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• Pt. 2 of 4

7. Discarding a Client: The 1991 Gulf War

Secretary Shultz strongly protested the gassing of the Kurds in August and September of 1988. In response to this criticism, Tariq Aziz declared on 17 September that Iraq abided by international law prohibiting the use of poison gas. On 13 October, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy told Congress that Aziz's statement was a formal renunciation of the use of chemical weapons. A congressional bill for sanctions against Iraq was defeated. In December, a CIA report surmised that Iraq would not use chemical weapons unless its survival was threatened, for fear of international condemnation and a U.S. embargo. The report expressed concern with Iraq's renewed attempt to develop nuclear weapons, since that might encourage an Iranian program and destabilize the region.

In September 1989, the State Department under the new presidency of George Bush, Sr. met with the Iraqi foreign ministry to discuss human rights issues. On 27 October, new Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly declared in a formal policy statement: Iraq is an important state with great potential. We want to deepen and broaden the relationship. In the U.S. Senate, legislation was proposed that would require the President to determine whether Iraq committed gross human rights abuses prior to providing foreign assistance. The Bush administration opposed this bill, claiming Iraq was impervious to leverage. A State Department official complained, Congress is not very protective of our relationship with Iraq. The bill remained in limbo at year’s end.

Although Reagan had called for an international conference on chemical weapons in September 1988 in response to the gassing of the Kurds, the conference held in Paris in January 1989 did not directly address the Kurdish issue. Reiterating the validity of the Geneva Protocols, the conference was determined to prevent any recourse to chemical weapons by completely eliminating them. Iraq was not condemned by name, and the Kurds could not send a delegation since they had no state, and the conference only dealt with interactions among states.

In its 1989 session, the UN Human Rights Commission attempted to address the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, and called for a thorough study of the human rights situation in Iraq. The Bush administration did not support the resolution, fearing it was too confrontational toward Iraq, though it was endorsed by its allies Canada, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Australia, among others. France, a long-time military supplier of Iraq, also declined to sponsor the resolution. U.S. exports of dual-use technology and Export-Import Bank credits to Iraq continued through 1989.

In December 1989, President Bush briefly propped up his sagging popularity by invading Panama and deposing Manuel Noriega, a long-time U.S. client who helped the Reagan administration distribute weapons to the contras. As director of the CIA in 1976, Bush paid Noriega $110,000 a year. Removed from CIA payroll under Carter, Noriega’s CIA connections were renewed under Reagan in 1981, and his salary increased to $200,000 by 1985. Fully aware of Noriega’s ties to drug dealers, the U.S. continued to support him, and even commended him for his help in the war on drugs by identifying his competitors in the Medellin drug cartel. Now, Bush hypocritically denounced his former client and sent a massive invasion force to remove him, so business-friendly Guillermo Endara could take power, having won the presidential election in May. 1000–4000 Panamanians were killed during the invasion, which was condemned by the Organization of American States and the UN General Assembly. Bush’s selective dethronement of a dictator reflected political expediency more than principle, and a similar calculus would soon be employed against Iraq.

Bush’s surge in popularity did not last long, and his approval rating plunged from 80 percent in January to 60 percent in July, as a weak economy and an astronomical federal deficit continued to plague his administration. Soon an opportunity would arise for Bush to save his flagging presidency.

After the Iran-Iraq war ended, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates extracted petroleum in excess of OPEC production quotas, keeping oil prices low and adversely affecting the revenue of other Arab states. The heavily indebted Iraqi economy was particularly hard hit by this illicit activity, and Saddam Hussein accused the Kuwaitis of waging economic warfare. An unresolved border dispute enabled Saddam to further accuse Kuwait of slant drilling under Iraq’s Rumaila oil field during the Iran-Iraq war, stealing $2.4 billion with of petroleum. Kuwait had also built military and civilian structures on Iraqi-claimed territory. Most Arab states agreed with Saddam’s view of the facts, especially Kuwait’s serious violation of OPEC quotas.

As Kuwait refused to recognize Iraq’s territorial and financial claims, and continued to refuse to honor its OPEC quota, Iraq began large-scale troop deployments near the Kuwaiti border in July 1990.

The first indication that the U.S. might go to war over Kuwait came from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who stated on 19 July that the U.S. would keep its commitment to defend Kuwait made during the Iran-Iraq war. Ironically, during the war, the U.S. feared an attack on Kuwait by Iran, not Iraq, and actually defended Iraq during the war. Cheney was promptly chastised by the White House, You’re committing us to war we might not want to fight. On 24 July, the State Department issued a statement to allay concerns that the U.S. was committed to war: We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait. The State Department also affirmed, somewhat vaguely: We remain strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf with whom we have deep and longstanding ties.

Saddam believed that he was still in the good graces of the United States, but he sought reassurance. As recently as April, Senator Bob Dole had personally assured Saddam that the Bush administration opposed economic sanctions against Iraq. Now, on 25 July, the Iraqi dictator met with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, who made the now-infamous remark:

We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.

The last part of the comment is by far the more telling. The Kuwait issue in the 1960s meant Iraq’s opposition to Kuwaiti independence. Iraqis had long maintained that the British colony of Kuwait ought to be returned to Iraq (much as Hong Kong would eventually be returned to China), since historically Kuwait belonged to the same legal division of the Ottoman Empire as Iraq. Glaspie was now effectively saying that the U.S. had no position on Iraqi claims over Kuwaiti territory. She did reiterate the administration’s publicly expressed concern that all parties should avoid violence.

The Bush administration’s position was not dramatically different from that of most Arab states, which recognized Iraqi claims, yet objected to the enforcement of those claims through military invasion. Saddam attempted to justify his actions by claiming that Kuwait’s economic warfare was parallel to military aggression. On 28 July, President Bush personally warned Hussein against using force. Just the previous day, his administration had opposed congressional measures to impose economic sanctions against Iraq for human rights violations.

All the way until 31 July, U.S. policy remained ambiguous, as Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly, before Congress, agreed with the statement that the U.S. did not have a treaty commitment which would obligate us to engage U.S. forces if Iraq charged across the border into Kuwait. Kelly stated, We have historically avoided taking a position on border disputes or on internal OPEC deliberations.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait on 31 July (1 August in the U.S.), the Bush administration immediately declared its unequivocal opposition to the action, in startling contrast to its carefully worded ambiguous statements of the preceding days. Saddam Hussein had strong reason to believe he had been deceived by the U.S., and his argument appeared to be strengthened by a document recovered from Kuwaiti intelligence files, describing a November 1989 meeting between CIA Director William Webster and the head of Kuwaiti intelligence.

We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country’s government to delineate our common border. The Central Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on condition that such activities be coordinated at a high level.

Other Arab leaders corroborated the view that Washington was trying to create an impasse between Kuwait and Iraq. Yasser Arafat claimed that the U.S. sabotaged Iraqi attempts to resolve the border dispute at an Arab summit in May by encouraging Kuwait not to offer any compromise, which meant there could be no negotiated solution to avoid the Gulf crisis. King Hussein of Jordan claimed that the Kuwaiti foreign minister had told him shortly before the invasion: We are not going to respond to [Iraq]… if they don’t like it, let them occupy our territory… we are going to bring in the Americans. According to Hussein, the Kuwaitis were misled into thinking that U.S. support would be immediate, as the emir told his officers that they needed to hold off the Iraqis for twenty-four hours, at which point American and foreign forces would land in Kuwait and expel them. Hussein’s testimony on this point was later reinforced by the Kuwaiti finance minister, who said:

But we knew that the United States would not let us be overrun. I spent too much time in Washington to make that mistake, and received a constant stream of visitors here. The American policy was clear. Only Saddam didn’t understand it.

This assurance that they would be backed by the U.S. helps explain why the Kuwaitis repeatedly rebuffed attempts to negotiate the dispute at Arab summits. Without the guarantee of U.S. support, it would have been suicidal for the Kuwaitis to oppose Iraq so brusquely, especially when most of the Arab world favored Iraq on several of the points of dispute.

Bush, for his part, was remarkably passive in the days preceding the invasion, and took no action to prevent the invasion despite satellite images showing Iraqi troop concentrations. Even a small-scale U.S. deployment would have provided a powerful deterrent against Iraq, which certainly did not seek war with a superpower. Ambassador Glaspie claimed that no one expected Saddam to take all of Kuwait, yet this is contradicted by the Kuwaitis themselves and Iraq’s public history of claiming all of Kuwait throughout the twentieth century. Her claim is flatly incredible, as military planning routinely involves accounting for all contingencies. Even if only a partial invasion was expected, it is difficult to account for American passivity in both the military and diplomatic arenas, unless Bush actually wanted the invasion to occur.

The most obvious motive for allowing Iraq to invade Kuwait was to justify a much larger military response than would otherwise be politically acceptable. This would achieve the objectives of projecting a greater long-term U.S. military presence in the region, crippling Iraqi ambitions at becoming a regional power, and justifying an escalation in the U.S. military budget, which had recently seen dramatic cuts as a result of the end of the Cold War. Former Secretary of State Shultz, now working for Bechtel, warned the company to withdraw from a project in Iraq in the spring of that year. I said something is going to go very wrong in Iraq and blow up and if Bechtel were there it would get blown up too.

The Bush administration soon ordered troop deployments in Saudi Arabia, in order to protect the oil-rich Gulf states upon which the U.S. energy supply depended. This direct implementation of the Carter doctrine was called Operation Desert Shield, continuing a novel practice of naming military operations for propaganda purposes, beginning with the Orwellian label Operation Just Cause for the illegal invasion of Panama. Many Americans were able to see through this obvious manipulation. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense James Webb warned, Many are claiming that the buildup is little more than a ‘Pentagon budget drill,’ designed to preclude cutbacks of an Army searching for a mission as bases in NATO begin to disappear. Among such critics was former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, who said the U.S. military deployment in Saudi Arabia seems driven more by upcoming budget battles on Capitol Hill than a potential battle against Saddam Hussein.

