[A-List] US imperialism: Iraq

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

White House Touts 'Solid' Evidence on Iraqi Weapons

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, December 5, 2002; 2:14 PM


The White House said Thursday it possesses solid evidence that
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and rejected Baghdad's
denials, saying they have no credibility.

President Bush, asked if the United States was headed toward war,
said: "That's a question you should ask to Saddam Hussein."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to say what evidence
the administration has on Saddam's weapons, but said the United
States will provide intelligence to United Nations inspectors.

"The president of the United States and the secretary of defense
would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq
has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they
did not have a solid basis for saying it," Fleischer said. "The
Iraqi government has proved time and time again to deceive, to
mislead and to lie."

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told ABC News that "we
don't have weapons of mass destruction. We don't have chemical,
biological or nuclear weaponry, but we have equipment which was
defined as dual use."

Fleischer responded: "That statement is just as false as
statements that Iraq made in the late '90s when they said they
had no weapons of mass destruction, when it was found they indeed
did. There is no basis to that."

Bush addressed the Iraq crisis during a Cabinet Room meeting with
the leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia.

On the prospects that the United States will go to war to force
Saddam, the Iraqi president, to surrender his weapons of mass
destruction, Bush said: "For the sake of peace, he must disarm.
There are inspectors inside the country now and the inspectors
are there not to play a game of hide and seek. They're there to
verify whether or not Mr. Saddam Hussein is going to disarm."

At a Pentagon news conference, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld said Iraq faces a choice of either confessing to having
weapons of mass destruction or continuing to "lie and deceive and
deny and string along the inspectors and prevent them from
finding out" what weapons he possesses. A "nice outcome," he
said, would be for Saddam to decide to leave Iraq.

"He will either deal with the problem of disarming or he will
tell the world community that he is unwilling to," Rumsfeld said.
"And the next choice, as the president has suggested, is with the
United Nations and the members of the Security Council. They have
to make a judgment as to whether or not the resolution that they
passed unanimously is being complied with."

If the Security Council decides Resolution 1441, requiring Iraq
to disarm, is not being complied with, then "they have to face
the reality that for the United Nations to be a relevant
institution they simply cannot allow one more resolution to be
ignored by the Iraqi regime." He said that would be a judgment
for the Security Council, not the United States alone.

Bush administration officials expect tricky and troubling
deception from Saddam in response to a U.N. Security Council
deadline this weekend for listing any hidden chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.

The assumption within the administration is that Saddam wants to
hold on to the weapons and hopes to shift the burden of proof to
the United States, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. What
Saddam is most likely to do is to provide thousands of documents
on such peripheral issues as dual-use equipment and commercial
material of potential military application, the official said on
condition of anonymity.

The schedule set by the Security Council calls for a full weapons
declaration. In Baghdad, a senior Iraqi official said the list
would be turned over to U.N. and International Atomic Energy
Agency inspectors on Saturday, a day ahead of the deadline.

If the declaration is patently false, the administration may try
to rally a consensus on the Council to explicitly approve using
force against Iraq.

Iraq protested sharply Wednesday over U.N. weapons inspectors'
surprise intrusion into one of Saddam presidential palaces,
accusing the arms experts of being spies and staging the palace
search as a provocation that could lead to war.

The harshest criticism came from Vice President Taha Yassin
Ramadan, who charged – in language reminiscent of clashes with
inspectors in the 1990s – that the new teams of U.N. monitors are
gathering intelligence for Washington and Israel. The White House
dismissed Iraq's protest as part of its pattern of not
cooperating with international inspectors.

If the Iraqi leader denies having weapons of mass destruction,
Bush will be faced with several options. One is to provide U.S.
intelligence to the inspectors to have them disprove Saddam's
claim. Another is for the president to take his case to the
Security Council, several other U.S. officials said.

The resolution adopted unanimously by the Council on Nov. 8
requires Bush to consult. At the same time, the president has
made plain he reserves the option of using force against Iraq if
Saddam refuses to disarm.

Bush said on Wednesday that Saddam "is not somebody who looks
like he's interested in complying."

"This is not a game any more of, 'Well, I'll say one thing and do
another,'" Bush told reporters at the White House. "We expect him
to disarm, and now it's up to him to do so."

The administration is confident it would have the support of many
countries in a war with Iraq – and more of them if a second
anti-Iraq resolution is approved, he said.

Above all else, the United States is seeking permission to use
foreign bases for combat flights and asking for troops to fight
alongside Americans, the official said. Beyond that, there is a
need for approval for overflights and other forms of access.

No country is prepared to make an ironclad commitment, and none
has been requested, the official said. But most countries in the
Middle East and Persian Gulf share the U.S. analysis of Saddam,
and the Nov. 8 resolution has accelerated their willingness to
take part in contingency planning, he said.

Article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14285-2002Dec5.htm
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