[dadyamaru]

It is a well known fact that after the first Gulf war of 1991, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them. Furthermore, according to an article by Seth Ackerman in Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting’s July/August edition of “Extra!” that cited a 1999 UN report;

“Using forensic techniques, the inspectors confirmed that Iraq indeed undertook extensive, unilateral and secret destruction of large quantities of proscribed weapons.”

Even if these weapons of the early 90’s were still in existence, they would have been hopelessly degraded by age and in many cases left impotent. Nerve agents “Sarin” and “Tabun” have a shelf live of only five years, “VX” a bit longer, “Botulinum Toxin” and “Liquid Anthrax”, if kept in ideal conditions, are potent for about three years. “Mustard Gas” is perhaps the most stable of the agents Iraq had possessed in the past, yet according to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, by 2003 any remaining biological or chemical weapons stores in Iraq would have turned into, after a dozen years, harmless goo. So, we are left with White House allegations about a huge stockpile of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq despite evidence proving that they were destroyed a decade earlier and that if indeed there were some remaining, age would have left them degraded and unable to use.


Of course, whenever Bush is prodded by journalists about these findings, he complains that he is being abused by “Revisionist Historians”. Despite the fact that in the days leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was giving full cooperation to UN weapons inspectors, the US was adamant about its attack on Iraq.
In fact, it appeared that Saddam was one of the last to grasp the fact that the United States really didn’t care what he did or didn’t posses.


There were 11 British deaths in Iraq last month, the highest total since the fall of Baghdad three years ago. More than 100 British soldiers have been killed and the American figure approaches 2,500. The number of Iraqi lives lost is somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000.
Even taking a wider view of our interests and those of the Iraqis, the war looks a failure.
It had made no effective response to a series of Al-Qaeda attacks that began with a truck bomb in the World Trade Center in 1993.

The United States has shown itself incapable of controlling Iraq or Afghanistan. As the public becomes disillusioned with the war and as the president’s ratings plummet, the world has fresh reasons to doubt America’s willpower. Its military appears overstretched and the idea of another war of conquest is implausible.

Iran is certainly not cowed by having more than 100,000 US troops next door. Saddam’s forces caused it much greater concern. Tehran pursues uranium enrichment with a new militancy. America denounces it as the premier state sponsor of terror. Yet now the White House is willing to enter direct talks with that regime, even as Iranian agents and explosives are probably killing American soldiers in Iraq.

It is a vivid illustration of US weakness, although the new démarche is nonetheless the right thing to do. America has given up a policy of pre-emptive strikes against regimes that pose a threat in favour of a cold war-style strategy of diplomacy, economic sanctions and containment.

President Bush argues that Iraq is the frontline against terror. Even if you do not believe that invading Iraq has helped terrorist recruitment (a view that is becoming harder to sustain), the war has certainly provided the West’s enemies with easy targets. America has lost about as many dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as it did in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

Nor is it now easy to argue that overall Iraqis have benefited from their liberation. Saddam ran a wicked regime under which many people suffered horrible deaths. But the unheroic ones who avoided politics lived quiet lives. Now those people are being slaughtered by the dozen