Veterans for Common Sense

In his State of the Union address President Bush did his best to foster this subliminal linkage, asking us to “imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein.” This followed a sentence about chemical agents and lethal viruses.

The supreme irony is that the specter the president raises is much more likely to become real if the US launches war against Iraq. Such is the considered judgment of the US intelligence community provided in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 7, 2002:

“Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical/biological warfare against the United States. Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.”

But what about nuclear weapons? Didn’t the president warn last fall that Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in less than a year?

He did. But apparently his staff has since reminded him of the formal judgment of his own intelligence community, the British, and others that Iraq will not be able to do so until the end of the decade—if then. And the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency reported last week that his inspectors “have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990’s.”

The lack of a persuasive casus belli does not bother the Bush administration, since Congress has already given the president carte blanche to make war and few in Congress are inclined to insist on an answer to why Iraq poses an imminent “grave threat to the United States.” With the spotlight turning this week to the United Nations, administration officials are happy to be able to focus debate more narrowly on UN resolutions.

That Iraq is in violation of Resolution 1441 is as easy to prove as, say, that Israel is in violation of Resolution 242 of 1967 requiring Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories. But the case for an imminent attack on Iraq as the preferred solution is far more difficult to build. That is why the Western alliance is more deeply split now than at any time since World War II.

In making its case for war, one of the hurdles the administration faces is, ironically, a function of the wide intelligence sharing arrangements already in place with major allies. This has made it more difficult to manipulate intelligence reporting for political purposes. If there are major surprises in the evidence that Secretary Powell lays before the UN Security Council on Wednesday, our major allies are likely to be more inclined toward skepticism than credulity.

That the best intelligence cannot be shared without jeopardizing “sources and methods” is a red herring. The best intelligence is regularly shared with minimal danger of compromise. In the case of satellite imagery, for example, it is no secret that technology is available to automatically alter the resolution and conceal other parameters before sensitive imagery is passed to those not cleared for the original.

Rather, it is a safe bet that the administration’s main reason for withholding intelligence information on Iraq is that so much of it is so elusive and inconclusive. Perhaps the most revealing recent comment on this came last week from Republican Senator Pat Roberts, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee who described the administration’s case as “compelling but circumstantial—the transportation of ‘X,’ delivered to a shed where ‘Y’ is thought to be happening.” Compelling?

Highly disturbing are the eerie parallels with our country’s misguided slide into Vietnam. Military historian H. R. McMaster has observed that former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s arrogance and disregard for military experience and for history led him to draw principally from his civilian staff in the Department of Defense. This, of course, helped lead to tragedy in Vietnam, as McNamara has since openly acknowledged (“We were wrong, terribly wrong.”)

Against that background retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s deep misgivings over the wisdom of attacking Iraq and his undisguised disdain for Rumsfeld acquire additional resonance.

Armitage should know better. His spoonful of anthrax may help blacken Iraq by innuendo, but it will not make the bitter medicine of war go down any easier.

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years. He is now co-director of The Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington, DC.

Le Touquet, France (AP) – British Prime Minister Tony Blair failed Tuesday to persuade France to join a U.S.-led coalition ready to take quick military action against Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein.

Despite intense pressure by Blair, French President Jacques Chirac said he remained steadfastly opposed to war against Baghdad without giving U.N. weapons inspectors searching for banned weapons as much time they need to do their work.

When asked how much time — weeks or months — weapons inspectors should have, Chirac responded: “I can’t put a timeframe on it. It’s up to them to decide,” Chirac said.

Conservatives fancy themselves to be hardheaded realists, immune to cheap emotional appeals. But last week, you could barely recognize them. Hearing George W. Bush rail theatrically against the savagery of Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address, members of the war party practically quivered in ecstasy.

“The president was able to show his resolve, his sober determination, his moral vision,” exulted David Brooks in The Weekly Standard. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers got a thrill from “the look in his eyes” as he “seethed with determination.”

Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for President Reagan and the first President Bush, wrote in perfect seriousness, “For a moment I thought of earnest Clark Kent moving, at the moment of maximum danger, to shed his suit, tear open his shirt and reveal the big `S’ on his chest.”

Well, there is no accounting for what goes through Peggy Noonan’s mind in the presence of a Republican politician. But it’s understandable that conservatives responded to the speech with their hearts, because it didn’t have much to appeal to the brain. All the inflammatory denunciations and ostentatious muscle-flexing couldn’t disguise the flimsiness of Bush’s case.

