-Caveat Lector-
William
There is talk that Saddam may hand over to his two
sons and if he does there will be no chance of a weapons inspection and
certainly no oil for the greedy Bush family.
Invasion is obviously on the cards as 6000 british
troops are on their way home I havent heard much on the US troops but no doubt
they will start Draft proceedings in the future according to some
sources.
Back benchers in the labour government will never
give their backing to Blair to invade Iraq and there will be a terrible
hullabaloo over it.
Even the american soldiers themselves do not feel
happy about invading Iraq The Only way open to Bush and Blair as I
see it is to stage another 9/11 to get the sheeple behind them
again.
There seem to be no lengths they will not go to, to
feed their greed for oil and it must be apparent to most Americans and British
that something stinks here...either that or they must be either blind or stupid
or both...or could it be fear.
The Mermaid xxxxxx
---- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 12:24
AM
Subject: [CTRL] Ron Paul- Inspection or
Invasion in Iraq?
-Caveat Lector- http://www.antiwar.com/paul/paul34.html
Inspection
or Invasion in Iraq? by Rep. Ron Paul
(R-TX) June 27, 2002
I call my colleagues' attention
to a recent article by Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in
Iraq, published in the Los Angeles Times. In this article, Mr. Ritter makes a
salient point that deserves careful and serious consideration in this body:
how will it be possible to achieve the stated administration goal of getting
weapons inspectors back into Iraq when the administration has made it known
that it intends to assassinate the Iraqi leader?
If nothing else,
Saddam Hussein has proven himself a survivor. Does anyone believe that he will
allow inspectors back into his country knowing that any one of them might kill
him? Is it the intention of the administration to get inspectors back into
Iraq and thus answers to lingering and critical questions regarding Iraq's
military capabilities, or is the intent to invade that country regardless of
the near total absence of information and actually make it impossible for
Suddam Hussein to accept the inspectors?
Mr. Ritter, who as former
chief UN inspector in Iraq probably knows that country better than any of us
here, made some excellent points in a recent meeting with Republican members
of Congress. According to Mr. Ritter, no American-installed regime could
survive in Iraq. Interestingly, Mr. Ritter noted that though his rule is no
doubt despotic, Saddam Hussein has been harsher toward Islamic fundamentalism
than any other Arab regime. He added that any U.S. invasion to remove Saddam
from power would likely open the door to an anti-American fundamentalist
Islamic regime in Iraq. That can hardly be viewed in a positive light here in
the United States. Is a policy that replaces a bad regime with a worse regime
the wisest course to follow?
Much is made of Iraqi National Congress
leader Ahmed Chalabi, as a potential post-invasion leader of Iraq. Mr. Ritter
told me that in his many dealings with Chalabi, he found him to be completely
unreliable and untrustworthy. He added that neither he nor the approximately
100 Iraqi generals that the US is courting have any credibility inside Iraq,
and any attempt to place them in power would be rejected in the strongest
manner by the Iraqi people. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American military
personnel would be required to occupy Iraq indefinitely if any
American-installed regime is to remain in power. Again, it appears we are
creating a larger problem than we are attempting to solve.
Similarly,
proponents of a US invasion of Iraq often cite the Kurds in the northern part
of that country as a Northern Alliance-like ally, who will do much of our
fighting on the ground and unseat Saddam. But just last week the Washington
Times reported that neither of the two rival Kurdish groups in northern Iraq
want anything to do with an invasion of Iraq.
In the meeting last
month, Scott Ritter reminded members of Congress that a nation cannot go to
war based on assumptions and guesses, that a lack of knowledge is no basis on
which to initiate military action. Mr. Ritter warned those present that
remaining quiescent in the face of the administration's seeming determination
to exceed the authority granted to go after those who attacked us, will
actually hurt the president and will hurt Congress. He concluded by stating
that going in to Iraq without Congressionally-granted authority would be a
"failure of American democracy.'' Those pounding the war drums loudest for an
invasion of Iraq should pause for a moment and ponder what Scott Ritter is
saying. Thousands of lives are at stake.