Bush’s supporters were not shy about linking Iraqi aggression to the Pentagon’s budgetary demands. Senators invoked the Iraqi threat as justification for funding the B-2 stealth bomber, despite the fact that existing U.S. armaments were already overwhelmingly superior to those of Iraq, as would be demonstrated in a few months. Senator Bob Dole said, If we needed Saddam Hussein to give us a wake-up call at least we can thank him for that. Bush himself claimed that the invasion underscores the need to go slowly in restructuring U.S. defense forces.

Although the Bush administration was content to let Iraq invade Kuwait in order to justify a military buildup, it had not yet committed to actually fighting a war. So-called Operation Desert Shield achieved a shift in congressional attitudes, as legislators funded the deployment and left intact much of the Cold War era funding for a potential Soviet invasion of Europe. The total military budget, which had dropped in FY91, would increase for FY92. Bush’s approval rating, meanwhile, rose to 74% in August, feeding off the militarist zeal of the American public, which could afford to be belligerent since there was no danger of a draft.

In preparation for a potential war, the Bush administration pursued a strategy that would be repeated on later American military adventures, the formation of an international coalition to provide a figleaf of legitimacy to what was essentially a unilateral U.S. action. This coalition would be forged in large part through bribery, waiving billions of dollars in Egyptian debts, and giving military or economic aid to Syria, China, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. When Yemen dared to vote against a Security Council resolution authorizing the war, Secretary of State Baker responded, I hope he enjoyed that applause, because this will turn out to be the most expensive vote he ever cast. U.S. aid to Yemen dropped sharply within days. Although the war was not waged under UN auspices, as the Korean conflict had been, the U.S. at least obtained a Security Council resolution authorizing the war, which is more than it would bother in later conflicts.

Bush employed another propaganda technique that would become a staple of later military adventures, inflating a much weaker enemy to monstrous proportions. In order to persuade the American public that the Iraqi regime was a serious threat to the United States, Bush compared the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait with the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and likened Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler, even threatening Nuremberg-style trials. Considering all we know about the Reagan-Bush administration’s support of the Iraqi regime, this required breathtaking contempt for reality. Similarly, Bush’s characterization of the invasion as without provocation and refusal to acknowledge Iraqi grievances constituted a deliberate distortion. When Bush went so far as to say Saddam was worse than Hitler, for using U.S. citizens as human shields, even his own administration saw the need to get his rhetoric under control.

By all accounts, the Iraqis were genuinely surprised at the severity of the American reaction to the invasion, and Saddam made offers in August and October to withdraw from all of Kuwait except the disputed Rumaila oil field, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and resolution of the oil price dispute. As a diplomatic gesture, he released all foreigners who had been trapped in Kuwait or Iraq during the invasion by mid-December.

Bush systematically rejected any offers of a peace settlement, whether from Saddam or a third party. The State Department denied categorically that Saddam had even made the August offer, until the White House later confirmed it. Bush was understandably unwilling to accept any deal that would seem to reward the invasion, but his opposition to a peace settlement soon moved beyond such reasonable grounds. A congressional review would later conclude that a diplomatic solution satisfactory to the interests of the United States may well have been possible since the earliest days of the invasion. Former Assistant Defense Secretary Korb claimed that in late November the defense establishment was pushing for action in order to justify their continued funding. He accurately predicted that over 400,000 troops would be deployed, including battle groups from all of the armed services, as if they were competing to show their worth. Fortune magazine, in defense of Bush, plainly acknowledged his aversion to any form of peace settlement:

The President and his men worked overtime to quash freelance peacemakers in the Arab world, France, and the Soviet Union who threatened to give Saddam a face-saving way out of the box Bush was building. Over and over, Bush repeated the mantra: no negotiations, no deals, no face-saving, no rewards, and specifically, no linkage to a Palestinian peace conference [a point raised by Iraq on several occasions].

In a sign that Bush had moved away from the realpolitik of his predecessors, the president seemed excessively concerned with appearing strong, rather than considering the most practical means of resolving the conflict. His approval rating slipped back down to 60% by October, as the American public respected strength more than sobriety. In this atmosphere, it became common to regard the Germans as cowards for favoring a peaceful resolution of the conflict, an ironic accusation, considering all the effort a previous generation of Americans had made to expunge militarism from German culture.

The American commitment to war certainly seemed fixed by the end of November, when the U.S. secured a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of all necessary means to compel Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait after 15 January. Over Christmas, President Bush apparently quelled any lingering doubts about the proper course of action after reading an Amnesty International report detailing the war crimes being committed in Kuwait. It’s black and white, good versus evil. The man has to be stopped. One wonders where George Bush was during the 1980s. Saddam Hussein had not forgotten: You are talking about an aggressive Iraq… if Iraq was aggressive during the Iran war, why then did you speak with [us] then? Only a few years previously, Bush supported a policy of direct diplomacy with Iraq, when Saddam was committing much more heinous crimes than anything that happened in Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein, for his part, was needlessly obstinate and overly concerned with saving face. As the 15 January deadline approached, he continued to link withdrawal from Kuwait to an international conference on Palestine and a resolution of disputes between Iraq and Kuwait. These were reasonable requests, but Saddam foolishly decided to delay any withdrawal until at least a day or two after the deadline, to show he was not intimidated. This gave the U.S. all the pretext it needed for its desired war.

Even on the naive assumption that George Bush discovered a newfound horror for the human rights violations of Saddam Hussein, we must recognize that the president was astute enough to realize that this would not suffice to persuade his political opponents to support a war. Selling the war entailed exaggerating the threat posed by a Third World nation to ludicrous proportions. Bush told the American public with a straight face:

Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom, and the freedom of friendly countries around the world will suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell in the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein.

On one level, we must appreciate Bush’s candor in openly using the Carter doctrine as a motivation for war. On the other hand, Iraq hardly posed a credible threat to oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that were under the protection of the U.S. The Carter doctrine had been conceived in opposition to the Soviet Union; its application against Iraq bordered on the ridiculous, requiring us to imagine Iraqi forces overrunning American defenders and marching on Riyadh, then attacking the United Arab Emirates as the U.S. Navy watched helplessly. The CIA and DIA knew full well that Saddam had no designs on Saudi Arabia, and said as much in their intelligence reports. Nonetheless, Defense Secretary Cheney told the Saudis on 5 August that they were in grave danger, a brazen lie that persuaded King Fahd to allow a large American force on his soil. Yet even if such a scenario somehow transpired, making Saddam Hussein master of the Gulf’s oil reserves, the effect on the U.S. would be purely economic. There would be no danger of Americans losing their way of life or freedom, unless these terms are interpreted in a crassly commercial sense.

Bush’s ambiguous rationale for war allowed many critics to accuse him of being purely motivated by the narrow interests of the oil industry. However, it is not at all clear what those interests ought to have been. The disruption in Iraqi-U.S. relations was actually bad for many companies that hoped to have contracts in Iraq. As for the price of oil, the U.S. received only a small fraction of its supply from Iraq and Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia more than made up the difference after the invasion. There was no danger of an oil price spike, nor was it clear that the U.S. oil industry would have been averse to a price increase. In fact, in January 1990, the Bush administration had asked Saddam to persuade OPEC to raise prices to $25 a barrel, as reported in the Observer in October. At any rate, countries such as Germany and Japan, which were far more dependent on Gulf oil than the U.S., did not see themselves as endangered by the Iraq situation, further undermining the view that there was any economic necessity to Bush’s uncompromising policy.

If Iraqi human rights violations and the specter of an oil crisis were not enough to persuade the American public to fully support the war, Bush invoked another rationale, focusing on Iraq’s chemical weapons and nuclear program. Of course, Bush knew that Iraq was nowhere near nuclear weapons capability, which is why he had no problem maintaining good diplomatic relations with Iraq as recently as early 1990. Chemical weapons, while certainly reprehensible, hardly constituted an existential threat to the United States, and Bush also had full knowledge of this capability long before he decided to end his partnership with Saddam. We have already noted how the Reagan administration mitigated UN condemnations of Iraqi chemical warfare, and materially encouraged such war crimes by helping to prolong the war in 1988. Thus we can hardly avoid the conclusion that Bush’s invocation of a chemical and nuclear threat was thoroughly disingenuous, being motivated purely by politics.

War was a foregone conclusion months before the 15 January deadline, when the U.S. military finally was unable to unleash its might with overwhelming force, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on Iraq over a month. The conduct of this war established precedents that would be repeated in other conflicts of choice in the years ahead. Subsequent U.S. policy belied the Cold War myth that U.S. military interventions were strictly in defense against Soviet aggression. With end of the Cold War, U.S. military interventions actually increased, as the sole remaining superpower could now have a freer hand over unruly Third World nations. Of course, even before the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the U.S. exceeded the post-Stalin USSR in military adventures, waging many more wars and killing many more civilians. The American love of warfare had been dealt a serious blow, however, by the debacle of Vietnam, which exposed an entire generation to the unglamorous, amoral brutality of modern warfare. A new approach would be needed in order to sell new military adventures and keep the defense industry churning.

A critical aspect of the new made-for-television brand of warfare was the suppression of battlefield journalism. There would be no repetition of Vietnam-era footage showing American soldiers killing and being killed; the new warfare would be completely bloodless. Journalists were not even free to enter the war zone, except under strictly controlled conditions as embedded reporters. All information came from military briefings, so reporters had no job other than to parrot the official line. The major news outlets seemed to relish this cheerleading role, opening their broadcasts with sharp graphics proclaiming America at War and boasting of the nation’s high-tech armaments, whose deadly capabilities were described in loving detail. Once at war, there would be no more strong criticism from the major media, none of the self-doubts that plagued the Vietnam era. One of the common myths about Vietnam among Americans, incapable of admitting defeat, is that the war was lost due to a lack of political will and a failure to stand behind the troops. A similar myth was held among Germans after World War I, blaming the defeat on so-called November traitors. There would be, on this and later adventures, no latter-day Walter Cronkite urging withdrawal and no Congress with the gumption to exercise its power of the purse to rein in a conflict. Even critics of the administration took care to emphasize their support of the troops, which was understood synonymously with support of the war.