Consider the reasons he cited:

– Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and hopes to get more. The president unrolled a list of nasty weapons that Iraq has long possessed–anthrax, mustard gas, sarin, and VX nerve agents, which could be used to kill millions of people. But that raised an inconvenient question: Why hasn’t he used them against us? Answer: He knows he would be destroyed. That hasn’t changed.

– The only reason Hussein wants such weapons is for aggression. Bush says that’s “the only possible use” they could have. Nonsense. Half a century of experience with the Bomb makes it clear that weapons of mass destruction are valuable only for deterring attack, not facilitating it. That’s why we spend billions on nuclear missiles we never use. Given our desire for “regime change” in Iraq, Hussein has understandable motives for wanting such protection. It’s worked for North Korea, hasn’t it?

– Hussein is too crazy to control. Bush got a rousing ovation when he declared, “Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” In fact, Bush himself has relied on it for more than two years. If it’s not an option, why didn’t Bush set out to attack him immediately after taking office?

The truth is, Hussein has sometimes been aggressive but never suicidal. We don’t have to wonder if he can be deterred. He already has been, over and over. He could have used his chemical and biological armaments during the Gulf War or anytime in the last 12 years. But he didn’t. Trusting Saddam Hussein to place his personal and political survival first has not only been a strategy, it’s been a successful one.

– He might give unconventional weapons to Al Qaeda. “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans–this time armed by Saddam Hussein,” said the president. This is a fantasy. The administration has tried in vain to prove that Iraq had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks. And the Central Intelligence Agency, in a classified assessment last fall, dismissed the possibility that Hussein would give his most lethal weapons to an uncontrollable terrorist organization that might turn against him.

The only instance in which he might do that, said the CIA, was if the U.S. were to launch an all-out war–because he would no longer have anything to lose. Bush’s solution is the surest way to precipitate the very nightmare it’s supposed to prevent.

– He’s a sadistic dictator who tortures his people in horrible ways. A recent report from Amnesty International found, “Detainees in their custody are tortured with electro-shocks, suffocated with plastic bags over their heads, burned by cigarettes, beaten with metal pipes and gun barrels, and have chili peppers put in their eyes or on their genitals.” But that wasn’t Iraq–it was the Philippines, where U.S. troops were sent last year to train government soldiers in fighting Islamic extremists.

We work with a lot of countries where torture is reportedly common–including Turkey, Pakistan, Russia and Egypt. Amnesty International says there are about 70 around the world. There is only one, though, that bothers Bush enough to invade. Reciting gruesome tales from Iraq is good for stirring an audience, but as grounds for war, it’s completely bogus.

This State of the Union address resembled one of those fast-paced thrillers that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat even though the plot is full of holes. It was easy to get swept away by it, but only if you didn’t think too much.

E-mail: schapman@tribune.com

In December 1983, Rumsfeld, then a special envoy to the Middle East appointed by President Reagan, travelled to Baghdad to inform Saddam Hussein that the United States was ready to resume full diplomatic relations with Iraq.

A lengthy report in the Washington Post on December 30, 2002 – based on analysing thousands of pages of declassified government documents and interviews with former policy-makers – said that “US intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defences” following Rumsfeld’s visit.

The resumption of diplomatic relations was proposed despite warnings from the State Department a month earlier that Iraq was engaging in “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” in the war against Iran.

At the time, the US judged that preventing an Iranian victory against Iraq was a higher policy priority than obeying the 1925 Geneva Protocol outlawing chemical warfare.

Before the visit, the US had removed Iraq from the State Department’s terrorism list, opening the door for arms deals with Western countries.

Again according to the Washington Post, a 1994 investigation by the US Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-’80s under licence from the Department of Commerce, including various strains of anthrax subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.

These days Rumsfeld likes to downplay or even deny his role in helping arm Iraq with the makings of weapons of mass destruction. He has been quoted as saying he had “nothing to do” with helping Iraq fight Iran in the ’80s. However, the Washington Post says “the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer US-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts”.

The scale of the business done between Iraq and US corporations has never been made public, and recent efforts by the US Government suggest that, far from wanting to uncover the extent and details of the sources of Saddam’s weapons program, it has every interest in covering it up.

In mid-December 2002 Iraq released massive documentation which purported to provide an inventory of its arms programs. The television news showed tables of documents, 12,000 pages in all plus accompanying CD-ROMs. It was made available to the UN weapons inspection team under the terms of the Security Council resolution demanding full disclosure of the country’s efforts to build weapons of mass destruction.

