Saddam Hussein's Iraq is a place of brutal and potentially explosive social divisions. Among the country's 22 million people, a favored few have access to the most extravagant luxuries. In general, most seem blithely indifferent to others' suffering in a society where a vast majority of people have been reduced to penury by two decades of war and sanctions.
The sanctions, requiring United Nations approval for Iraq's imports of medicines and other goods, were imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and have continued until now, pending resolution of the dispute over Iraq's banned-weapons programs.
For any visitor spending a few weeks in Iraq, it is this contrast in lifestyles between Mr. Hussein's elite and other Iraqis that seems as telling a characteristic of the society as any other, besides a pervasive climate of fear with no obvious counterpart in any country, except possibly North Korea.
In this atmosphere of dread, with Iraqis forever terrified that their dissident thoughts will attract the attention of Mr. Hussein's secret police, the self-indulgence of those with favored positions has echoes, for an outsider, of Bob Fosse's 1972 movie "Cabaret," with its depiction of the decadence in mid-1930's Berlin that accompanied the rise of Hitler.
» Amid Brutal Poverty in Iraq, a Favored Few Enjoy Riches
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.
Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."
Iraq's biological arsenal could do the most damage if it were used to retaliate immediately against a US invasion rather than in later stages.
Although US troops are being vaccinated against anthrax and smallpox and have protective gear, a biological attack cannot be detected until after exposure.
Even if a biological attack did not kill US troops, it could still kill many civilians, slow a US advance and strain medical capabilities.
There are less costly strategies for dealing with Hussein than conducting a war. Hussein, while he may not act morally, is rational in the sense that economists and political scientists use the term. An examination of his past actions indicates that his principal need is to maintain his own physical and political survival. Using that knowledge, Washington can develop a strategy that would allow the United States to deter Hussein from taking actions detrimental to U.S. national security, without engaging him in warfare.
The key to neutralizing the Iraqi threat is to deter Hussein from aggressive action by sending a clear and credible message of commitment to protecting the United States against any challenge to its security; it is essential to communicate a willingness to massively retaliate in response to attacks against our homeland. This is crucially different from President Bush's message that overthrowing Hussein must be a top priority, regardless of his actual behavior. If Hussein believes that his political survival is being threatened, and there is nothing he can do about it, he may respond in a dangerous and unpredictable manner -- with weapons of mass destruction.
» Why the United States Should Not Attack Iraq
Removing Saddam Hussein now will definitely have dramatic and far-reaching consequences, extending far beyond Iraq. The shock waves may well imperil the rigid autocratic states such as Saudi Arabia that benefited most from the 1991 conflict.
No one should doubt Iraq's potential. With its sophisticated and well-educated population, its skilled work force and diverse economy, Iraq is like no other Arab state. Baghdad vies with Cairo as one of the traditional centres of the Arab world. And, despite being impoverished by a decade of crippling sanctions and decimated by Saddam Hussein's failed wars against both Iran and Kuwait, the Iraqi middle class represents the most fertile ground in the entire Arab world in which to nurture a broad-based civil society.
Continue Reading "Arguments For" » »A high ranking military source at NATO said that all European military reports whose information are inspired from the US agree on that the American war against Iraq will be in February.
In a statement issued yesterday by the Saudi daily al-Watan, the source said that Washington decided to transfer the headquarters of the American embassy in Tel Aviv to southern Israel in a place close to "Eilat port" before the beginning of the war against Iraq because Eilat is considered one of the secure areas which is away from the goals of the Iraqi Skud missiles, according to the experience of the Gulf war of 1991.
» Al-Watan: The American attack on Iraq and Israel
Pope John Paul, in his Christmas Day message, urged the world to avert a conflict in Iraq and appealed for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
In his appeal, his first public reference to the crisis in Iraq, the pope said believers in all religions should build peace.
Looking frail but resplendent in gold vestments, the 82-year-old Polish pontiff said they were called on "in the Middle East, to extinguish the ominous smoldering of a conflict which, with the joint efforts of all, can be avoided."
The Vatican believes that any action in Iraq must be approved by the United Nations.
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In Iraq, the country's Christian minority put on a brave face to celebrate Christmas but there was little joy.