Support for the war was made easy, not only because Americans were insulated from graphic images of the effects of war, but also because it would be an overwhelming military success with minimal casualties. New technologies and tactics were responsible for this, as was the choice of adversary. Never again would the U.S. fight a nation as populous as Vietnam, with ground cover that forced the use of ground combat and high casualties. The U.S. would fight its wars almost entirely from the air, against nations with negligible air forces. Bombing from an altitude beyond the reach of antiaircraft fire, the war was actually mostly an air raid against a virtually defenseless nation. Nearly all of the U.S. fatalities, numbering less than 400, were from the brief ground conflict or numerous vehicular accidents.

New military technologies were employed in the war, guaranteeing lucrative long-term defense contracts, as well as allowing Americans to kill without fear of being killed in return, turning warfare into simple slaughter. The most highly touted of these were so-called smart weapons which used global satellite positioning systems enabling fighter planes or warships to destroy specific buildings with an accuracy of a few meters. This bombardment by remote control removed any element of skill or chance, reducing missile strikes to simple videogames. Lost in the media hype was the fact that the vast majority of bombs used were old-fashioned dumb bombs, and even the smart weapons were subject to human error in targeting. This predictably resulted in massive civilian casualties, or as they were now known, collateral damage.

Other technologies included radar-evasive stealth aircraft and night vision capabilities that enabled the Americans to attack their targets without being seen, like a thief in the night. The ancient Greco-Roman taboo that it was dishonorable to attack at night was routinely flouted by the results-oriented Americans, who boasted that they ruled the night. As if the technological lopsidedness of the war were not enough, they insisted that their opponents be blindfolded.

The anti-ballistic Patriot missiles were heavily promoted by the major news media, as if they were advertising for Raytheon. After the war, the failure rate of the missile turned out to be much higher than what was boasted during the conflict, but this did not prevent Raytheon from procuring lucrative long-term contracts. Patriot missiles and smart weapons had advantages beyond their effectiveness; they were enormously expensive, generating huge revenues for the industry and justifying a bloated military budget.

Some of the newly favored armaments would have long-term humanitarian and environmental consequences. Unexploded cluster bombs would remain in Iraq for years afterward, and the U.S. would resist international efforts to ban the weapons. The use of depleted uranium warheads is almost certainly correlated with the 500% increase in Iraqi birth defects, dozens of which are too horrific to be believed unless seen. The sheer number of these extraordinarily monstrous deformities is a strong indication of environmental contamination, either radioactive or chemical. For those with the stomach to view these horribly deformed infants, or the charred and dismembered carcasses of adults, it is clear that the new kind of war is much like the old: callous, inhuman, and at times, pure evil.

Clothed in a self-righteous, ends-justifies-the-means mentality, the Bush administration continued the bombardment of Iraq for a month. A total of 2,800 fixed-wing aircraft flew 109,000 sorties, of which 20,000 were bombing missions, dropping 250,000 bombs, including only 244 laser-guided smart bombs and 88 cruise missiles. In equivalent tonnage of TNT, this amounted to over 85,000 tons, of which only 8,000 tons were precision-guided missiles. According to the air strike planner, Gen. Buster C. Glosson, precision-guided munitions nonetheless accounted for 75 percent of the damage inflicted. These surgical strikes, as they would come to be known, reduced civilian casualties, or collateral damage. Still, it is clear that 90% of the explosives rained down on Iraq were of the old-fashioned, non-surgical variety. This does not even count the additional 20,000 to 30,000 tons of artillery shells from battleships and rocket launchers. Media coverage emphasizing low-casualty smart weapons was misleading propaganda.

Based on the Pentagon’s FY1991 request to replenish its munitions, a Greenpeace report estimated that 2,095 HARM anti-aircraft missiles, 44,922 cluster bombs and rockets, and 136,755 conventional bombs were used in the Gulf War, as opposed to a mere 4,077 guided bombs. The U.S. is also known to have used fuel air explosives (FAEs), or firebombs, against Iraqi troops, burning them alive. The biggest munition of all was the 15,000-pound daisy cutter, whose concussive force could rupture internal organs and eardrums, and whose firestorm sucked oxygen out of the area, asphyxiating or incinerating those within the area. Hypocritically, the Pentagon during the war leaked stories of possible Iraqi use of fuel air explosives, to stoke fears of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the Iraqis never used FAEs, nor biological or chemical weapons, while the U.S. did in fact use firebombs and concussive bombs with the combined explosive force of more than five times the 15,000-ton Hiroshima bomb in the span of a month. It is hard to characterize Bush’s demonization of so-called weapons of mass destruction as anything but dishonest.

Similarly, Defense Secretary Cheney’s statement on 23 January that in contrast to Iraq’s highly inaccurate Scud missiles, we’ve carefully chosen our targets and bombed them with precision was a baldfaced lie, since he had to know that the vast majority of munitions used were non-guided bombs. The Gulf War was fought no differently from other modern wars, deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and resulting in enormous civilian casualties. Given the overwhelming military superiority of the U.S. over the Iraqi army, it was militarily needless to destroy bridges and industrial targets deep inside of Iraq, if the mission was simply to liberate Kuwait. The choice of targets reveals the true intent of the Gulf War, which was to cripple Iraq and thwart its ambitions of becoming a regional power. To this end, the U.S. knocked out electricity in most of Iraq, and bombarded bridges, such as that in Nasiriyya, killing 100 civilians, and that in Falluja, killing 200. Another raid on the same bridge in Falluja on 14 February leveled a nearby market, killing hundreds and maiming hundreds more. After initial denials, the coalition admitted that a precision bomb had missed its target. Given the unreliability of precision weapons (only 75 to 90 percent accurate, according to British defense officials), we can scarcely extrapolate how many civilian casualties were caused by non-guided weapons, which were the overwhelming majority of munitions used.

Similar targeting errors occurred in other Iraqi cities as well. An attack on a bridge in Samawa killed over 100 civilians in a nearby market and maimed others. 150 were killed in a market in al-Kut on 5 February, and the Ashshar market in Basra was bombed four times during the war, though there were no military targets, bridges or government structures in the area. Another 200 to 300 civilians were killed when an air raid shelter in western Baghdad was bombed without warning, in violation of the laws of war. The effects of these bombings were the same everywhere: large craters, leveled buildings, and dismembered human body parts littering the ground.

Other civilian targets included government food warehouses south of Baghdad, a dairy factory, north of Basra, grain storage warehouses, water-treatment facilities, and four hydroelectric facilities. This created a severe humanitarian crisis, as hospitals lost power, food and medicines could not be refrigerated, and the water supply was contaminated. Iraq’s mechanized agriculture was reduced to pre-industrial conditions. The systematic destruction of Iraq’s power supply made a lie of the administration’s claim not to be attacking the Iraqi people, and Dick Cheney’s assertion that no country had done more to minimize civilian casualties was a shameless falsehood.

In reality, the Defense Department was concerned only with conveying the appearance of low civilian casualties, for the sake of propaganda purposes, but they could not have cared less about actual civilian casualties. This is obvious to anyone familiar with the culture of the U.S. military, which places a high importance on metrics, measuring and counting everything, whether it is the percentage of targets destroyed, number of sorties flown, amount of munitions used, or the number of bolts or resistors purchased. Every quantifiable variable of at least marginal significance is meticulously measured and catalogued. The mere fact that the military made no effort to count civilian casualties and expressly disavowed any efforts to do so speaks volumes about how little the Defense Department actually cares about civilian casualties. They count hardware because they care about hardware. If they truly cared about minimizing civilian casualties, they would analyze such casualties with their usual thoroughness in order to assess how well they were doing.

After the war, a Commerce Department demographer estimated that 13,000 civilians were killed directly by Allied forces in the conflict, and another 70,000 civilians died within a year afterward due to damage inflicted on the electric power grid and water system, and the resulting lack of adequate medical facilities. Combined with the 40,000 Iraqi soldiers killed, a total of 158,000 Iraqis were killed, including approximately 86,000 men, 40,000 women, and 32,000 children. The demographer was summarily fired, and a new report was issued, reducing the estimates, though the original report’s methodology was supported by the American Statistical Association.

In one sense, Bush was accurate when he said the war was chiefly directed against Saddam Hussein and not the Iraqi people. Crippling the Iraqi civilian infrastructure was calculated to incite rebellion against Saddam, especially in the majority-Shi’ite south. Like the Kurds in the 1970s, the Shi’ites would find themselves abandoned by the Americans after being urged to revolt, and Saddam’s army would mercilessly suppress their insurrection. This cynical policy of creating a humanitarian crisis in order weaken the Iraqi regime would continue throughout the decade, as we will see later in detail.

The goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was adopted in August 1990, when President Bush authorized the CIA to engage in covert operations to destabilize the government. According to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Bob Woodward, Bush ordered a thorough effort to support Iraqi resistance groups and strangle the Iraqi economy. A few senior members of Congress were informed of these efforts in December, according to The New York Times. Creating chaos in the civilian sector in order to encourage regime change was a deliberate U.S. policy, aimed to isolate and incapacitate the Iraqi regime, as a July 1991 Defense Department report stated. To this end, Iraqi telecommunications and television stations were destroyed, another war crime that would be repeated in the bombardment of Yugoslavia eight years later. We noted previously that most of the destruction of civilian infrastructure was completely unnecessary, if the objective was merely to liberate Kuwait, since the U.S. could have easily forced the Iraqi army to flee by directing its overwhelming might against the troops in Kuwait. Instead, the bombing campaign was a deliberate attempt to inflict suffering on the Iraqi people in order to get them to turn against their government. An Air Force bombing planner interviewed by the Washington Post candidly admitted that the message of the bombing was, We’re not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we’ll fix your electricity. Somehow, the Americans are still able to wonder why they are despised in the Middle East.

This campaign of disrupting electricity and other basic services, which would be repeated in Yugoslavia, was a clear violation of the Geneva Protocols’ distinction between military and civilian targets, expressed in Article 51(2) of Protocol I: The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited. Bush’s bombing of civilian infrastructure clearly had the intent of demoralizing the population so that they would encourage a change of government or a surrender. This deplorable tactic has stained many wars in modern history, and the idea that the U.S. military has operated on a higher moral plane in this regard is risible. The Gulf War was just one more slaughter committed in the name of freedom, motivated in reality by cynical balance-of-power geopolitics.

