WMD Again: A primer on what was and was not reasonable to assume about Saddam Hussein's WMD

Critics of the Bush admin have been struggling lately to contain their excitement at the continuing failure to turn up WMD in Iraq. The early leads were all busts, and the current favorite now is a looted trailer whose use is disputed by the different intelligence teams assigned to interpret it's obscure meaning. Distinctly underwhelming. There is real damage to the admin internationally, though it remains to be seen whether there will be any domestic consequences. But even hawks who supported the war - W.F. Buckley and Mark Bowden, to name just two - are starting to write columns expressing unease about the admin's salesmanship in the leadup to the war.

All of this is obscuring a fair picture of what it was and was not reasonable to assume prior to the war. The Bush admin clearly brought this on itself by exaggerating what it did know, but some of the criticism is unfair nonetheless.

But first, a word of warning to my fellow critics: Be careful how you frame the debate. The point shouldn't be the complete failure to find WMD. If that's the way you frame the matter the war will appear vindicated in retrospect by the discovery of even small though unambiguous stockpiles or precursors. And it's important to see that it will not. For the selling of the war depended on claims about relative degrees of danger - remember when Iraq represented a unique threat? - and for the war to be vindicated retrospectively on these grounds requires that significant WMD stores be found. So first things first: centering the debate around the fact that no WMD have been found risks ceding the main point for temporary rhetorical advantage.

I never believed the admin's claims that it knew lots about WMD in Iraq but couldn't say it, or that it had quality intelligence but couldn't share it with inspectors or allies. The issue was simply too important for the U.S. not to be leaking its best intelligence on the issue, and that made me fairly confident we were hearing most of what there was to know, or at least believe, about Iraq WMD program.

Still, it was reasonable to believe at the time that Iraq had an ambitious WMD program. In fact, it was foolish at the time to refuse to believe it. Prior possession, ugly news brought by defectors which could be independently confirmed, and five minutes spent reflecting on S.H.'s character all tended to suggest that Iraq had restarted its WMD program after the withdrawl of inspectors in 1998.

It was also reasonable to believe that even if Iraq did not have an active WMD program in 2002, it would restart the program in the event that the sanctions were lifted and significant oil revenues were again made available to the regime.

What's more, it is reasonable now to think that S.H. would have restarted the programs, given half a chance.

The fact that the U.S. has found no evidence of the programs so far does nothing to diminish the fact that it was once reasonable to assume he was hiding something, and it certainly does not provide evidence that he was out of the WMD game for the long run.

Trouble is, the admin was acting on long-term calculations about Iraq's capabilities, but it was trying to sell the war on short-term calculations of immanent threat. It was dishonest, perhaps impeachably so, but we shouldn't let that distort the fact that WMD were a genuine concern prior to the war. Opponents of the war, such as myself, still owe an account of how we would have dealt with this concern.

A forum on Iraq and the U.S.

Yesterday I went to a forum organized by the editors of the new Iraq War Reader. The debate was lively, though a little lopsided. W. Kristol was supposed to balance things out, but he bailed for some reason or other. His replacement was more than worthy: Saad Ibrahim, whose case I’ve been following off and on in Human Rights Watch press releases, and occasionally, the mainstream media. Ibrahim is the Egyptian intellectual arrested by the government in Egypt for the reckless crime of attempting to monitor elections. After an international ruckus and American pressure, Egypt’s supreme court overturned the lower court’s ruling against Ibrahim. This was his first public appearance in the U.S. since. Although clearly in poor health, Ibrahim spoke engagingly about his attempts to build civil society in Egypt.

Also on the panel were Christopher Hitchens, Jonathan Schell and Chris Toensing. Hitchens was in fine form. He is a bit paunchy—though he was not as large as he appears on television. He looked a wreck: His face was puffy, his clothes rumpled, and his hair disheveled. For much of the debate, especially at the beginning, he rested his head on his hands. For a few moments when he first sat down, he looked as if he might vomit. As the debate swung into gear, though, he looked increasingly animated. He was the target for many of the comments, and obviously the most infuriating member of the panel for much of the crowd. Well worth it, and I was very glad I had seen him in person.

