Thursday, October 10, 2002
In order to obtain an unforgiving resolution from the UN Security Council, the United States is providing a wide range of concessions to the members of the Council. The Boston Globe has China asking the US to stop interfering in Tibet and Taiwan. France and Russia are asking for concessions on Iraqi oil. Russia would also like American sympathy with its actions in Georgia.
BBC points out that Iraq owes Russia $8 billion. They also quote a Russian diplomat saying that the British are doing a great deal to keep the United States under international law.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
The House approved a bipartisan bill, 296 to 133. The resolution gives the President the power to use “necessary and appropriate” force against Iraq to ensure the national security of the United States and enfoce UN Security Council resolutions. It also encourages, but does not require, the President to exhaust political and diplomatic methods before using force. Should the President decide to act against Iraq, he must explain his actions to Congress within 48 hours. The President must also report to Congress every 60 days on the progress of the war. The Senate is expected to pass a similar bill on Friday.
The BBC highlights the fact that the resolution passed in the wake of the CIA report which may contradict the assumptions of the President’s policy. The Beeb also does not explicitly mention that UN approval is unnecessary for American action.
The New York Times is carrying excerpts from the speeches on the floor of the Senate.
ABC News puts the lack of UN involvement high up, and points out that a majority of House Democrats voted against the bill, despite the endorsement of Majority Leader [redacted] Gephardt (D-Missouri).
Continue reading... (256 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)
Thursday, October 10, 2002
The CIA Director, George Tenet, provided the long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to Congress. The two significant findings:
* Iraq is producing weapons of mass destruction to create a “blackmail” scenario to increase its power in the region
* Iraq will not attack the United States unless it is provoked, since it has no interest in doing so.
This second conclusion seems to run against the Bush Administration’s policy towards Iraq, and many media outlets interpreted the report as the CIA’s effort to moderate the President’s policies in the region.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that the report did not contradict the President’s policy, as the blackmail scenario was the most significant part of the report.
The Internation Herald Tribune offers an excellent overview of the story, and is a good place to start.
The Scoop is good enough to produce the full text of the White House press conference.
MSNBC points out that the NIE is a classified document, and that the CIA only declassified portions of the document at the behest of the Democrat-controlled intelligence committee. So what was revealed in the NIE is not the complete report.
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President Bush addressed the nation last night to lay out his policy for Iraq. No new evidence was presented — some compared it to “closing arguments” that a prosecutor would make at the end of a trial. The three major networks did not carry the speech, indicating that the White House did not request the coverage. That did not stop the White House from being somewhat disappointed over the lack of coverage. Read more for the major points.
The New York Times provided their full transcription of the President’s speech.
- Why Iraq?
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Weapons of Mass Destruction, in the hands of a “murderous tyrant” who attacked his neighbors and has attacked his own people.
- Why Now?
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It will only get worse if we wait. We know he has harbored terrorists. He could provide chemical and biological weapons to them, and they can easily be delivered, unlike conventional or nuclear weapons.
- Won’t this distract from the war on terror?
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No. It’s the same war.
- Do they have a nuclear weapons program? When will they have the bomb?
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Yes, they do. They will have the bomb very soon.
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The House and the Senate are well into the debate, but all the drama is in the Senate. House Democratic leaders have already pledged to back a bipartisan bill. The Senate Democrats are more unruly. Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) is backing a resolution, while Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) leads the opposition. In any case, a resolution is almost guaranteed to pass. To register his disapproval, Senator Byrd has pledged to filibuster the Senate vote, delaying it for up to 30 hours. A Congressional resolution is important not just for constitutional reasons, but because President Bush needs the backing of congress in his push for new UN Security Council resolutions. “This is one of the most consequential questions we will deal with for years to come,” said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) via the AP. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) says the President had “failed to make a case for a unilateral and pre-emptive strike on Iraq. War is simply a failure of diplomacy.” House Majority Leader [redacted] Armey (R-Texas) finally got off the fence, endorsing the President’s plan after hand-wringing over the morality of a pre-emptive American strike. He finally decided that an American attack would not be pre-emptive at all, since the end of the Gulf War in 1992 was technically a cease-fire. Presidential hopeful Senator John Edwards came out strongly against the President’s effort, referring to his “gratuitous unilateralism.” Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massacheusets) agrees, saying in the Senate that the President’s policy “flies in the face of international rules of acceptable behavior,” leaving America without “the moral legitimacy necessary to promote our values abroad.”
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair told members of a Labour Party conference in Blackpool last Tuesday that is important to restart the Israeli-Palenstinian peace talks in light of the pending UN action against Iraq. He alluded to the UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which together call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and a dialogue for final resolution of the problem. He expressed concern over a double-standard in applying resolution to Iraq and Israel.
