- Dick Cheney's big speech on Iraq was an act of rhetorical
desperation. He called Saddam Hussein a "mortal threat," and
"as grave a threat as can be imagined." And then he whipped out
the tattered analogy between Iraq today and Germany and Japan in the 1930s.
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- A few facts might be in order here.
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- The United States has a $400 billion Pentagon budget;
Iraq's military budget is about $4 billion.
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- The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons; Iraq
doesn't have one yet, much less the means to deliver it. And even if Iraq
obtained one nuclear weapon or two, would that present a "mortal"
danger to the United States? Remember, the United States managed to survive
for four decades against an enemy with thousands of nuclear weapons aimed
at us.
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- (Cheney also mentioned that Saddam "has already
shown his willingness to use" weapons of mass destruction. But he
didn't note, for obvious reasons, that the United States was giving Saddam
material intelligence and advice at the same time he was using chemical
weapons against the Iranians in the 1980s.)
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- Iraq is no "mortal threat" to the United States,
and I doubt Saddam Hussein is amassing weapons of mass destruction to use
in a first strike against us, as Cheney suggested. Saddam Hussein knows
full well that if he attacked the United States, he would be wiped out.
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- He has already proven that he is not suicidal. Back in
1991, during the first Gulf War, the United States warned him that if he
used his chemical and biological weapons, which he had on hand, he would
face annihilation. And so he didn't use them. There's no reason to believe
he's more suicidal now than he was then. He is barbaric, yes; but he's
a power monger.
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- The more realistic threat that concerns Cheney and the
Bush Administration is Saddam's control over oil. Cheney mentioned that
three letter word in a key passage when he said that Saddam has "a
seat atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves." With weapons of
mass destruction, "Saddam Hussein could be expected to seek domination
of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's
energy supplies, [and] directly threaten America's friends throughout the
region."
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- Back in 1991, the peace movement had a slogan: No Blood
for Oil. It's an even more relevant slogan today.
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- Cheney also revealed that the Bush Administration really
has no interest whatsoever in returning U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq,
even though these weapons inspectors did more to identify and destroy Saddam's
weapons program than all the bombing during the Gulf War, and even though
our European allies urgently want those inspectors back in. Said Cheney:
"A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his
compliance with U.N. resolutions."
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- The U.N. has not deputized the United States to enforce
those resolutions with a war, but the niceties of the U.N. don't concern
the Bush Administration, which has shown no interest in going to the Security
Council to seek authorization for the coming U.S. aggression. Any war by
the United States without Security Council approval would violate the U.N.
charter, which the United States is a signatory to.
-
- Nor does Cheney take his legal obligations to uphold
the U.S. Constitution seriously. He said the Administration would "consult
widely with the Congress." But that's not what the Constitution requires.
Article 1, Section 8, says only Congress has the power to declare war.
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- The Bush Administration is preparing to take the country
down a lawless road to war. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of innocent
people could die along the way.
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- We need to be clear: The Bush Administration has no right,
under international law or the U.S. Constitution, to wage this war. And
conjuring up a "mortal" threat to the United States is the worst
kind of scare tactic.
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- The Progressive http://www.progressive.org/webex/wx082802.html
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