Iraq’s offensive efforts in the Gulf War were limited to Scud missile strikes, primarily on coalition positions in Saudi Arabia and on Riyadh. Saddam attempted in vain to expand the conflict by firing missiles into Tel Aviv, but the U.S. persuaded the Israelis not to retaliate, as that would have almost certainly brought other Arab nations into the conflict, and risked alienating Arab allies who would refuse to support the Israeli side of a war. Despite early reports that nerve gas was used in strikes on Tel Aviv, it turned out that all Iraqi warheads were conventional. Patriot anti-aircraft missiles were used to engage Scuds, and they were highly touted in the war as a success, with claims of success rates in the vicinity of 80%–90%. After the war, the Army said the Patriots had success rates of only 70 percent in Saudi Arabia and 40 percent in Israel, but continued to defend the system and favor lucrative contracts for its manufacturer, Raytheon. A 1992 investigation by the General Accounting Office found that only in 9 percent of cases was there evidence in the form of debris or radar data indicating that a Scud was actually destroyed by a Patriot. A study by MIT scientists concluded that the television images showing Patriots launched against Scuds were misleading, since in a number of cases the Scuds were merely deflected, and debris from both missiles would hit the ground. In fact, the amount of damages and casualties per Scud strike in Israel increased after the deployment of Patriots. Once again, selling a system and securing the interests of the defense industry took precedent over saving lives.

After a full month of needless mayhem and destruction, the U.S.-led coalition finally addressed the supposed casus belli and launched a ground assault on Kuwait. The ground campaign, designated Operation Desert Sabre, began on 24 February with an attack into Iraq west of Kuwait in order to circumvent Iraqi fortifications and encircle Iraqi forces. Within 90 hours, U.S. forces destroyed 1,300 tanks, 1,200 other vehicles, 285 artillery pieces, and 100 air defense systems. They also captured nearly 22,000 soldiers. The Iraqis destroyed 7 Abrams tanks, 15 Bradley fighting vehicles, 2 armored troop transports, and an Apache helicopter. The Defense Department did not keep count of how many Iraqi troops were killed, once again revealing its sense of priorities.

Two years later, an Air Force-sponsored survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University estimated 10,000 Iraqi casualties due to the ground war. The survey found that the deployed Iraqi Army probably numbered no more than 336,000 when the war began, (contrary to the 540,000–600,000 publicly cited before the war) and declined to 220,000 after the air campaign due to casualties and desertions. Iraq possessed only 3,475 tanks, 3,080 armored personnel carriers and 2,475 artillery pieces prior to the war, making Iraqi ground forces hopelessly outnumbered and overmatched. Worse, they had not expected the air strikes to be sustained for weeks before the ground war even began. When the ground battle began on the 24th of February, the Iraqi infantry quickly scattered before the air strikes as the coalition forces advanced from three directions. On the 25th, Saddam announced a general withdrawal from Kuwait, to which President Bush responded, He is not withdrawing. His defeated forces are retreating. He is trying to claim victory in the midst of a rout.

On the 26th and 27th of February, when Iraqi forces were already in full retreat, the U.S. inflicted heavy casualties, taking care to destroy as much military equipment as possible. Although the war, by President Bush’s own admission, was already over tactically, the real mission was to cripple the Iraqi military, so repeated sorties were sent for a turkey shoot of retreating or abandoned vehicles. This highway of death included hundreds or thousands of dead, according to conflicting accounts. The Iraqis nonetheless did manage to salvage some units in their retreat to Basra, at which point the U.S. declared an armistice. The Iraqis were left with only 842 tanks and 279 artillery pieces at the end of the war. The 1993 survey clearly shows that Iraq was no longer a conventional military threat, as its equipment had been decimated and a third of its army scattered.

8. Containing the Bogeyman: The Sanctions Regime

Although it was no secret that Iraq was no longer a threat, continued punitive measures against Iraq needed justification, so the specter of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was invoked to justify a crippling economic sanctions regime against a nation that had just been bombed into a pre-industrial age. The U.S. returned to its policy of the mid-1970s, using the Kurds and Shiites to destabilize the Baath regime, without any real intention of allowing these groups to gain power. The Shi’ites were betrayed once again by the Americans, who stood by as Saddam brutally suppressed their revolt after the Gulf War.

The long-term resolution of the Iraq-Kuwait situation was debated in the UN Security Council on 3 April 1991. The Kuwaiti representative, Abulhasan, deplored Iraq’s attempt to extinguish Kuwait’s national identity through coordinated vandalism and looting (as confirmed by the UN Secretary-General’s representative in postwar Kuwait), and its abrogation of the October 1963 agreement between the Iraqi and Kuwaiti prime ministers recognizing the independence and complete sovereignty of the State of Kuwait within borders specified by mutual agreement in 1932. The Kuwaiti delegate also referred to the draft resolution as reflecting the content and concepts of the new world order that the international family is determined to establish. He added significantly, The international community is also determined to encourage a commitment to that new world order, and if need be, to impose it. The resolution in question is therefore highly significant in identifying what was meant by George Bush’s oft-quoted expression, new world order. A hint may be given in Abulhasan’s statement:

It was no exaggeration to say that the United Nations Charter, with all its lofty principles, became law when the international community effectively dealt with the brutal Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. It proved that the Organization, with its Security Council, is an effective instrument for collective security and the maintenance of world peace and security…

A key aspect to the new world order would be using the Security Council to organize collective enforcement of the UN Charter through military force. This would give the charter the unprecedented status of enforceable law.

The Iraqi representative, Al-Anbari, naturally rejected these claims of high-minded internationalism, contending that the use of force against Iraq was motivated by the objectives of a single country or group of countries. The Gulf War was not conducted under the UN flag, and was directed according to U.S. objectives, which differed from those of the UN. Iraq accepted Resolutions 660 and 678 (passed in August and November 1990) calling for full Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, and authorizing all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions. Al-Anbari claimed that the aerial bombardment of Iraq went well beyond the objective of forcing Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, but was motivated by the U.S. strategic objective to cripple Iraq. Explosives amounting to seven Hiroshima bombs (88,500 tons) were dropped on Iraq, using mostly dumb bombs dropped from over 30,000 feet, making civilian casualties inevitable. The Iraqi delegate also noted the American establishment’s use of the hideous Orwellian term collateral damage to describe civilian casualties of indiscriminate bombing. Citing statements by the Commander of the U.S. Air Force, General Merrill A. McPeak, in the Washington Post on 16 March 1991, only 7% of the bombs dropped on Iraqi cities and villages were guided, and only an estimated 30% hit their targets. Quoting the report of the UN mission to Iraq from March 1991 regarding civilian infrastructure:

It should… be said at once that nothing we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society.

The report stated, further:

Now, most means of modern life have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.

Iraq was actually worse off than if it had been merely a pre-industrial country, since its society was already organized on a non-agrarian basis, and thus dependent on industrial goods and modern infrastructure. The U.S. bombing created a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions that would extend for a decade. This level of destruction can hardly be justified by the limited UN objective of obtaining Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. To make matters worse, the draft resolution in discussion would continue to impose economic sanctions against Iraq, even after the objectives of Resolution 678 had been achieved.

The Yemeni delegation supported Iraq in its opposition to the proposed embargo, arguing that there was no legitimate reason to prohibit the importation of books, clothing, construction materials, and consumer goods, especially in light of the humanitarian crisis caused by the devastation of Iraq infrastructure.

Notwithstanding these objections, the resolution was passed as UN Security Council Resolution 687 on 3 April 1991. This resolution called upon Iraq and Kuwait to respect the border defined in the October 1963 agreement. This unprecedented attempt by the Security Council to define an international border by its own authority rather than bilateral negotiations rested on the fact that the 1963 agreement had been registered with the UN and published among its treaty documents. This is a dubious basis for asserting the authority to define borders, as sovereign states reserve the right to re-negotiate their boundaries with other states. Nonetheless, Resolution 687 guaranteed the inviolability of the 1963 border.

The heart of Resolution 687 is in its call for unconditional Iraqi disarmament as a prerequisite for removing the sanctions imposed by Resolution 661 (passed 6 August 1990). Resolution 661 prohibited the import of all commodities other than medical supplies or in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs into Iraq. In the resolution’s own words, these sanctions were imposed as a consequence of Iraq’s failure to comply with Resolution 660 calling for withdrawal from Kuwait. Now that Iraq had withdrawn from Kuwait, the Security Council moved the goalposts, by imposing a detailed list of disarmament criteria as a condition for removing sanctions. The Americans and their allies practiced dishonest diplomacy, getting the sanctions approved in 1990 when there was widespread outrage against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and now, when it would have been much more difficult to justify new sanctions, they left the original sanctions regime in place, avoiding a new vote, though the original pretext for sanctions no longer existed. This leverage would be repeatedly used throughout the nineties, as the U.S. could threaten to use its veto power to block any end to the sanctions, as if the sanctions ought to continue by default, when really a new resolution ought to have been passed after Iraqi withdrawal. Since the real motive of the Gulf War was to cripple Iraq as a military and economic power, it is only logical that relief from the embargo should be linked to these stringent conditions:

Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of:

(a) All chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities;

(b) All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities;
...
Iraq shall unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components or any research, development, support or manufacturing facilities related to the above;

These demands exceeded Iraq’s obligations under international law, particularly in the demand that its missiles not have a range greater than 150 kilometers. Even setting aside the hypocrisy of forbidding even minimal Iraqi nuclear weapons research while turning a blind eye to Israel’s dozens of nuclear warheads, there is no lawful basis for imposing this limit on their ballistic missile range. As with the imposition of border conditions, the Security Council is arrogating new authority to itself, holding unruly nations in check by arbitrary punitive measures. This attempt to give teeth to the Security Council is the essence of the new world order described by the Kuwaiti ambassador.

