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Despite growing opposition, the Bush administration is pushing for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Before the public and Congress allow such a dangerous and unprecedented use of American military power, they should seriously consider the following:
The United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1990 applied only to the enforcement of previous resolutions calling for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, nothing more. Iraq remains in violation of some subsequent resolutions, but the United Nations has not authorized the use of force to enforce them. Without the explic-it authorization of the UN Security Council or an attack by Iraq against the United States or its allies, a war against Iraq would be illegal.
Reports of an alleged meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the hijackers of the doomed airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center have been investigated by the FBI, the CIA, and Czech intelligence and were found groundless. None of the hijackers were Iraqi, no major figure in Al Qaeda is Iraqi, and no funds to Al Qaeda have been traced to Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has provided no evidence for his assertion that important Al Qaeda operatives are in Iraq under Saddam Hussein廣 protection. Despite the regime廣 occasional use of Islamist rhetoric, the decidedly secular ruling Baath party in Baghdad and the Islamic fundamentalist Al Qaeda have long been in vehement opposition to one another. The State Department廣 latest annual study, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2001, did not list any acts of international terrorism linked to the government of Iraq.
Iraq has certainly developed weapons of mass destruction in the past, but there is no evidence it has such weapons now. The International Atomic Energy Agency has categorically declared that Iraq no longer has a nuclear program. UNSCOM綟he UN monitoring mission in Iraq綖eportedly destroyed at least 95% of Iraq廣 chemical weapons capability. The state of Iraq廣 biological weapons capability is less clear, but virtually all of Iraq廣 medium-range missiles and other delivery systems have been accounted for and destroyed. Iraq廣 development of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s was made possible in large part by the importation of key components from the United States and other industrialized countries. This can no longer be done due to the sanctions. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein has demonstrated that he cares first and foremost about his own survival, and he presumably recognizes that any effort to use weapons of mass destruction or to pass them on to a terrorist group would inevitably lead to his own destruction. However, with nothing to lose in the event of a U.S. invasion, the likelihood of Saddam ordering the use of any weapons of mass destruction he may have at his disposal would dramatically increase.
The 1991 Gulf War was widely viewed as an act of collective security in response to aggression by Iraq against Kuwait and therefore had the support of several important Arab allies.
