February 09, 2003

U.S. Demands Iraq Show Cooperation by This Weekend

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned today that if Saddam Hussein was still not cooperating with United Nations inspectors at the end of this week, President Bush would press immediately for consideration of a Security Council resolution authorizing possible use of force against Iraq.

Mr. Powell's comments laid out what appeared to be an accelerating timetable in the confrontation with Iraq, even as France, Germany and other members of the Security Council continued to call for more time before considering the use of force.

Mr. Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, also said time was running short, as the administration seemed to be setting in motion a swift showdown with France and Germany, traditionally two of the United States' closest allies. Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, said today that Moscow, too, was aligning itself with Paris and Bonn. He spoke after talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany.

American officials say the next important day in the quickening pace of events on Iraq is this Friday, when Hans Blix and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief United Nations weapons inspectors, are to deliver an updated report on whether Iraq is cooperating with the inspections ordered by the Council in November.

f Mr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei report next Friday that Mr. Hussein is still not cooperating, "then the Security Council will have to sit in session immediately and determine what should happen next," Mr. Powell said on NBC News program "Meet the Press."

The Security Council, he added, would then have to "start considering a resolution that says Iraq is in material breach and it is time for serious consequences to follow." The phrase "serious consequences" is used by American officials to refer to military force.

Mr. Powell dismissed reports that France and Germany, and perhaps Russia, would recommend deploying United Nations peacekeepers in Iraq along with inspectors, saying that would be pointless. The reports, first raised in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, were played down by French and German officials as well, although they said discussions were under way to seek some alternative to quick military action.
[...]

But while the main pressure exerted today was on the United Nations, Mr. Powell and others in the administration were also seeking to put pressure on France and Germany over a growing dispute within NATO on Iraq. The dispute centers on a refusal by France, Germany and Belgium to agree to Turkey's request for military equipment to prepare for a possible war.

Echoing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's comments in Germany over the weekend, Mr. Powell said on "Fox News Sunday" that it was "inexcusable" for France, Germany and Belgium to block the request, coming as it did from a fellow NATO member.

The NATO Charter requires the alliance to come to the defense of any member attacked, as Turkey fears it will be in the event of a war.

The NATO alliance is to decide the issue on Monday, but there was no sign today that France, Germany and Belgium were wavering. The three nations say that without a Security Council resolution authorizing war, it is premature to start supplying Turkey with the equipment requested, including Patriot missiles and Awacs surveillance aircraft.

"For three NATO nations to say, with respect to a fourth NATO nation, `We won't even consider that at this time because of a dispute, really, we're having within the United Nations Security Council about what follows next,' I think is inexcusable on the part of those countries," Mr. Powell said.

A potentially divisive new element arose, meanwhile, as the commander of American forces in Europe, Gen. James L. Jones, told members of Congress of a plan under study to scale back American forces in Germany. During a briefing to a visiting Congressional delegation last week, General Jones, who also is supreme commander of NATO forces, said the plan envisioned scattering the forces to bases in several countries, those closer to the Persian Gulf.

According to a Senate aide familiar with the briefing, the plan is still preliminary, but in the context of the United Nations deliberations, it is sure to be contentious.

The French and German position is said to be especially infuriating at the Pentagon, where planners say the Patriot missiles and other equipment need to start moving right now in order to reach Turkey on time. Mr. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz have spent considerable effort in the last several months to line up Turkish help for a war with Iraq, and their efforts have borne fruit recently.

But French and German diplomats say that Turkey does not need the equipment now, and that the United States is pressing for it now only to give the shaky government led by Prime Minister Abdullah Gul in Turkey a show of political support that he can cite in his efforts to supply troops for an Iraq war.

American officials have tried to play down their anger over the NATO dispute, in part out of a desire not to aggravate tensions. But one American official called it a problem that could affect the unity of the entire Atlantic alliance forged after World War II.

Some say the relationship between the United States on one hand and France and Germany on the other is becoming increasingly poisonous. President Jacques Chirac of France was described by knowledgeable officials as furious over American efforts to gather support from other European nations for a war with Iraq. "Chirac is not amused that the United States seems to be trying to isolate him and suggest that France is not the real leader of Europe," a European diplomat said.

The diplomat was referring to recently successful efforts to line up eight other nations in Europe to sign a declaration favoring disarmament of Iraq, which was interpreted as a rebuff to France. French officials complained that France had not been asked to sign the declaration, which they noted did not actually call for a war and therefore might have been acceptable to Mr. Chirac.

A second letter was released by 10 other European nations, mostly from Eastern Europe. Mr. Powell said today that those letters of support indicated that many Europeans supported the United States' view, even if France and Germany did not.

There was some confusion, meanwhile, over whether there would be a French and German counterproposal this coming week — possibly backed by Russia — to avoid a confrontation with Iraq by instead demanding that Mr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei be given more inspectors and be backed by possible use of United Nations troops while they do their inspections.

France and Germany denied a report in Der Spiegel that they were talking secretly about such a proposal. Mr. Powell said he had not seen it, but that if it was an offshoot of a similar proposal by France last week for more inspectors, and more time for them to do their work, the idea was a nonstarter.

"I do not know what that accomplishes," Mr. Powell said on the ABC News program "This Week," referring to the proposal to add inspectors. "The issue is not more inspectors or more robust inspections. The issue is: Will Iraq comply? Will it give up its weapons of mass destruction?"

