Oops. North Korea has what?
By Richard Gwyn
IN WHATEVER bunker in Baghdad he's hiding in these days — very likely one located beneath a hospital or a mosque — Saddam Hussein must be cursing himself for having made the most elementary of all geopolitical blunders.
This has been his failure to develop or to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
It's because he doesn't have any such weapons that Saddam has no more than six months in power left and the same number of months of life left unless the U.S. delays the inevitable by first putting him on trial before the International Criminal Court (it being a minor detail that the U.S. itself doesn't accept the court's authority).
Wait a second, many readers will say at this point: Isn't it because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction that the U.S. is about to invade Iraq?
The confusion is understandable. President George Bush keeps saying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are the reason he's about to invade the country. But, gentle reader, you have been misled and manipulated. It's a cruel, cruel world.
If Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction he'd be as untouchable as another dictator/tyrant/terrorist/ mass murderer, namely North Korea's Kim Jong-Il.
In response to the disclosure that North Korea has violated its 1994 Agreed Framework with the U.S. by resuming its nuclear weapons program, America and its allies (South Korea, Japan) have done nothing, save for a limited amount of diplomatic arm waving.
Less than nothing, in a certain sense. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made an historic first-ever visit by a Japanese leader to North Korea last month, even after having been told by the U.S. that North Korea had resumed its nuclear program.
A scheduled meeting next week of senior South Korean and North Korean politicians is still on, even though the news is now public.
As for Bush, his total comments about what North Korea have added up to zero, nothing, nada. Because of the embarrassing comparison with Iraq, junior officials, most often off the record, have made all Washington comments.
The reason for the difference in treatment couldn't be simpler. Because Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction, he's no threat.
North Korea is a threat. It not only has the weapons it also has, in the Nodong — a multi-stage, medium-range missile — the means to deliver them.
Saddam, the sap, has no missiles, other than a dozen, primitive Scuds. He does have chemical weapons, but his technology is World War I level, so they'd be useless against modern troops (unlike the Iranians who launched mass, suicide attacks against his lines).
In fact, North Korea does have some justification for breaking the agreement. The U.S. has also broken the agreement.
In return for halting its nuclear weapons program, North Korea was supposed to get two light-water nuclear reactors to supply desperately-needed power. They were supposed to have been finished by 2000 with the U.S. supplying 500,000 tons of oil a year to make up the difference.
Construction on the first station has only just started. The pair won't be finished until 2010. (Some experts doubt they will ever be built). This leaves North Korea helplessly vulnerable to the U.S.'s ability to turn off the oil supply.
Saddam, though, also has justification for breaking the United Nations' resolutions he signed. The U.S. has refused to allow him to import such essentials as ambulances on the grounds they might be used for military purposes. Also pencils, because their graphite might have military applicability. And fertilizers, pesticides and water treatment chemicals for the same reason.
These are details.
The elements of the equation that matter are simple. But they have to be scrutinized in a mirror, backwards.
Saddam is for the chop because he has no weapons of mass destruction. He's for the chop instead because knocking him off will demonstrate to the world that the U.S. has the will as well as the power to knock off anyone anywhere.
Also, because he humiliated Bush's father. And, far from least, because of Iraqi oil, the world's second-largest reserves. As for Saddam's supposed — minimal at worst — weapons of mass destruction they do serve one vital purpose: They provide the excuse to knock him off. In short, it's not about disarmament; it's about regime change.
Kim Jong-Il, by contrast, has no oil and he's never embarrassed a U.S. president, but he has the weapons. So he gets slapped with kid gloves.
Another difference that can't be ignored because it most certainly will not be by more than 1 billion people in the world: Saddam, unlike Kim, is an Arab and a Muslim and so easy to demonize.
This is the misshapen shape of the New World Order
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