The mood was somber as President Saddam Hussein, in a Christmas message to Iraqis, warned the drums of a U.S.-led war against Iraq were beating louder.
Some Iraqis said they were celebrating Christmas as an act of defiance.
"We celebrate Christmas and practice our normal life despite the American threats and the embargo," said a Baghdad restaurant owner.
» Pope Calls on World to Avert Conflict in Iraq
A television announcer Tuesday delivered a lengthy message from President Saddam Hussein denying Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and accusing the United States of making up lies to excuse attacking "Iraq and our peace-loving people."
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The Christmas Eve statement, which slammed the "American-Zionist campaign" against Iraq, reiterated that inspectors would find no weapons of mass destruction "as long as the inspectors conduct themselves professionally and technically -- and with no hidden agendas."
» CNN.com - Saddam blasts U.S. in Christmas message - Dec. 24, 2002
"We have told the world we are not producing these kind of weapons, but it seems that the world is drugged, absent or in a weak position," President Saddam Hussein said Sunday during talks with visiting Belarus envoy Nikolai Ivanchenko.
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Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has said the Iraqi weapons declaration earlier this month leaves so many unanswered questions that it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of Iraq's claim to have no weapons of mass destruction. Blix has asked the United States and Britain to share intelligence to help inspectors determine the truth.
President Bush, pointing to what U.S. officials call fabrications and omissions in the declaration, already has declared Iraq in "material breach" of U.N. demands but has decided to hold off any military response for at least a month as the Americans seek to build U.N. support for attacking Saddam.
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On the streets, Iraqis expected war.
"Of course I'm afraid," said a 35-year-old woman shopping Sunday in Baghdad who gave only her first name, Solafa. "Most people don't know what is going on, the media are keeping people in a coma. TV doesn't broadcast the latest news, some people don't even know that there are inspectors in the country."
» Iraq Says It Doesn't Have Banned Weapons
What Nahla Mohammed remembers from that day, however, is not the sirens or the jet planes, but running into her son on the street just after she finished shopping for supper. He asked what she would fix, she recalled. Meat, vegetables and soup, she answered. He headed off, anticipating the family meal.
Ten minutes later, according to a cousin who was there, a powerful blast slammed him to the ground as metal shards sliced through his body. Mohammed Sharif Reda, a 23-year-old mechanic married just two months and planning to build a house for his family, was among four people who Iraqi officials said were killed Dec. 1 in what they call an "undeclared war" being waged here in southern Iraq.
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The attack on Dec. 1 destroyed a pair of large vehicles parked in an oil company courtyard in the center of Basra, the country's second-largest city, located near the Kuwaiti border. U.S. military spokesmen said they hit an air defense facility, not an oil company, and in any case never deliberately attack civilian targets. But something obliterated the vehicles here and everyone questioned believes it was the Americans.
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"Not many people realize that a war has been going on for the last several years in the no-fly zone," said Gen. Amir Saadi, a top Hussein adviser. "The very people that Britain and the United States claim to be protecting, they're killing them, maiming them, depriving them of their normal livelihood and also destroying the infrastructure which is there to serve them."
» Casualties of an 'Undeclared War'
Iraq, which has been trying to improve ties with its Gulf War foe Kuwait, promised on Saturday to return another batch of Kuwaiti property.
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The Foreign Ministry statement said Iraqi customs authorities had recently seized the property, comprising four paintings and seven gifts from foreign dignitaries to the Kuwaiti ruling family, along with museum items.
It did not say where the items had been found.
Iraq has previously returned much of the property it took from Kuwait during its 1990-91 occupation, including gold, museum pieces, military equipment and civil and military aircraft, as required by the Gulf War cease-fire terms.
» Iraq Says to Return More Kuwaiti Property
"You'd have to be insane to use such an unpredictable, dangerous weapon when you can (destroy Iraqi forces) with plain old, garden-variety precision weapons," said Edward Luttwak, a nuclear-strategy expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.
"Any attack by an enemy using weapons of mass destruction would have to be very perverse" in order to justify a nuclear response, Luttwak continued. "Conventional weapons would be much more effective anyway."