After the panel discussion, there was a book signing. Towards the end, I decided to buy one of Hitchens’ books so that he could sign it. I also wanted to ask him a question. Our exchange, as best as I can remember it:

Me: May I ask you a question?
Hitchens: By all means.
Me: If Iraq is a functioning democracy in 5 or 10 years, I’ll admit that I was wrong to oppose the war. What would it take for you to admit that you were wrong?
Hitchens: Very little that could happen would lead me to admit that I was wrong because it was the right thing to do. That does not mean that we might not fail. It’s extremely risky. But even if we fail it will have been right to try. For one thing, there was a confrontation brewing with Saddam Hussein anyway, and it was best that it be at a place and time of our own choosing.
Incredibly risky, though. In fact, that’s one of the things which counts heavily in its favour. Risk-averse strategies are almost always awful ones. It is a great merit of the current plan that it was so risky.

His assistant (manager? wife?) was getting impatient at this point, so I didn’t press it any further. It seems to me an awful lots of lives to wager. I’m not against wagering 25 million lives when the alternative is so bad and the odds are good. I suppose I just didn’t think the odds were very good.

I asked Hitchens the question, because I wanted to see if we had a moral disagreement at all, or if perhaps we simply disagreed in our assessments of what was likely to happen. I suspected the latter: that our disagreement was a factual or predictive one, rather than a moral one. But this turns out not to be true. There is, also, at the root of it, a moral disagreement about how good the odds need to be before placing – or supporting – a wager of this sort.

Peace in the Middle East?

Some of the best signs in a long time from the Middle East that both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute are inching towards some kind of settlement. If Bush actually pulls this off, I'll take back a full one quarter of all the lousy things I ever said about him.

Hope it happens, but, sad to say, they're not out of the woods yet:
1. I don't believe that Bush understands the issues well enough to intervene effectively. Publicly, at least, he seems too indulgent towards Sharon.
2. I believe that Sharon wants peace. Who doesn't? But I don't think that Sharon would ever settle for a deal fair enough to bring peace about. If Abbas is gullible and bullied enough, they might get an agreement out of him. But to stick, the agreement has to be fair. That's seems unlikely.
3. Abbas has a very slender base of support. He's going to have to try to pull off an extraordinary balancing act between a civil war within the occupied territories and cracking down on terrorists. This would be hard enough for someone with popular support to draw on. Abbas doesn't have it.
4. Sharon has said some remarkable things recently. He's even used the word occupation (extraordinary when using ordinary language accurately is newsworthy!). No one, including the settler movement, knows what to make of all this. My distrust of Sharon is so deep that all this strikes me as tactical. But suppose it's genuine. The settler movement is now a deeply entrenched fact of life, so deeply entrenched that Bush's ultra minimalist request to take settlements back to 2001 is presented as a deep and difficult burden. I'm no longer sure whether Israel can restrain its radicals, even if it finds the political will to do so.

I could go on. I hope I'm wrong. But it ain't over till the fat general sings.

Bowden on Bush on Iraq's WMD

Also don't miss Mark Bowden's piece on the Bush admin's rhetoric about WMD. Bowden seems bewildered at the possibility that the WMD threat was hyped:

But when the President of the United States addresses the nation and the world, I expect the spinning to stop. He represents not just a party or a cause, but the American people. When President Bush argued that Hussein possessed stockpiles of illicit and deadly poisons, he was presumably doing so on the basis of intelligence briefings and evidence that the public could not see. He was asking us to trust him, to trust his office, to trust that he was acting legitimately in our self-defense. That's something very different from engaging in a bold policy of attempting to remake the Middle East, or undertaking a humanitarian mission to end oppression. Neither of these two justifications would have been likely to garner widespread public support. But national defense? That's an argument the President can always win.

I trusted Bush, and unless something big develops on the weapons front in Iraq soon, it appears as though I was fooled by him. Perhaps he himself was taken in by his intelligence and military advisers. If so, he ought to be angry as hell, because ultimately he bears the responsibility.

It suggests a strain of zealotry in this White House that regards the question of war as just another political debate. It isn't. More than 100 fine Americans were killed in this conflict, dozens of British soldiers, and many thousands of Iraqis. Nobody gets killed or maimed in Capitol Hill maneuvers over spending plans, or battles over federal court appointments. War is a special case. It is the most serious step a nation can take, and it deserves the highest measure of seriousness and integrity.

