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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Uncomfortable questions about U.S. policy toward Iraq
If Iraq poses a serious threat to America's security, why has the Bush administration waited so long to take military action? President Bush took office in January 2001, more than 25 months ago. The Sept. 11 attacks occurred some 18 months ago. And the president listed Iraq as a member of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address more than 13 months ago.

The Bush administration has proceeded at a most leisurely pace to meet the alleged security threat from Iraq. Is it really credible that U.S. leaders would wait 13 months -- to say nothing of 18 months or 25 months -- to neutralize a truly grave threat? The United States certainly did not dawdle in that fashion to meet the threat posed by Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Within a month of the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. forces were pounding Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.
If Iraq poses a dire threat, why has the United States bothered to go to the United Nations? In the case of Afghanistan, the United States invoked the right of self-defense and took action on its own. In the case of Iraq, U.S. leaders have wasted months going through the diplomatic agony of securing a U.N. resolution and the endless weeks of pointless U.N. inspections.

The United Nations is an international debating society, not a serious security body. The United States and the other major powers have typically taken to the U.N. only those issues that are peripheral to their own security. They bypass the world body and take action unilaterally or with regional coalitions on more serious matters. The willingness to go through a multistage diplomatic farce at the U.N. suggests that Bush administration officials, despite their statements, do not really regard Iraq as a major security threat to the United States.

If Iraq wanted to give chemical and biological weapons to Al Qaeda, why hasn't it done so over the past decade? Iraq has possessed chemical and biological weapons since at least the mid-1980s.

There is a major disconnect between the administration's inflammatory rhetoric and its actions to date. If Iraq actually poses a serious threat to America's security, the administration should have taken military action many, many months ago. In particular, if there was a credible danger of Baghdad passing along chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda, the United States should have launched attacks against Iraq on the heels of the military operations in Afghanistan. Instead, the administration has proceeded to war at a snail's pace. That conduct suggests that the strident comments about the danger posed by Iraq is little more than cynical propaganda to dupe a gullible public.

posted by Hal 9:58 PM