He said more inspectors would accomplish nothing without a change of approach by Mr. Hussein. Similarly, adding United Nations troops would also not help, he said.

"What are these blue-helmeted U.N. forces going to do?" he asked. "Shoot their way into Iraqi compounds?"

Precisely, Secretary Powell. Thank you for your firm response.
And, of course, any UN force would end up being largely made up of American military, too, I'm sure, as we made up so many such forces....
The Frogs and the Krauts want to turn Iraq into Somalia 1993: great plan. Thud.
Well, folks, what can you say about all this...mess? (And what else could we call it that doesn't involved 4-letter curse words?)
The French haven't come up with this cockamamie a plan since the Vichy Government.
I am so horrified by all this, I can barely blog about it.
And for all of my readers who are Jacksonian Democrats--the only type of "Democrat" I'll ever be--and who live and die by the concept of Honor in the conduct of a nation's affairs and especially our nation's affairs, I hope you are as outraged as I.
France and Germany have covered themselves with dishonor in just the past few days, succeeding in virtually nuking both the UN and NATO, as well as any diplomatic goodwill and national good feeling that has existed between their countries and ours.*
Bravo. Nice work, you perfidious bastards.
I can't put into words how shocking their behaviour has been to me.
Joschka Fischer openly insulted Donald Rumsfeld.
Rummy found out about this secret French/German plan to militarily occupy Iraq from the German press, not through the proper diplomatic channels...
Although I've no doubt that SecState Powell will be hearing about it at the UN this week, as well.
If no good deed goes unpunished, that must goes double for the U.S. and her salvation of Western Europe from the tyranny of Hitler in '45 and the ambitions of the Kaiser in 1918.
And we won't even talk about keeping the Soviets at bay from France and Western Germany for 45 years from the end of WWII to the collapse of the Soviet system...(Not just one, but 2 Berlin Airlifts!
You're welcome!)
Now Chirac and Schroeder are supposedly miffed about the pro-US statements of the New Europe 8 in the WSJ and the Vilnius Group and they want to blame the Bush Administration because there are other countries in Europe beside France and Germany who want to be part of the solution of the world's problems and not parties to their causation?
New Europe has learned from their own histories and know only too well which side is right and which is wrong, while France and Germany choose to feed the alligator hoping that it will eat them last or just won't get around to it.
Well, America is superior to them (and they know it!).
We can get beyond this.
As the motto I adopted for this blog says, We can do it!
Once the Bush Administration goes to the UNSC for a resolution to go to war on Iraq and doesn't get it--which I don't think we will--then we must move ahead without it.
We'll figure out what to do about the degenerate, irrelevant UN later.
France, Germany and their little Belgian poodle's actions will destroy NATO, such as it is.
We can form another alliance with New Europe.
And we should, to reflect more accurately the 21st Century realities.
Further, we should move all those troops out of Germany and into Poland, where we're not only wanted, but where strategically we would be equipoised between Central Europe and the steppes of Russia more advantageously.
If France and Germany and their satellites Belgium and Luxembourg want to join common cause with America's Islamist-led enemies, they're "free" to do that.
In the meantime, we don't have to go to those countries as tourists and spend money.
Nor do we have to buy German cars or Hermes ties or anything else made in those countries.
The U.S.A. is not going to be dictated to by bloviating, corrupt and megalomaniacal petty despots like Chirac and Schroeder, neither of whom received a mandate from their own citizens to govern in the last elections[Both were narrowly elected by slim margins.].
We are also not going to sign that bogus Kyoto Treaty, which is nothing but an attempt to curb our roaring capitalist economy based on junk science.
And don't even think about us joining the ICC, which threatens to be the Big Brother watchdog agency all of us have long feared, promising to prosecute anyone who speaks out against their Socialist government as guilty of "hate crimes."
Since the Revolutionary War, many thousands, perhaps now millions, of Americans have died for our rights and liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and probably, in this War with Iraq and in the larger War on Islamist Terrorism, more will give their lives to protect and preserve the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
But some things are worth dying for...things like the principles upon which this country was founded.
And fight for them we will, especially when a madman like Saddam Hussein has WMD which threaten the very lives who enjoy these rights-- human lives here, in Iraq, and anywhere on the planet where a motivated Islamist can take one and murder others for jihad.
If the French and Germans think that such rights to defend ourselves and to protect our inalienable freedoms can be negotiated away or even given up willingly as they did in Vichy France and Hitler's Reich, that is their problem.
*Actually, the French and Germans hit the trifecta: this past week, they've succeeded in destroying the UN, NATO and the EU.
The biggest omission from this new German/French disarmament plan for Iraq, which they appropriately have called "Mirage," is the entire nation of Great Britain. Nowhere in their machinations is the UK's name mentioned that I have read, which is as good as saying that for the 2 "leading" nations of Western Europe, Britain doesn't exist and is not important enough to rate a place at the table.
This is a pretty significant omission for a country that is not only supplying the second largest contigent of troops and materiel for our Iraq attack [which would be used along with ours in the Franco-German plan, BTW], but which has one of the more robust economies in Europe.
Britain was going to vote on full membership in the EU this year, voting mainly on full economic participation and the adoption of the EUro.
That vote was postponed even before the calamitous actions of the Frogs and the Krauts this week.
Do not look for this vote--should it ever take place--to succeed in overthrowing the British pound.
And Thank God for that in advance!