The trade embargo against Iraq was modified to exempt foodstuffs, provided that the Security Council was notified of such imports. The U.S. and its allies acted on the dubious legal assumption that the embargo was to remain in place unless a new resolution was passed to end it, when in fact the conditions upon which the embargo declared by Resolution 661 was explicitly predicated no longer existed. Thus a trade embargo with Iraq was imposed on all UN member states due to the machinations of a privileged minority in the Security Council. Since food imports into Iraq had to be vetted by the Security Council, the opportunity for corruption was ripe. The sanctions regime was guaranteed to stay in place at least until Iraq allowed international inspectors to verify full compliance with Resolution 687.

Despite the obvious fact that continued sanctions would cripple the Iraqi economy, Resolution 687 required Iraq to adhere scrupulously to all of its obligations concerning servicing and repayment of its foreign debt. The noble language of disarmament rings hollow when coupled with this usurious demand. If it were not enough to demand timely payment of debts while bleeding the nation's economy, the Security Council further found Iraq to be:

…liable under international law for any direct loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

The Iraqis would have to make reparations not only to Kuwait, but to foreign oil companies for setting oil fields ablaze. Meanwhile, the U.S. owed nothing to Iraq for systematically destroying sewage treatment facilities, power plants, and other civilian infrastructure hundreds of miles away from Kuwait. As always, only the poor are forced to honor their debts. If this rich man’s justice was a sample of the new world order to come, it would behoove the poorer nations of the world to align themselves in firm opposition, as would eventually be the case.

Two days later, the Security Council passed Resolution 688, condemning Iraq’s postbellum repression of the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shi’ites of southern Iraq (though not mentioning the latter by name). Responding to complaints by Iran and Turkey, the Security Council sought to avoid a new international conflict and at the same time prevent a humanitarian crisis. Thus the resolution called upon Iraq to cease its acts of repression and to allow immediate access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq and to make available all necessary facilities for their operations. It also appealed to all Member States and to all humanitarian organizations to contribute to these humanitarian relief efforts.

The U.S. and U.K., acting on their own initiative and without UN authorization, imposed no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, shooting down any Iraqi aircraft that attempted to fly in the Kurdish or Shi’ite areas. Any anti-aircraft battery that fired upon an American or British fighter would be targeted in kind. The allies pretended to justify this blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty by appealing to Resolution 688. The resolution in fact did not authorize the use of force, as it did not invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter, nor did its language ask anything of Member States besides contributing to humanitarian relief. The Americans and the British argued that the no-fly zones were necessary in order for humanitarian relief to take place, as if this judgment was theirs to make. Knowing that they could not muster the votes necessary to authorize force in the Security Council, the Anglo-Americans took matters in their own hands, revealing a new hypocrisy in the new world order. The Anglo-Americans would appeal to the UN’s authority only when it rubber-stamped their national interests; otherwise, they would act independently, offering at best a fig-leaf justification under international law.

The real motive of the no-fly zones was not altruistic humanitarianism, but the desire to topple the central government of Iraq. With the Baathists unable to impose air power in the north or south, it was hoped that Kurdish and Shi’ite rebellions might succeed where they failed in the 1970s. This new attempt to dismember Iraq and destroy the government would fail, due to the allies’ unwillingness to commit ground troops. Neo-imperialists are much less willing to risk blood than treasure, hence the increasing tilt towards air power over ground forces. As for their supposed humanitarian concern, this would be belied by the murderous effects of the brutal sanctions regime.

Living conditions in Iraq plummeted after the Gulf War, as the import-dependent Iraqi economy was constricted to the breaking point by the sanctions. Saddam’s military spending certainly did not help the situation, but even a government budget of zero would not have saved Iraqis from poverty, since money is useless without goods to buy. Without importation of construction materials, the rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure was painstakingly slow, and mortality increased as water supplies were contaminated by sewage due to U.S. targeting of treatment plants, as well as from the carcinogenic effects of depleted uranium munitions. Shortly after the war, birth defects in Iraq skyrocketed, including numerous monstrosities too horrific to describe. Both infant mortality and child mortality (ages 1-5) more than doubled between 1990 and 2000, though Iraq once boasted of an advanced healthcare system. Malnutrition and disease were rampant in central and southern Iraq, yet the British and Americans were the most obstinate in opposing the relaxation of sanctions, notwithstanding their supposed humanitarianism.

Increasingly isolated from global opinion as years passed, the U.S. and Britain had to threaten Security Council vetoes in order to keep the sanctions in place. The intent of continuing the sanctions was clearly to cripple the Iraqi economy, for one could have kept Iraqi oil off the market while still allowing the importation of consumer goods. The Bush and Clinton administrations claimed their intent was to punish Saddam, but any intelligent person must know that those in power are the last to starve. The only plausible rational motive for the Iraq sanctions was the cynical hope that economic desperation would drive the populace to despise their ruler and dethrone him. Any way one looks at it, the suffering of the Iraqi people was a tool for the advancement of Western strategic interests.

The bulk of the Arab world made a similar deduction, including moderate, secular observers. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, including anti-Baathist political exile groups, opposed the sanctions that were supposed to benefit them. Admittedly, the Iraqi humanitarian crisis was sensationalized in the Middle East, but this overexposure guaranteed that Arabs were at least more aware of the basic facts and issues than most Westerners, who, by contrast, received a largely sterilized view of the consequences of the sanctions. They have been spared the horrific images of babies born with skulls like jelly or torsos turned inside out, or of adults and children who were emaciated or maimed. The glorification of military victory has no room for the moral ambiguity that such images might impose.

Since the sanctions were an extension of an unresolved war, criticism of the sanctions in the U.S. exposed one to the same accusations of anti-Americanism normally reserved for pacifists. American political leaders downplayed, ignored, or even ridiculed reports of Iraqi suffering. In 1999, UNICEF estimated the excess deaths of children under five was about 500,000. Official Clinton administration responses usually disputed the accuracy of these estimates, or used Bush’s rhetorical trick of blaming the death toll entirely on Saddam Hussein. In a 1996 television interview, Secretary of State Albright once departed from this tactic, and instead explicitly admitted that the deaths of a half a million children were the result of a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price was worth it. This comment sparked a torrent of outrage in the Arab world, but the mainstream American media was largely silent. This media self-censorship enabled most Americans to sustain the myth that U.S. policies were not the cause of a humanitarian crisis, even though the Secretary of State had acknowledged as much.

Albright believed that the calculated infliction of suffering upon Iraqis was the morally correct choice, in view of the long-term good of containing Saddam’s regime. This justification presumes that Americans somehow have the authority to make grand moral calculations and decisions for other peoples. A similar assumption would prevail in rationalizing the invasion of Iraq. Albright’s comment probably would not have rattled too many consciences even if it were widely publicized, since many Americans share the unconscious assumption that they have the right to make moral calculations for the supposed benefit of other nations, even against their will. Consciously, most Americans uphold the right of self-determination and reject imperialism, but their actions and attitudes toward foreign nations often betray a set of values inconsistent with a belief in self-determination.

The UN Security Council was not blind to the humanitarian crisis caused by the sanctions, and took steps to remedy the situation beginning in August 1991, when Resolution 706 authorized the sale of Iraqi oil to cover humanitarian needs and UN expenses, with 30% of revenue going toward war reparations. The Iraqis protested that they needed a five-year grace period on their debts in order to rebuild their infrastructure and restore their prior standard of living, especially as their British and US assets were frozen. They also objected to UN control of the distribution of revenues and of purchased goods, especially as Iraq would have to pay for associated UN administrative expenses. This effective confiscation of $1.6 billion in oil revenue to be distributed at the Secretary-General’s discretion was an unprecedented assertion of authority by the UN. The shipment of food and medicine to Iraq, however, could not by itself compensate for the economic disaster wrought by the sanctions. The Yemenis warned that famine and the collapse of the Iraqi healthcare system would ensue if the current sanctions regime persisted, and indeed that would prove to be the case.

The level of punishment inflicted on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait greatly exceeded anything the UN had dared to impose on any other nation, including those who participated in the Arab-Israeli wars. This is because the Security Council was dominated by Western interests that sought to prevent Iraq from being an economic power. Without the Soviet Union as a counterweight, the West would have free rein to dictate terms to unruly Third World nations on how their debts would be paid and how their revenues would be invested.

We should not allow Anglo-American geopolitical ambitions to distract us from the fact that the Iraqi regime was similarly unconcerned with the economic welfare of the Iraqi people. The Baathist government refused to comply with the oil revenue program of Resolution 706, insisting on full control of both revenue and the distribution of goods. While these demands on their face might have been reasonable, and the Iraqi representative correctly noted that the sanctions had gone beyond their original purpose of achieving withdrawal from Kuwait, Baathist concerns for the economic welfare of the populace were almost certainly insincere. As Gen. Kemal Hussein would reveal in 1995, the regime still harbored intentions of eventually restoring its weapons programs and invading Kuwait, and placed its military concerns above humanitarian issues. Had the UN allowed the Iraqi government greater leeway in the administration of oil revenue, it would certainly have been abused by the regime. The Baathist government, being concerned principally with its own survival and military ambitions, bears a large share of the blame for the humanitarian crisis that afflicted Iraq, which they exploited as diplomatic leverage to end the sanctions. The regime was duly condemned by UN Security Council Resolution 778 (2 October 1992) for refusing to implement the aid program. If the Iraqi government had been deeply concerned with the welfare of its people, it would have implemented the program, flawed as it was, rather than allow greater suffering. Instead, the Iraqis haggled over terms, unsuccessfully requesting the revenue ceiling to be raised from $1.6 billion to $2 billion.

In 1993, the UN’s Boundary Demarcation Commission completed its work of marking the border between Iraq and Kuwait. The Commission’s job was simply to carry out the technical task of marking the border defined by the 1963 Iraq-Kuwait agreement, not to allow any renegotiation of territorial claims. Thus the UN truly did arrogate to itself the right to define international borders for the first time, and the Iraqi government capitulated, formally recognizing Kuwaiti sovereignty within these defined borders in 1994.

