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Guest
Opposing the Use of Military Force Against Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
October 10, 2002
I oppose the resolution authorizing military force against
Iraq. The wisdom of the war is one issue, but the process
and the philosophy behind our foreign policy are important
issues as well. But I have come to the conclusion that I see
no threat to our national security. There is no convincing
evidence that Iraq is capable of threatening the security of
this country, and, therefore, very little reason, if any, to
pursue a war.
But I am very interested also in the process that we are
pursuing. This is not a resolution to declare war. We know
that. This is a resolution that does something much
different. This resolution transfers the responsibility, the
authority, and the power of the Congress to the President so
he can declare war when and if he wants to. He has not even
indicated that he wants to go to war or has to go to war;
but he will make the full decision, not the Congress, not
the people through the Congress of this country in that
manner.
It does something else, though. One-half of the resolution
delivers this power to the President, but it also instructs
him to enforce U.N. resolutions. I happen to think I would
rather listen to the President when he talks about
unilateralism and national security interests, than accept
this responsibility to follow all of the rules and the
dictates of the United Nations. That is what this resolution
does. It instructs him to follow all of the resolutions.
But an important aspect of the philosophy and the policy we
are endorsing here is the preemption doctrine. This should
not be passed off lightly. It has been done to some degree
in the past, but never been put into law that we will
preemptively strike another nation that has not attacked us.
No matter what the arguments may be, this policy is new; and
it will have ramifications for our future, and it will have
ramifications for the future of the world because other
countries will adopt this same philosophy.
I also want to mention very briefly something that has
essentially never been brought up. For more than a thousand
years there has been a doctrine and Christian definition of
what a just war is all about. I think this effort and this
plan to go to war comes up short of that doctrine. First, it
says that there has to be an act of aggression; and there
has not been an act of aggression against the United States.
We are 6,000 miles from their shores.
Also, it says that all efforts at negotiations must be
exhausted. I do not believe that is the case. It seems to me
like the opposition, the enemy, right now is begging for
more negotiations.
Also, the Christian doctrine says that the proper authority
must be responsible for initiating the war. I do not believe
that proper authority can be transferred to the President
nor to the United Nations.
But a very practical reason why I have a great deal of
reservations has to do with the issue of no-win wars that we
have been involved in for so long. Once we give up our
responsibilities from here in the House and the Senate to
make these decisions, it seems that we depend on the United
Nations for our instructions; and that is why, as a Member
earlier indicated, essentially we are already at war. That
is correct. We are still in the Persian Gulf War. We have
been bombing for 12 years, and the reason President Bush,
Sr., did not go all the way? He said the U.N. did not give
him permission to.
My argument is when we go to war through the back door, we
are more likely to have the wars last longer and not have
resolution of the wars, such as we had in Korea and Vietnam.
We ought to consider this very seriously.
Also it is said we are wrong about the act of aggression,
there has been an act of aggression against us because
Saddam Hussein has shot at our airplanes. The fact that he
has missed every single airplane for 12 years, and tens of
thousands of sorties have been flown, indicates the strength
of our enemy, an impoverished, Third World nation that does
not have an air force, anti-aircraft weapons, or a navy.
But the indication is because he shot at us, therefore, it
is an act of aggression. However, what is cited as the
reason for us flying over the no-fly zone comes from U.N.
Resolution 688, which instructs us and all the nations to
contribute to humanitarian relief in the Kurdish and the
Shiite areas. It says nothing about no-fly zones, and it
says nothing about bombing missions over Iraq.
So to declare that we have been attacked, I do not believe
for a minute that this fulfills the requirement that we are
retaliating against aggression by this country. There is a
need for us to assume responsibility for the declaration of
war, and also to prepare the American people for the taxes
that will be raised and the possibility of a military draft
which may well come.
I must oppose this resolution, which regardless of what many
have tried to claim will lead us into war with Iraq. This
resolution is not a declaration of war, however, and that is
an important point: this resolution transfers the
Constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority to declare
wars to the executive branch. This resolution tells the
president that he alone has the authority to determine when,
where, why, and how war will be declared. It merely asks the
president to pay us a courtesy call a couple of days after
the bombing starts to let us know what is going on. This is
exactly what our Founding Fathers cautioned against when
crafting our form of government: most had just left behind a
monarchy where the power to declare war rested in one
individual. It is this they most wished to avoid.
