Iraq agrees to weapon inspections...

I guess this means we won't be going to war as we really have no reason to go at it now. God, I hope it works out.


Don't be so sure. This is exactly what Bush and the US didn't want. The administration has come out a couple of times and said weapons inspections aren't good enough.

I understand the logic and don't necessarily disagree, but this makes it much harder to justify any sort of invasion or regime-change, which is what the administration is aiming for, I believe.

 

I don't know what prompted me to say this now, but....




weapons inspections are the biggest joke in the world.

I don't know who they make feel better, but it sure as hell ain't me.

 

Iraq ok's inspections

from MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/805226.asp

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 16 — U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced Monday evening that Iraq had agreed to accept a new round of weapons inspections without condition. The news came as the United States pressed key U.N. members to draft a resolution setting a deadline for Baghdad to comply with its previous commitments to disarm and prove that it had destroyed all biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.



“I CAN CONFIRM to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying their decision to allow the return of the inspectors without conditions,” Annan told reporters.
“There is good news,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said moments earlier.
Sabri and Arab League chief Amr Moussa met late with Annan and transmitted a letter from the Iraqi government on the inspectors’ return.
Under Security Council resolutions, sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that its weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed. Inspectors left the country four years ago ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes to punish Iraq for not cooperating with inspections.
Since then, Iraq has refused to allow inspectors to return, and the stalemate has split the United States, Britain, Russian, France and China — the five powerful members of the U.N. Security Council.
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Earlier in the day, the United States appeared to be making strides toward garnering international support for its Iraq policy as Secretary of State Colin Powell held talks with key Security Council members. One U.S. official told NBC News that the Bush administration was optimistic that a new U.N. resolution calling on Baghdad to comply with long-standing U.N. resolutions would be drafted by the end of the week.
The turnabout in Iraq, after four years of stalemate, came days after President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly debate and said that Iraq must comply with Security Council resolutions or face the consequences.
Annan credited Bush late Monday. “I believe the president’s speech galvanized the international community,” he said.
There was no immediate response from the White House. Top Bush aides huddled after Annan’s announcement, preparing a response.
In a related development, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that U.S. pilots patrolling the skies over Iraq are taking a new approach to defending themselves against Iraqi gunners by striking at the command and communications links in Iraq’s air defense system rather than its guns and radars.
WashPost: Democrats question timing

The switch, which Rumsfeld said he personally ordered more than a month ago, is designed to do more long-lasting damage to Iraq’s ability to shoot down the U.S. and British pilots whose fighter jets have been patrolling “no fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq for 11 years.

BUSH RAISES PRESSURE
Meanwhile, President Bush had also ratcheted up the pressure on the United Nations, urging the body to show resolve against the Iraqi leader, who Bush attempted to link — if only in rhetoric — to the al-Qaida terrorists behind last year’s Sept. 11 attacks.
The war on terror is more than hunting down al-Qaida, Bush said. “It also means dealing with true and real threats that we can foresee. One of the most dangerous threats America faces is a terrorist network teaming up with some of the world’s worst leaders who develop the world’s worst weapons.”
While Powell in New York doing the groundwork for a Security Council resolution against Iraq, Bush told Iowans that with or without the United Nations, “if Iraq’s regime continues to defy us and the world, (the United States) will move deliberately yet decisively to hold Iraq to account.”


Bush also addressed skeptics who want proof of Saddam’s nuclear ambitions: “We must anticipate. You know, somebody said, ’Well you know they don’t have a nuclear weapon.’ The most dangerous thing — we know they’re trying to get one — the most dangerous thing would be to find out they had a nuclear weapon after they developed one.”
Iraq denies running chemical, biological, nuclear or long-range missile programs, which it agreed to scrap under a 1991 cease-fire agreement after the Gulf War. Baghdad then forced U.N. arms inspectors out of Iraq just before U.S.-British air strikes in 1998.
The United States got a boost over the weekend when Saudi Arabia hinted that it might offer its desert installations as a jump-off base for any U.S. military campaign against Iraq — as long as such an attack had U.N. sanction.
But the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, also said the rest of the world clearly wants the Iraq crisis resolved without “the firing of a single shot.”