According to a report in The Guardian newspaper on December 11, the US obtained agreement from Colombia, at the time serving as president of the Security Council, to hand over the documentation for it to analyse and copy. This was an apparent breach of a Security Council agreement that the document would be first analysed by UN specialists before being made available to member states.

The US provided copies of the full documentation to the four other permanent members: Russia, China, France and Great Britain. Whether anything was first removed from this report is a matter of contention.

What is known is that the 10 non-permanent members had to be content with an edited, scaled-down version. According to the German newsagency DPA, instead of the 12,000 pages, these nations – including Germany, which this month became president of the Security Council – were given only 3,000 pages.

So what was missing?

The Guardian reported that the nine-page table of contents included chapters on “procurements” in Iraq’s nuclear program and “relations with companies, representatives and individuals” for its chemical weapons program. This information was not included in the edited version.

On December 11, The New York Times said that Dr Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, had agreed to this. He told the Security Council that he was not going to release the names of the foreign suppliers to Iraq. His rationale: these suppliers could be valuable sources of information to UN inspectors.

Others have offered alternative explanations. A former UN weapons inspector, David Albright, told The Guardian in December that there would be widespread embarrassment if the extent to which British, French, German and other Western companies had supplied Iraq’s weapons build-up was known.

Now a German newspaper has blown the whistle and published a list of all these suppliers. National daily Die Tageszeitung ran its report on December 19 but it has been slow to get an airing in the English-speaking world. The US media has ignored it. Perhaps it hits too close to home.

The article claims that what it calls the “censorship” of the original Iraqi disclosure document was done at US urging. The report lists details of suppliers from US, China, France, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Sweden – but the standout supplier to Saddam was the US.

Twenty-four companies as well as the Departments of Defence, Energy, Trade and Agriculture all took part, as did the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. The US government evidently did not want this made public.

The US corporate contribution includes Hewlett-Packard (nuclear weapon, rocket and conventional weapons programs), Tektronix (nuclear, rockets), Eastman Kodak (rockets), Honeywell (rockets, conventional) and American Type Culture Collection (biological).

(Full details can be found in German at www.taz.de/pt2002/12/19/a0012.nf/text.)

This cosy arrangement lasted until 1990 when relations were abruptly terminated after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Since the conclusion of the first Gulf War, UN weapons inspectors have scoured Iraq for proscribed weaponry.

Whether there is anything left to find is a matter of fierce conjecture. Evidently Donald and Dubya (whose father was Vice-President when Rumsfeld made his mission to Baghdad) think they know something.

Isn’t it time they came clean?

It is in no one’s interests for Saddam Hussein to retain deadly weapons he has shown no compunction about using in the past, including on his own citizens. But by what crazy logic does the West go to war to disarm him of weapons it supplied in the first place? Instead of so-called smart bombs, how about a bit of smart diplomacy?

Sounds like a job for Donald Rumsfeld.

My village of about 650 year-round residents votes overwhelmingly Republican. Most of us are affluent or at least comfortable. And every morning a few dozen of us take turns sitting at the two old, worn oak tables in the town’s bakery to talk about the news of our homes, our neighborhoods and the world.

On Wednesday morning, nobody was convinced by George Bush’s State of the Union speech that we ought to go to war. Together, all we could do was ask questions.

“We haven’t made much progress,” one retired teacher complains. “We keep setting up regimes that we end up having to take down. Why haven’t we learned more?”

I speak up. “I think we have learned a lot as a nation, which is why the antiwar sentiment is so strong, which is why we’re having this conversation today. Nobody can be gung-ho about war ever again. None of us is as blindly patriotic as we used to be.”

We talk about it. The media has taken us around the world, so that we worry about Iraqis and other distant peoples. Fifty years ago, we didn’t see into enemy homes. Now we do.

And the best war movies have shown us exactly what war looks like, the blood and the guts. We trust them more than images from Desert Storm, an antiseptic collage of press briefings and missiles flashing across the night skies.

Too many will die

Many of us don’t buy “Our way or the highway” anymore.

In our diversity we have grown to be less self-righteous.

As one conservative clergyman asks at the bakery table, “Why are we allowed to have weapons of mass destruction but nobody else is?”

The death of young men and women, noble and brave as they might be, sickens us now in a way I don’t think we let it years ago.

An apple farmer wonders, “How many people do you suppose would die if we go to war?”

