Commentaries

THE BURDEN OF DRAWING SUPPORT FOR A MILITARY STRIKE ON IRAQ

  • Print
Details
Published on Tuesday, 12 June 2007 09:28


Saddam Hussein is a despicable tyrant who has committed a laundry list of serious crimes against his neighbors, even his own people have not been spared. He gassed Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraqi war, he gassed 200,000 Kurds a number that included men, women and children and subjected their future generations to miserable birth defects. He is responsible for the genocide of the Shiites and guess what he did when he realized, he was losing Kuwait? He set fire to Kuwaiti oil and gas wells. An action that should give us insight of what he is capable of should he find himself losing a grip on power and everything he relishes so fondly.
Both fear and concern have been expressed that, if the U.S. engages in a war with Iraq- a war Iraq is certain to lose. Saddam will become desperate and being an unscrupulous, divorced from ethics maniac, you can be sure, he'll take out as many people as his biological, Chemical and scud missiles can allow.
Saddam is doing now, what he has been doing for over a decade and that is, defying U.N. demands with impunity. He has broken each and every of the 16 U.N. pledges repeatedly and without consequence since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He ran out U.N. Inspectors in 1998 with accusations that some of them were U.S. Spies and until now he never allowed them back. That gave him four good years of unfettered environment to develop weapons of mass destruction.
According to collected intelligence, Saddam has been using legal factory sites as his venue for the development of illegal weapons. Saddam has eight palaces each with hundreds of buildings sprawling on vast compounds. He sought for these presidential residences to be exempted from U.N. Inspectors and cited indignity as his reason for the request. Unfortunately the U.N. was too trusting, even gullible for they went ahead and granted him his wish. Like an ungrateful donkey, he lashed back by using the palaces as safe havens for building illegal weapons.
In a forceful speech before the U.N. General assembly, President bush asserted the unique and present danger Posed by Saddam. He brought before the table all the transgressions of the Iraqi leader, He even pointed out how Iraq is acquiring aluminum tubes and ingredients of a nuclear bomb, He mentioned how close he is to developing a nuclear bomb and how easily he could make such deadly weapons available to al-qaeda who in turn will not hesitate to use them against American targets.
Unfortunately when confronted to produce any evidence of Saddam's link to al-qaeda or elaborate evidence that will prove beyond doubt that Saddam is producing weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration refuses to deliver and all it could tell Congress and the U.N. General Assembly is that they have to protect their sources, more so such information falls within the classified category hence the difficulty to bring their intelligence evidence to the table.
It is such hesitance from the Bush administration that makes the rest of the world community question Bush's intentions even when it's clear and documented that Saddam has flouted U.N. resolutions repeatedly. Another throw back is the approach the U.S. used in it's bid to rally support for a war against Iraq. It was like the Bush administration had figured out everything and just wanted a U.N. rubber stamp without considering the U.N. suggestions or including the U.N. in the drafting of the final resolve against Iraq. If the U.S. President's approach achieved anything, then it was an affirmation of how the U.S. has become arrogant when dealing with the world community. Consequently the Bush administration has been spending weeks on end to soften it's language and to sound more inclusive and receptive to suggestions. Still, France, China and Russia who all hold veto power have so far shown no commitment to jump on board because there are so many unanswered questions. Prime among which are whether, Bush is trying to distract attention from un glamorous domestic issues or whether he is trying to throw the rest of the world into a war to Build his party's popularity, which will no doubt favor Republican candidates in the coming mid term elections,
It could just be a coincidence that there is one interpretation, when indeed there is a war that has to be fought and time is of essence if Saddam is to be stopped before he does any harm to innocent lives. Another reason for the reservation is the possibility of the war making the middle east more unstable than it already is. There is also a looming fear that one thing might lead to another and before long a third world war will have been offset.
North Korea has admitted that it has a nuke program despite an agreement to stop such programs years ago. Pakistani a strategic U.S. ally is allegedly an accomplice of North Korea's Nuke program.
So don't rule out the possibilities yet.