A senior Saudi official denied the prince had signaled a change of policy. “Saudi Arabia rejects any unilateral attack that has no international cover,” the official told Reuters on Monday.
“The shift is in the American position, not the Saudi position,” he added, referring to U.S. attempts to lobby the U.N. Security Council against Iraq rather than act alone.
Some 5,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Saudi Arabia, most at the remote Prince Sultan Air Base. In the 1991 Gulf War, Saudi Arabia was the main base for a half-million-strong, U.S.-led military force that drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. But since then the Saudis have periodically prohibited the use of their soil for strikes against Iraq and, more recently, limited the use of their bases for the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.
The Saudi foreign minister first commented Sunday in an interview with CNN. Asked whether Saudi bases would be available to Washington, Saud replied that if the Security Council adopts a resolution authorizing force against Iraq, “Everybody is obliged to follow through.”
Saud said, however, he remained opposed in principle to the use of military force against Iraq or a unilateral American attack.



Unlike the Gulf War, another full-scale U.S. attack on Iraq appears to lack the support of most Western allies and, more importantly, Iraq’s neighbors and key Arab states. Here’s how the key nations have lined up so far on the issue of a “regime change” in Baghdad.


Later, the Saudi minister issued a more complete statement, saying, “All signatories to the U.N. Charter, including Saudi Arabia, are obligated to abide by the decisions of the Security Council, in particular those taken under Chapter 7 of the Charter.”
The U.N. Charter’s Chapter 7 authorizes the collective use of force, under the Security Council, in cases of threats to international peace and security.




REPORT LINKS SADDAM WITH AL-QAIDA
Meanwhile, a newspaper reported Sunday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s promised dossier on Iraq will reveal that Saddam has trained some of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants as terrorists.
Britain’s Sunday Telegraph gave details of a draft version of the dossier Blair plans to release to skeptics in the British public and within his own Labor Party. London released a similar document last autumn detailing evidence showing bin Laden’s links to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The document is also expected to show that Saddam has reconstructed three weapons plants to manufacture biological and chemical weapons, the paper said.

NBC’s Linda Fasulo at the United Nations, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

 

Man, I'm surprised this happened so soon. The most surprising thing is that they supposedly said 'unconditional.' Is Saddam learning a new game? If he does what he did before, he'll play cat-and-mouse and say come in, then complain and restrict their movement, then open up again after more military threats.

I can't imagine Saddam is really going to do it- he must have an agenda here. I have been predicting all along that they would never allow inspections- but now, only days after Bush's speech, they will? Without conditions?

Look for Bush/Cheney to make more strong talk here. They're going to say they've heard this before (which we have,) and keep pushing for deadlines and international backing for military force.

What is Saddam thinking here? Has he finally given up and is going to just allow the inspectors to blow up all the weapons he's invested so much in? Is he resigned to being a dictator only of Iraq? Or is he biding for time, hoping that he can get more international sympathy, weaken international support for a military strike?

The White House has to be pissed. I bet they were hoping Saddam would go on being an a**hole so they could go ahead and deploy and kill the guy. I am very curious what will happen next.

 

This is where the UN and US have to work together. The US must allow the UN to schedule and perform the inspections without hindrance (that includes any statement that we'll invade Iraq even with the inspections going on). However, if Iraq fails to comply with their promise, the UN must IMMEDIATELY support a resolution to aid the US in overthrowing Saddam.

 

This is a load of doodoo. I say we just kill Saddam.

 

Actually I think quite the opposite. This is, IMO, exactly what the administration wants and this was their plan all along. Bush doesn't really want to go into Iraq - it's all just a bluff; an international game of good cop/bad cop to get Saddam to cooperate. (As an aside, that Bush has done/is doing is exactly what Clinton should have done in '98).

The hard part will be to make sure that Saddam lives up to the "unconditional" part. You know, just keeping Saddam in the spotlight is probably enough to prevent him from doing anything stupid.

The next step will be to find some way to get Saddam out and get another regime in. But you can bet it won't be by invasion. Invasion would make no sense at all.

 

I'm going to take a different path and say that this is excellent news for the United States. Now they have the chance to pull tangible evidence out of Iraq that will satisfy the international critics and allow a large-scale coalition to be built to fight Iraq. This is, of course, assuming the UN weapons inspectors find something -- who knows the answer to that. Saddam is clearly showing his fear of death by making this swift move. We're about to find out what "unconditional" really means. I'm afraid it doesn't truly mean "unconditional". Saddam wouldn't be allowing people in if he wasn't confident that everything was hidden or moved. Let's just hope they find something.