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Currently, most nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal are decades old and not fitted with the accurate precision guidance systems that most conventional bombs and missiles have, analysts noted. In the event of a war with Iraq, it is believed that about 80 percent of the U.S. bombs and missiles aimed at Iraqi targets would be satellite- or laser-guided smart bombs, as opposed to the roughly 20 percent used during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
» U.S. unlikely to use nukes against Iraq
Iraq has agreed to hold talks with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia next month to discuss the fate of hundreds of people who disappeared during the Gulf War.
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Kuwait says more than 600 people, almost all of them Kuwaitis, are still unaccounted for since the Iraqi occupation in 1990-91.
Iraq denies it is holding them.
But it boycotted talks on the issue following US and British air raids on its territory in 1998.
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Iraq says about 1,000 of its citizens are being held illegally in Kuwait - a claim Kuwait denies.
Red Cross officials who have inspected Kuwaiti prisons have found only 40 Iraqis, all common criminals.
» Iraq to discuss missing Kuwaitis
That foreign companies helped Iraq has long been known, and some of them have been identified before, but the Iraqi accounting adds up to the most exhaustive list so far of companies involved.
Iraq's report says the equipment was either sold or made by more than 30 German companies, 10 American companies, 11 British companies and a handful of Swiss, Japanese, Italian, French, Swedish and Brazilian firms. It says more than 30 countries supplied its nuclear program.
It details nuclear efforts from the early 1980s to the Gulf War and contains diagrams, plans and test results in uranium enrichment, detonation, implosion testing and warhead construction.
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Most of the sales were legal and often made with the knowledge of governments. In 1985-90, the U.S. Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses. Iraq was then getting Western support for its war against Iran, which at the time was regarded as the main threat to stability in the oil-rich Gulf region.
But inspectors have discovered over the years that Iraq often obtained supplies through middlemen or by lying to companies about the products' intended use.
» Iraq Used Many Suppliers for Nuke Program
US Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement that "there are problems with the Iraqi declaration" on its weapons programmes might be compared to the call from astronaut on Apollo 13.
When an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 blew up mid-way to the moon in 1970 Jim Lovell said: "OK Houston, we have a problem."
Both were understated. Both were serious.
The "problems" over the declaration could relate to material unaccounted for when the weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998.
Explaining what happened to it was the first test laid down by the US and Britain for the truthfulness of the Iraqi inventory.
When Iraq handed over the declaration on 7 December, in fact, it said worryingly that there was nothing new to say about this material.
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It was made up of 300 tonnes of chemical warfare agents, including 1.5 tonnes of VX, 3000 tonnes of chemical precursors, growth medium for 20,000 litres of biological warfare agents and tens of thousands of shells and bombs for use in chemical and biological war.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz branded President Bush a hypocrite on Sunday for pursuing war and predicted there would be "a great amount" of American casualties should the United States invade his country.
Appearing on the "Fox News Sunday" program, Aziz said Bush was "driving America to a hostile imperialist policy" that was dangerous both for the United States and the world.
"He's a hypocrite because a true Christian would not be a war monger, would not push for the destruction of a country and its people," Aziz said.
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"America will face strong resistance in Iraq. There will be a great amount of casualties among Americans," he said.
"Don't fool yourself. The Iraqis are not going to receive the Americans with flowers. The Iraqis are going to receive the Americans with bullets."
If there is an invasion, he added, "We will fight it very capably and fiercely."
» Iraq's Aziz Brands Bush a 'Hypocrite' (washingtonpost.com)
Iraqi opposition groups meeting in London have appealed for foreign help to depose Saddam Hussein and urged the creation of a democratic state if the regime were toppled.
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Many delegates said they agreed with Mr Chalabi, supporting the prospect of a US-led attack on the country.
However, correspondents covering the event say despite the apparent show of unity, it is likely to prove extremely difficult for the traditionally fractious group to come up with a blueprint for an alternative Iraqi Government.
But failure to start formulating a plan, could rob them of a chance to play a meaningful role in any Iraq administration should Saddam Hussein fall.
» Saddam opponents seek foreign help
U.S. actor and director Sean Penn, starting a three-day visit to Baghdad, said Friday he wanted more insight into "this frightening conflict."
The former Hollywood bad boy and Oscar nominee, who paid for a $56,000 advertisement in the Washington Post in October accusing President Bush of stifling debate over Iraq, was to visit a Baghdad hospital later in the day.
