INTERNATIONAL LAW/ Scott Ritter

[Zlatko Waterman]

All:


I have been impressed by Scott Ritter's honesty and analysis from the beginning, when he was still a weapons inspector. Here is the voice of a dedicated US military officer and analyst of WMD, clearly speaking out against the implications of unilateralism.

--Z

(paste)


Published on Sunday, October 10, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
If You Had Seen What I Have Seen




The Inspection Process was Rigged to Create Uncertainty Over WMD to Bolster the US and UK's Case for War

by Scott Ritter

It appears that the last vestiges of perceived legitimacy regarding the decision of President George Bush and Tony Blair to invade Iraq have been eliminated with the release this week of the Iraq Survey Group's final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The report's author, Charles Duelfer, underscored the finality of what the world had come to accept in the 18 months since the invasion of Iraq - that there were no stockpiles of WMD, or programs to produce WMD. Despite public statements made before the war by Bush, Blair and officials and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic to the contrary, the ISG report concludes that all of Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been destroyed in 1991, and WMD programs and facilities dismantled by 1996.

Duelfer's report does speak of Saddam Hussein's "intent" to acquire WMD once economic sanctions were lifted and UN inspections ended (although this conclusion is acknowledged to be derived from fragmentary and speculative sources). This judgement has been seized by Bush and Blair as they scramble to re-justify their respective decisions to wage war. "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away." Blair, for his part, has apologised for relying on faulty intelligence, but not for his decision to go to war. The mantra from both camps remains that the world is a safer place with Saddam behind bars.

But is it? When one examines the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq today, it seems hard to draw any conclusion that postulates a scenario built around the notion of an improved environment of stability and security. Indeed, many Iraqis hold that life under Saddam was a better option than the life they are facing under an increasingly violent and destabilizing US-led occupation. The ultimate condemnation of the failure and futility of the US-UK effort in Iraq is that if Saddam were released from his prison cell and participated in the elections scheduled for next January, there is a good chance he would emerge as the popular choice. But while democratic freedom of expression was a desired outcome of the decision to remove Saddam from power, the crux of the pre-war arguments and the ones being reconfigured by those in favour of the invasion center on the need to improve international peace and security. Has Saddam's removal accomplished this?

To answer this question, you have to postulate a world today that includes an Iraq led by Saddam. How this world would deal with him would be determined by decisions made by the US, Britain and the international community in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the key historical questions being asked is what if Hans Blix (who gives his own view, right) had been given the three additional months he had requested in order to complete his program of inspection? Two issues arise from this scenario: would Blix have been able to assemble enough data to ascertain conclusively, in as definitive a fashion as the Duelfer ISG report, a finding that Saddam's Iraq was free of WMD, and thus posed no immediate threat; and would the main supporters of military engagement with Iraq, the US and Britain, have been willing to accept such a finding?

The answer to the first point is that Blix and his team of inspectors were saddled with a complicated list of "cluster issues", ironically assembled by Duelfer during his tenure as head of the UN weapons inspectors, that would have needed to be rectified for any finding of compliance to be made. These "clusters" postulated the need for Iraq to prove the negative, something that is virtually impossible to do. We now know that Iraq's WMD were destroyed in 1991. The problem wasn't the weapons, but verification of Iraq's declarations. The standards of verification set by Duelfer-Blix were impossible for Iraq to meet, thus making closure on the "cluster" issues also an unattainable goal. This situation answers the second point as well. Since the inspection process was pre-programmed to fail, there would be no way the US or the UK would accept any finding of compliance from the UN weapons inspectors. The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty regarding Iraq's WMD, which was used by the US and the UK to bolster their case for war.

It appears that there was no way short of war to create an environment where a finding of Iraq's compliance with its obligation to disarm could be embraced by the US and British governments. The main reason for this was that the issue wasn't WMD per se, but Saddam. The true goal wasn't disarmament, but regime change. This, of course, clashed with the principles of international law set forth in the Security Council resolutions, voted on by the US and UK, and to which Saddam was ostensibly held to account. Economic sanctions, put in place by the UN in 1990 after Saddam's invasion of Iraq and continued in 1991, linked to Saddam's obligation to disarm, were designed to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's requirements. Saddam did disarm, but since two members of that Security Council - the US and the UK - were implementing unilateral policies of regime change as opposed to disarmament, this compliance could never be recognised. Sadly, when one speaks of threats to international peace and security, history will show that it was the US and Britain that consistently operated outside the spirit and letter of international law in their approach towards dealing with Saddam.