 

Trader Jorge:

Jorge, you really want this war. However, I think you miss the point. If they find weapons and then destroy them, then there is no reason to go to war. Right?

The whole purpose of the inspectors is to find and destroy biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as agreed to in the treaty that ended the Gulf War.

Instead you twist it and say if weapons are found that gives us the right to start the war again.

 

glynch, he doesn't understand the concept so it's useless to bother

 

This shouldn't be a suprise. It was Saddam's last card to play, and he was shrewd enough to play out the hand. My best guess is that he will at first try to play the hide and seek games, and then just delay and hinder the weapons inspectors. If the UN gets tough and demand complete open access or threatens to move to 'regime-change' then he'll let them destroy them all. He can always just start over when they leave, and he knows that. Seems like a band aid fix is the best we can hope for at this point. But we'll be dealing with the same problem in 2011/2, just like 1991/2 and 2001/2.

 

Hayes, I think you underestimate Bush and the neocons around him.

It should be very instructive to watch and see how the Bush administration manufactures an excuse to go to war-- inspectors or not, weapons of mass destruction or not.

******
Note the above is just my humble opinion as an American exercising my freedom of speech. It should not be assumed to necessarily be the truth or free from human error and bias.

 

The Iraqi defectors will make this a rough ride for Saddam.

But Saddam has never just rolled over. They say unconditional, but the inspectors will be blocked and harassed. Bush won't need to do anything to find an excuse for military action, Saddam will oblige him. It's just his nature, IMHO.

 

True, but I was surprised that he played it so soon. He really must have been feeling some heat, or maybe he has an Ace up his sleeve?

 

I think it puts the hawks in our government in a very awkward position. The American people have said that, though they are ok with war against Iraq, they want it with the blessing of Congress and the UN.

This move makes it nearly impossible to go after Sadaam prior to further inspections without looking like renegade war mongers. Not only would it completely isolate us from the rest of the free world, but it would very likely piss off a larger percentage of the American people.

Frankly, this should be good news for the Bush administration. They can get everything they wanted including the backing of the UN and Arab states AND they can do it all prior to elections. They look good standing up to Sadaam and giving the UN a little kick in the ass and they've won back the support, albeit tenative, of the rest of the world. All they have to do is wait on Sadaam to screw up and my bet is he will. At that point, no one will be able to protect him.

 

You should really add that as your permanent sig.

 

I have 2 fears in this situation:

1) Saddam's compliance won't really be unconditional. He'll likely demand Scott Ritter (his new drinking buddy) lead the team. Even a conditional inspection will likely satisfy the UN.

2) Who the hell says that all of Saddam's stuff is actually in Iraq? If he's connected with well-moneyed people all over the Middle East, then that stuff could be kept anywhere until the inspections are completed. As soon as the UN leaves, it's back to business as usual.

Please pardon me if I don't trust this guy...he's given us no reason to trust him up to this point. He hides, hinders and obfuscates...knowing the UN will just back down when the heat is off.

 

Good news, bad news. This doesn't really matter. This won't change anything Bush administration was planning to do or will do.

They simply establish what I called the "logic of evil": As long as it is established that Saddam is evil, the rest is irrelevant.

Does Saddam has WMD? He must have, he's evil, he'll try to aquire those.
Does Saddam has Nukes or is he near to get Nukes? How can we risk of letting him actually get nukes, he's evil.
Will Saddam use or has the means to deliver nukes? He is evil.
What if inspectors don't find anything. He can hide, he's evil. He can build them later anyway.

really, what Iraq counter moves at this point has little to do what Bush can do or will do.

 

Can we just assume these points as being made from now on. It has grown tiresome reading the same thing 6 or 7 times in each Iraq thread. This is what it sounds like now:

I don't like Bush...blah blah blah...Iraq can't do anything to stop him....blah blah blah blah...what a mean guy...BS BS BS!!!!

We ALL understand. There are people who don't like Bush and never will. Moreover there are some who DO like Bush and disagree with him on this. Point noted.

PS-- In a Newsweek poll, 66% of Americans favor military action against Iraq. So it can't possibly be as clear as the detractors say it is.