Although the Iraqi–Kuwaiti territorial dispute, the reason for the sanctions, had been resolved, the punitive embargo persisted. In April 1995, Resolution 986 authorized an oil for food program allowing up to $1 billion in oil sales every 90 days. Since Iraqi oil revenue could only be used for consumable goods like food and medicine, the nation was denied any opportunity to rebuild its economy, while the West could still reap the benefits of Iraq’s petroleum. Hypocritically, the top purchaser of Iraqi oil under the oil for food program was the United States, the most ardent supporter of the sanctions. In 1998, the revenue ceiling was raised to $5.256 billion over 180 days. Numerous resolutions were issued in the years that followed, renegotiating which imports ought to be permitted and how the revenues were to be administered. The basic parameters remained in place, so that the UN effectively managed all the foreign revenues of Iraq.

This neocolonial subjugation of Iraq could hardly be justified on the basis of its previous invasion of Kuwait, so Iraq was repeatedly found to be non-compliant with its obligations under resolutions requiring its disarmament. Iraq repeatedly denied weapons inspectors access to its presidential palaces, declaring these sites off-limits in September 1997. The Iraqis also accused the inspections teams of espionage, and demanded that the number of inspectors from the United States be limited. The UN Security Council rejected Iraqi demands and condemned Iraq for non-compliance with Resolution 687 on several occasions: Resolution 707 (15 August 1991), Resolution 1115 (21 June 1997), Resolution 1134 (23 October 1997), Resolution 1137 (12 November 1997), Resolution 1194 (9 September 1998), and Resolution 1205 (5 November 1998). Note that the last time the UN condemned Iraq for non-compliance was in 1998, four and a half years before the Iraq invasion, contrary to the Bush administration's portrayal of Iraq as routinely flouting the weapons regime. All of Iraq’s weapons inspection violations occurred from 1993 to 1998, and as we shall see, not all of these were without justification.

In the early 1990s, Iraq was genuinely non-compliant, in the sense of secretly continuing its biological and nuclear weapons programs. The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), established in 1990 to conduct weapons inspections, aggressively investigated every claim of illicit Iraqi weapons development, often employing espionage. As part of its enforcement of Resolution 687, UNSCOM not only investigated possible biological and chemical weapons development, but any missile development, as Iraq was forbidden to produce missiles with a range over 150 km. Nuclear inspections were conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iraq denied the continued existence of its nuclear weapons program until October 1991, when the discovery of enrichment and reprocessing-related equipment forced Iraqi admission that a weapons program existed. The IAEA began destruction of all material components of Iraq’s nuclear program immediately, and effectively dismantled the program by November 1992. In its 1997 progress report, the IAEA found there are no indications of Iraq having retained any physical capability for the indigenous production of weapon-usable nuclear material in amounts of any practical significance (as reported to the UN Security Council on 27 July 1998), with any remaining materials having been unilaterally destroyed by Iraq. At the peak of its program in April 1991, Iraq was close to success in producing highly enriched uranium, yet it never produced more than a few grams of weapons-grade material nor was it able to obtain such material from other sources. This rudimentary program, defunct for well over a decade, was the basis of President Bush’s scaremongering invocation of mushroom clouds in the leadup to the 2003 invasion.

Iraq’s biological weapons program was much more substantial than its nuclear program, and may have continued a few years longer. Iraq nominally accepted inspections in April 1991, but they obstructed UNSCOM on several occasions, most notably in July 1992, when inspectors were denied entry into the agricultural ministry and assaulted by a mob of demonstrators. Early setbacks like this encouraged Rolf Ekeus, director of UNSCOM, to pursue increasingly sophisticated and aggressive surveillance measures. In September 1991, Scott Ritter was brought into UNSCOM to help create an Information Assessment Unit, which would collect photographs from U-2 spy planes and have them analyzed by experts. The line between inspections and espionage was erased, as CIA experts were employed by UNSCOM, as was Israeli intelligence. In fact, according to Ritter, UNSCOM became heavily dependent on Israeli information from 1995 to 1997. This dependence was kept secret, as the Arab world would have been outraged to learn that the UN was relying on the accusations of their archenemy as a basis for weapons inspections. It was probably naive of UNSCOM to trust the Israelis, who clearly had a selfish interest in prolonging the sanctions, and had a long track record of double-dealing, going back to the Suez crisis and their own covert nuclear program. With U.S. help, UNSCOM was able to intercept and decode encrypted Iraqi radio transmissions, and employed virtually every type of surveillance bug used by the NSA. In short, the Iraqis were right: UNSCOM was spying on Iraq, in a very intrusive, thorough, and technologically sophisticated way.

While UNSCOM’s espionage program might be justified if its use were restricted to identifying illicit weapons programs, the CIA was conducting its own spying missions through UNSCOM. This created conflicts of interests for Americans in the commission, as Ritter felt it was his duty as a patriot not to reveal the specifics of these activities. The love of country, it seems, is a strange love that demands lies and deception for the sake of honor. Mr. Ritter’s patriotism remaining unblemished, we may nonetheless deduce that the CIA was using the intelligence on Iraq to help orchestrate the failed coup of 1997. The Iraqi government had penetrated the coup plot at an early stage, which is why they were able to make accusations of U.S. espionage with such certitude. Americans in UNSCOM were further conflicted by their government’s insistence that the CIA should have control over any foreign intelligence interactions involving a U.S. citizen. Thus, if an American member of UNSCOM was interacting with British intelligence, the CIA needed to be involved. Thus, all U.S. members of UNSCOM would be effectively agents for the CIA.

Before all this espionage would come to a head in 1997, UNSCOM did accomplish some important work with regard to Iraqi disarmament. Half of Iraq’s chemical munitions had already been destroyed by the Gulf War bombing or by the Iraqis themselves shortly after the war. As Iraq’s chemical weapons were an open secret since the 1980s, the Iraqis immediately acknowledged the existence of this program, and destroyed the remaining munitions under UNSCOM supervision from 1992 to 1994. Most of this was mustard gas (600 tons), which was of good quality and could have lasted for years. The much more deadly nerve gas existed in relatively small quantities (30 tons of tabun and 70 tons of sarin), and were of such poor quality that they would have degraded shortly anyway. Iraq’s developmental VX nerve agent was abandoned after 1988, having never existed in large quantities (less than half a ton), though there were several hundred tons of chemical precursors, also destroyed.

Though the Iraqi chemical program was unilaterally dismantled starting immediately after the Gulf War, Hussein’s regime continued the development and production of biological weapons for a brief period after UN inspections were in place. Biological weapons did not require industrial scale facilities, and they were easier to produce since they could simply be grown, making it more feasible for this weapons program to continue covertly. Despite these advantages, the biological weapons program was identified by UNSCOM’s intelligence arm by 1995, around the same time Gen. Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law, defected from Iraq. Contrary to depictions by the U.S. government, Kamel did not provide evidence that the Iraqi biological weapons program was still in existence. Rather, he explicitly stated that all agents and weapons were destroyed in response to UNSCOM’s effective inspections in the early 1990s. All centrifuges, chemical and biological munitions, and long range missiles were destroyed, though blueprints and molds remained, as the regime harbored intentions of eventually reviving some of the programs. Kamel stated his reason for defecting was to disclose all of Iraq’s past weapons programs so that the sanctions might end and Iraq could move forward. The U.S. had no interest in Iraq moving forward, however, and no interest in the truth of Kamel’s revelations becoming known. The world needed to be frightened into accepting the American objective of crippling and toppling the Iraqi regime, regardless of whether they disarmed. Glimpses of this disingenuous game appeared in 1997 and 1998.

9. Dropping the Mask: The Policy of Regime Change

By now, it should be clear that the principal objective of the United States and its closest allies was not simply to remove the threat of non-conventional weapons, but to eliminate Iraq even as a conventional military or economic power. This objective was part of a broader Anglo-American policy of keeping the Arab world fragmented, so no single regime could control the majority of the world’s petroleum, nor could the Arab world ever constitute a geopolitical power to rival the West, or even Israel for that matter. As international support for continuing the sanctions began to wane in the late 1990s, the American objective of toppling the Ba’ath regime acquired greater prominence.

On 26 March 1997, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivered a scathing speech detailing Iraq’s past non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, and its current refusal to fully cooperate with UNSCOM inspections. She referred to the new oil-for-food program established in 1995 as an experiment that was unrelated to any possible lifting of the sanctions. While admitting that great progress had been made in the disarmament of Iraq, she was unconvinced that all unconventional weapons had been destroyed, and warned that the lifting of sanctions and ending of inspections would encourage Saddam to resume his earlier ambitions and restart the forbidden weapons programs. Her desire to use the sanctions as a means to weaken Iraq strategically and topple its leader was undisguised:

Meanwhile, six years of sanctions and isolation have taken their toll on the regime in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein has become by far the most divisive force in Iraq, and several coup attempts have been made. Members of his own somewhat dysfunctional family have turned against him. His inner circle of advisers has been purged repeatedly. Today, his power rests on an increasingly narrow foundation of intimidation and terror.

After candidly admitting that the sanctions were aimed at the broader goal of regime change, rather than simply prevention of military aggression and non-conventional weapons, Albright declared that this policy of containment should continue regardless of Iraq’s future compliance.

We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subject.

Is it possible to conceive of such a government under Saddam Hussein? When I was a professor, I taught that you have to consider all possibilities. As Secretary of State, I have to deal in the realm of reality and probability. And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein’s intentions will never be peaceful.

In this ill-advised statement, which was published globally, Albright revealed to the Iraqi government that no matter what they did, the sanctions would remain in place as long as they were in power. The mere presence of Saddam Hussein constituted a threat to peace, as far as the Clinton administration was concerned. This is an astonishing claim from a government that started more wars than Saddam Hussein, wreaking far more death and destruction against nations many times weaker. Albright also had the chutzpah to chastise Saddam’s aggression against Iran, while ignoring the U.S.’s prominent role in that conflict. Apart from the hypocrisy in this statement, it was also foolish to deny the Iraqi regime any incentive to comply with the weapons inspections.

