Sunday, February 09, 2003

US weaving a web of lies

by 'Inad Khairallah (pen name)

IT IS DISGUSTING at best and frustrating at worst to hear senior US officials continuing to air their self-deceptive contentions about Iraq as they try to con the world into accepting that there is legitimate ground for war against that country. It is as if the rest of the world is ignorant, could not think on its own, and is incapable for ascertaining facts for itself.
The US approach is indeed typical: The US wants to wage war on Iraq in order to serve its strategic, economic and political interests and it is building a web of unsubtantiated allegations and hypothetical scenarios tailored to suit its thinking. Nothing that contradicts its thinking is allowed to stand in its way.
It is like fixing a dome in the air on wobbling poles and then trying to build those poles into concrete pillars. The blatant doctoring of academic studies into intelligence documents is only part of that effort and should not surprise anyone.
It is definitely not as if the US is working through the UN process to prove beyond any trace of doubt that Iraq is in material breach of Security Council resolutions. Washington is perched high in the middle of its planned war scenario, trying to affirm to the world at every given opportunity and building the slightest question against Iraq into massive arguments for war. We heard National Security Council Advisor Condaleeza Rice on CNN on Sunday repeating the themes that Iraq had 12 years to disarm but did not and that Baghdad is a "serious abuser" of UN Security Council resolutions.
It was even more revulsive to hear Rice talk about the UN's credibility and how US viewed the Security Council as the strongest and most powerful international body whose orders have to be obeyed by the world community because that was the very purpose for which it was created.
It is on old story anyway, and it is being replayed now but it only goes to highlight the double-standards that the US had consistently followed while dealing with the Middle East.
Conveninently ignoring the international rejection of a unilateral US war against Iraq and demand for a UN context for such action that forced President George W. Bush into seeking Security Council Resolution 1441, Rice spoke as if her boss had voluntarily taken the issue to the Security Council in September in all good faith.
Don't we all know that Bush was cornered into entering the council rather than voluntarily going in? Don't we know that had it not been for bitter opposition from fellow Security Council permanent members France, Russia and China coupled with bitter European, Arab, Muslim and Third World criticism that left Bush little choice but to seek some grain of legitimacy for his plans against Iraq through the UN?
Indeed, assumptions like those made by Rice and her colleagues in Washington, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others as well Bush's spin doctors could be swallowed by Americans, but not people in this part of the world.
We wish there was some way of reminding them that we could see through their game because we know the realities on the ground in this region.
We also heard Rice talk about the need to preserve the UN Security Council all-embracing authority in world affairs, and how Iraq's behaviour was in total disregard of Security Council decisions. One would indeed be prompted by hearing such lofty assertions that the US and indeed the world community had always taken every country to task for violating UN Security Council resolutions.
Just in case Rice has a short memory, let us remind her:
For more than 50 years Israel has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions with impunity. It has scoffed at the resolutions, rejecting them out of hand and continuing its practices as if it was beyond the UN Security Council's authority -- that was emphatically highlighted by Rice on Sunday.
For more than 34 years Israel has illegally occupied other's territory. It has refused to accept international conventions and charters that uphold the rights of the Palestinians and reject human rights violations.
It has steadfastly refused to allow UN investigators entry to the Palestinians territories it occupies.
We would like to ask Rice and her colleagues a few questions:
Where is the authority of the Security Council when confronted with the Israeli refusal every year when the investigators seek to go in?
Where was the authority of the Security Council when Israel contented that the mandatory Fourth Geneva Conventions do not apply to the territories it occupies?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel rejects implemention of Resolution 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 -- and indeed the dozens of other council demands since 1948?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel scoffs at demands that it sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear programmes for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Why is the Security Council keeping quiet while it is known that Israel's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction is more than those of all other countries in the Middle East put together?
And then we are told by people like Rice of the need to disarm Iraq; even at that there is no substantiation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
It is adding insult to injury when we are reminded of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions while we know that Israel is in material breach of at least 70 Security Council resolutions (not to mention the scores of draft resolutions that were vetoed by its guardian angel, the US).
It is all the more ironic or even funny that the US administration officials pushing hard to open up the guns against Iraq could keep a straight face while coming out with assertions that any level-headed person would reject.
Who knows, perhaps they themselves are so much indoctrinated that they have started to believe in what they are saying.