“Too many!” somebody shouts. “Even one is too many!”

“Oh,” someone guesses, “maybe 25,000.”

The farmer’s eyes widen. “That’s a lot,” he says.

“But,” someone else interjects, “isn’t 1,000 a lot?” We sit for a moment in silence, imagining losing our whole town, all 650 of us, plus a few hundred from the town down the road.

Ask the president

And for what? Security as a nation? “Wouldn’t war,” one woman asks, “make us feel less secure and more vulnerable to revenge?”

What’s the alternative, though? Is anyone negotiating? Can you negotiate with evil? But is he as evil as we’re led to think? If so, let’s kill him off! But everyone winces at the idea of assassinating anyone whom we decide, as a nation, is a menace.

Behind the counter, refilling coffee cups, the bakery’s owner listens. He told me a few days ago that he never knew his dad, who was killed in World War II when Jerry was only 4. Jerry told me: “The president should send his daughters to war.”

At our table, someone says, “We should invite George to join us,” as we tend to invite any newcomer who walks through the door. We laugh. George, the president, is not far away, talking about Medicare and prescription drugs in a big auditorium in Grand Rapids.

Better, perhaps, for him to visit the hometown bakeries of America, the bowling alleys, the neighborhood bars, and take questions from the people and try, if he can, to answer us.

Susan Ager appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, only in the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at 313-222-6862 or ager@freepress.com

DEPLETED URANIUM FACT SHEET

February 3, 2003

by Dan Fahey (1)

Key Points

• Depleted uranium (DU) is a toxic heavy metal used in armor-piercing ammunition because its extreme density enables it to penetrate thick tank armor.

• Laboratory research has found DU may cause cancer, central nervous system damage, reproductive effects, and other health problems in rats.

• Evidence of human health effects caused by DU is inconclusive, due largely to the fact that the health status of very few people with verified exposures has been assessed.

• After DU munitions have been used in combat, the presence of DU in soil and water, or on equipment and in buildings, may present risks to the health of local populations.

What is depleted uranium?

Depleted uranium is the waste product of the process to create highly radioactive enriched uranium from natural uranium. Enriched uranium is used for nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons; DU is stored as toxic waste.

DU emits alpha radiation and is chemically toxic. Alpha radiation is hazardous inside the body, where its high energy emitted over a short distance may kill or damage cells. DU’s chemical toxicity is similar to lead and other heavy metals. DU’s chemical toxicity appears to be a greater hazard to human health than its radioactivity (2).

How is DU used in munitions?

DU is primarily used in armor-piercing ammunition. This ammunition is simply a solid rod of dense metal shot at a high velocity from a variety of guns. Large caliber DU tank rounds (105mm, 120mm, 125mm) are manufactured in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and Pakistan (3).

The US manufactures small caliber DU rounds that are shot by aircraft (25mm, 30mm) and lightly armored fighting vehicles (25mm). The US Navy is phasing out its use of small caliber DU rounds (20mm).

Other military uses of DU include tank armor, ballast in aircraft, and as a catalyst in certain anti-personnel mines (4).

DU is used as a casing for some bunker-busting missiles and bombs (5), and as a counterweight in some missiles (6).

Why is DU used in munitions?

There are two main reasons DU is used in munitions.

DU exists in large quantities and its use in munitions relieves governments of their fiscal and legal responsibilities to properly store it (7).

In addition, DU’s extreme density (1.7 times that of lead), pyrophoricity (it burns when it fragments), and resistance to deformation (when alloyed with a small amount of titanium) enable it to effectively penetrate tank armor (8).

Where has DU been used in combat? (9)

Iraq, Kuwait (1991), 286 metric tons, from US Aircraft, US Tanks, and UK Tanks

Bosnia (1994-95), 3.2 metric tons, from US Aircraft

Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro (1999), 9.5 metric tons, from US Aircraft

Afghanistan (2001-03), uncertain amount, uncertain sources

How are people exposed to DU?

The impact of DU ammunition against a hard target creates a fine DU dust that contaminates the impact site, though small amounts of DU dust drift downwind.

People may be wounded by DU fragments, inhale the DU dust particles created by an impact, suffer wound contamination by DU dust, or ingest DU through hand-to-mouth contact or consumption of contaminated food or water.

Who is at risk?

Those at greatest risk are combat soldiers in or near vehicles at the time they are struck by DU rounds; soldiers or civilians who work in contaminated areas (e.g. on or in destroyed equipment, inside buildings where DU is present); and children who play in contaminated equipment or soil (10).