This blatant disregard for international law on the part of the world's two greatest democracies serves as the foundation of any analysis of the question: would the world be better off with or without Saddam in power? To buy into the notion that the world is better off without Saddam, one would have to conclude that the framework of international law that held the world together since the end of the Second World War - the UN Charter - is antiquated and no longer viable in a post-9/11 world. Tragically, we can see the fallacy of that argument unfold on a daily basis, as the horrific ramifications of American and British unilateralism unfold across the globe. If there ever was a case to be made for a unified standard of law governing the interaction of nations, it is in how we as a global community prosecute the war on terror. Those who embrace unilateral pre-emptive strikes in the name of democracy and freedom have produced results that pervert the concept of democracy while bringing about the horrific tyranny of fear and oppression at the hands of those who posture as liberators.

If Saddam were in power today, it would only have been because the US and Britain had altered course and joined the global community in recognising the pre-eminence of international law, and the necessity of all nations to operate in accordance with that law. The irony is that had the US and Britain taken this path, and an unrepentant Saddam chosen to defy the international community by acting on the intent he is alleged to have harboured, then he would have been removed from power by a true international coalition united in its legitimate defence of international law. But this is not the case. Saddam is gone, and the world is far worse for it - not because his regime posed no threat, perceived or otherwise, but because the threat to international peace and security resulting from the decisions made by Bush and Blair to invade Iraq in violation of international law make any threat emanating from an Iraq ruled by Saddam pale in comparison.

Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998) and the author of 'Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America', published by Context Books

©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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[abcrystcats]

We have lost our credibility with the rest of the world. It's too bad that there are so many in this country who don't realize what a tremendous loss that is. We have economic interests in every corner of the globe, and without credibility, those interests are weakened and the strength of this country is substantially diminished.

As for gaming the oil-for-food program, I thought that was old news. I was surprised when it turned up somewhere in the debates. I heard about this LONG before we went into Iraq. I don't see why it should have any impact as an element in the new set of lies Bush/Blair have fabricated.

[mnaz]

What a mess.

Zlatko:

This is actually what I was beginning to suspect about the weapons inspections. There's a good thread over on Arcanum, http://www.arcanumcafe.com/community/sh ... hp?t=51772, with a related discussion. A post near the end of the thread is filled with informative, relevant links, including this one, http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html, which describes how the Bushites wanted to carve up Iraq and sell it off piece by piece to US/UK corporate interests, in violation of international law. I'm still shaking my head over that one.

Cat: I agree with your assessment about our rapidly disappearing credibility (what was left of it). Ironically, using the "War on Terror" smokescreen as a coverup for our aggression hurts us in any potential real effort to contain terrorism. Terrorism hasn't gone away. If anything, our actions are just adding "fuel to the fire". And terrorism is global. We'll need the help and cooperation of our allies to battle it, in the long run.

But just when I think I've figured it all out, along comes a confident spokesman on public radio who is for the war even though he admits "mistakes have been made"; someone who reminds me that "60,000 people were dying each year under Saddam and the sanctions", and that the Iraqis now "have a chance to be much better off" if Iraq can be stabilized, etc., etc.

What a mess.

[abcrystcats]

I was reading some international survery data on Pew

http://people-press.org/reports/display ... portID=206

that indicates that many people feel that the war on terror has NOT made the world safer from terrorism. Some feel our actions have only made things worse.

Our Aussie contributors over at Arcanum inspired me to look up a separate Aussie survery held just before their general election. In that one, 1001 Aussies participating a telephone survery responded to questions about their involvement in the war on terror. 93% of those surveyed DISAGREED with John Howard's statement that the situation in Iraq made the world safer from terrorism. 66% said they believed the world was less secure because of the Iraq invasion.

Check out the Pew link. According to that, we Americans are living a world of our own with regards to our outlook about our government and the actions we have taken overseas. Not many agree with us.

I have been trying to pound it home with anyone in my family (there are more than I thought !) who want to vote for Bush, that
our loss of respect overseas is a critical issue here, and something we can't just brush off with a "so what?" The less support we have in the world, the less power we will have to influence anybody or anything, in the future. It will affect our economic growth, our ability to travel internationally, maybe even our ability to seek help from other nations in the future, when we need it. Just because we are "America" doesn't mean we live in a vacuum or we can afford to brush off negative opinions around the world.

I think our whole nation must have been taken over by Pod People while we slept. I find it utterly incomprehensible that ANY American can cast a vote for George Bush after he got us into a pre-emptive strike war based on FALSE INFORMATION. To me, it doesn't matter whether it was an outright lie, or a simple mistake. When you make a pre-emptive strike, you better DAMN well be sure you've got your facts straight. That people are willing to just brush this off and vote for him anyways makes me sick.

There are long, comprehensive lists of things against this President with facts to back them up. You can reel them all off, and get answered with some nonsense like: "Kerry flip-flops" or "George Bush makes the nation secure". Are these people NUTS? George Bush had been President for eight months when we got hit with the worst terrorist attack in the history of the WORLD. And he makes us safe?? I feel like I'm living in a nightmare.