[antiwar-van] FW: IRAQ: Iraq Team's response to Colin Powell's February 5 Speech

[hanna kawas]

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Subject: IRAQ: Iraq Team's response to Colin Powell's February 5 Speech


CPTnet
February 14, 2003
IRAQ: Response to Colin Powell's February 5 Speech

[Note:  The following response to Secretary of State Colin Powell's has
been cut for length.  People wishing to see the entire speech should send
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         [On February 5]  U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell provided to
the United Nations' Security Council the Bush administration's most
detailed argument to date to justify a war on Iraq.  We believe both from
what Mr. Powell said, as well as from what he did not say, that the U.S.
case falls
far short of the legitimate justification for war embodied in international
law and in the United Nations Charter.

          Mr. Powell stated that his presentation had two purposes: to
support the assessments of the UN weapons inspection team and to provide
new information about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and
involvement in terrorism.  Regarding the first purpose, we are glad to see
that the U.S. says that it will support the UN weapons inspection team. . .
. This is a welcome change.  Only one week ago head of the inspection team,
Dr. Hans Blix, had to publicly request that the United States share
information with him.  It is not at all clear why the U.S. has hampered the
work of the team by withholding information until now. . .

        The "new information" that Mr. Powell presented at some length
turns out to be not all that new and relies to a large degree on hearsay,
interpretation and innuendo.  We are skeptical of the information Mr.
Powell uses to justify war for a number of reasons, not the least of which
is the number of times the U.S. government has deliberately manipulated
information in the past to convince the American people and the world
community to support its military adventures.  The Gulf of Tonkin incident
that led the U.S. Congress to authorize an unlimited expansion of the war
in Vietnam turned out to be contrived and misreported.  Before the
beginning of the 1991 Gulf War, in order to justify not making further
diplomatic efforts to avoid war, the U.S. claimed it had evidence that
Iraqi troops were converging at the southern border for an invasion of
Saudi Arabia.  Later it turned out this was a fabrication.

Mr. Powell's own remarks in this presentation do not give us confidence
that he is committed to being entirely straight forward.  For example, Mr.
Powell claims that "Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998".
. . . UN weapons inspectors were ordered out of Iraq by the chief of the
weapons inspection team, Richard Butler, just days before the Desert Fox
bombing began in December
1998.  Iraq did not let the inspectors back in when it became known that
the inspectors were providing intelligence information to the U.S. and
Israel and that some of the information may have been used for targeting in
the bombing campaign.

. . .Mr. Powell would have us presume that if Iraq is in material breach of
Resolution 1441, that is a sufficient justification for war.  It is
not.  The United Nations charter is very specific about the conditions that
need to be present before war can be justified.  Written at a time when the
world community better remembered the real consequences of
war, Article 39 of the Charter says that the UN Security Council can take
action only after it has determined a "threat to peace, breach of peace, or
act of aggression".  Article 42 allows for armed force only when all
non-military "have proved to be inadequate" to restore or maintain
peace.  The UN Charter supercedes any Security Council resolution in the
same way that the U.S. Constitution is above any law passed by Congress.

. . .Even if all of Mr. Powell's assertions were true, even if he could
demonstrate that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Powell would
still need to show that Iraq intended to use those weapons in an illegal
and aggressive manner.  There is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq has that
intention.  Even the head of the U.S. CIA concludes that the only time Iraq
would be motivated to use weapons of mass destruction or to provide them to
terrorists would be if Iraq were invaded. . .

          Many countries have weapons of mass destruction.  Israel, for
example, has over 200 nuclear warheads and the missile technology to bomb
other countries (including Iraq.)  Israel is in defiance of numerous UN
resolutions and is guilty of massive human rights violations.  Yet the U.S.
seems to be unconcerned about this. . .

          We must conclude that Secretary Powell has failed to make his
case. . .We hope the Security Council will uphold the UN Charter.  Further
we call on all people to oppose this unjustified, illegal, immoral, and
counterproductive war.


Issued by Iraq Peace Team in Baghdad, Feb. 6, 2003
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