"As a father, an actor, a film-maker and patriot, my visit to Iraq is for me a natural extension of my obligation...to find my own voice on matters of conscience," Penn, once married to pop diva Madonna, said in a statement issued by the Institute of Public Accuracy.
» Sean Penn, Critical of Bush, Visits Baghdad
Saddam's white, pocket-sized pamphlet is filled with words of wisdom such as:
- Don't be attracted to easy paths because the paths that make your feet bleed are the only way to get ahead in life;
- Keep your eyes on your enemy and be faster than him;
- Keep people's secrets and don't tell them to others or use them against them;
Earlier this year the Iraqi information ministry brought out Saddam Hussein: Great Lessons, Commandments to Strugglers, The Patient And Holy Warriors.
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Selections from the 57 commandments have been painted on school walls, carved on statues, printed in Iraqi newspapers, splashed across billboards, placed on the walls in government offices and printed in Iraqi newspapers - all of which are controlled by the state, Saddam's Baath party or his son.
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If Saddam is seeking advice as the standoff intensifies, he might turn to page 11 of his pamphlet: "Don't provoke a snake unless you have the intention and power to cut off its head."
» 'Saddam says' book paves way to good life
Iraqi exile Ahmed al-Haboubi's credentials as an opponent of Saddam Hussein are solid - he's seen the Iraqi president's brutality from inside an interrogation cell.
But al-Haboubi, a former minister in the government overthrown by Saddam Hussein's Baath party, has no plans to participate in a U.S.-backed conference of major Iraqi opposition groups to be held this week in London.
"This is an American conference with an American agenda to serve American interests and objectives," al-Haboubi said. "Regime change should be done by Iraqis and for Iraqis."
Continue Reading "Small Potatoes" » »THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological wea pons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defence Dep-artment documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
» How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them
The declaration makes one mention of a bomb, referring to a "terminated radiation bomb project" in a section dealing with chemical weapons.
It also gives details of techniques used in the development of nuclear weapons - the kind of sensitive material the five nuclear powers on the UN Security Council did not want exposed to non-nuclear countries.
Experts from the UK, US, France, Russia and China are censoring potentially dangerous sections of the dossier before releasing a working version for wider distribution among the other members of the Security Council.
» Iraq dossier: First breakdown
"Iraq's past declarations were not accepted as a full account of the scale and the scope of Iraq's (biological weapons) program," the inspectors wrote.
Saadi, however, said Sunday that the Iraqi government was unable to find any documents about the destruction beyond those it already had turned over to the United Nations over the past decade.
"Those documents have not been increased, not by a single document," he said at a news conference. "We have done all researching we could, and we could not find any more."
The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, recently expressed doubt about Iraq's claims not to have more thorough evidence. "The production of mustard gas is not like marmalade," he said on a trip to Baghdad last month. "You have to keep some records."
Some Canadians already have left for Iraq to serve as human shields against bomb attacks on Baghdad. More will follow before Christmas.
Irene Vandas and Jennifer Ziemann of Vancouver are heading to Iraq on Friday. Vandas, a 32-year-old registered nurse, and Ziemann, a 30-year-old home-care worker, will fly to Amsterdam, board a plane to Amman, Jordan, then drive into Iraq all the way to Baghdad where they will live with Iraqi civilians. There, they will join friends Linda Morgan and Irene MacInnes, two Canadians who travelled to Iraq in mid-November.
The four Canadians, sponsored by an anti-war organization called Voices in the Wilderness, have volunteered to be human shields in an effort to dissuade American-led forces from attacking Iraq.
» Canadians go to Baghdad as 'human shields'
I'm convinced someone may die soon in one of these insane car chases - forget weapons of mass destruction, the real threat to human life here are the Baghdad Wacky Races, or should I call them the demolition derbies?
Because occasionally, a hapless, dazed Iraqi motorist gets caught up in the frenzied rush of dozens of four wheel drives, his car simply shunted off to the side of the road.
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Dimitry Perricos, the senior inspector of the biological and chemical weapons team, picked up a jar.
"What's this?" he asked, suspiciously. "Marmalade", he was told.
