BY NORM DIXON
Within a day of the United Nations Security Council passing its November 8 resolution to impose "enhanced" weapons' inspection rules and shortened deadlines on Iraq, US and British officials were openly discussing how they might use its provisions to justify their preplanned military attack. US military officials immediately briefed major US newspapers on their latest war plans.
Following the unanimous vote, non-permanent council member Syria's UN ambassador — who had been expected to vote against — said that the French and US representatives had given assurances that "this resolution would not be used as a pretext to strike Iraq". The Russian ambassador to the UN claimed that the resolution "deflects the direct threat of war" and "does not contain any provision about automatic use of force". These diplomats, however, were displaying either an abundance of wishful thinking or of dishonesty.
The French ambassador showed no such naivete. Reflecting his government's main motive — to retain its influence over international affairs — France's UN ambassador expressed relief that the Security Council had been allowed to set the "rules of the game". "If Iraq wishes to avoid confrontation, it must understand that the opportunity it has been given is the last", he stated.
The most honest assessment of the resolution came from US President George Bush as he gloated about Washington's UN victory in the White House Rose Garden with US Secretary of State Colin Powell at his side.
"With the passage of this resolution, the world must not lapse into unproductive debates over whether specific instances of Iraqi noncompliance are serious", Bush explained. "Any Iraqi noncompliance is serious... America will be making only one determination: is Iraq meeting the terms of the Security Council resolution or not? The US has agreed to discuss any material breach with the Security Council, but without jeopardising our freedom of action to defend our country. If Iraq fails to fully comply, the US and other nations will disarm Hussein."
Bush accurately summarised the gist of the resolution: the US will determine if Iraq has breached the resolution, the US will decide if military action will be taken and such action need not be authorised by the Security Council.
On November 10, Powell told CNN: "If [Hussein] doesn't comply this time, we'll ask the UN to give the necessary authorisation for all necessary means, and if the UN is not willing to do that, the US, with like-minded nations, will go and disarm him forcefully."
The Bush gang's candour reflects that, after eight weeks of "negotiations" with France and Russia, the final, barely amended, resolution provides Washington with everything it needs to launch a devastating and bloody war against the Iraqi people.
While the resolution states that the Security Council will immediately meet "to consider the situation" if a breach is reported, there is nothing that prevents the US from going to war.
France, Russia, China and a majority of the Security Council's non-permanent members had pushed for a second Security Council vote to explicitly authorise an attack following a report of noncompliance. However, despite having the power to veto the US-British war resolution, France and Russia caved in following weeks of US intransigence and after informal assurances that their economic stake in Iraq would be respected by a post-invasion Quisling government.
Trip-wires
The resolution states that Iraq is already in "material breach" of previous UN resolutions and any further failure to comply will constitute a further "material breach". In diplomat-speak, this means that military action must follow. US ambassador to the UN John Negroponte denied there were "hidden triggers" in the resolution. In fact, they are trip-wires:
* If Iraq fails to provide a "currently accurate, full and complete declaration" of stocks of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) and every aspect of the country's military and civilian biological, chemical and nuclear industries by December 8, or if that declaration contains any "false statements or omissions", the US can go to war;
* If Iraq fails to give the "precise locations" of "weapons, components, sub-components, stocks of agents and related material and equipment", the US can go to war;
* If Iraq fails "at any time to comply with" or "cooperate fully" with the implementation of the resolution, the US can go to war;
* If Iraq objects to the entry of a provocatively large number of US troops, under the resolution's provision that "sufficient UN security guards" be allowed to protect inspectors, the US can go to war;
* If inspectors report "any interference" with "inspection activities" — which includes the right to "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access to any and all, including underground areas, facilities, buildings, equipment, records and means of transport" — the US can go to war;
* If Iraqi air defences fire at the US and British war planes that daily violate its air space, the US can go to war; and
* If UN inspectors seize Iraqi scientists and their families and attempt to spirit them out of the country — even if they do not want to go — and Iraq attempts to prevent it, the US can go to war.
The heads of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and International Atomic Energy Agency must immediately report any transgression of the resolution's rules, no matter how trivial or unintentional, to the Security Council.
The US and Britain are demanding that the resolution be interpreted as literally as possible. US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice stated on November 10 that Iraq would be held to a "zero tolerance" compliance standard.
'Worst-case scenario'
Even if Iraq survives this until February 21, when the heads of the UN inspection teams must report to the Security Council on whether Iraq has or has not fully cooperated, any negative report will mean war.
But Washington is making it plain that it is prepared to engineer, manufacture or provoke an Iraqi breach long before the final deadline. The November 9 New York Times reported that the Bush gang's plan, "which they make little effort to conceal, is to force [Iraq's President Saddam Hussein] into a misstep — one that would be obvious to the Security Council — as early as possible".
On November 9, the NYT added, "Despite the administration's professed confidence in the inspectors, there is a deep-seated unstated fear that [Hussein] will only seem to cooperate and the inspectors will find little or nothing incriminating. That would leave the administration with insufficient evidence to persuade the Security Council, its potential allies — or even Americans — that a war is necessary."
After many months of making wild assertions that Iraq has hidden vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons, is producing even more and is on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, Washington and London are afraid that their lies will be found out if the inspectors fail to uncover something.
Martin Indyk, a former staff member of the US National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, told the November 10 NYT that "there's a risk in the whole enterprise of not finding anything". The November 11 Los Angeles Times described this as "the administration's worst-case scenario".
Rice told Fox News on November 10 that Iraq's December 8 declaration would be the "early test" of Hussein's willingness to cooperate, hinting that if it did not satisfy Washington it may be enough to trigger military action.
"The best thing that Saddam Hussein can do is to issue a declaration that is full and fair and complete. We will see whether, in that early test of his willingness to cooperate, he passes the test... The next time that Saddam demonstrably gives false information he is going to be held in material breach", Rice warned.
Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which reflects the thinking of the dominant faction of the Bush administration, endorsed the plan.
Clawson told the November 9 Washington Post that US officials will not have to wait for inspections to begin. They only need to take Iraq's December 8 declaration and "match it up against their intelligence and determine whether it is 'full and complete' as required under the resolution". "We should be in a position to say he hasn't accounted for his stuff", Clawson declared.
The November 10 NYT reported that inspectors "plan to force an early test ... by demanding a comprehensive list of weapons sites and checking whether it matches a list of more than 100 priority sites compiled ... from the findings of previous weapons inspections and the latest intelligence culled from defectors and other sources by American and other intelligence experts".
War plans
On November 10, the NYT, the Washington Post, the British Observer and the major US wire services reported that even as the Security Council was "negotiating" the resolution, the Bush administration had settled on its plan to attack Iraq.
The plan envisages an initial bombing blitz of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, and Hussein's home town of Tikrit, combined with the swift seizure of northern, southern and western Iraq. Up to 250,000 US and British troops would take part. The goal would be to lay siege to, but not necessarily enter, Baghdad (avoiding US casualties), destroy Hussein's "pillars of power" and provoke a military coup against the Iraqi leader.
The reports, clearly based on November 9 briefings from senior military officers and Bush administration officials, noted that the military expects to move into action either in early December (consistent with a US rejection of Iraq's December 8 declaration) or by the end of February (following the inspectors' final report).
Clearly, as far as Washington is concerned, a US-led attack on Iraq is a done deal.
From Green Left Weekly, November 20, 2002.
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