2003 Year in Review

Must We Find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?

“Must we find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify the war with Iraq?” Chris Matthews of MSNBC cable news asked this question of one of his guests. It is a question asked by many commentators of many guests on the talk news programs. It is a question answered by many politicians who voted for the war with Iraq based on intelligence from the Bush administration.

The justification for war with Iraq has already been provided by the Bush administration and the many critics of the Saddam regime. The case for war with Iraq if it did not comply with United Nations (UN) resolution 1441 to abandon its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs was made over the course of several months by members of the Bush administration. The case was made by groups outside the administration that monitor Iraqi compliance with the UN resolutions.

Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rice made public comments on the reality of Iraqi research and deployment of weapons of mass destruction and the stockpiling of those weapons. These officials made their claims based on the best intelligence, not only from American intelligence sources, but from foreign sources as well. Powell spent four days and evenings at the Central Intelligence Agency digging into intelligence materials in preparation for his UN presentation. He has no doubts the information he received was true and from reliable sources.

The International Atomic Energy Agency gave credence to the viability of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

During the last inspection which began on November 27, 2002, Hans Blix, chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), complained Iraq was less than helpful in fulfilling his mandate to determine if the Saddam regime had or was producing biological and chemical agents and weapons-grade nuclear materials. It was a complaint comparable to complaints made by UNMOVIC’s predecessor UNSCOM since 1998.*

UNMOVIC was not allowed free and open access to Iraqi scientists. In other words, the Saddam regime was doing its utmost to thwart Blix’s UN mandate while still staving off the use of force. By March 2003, Blix felt “sadness that more than three months of work carried out in Iraq have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction or other proscribed items in Iraq.”

Bush made the American case for intervention to the United Nations. Powell presented the case to the United Nations, offering clear and precise intelligence on Iraqi non-compliance and soliciting support for the American position. The Security Council vote was 15 – 0 to censure Iraq for its uncooperative attitude and recommend force if Iraq continued to refuse to abide by UN resolutions. Powell presented the US position on al-Jazeera TV. Rice and Rumsfeld made appearances on national television to pitch the government’s views.

Arab nations pleaded with Saddam to open his country to inspections and to cooperate with UNMOVIC. Numerous efforts were made by friend and foe to avoid war.

The justification for the war with Iraq was made before the war began. It is useless to beg for justification after the fact. Those who opposed the war from the public to the celebrities to the news anchors feel safe in taking the administration to task for its hyperbolic advocacy for war. Those who favored the war from the public to the celebrities to the news anchors feel with a certainty with the administration that WMDs will surface in due time.

The war with Iraq is now not only a cleaning up action militarily, but a hot potato politically for the Bush administration. The Democratic leadership in Congress and the Democratic candidates for their party’s presidential nomination are making hay while the sun shines. Like the campaign ads of 1984 that badgered “Where’s the beef,” the slogan is “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?”

According to a CBS News Poll (6-14-03) “Americans continue to express confidence that the U.S. will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Roughly two-thirds of those polled say so now and said so two weeks ago.”

That weapons of mass destruction have not been unearthed to date “has not changed most Americans' belief that Iraq was a threat requiring immediate military action. A majority - 53% in this poll - continues to say it was such a threat. But that's down from 58 percent in early April.”

While the man-on-the-street may have the sentiments expressed in the CBS News Poll, the politicians will harp on this issue. However, the fact remains the United States took the war to Iraq and the United States has obligated itself to oversee the stabilization of the country with the establishment of a viable Iraqi national government.

The question isn’t can the war be justified if weapons of mass destruction are not located, but what are the consequences for the Bush administration and the nation if such weapons are not found.

The consequences for the Bush administration have already come to the surface. The President’s political opponents are having a field day in lambasting him and his close advisers for padding the intelligence to make it appear as if Iraq posed a clear and present danger to the United States. John Dean, Watergate figure and former counsel to Richard Nixon, has called for Bush’s impeachment on constitutional grounds.

None of the opposition, Democratic or Republican, has called for the immediate evacuation of American forces from Iraq. In truth, the opposition is glad that we now have a base in this country in the heart of the Middle East. Even with the election of a Democratic ticket in 2004, there will be no quick retreat from Iraq – or Afghanistan, for that matter.

Despite the rhetoric coming from the candidates for president, Republican and Democrat, the United States is in Iraq for the long haul. The Republicans complained about the deployment of American troops in Kosovo during Clinton’s administration, so the Democrats carp about one issue or another with the use of troops in Iraq. As Clinton’s promise to bring the boys home within a year from Kosovo has proven premature, so any promise of a quick return of troops from Iraq is premature and unlikely.

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*By the end of the 1998, there remained significant uncertainties in the disposition of Iraq's prohibited programmes.

UNSCOM has received information recently from multiple sources, identifying organizations that direct and implement the concealment effort in Iraq. While the information from these sources differs in some minor details, it agrees on several major points:

• The highest level of concealment-related decisions are made by a small committee of high ranking officials. The Presidential Secretary, Abed Hamid Mahmoud, chairs this committee;

• The Committee directs the activities of a unit which is responsible for moving, hiding, and securing the items which are being concealed from the Commission;

• The Special Security Organization plays a key role in the operation of this unit and in the tracking and surveillance of Commission activities.

UNSCOM’s Comprehensive Review

(http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq/ucreport/dis_acti.htm)

by William Driver, Guest Columnist
June 16, 2003