Inevitably the press corps cracked jokes about it - we'd heard of mustard gas, we said, but perhaps the dear old Iraqis have come up with a new weapon of mass destruction - marmalade gas.
It all seemed slightly surreal. We wondered if this really is the way you're going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - going from room to room, cupboard to cupboard, fridge to fridge.
We could be chasing after the inspectors for a very long time to come.
The Iraqi officials were outraged with the inspection of the palace - one of their so-called "sensitive" sites. For the inspectors, the honeymoon was now over.
» Surreal search for Iraq's weapons
Although the Pentagon has said that President Bush has made no decision on whether to attack Iraq, the United States has been building up forces in the region as it presses accusations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
"Exercise Internal Look" is a classified war game involving 1,000 Centcom personnel in Qatar plus several thousand more at the Command's permanent Florida HQ and other Gulf bases.
» U.S. General Arrives in Gulf for War Game Near Iraq
Indict said the Iraqi leader's son once made a group of track athletes crawl on newly poured asphalt while they were beaten and ordered that some be thrown off a bridge. It also alleged he ran a special prison for athletes who offended him.
"The Iraqi committee is the only Olympic committee in the world with its own prison and torture chamber," said Ann Clwyd, a British lawmaker who also is chairwoman of Indict. "To allow (it) to participate in the Olympic movement is to mock all of the Olympics' high principles."
Iraq was investigated in 1997 by FIFA, the international soccer governing body, following allegations that members of the Iraqi national team were tortured because they lost a key match.
» CNN.com - Group accuses Iraq of torturing athletes - Dec. 5, 2002
Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thank you for watching us tonight.
The real story about President Bush and Saddam Hussein, that's the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo
They will never say it, but the Bush administration wants a war with Iraq. The president and his key advisers believe removing Saddam Hussein from power is vital, weapons found or no weapons found.
Iraq branded US President George W. Bush a "bad man" Tuesday and accused him of damaging international relations.
Bush was "trying to put international relations on an unhealthy basis," said a commentary from the official INA news agency in reaction to a speech from the US leader on Monday.
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INA said the remarks were "strange", adding that "Bush, the bad man, has put Iraq among the gang of outlawed countries because Baghdad refuses to accept the logic of aerial exclusion (zones) imposed by the United States and Britain which have no UN mandate."
The official commentary was echoed by Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, who charged: "The US administration is inventing pretexts to lead an assault on Iraq.
"Iraq's complete cooperation with UN disarmament inspectors is intended to refute the US and British lies about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction," INA quoted him as saying during a reception for a visiting delegation of Canadian MPs.
» Baghdad blasts "bad man" Bush
A dossier of human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by the Iraqi regime, including torture and rape, has been released by the UK Government.
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The human rights dossier, released earlier on Monday, contains graphic first-hand accounts by Iraqi victims of torture, with methods including eye gouging, piercing of hands with drills and acid baths.
It accuses Saddam Hussein of introducing severe penalties like cutting off ears and tongue amputation for criminal offences and speaking out against him.
Women are allegedly raped, tortured and summarily executed. Prisoners at one jail are said to have been kept in steel boxes like those found in mortuaries with only half an hour a day allowed for light and air.
The dossier says Iraq "is a terrifying place to live" with "fear Saddam's chosen method for staying in power".
» UK unveils Iraq 'torture' dossier
It is hard to imagine that inside an innocuous cluster of buildings in the Austrian countryside scientists might find something worthy of igniting a war in Iraq.
But that is exactly the power the U.N. forensic laboratories located a half hour's drive from the Austrian capital will hold when samples collected by weapons inspectors begin arriving from Baghdad next week.
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The scientists at the lab are well aware that their work could be the trigger for a war against Iraq.
The Iraqis are to provide a full and truthful declaration of any nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic weapons programs by December 8. If they fail to meet this demand, Washington is expected to lead a coalition to forcefully disarm and topple Saddam Hussein.
IAEA lab director Gabriele Voigt said she feels the weight of responsibility that their findings could spark a bloody war thousands of miles away from peaceful Seibersdorf. That is why the lab must provide proof that is incontrovertible.
"All we can do is provide good data," she told Reuters. "And if we find something we have to report it."
» Iraq's Fate Lies in Hands of U.N. Nuclear Lab