What are the health effects?

Laboratory studies on rats indicate short-term effects include kidney damage, while long-term effects may include cancer, central nervous system problems, immune system disorders and reproductive effects (11).

Few humans exposed to DU have been studied, therefore little is known about the effects DU has had or may have in the future on exposed populations.

The US government claims it has not found evidence of significant health effects caused by DU in a study of a few dozen Gulf War veterans (12), although Pentagon spokesmen have lied about the existence of cancer among these veterans (13).

There have been many claims made about DU causing a large number of serious health effects in Iraq, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, but these claims has not been confirmed by credible, independent sources.

What are the environmental effects?

DU may contaminate soil, water, and air, as well as plant and animal life. The extent of the contamination and its risk to public health depend upon several factors including the quantity and size of the DU released, its concentration in a given area, and local environmental conditions.

Footnotes:

1. Dan Fahey (duweapons@hotmail.com) has written extensively about DU munitions, and is a Board Member of Veterans for Common Sense. He is a contributor to “International Law and the Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons,” forthcoming 2003.

2. See e.g., Jose L. Domingo, “Reproductive and developmental toxicity of natural and depleted uranium: a review,” Reproductive Toxicology (2001) 15: 604.

3. See Dan Fahey, “Use, Effects and Legal Standing of Depleted Uranium Munitions,” 10 December 2001, http://www.du.publica.cz/papers/Fahey.htm.

4. U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Radiological Sources of Potential Exposure and/or Contamination, (Aberdeen Proving Ground, 10 December 1999) 114 – 120.

5. See e.g., Matthew L. Wald, “U.S. Refits a Nuclear Bomb To Destroy Enemy Bunkers,” New York Times 31 May 1997: A1.

6. US Army Environmental Policy Institute, Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium Use by the U.S. Army, Technical Report (Atlanta: AEPI, 1995) 25.

7. See e.g., Joint Technical Coordinating Group for Munitions Effectiveness (JTCG/ME), Ad Hoc Working Group for Depleted Uranium, “Special Report: Medical and Environmental Evaluation of Depleted Uranium,” (Richland, WA, 1974) Vol. I: 1, 2.

8. The Royal Society, The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions, Part I, (London, 2001) p. 2; R. Pengelley, “The DU Debate: what are the risks,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 15 January 2001).

9. See Dan Fahey, “Use, Effects and Legal Standing of Depleted Uranium Munitions,” 10 December 2001, http://www.du.publica.cz/papers/Fahey.htm; Dan Fahey, “The Use of Depleted Uranium in Afghanistan,” 23 Dec. 2002, http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dissafdf.html.

10. The potential for health effects depends on a number of factors, including the quantity and size of the DU a person’s body absorbs, the location where DU deposits in the body, and the age and health of the exposed person.

11. See D.E. McClain, et al, “Biological effects of embedded depleted uranium (DU): summary of Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute research,” The Science of the Total Environment (2001) 274: 117; Fletcher F. Hahn, Raymond A. Guilmette, and Mark D. Hoover, “Implanted Depleted Uranium Fragments Cause Soft Tissue Sarcomas in the Muscles of Rats,” Environmental Health Perspectives (2002) 110: 51; D.E. McClain, “Project Briefing: Health Effects of Depleted Uranium,” U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (Bethesda, MD, 1999).

12. See e.g., U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Health Support Directorate, “DU – Health Concerns,” undated, http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/health.shtml.

13. See Dan Fahey, “Depleted Legitimacy: The U.S. Study of Gulf War Veterans Exposed to Depleted Uranium,” 4 May 2002, http://www.ngwrc.org/conf2002/NGWRC-DU-Atlanta.pdf

Recent vituperative attacks on U.S. policy by famous and respected men like Nelson Mandela and John Le Carré, although excessive, are echoed in a Web site poll conducted by the European edition of TIME magazine. The question was “Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?” With several hundred thousand votes cast, the responses were: North Korea, 7 percent; Iraq, 8 percent; the United States, 84 percent. This is a gross distortion of our nation’s character, and America is not inclined to let foreign voices answer the preeminent question that President Bush is presenting to the world, but it is sobering to realize how much doubt and consternation has been raised about our motives for war in the absence of convincing proof of a genuine threat from Iraq.

