- For some reason unknown to me, Iraq casts a strange spell
on the members of the Bush family when they occupy the White House. It
seems to corrupt them so that they resort to lies and elaborate deceptions
as their frenzy for war grows feverish.
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- The original Gulf War was based largely on lies. There
was the outright lie that Iraqi soldiers had snatched Kuwaiti babies out
of incubators to steal the incubators. The second big lie was the claim
that Iraq was massing troops for an invasion of Saudi Arabia. Totally false.
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- Now, another Bush is misleading the American people in
order to dupe them into a war with Iraq. Let me trace the deceptions of
the Bush team. In the first place, Republican campaign advisers argued
that war was better for Republican chances in November than trying to campaign
on domestic issues. It's quite clear that Mr. Bush was in somewhat of a
fog prior to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He has blossomed
into a war leader and seems determined to make sure he never runs out of
wars.
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- The first ploy used to justify war was the claim that
Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and therefore posed an
imminent threat to the United States and, indeed, the world itself. It's
important to understand that in the past, a policy of containment worked
with an enemy that had thousands of weapons of mass destruction and, unlike
Iraq, the means of delivering them. Yet Bush claims that Iraq, with one
or two nuclear warheads, could blackmail the world. That, of course, is
patent nonsense. It couldn't even blackmail Israel, which has a nuclear
force of 200 warheads and the rockets and the planes with which to deliver
them.
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- That aside, however, Bush was unable to produce any new
evidence that would support the claim that Iraq was building weapons of
mass destruction. Everything the administration tossed out as "evidence"
was old stuff. It was flatly unable to prove that Iraq was on the verge
of some new, dangerous venture. So the strategy shifted.
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- Bush goes to the United Nations. He has to, since it
was obvious no country except Great Britain was going to support a unilateral
invasion by the United States. Here the ploy is that Saddam Hussein, by
failing to obey U.N. resolutions, has put the world body in the position
of either enforcing its resolutions or becoming "irrelevant."
What Bush really is saying is, give me a U.N. cover to attack Iraq, or
I'll call you a League of Nations.
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- There is one flaw in this strategy, which most Americans
have swallowed whole. The country that is the all-time world-class champion
at failing to obey and at defying U.N. resolutions is Mr. Bush's favorite
country, Israel. There is no way you can logically argue that failure to
enforce about 70 resolutions against Israel does not jeopardize the United
Nations, but failure to enforce 16 resolutions directed at Iraq would and
is a just cause for war. The reason the United Nations has never tried
to enforce its resolutions directed at Israel is that the United States
prevents it from doing so.
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- Now, much to President Bush's discomfort, Iraq has said
the weapons inspectors can come back without conditions. This throws a
monkey wrench into Bush's war plans. True, it might be just a trick by
Saddam Hussein, but nothing will be lost or threatened by giving peace
a chance. The truth is that the original inspectors oversaw the destruction
of 90 percent to 95 percent of Iraq's weapons. It is also true that the
United States kept raising the bar and had furthermore corrupted the inspection
process by using it as a cover for spying.
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- Finally, let me point out another obvious fact: All over
the world, the United States advocates dialogue as an alternative to war
to settle disputes. Yet not one time since the Gulf War has the United
States even attempted to conduct a diplomatic dialogue with Iraq. There
is no justification for war with Iraq. The Bushes would waste every American
life lost in an attempt to satisfy their sick obsession with Iraq.
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- © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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