Mine clearly was a minority position on March 17, 2003. On that day, Maine Public Radio broadcast a 10-second clip of my testimony during the Citizen Summit at Bangor Theological Seminary. So, I dug out a tinny little mike (I had no professional equipment at the time) and recorded a three-minute audio op-ed. Here is the AUDIO FILE, recorded March 17, 2003:
The (never-published) written op-ed upon which this was based is below. It's quite prescient, isn't it? It's the historical perception of the vast majority now. Don't let anyone tell you "everyone" thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in March of 2003. I doubt there ever will be another thing in my life about which I will be so sad because I was right.
Faulty War Case is a Diplomatic Disaster
Most coverage of the motivations for war against Iraq parallels that found in a recent commentary by respected author Elie Wiesel: ?I am in favor of intervention when, as in this case because of Saddam?s equivocations and procrastinations, no other option remains.?Before we unleash tens of thousands of our fine young fighting men and women to bomb and invade another country, the transgressions better be awfully grave. ?Equivocations and procrastinations? just do not seem to merit a level of gravity eliminating all options short of war. For the sake of our troops and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose lives are at stake, let us not go to war based on questionable justifications.
First and most obvious, there is no reasonable argument for self defense against an imminent Iraqi attack on the U.S. because there is no such attack.
So what we are left with to justify invasion is an image of a monstrous Saddam Hussein who would jump up, take out his secret weapons, and harm America as soon as we released the boot from his neck. What is the proof of this?
The Bush administration had been reluctant to give such proof. But due to worldwide pressure, the U.S. and the U.K. have since September 2002 in dossiers, speeches by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, and in U.N. Security Council presentations, provided a case against Iraq. Most spectacularly, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to the Security Council on February 5 to give evidence of Iraq?s refusal to fully disclose its weapons.
His exposition was impressive and breathtaking. The picture he painted indeed was a scary one: Iraq has trucked out its weapons ahead of the UNMOVIC inspectors, lied in its declaration, maintained mobile bio-weapons labs, sought components necessary for the construction of nuclear bombs, and consorted with and provided camps for poison-spreading al-Qa'ida terrorists. Voice intercepts and satellite photos underscored his case.
What has followed Powell?s U.N. presentation can only be described as a diplomatic disaster. The under-reported reason for this disaster is that key charges Powell leveled against Iraq either appear to have been fabricated or have been shown to be unsubstantiated by the weapons inspectors. For example, within a few days it was discovered that a major MI6 intelligence report from the U.K., on which part of Powell?s presentation was based, was cribbed directly off of the Internet.
But that is not all. Two stunning blows came on March 7 when, (1) Chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said food testing mobile laboratories and seed processing equipment accounted for Powell?s weapons trucks, and (2) Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.?s nuclear watchdog, explained that U.S.-U.K. intelligence documents supposedly showing Iraq?s recent quest to obtain uranium from the African nation of Niger are fraudulent.
?Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents which formed the basis for the reports of these uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are, in fact, not authentic,? he said.
Meanwhile, introducing critical doubts about the whole notion that Iraq still has hidden weapons of mass destruction, a piece by John Barry in Newsweek detailed the debriefing of Saddam?s son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel. He defected in the mid-1990s with extensive documentation of Saddam?s destruction of biological and chemical weapons. Kamel, who was killed after returning to Iraq in 1996, actually told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq has always claimed. Could this be true? Powell, President Bush, and Prime Minister Blair all have at various times cited Kamel as a credible source. We can only be sure if the inspections are allowed to continue.
It is clear that whatever is the truth of Iraq?s behavior, the United States too has deceived the world with its claims about Iraqi weapons and has failed to fulfill its own responsibilities under U.N. Security Council resolutions. Despite U.S. protestations to the contrary, it should be understood that the U.N. weapons inspection regime and Iraqi cooperation with it in reality have gone a long way toward the disarmament of Saddam Hussein.
A solution short of war has always been possible. The cease-fire agreement from the first Gulf War ? U.N. Security Council resolution 687 ? laid out a political settlement: permanent in-country inspections, a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East, and a timetable for ending the economic sanctions against Iraq. We just do not know if Iraq could have fully cooperated with the international community and begun the process of healing itself from decades of tyranny. By refusing to offer such a timetable, the U.S. has blocked it at every turn.
Administration officials are now well-rehearsed in delivering lines like, ?Saddam Hussein is a practiced liar, there is no doubt about it. We should take everything he says very skeptically.?
Apparently, the same holds true for Colin Powell and our own administration. People in other countries see this clearly as their citizens line up at 80%+ rates against the war. This is why there are three likely vetoes of a war resolution from China, France, and Russia; and support is vanishing even from third-world governments. In the U.K., the Blair government teeters as it desperately seeks U.N. cover for war against massive public opposition. These are no small measures of how badly the diplomatic disaster has turned out.
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