When a president lies or exaggerates in making an argument for war, when he spins the facts to sell his case, he betrays his public trust, and he diminishes the credibility of his office and our country. We are at war. What we lost in this may yet end up being far more important than what we gained.

I confess to my own bewilderment: I'm surprised that Bowden is surprised. You don't have to be a hardened cynic to suspect the Bush admin of playing a bit with the facts.

I have to admit, though, that I caught myself occasionally thinking of the Bush admin, "They've got to have something firm. If too much of it is a lie, their credibility will be shot - and they know that." But the fact is that admins lie all the time, and usually don't get caught for it. When they do, often pepole don't understand all the issues, or don't care.

To America's enduring credit, it has often (usually not enthusiastically) released documents which outline the policy debates of former admins. What the debates reveal, however, is not always to America's credit. Internal documents and memos show a longstanding tradition, hardly unique but disappointing nonetheless, of lies, evasions and fraud in the formulation and presentation of foreign policy. This does not mean that the U.S. govt is always lying. Still, no one with a passing acquaintance with this pattern of deception has any excuse for being fooled by an admin gearing up for war, especially a war like the most recent.

Bowden is surprised. He shouldn't be.

Salam Pax

Check out Salam Pax's first column for the Guardian. I think it's quite good.

Another HRW Press Release Worth Reading

Basra: British Forces Fail to Provide Security

(New York, June 3, 2003) - Nearly eight weeks after British forces entered
Basra, they still have not addressed basic security needs in Iraq's second
largest city, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a 23-page report released today, "Basra: Crime and Insecurity Under
British Occupation," Human Right Watch charged that U.S. and British
authorities failed to plan for or provide adequate forces to carry out their
international legal obligation as the occupying power.

U.S. and U.K. forces have defended their poor security performance in Iraq by
arguing that they lack personnel to patrol city streets. But the Human Rights
Watch report documents other failings that have nothing to do with the number
of troops on the ground.

"The coalition forces in Basra simply haven't made security a high enough
priority, and that was obvious from the moment they entered the city," said
Saman Zia-Zarifi, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Eight weeks
later, there's simply no excuse for the continuing insecurity on the ground."

Security conditions in Basra are better than in Baghdad and some other cities
occupied by U.S. forces, but Basra's citizens remain fearful for their lives
and property.

Human Rights Watch researchers spent four weeks in Basra and southern Iraq
interviewing residents and British soldiers and commanders. While the city's
streets showed some signs of improved security over this period, hospitals
reported up to five gunshot homicides daily, and another five or seven
gunshot injuries. Carjackings and organized looting continued to plague
neighborhoods. Women and girls were reluctant to return to jobs and schools
while criminals roamed the streets and attacked buildings.

Journalists entering the city in early April in the wake of British forces
reported thousands of looters carrying on their activity in plain view of
British troops. The failure to respond convinced many residents that security
was not a priority for the coalition forces.

The shortcomings of British efforts in Basra go beyond numbers, Human Rights
Watch said. The coalition has not communicated with the local population on
security issues; not deployed international police or judicial personnel;
relied on combat troops for policing and security duties without appropriate
training; and not arranged protection for victims and witnesses regarding
past and current crimes.

"Coalition forces had the duty to provide security for civilians as soon as
they took control over Basra," Zia-Zarifi said. "There is something terribly
wrong when Iraqis are now calling for their former corrupt and brutal police
force to provide some semblance of security."

British officers responsible for police forces in Basra told Human Rights
Watch they lacked sufficient troops and international support to provide
security for Basra's 1.5 million people. As of mid-May, some 480 members of
the Royal Military Police were available in the British-occupied provinces of
Basra and Misan, and only a hundred of these were carrying out street patrols
in Basra. A newly created Auxiliary Police has only 600 poorly trained Iraqi
officers.

A copy of this report can be found online at:
http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0603/

Worth Repeating

Here's a recent press release from Human Right Watch:

Uzbekistan: Torture Death in Prison

(New York, June 3, 2003)-Another Uzbek prisoner was tortured to
death, contradicting U.S. claims that Uzbekistan is making
progress on human rights, Human Rights Watch said today.

