A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/goldstein_feb23.html
Avoiding war is easy - and it's up to Saddam
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN - Toronto Sun
February 23, 2003
Here are five signs you won't see at a Canadian "peace" protest about the looming war with Iraq.
1) Hey Saddam, is that shotgun registered?
2) Vive l'Iraq libre!
3) There's something Vichy about France.
4) Trust Germany - has it ever lied to us before?
5) Jean Chretien is our weapon of past destruction.
Of course, such signs would never appear at any "anti-war" protest in Canada because they are not politically correct. Because they suggest something or someone other than George Bush or Tony Blair might be the real problem. And that this looming war with Iraq could be avoided through other means than the U.S. and Great Britain standing down their armies - which everyone knows are the only reasons Saddam Hussein is tolerating UN weapons inspections at all.
This war could be avoided if Saddam disarms now in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1441 - and 16 previous ones - and/or goes into exile. Why don't peace marchers call for that, instead of only focusing on Bush and Blair?
Peace protesters argue that sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 have resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.
Why don't they point out that Saddam could have erased those sanctions by complying with the Security Council resolutions he agreed to in order to stay in power after coalition forces ousted his invading forces from Kuwait in 1991?
That those sanctions eventually allowed for the sale of Iraqi oil for food and medicine. That it was Saddam who threw up roadblocks to this humanitarian relief effort, while his officials made millions in illegal commissions and kickbacks under the oil-for-food program and billions smuggling oil.
That this money, according to groups like the respected human rights monitoring agency Freedom House, was used by Saddam to build his palaces, pad his personal fortune estimated at $6 billion and possibly fund his weapons program.
Peace protesters have adopted the French/German line that UN weapons inspectors are detectives who must find Saddam's hidden weapons of mass destruction. But anyone who has read Security Council Resolution 1441 knows the UN inspectors are verifiers, not detectives. Their job is to confirm that Iraq, having been in "material breach" of 16 Security Council resolutions for 11 years, and now being given one final chance to disarm or face "serious consequences," is doing so.
The proof must come from Iraq, not the inspectors.
"Johnny Cochran" defence
Many anti-American media commentators have adopted the Johnny Cochran "if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit" defence from the O.J. Simpson trial. They argue that if any fact in the case against Saddam turns out to be inaccurate, then an invasion of Iraq cannot be justified, which is absurd.
(Indeed, contrary to what many commentators and peace protesters say, polls show most Canadians are not opposed to war with Iraq under any circumstances. Rather, they want Canada to act through the UN, an entirely different issue.)
How many times have we heard these anti-war types point out that Iraqi troops were falsely accused in 1990 of throwing babies out of hospital incubators in Kuwait, a tale stage-managed by the PR firm Hill and Knowlton, based largely on un-corroborated congressional testimony from the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.
So what? How does that justify Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, or that hundreds of Kuwaitis were "disappeared" by Iraqi troops during that invasion?
Similarly, a recent report by a former CIA specialist on Iraq casting doubt on whether Saddam gassed Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988 - another article of faith by the anti-war movement - doesn't change the fact that Saddam routinely engages in extra-judicial murder, mass arrests, torture, summary executions, disappearances and human rights abuses involving hundreds of thousands of his own citizens.
And on it goes. No one has refuted U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation before the Security Council in which he revealed radio intercepts of Iraqi military officers being told to hide prohibited vehicles from UN inspectors and to remove references to nerve agents from documents.
Instead, we get constant references from peaceniks to a British intelligence report, praised by Powell, that turned out to have been cribbed in large part from a student thesis.
All of which rather spectacularly misses the point, that whatever the occasional inaccuracy or even deliberate misinformation coming out of the U.S. and Britain, it pales beside the massive lies Saddam and his officials tell every day.
It ignores that Saddam is a tyrant to his own people who has weapons of mass destruction (which even France concedes), has attacked three neighbours in his bid for Mideast domination and supports terrorism through payments to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. Does anyone doubt he might pass along weapons of mass destruction to terrorists?
Ah, but we're told, finally, this is all about oil. But if it's all about oil, why did the U.S., after liberating Kuwait and putting out the oil fires set there by Saddam's departing troops, leave? Why didn't it just stay and take over Kuwait for its oil?
And, finally, the real question - what would the peace protesters do about Saddam, other than blame Bush and Blair? Perhaps we could see a few signs at the next demo about that.
Lorrie can be reached at (416) 947-2212, by fax at (416) 947-3228 or by e-mail at lorrie.goldstein@tor.sunpub.com. Or visit his home page. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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