A rchive Date
[ 24-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
No good reason for 'last chance'
By PETER WORTHINGTON - Toronto Sun
February 24, 2003
Here we go again. Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has given Saddam Hussein until March 1 to destroy all al-Samoud 2 (SA-2) missiles that have a greater range than the 150 km mandated by the UN in 1991.
And therein lies the problem with ultimatums to Saddam. He only admits to what is discovered.
The useless weapons inspectors - unless they are ex-weapons inspectors, and then they are sensible on TV interviews - have to be detectives, or players in a scavenger hunt for weapons. If they can't find any, then Saddam is innocent of having any. That's not the original intent, but that's what it has come down to.
To the virulent anti-war protester, if biochemical weapons can't be found, it means Saddam doesn't have any. In the next breath they say if U.S. President George W. Bush attacks Saddam, he's risking unknown numbers of young American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians suffering ghastly deaths from the same biochemical weapons they insist Saddam doesn't have.
What to do? Nothing, say peaceniks. Not our concern. Hans Blix knows what to do, and that's give Saddam a week to get rid of his SA-2 missiles. If he doesn't (and he probably will), well, Saddam risks another "last chance" ultimatum from the UN Security Council in which France will issue another plea for "patience."
HIGH STAKES
Clearly Saddam is snookering George W. Bush in this high-stakes poker game. Bush has already delayed perilously long for his reputation. If he had acted - that is, invaded Iraq - at Christmas, or after UN Resolution 1441 had been violated, he'd be in a better position than now.
He's trying simultaneously to be nice guy and tough guy, which is the American way. Understandable, because Bush seems a decent man and like most Americans, doesn't relish war. But leadership is not waiting for consensus, not following polls. It is taking the lead. If you are right, others will join you and history will remember you. Bush knows you can't appease the unappeasable - which is what Saddam Hussein and other malignant dictators are.
Latvia's new president, Vaira Vika-Freiberga, put it succinctly and accurately in a back-handed reference to peace protesters when she said: "It's much easier to tolerate a dictator when he's dictating over somebody else's life and not your own." Precisely. President V-F was raised and schooled in Canada after she fled Soviet-ruled Latvia at age seven, and was elected president of Latvia in 1999 after a career as a psychology professor in Montreal. She is a fitting successor to Margaret Thatcher's respected title of "Iron Lady."
While Saddam is so far winning the showdown with President Bush by merely surviving, it's hard to see the U.S. not invading.
LIKELY TO DESERT
If Saddam were to flee into exile, which U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says would avert war, it would mean U.S. troops occupying Iraq and supervising Saddam's successors - a prospect almost worse than war.
Saddam's army is unlikely to fight. Most of the 350,000 regulars are in the boondocks, where they will desert or be killed in the early going of a war. Saddam daren't put them in Baghdad or cities because the desertion rate would be even higher. According to an Iraqi tank soldier, Ali Qadir Jadir, who deserted and escaped, most of his comrades will surrender at the first shot.
Scott Taylor, publisher of the military magazine Esprit de Corps and a Sun columnist, was recently in Kurdish northern Iraq, and tells of American Special Forces already there. A highway is being built heading south, and Kurdish militia are armed to the teeth, eager and ready to go.
Iraqi artillery is ancient and in the open, and if war starts, will last but a few minutes under air strikes. Meanwhile, "last chance" charades continue.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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