Scott Ritter was an American inspector on the U.N. team monitoring the “weapons of mass destruction” [WMD] build-up that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was being accused of stockpiling. During the Clinton regime, massive embargos were imposed upon Iraq when their resistance to surveillance made inspections useless. Certain inspections weren’t allowed, or were delayed, or were hampered in such ways that the whole process became a sham.
The United States embargo prevented medical supplies, food and clothing from reaching the Iraqi people, causing over a million deaths, half of them among their starving children. I doubt if many of our citizens are angry with the Iraqi people – it is Saddam we were taught to hate. But it is the Iraqi people who were made to suffer by our embargo. It is they who died and suffered at the hands of our government.
Ritter, who argued for more aggressive inspections to assure the non-existence of a menacing stockpile of WMD, was harassed in the Senate by Democrat Joseph Biden who suggested he “exceeded his grade level” in offering his expertise at the time. Ritter was also put down by our then-illustrious Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who has offered that the loss of over one million human lives was insignificant “collateral damage.” Shades of Joe Stalin, no?
Ritter has once again opined, this time to say that Iraq has no massive weapons build-ups that we need to fear. Other sources of relevant observation offer the technical qualifier that Saddam has no delivery systems even if the alleged WMD stockpile exists. The latest buzz on this is that it will take Saddam at least three years to develop this capability. It would seem that this is ample lead time for the US Department of Defense to develop adequate defensive countermeasures, considering that Communist China is now displaying space-capable missile launches only five years after Clinton and the Democrat Party transferred the required technology.
Only Richard Butler, the Brit in charge of Ritter’s former UN inspection team, feels that Saddam’s weapons are a threat. And of course, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is having a serious hissy fit regarding Saddem’s reign. Undoubtedly, so is George Bush, the younger. It seems what we are really dealing with here is some kind of ugly mutation of “Family Feud.” Iraq, our former ally as well as that of Britain, has gotten the short end of the picks here. Blair is being vehemently opposed by many in his own government as regards his desire to blow Iraq to bits, as well as by the UN and most of its member nations. And what interests are ours such that we are now contemplating this unprovoked and illegal act of war?
Wouldn’t it be much easier to rein in Tom Daschle and his obstructionist tactics on ANWR as opposed to putting our young people in harm’s way over oil? Wasn’t that the left-liberal battle cry of Democrats opposing the Gulf War: “No blood for oil!” Members of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, will make out terrifically if Iraq, the second largest producer of oil in the world, has its oil supply cut off.
There is no legitimate reason at all for the United States to unilaterally provoke a war with Iraq, either to topple an undesirable head of state or to destroy another sovereign state’s build-up of weapons. The former is none of our business, and the latter is precisely why we have a State Department, diplomats, a CIA and a Department of Defense. What kind of justification exists for us going around the world and blowing up foreign nations because we fear that they might attack us? We should remain strong, not to bully other nations, but to be able to protect ourselves when called upon to do so.
When are the President and the Congress going to obey the law of the land, the law that ensures no underhanded, self-serving political trickery is imposed on the American people? That is why the President is supposed to ask Congress to declare war, and not be allowed to do so himself. Does the Bush family have oil interests that will be affected by the outcome of this planned illegal war? Does Dick Cheney as regards his strong connections to the international oil industry’s Halliburton Corporation?
As a fictional Prince of Denmark once observed concerning a certain rottenness, last time I checked there were no decaying fish in the deserts of Iraq. But there sure is lots of oil!