Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

THE TORONTO SUN
Sunday, April 13, 2003
COMMENT
by LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/goldstein_apr13.html

In recent days, there has been an obvious attempt by some supporters of the war against Iraq to start downplaying the importance of coalition forces finding Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

It's coming out in various ways from the military, the Bush administration and the media. Among the reasons offered for why coalition forces have yet to find any WMDs almost a month into the war - after a number of false alarms - are:

* Iraq's chemical and biological weapons (few seriously believed Saddam had a nuclear capability by the time the war started) secretly may have been shipped to Syria.

* Saddam had 12 years to hide these weapons and it will take time and the co-operation of Iraqi informants to find them.

* With isolated pockets of resistance, looting, etc., still going on, the coalition's priority is to secure the peace. Finding WMDs will come later, and could take weeks or months.

* Finally, some, perhaps worried the coalition will not find any WMDs, have started trying to shift the purpose of this war - after the fact - to the liberation of the Iraqi people.

They argue that freeing Iraqis from the nightmare regime of Saddam was enough in and of itself to justify this war.

Well, they're wrong. That argument would be fine if freeing Iraqis had been the primary reason offered by George Bush and Tony Blair for embarking on their pre-emptive strike against Iraq, without UN Security Council approval.

But it wasn't. They may have dubbed it "Operation Iraqi Freedom," but the primary reason they gave for war - as did U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who went before the Security Council with what he described as incontrovertible evidence of Saddam's weapons program - was that these weapons had to be found and destroyed before Saddam could hand them over to terrorists.

As someone who has backed this war from the start, it's clear to me that unless the U.S.-led coalition finds evidence of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, the moral basis for fighting this war - which was essentially self-defence - will have been fatally undermined.

Liberating Iraqis is a welcome byproduct of the conflict. But what morally justified a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, even without UN approval, was the legitimate fear America had - post 9/11 - that the next logical step in the escalation of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists against the West would be a strike by these terrorists, armed with WMDs.

Rogue state

And that the most likely source of those weapons was Iraq - a rogue state led by a psychopath who had used them in the past against both his enemies and his own people, and who openly supported and encouraged both terrorists and terrorism of the Palestinian, if not the al-Qaida, variety.

It's fair for the Bush and Blair administrations to argue that finding these weapons and the facilities that produced them may take considerable time. As UN weapons inspectors already know, finding WMDs is a tough, complex job.

But once coalition forces have control of the country - and are able to induce Iraqi scientists, informers and military insiders to tell what they know via the carrot and stick approach (rewards and prison) - they must find Iraq's WMDs and the factories which produced them.

Presuming Iraq has them, that is. Cynics will, of course, argue that even if Iraq has no WMDs now, as Saddam claimed, the Americans and Brits will find them anyway. In other words, the coalition will manufacture evidence if none exists.

But in fairness, that flies in the face of what has happened since the start of this war. Each time coalition forces, who are, after all, soldiers and not scientists, have reported a suspected chemical or biological weapons find, it has been the U.S. administration itself that has shot it down within the next few days, following further investigation and testing.

There certainly has been circumstantial evidence that Iraq possesses WMDs - the uncovering of hundreds of chemical suits, gas masks and nerve gas antidotes, for example, along with chemical decontamination vehicles and other decontamination equipment. But there has been no smoking gun.

Nor did Saddam's forces use WMDs against coalition troops during their advance on Baghdad, as many feared.

Ideological thinkers always try to make the facts conform to their point of view, no matter what the reality on the ground.

We saw a classic example of that last week when liberal, left-wing and anti-U.S. pundits desperately tried to change the subject to anything other than those unforgettable images of Iraqis wildly celebrating as they finally realized Saddam's fingers had been pried from around their throats, and greeted the U.S. (and British) soldiers as liberators. Exactly as Bush predicted they would, much to the left's chagrin.

Nor did the anti-war crowd want to admit U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's military strategy of a lightning strike into Baghdad had, in fact, worked - despite their dire predictions that it would lead America into another Vietnam.

Still, two wrongs don't make a right. Those who supported this war should be at the forefront in demanding the U.S.-led coalition produce - in due course - verifiable evidence of Iraq's WMDs - the weapons it said were the primary reason for invading Iraq.

Without that evidence, this war cannot be justified - even if history is written by the victors.

Lorrie can be reached at (416) 947-2212, by fax at (416) 947-3228 or by e-mail at lorrie.goldstein@tor.sunpub.com.

Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.

Page created April 14, 2003 by Charlie Jenks