Truth About Iraq Flap is Hidden in Government's Manure Pile
By Charley Reese
of The Sentinel Staff
Published in The Orlando Sentinel, November 30, 1997
Should President Clinton order the bombing of Iraq, he will be acting as a cold-blooded
terrorist and will be guilty of first-degree murder.
The only difference will be that Clinton, unlike most terrorists, doesn't have the guts
to do his own killing. Let me dig out a few facts for you from the pile of horse manure
the U.S. government has unloaded to hide the truth about this latest flap with Iraq.
First, Iraq did not -- I state again, did not -- halt United Nations inspections. All
Iraq said was that the Americans on the team were not acting in good faith and would not
be allowed to participate. Continue the inspections without the Americans. That was the
Iraqi position.
It was the United Nations, not Iraq, that chose to halt the inspections. Now, if it
really thought Iraq was about to whip up a weapon of mass destruction, why did it halt
inspections? It could have continued the inspections while protesting the exclusion of the
Americans. Instead the United Nations pulled out. The obvious inference to be drawn is
that the United Nations, despite its lies to the contrary, does not really think that Iraq
has any weapons of mass destruction.
And let's look at the issue of whether or not the United States is acting in good
faith. Why do you suppose Iraq reached that conclusion? Perhaps because, after nearly
seven years of full-time inspections and the supervised destruction of missiles,
manufacturing plants, warheads and stores of chemical weapons, the United States still
refuses to lift sanctions on the grounds that somewhere in this little country something
may be hidden. But there is an even better reason to justify the Iraqi position.
Earlier this year Madeleine Albright made an official, public speech in which she said
plainly and explicitly the sanctions were not going to be lifted no matter what the Iraqis
do as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.
You do understand plain English. Albright said, and the president confirmed it in a
message to Congress, that the United States will not lift the sanctions no matter how
cooperative the Iraqis are, no matter what proof there is that they have no weapons of
mass destruction. In short, the inspections are just a pretense.
And why, after Clinton just finished wallowing all over a Chinese dictator with an
infinitely worse human-rights record than Saddam Hussein, does the United States refuse
even to discuss the issue with Iraq. Why did we prevent an Iraqi official from addressing
the Security Council? Whatever happened to the idea of constructive engagement? Free
speech?
So bottom line is you had a disagreement over the composition of an inspection team but
no refusal to be inspected. For that, Clinton, the great military strategist, moved ships
and planes to the Persian Gulf to threaten defenseless people with death.
Death for what? For being Iraqis, I suppose. There is something about Iraq that makes
the moral decadence in American society rise to the surface like pus in an infected wound.
Journalists, both conservative and liberal, suddenly advocate murder and, like
contemptible cowards safely on the fringe of a lynch mob, scream for blood. That is
despicable behavior.
Do you understand how ridiculous we look in the eyes of the world, making such a fuss
over a small country run by a quite ordinary dictator not unlike 100 others we do business
with? Even Kuwait has told the United States not to use military force against Iraq. Make
no mistake: The life of an Iraqi is as precious in the eyes of God as any other. And we're
in enough trouble with him already for murdering half a million Iraqi children with the
sanctions.
How's that for mass destruction?
[Posted 11/29/97 6:09 PM EST]
(c) 1997 Orlando Sentinel Online