Otamaza Gafarov was due to be released in September from Chirchik
prison in northern Uzbekistan. Instead, he died there on May 3,
apparently from torture.

Human Rights Watch received information about his death shortly
after the U.S. State Department issued a memorandum certifying
that Uzbekistan has made "substantial and continuing progress" in
respecting human rights.

"Another prisoner tortured to death in Uzbekistan is not
progress-it is more of the same," said Elizabeth Andersen,
executive director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of
Human Rights Watch. "This is the tenth torture-related death in
custody we've documented in the past year and a half. The State
Department's claims of human rights progress simply do not
reflect reality."

Family members who helped to wash Gafarov's body told Human
Rights Watch that they observed a large wound to his head that
appeared to have been caused by a sharp object. There was also
bruising to the back of his head. Gafarov's rib cage, chest and
throat were also bruised, and his hands were scratched.

The State Department memorandum, signed in May 2003, specifically
cited torture among the areas where the Uzbek government had made
progress. The memorandum certifies that Uzbekistan made overall
progress in meeting its human rights and democracy commitments
under the "Declaration on the Strategic Partnership and
Cooperation Framework" that the two countries signed in March
2002. The certification is required semi-annually to release U.S.
assistance to the Uzbek government.

The March 2002 declaration committed Uzbekistan to ensuring a
"strong and open civil society," "respect for human rights and
freedoms," a "genuine multi-party system," "free and fair
elections," "political pluralism, diversity of opinions and the
freedom to express them," "the independence of the media" and
"independence of the courts."

In a critique of the memorandum (available at:
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/uzbek060303-bck.htm), Human
Rights Watch noted that the State Department cited isolated
positive steps taken by the Uzbek government without
acknowledging ongoing practices that undermine these nominal
measures. The critique describes ongoing setbacks, including
torture-related deaths in custody; new arrests and convictions
based on peaceful religious expression; denial of the right to
register for political opposition parties; dismissals,
intimidation, and beatings of journalists; and harassment and
arbitrary arrest of human rights defenders.

With regard to torture, the State Department cited the Uzbek
government's "adequate cooperation" with the U.N. Special
Rapporteur on Torture Theo van Boven during his December 2002
visit as evidence that the government "has become more willing to
discuss torture." In fact, Mr. van Boven has made clear that he
did not receive adequate cooperation. Moreover, the Uzbek
government has taken no serious steps to implement his
recommendations for ending torture.

More on Africa

Don't miss an excellent piece in the NYTimes today by N. Kristoff. After months, years, of almost total silence, there may be a faint stirring of interest in one of the most miserable places on the planet: Central Africa.

Alone the same lines, Lewis MacKenzie in the National Post blasts the failure of the UN to deal at all with the carnage in Central Africa:

Like it or not, the UN is no longer capable of finding adequate resources, read countries, willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters in uniform for someone else's human rights, unless the conflict threatens world peace and security or is in America's self-interest to get involved.

Apply that criteria to the situation in the Congo and you get little interest and no action writ large. Africa, in general, and the complicated situation in the Congo don't register on the "must-do" list of the Security Council. Observers wax eloquent on how the Security Council would have acted to stop the potential genocide in Rwanda in 1993 if only they had known of Canadian General Roméo Dallaire's forecast of genocide and his plea for additional soldiers to try and thwart it. Balls! The Permanent Five veto-holding members of the Security Council knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on in Rwanda and what was being planned by the Hutus than General Dallaire, who had virtually zero intelligence-gathering capability in his tiny command. They chose to do nothing because they had no national self-interests in Rwanda.

MacKenzie's conclusion is on less firm ground, I think. MacKenzie argues that peacekeeping is obsolete because the Security Council is dependent on credible armies and significant international consensus:

The Congo is a perfect example of a crisis the UN should be able to resolve without the leadership of the United States -- by deploying the force necessary to sort out the thugs and goons who currently control the streets and jungles. The fact that the UN is not capable of doing so should be the final piece of evidence to convince even the most optimistic among us that it is incapable of carrying out the role assigned it in 1945 as the primary instrument responsible for international peace and security.