As James Madison wrote in 1798, "The Constitution supposes
what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the
executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and
most prone to it. It has, accordingly, with studied care,
vested the question of war in the legislature."
Some- even some in this body- have claimed that this
Constitutional requirement is an anachronism, and that those
who insist on following the founding legal document of this
country are just being frivolous. I could not disagree more.
Mr. Speaker, for the more than one dozen years I have spent
as a federal legislator I have taken a particular interest
in foreign affairs and especially the politics of the Middle
East. From my seat on the international relations committee
I have had the opportunity to review dozens of documents and
to sit through numerous hearings and mark-up sessions
regarding the issues of both Iraq and international
terrorism.
Back in 1997 and 1998 I publicly spoke out against the
actions of the Clinton Administration, which I believed was
moving us once again toward war with Iraq. I believe the
genesis of our current policy was unfortunately being set at
that time. Indeed, many of the same voices who then demanded
that the Clinton Administration attack Iraq are now
demanding that the Bush Administration attack Iraq. It is
unfortunate that these individuals are using the tragedy of
September 11, 2001 as cover to force their long-standing
desire to see an American invasion of Iraq. Despite all of
the information to which I have access, I remain very
skeptical that the nation of Iraq poses a serious and
immanent terrorist threat to the United States. If I were
convinced of such a threat I would support going to war, as
I did when I supported President Bush by voting to give him
both the authority and the necessary funding to fight the
war on terror.
Mr. Speaker, consider some of the following claims presented
by supporters of this resolution, and contrast them with the
following facts:
Claim: Iraq has consistently demonstrated its willingness to
use force against the US through its firing on our planes
patrolling the UN-established "no-fly zones."
Reality: The "no-fly zones" were never authorized by the
United Nations, nor was their 12 year patrol by American and
British fighter planes sanctioned by the United Nations.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 688 (April, 1991),
Iraq's repression of the Kurds and Shi'ites was condemned,
but there was no authorization for "no-fly zones," much less
airstrikes. The resolution only calls for member states to
"contribute to humanitarian relief" in the Kurd and Shi'ite
areas. Yet the US and British have been bombing Iraq in the
"no-fly zones" for 12 years. While one can only condemn any
country firing on our pilots, isn't the real argument
whether we should continue to bomb Iraq relentlessly? Just
since 1998, some 40,000 sorties have been flown over Iraq.
Claim: Iraq is an international sponsor of terrorism.
Reality: According to the latest edition of the State
Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism, Iraq sponsors
several minor Palestinian groups, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq
(MEK), and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). None of these
carries out attacks against the United States. As a matter
of fact, the MEK (an Iranian organization located in Iraq)
has enjoyed broad Congressional support over the years.
According to last year's Patterns of Global Terrorism, Iraq
has not been involved in terrorist activity against the West
since 1993 - the alleged attempt against former President
Bush.
Claim: Iraq tried to assassinate President Bush in 1993.
Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq was behind the
attack. News reports at the time were skeptical about
Kuwaiti assertions that the attack was planned by Iraq
against former. President Bush. Following is an interesting
quote from Seymore Hersh's article from Nov. 1993:
Three years ago, during Iraq's six-month occupation of
Kuwait, there had been an outcry when a teen-age Kuwaiti
girl testified eloquently and effectively before Congress
about Iraqi atrocities involving newborn infants. The girl
turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to
Washington, Sheikh Saud Nasir al-Sabah, and her account of
Iraqi soldiers flinging babies out of incubators was
challenged as exaggerated both by journalists and by
human-rights groups. (Sheikh Saud was subsequently named
Minister of Information in Kuwait, and he was the government
official in charge of briefing the international press on
the alleged assassination attempt against George Bush.) In a
second incident, in August of 1991, Kuwait provoked a
special session of the United Nations Security Council by
claiming that twelve Iraqi vessels, including a speedboat,
had been involved in an attempt to assault Bubiyan Island,
long-disputed territory that was then under Kuwaiti control.
