[Peace-discuss] questions exist

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

Not All Iraq Claims Backed by Evidence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 
Filed at 1:12 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Today's claims about Iraq could become tomorrow's call to 
arms. But not all the statements coming from the Bush administration have 
been supported by evidence, and some that haven't are central to the question 
of whether Americans should go to war.

The overarching claim, that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, may 
have the weight of probability behind it, but it has yet to be backed by 
proof shared with the public.

Behind that is a cast of supporting allegations, some veering off into murky 
territory.

Human rights monitors, for example, say it is news to them that when Iraqi 
soldiers captured by Iran in the 1980s returned from that war, President 
Saddam Hussein ordered their ears cut off, as the Pentagon stated.

When President Bush flatly asserted about Saddam, ``He possesses the most 
deadly arms of our age,'' he seemed to ignore the consensus that Iraq does 
not have the weapons of Armageddon -- nuclear ones -- however actively it may 
be pursuing them.

A decade ago, Americans preparing for their first war against Iraq were 
shocked when a Kuwaiti girl, testifying to Congress, said she saw Iraqi 
soldiers occupying her country take infants off of their respirators and let 
them die.

The story quickly became part of the first President Bush's campaign to win 
public support for the war. ``Babies pulled from incubators and scattered 
like firewood across the floor,'' he said.

Only after the war did the story fall apart and the witness' true identity -- 
the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States -- become known.

With that in mind, Joe Stork, a Middle East monitor for Human Rights Watch, 
urged the government not to stretch its claims of Iraqi atrocities, because 
doing so can undermine confidence in carefully documented reports of genuine 
abuses.

``I do think the human rights abuses in Iraq are systematic and serious,'' 
said Stork, whose group investigates mistreatment of citizens worldwide. 
``This is one of the worst governments in the world. There is absolutely no 
need to exaggerate.''

On the crucial question of Iraqi weapons, knowledge of Saddam's past chemical 
and biological stockpiles, combined with shadowy actions since the world last 
had a good look around there, leads many analysts to think he is capable of 
causing huge destruction now.

But U.N. inspectors are still inspecting, some suspicions remain 
suppositions, and U.S. allies are waiting for a clincher.

``So far the inspectors have found nothing, and the U.S. has produced 
nothing,'' said Phyllis Bennis, a Middle East analyst for the liberal 
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. ``I'm not prepared to support a 
war on spec.''

Other analysts put more weight behind U.S. allegations that Iraq has 
regenerated its biological weapons capabilities and may have chemical 
weapons, which it used in the past, as well.

But the indictment offered by Washington last week, accusing Iraq of being in 
``material breach'' of the U.N. disarmament resolution, rests not on what has 
been uncovered in the inspections but, in large measure, on what was omitted 
in Iraq's report on its weapons inventory.

Among the administration's points:

--Satellites have picked up on construction of an unknown nature at 
previously bombed weapons sites.

--Iraq has offered no proof that it has destroyed a long list of highly 
destructive weapons it acknowledged having had before.

--Iraq has imported suspicious materials that could advance its attempts to 
develop nuclear weapons.

On other fronts, U.S. officials have made several charges without offering 
support in the past few weeks.

For example, intelligence officials said Iraq has an audacious plan to 
destroy its own food sources, power supplies and oil fields, and blame 
America for it, if war against U.S. forces does not go well -- all for the 
purpose of turning international opinion against Washington. They refused to 
describe their evidence.

Government sources also said, in leaked comments, that Islamic extremists 
affiliated with the al-Qaida network might have taken possession of the 
deadly chemical weapon VX while in Iraq. The claim weakened under examination.

U.S. officials have tried before to establish a connection between Iraq and 
the terrorist network that attacked America.

In this case, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would not talk about any 
Iraq-terrorist VX transaction but said: ``I have seen other information over 
a period of time that suggests that could be happening.''

But a variety of counterterror and defense officials said later they had no 
credible evidence that Iraq supplied the nerve agent to al-Qaida operatives.

Questions also have been raised about claims made in U.S. radio broadcasts to 
Iraqi soldiers and citizens. One was the ear-cutting claim.

Referring to the Iran-Iraq war, one new broadcast proclaims: ``When the Iraqi 
soldiers that were taken prisoner were returned, Saddam ordered their ears 
cut off as punishment for being captured.''

Pentagon officials would not verify the claim.

In fact, a 1994 investigation by the U.N. Human Rights Commission took note 
of reports that doctors were carrying out a decree that military deserters 
and evaders have their ears amputated.

The report did not find that loyal Iraqi troops who had been captured in the 
Iran war years earlier were similarly punished. ``That's quite a different 
assertion,'' said Stork. ``I frankly doubt if it's true.''