Albright’s demand for regime change fell beyond the pale of international law, as the UN resolutions regarding Iraq only required compliance with weapons inspections and the abandonment of military aggression against Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. For the Clinton administration, the inspections were simply a means of perpetuating the sanctions, which is why Albright’s speech ignored the possibility of ending the sanctions but continuing inspections to ensure permanent compliance.

The American position linking the ending of sanctions to regime change undermined UNSCOM’s mission, and Iraq refused to cooperate with inspections that summer, and even fired upon surveillance helicopters. The new director of UNSCOM, the Australian Richard Butler, was willing to work much more closely and trustingly with U.S. intelligence than his Swedish predecessor. In September, an UNSCOM inspection team boldly demanded access to Saddam’s residence, the Al Hyatt palace, after receiving evidence that security staff there may have been involved in biological weapons research. Naturally, the Iraqis denied entry to the inspectors, precipitating the first major confrontation over inspections.

Iraq’s contention that presidential sites should be off-limits to inspectors was judged a flagrant breach of compliance in UN Security Council Resolution 1134, issued on 23 October. At this time, the Iraqis voiced accusations of espionage on the part of the Americans in UNSCOM, knowing that the U.S. was indeed attempting to foment a coup against the government. Indeed, in March, Secretary Albright said the U.S. would continue to support the establishment of a coherent and united Iraqi opposition. Up to their old tricks, the Americans again sought to manipulate Iraqi politics, squeezing the regime out of power with the pressure of sanctions, making them just as cynically culpable for Iraqi suffering as the Ba’athists.

Iraq continued to cooperate with UNSCOM with regard to the destruction of chemical weapons and related equipment, yet the government insisted that all U.S. citizens working for UNSCOM should leave the country, and claimed the right to shoot down American U2 spy planes. On 30 October and 2 November, Iraq denied entry to two American UNSCOM officials, resulting in condemnation by the Security Council on 12 November (Resolution 1137).

The U.S. sought the use of military force against Iraq, but was opposed by a Security Council coalition of Russia, China, and France, forged by the Russian Foreign Minister Evgenii Primakov. By 20 November, the Russians persuaded Saddam to allow inspectors back into the country, in exchange for the promise that Russia would work to remove the sanctions. From this point onward, the sanctions issue would divide the Security Council between the belligerent Anglo-American axis, seeking regime change no matter what, and the Russian-Chinese-French coalition, motivated in no small part by economic self-interest. The Russians would especially benefit from the lifting of sanctions, so Iraq could pay its $7 billion debt to Russia and purchase Russian armaments, as well as allow Russian companies to develop oil and gas projects.

Despite the efforts of Russian diplomacy, the Iraqis remained uncompromising in their opposition to the inspection of presidential palaces. UNSCOM Director Richard Butler failed to reach an agreement with the Iraqis in December, and in January 1998 the Iraqis added the further demand that Scott Ritter’s team be permanently banned from Iraq, openly accusing Ritter of being a U.S. spy. Ritter has since openly, even proudly, acknowledged cooperating with the CIA in spying on the Iraqi government, at a time when the Clinton administration was plotting an insurrection. His patriotism was ill-rewarded, as the Clinton administration would soon turn against him and make him a scapegoat.

In late January, things became strange and downright Clintonian. With the breaking of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton threatened military action against Iraq. In Ritter’s view:

The U.S. wasn’t a big supporter of UNSCOM to begin with, at that point in time; we were merely a means of implementing the continuation of sanctions. So, suddenly, you had to fall in love with UNSCOM all over again, and decide that you were willing to go to war for the inspection process.

Albright had already indicated the previous year that the U.S., contrary to its international mandate, sought sanctions against Iraq regardless of whether it disarmed. On 26 January, the same day Clinton issued his infamous denial about relations with that woman, the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC) sent a letter to the President, urging that the U.S. pursue a policy of regime change in Iraq even if inspections resume. Among the signatories to the letter were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad, who would all have roles to play in a later Iraq adventure. Days later, Secretary Albright was sent to Europe to defend the U.S. position on the use of military force. While the Clinton administration had already committed to extending the sanctions no matter what, using disarmament inspections as an excuse, it is probable that the domestic scandal added pressure to act quickly.

Since the Clinton administration and other advocates of regime change did not respect or understand the weapons inspection process that they deemed ineffective, they did not accurately represent the threat level Iraq posed, which was actually known to the weapons inspectors. According to Ritter, Iraq had seed stock to reconstitute a biological weapons program, but their weapons factories had been destroyed by UNSCOM. Scaremongering by Defense Secretary William Cohen holding up a bag of anthrax (a scene that would be repeated in the run-up to the second Iraq war) was not based on Iraq’s real capability. In Ritter’s words, Yeah, there’s a handful of Special Security Organization guys, running around with briefcases that have plans and ideas for larger activity. Iraq’s not clean, in any sense of the word. But there’s not this great factory. Without industrial facilities, Iraq’s weapons plans posed no immediate threat. By devaluing how effective the weapons inspections had been so far, the administration was able to greatly exaggerate the danger.

In a major miscalculation, the Clinton administration arranged a televised town hall meeting at Ohio State University on 18 February, where Secretary of State Albright, Defense Secretary Cohen, and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger fielded questions from students and faculty. The meeting soon became hostile, with heckling, chanting, and pointed questions and accusations coming from the audience. Broadcast on CNN in anticipation of Saddam Hussein’s viewing habits, this attempt to show American solidarity in fact revealed deep divisions over the threatened war, and even over the sanctions themselves. Attempts by Albright and Cohen to spin the disaster as evidence of our vibrant, free democracy rang hollow, especially as the administration disregarded the concerns of dissenters. It is a common rhetorical tactic to use the existence of an opposition to boast of a free society, while hypocritically ensuring that the opposition has no real political influence. Americans apparently should be proud that they can speak against their government, even if it has no effect on policy. Freedom of speech is a way to appease the masses so the real powers can proceed as they would anyway.

Nonetheless, the unexpected show of opposition may have forced the Clinton administration to give diplomacy another hard look. Two days later, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1153, doubling the oil-for-food cap to $5.256 billion. On 23 February, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi government, in which the latter agreed to comply with UNSCOM and IAEA inspections. This agreement was endorsed by the Security Council on 2 March in Resolution 1154. Since Iraq would agree to inspection of the eight disputed presidential sites, the pretext for war was eliminated.

10. Caught Redhanded: Subversion of UNSCOM by U.S. Espionage

As Iraq finally agreed to admit inspectors to presidential sites, the U.S. took advantage by secretly taking control of UNSCOM’s intelligence operations, effectively turning the commission into a tool of U.S. espionage. While UNSCOM had long cooperated with U.S. intelligence, which provided U-2 surveillance data since 1992, now the U.S. used inspection teams to penetrate Saddam’s security forces, providing information that would later be used for military targeting. The UN disarmament commission was subverted to further the U.S. policy of regime change.

UNSCOM had crossed the line from inspections into espionage years earlier. Beginning in 1995, Israel provided inspectors scanning and recording equipment to intercept short range Iraqi radio communications, which evaded satellite and aerial reconnaissance. Inspectors carried surveillance devices in their backpacks, and conversations were deciphered by British intelligence specialists. Beginning in 1996, at the request of UNSCOM Director Rolf Ekeus, the U.S. provided sophisticated surveillance devices designed by the CIA and NSA's Special Collection Service, a secret organization created in the late 1970s. By September, Ekeus complained that U.S. had been consistently withholding data from UNSCOM, a sure sign this data was collected for purposes other than weapons inspections. In 1997, new UNSCOM Director Richard Butler adopted a more trusting attitude toward the United States, which would lead to the domination of UNSCOM by U.S. intelligence.

In March 1998, DIA agents posing as UNSCOM operatives planted newly designed surveillance devices in Baghdad. These devices could transmit intercepted signals directly to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, eliminating the need for inspectors to act as spies. A supercomputer would search for key words in order to identify conversations of potential interest, greatly reducing deciphering time. With this new system, the U.S. had full control over all data collection and distribution. The U.S. stopped issuing intelligence reports to Scott Ritter’s team, reserving these for only the most senior UN personnel. Now that the U.S. was the gatekeeper of all data, UNSCOM was only allowed to use international personnel with U.S. security clearance to work with surveillance equipment or data. The U.S. had effectively taken ownership of UNSCOM’s espionage operations.

U.S. orchestration of UNSCOM’s espionage was at times not only indifferent to the cause of weapons inspection, but hostile to it. Inspectors on the field such as Scott Ritter were denied access to intelligence reports, though the surveillance was supposedly being conducted for the benefit of weapons inspections. The U.S repeatedly urged UNSCOM to abort inspections that met Iraqi protests or were likely to result in a confrontation. Ritter viewed this as capitulation to the Iraqis, but it is also possible that the U.S. viewed confrontational inspections as jeopardizing their intelligence gathering operations.

By the summer of 1998, it was clear that the U.S. was not concerned with weapons inspections, but with a massive espionage campaign. Ritter recalls an Australian collection specialist who suspected he was being used as part of a spy campaign.

In early August, when I went to Baghdad, he pulled me aside and told me he had concerns about what was transpiring. He said there was a very high volume of data, and that he was getting no feedback about whether it was good, bad, or useful. He said that it was his experience that this was a massive intelligence collection operation—one that was not in accordance with what UNSCOM was supposed to be doing.

In early August, Tariq Aziz insisted that the inspections must end, and Iraq should be declared free of weapons of mass destruction. There was dishonesty on both sides, as Iraq certainly intended to resume developing such weapons at the earliest opportunity, while the weapons inspections were increasingly subverted to facilitating American espionage aimed at regime change. On 5 August, Iraq suspended cooperation with UNSCOM, on the grounds that the agency was spying for the Americans. Though Iraqi motives were disingenuous, the accusation was entirely correct.