The world will be awaiting Wednesday’s presentation of specific evidence by Secretary of State Colin Powell concerning Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. As an acknowledged voice of moderation, his message will carry enormous weight in shaping public opinion. But even if his effort is successful and lies and trickery by Saddam Hussein are exposed, this will not indicate any real or proximate threat by Iraq to the United States or to our allies.

With overwhelming military strength now deployed against him and with intense monitoring from space surveillance and the U.N. inspection team on the ground, any belligerent move by Saddam against a neighbor would be suicidal. An effort to produce or deploy chemical or biological weapons or to make the slightest move toward a nuclear explosive would be inconceivable. If Iraq does possess such concealed weapons, as is quite likely, Saddam would use them only in the most extreme circumstances, in the face of an invasion of Iraq, when all hope of avoiding the destruction of his regime is lost.

In Washington, there is no longer any mention of Osama bin Laden, and the concentration of public statements on his international terrorist network is mostly limited to still-unproven allegations about its connection with Iraq. The worldwide commitment and top priority of fighting terrorism that was generated after September 11th has been attenuated as Iraq has become the preeminent obsession of political leaders and the general public.

In addition to the need to re-invigorate the global team effort against international terrorism, there are other major problems being held in abeyance as our nation’s foreign policy is concentrated on proving its case for a planned attack on Iraq. We have just postponed again the promulgation of the long-awaited “road map” that the U.S. and other international leaders have drafted for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is a festering cancer and the root cause of much of the anti-American sentiment that has evolved throughout the world. At the same time, satellite observations of North Korea have indicated that nuclear fuel rods, frozen under international surveillance since 1994, are now being moved from the Yongbyon site to an undisclosed destination, possibly for reprocessing into explosives. It is imperative that this threat to Asian stability be met with aggressive diplomacy.

Since it is obvious that Saddam Hussein has the capability and desire to build an arsenal of prohibited weapons and probably has some of them hidden within his country, what can be done to prevent the development of a real Iraqi threat? The most obvious answer is a sustained and enlarged inspection team, deployed as a permanent entity until the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council determine that its presence is no longer needed. For almost eight years following the Gulf War until it was withdrawn four years ago, UNSCOM proved to be very effective in locating and destroying Iraq’s formidable arsenal, including more than 900 missiles and biological and chemical weapons left over from their previous war with Iran.

Even if Iraq should come into full compliance now, such follow-up monitoring will be necessary. The cost of an on-site inspection team would be minuscule compared to war, Saddam would have no choice except to comply, the results would be certain, military and civilian casualties would be avoided, there would be almost unanimous worldwide support, and the United States could regain its leadership in combating the real threat of international terrorism.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is chair of The Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga., a not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization that advances peace and health worldwide.

It turned out that his questions are the same ones that countless Americans are asking:

Q: President Bush keeps saying that Iraq is a ”grave threat to the United States.” Why?

A: He no longer tries to explain. The hyperbole of his speechwriters has too often held him up to ridicule. Last fall they had him say, for example, that Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon within a year. The U.S. intelligence communitys judgment is that it cannot do so until the end of the decade — if then.

Q: But wont Iraq give terrorists chemical or biological agents to attack America?

A: The U.S. intelligence community says that Iraq is unlikely to do so, unless it is invaded.

Q: Could it be a personal thing? Didn’t Bush say that Saddam Hussein tried to kill his dad?

A: I’ll leave that one to the psychologists. There are more plausible reasons. One is Israel.

Q: Israel seems to be egging Bush on. Why?

A: As Israel demonstrated when it destroyed Iraqs Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, it simply will not allow Iraq to acquire nuclear weapons.

Q: Why?

A: Because the Israelis fear that this could jeopardize their ability to work their will in the lands seized from the Arabs in 1967 and 1973. Hussein or his successor could easily brandish a nuclear weapon and restrict the freedom that Israel now enjoys to do what it pleases in the occupied territories.

Q: Are you suggesting that the Israelis are running U.S. policy toward Iraq?

A: Not ”running,” but certainly heavily influencing. U.S. domestic politics and campaign contributions play a key role here.

Of equal importance, Vice President Cheney and the Pentagon’s civilian leadership share a boy-like admiration for the Israeli generals who have made a career of preemptive attacks. (On Cheney’s office wall hangs an aerial photo of the destroyed reactor at Osirak. He has blessed that attack, even though it was unanimously condemned by the United Nations Security Council as a violation of international law.)

Q: But certainly the Israeli factor does not suffice to account for the Bush administrations policy on Iraq.