[From the Los Angeles Times,
June 19, 2002] BEHIND "PLOT" ON HUSSEIN, A SECRET AGENDA (By
Scott Ritter)
President Bush has reportedly authorized the CIA to use
all of the means at its disposal- including U.S. military special operations
forces and CIA paramilitary teams- to eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
According to reports, the CIA is to view any such plan as "preparatory" for a
larger military strike.
Congressional leaders from both parties have
greeted these reports with enthusiasm. In their rush to be seen as embracing
the president's hard-line stance on Iraq, however, almost no one in Congress
has questioned why a supposedly covert operation would be made public, thus
undermining the very mission it was intended to accomplish.
It is high
time that Congress start questioning the hype and rhetoric emanating from the
White House regarding Baghdad, because the leaked CIA plan is well timed to
undermine the efforts underway in the United Nations to get weapons inspectors
back to work in Iraq. In early July, the U.N. secretary-general will meet with
Iraq's foreign minister for a third round of talks on the return of the
weapons monitors. A major sticking point is Iraqi concern over the use- or
abuse- of such inspections by the U.S. for intelligence collection.
I
recall during my time as a chief inspector in Iraq the dozens of extremely fit
"missile experts'' and "logistics specialists'' who frequented my inspection
teams and others. Drawn from U.S. units such as Delta Force or from CIA
paramilitary teams such as the Special Activities Staff (both of which have an
ongoing role in the conflict in Afghanistan), these specialists had a
legitimate part to play in the difficult cat-and-mouse effort to disarm Iraq.
So did the teams of British radio intercept operators I ran in Iraq from 1996
to 1998- which listened in on the conversations of Hussein's inner circle- and
the various other intelligence specialists who were part of the inspection
effort.
The presence of such personnel on inspection teams was, and
is, viewed by the Iraqi government as an unacceptable risk to its nation's
security.
As early as 1992, the Iraqis viewed the teams I led inside
Iraq as a threat to the safety of their president. They were concerned that my
inspections were nothing more than a front for a larger effort to eliminate
their leader.
Those concerns were largely baseless while I was in
Iraq. Now that Bush has specifically authorized American covert-operations
forces to remove Hussein, however, the Iraqis will never trust an inspection
regime that has already shown itself susceptible to infiltration and
manipulation by intelligence services hostile to Iraq, regardless of any
assurances the U.N. secretary-general might give.
The leaked CIA
covert operations plan effectively kills any chance of inspectors returning to
Iraq, and it closes the door on the last opportunity for shedding light on the
true state of affairs regarding any threat in the form of Iraq weapons of mass
destruction.
Absent any return of weapons inspectors, no one seems
willing to challenge the Bush administration's assertions of an Iraqi threat.
If Bush has a factual case against Iraq concerning weapons of mass
destruction, he hasn't made it yet.
Can the Bush administration
substantiate any of its claims that Iraq continues to pursue efforts to
reacquire its capability to produce chemical and biological weapons, which was
dismantled and destroyed by U.N. weapons inspectors from 1991 to 1998? The
same question applies to nuclear weapons. What facts show that Iraq continues
to pursue nuclear weapons aspirations?
Bush spoke ominously of an
Iraqi ballistic missile threat to Europe. What missile threat is the president
talking about? These questions are valid, and if the case for war is to be
made, they must be answered with more than speculative rhetoric.
Congress has seemed unwilling to challenge the Bush administration's
pursuit of war against Iraq. The one roadblock to an all- out U.S. assault
would be weapons inspectors reporting on the facts inside Iraq. Yet without
any meaningful discussion and debate by Congress concerning the nature of the
threat posed by Baghdad, war seems all but inevitable.
The true target
of the supposed CIA plan may not be Hussein but rather the weapons inspection
program itself. The real casualty is the last chance to avoid bloody conflict.
Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District
of Texas in the United States House of
Representatives.
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