nuclear] components have likewise been eliminated. The IAEA did a very good job of monitoring Iraq's industrial infrastructure to ensure that these things cannot be reconstituted.
"If Iraq is on verge of building nuclear weapon, it would be a miracle. For Iraq to produce a nuclear bomb today ... would require the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars and the construction of facilities that are readily detectable... They would have to acquire fissile material from abroad. There isn't a whole bunch of highly enriched plutonium floating out there ready for someone to buy... So I would not lose any sleep over Iraq's nuclear weapons program."
Unilateralists defeated?
There has been much speculation in the capitalist press that the Bush administration's decision to backpedal and take its case against Hussein to the UN represented a defeat for the dominant "unilateralists" most notably Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who champion the view that the exercise of US military or economic power should not be constrained by alliances, international organisations or multilateral treaties. They are convinced that in the wake of 9/11, the US people will back their unashamedly imperial views.
Just weeks earlier, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the "hawks" had been forcefully pushing the case for a US first strike without UN approval and dismissing the need for the return of weapons inspectors. Few doubted this would be the course the war would take.
However, the views and methods of the "hawks" provoked a fierce tactical debate within the US ruling elite, led by leading former Reagan administration officials such as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker. This debate reflected a fear that, unless such a massive military undertaking was properly "sold" to the US people and Washington's European and Arab allies, the possible political consequences of a large-scale invasion of Iraq could outweigh the benefits to the US of toppling Hussein's regime.
These consequences might include the rapid growth of large anti-war protests, fuelled by unexpectedly large numbers of US casualties, explosions of anti-US sentiment in Middle Eastern and Muslim countries that could threaten Washington's key allies in the region and the disintegration of Iraq. They also fear that the US population may be unprepared for the long and expensive in terms of money and lives US occupation that must follow the overthrow of Hussein.
As the debate raged through the northern summer, public support for a unilateral war on Iraq began to drop. An American Broadcasting Company news poll on August 29 showed that 56% of Americans favoured US military action against Hussein, down from 78% in November. However, support jumped to 65% if the attack was part of a multilateral action.
The "hawks" have been forced to make a concession to try to heal the rift in the ruling class and halt the slide in public support for war. But their control over US government policy is as strong as ever. This is revealed by the openly tokenistic and cynical nature of Washington's nod to "multilateralism".
As the September 13 New York Times noted: "Mr Bush made no pledge to wait for UN approval for military action, only to work with the Security Council for the 'necessary resolutions' that would give Washington freedom of action."
The September 13 Washington Post added that Bush's speech was a continuation of the administration's policy of "pre-emption", not a departure from it. Bush's strategy was transparent: "Now [Bush is] at least making a bow in the direction of lining up international support. Although as the White House sees it, this probably means a UN demand that weapon inspectors have unfettered access to Iraq, followed by a Hussein rejection, followed by an American insistence that it has no choice but to send in the troops. Preferably after the [November congressional] elections."
The Boston Globe was closest to the mark when it observed on September 13: "By laying out an array of impossible conditions for Saddam Hussein, President Bush yesterday all but eliminated every course of action in the US campaign against Iraq but war."
A close reading of Bush's speech shows that Bush is demanding UN endorsement of Washington's goal of "regime change" and triggers for military action that go well beyond simply the refusal by Hussein to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq. It is also clear that Washington will not lift sanctions, even if Iraq is certified to be free of weapons of mass destruction.
As Bush stated: "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it... It will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans and others... It will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown.
"It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues... If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept UN administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
"If all these steps are taken... it could open the prospect of the UN helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty and internationally supervised elections."
In other words, only the overthrow of Hussein and the installation of a regime committed to "political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq" (Bush's words) will remove the threat of massive US military action or result in the lifting of the debilitating sanctions that have led to the deaths of more than one million Iraqi civilians, half of them children.
Little wonder that Bush stated on September 12 that it was "highly doubtful" that Hussein would agree with Washington's demands. Bush added that he expected the UN Security Council to formulate a deadline for Baghdad that would be "day and weeks, not months and years".
Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, the influential right-wing think tank that has shaped the policies of Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration, told the Washington Post that Bush's speech was unambiguous: "When you look at the totality of UN resolutions, Saddam has to go. Bush built himself and the UN a box that it will be hard to get out of."
Richard Perle, another key Bush administration strategist, agreed: "It goes well beyond simply inspections... It is significant that the bar has been set at what seems to be an appropriately high point."
Washington's urgent moves for a war to depose Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11 have nothing to do with the threat posed by Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction or any real concern at Hussein's oppression of his own people.
As radical US historian Howard Zinn explained to the September 13 US Socialist Worker: "All US policies in the Middle East since the second world war have been rooted in the desire to control the enormous oil reserves there... [But] oil is not the only reason... There is the motive of establishing control in a country that has so far eluded the American grasp. The US cannot abide by the existence of nations that do not go along submissively with American policy...
"But behind all [the US government's] justifications [is] the urge to expand US economic and military power. The 'war on terrorism' is the latest opportunity to expand US political, economic and military power into other parts of the world."
From Green Left Weekly, September 18, 2002.
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