Those numerous Canadian commentators who call for our immediate participation in the Congo as "peacekeepers" display a disturbing ignorance of the profound change that has taken place regarding conflict since the end of the Cold War. Peacekeeping was a key component of our foreign policy for almost 50 years. It was a good run, but the concept is pretty well dead and buried and it's time for its inventor -- us -- to admit it. Mercifully, countries rarely go to war these days, but factions within countries are fighting in more than 50 conflicts as you read this. If the UN is to take on stopping the slaughter it needs the participation of professional militaries trained for combat in sufficient numbers to defeat -- euphemism for kill in most cases -- the perpetrators of these war crimes. The concept of a neutral and impartial role for the UN in such conflicts is dangerous wishful thinking, and wrong. Like it or not, this fact, based on compelling evidence accumulated over the past decade, should be serious food for thought as the federal government undertakes the long-overdue foreign and defence policy review as promised by prime ministerial contenders Paul Martin and John Manley.

It's not clear to me what MacKenzie is proposing as an alternative to the UN here. Unilateral actions or actions undertaken without international backing? Won't all the same problems of cycnicism and inaction attach to these actions, compounded by fresh problems that arise from a lack of international consensus? MacKenzie is obviously right that the current international system is a failure. But what does he propose in its place? Or is nothing supposed to take its place?

I'm often reminded of the crack that "never again" means "never again will the world stand by and let Germans persecute Jews in the 1940s". We have to do something. Don't we?

The Kurds Again

The Kurds are starting to get a taste of their rewards for helping the U.S. Here are the first two grafs in a piece in the times today:

The two main Kurdish political parties sharply criticized an American proposal today for a new United Nations resolution on Iraq, saying it would take away $4 billion that rightfully belongs to the Kurds.

In a letter to L. Paul Bremer III, the chief allied administrator in Iraq, two leaders, Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, expressed outrage over a plan to redistribute unspent money from the oil-for-food program.

This was inevitable, and it will only get worse. The U.S. will be increasingly pulled between the imperative to keep its promises to the Kurds and the imperative to rebuild Iraq quickly and inexpensively. Since Kurdish resources will be very helpful in the latter project, it's hard to see the Kurds not getting shafted big time.

Casualties

The first attempts to assess the level of civilian casualties in the recent war are just trickling in. Click here for a piece in the Christian Science Monitor. This is only the opening round of what will no doubt be a long debate about the level of casualities . . . stay tuned.

A Bush Trip to the Mideast?

The NYTimes says this morning that Bush is weighing a trip to the mideast. I would be very surprised if this came to pass. It seems to me that Bush is unlikely to intervene in such a drammatic way without reasonable chances of success, and even Bush can see that the chances of success are not good now. Add to that the fact that Bush's personal intervention is much less likely to be effective since he's such a moron. And the fact that his plan seems to require to the Palestinians to risk civil war enforcing the occupation with no plausible prospects of anything in return . . .

One thing that seems striking about the Bush admin in the last few weeks is that they seem genuinely surprised by the wave of suicide bombings as talks between the PA and Sharon neared. Now, they can't have been that surprised - given recent history it seemed all but inevitable. But now they don't seem to know what to do.

Two Steps Back in Morocco

So much for freedom of the press in Morocco. Tell me, if the U.S. can't - won't - pressure the government of Morocco (or Egypt, which gets 2 billion a year) out of this sort of nonsense, how is it supposed to move Iraq towards a healthy, functioning democracy?

Nuclear-powered politicians

Not sure what I think about nuclear power, but I do have a few opinions about the role of money in politics. Anyone with an interest in either of these topics will be interested in a new report released today by Public Citizen. Here's the press release:

Bill of Sale: Nuclear Industry PACs Gave Millions to Congress

Nuclear Provisions in Energy Bill Demonstrate Influence of Corporate Campaign Contributors

WASHINGTON, D.C.- As the U.S. Senate debates a comprehensive energy bill (S.14) that features unprecedented subsidies to promote commercial nuclear power, an analysis of nuclear industry campaign contributions suggests that energy policy is for sale in the halls of Congress, Public Citizen said today.

