Editorial
Let's get our Iraq story straight
Wed May 19, 2004 16:50
64.140.158.152


CLICK: Editorial: WMD's in Iraq
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Let's get our Iraq story straight
May 20, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9607025%255E25377,00.html

AT last the truth is out - John Howard is a fully paid-up neo-conservative. This is the inescapable conclusion from Howard's speech on Iraq last night.

The neo-cons are most closely associated with the view that the US operation in Iraq was about much more, ethically and strategically, than eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and the threat he posed to his neighbours.

They have provided a charge of ethical motivation and high idealism to the Bush administration's Iraq actions. They believe there was a moral imperative to end Saddam's dictatorship, which they rightly regard as one of the most evil and bloodthirsty of the past 100 years.

They also believe that promoting democracy in Iraq can help change the profoundly dysfunctional political culture of the Arab Middle East.

Howard has embraced that historical ambition. He could not have been more explicit: "Iraq is the key to creating new hope for the people of the Middle East. It will be a great encouragement for them to see democracy take root in Iraq."

The UN Development Program, he says, "found that the Middle East region had the least freedom of all - fewer civil liberties, fewer political rights and less free media. Women's lives, in particular, are more restricted than anywhere else in the world."

Howard accepts the neo-cons' central analysis - that dysfunctional Arab political culture is the real root cause of terrorism - and their fundamental prescription, that democracy can work in the Middle East and it can start in Iraq.

These are giant claims, and Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer would do well to amplify them further in future speeches if they are to inform Australian policy in Iraq. Of course, those who reject Howard's analysis root and branch should also face up to what they are saying - in effect that Arabs are incapable of democracy.

Howard also argued last night that the operation in Iraq is a front line in the war on terror. If Iraq becomes a democracy, he says, the terrorists know they have lost. Howard is surely right in this judgment. Al-Qa'ida and its affiliates want above all to destroy all moderate Muslim governments. Their objection to the West is not rooted in disparities of wealth but in the nature of Western society, which they see as a temptation to Muslims. Osama bin Laden is not unhappy that we don't have universal maternity leave. He's unhappy that we let women work at all.

An Iraq that respects its citizens' human rights, that is prosperous and enjoys a sensible relationship with Western nations would surely be a standing rebuke not only to the dictatorships of the Middle East but to the inherent paranoia and conspiracy mentality at the heart of radical Islamist ideology.

Whether such an Iraq can possibly be achieved is, of course, another question.

Echoing Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Howard presents Iraq as a test of wills. If the US and its allies back down and allow a new dictator to take charge or a Taliban-style regime to emerge, Islamist terrorists will have won a mighty victory. Whatever Western commentators might say, the terrorists have invested a huge effort in Iraq and believe they can win there a mighty victory. Just as, Howard rightly observes, they believe they won a mighty victory by influencing the outcome of Spain's election.

Howard deserves credit for the Iraq commitment. It was the right decision and he stuck to his guns throughout all manner of political travail.

BUT there are two worrying gaps in the speech. One is an almost total eclipse of the issue of weapons of mass destruction, which gets the barest passing mention. Western intelligence agencies, indeed all intelligence agencies, seemingly overestimated Iraq's WMDs - although clearly significant WMD-related laboratories, precursor chemical stocks and so on have been discovered. Howard restricts himself to the observation that everybody thought Saddam had WMDs. This includes opponents of the war such as France and Russia.

This is not good enough. Neither George W. Bush nor Tony Blair nor Howard has offered any kind of grand narrative about the WMDs. They have made two judgments. One is that their electorates no longer care about this issue. The other is that dealing with the situation in Iraq today is much more important. Both are correct. But it is wholly unsatisfactory for the three leaders to offer no overall interpretation of the WMD issue. Were the stocks overestimated? Did Saddam keep a just-in-time capacity? Were weapons destroyed or shipped to Syria at the start of the war?

These questions deserve to be answered and they cannot be answered by newspaper columnists or the speculations of former officials. The governments, which by definition have more information than anyone else, should tell us in some detail what happened with the WMDs. No serious observer believes that Bush, Blair or Howard acted in bad faith - that is, said there were WMDs when they knew there weren't any. But we now deserve a full explanation, otherwise critics will simply continue to chant "Liar! Liar!"