A: There is a factor of at least equal importance: oil. Even our 15-year-old grandson could point out how long Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfelds nose grew when he said, “This has nothing to do with oil!”

Consider this: According to the Department of Energy, the United States, with less than 3 percent of the worlds known oil reserves, will have to import 70 percent of its oil by 2025. And Israel is totally dependent on imports for oil. With ”regime change” in Baghdad, nearly a quarter of the worlds oil reserves would fall into the hands of U.S. oil companies.

Lust for this windfall is nothing new. In May 1998, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (now Deputy Defense Secretary), Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board, Elliot Abrams (a newly rehabilitated National Security Council official) and others with top positions in the current administration wrote this to congressional leaders: ”We should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf — and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power” (for ”vital interests” read oil).

Q: What will happen now?

A: Bushs press secretary has already issued a reminder that the Bush has said that U.N. opposition would not prevent him from leading ”a coalition of the willing” to attack Iraq and that U.S. and British forces are already in position to do so.

Q: Why the great rush?

A: Summer comes quickly to Iraq. The optimum time to attack is now.

Q: But the polls show diminishing support in the United States for war.

A: Public support is still higher than before the 1991 Gulf War. And Bush can count on Americans to rally around once U.S. forces are engaged. In this sense, the polls provide additional incentive to strike quickly to halt the erosion of popular support.

Q: Wont Bush have to justify such an attack to the American people?

A: No. Congress gave him carte blanche last fall. There will be speeches and ”intelligence” to support Bush’s case for war.

CIA analysts so far have resisted unrelenting pressure from Wolfowitz to cook the evidence to the recipe of administration policy. If they do not cave under the pressure, the conjuring up and presenting the desired intelligence will be left to Rumsfeld.

Ray McGovern, a former Army intelligence officer, co-directs the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington, D.C.

One hundred eleven members of Congress signed the letter to President Bush. Of those, 20 voted for Bush’s war resolution in October 2002.

This letter reflects what could, with enough signatures, become a powerful position in Congress, uniting both those that voted for the president’s resolution, and those who voted against, and thereby slow President Bush’s headlong rush to launch a unilateral first-strike war against Iraq.

Here is the text of the letter and the signers:

January 24, 2003

Dear Mr. President,

On November 8, 2002, the United Nations Security Council unanimously endorsed a resolution designed to force Iraq to give up any weapons of mass destruction. We believe the U.S. should make every attempt to achieve Iraq’s disarmament through diplomatic means and with the full support of our allies, in accordance with the process articulated in UN Security Council resolution 1441.

The UN resolution calls for a tough new weapons inspection regime; it requires the government of Iraq to provide inspectors with immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access, and requires that Iraq permit inspectors to interview officials, scientists, and other individuals as necessary to fulfill the mandate of the resolution. This is an inherently difficult task requiring patience and perseverance.

The report scheduled to be given by Chief UN weapons inspector Dr. Hans Blix and Director General Mohamed EI Baradei on January 27, 2003 will assess whether the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) comprehensive mission is proceeding in the unobstructed and effective manner necessary to realize the aims of UN Security Council resolution 1441.

We encourage your Administration to sufficiently weigh future decisions regarding Iraq on the assessment given by UNMOVIC/IAEA, including additional inspection time and resources as appropriate. Your commitment to working through the UN Security Council and your vocal support for resolution 1441 are critical to UNMOVIC/IAEA’s eventual success.

In addition, we respectfully urge you to use the opportunity provided in the upcoming State of the Union Address to offer assurances both to the American people and the international community that the United States remains committed to the diplomatic approach and comprehensive inspections process agreed to in UN Security Council resolution 1441.

Thank you for your consideration, and we look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

List of signers:
* indicates Rep. voted for Bush War Resolution

Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI)*

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL)*

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)

Additional Signers (as of 5:00 PM EST, January 23, 2003):

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR)

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)

Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-VT)

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)

Rep. Ted Strickland (D-OH)

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY)

Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY)*

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)

Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA)

Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN)

Rep. F. Allen Boyd (D-FL)*

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)*

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA)

Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA)

Rep. James Moran (D-VA)

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)

Rep. S. Tubbs Jones (D-OH)

Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA)

Rep. David Price (D-NC)

Rep. William Clay (D-MO)

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)*

Rep. Ed Case (D-HI)

Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC)

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL)

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL)

Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-IL)

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA)*

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN)

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)

Rep. John Olver (D-MA)

Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA)

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY)

Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA)

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

Rep. James McGovern (D-MA)

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA)

