That’s Not Good Enough

Middle East News Line (MENL) reports today: Ten years later, the United States does not see a short-term threat from Iraq. U.S. defense officials said the regime of President Saddam Hussein has been contained by the United States and Britain – which flies daily patrols over the south and north of Iraq. The cost of such missions, the officials said, is about $2 billion a year. Washington also deploys more than 24,000 troops in the Gulf. Many of them are in warships to avoid resentment within the Gulf States. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said, “Iraq is contained. It has a broken economy.

Middle East News Line (MENL) reports today: Ten years later, the United States does not see a short-term threat from Iraq. U.S. defense officials said the regime of President Saddam Hussein has been contained by the United States and Britain – which flies daily patrols over the south and north of Iraq. The cost of such missions, the officials said, is about $2 billion a year. Washington also deploys more than 24,000 troops in the Gulf. Many of them are in warships to avoid resentment within the Gulf States. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said, “Iraq is contained. It has a broken economy. It is an isolated state. I think that’s the fundamental accomplishment over the last 10 years.”

If true, that’s not good enough. And it may be true only on the margins. Richard Butler, former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq told a conference in Israel and the Knesset, “Evidence suggests that Saddam Hussein could be rebuilding his missile project both in the biological and chemical spheres.” He noted that Iraq has missiles that can carry different types of warheads.

He called Iraq “awash with money.”(From our pal Egypt, Iraq’s largest trading partner? Or from U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil under the U.N. “Oil for Food” farce?) Butler said Iraq’s regime can manufacture VX nerve gas and mustard gas, and has an estimated 16 missiles that can be loaded with anthrax. He added that Iraq is capable of developing nuclear weapons within a year, and lacks only the raw materials.

Butler blamed the failure of UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) on “political pressure” from Russia in the U.N. Security Council and the lack of a strong American and allied response. He described the list of requirements that could have ended the sanctions in 1998, which included accounting for 500 tons of fuel to make SCUD missiles, the quantity of mustard shells and VX they had, and the types of biological weapons they were producing. Iraq refused to comply.

According to The Jerusalem Post: “They refused to comply with my list because it was right. The things I was asking for were precisely the weapons that if we got hold of, Iraq would be disarmed, and they did not want to be,” he said. The new organization that took over after UNSCOM was expelled, established six months ago after nearly a year of U.N. deliberations, has still never set foot in Iraq and is undergoing training in New York about Iraq’s “cultural sensitivities.”

In other words, 10 years after the expenditure of lives and treasure in Desert Shield/Storm; and after the aborted Shiite uprising in the south and Kurdish uprising in the north of Iraq – costing thousands of lives; and after the expenditure of nearly $20 billion for the daily flights since 1991 and countless billions spent on the rest of the U.S. presence in the Gulf and in Turkey; and after years of sanctions, which Saddam manipulated to fall on hapless civilians, Saddam is still doing precisely that which has made him a threat to regional stability and world peace since 1981 when Israel took out the Osirak reactor. It’s not good enough.

He, by the way, celebrated the 32nd anniversary of the coup that brought him to power saying, “And thus the free, exalted men and women win victory over the invaders.”