Finally, if Iraq is as important as Howard says (and I believe it is), if it is so pivotal that the US not retreat, then we should be doing more to convince the US it is not alone and it doesn't have to carry the whole burden. We have 850 troops in the area, of whom only a few hundred are in Iraq. They are doing a great job. But Howard tempts his critics to believe he is not serious about what he says on the importance of Iraq when Australia's contribution is so tiny, and so disproportionately tiny.
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TIME.com: Exclusive: Scott Ritter in His Own Words
... Exclusive: Scott Ritter in His Own Words The former weapons inspector explains his switch from getting up Saddam's nose to picking fights with Bush By MASSIMO ...
HTTP://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html

CNN's Hatchet Job on Scott Ritter
Published on Thursday, September 12, 2002 in the Toronto Star. CNN's Hatchet Job on Scott Ritter Media smear ex-Marine for seeking answers on Iraq. ...
HTTP://www.commondreams.org/views02/0912-02.htm

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Sarin? What Sarin?
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: May 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/opinion/19SAFI.html

You probably missed the news because it didn't get much play, but a small, crude weapon of mass destruction may have been used by Saddam's terrorists in Iraq this week.

The apparent weapon was sarin gas, a highly toxic nerve agent that causes victims to choke to death. Developed by the Nazis, it has been used in the past by terrorists in Japan to kill a dozen subway riders and panic thousands, and by Saddam Hussein, who produced tons of it to kill Iraqi Kurds.

Rigged as an "improvised explosive device," or roadside bomb, the 155-millimeter howitzer shell was accidentally detonated by a U.S. ordnance team. Two men were treated for what an Army spokesman called "minor exposure" to the nerve gas.

You never saw such a rush to dismiss this as not news. U.N. weapons inspectors whose reputations rest on denial of Saddam's W.M.D. pooh-poohed the report. "It doesn't strike me as a big deal," said David Kay.

"Sarin Bomb Is Likely a Leftover From the 80's" was USA Today's Page 10 brushoff; maybe the terrorists didn't know their shell was loaded with sarin. Besides, say our lionized apostles of defeat, a poison-gas bomb does not a "stockpile" make. Even the Defense Department, on the defensive, strained not to appear alarmist, saying confirmation was needed for the field tests.

In this rush to misjudgment, we can see an example of the "Four Noes" that have become the defeatists' platform.

The first "no" is no stockpiles of W.M.D., used to justify the war, were found. With the qualifier "so far" left out, the absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. In weeks or years to come — when the pendulum has swung, and it becomes newsworthy to show how cut-and-runners in 2004 were mistaken — logic suggests we will see a rash of articles and blockbuster books to that end.

These may well reveal the successful concealment of W.M.D., as well as prewar shipments thereof to Syria and plans for production and missile delivery, by Saddam's Special Republican Guard and fedayeen, as part of his planned guerrilla war — the grandmother of all battles. The present story line of "Saddam was stupid, fooled by his generals" would then be replaced by "Saddam was shrewder than we thought."

This will be especially true for bacteriological weapons, which are small and easier to hide. In a sovereign and free Iraq, when germ-warfare scientists are fearful of being tried as prewar criminals, their impetus will be to sing — and point to caches of anthrax and other mass killers.

Defeatism's second "no" is no connection was made between Saddam and Al Qaeda or any of its terrorist affiliates. This is asserted as revealed truth with great fervor, despite an extensive listing of communications and meetings between Iraqi officials and terrorists submitted to Congress months ago.

Most damning is the rise to terror's top rank of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who escaped Afghanistan to receive medical treatment in Baghdad. He joined Ansar al-Islam, a Qaeda offshoot whose presence in Iraq to murder Kurds at Saddam's behest was noted in this space in the weeks after 9/11. His activity in Iraq was cited by President Bush six months before our invasion. Osama's disciple Zarqawi is now thought to be the televised beheader of a captive American.

The third "no" is no human-rights high ground can be claimed by us regarding Saddam's torture chambers because we mistreated Iraqi prisoners. This equates sleep deprivation with life deprivation, illegal individual humiliation with official mass murder. We flagellate ourselves for mistreatment by a few of our guards, who will be punished; he delightedly oversaw the shoveling of 300,000 innocent Iraqis into unmarked graves. Iraqis know the difference.

The fourth "no" is no Arab nation is culturally ready for political freedom and our attempt to impose democracy in Iraq is arrogant Wilsonian idealism.

In coming years, this will be blasted by revisionist reportage as an ignoble ethnic-racist slur. Iraqis will gain the power, with our help, to put down the terrorists and find their own brand of political equilibrium.

Will today's defeatists then admit they were wrong? That's a fifth "no."
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