Rep. Michael McNulty (D-NY)*

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)*

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA)

Rep. Thomas Allen (D-ME)

Rep. Melvin Watt (D-NC)

Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA)*

Rep. Jim Davis (D-FL)*

Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL)

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)

Rep. Karen McCarthy (D-MO)

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY)

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI)

Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA)

Rep. Fortney Stark (D-CA)

Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)

Rep. Albert Wynn (D-MD)*

Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA)

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY)*

Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD)

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)

Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA)

Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA)

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)*

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)

Rep. Darlene Hooley (D-OR)

Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ)

Rep. Martin Sabo (D-MN)

Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA)

Rep. James Langevin (D-RI)

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA)

Rep. Jerry Kleczka (D-WI)

Rep. Lane Evans (D-IL)

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH)

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV)*

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)

Rep. Major Owens (D-NY)

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY)

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA)

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)*

Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM)

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA)

Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA)

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA)

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV)

Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA)

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA)*

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)

Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA)

Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI)

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)

Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL)

Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME)

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA)

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA)

Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT)*

Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

Rep. John Tierney (D-MA)

Rep. Joseph Hoeffel (D-PA)*

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)*

Washington – With a weekend of large, orderly anti-war demonstrations over, ignored by President Bush at Camp David, he can now resume determined plans to disarm Iraq by threat or use of military force.

Estimates of the crowds that marched here and elsewhere are, as usual, in dispute between police and the protest organizers. But there is little disagreement that they constituted the largest peace demonstrations since Vietnam and the largest ever against a war that hasn’t started.

Still, they lacked much of the agony of the Vietnam protests, which were fired by tens of thousands of American deaths, not to mention young American students’ fears of being drafted and killed in a war in which they did not believe.

In a sense, that fact made last weekend’s turnout all the more remarkable. It appeared to be driven not by revulsion toward what was happening, as was the case in the Vietnam protests, but by concerns about what might happen if the Bush administration follows through on the pre-emptive war for which it is mobilizing.

Regardless of the precise numbers of protesters, the demonstrations did provide the most tangible evidence yet that behind Mr. Bush’s popularity there exists considerable uncertainty about plunging the country into another war while the fight against terrorism continues.

More threatening to those plans is the determination of U.N. Security Council permanent members France and Russia and others to continue the U.N. inspections beyond the Jan. 27 reporting date of Hans Blix, the chief inspector, which the Bush administration hoped would trigger another war-making resolution.

If Mr. Bush ever thought he could just go through the motions of taking the Iraq dispute to the United Nations to placate the international community and then unleash the military, he is now obliged to think again.

Although the administration continues to insist that the inspectors need not find “smoking” weapons of mass destruction to warrant action, their failure so far to do so has given many U.N. members a strong arguing point for extending the time for inspections.

It’s obvious that Saddam Hussein wants to stretch out the inspection process, but such a development is not entirely detrimental to Mr. Bush’s plans, for all his talk of Iraq’s imminent threat. It gives the Pentagon more time to deploy U.S. forces, not to mention to continue almost daily softening-up bombing of targets in Iraq’s no-fly zones, little mentioned by the White House.

The administration insists that the Iraqi regime is already in “material breach” of U.N. resolutions by failing to file a complete account of weapons it has.

But notably the White House did not seize on last week’s discovery of a few empty warheads designed to deliver chemical weapons to demand immediate Security Council action. It understood the council would balk.

The prospects for a U.S. invasion of Iraq remain real, but for the first time the outlook for averting it has grown as a result of a stiffening of attitudes at the United Nations.

Also, polls are telling Mr. Bush that support at home for war drops sharply if he proceeds without U.N. backing.

Suddenly it also seems that the imminent threat from Iraq is not all that imminent – unless, that is, Mr. Hussein unleashes his chemical or biological arsenal in retaliation for a U.S. attack.

Talk also grows of pressures from Arab nations to persuade him to go into exile.

Many say Mr. Bush is so far out on a limb now with his massive mobilization that he can’t stop without losing face. But much more important is preserving international solidarity. If France, as threatened, vetoes any new U.N. war authorization, Mr. Bush will be hard-pressed to go ahead.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, carrying Mr. Bush’s mail the other day at the United Nations, warned that “if the United Nations is going to be relevant, it has to take a firm stand.” There can be no better way for the United Nations to prove its relevancy than to stop the Bush runaway war-making train in its tracks.

Jules Witcover writes from The Sun’s Washington bureau. His column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

jules.witcover@baltsun.com