The president's industry-endorsed energy policy, unveiled in 2001, drew attention to the inappropriate coziness between the Bush administration and energy industry executives. According to the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Political Action Committees (PACs) affiliated with oil and gas companies and electric utilities - the main beneficiaries of the Bush energy policy - gave more than $17 million to congressional campaigns in the 2002 election cycle alone. And PAC contributions are just the tip of the iceberg. CRP calculates that total contributions over the same period from these energy interests
(including individual and "soft money" contributions) were nearly $45 million.

Like the energy bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 6), energy legislation now before the Senate is larded with giveaways to these lucrative industries, at the expense of consumers, taxpayers and the environment. In particular, the Senate bill provides substantial subsidies to promote the construction of new nuclear power reactors. For instance, one provision authorizes government loan guarantees and power purchase agreements to finance up to half the costs of reactor construction, which could leave taxpayers liable for an estimated $30 billion.

Public Citizen's analysis of nuclear industry PAC contributions to members of the current Congress highlights this industry's egregious influence on lawmakers. The new report examines PAC contributions from
companies that own or operate nuclear power plants to current House representatives in the 2002 election cycle, and to senators of the current Congress in the past three election cycles. The report is based on PAC and individual member filings with the Federal Election Commission, compiled by CRP. Among the report's findings:

- Nuclear PACs contributed more than $5.8 million to the House and Senate campaigns of members of Congress in the 2002 election cycle. Current members of the Senate received more than $3.2 million from these nuclear PACs over the past three election cycles.

- Topping the list on the receiving end is Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who took $145,499 from the nuclear industry in the past three election cycles. Landrieu was the lone Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee to vote for S.14.

- The 23 members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took almost half a million dollars from nuclear power plant PACs in the 2002 cycle, and close to $1 million over the past three election cycles
ñ nearly one third of the total Senate receipts.

- While Democratic members topped the list in both the Senate and the House, Republicans, on the whole, were the primary beneficiaries of nuclear industry PAC money. In the 2002 election cycle, nuclear PACs
contributed nearly $3.8 million to Republicans, almost 65 percent of the total amount of their contributions. Democrats, on the other hand, received about $2 million from those PACs, roughly 35 percent of the
total.

- Doling out the most generous contribution was nuclear energy giant Exelon, which gave $588,044 to various members. Second to Exelon was Southern Company, whose PAC shelled out $488,000 for the electoral campaigns of senators and representatives. Exelon runs 17 nuclear power reactors (the largest fleet in the nation) and is being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to apply for a permit to construct a new reactor. Southern Company owns seven reactors.

"Politicians insist that their votes are not for sale, but the anti-consumer, anti-environment and fiscally irresponsible nuclear provisions in Senate energy legislation will test the loyalties of many members," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Rather than pandering to the interests of nuclear industry executives, lawmakers should reject this energy bill and instead work toward forward-looking policy that promotes safe, clean and affordable energy."

Click here for the full report.

Here's a fairly bitter piece from a reporter who was "embedded" recently in Iraq. He seems especially irritated at all the hate mail he got. I'm not sure how much he should infer from a little hate mail (he seems to think that it is representative of something larger than a few nuts). On the other hand, I agree with his basic complaints about U.S. media, especially U.S. television media, and especially the execrable Fox.

Troop Size Revisited

Just a reminder. I was right about troop size.

WMD: A Category Problem?

Owen Cote, Jr. has a great piece in the Boston Review on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The piece argues persuasively that it is misleading to refer to WMD as though these weapons all fit into a single category requiring a similar response. Recommended.

Marshall on Wolfowitz

Josh Marshall takes a look at Wolfowitz's offensive comments about Turkey last week. Check it out.

One complaint about the piece, though. Marhsall recycles the stupid isn't-it-counter-intuitive! idea that Turkey's military has been a force for democracy in Turkey:

Over the decades, the military played a pivotal role in keeping Turkey united, secular, pro-Western, and —- contradictory as it may seem —- democratic.