The Security Council eventually concluded that, while the
Iraqis had been provocative, there had been no Iraqi
military raid, and that the Kuwaiti government knew there
hadn't. What did take place was nothing more than a
smuggler-versus-smuggler dispute over war booty in a nearby
demilitarized zone that had emerged, after the Gulf War, as
an illegal marketplace for alcohol, ammunition, and
livestock.
This establishes that on several occasions Kuwait has lied
about the threat from Iraq. Hersh goes on to point out in
the article numerous other times the Kuwaitis lied to the US
and the UN about Iraq. Here is another good quote from
Hersh:
The President was not alone in his caution. Janet Reno, the
Attorney General, also had her doubts. "The A.G. remains
skeptical of certain aspects of the case," a senior Justice
Department official told me in late July, a month after the
bombs were dropped on Baghdad.Two weeks later, what amounted
to open warfare broke out among various factions in the
government on the issue of who had done what in Kuwait.
Someone gave a Boston Globe reporter access to a classified
C.I.A. study that was highly skeptical of the Kuwaiti claims
of an Iraqi assassination attempt. The study, prepared by
the C.I.A.'s Counter Terrorism Center, suggested that Kuwait
might have "cooked the books" on the alleged plot in an
effort to play up the "continuing Iraqi threat" to Western
interests in the Persian Gulf. Neither the Times nor the
Post made any significant mention of the Globe dispatch,
which had been written by a Washington correspondent named
Paul Quinn-Judge, although the story cited specific
paragraphs from the C.I.A. assessment. The two major
American newspapers had been driven by their sources to the
other side of the debate.
At the very least, the case against Iraq for the alleged
bomb threat is not conclusive.
Claim: Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction
against us - he has already used them against his own people
(the Kurds in 1988 in the village of Halabja).
Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq used chemical
weapons against the Kurds. It may be accepted as
conventional wisdom in these times, but back when it was
first claimed there was great skepticism. The evidence is
far from conclusive. A 1990 study by the Strategic Studies
Institute of the U.S. Army War College cast great doubts on
the claim that Iraq used chemical weapons on the Kurds.
Following are the two gassing incidents as described in the
report:
In September 1988, however - a month after the war (between
Iran and Iraq) had ended - the State Department abruptly,
and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned
Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish
population. The incident cannot be understood without some
background of Iraq's relations with the Kurds.throughout the
war Iraq effectively faced two enemies - Iran and elements
of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the
Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the
process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran
ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish
insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area,
and in the course of the operation - according to the U.S.
State Department - gas was used, with the result that
numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government
denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless,
Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and
the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose
economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds'
human rights.
Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us,
we find it impossible to confirm the State Department's
claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with.
There were never any victims produced. International relief
organizations who examined the Kurds - in Turkey where they
had gone for asylum - failed to discover any. Nor were there
ever any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on
testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into
Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was
influenced by another incident that occurred five months
earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March
1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical
weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish
victims were widely disseminated in the international media.
Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was
subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in
this operation and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian
bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.
Thus, in our view, the Congress acted more on the basis of
emotionalism than factual information, and without
sufficient thought for the adverse diplomatic effects of its
action.
Claim: Iraq must be attacked because it has ignored UN
Security Council resolutions - these resolutions must be
backed up by the use of force.
Reality: Iraq is but one of the many countries that have not
complied with UN Security Council resolutions. In addition
to the dozen or so resolutions currently being violated by
Iraq, a conservative estimate reveals that there are an
additional 91Security Council resolutions by countries other
than Iraq that are also currently being violated. Adding in
older resolutions that were violated would mean easily more
than 200 UN Security Council resolutions have been violated
with total impunity. Countries currently in violation
include: Israel, Turkey, Morocco, Croatia, Armenia, Russia,
Sudan, Turkey-controlled Cyprus, India, Pakistan, Indonesia.
None of these countries have been threatened with force over
their violations.
