| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 5:27 am Post subject: President Carter Blasts Bush Rush to War |
| President Carter Blasts Bush Rush to War
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (http://www.ajc.com)
Carter blasts rush to war
Bush, Blair warn Saddam not to try to play for time.
Bob Deans - Cox Washington Bureau
Saturday, February 1, 2003
Washington --- While President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair showed a united front for action against Iraq, former President Jimmy Carter said Friday the White House has not made its case.
In unusually strong criticism of a sitting president's foreign policy by a former commander in chief, the Nobel Peace Prize winner said, "Our government has not made a case for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq, either at home or in Europe."
Even if the Bush administration presents compelling evidence at the United Nations next week that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, Carter said, "this will not indicate any real or proximate threat by Iraq to the United States or to our allies."
As Carter's statement was being released to the news media, Bush and Blair were pressing their argument for speedy action against Iraq.
The president and the prime minister, Bush's staunchest military ally in his campaign against Iraq, insisted Saddam Hussein should comply with U.N. disarmament demands without negotiation or delay and warned that time for avoiding war is running short.
"This issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months," Bush said again. "Any attempt to drag the process on for months will be resisted by the United States."
Both said a new resolution from the U.N. Security Council calling on Iraq to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction or face attack would be welcome, but neither called it necessary to justify military action.
U.N. Resolution 1441 was unanimously adopted by the 15-nation Security Council in November and calls on Iraq to account for its banned weapons-building programs. That resolution already provides sufficient justification for a military attack, Bush asserted.
Blair has pushed harder than Bush for a second resolution authorizing military action, but he said, "We made it clear that failure to disarm would lead to serious consequences. Time is running out."
Both Bush and Blair have been under pressure from leaders of other nations and have been criticized by political opponents and some citizens in their own countries who say military action should be delayed until U.N. weapons inspectors have more time to work.
Carter said the Bush administration bears significant responsibility for the hostility that has built up around the world toward the United States. He cited "vituperative attacks on U.S. policy by famous and respected men," such as former South African President Nelson Mandela and best-selling author John LeCarre of Britain.
Carter called the criticism excessive but said the erosion of international public opinion was a sobering reminder of "how much doubt and consternation has been raised about our motives for war in the absence of convincing proof of a genuine threat from Iraq."
The best approach, he said, would be "a sustained and enlarged inspection team, deployed as a permanent entity until the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council determine that its presence is no longer needed."
"The cost of an on-site inspection team would be minuscule compared to war," Carter said. "Saddam would have no choice except to comply, the results would be certain, military and civilian casualties would be avoided, there would be almost unanimous worldwide support, and the United States could regain its leadership in combating the real threat of international terrorism."
The comments from Carter came a day after Mandela, also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, assailed Bush for pushing the United States to the brink of war.
"It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq," the former South African leader said. "Why does the United States behave so arrogantly?"
On Thursday, the regime in Baghdad invited chief U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei to return to Baghdad --- they were there two weeks ago --- to discuss the terms of continuing inspections.
Bush and Blair said the gesture was reminiscent of ploys Baghdad has used to confound inspections since it first promised to surrender its secret weapons as part of its 1991 Gulf War surrender agreement.
"As the pressure grows, they want to play the same games as they've been playing all the way through," Blair said.
Top U.N. weapons inspectors said Friday they would not agree to meet with Iraqi officials unless they agreed to cooperate more closely and stop hindering inspections. The inspectors have complained about being unable to interview Iraqi scientists in private and that Iraq has not agreed to overflights by U-2 surveillance planes.
"We need to make sure before we go that they are ready to move forward," ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in Vienna, Austria.
The Iraqi government has denied possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Secretary of State Colin Powell will take the U.S. case against Saddam's regime to the Security Council next Wednesday. Several council members, including France, Russia and China, have publicly urged Bush to use restraint and give inspectors additional time, a position Powell challenged in a speech Friday to members of the National Conference of World Affairs Councils of America.
"Show us the bunkers. Show us the missing missiles. Show us all, so that it can be verified by the inspectors," Powell said in the speech. "It is not about a scavenger hunt for hidden materials in a country the size of California. [Resolution] 1441 is about Iraq disclosing the entire extent of its illicit biological, chemical, nuclear and missile activities and disarming itself of these horrible weapons with the assistance of inspectors to verify and to destroy."
Powell has been putting together a presentation officials said will draw on open sources and intelligence information to demonstrate that Saddam has been hiding his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs from U.N. inspectors and that he has links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization.
Administration officials have cautioned privately that the presentation will contain little in the way of fresh information but rather will attempt to connect the dots between what is known and what is feared about Saddam's weapons and his ties to terrorist groups.
"He will make it clear that Saddam Hussein is fooling the world, or trying to fool the world," Bush said.
Bush has ordered more than 160,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf, as well as scores of warplanes and four aircraft carrier battle groups. Blair has dispatched 30,000 British troops, and both leaders have said other countries stand ready to join them if a decision is made to attack Iraq.
The two allies got a boost Friday when the government of Turkey announced it would allow U.S. troops to use areas near its border with Iraq as a staging ground.
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