Clinton again threatened war with Iraq in August, and again the timing was questionable, coming immediately after his admission that he had lied about the Lewinsky affair. At the same time, he ordered cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan in response to the East Africa embassy bombings committed by terrorists earlier that month. The unusually aggressive response appeared to be a distraction from the president’s domestic problems, so that the Arab press disdainfully spoke of the Monica missiles. Such cynicism seemed reinforced by the revelation that the Sudanese target bombed by Americans was an innocent pharmaceutical factory. Naturally, the U.S. government conducted these attacks without regard for the sovereignty of Sudan or Afghanistan and without a declaration of war.

Ritter resigned from UNSCOM in late August 1998, in response to requests that he desist from confrontational inspections. Little did he know, at the time, that his team was actually being used for espionage, so he thought that the undercutting of his mission was a capitulation to the Iraqis. The administration attempted to discredit Ritter by accusing him of being an Israeli spy.

As the U.S. accused Iraq of having chemical weapons in some of its destroyed warheads, Iraq cancelled all UNSCOM inspections on 31 October. On 13 November, Clinton ordered an air strike against Iraq, but cancelled it as Iraq agreed to cooperate. When the inspection teams returned, Iraq again gave only limited cooperation, resulting in another confrontation.

On 13 December, with an impeachment vote pending, Clinton secretly authorized a military strike on Iraq. This would take place on the 16th, forcing a delay in the vote. On the 15th, Richard Butler reported Iraq’s failure to cooperate, providing a pretext for attack. Naturally, Iraq refused to comply with UNSCOM, as by now it was abundantly clear that it was a tool of American espionage. The Iraqi government openly accused UNSCOM of spying for the Americans. The U.S. government dismissed these complaints as mere propaganda, a denial about as truthful as Clinton’s January statement on the Lewinsky affair. In fact, the U.S. government was secretly doing everything in its power to use UNSCOM as a tool for covert warfare against Iraq. The data gathered would provide targets for air strikes. Inspectors withdrew from Iraq in anticipation of these strikes.

The bombing campaign, Operation Desert Fox, lasted four days (16–19 August), and resulted in Iraq’s refusal to allow UNSCOM back into the country. This suited the U.S. well, as such non-cooperation provided a pretext for continuing the sanctions, though it had the disadvantage of discontinuing the espionage.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s office leaked knowledge about U.S. spying through UNSCOM on 4 January 1999, precipitating a cascade of more detailed revelations. Within days, the Boston Globe and New York Times reported that U.S. spies had been planted on UNSCOM teams, resulting in an immediate denial by the State Department. As more details emerged, it became clear that the U.S. had arranged a system whereby Canadian, Australian, British, and New Zealand nationals with U.S. intelligence clearance would serve on UNSCOM to operate eavesdropping equipment. Thus the operation would have the appearance of an international effort when in fact the U.S. was in control. Nationals of these countries share U.S. intelligence clearance per the secret 1948 UKUSA treaty, which enables the U.S. intelligence agencies to circumvent constitutional barriers to spying on the American public.

As it became widely reported that UNSCOM had indeed spied on Iraq, and not solely for the purpose of weapons inspections, the credibility of UNSCOM was destroyed. This did not seriously affect American policy, since weapons inspections had become merely a front for espionage, as far as the administration was concerned, for they did not believe inspections could ever be effective.

Documentation of U.S. espionage through UNSCOM can be found in these references:

• Annan Suspicious of UNSCOM Role, Washington Post, 6 January 1999
• U.S. Used U.N. Team to Place Spy Device in Iraq, Aides Say, New York Times, 8 January 1999
• Bugging Saddam, Time, 18 January 1999
• A Most Unusual Collection Agency: How the U.S. undid UNSCOM through its empire of electronic surveillance, Village Voice, 24 February–2 March 1999
• Withholding the News: The Washington Post and the UNSCOM Spying Scandal, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, March/April 1999
• Spying in Iraq: From Fact to Allegation, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 24 September 2002

The UNSCOM espionage episode provides an instructive example of the systematic deception and manipulation that is routinely perpetrated by the U.S. government and major news media. The facts of this espionage were made public in 1999, being published on the front pages of the New York Times (7 January), Washington Post (2 March) and Boston Globe (6 January). The administration at first denied these reports, but ultimately, as more officials came forward, they refused to repeat these denials. So the U.S. spied on Iraq, denied that it had done so, then admitted to having spied only for the purpose of weapons inspections, and eventually officials acknowledged having gathered intelligence for the purpose of pursuing regime change. In effect, the government lied to the American people and the international community. Yet three years later, when the Bush administration was looking for an excuse for war, major American media outlets either ignored the fact that UNSCOM had spied on Iraq or referred to Iraqi allegations of spying, though the UNSCOM espionage had been presented as factual front page news by the same media sources in 1999. In a mere three years, a pliant, amnesiac populace was persuaded to forget about the fact of American spying, and could even be sold the stale propaganda that the U.S. government would never deliberately lie to the American people. Such breathtaking Orwellian reversals can only take place in a shallow culture that has no appreciation of even the most recent history, being totally immersed in the present.

The oft-repeated myth that Iraq expelled the weapons inspectors stands in disregard of two facts: (1) The inspectors actually left voluntarily, in anticipation of the American bombing campaign of December 1998. (2) Inspectors were not allowed to return because of their espionage activities, which facilitated Operation Desert Fox and American attempts to overthrow the Iraqi government. Both of these inconvenient facts are completely ignored in later mainstream narratives of the Iraqi conflict.

After the spying scandal broke in 1999, UNSCOM was disbanded by the UN and eventually replaced by the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) under Security Council Resolution 1284 (17 December 1999). Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM who almost certainly was aware of U.S. espionage despite his repeated denials, was not on the new commission. In fact, all members of UNMOVIC were employees of the United Nations, to avoid the scandalous subversion of weapons inspections to the covert operations of a member state, such as the U.S. had orchestrated. Iraq, however, would not accept Resolution 1284, and refused to admit inspectors until 2002. This suited the U.S. perfectly, as Iraqi non-compliance with weapons inspections provided an excuse to continue the sanctions and the pursuit of regime change.

11. The Amorim Report

After the fiasco of UNSCOM, which submitted its final report in January 1999, the Security Council sought to re-establish a UN presence in Iraq for disarmament. A multinational panel chaired by Brazilian Ambassador Celso L. N. Amorim convened in February and March to assess the state of Iraqi disarmament, according to data gathered by UNSCOM, the IAEA, the UN Secretariat, and other sources. The panel stated its findings in the so-called Amorim report (S/1999/356), which was issued on 27 March 1999.

Regarding Iraq’s nuclear capability, the Amorim report summarized the finding of the IAEA:

Most of the IAEA activities involving the destruction, removal and rendering harmless of the components of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme which to date have been revealed and destroyed were completed by the end of 1992. In February 1994, the IAEA completed the removal from Iraq of all weapon-usable nuclear material essentially research reactor fuel. On the basis of its findings, the Agency is able to state that there is no indication that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or any meaningful amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material or that Iraq has retained any practical capability (facilities or hardware) for the production of such material.

In 1999, Iraq had no nuclear weapons capability whatsoever. However, the panel noted that questions remain with regard to the lack of certain technical documentation, external assistance to Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme and Iraq's abandonment of its nuclear weapons programme. Iraq had not yet enacted any enforceable penal laws against nuclear weapons development.

UNSCOM was able to account for the destruction of 817 out of 819 imported missiles that exceeded the proscribed range of 150 km, as well as all mobile launchers for Al Hussein missiles. Warheads for these prohibited missiles were also largely accounted for, including all 75 declared non-conventional warheads and 163 out of 210 declared conventional warheads. UNSCOM also concluded that Iraq could not indigenously produce BADR-2000 missiles or a so-called supergun. Still, Iraq needed to account for about fifty conventional warheads, seven domestically produced missiles, and proscribed propellants claimed to have been destroyed.

UNSCOM was able to verify the destruction of massive quantities of chemical weapons, as well as associated raw materials, equipment and facilities. Still, some questions remained, including a discrepancy between Iraq’s declared consumption of chemical warheads during the eighties and an Iraqi Air Force report indicating a smaller figure. Further, 550 mustard shells were lost after the Gulf War, and Iraq did not adequately account for 500 R-400 bombs. Also, questions remained regarding the degree of weaponization that had been achieved by Iraq’s VX program prior to dismantlement.

Iraq had concealed the prior existence of its biological weapons program until evidence was uncovered by UNSCOM. Its biological weapons productions facilities had been converted to civilian use, and the Iraqis undoubtedly concealed their previous biological program in order to protect these facilities from destruction. Indeed, UNSCOM demanded that these facilities be destroyed, due to their potential for dual use. No biological weapons agent was found, but 22 tons of growth media was destroyed. As a result, the declared facilities of Iraq’s BW programme have been destroyed and rendered harmless, the Amorim report concludes.

UNSCOM did not believe that Iraq had fully disclosed the extent of its past biological weapons activities. The Amorim panel considered that the bulk of Iraq’s program was eliminated, though biological weaponry could be reproduced with relatively simple equipment as long as Iraqis retained the knowledge. Given the ease with which biological weapons could be concealed, Both UNSCOM and IAEA have therefore been adopting a pragmatic approach which assumes that 100% of verification may be an unattainable goal.

In sum, the report acknowledged that Iraq’s WMD capability had been largely destroyed, though it could not preclude the possibility of some concealment. There were several instances where items declared to have been destroyed were not adequately documented. These discrepancies would have to be resolved in order to verify Iraqi disarmament. Further, it would not be possible to verify continued Iraqi compliance without the continued presence of inspectors.

As of 1999, Iraq was hardly a formidable WMD threat, especially in comparison with nations like North Korea, known to have a much more highly developed nuclear program. The level of scrutiny to which Iraq was subjected eight years after the Gulf War was beyond all proportion to its relative threat. While Western nations chased the phantoms of Iraqi WMDs, India and Pakistan were developing nuclear weapons, and Al-Qaeda operatives were plotting the worst terrorist act on American soil. Rather than admit their failure to properly assess threats, the Americans would wreak vengeance upon Iraq for the actions of Al-Qaeda.

Continue to Part III

© 2009 Daniel J. Castellano. All rights reserved. http://www.arcaneknowledge.org