[infowar.de] Nachtrag: "same old trap" LDT 04.10.02: War or humiliation - the choice for Saddam

[Georg Schoefbaenker <schoefbaenker -! - aon - at>]

Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/10/04/wirq104.xml&site=5 


War or humiliation - the choice for Saddam
By Anton La Guardia
(Filed: 04/10/2002)

The terms that America and Britain want to impose on Iraq are so stringent 
that Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, could end up 
wielding more power than Saddam Hussein himself.

The new conditions, if endorsed, present Saddam with a stark choice: reject 
them and so bring down military action or accept them and submit to a 
virtual colonisation of Iraq by the UN, with the constant threat of a 
full-scale invasion.

Under the proposed Security Council resolution jointly drafted by 
Washington and London, the UN inspectors would be able to enter any site, 
including Saddam's own bedroom, in their quest for weapons, components and, 
crucially, incriminating documents.

They would be able to examine any files, including those of the secret 
police. The inspectors would be able to bring out of the country any Iraqi 
whom they wished to interview, as well as their families, to stop them 
being intimidated by the Iraqi government.

To ensure their authority and security, the inspectors would be accompanied 
by armed guards and have the power to impose "no-fly" and "no-drive" zones 
around any site they wanted to visit.

They would be able to establish their own road and air corridors.

Any violation of these conditions - or indeed any false declaration by Iraq 
about its weapons programme - would allow countries to take "all necessary 
means", the diplomatic code for military action.

Such conditions would be humiliating for any leader. For a dictator such as 
Saddam, they could be fatal.

His status would be transformed from that of all-powerful emperor to that 
of a common criminal on probation: his imposing palaces would be violated 
by foreigners, his secret police subjected to UN interrogators and his 
armed forces confined to barracks without their most fearsome weapons.

Saddam's power is based on maintaining an aura of invincibility and 
terrorising his population with the tools of a totalitarian state. Exposing 
himself as a weakling could destroy a regime based on fear.

If the UN tries to water down the conditions the US will accuse the world 
body of proving that it is "irrelevant". Washington will then feel free to 
take unilateral action.

If the UN Security Council agrees to incorporate the bulk of the conditions 
in a new resolution, there is a good chance that Saddam will reject them. 
Washington would have a ready-made case for war.

If Saddam concedes in order to buy time, the conditions are so tight that 
he is bound to violate them sooner or later, giving America the casus belli 
it needs.

Finally, in the unlikely event that Saddam really does abide by the new 
terms and allows himself to be disarmed, his regime will have been 
irredeemably changed.

Saddam's authority may be so undermined that he is toppled from within. 
Even if he survives, he would be so tightly contained that he no longer 
poses a major threat; Saddam would not be the same.

Will he accept a public humiliation, or will he stand and fight now? Nobody 
knows. But if Washington has calculated correctly, he will be able only to 
delay his final demise, not prevent it.



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