Almost no American sources carried this story, so we turn to some overseas outlets.
The Syndney Morning Herald provided this quote from Blair:
“The Palestinians living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless; Israeli civilians brutally murdered. I agree UN resolutions should apply here as much as to Iraq. But they don’t just apply to Israel. They apply to all parties.”
SMH provides fairly balanced coverage of the whole situtation.
The Jersusalem Post covers an aspect of the story not mentioned elsewhere: Israeli diplomats had publicly specualted that the US was encouraging Blair to make the link. It was a non-starter, with God and everyone denying it. The article points out that pulling Israel into the Iraq issue would complicate the Administration’s diplomatic efforts, and is last thing that the Bush Administration wants.
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Saturday, October 5, 2002
There appears to be modest progress on a new UN Security Council resolution. The US has long demanded that any new resolution on Iraqi weapons inspections have “teeth,” citing a decade of obstruction by the Iraqi government. France, China, Russia and others have stressed that diplomatic and political efforts are more effective than putting a gun to Iraq’s head. A consensus is building around a resolution which mentions dire consequences of attack, but does not explicitly authorize the use of force.
Washington Post says that UNMOVIC’s Hans Blix objected to a US proposal that would allow UNMOVIC to pull Iraqi scientists and officials out of Iraq for interviews.
The LA Times has a two bullets for the American reasons the resolution needs “teeth”:
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The
Washington believes that weapons inspectors will have no leverage over Iraq unless the threat of force looms.
- A measure now that does not approve the use of force could lead to another, potentially time-consuming diplomatic clash some months down the road.
At the same time, LAT mentions that White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer responded to questions about the President’s possibly flexible policy on the UN conditions: “‘How do you know the president has not moved?’ he asked. ‘I submit to you that much of these negotiations are, as you would expect, diplomatic conversations that take place in private.’”
Continue reading... (257 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)
Saturday, October 5, 2002
UNMOVIC head Hans Blix visited Washington to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. They told him to “not take no for an answer,” and demand to inspect whatever he liked, whenever he liked, in Iraq. They also told him to wait until the quickly-evolving UN Security Council resolution was passed before he began inspections. Blix has said that despite the talks with Iraq in Vienna, there were “loose ends” that a new Security Council resolution would resolve. The Security Council has basically agreed that new inspection rules are necessary, but there is a strong disagreement over whether the rules should be enforced by threat of force — France, China and Russia would all like to leave the military option for a second resolution to be enacted only if Iraq proves uncooperative.
Reuters has Blix amenable to the delay: “We are ready to go but we have not booked our tickets yet.”
ABC News gives a nice set of bullets on the “loose ends” that Blix mentioned:
- access to all sites, including presidential palaces
- freely conducted interviews, without Iraqi minders present
- total overflight rights, with security guaranteed
Continue reading... (203 words, estimated 49 secs reading time)
Saturday, October 5, 2002
The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to provide documents on its role in Iraq to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Committee wants to know what the CIA is doing in Iraq, and how it can be coordinated with military and political efforts. No reason was given for the refusal, but many speculate that the report would have highlighted the infighting between the Pentagon and the CIA over their activity in Iraq — and could possibly be construed as second-guessing the President. This comes at a time when the CIA already in hot water with Congress for bungling September 11th.
The New York Times plays up the fact that CIA Director George Tenet sent his deputy to refuse Congress, saying that he had a meeting scheduled with the President. NYT also ties this refusal to the battle Vice President [redacted] Cheney is having with the GAO over documents relating to energy policy.
A follow-up piece in today’s NYT has Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) absolutely livid, accusing the CIA of obstructing the Constitutionally mandated Congressional oversight duty. It also mentions new legislation introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) which would dissolve the CIA, and create an intelligence “czar,” who would coordinate efforts in the US intelligence agencies.
Continue reading... (290 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)
Saturday, October 5, 2002
The Vice President of Iraq, Taha Yassin Ramadan, proposed a duel between US President George Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, with UN General Secretary Kofi Annan as the referee. The AP says that he wasn’t obviously joking, but reporters detected irony. “Iraq has two vice presidents, and Ramadan did not say whether he or Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf would take on [redacted] Cheney,” says AP. CNN aired the disappointingly straight-faced response from White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Fleischer says it was an “irresponsible statement” that did not justify a “serious response.”
I'm the Chief Technology Strategist for the Red Hat US Public Sector group, an open source and free culture advocate, a picky drinker, an amateur aesthete, and a dog enthusiast.