Claim: Iraq has anthrax and other chemical and biological
agents.
Reality: That may be true. However, according to UNSCOM's
chief weapons inspector 90-95 percent of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons and capabilities were destroyed by 1998;
those that remained have likely degraded in the intervening
four years and are likely useless. A 1994 Senate Banking
Committee hearing revealed some 74 shipments of deadly
chemical and biological agents from the U.S. to Iraq in the
1980s. As one recent press report stated:
One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type
Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six
strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three
strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later
admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out
of all three.
The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi
Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples
in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxoid - used to
make vaccines against botulinum toxin - directly to the
Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at
al-Muthanna, the records show.
These were sent while the United States was supporting Iraq
covertly in its war against Iran. U.S. assistance to Iraq in
that war also included covertly-delivered intelligence on
Iranian troop movements and other assistance. This is just
another example of our policy of interventionism in affairs
that do not concern us - and how this interventionism nearly
always ends up causing harm to the United States.
Claim: The president claimed last night that: "Iraq
possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds
of miles; far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey
and other nations in a region where more than 135,000
American civilians and service members live and work."
Reality: Then why is only Israel talking about the need for
the U.S. to attack Iraq? None of the other countries seem
concerned at all. Also, the fact that some 135,000 Americans
in the area are under threat from these alleged missiles is
just makes the point that it is time to bring our troops
home to defend our own country.
Claim: Iraq harbors al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
Reality: The administration has claimed that some Al-Qaeda
elements have been present in Northern Iraq. This is
territory controlled by the Kurds - who are our allies - and
is patrolled by U.S. and British fighter aircraft. Moreover,
dozens of countries - including Iran and the United States -
are said to have al-Qaeda members on their territory. Other
terrorists allegedly harbored by Iraq, all are affiliated
with Palestinian causes and do not attack the United States.
Claim: President Bush said in his speech on 7 October 2002:
" Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to
developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly,
and that's the problem."
Reality: An admission of a lack of information is
justification for an attack?
Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District
of Texas in the United States House of Representatives."
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/paul51.html
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
October 10, 2002
I oppose the resolution authorizing military force against
Iraq. The wisdom of the war is one issue, but the process
and the philosophy behind our foreign policy are important
issues as well. But I have come to the conclusion that I see
no threat to our national security. There is no convincing
evidence that Iraq is capable of threatening the security of
this country, and, therefore, very little reason, if any, to
pursue a war.
But I am very interested also in the process that we are
pursuing. This is not a resolution to declare war. We know
that. This is a resolution that does something much
different. This resolution transfers the responsibility, the
authority, and the power of the Congress to the President so
he can declare war when and if he wants to. He has not even
indicated that he wants to go to war or has to go to war;
but he will make the full decision, not the Congress, not
the people through the Congress of this country in that
manner.
It does something else, though. One-half of the resolution
delivers this power to the President, but it also instructs
him to enforce U.N. resolutions. I happen to think I would
rather listen to the President when he talks about
unilateralism and national security interests, than accept
this responsibility to follow all of the rules and the
dictates of the United Nations. That is what this resolution
does. It instructs him to follow all of the resolutions.
But an important aspect of the philosophy and the policy we
are endorsing here is the preemption doctrine. This should
not be passed off lightly. It has been done to some degree
in the past, but never been put into law that we will
preemptively strike another nation that has not attacked us.
No matter what the arguments may be, this policy is new; and
it will have ramifications for our future, and it will have
ramifications for the future of the world because other
countries will adopt this same philosophy.
I also want to mention very briefly something that has
essentially never been brought up. For more than a thousand
years there has been a doctrine and Christian definition of
what a just war is all about. I think this effort and this
plan to go to war comes up short of that doctrine. First, it
says that there has to be an act of aggression; and there
has not been an act of aggression against the United States.
We are 6,000 miles from their shores.
Also, it says that all efforts at negotiations must be
exhausted. I do not believe that is the case. It seems to me
like the opposition, the enemy, right now is begging for
more negotiations.
