[Peace-discuss] Clinton I, not Bush II, responsible for WMD myth
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at uiuc.edu
Mon Oct 1 08:10:42 CDT 2007
Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable
By ANDREW COCKBURN
A former senior UN diplomat has revealed to me details of how, just over
10 years ago, the Clinton administration deliberately sabotaged UN
weapons inspections in Iraq.
American officials were fearful that Iraq would be officially certified
as weapons-free, a development that was seen as a political liability
for Bill Clinton. Thus the stage was set for the manufacture of the
Iraqi WMD myth as the excuse for George Bush's catastrophic invasion of
Iraq.
It was March 1997. For six years the UN inspectors had been probing the
secrets of Saddam's weapons programs, in the process destroying huge
quantities of chemical munitions and other production facilities. To
enforce Saddam's cooperation, Iraq was subject to crushing sanctions.
Now, Rolf Ekeus, the urbane Swedish diplomat who headed the inspection
effort, was ready to announce that his work was almost done. "I was
getting close to certifying that Iraq was in compliance with Resolution
687," he confirmed to me recently.
At the time, he declared that although there were some loose ends to be
cleared up, "not much is unknown about Iraq's retained proscribed
weapons capabilities."
For the Clinton administration, this was a crisis. If Ekeus was allowed
to complete his mission, then the suspension of sanctions would follow
almost automatically.
Saddam would be off the hook and, more importantly for the Clintonites,
the neo-conservative republicans would be howling for the president's blood.
The only hope was somehow to prevent Ekeus completing his mission.
Enter Madeleine Albright, newly appointed Secretary of State. On March
26, 1997, she strode on to the stage at Georgetown University to deliver
what was billed as a major policy address on Iraq. Many in the audience
expected that she would extend some sort of olive branch toward the
Iraqi regime, but that was far from her mind.
Instead, she was set on making sure that Saddam effectively ended his
cooperation with the inspectors. "We do not agree with the nations who
argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of
mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted," she declared. Sanctions,
she stated without equivocation, would remain unless or until Saddam was
driven from power.
Ekeus understood immediately what Albright intended. "I knew that Saddam
would now feel that there was no point in his cooperating with us, and
that was the intent of her speech."
Sure enough, the following day he got an angry call from Tariq Aziz,
Saddam's deputy prime minister and emissary to the outside world. "He
wanted to know why Iraq should work with us any more."
From then on, the inspectors found their lives increasingly difficult,
as Iraqi officials, clearly acting under instructions from Saddam,
blocked them at every turn.Ekeus resigned in July 1997, to be replaced
by the Australian Richard Butler. Butler was soon embroiled in
acrimonious confrontation with the Iraqis. Later the following year, all
the inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq and the US mounted a series of
bombing raids.
Clinton's strategy had been successful. Iraq remained under sanctions,
while in Washington the neo-conservative faction spun the wildest
conjectures as to what evil schemes Saddam, unmolested by inspectors,
might be concocting with his weapons scientists.
In fact Saddam had long abandoned all his WMD programs, but as the CIA
had no sources of intelligence inside Iraq, no one in the West could
prove this.
Finally, following 9/11, the war party in George Bush Jr's
administration was able to make the case for invasion on the grounds
that Saddam had refused to comply with UN resolutions on disarmament by
refusing to grant access to the weapons inspectors. The Iraq disaster
has many fathers.
[Footnote: Ekeus knew from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Hussein had no
such weapons of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years
earlier, after the first Gulf war.
Ekeus learned this on the night of August 22, l995, in Amman, from the
lips of General Hussein Kamel, who had just defected from Iraq, along
with some of his senior military aides. Kamel was Saddam's son-in-law
and had been in overall charge of all programs for chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
That night, in three hours of detailed questioning from Ekeus and two
technical experts, Kamel was categorical. The UN inspection teams had
done a good job. When Saddam was finally persuaded that failure to
dispose of the relevant weapons systems would have very serious
consequences, he issued the order and Kamel carried it out. As he told
Ekeus that night, "All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear,
were destroyed." (The UNSCOM record of the session can ne viewed at
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf). In similar debriefings
that August Kamel said the same thing to teams from the CIA and MI6. His
military aides provided a wealth of corroborative details. Then, the
following year, Kamel was lured back to Iraq and at once executed. Editors.]
Andrew Cockburn is the author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and
Catastrophic Legacy.
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