I confess it does seem contradictory to me. I think this cold war canard got off the ground partly because the West so often confused secularism with progress (it certainly is, in my opinion, all other things being equal - the problem is that other things are often not equal). What makes this position so absurd is the role that Turkey's military played in persecuting so many of its own citizens for so long. We shouldn't forget that the Turkish military contributed significantly to the mess in South Eastern Turkey.

Surely we should refuse to call a country a democracy when a large minority of its citizens gets shafted so thoroughly. And surely we should refuse to credit an institution within a country with safeguarding democracy when it bears primary responsibility for the mess.

Here come the Kurds!

Here's a piece in the NYTimes today about Kurdish moves to control oil resources in Northern Iraq. Expect more of the same over the next few months and years . . .

Chaos in Central Africa

What follows is a piece from the U.N. News Service about the chaos currently gripping central Africa. I'm not sure why I'm posting it - perhaps I'm protesting the fact that no one else seems to give a shit. Is there a moral to be drawn from it? Three things come to mind:

a) Much of this chaos is a result of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The genocide played a major role in destabalizing the entire region. The roots of the current conflict are complex, of course, and I don't want to oversimplify things. Still, every time I read about the millions who have perished in the fighting over the last few years, I am reinforced in my belief that never in history did the West have a chance to save more lives with fewer resources than 1994. If the West had acted, it could very probably have taken the edge off the worst. That's not to say that central Africa would be a nice place now, but chances are it wouldn't be hell on earth.

b) Pleas for help with the conflict have been issuing from the UN for a few weeks now. As far as I can tell, they've been met with nearly complete silence. I suppose I can understand the reluctance to intervene in a complex and perhaps intractable conflict. Still, would it hurt to report the conflict? There's virtually nothing in the papers about this. Surely the sheer scale of human suffering warrants more mention than it's now getting.

c) Western companies have profitted from this chaos. Central Africa is rich in resources, and the resources have played an important role in prolonging the conflict. Conflict diamonds are only the start of a long sordid tale of profit from misery. The current outrage, especially prevalent among conservatives, at French companies who did business with the former Iraqi regime would be far more convincing if the same group of outraged critics could bring themselves to condemn the Western companies currently doing business in central Africa.

AS FIGHTING CONTINUES IN BUNIA, DR OF CONGO, UN FEARS HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE
New York, May 14 2003 5:00PM
As heavy fighting continues to rage in the town of Bunia in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a top United Nations relief official today voiced fear of a looming humanitarian disaster in the area and warned of ethnic tensions that conjured up "shades of Rwanda in 1994."

The situation on the ground in Bunia continues to be "extremely difficult and volatile," with intense fighting going on between ethnic Hema and Lendu militias in the town itself, as well as around the airport, according to a UN spokesman. The local headquarters of the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC) is wedged in the area between the two groups.

Carolyn McAskie, the UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, told a press briefing at UN Headquarters in New York that the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation and the ethnic tensions in Bunia conjured up "shades of Rwanda in 1994," where men, women and children rose up and attacked their neighbours.

Whole villages in and around Bunia were slaughtering each other - a deeply disturbing aspect of the hostilities that Ms. McAskie feared was "Rwanda-like," although "nothing could match the scale of Rwanda." Still, there had been hundreds of casualties "that we know of" in the last few weeks or so, she added, stressing that the humanitarian situation was "extremely dangerous, even desperate; the focus was on very basic life-saving interventions."

The dire security situation - where a "rather nasty cocktail" of rebel groups and dissatisfaction with local authorities was playing on ethnic hatreds - meant that relief agencies were "down to the minimum in terms of providing the most basic human needs" such as plastic sheeting for shelter and high-protein biscuits.

Ms. McAskie noted there were just eight humanitarian personnel on the ground right now - including a surgeon, nutrition specialist, and water and sanitation expert -doing what they could. Despite the evacuations, she and others, including the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), were trying to keep a core group in place. Other teams and supplies were on standby, but needed a more secure environment in which to operate. Supplies were being moved up from Goma, but incoming flights tended to be sporadic. The first priority was to find a way to stop the fighting.

Asked how large a force would be needed to suppress the fighting, Ms. McAskie said Ugandan troops had been "keeping a lid on it". They had anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 troops. "We have 800 personnel now, and estimates of what was needed were some three times that," she said.