Also, the Christian doctrine says that the proper authority
must be responsible for initiating the war. I do not believe
that proper authority can be transferred to the President
nor to the United Nations.
But a very practical reason why I have a great deal of
reservations has to do with the issue of no-win wars that we
have been involved in for so long. Once we give up our
responsibilities from here in the House and the Senate to
make these decisions, it seems that we depend on the United
Nations for our instructions; and that is why, as a Member
earlier indicated, essentially we are already at war. That
is correct. We are still in the Persian Gulf War. We have
been bombing for 12 years, and the reason President Bush,
Sr., did not go all the way? He said the U.N. did not give
him permission to.
My argument is when we go to war through the back door, we
are more likely to have the wars last longer and not have
resolution of the wars, such as we had in Korea and Vietnam.
We ought to consider this very seriously.
Also it is said we are wrong about the act of aggression,
there has been an act of aggression against us because
Saddam Hussein has shot at our airplanes. The fact that he
has missed every single airplane for 12 years, and tens of
thousands of sorties have been flown, indicates the strength
of our enemy, an impoverished, Third World nation that does
not have an air force, anti-aircraft weapons, or a navy.
But the indication is because he shot at us, therefore, it
is an act of aggression. However, what is cited as the
reason for us flying over the no-fly zone comes from U.N.
Resolution 688, which instructs us and all the nations to
contribute to humanitarian relief in the Kurdish and the
Shiite areas. It says nothing about no-fly zones, and it
says nothing about bombing missions over Iraq.
So to declare that we have been attacked, I do not believe
for a minute that this fulfills the requirement that we are
retaliating against aggression by this country. There is a
need for us to assume responsibility for the declaration of
war, and also to prepare the American people for the taxes
that will be raised and the possibility of a military draft
which may well come.
I must oppose this resolution, which regardless of what many
have tried to claim will lead us into war with Iraq. This
resolution is not a declaration of war, however, and that is
an important point: this resolution transfers the
Constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority to declare
wars to the executive branch. This resolution tells the
president that he alone has the authority to determine when,
where, why, and how war will be declared. It merely asks the
president to pay us a courtesy call a couple of days after
the bombing starts to let us know what is going on. This is
exactly what our Founding Fathers cautioned against when
crafting our form of government: most had just left behind a
monarchy where the power to declare war rested in one
individual. It is this they most wished to avoid.
As James Madison wrote in 1798, "The Constitution supposes
what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the
executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and
most prone to it. It has, accordingly, with studied care,
vested the question of war in the legislature."
Some- even some in this body- have claimed that this
Constitutional requirement is an anachronism, and that those
who insist on following the founding legal document of this
country are just being frivolous. I could not disagree more.
Mr. Speaker, for the more than one dozen years I have spent
as a federal legislator I have taken a particular interest
in foreign affairs and especially the politics of the Middle
East. From my seat on the international relations committee
I have had the opportunity to review dozens of documents and
to sit through numerous hearings and mark-up sessions
regarding the issues of both Iraq and international
terrorism.
Back in 1997 and 1998 I publicly spoke out against the
actions of the Clinton Administration, which I believed was
moving us once again toward war with Iraq. I believe the
genesis of our current policy was unfortunately being set at
that time. Indeed, many of the same voices who then demanded
that the Clinton Administration attack Iraq are now
demanding that the Bush Administration attack Iraq. It is
unfortunate that these individuals are using the tragedy of
September 11, 2001 as cover to force their long-standing
desire to see an American invasion of Iraq. Despite all of
the information to which I have access, I remain very
skeptical that the nation of Iraq poses a serious and
immanent terrorist threat to the United States. If I were
convinced of such a threat I would support going to war, as
I did when I supported President Bush by voting to give him
both the authority and the necessary funding to fight the
war on terror.
Mr. Speaker, consider some of the following claims presented
by supporters of this resolution, and contrast them with the
following facts:
Claim: Iraq has consistently demonstrated its willingness to
use force against the US through its firing on our planes
patrolling the UN-established "no-fly zones."
