-Caveat Lector-
From
http://archive.showmenews.com/2002/Jan/20020114Comm003.asp
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Instead of attacking Iraq, U.S. should embrace it
By CHARLEY REESE
Published Monday, January 14, 2002
The Bush administration seems to be laying the groundwork to attack
Iraq despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence linking
Iraq to the Sept. 11 attack. There are many reasons why the United
States should not attack Iraq.
The current plan of U.S. attack is to use substitutes for the ground
fighting to be supplemented by U.S. air power. There are only two
possible sources of sacrificial grunts in Iraq: the Kurds and the
Shiites. The price the Kurds will surely demand is an independent
Kurdistan, and that will cause problems for Turkey, Syria and Iran.
If we use the Shiites and succeed, we will in effect be handing over
Iraq and its resources to the mullahs in Iran. Anybody who thinks
that it would be an improvement is sorely mistaken. There is no one
else. The so-called Iraqi opposition, living off U.S. taxpayers, is
an oddball collection of disaffected people, including communists,
who have neither standing nor support inside Iraq. As for these
defectors you see on television, just remember, they know that only
if they say what America wants to hear will they get their goodies.
The second reason is that we have done Iraq a great wrong. The sanctions against Iraq,
which are the worst since the Middle Ages, have caused the deaths of more than 500,000
children and another 500,000 adults, mostly eld
erly. You cannot blame this on Saddam Hussein, as American politicians and Israeli
apologists so glibly do.
The problem with that specious claim is that too many U.S. officials, starting in the
first Bush administration, have said publicly that it doesn�t matter what Saddam does
or doesn�t do - the sanctions will not be lifted
until he is out of office. You can�t get more stupid than that. What incentive does
Saddam have to comply if we say publicly that even if he does, we will never lift the
sanctions? That was, in fact, the core stupidity of
George Bush No. 1�s policy from the beginning: It was all stick and no carrot.
Furthermore, two U.N. officials who quit their jobs in disgust have spoken out over
and over that the Iraqi government has fairly distributed all the aid it has been able
to get. Some of the more honest former arms inspec
tors have said that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction. Don�t forget, U.N. arms
inspectors were in Iraq for seven or eight years, and Saddam did not kick them out.
The United Nations pulled them out the last time s
o President Bill Clinton could do one of his bombing acts.
I know many Americans are ill-informed about foreign affairs and are kept in the dark
by most U.S. news media. Eventually, however, it will dawn on more Americans that the
nations we�re being constantly urged to sanction
and bomb are not our enemies, but Israel�s. Now, Israel has the largest and most
modern army in the Middle East. If it has a problem with Iraq or Iran or Syria, it
should declare war and have at it. There�s no sane reason
for the United States to play the role of Israel�s junkyard dog.
Finally, the reason we should not attack Iraq is that deterrence works. We deterred a
far more powerful opponent that had thousands of nuclear weapons and tons of chemical
and biological weapons. We can certainly deter a
nation of 20 million with or without weapons of mass destruction.
Furthermore, the country that has held up an effective treaty against biochemical
weapons is the United States. The only country in the Middle East that did not sign
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and does not allow
international inspections is Israel. Israel is also the only country in the Middle
East with nuclear weapons. And there are more than 60 countries other than Iraq that
either have or have the capability of producing bioc
hemical weapons.
Rather than attack Iraq, we should lift the sanctions and invite Iraq to rejoin the
family of nations. After all, Saddam Hussein is the same man America once treated as
an ally.
Former Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese writes for King
Features Syndicate.
Copyright � 2002 The Columbia Daily Tribune. All Rights Reserved.
End<{{{
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