Joining Ms. McAskie at the briefing was Margaret Carey of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. She said that the new troops would have to be able to use force. The Mission was a peacekeeping operation and, therefore, lightly armed. It was basically comprised of guard units. What was needed now was the rapid deployment of well-equipped, well-trained troops, under a mandate that permitted the use of force. In terms of the total numbers needed, she thought the key was enforcement power and capacity.

Meanwhile, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said a shell landed in the UN Mission's compound, killing one person and wounding 13 others. "I can now confirm the reports on the wires yesterday that one woman was killed yesterday while inside the UN Mission's Bunia headquarters" he said, adding that a civilian was in fact killed by a stray bullet while she was in the compound, and one mortar shell also landed in the compound.

MONUC has also reported that two UN military observers have been missing since 11:00 a.m. local time Tuesday from Mongbwalu, five kilometres north of Bunia. "All attempts are being made to locate them," Mr. Eckhard said.

There has also been an increase in the number of internally displaced persons seeking shelter at the Mission's Bunia headquarters, and a makeshift medical clinic has been organized there to deal with the situation.

That's just Daffy!

It's true that the U.S. has resisted international attempts to stop the use of landmines. On the other hand, now they're pitching in with the healing power of cartoons! Check it out.

A little tidbit from the past

I end up reading a lot of commentary about the Bush admin, much of it critical. There are a lot of people watching very closely, and they're great at picking up inconsistencies, great and small, and making sure that people hear about them. But there are a few things that fly under people's radars. Here's one that is a few months late. I kept meaning to put it up but never got around to it. First, read part of the transcript of a policy address by Paul Wolfowitz at the Council for Foreign Relations:


Q: Michael Gordon, New York Times. Paul, I'd like to just follow up on the first question. The Bush administration has asserted not only that Iraq has had weapons of mass destruction, but that it has resumed production of biological and chemical weapons. And President Bush, in his appearance before the General Assembly, cited Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes as evidence that Iraq was trying to rejuvenate its nuclear weapons program.

But not all of these claims have been accepted by the U.N. inspectors that you cite. For example, just two weeks ago, the IAEA said that it had looked into the matter of the aluminum tubes and determined, on the evidence so far, that it thought they were for a conventional rocket program. And the IAEA also said that the uranium -- attempts to purchase uranium that you cited in your speech today -- that it had received no information from any governments that would allow it to determine the validity of this assertion as to when Iraq tried to purchase uranium, whether it was recent or long ago, as the Iraqis assert.

Given that we're talking about matters of war and peace, does the administration plan to make a further report and provide intelligence information to address these concerns stated by the IAEA in its public report, and to buttress its claims that Iraq has resumed the production of weapons of mass destruction? And if not, is this because of targeting concerns, sources and methods, or do you simply not have reliable information that would stand up in a public forum on this?

Wolfowitz: I think the short answer, Michael, really is there is a lot of evidence; as the evidence accumulates, our ability to talk about it undoubtedly will grow. But we don't have a lot of time; time is running out, and I repeat: What has clearly not happened is any change of attitude by the Iraqi regime.

Yeah, it's possible that we have been misinformed on some things. The only way to verify that you've been misinformed is with the kind of openness of the South Africans or the Ukrainians or the Kazakhs demonstrated. If you can go into places and talk freely to people and look at all the records, you might be convinced. But in a country that has a history of constructing Potemkin villages, there's absolutely no way to know whether what the inspectors were shown were indeed those aluminum tubes that we're concerned about or whether it was a whole facade constructed to substantiate a certain story.

Now, Wolfowistz was probably the biggest backer of the aluminum tubes theory in the admin. And here it seems pretty clear that he's given up on it. He's certain, of course, that other evidence will be found. But - and this is very important - he's basically admitting that this piece of evidence won't cut it. By the way, the policy briefing took place on Jan. 23rd, 2003. Keep your eye on the date.

Now here is Bush fils, in his State of the Union address:

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

This speech was "delivered" on Jan 28th, 2003. In other words, one of the most drammatic pieces of evidence cited in Bush's speech had been disowned by the most hawkish member of his own administration just five days before he gave the speech. Now, that's incomptence.

As far as I know, no one picked this up.