Reality: The "no-fly zones" were never authorized by the
United Nations, nor was their 12 year patrol by American and
British fighter planes sanctioned by the United Nations.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 688 (April, 1991),
Iraq's repression of the Kurds and Shi'ites was condemned,
but there was no authorization for "no-fly zones," much less
airstrikes. The resolution only calls for member states to
"contribute to humanitarian relief" in the Kurd and Shi'ite
areas. Yet the US and British have been bombing Iraq in the
"no-fly zones" for 12 years. While one can only condemn any
country firing on our pilots, isn't the real argument
whether we should continue to bomb Iraq relentlessly? Just
since 1998, some 40,000 sorties have been flown over Iraq.
Claim: Iraq is an international sponsor of terrorism.
Reality: According to the latest edition of the State
Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism, Iraq sponsors
several minor Palestinian groups, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq
(MEK), and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). None of these
carries out attacks against the United States. As a matter
of fact, the MEK (an Iranian organization located in Iraq)
has enjoyed broad Congressional support over the years.
According to last year's Patterns of Global Terrorism, Iraq
has not been involved in terrorist activity against the West
since 1993 - the alleged attempt against former President
Bush.
Claim: Iraq tried to assassinate President Bush in 1993.
Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq was behind the
attack. News reports at the time were skeptical about
Kuwaiti assertions that the attack was planned by Iraq
against former. President Bush. Following is an interesting
quote from Seymore Hersh's article from Nov. 1993:
Three years ago, during Iraq's six-month occupation of
Kuwait, there had been an outcry when a teen-age Kuwaiti
girl testified eloquently and effectively before Congress
about Iraqi atrocities involving newborn infants. The girl
turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to
Washington, Sheikh Saud Nasir al-Sabah, and her account of
Iraqi soldiers flinging babies out of incubators was
challenged as exaggerated both by journalists and by
human-rights groups. (Sheikh Saud was subsequently named
Minister of Information in Kuwait, and he was the government
official in charge of briefing the international press on
the alleged assassination attempt against George Bush.) In a
second incident, in August of 1991, Kuwait provoked a
special session of the United Nations Security Council by
claiming that twelve Iraqi vessels, including a speedboat,
had been involved in an attempt to assault Bubiyan Island,
long-disputed territory that was then under Kuwaiti control.
The Security Council eventually concluded that, while the
Iraqis had been provocative, there had been no Iraqi
military raid, and that the Kuwaiti government knew there
hadn't. What did take place was nothing more than a
smuggler-versus-smuggler dispute over war booty in a nearby
demilitarized zone that had emerged, after the Gulf War, as
an illegal marketplace for alcohol, ammunition, and
livestock.
This establishes that on several occasions Kuwait has lied
about the threat from Iraq. Hersh goes on to point out in
the article numerous other times the Kuwaitis lied to the US
and the UN about Iraq. Here is another good quote from
Hersh:
The President was not alone in his caution. Janet Reno, the
Attorney General, also had her doubts. "The A.G. remains
skeptical of certain aspects of the case," a senior Justice
Department official told me in late July, a month after the
bombs were dropped on Baghdad.Two weeks later, what amounted
to open warfare broke out among various factions in the
government on the issue of who had done what in Kuwait.
Someone gave a Boston Globe reporter access to a classified
C.I.A. study that was highly skeptical of the Kuwaiti claims
of an Iraqi assassination attempt. The study, prepared by
the C.I.A.'s Counter Terrorism Center, suggested that Kuwait
might have "cooked the books" on the alleged plot in an
effort to play up the "continuing Iraqi threat" to Western
interests in the Persian Gulf. Neither the Times nor the
Post made any significant mention of the Globe dispatch,
which had been written by a Washington correspondent named
Paul Quinn-Judge, although the story cited specific
paragraphs from the C.I.A. assessment. The two major
American newspapers had been driven by their sources to the
other side of the debate.
At the very least, the case against Iraq for the alleged
bomb threat is not conclusive.
Claim: Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction
against us - he has already used them against his own people
(the Kurds in 1988 in the village of Halabja).
Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq used chemical
weapons against the Kurds. It may be accepted as
conventional wisdom in these times, but back when it was
first claimed there was great skepticism. The evidence is
far from conclusive. A 1990 study by the Strategic Studies
Institute of the U.S. Army War College cast great doubts on
the claim that Iraq used chemical weapons on the Kurds.
Following are the two gassing incidents as described in the
report:
In September 1988, however - a month after the war (between
Iran and Iraq) had ended - the State Department abruptly,
and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned
Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish
population. The incident cannot be understood without some
background of Iraq's relations with the Kurds.throughout the
war Iraq effectively faced two enemies - Iran and elements
of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the
Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the
process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran
ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish
insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area,
and in the course of the operation - according to the U.S.
State Department - gas was used, with the result that
numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government
denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless,
Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and
the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose
economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds'
human rights.
Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us,
we find it impossible to confirm the State Department's
claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with.
There were never any victims produced. International relief
organizations who examined the Kurds - in Turkey where they
had gone for asylum - failed to discover any. Nor were there
ever any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on
testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into
Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was
influenced by another incident that occurred five months
earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March
1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical
weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish
victims were widely disseminated in the international media.
Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was
subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in
this operation and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian
bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.
Thus, in our view, the Congress acted more on the basis of
emotionalism than factual information, and without
sufficient thought for the adverse diplomatic effects of its
action.
Claim: Iraq must be attacked because it has ignored UN
Security Council resolutions - these resolutions must be
backed up by the use of force.
Reality: Iraq is but one of the many countries that have not
complied with UN Security Council resolutions. In addition
to the dozen or so resolutions currently being violated by
Iraq, a conservative estimate reveals that there are an
additional 91Security Council resolutions by countries other
than Iraq that are also currently being violated. Adding in
older resolutions that were violated would mean easily more
than 200 UN Security Council resolutions have been violated
with total impunity. Countries currently in violation
include: Israel, Turkey, Morocco, Croatia, Armenia, Russia,
Sudan, Turkey-controlled Cyprus, India, Pakistan, Indonesia.
None of these countries have been threatened with force over
their violations.
Claim: Iraq has anthrax and other chemical and biological
agents.
Reality: That may be true. However, according to UNSCOM's
chief weapons inspector 90-95 percent of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons and capabilities were destroyed by 1998;
those that remained have likely degraded in the intervening
four years and are likely useless. A 1994 Senate Banking
Committee hearing revealed some 74 shipments of deadly
chemical and biological agents from the U.S. to Iraq in the
1980s. As one recent press report stated:
One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type
Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six
strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three
strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later
admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out
of all three.
The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi
Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples
in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxoid - used to
make vaccines against botulinum toxin - directly to the
Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at
al-Muthanna, the records show.
These were sent while the United States was supporting Iraq
covertly in its war against Iran. U.S. assistance to Iraq in
that war also included covertly-delivered intelligence on
Iranian troop movements and other assistance. This is just
another example of our policy of interventionism in affairs
that do not concern us - and how this interventionism nearly
always ends up causing harm to the United States.
Claim: The president claimed last night that: "Iraq
possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds
of miles; far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey
and other nations in a region where more than 135,000
American civilians and service members live and work."
Reality: Then why is only Israel talking about the need for
the U.S. to attack Iraq? None of the other countries seem
concerned at all. Also, the fact that some 135,000 Americans
in the area are under threat from these alleged missiles is
just makes the point that it is time to bring our troops
home to defend our own country.
Claim: Iraq harbors al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
Reality: The administration has claimed that some Al-Qaeda
elements have been present in Northern Iraq. This is
territory controlled by the Kurds - who are our allies - and
is patrolled by U.S. and British fighter aircraft. Moreover,
dozens of countries - including Iran and the United States -
are said to have al-Qaeda members on their territory. Other
terrorists allegedly harbored by Iraq, all are affiliated
with Palestinian causes and do not attack the United States.
Claim: President Bush said in his speech on 7 October 2002:
" Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to
developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly,
and that's the problem."
Reality: An admission of a lack of information is
justification for an attack?
Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District
of Texas in the United States House of Representatives."
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/paul51.html