Given how much we know now about the deep corruption of the U.N. oil-for-food program, I'm even more relieved they are not the instrument for keeping Saddam contained. They were and would be the instrument for empowering Saddam and further impoverishing the Iraqi people. Bush was right to do what he did. And no amount of criticism of the conduct of the war will take that away.Well, for starters, the United States knew about it. And Sullivan is grossly oversimplifying.
So we should have gone to war because Saddam was cruel to his people? Well, there's lots of rulers who fit that description, and what the hell were we doing giving assistance in the 1980s? There was plenty of evidence that he was Bad News then.By virtually all expert accounts, the sanctions, backed by UN weapons inspectors, and the oil-for-food program achieved their major goals. Iraq's programs to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons disintegrated, its military forces became a hollow shell, and the health of the civilian population improved. But right from the start, Iraq found ways to circumvent the sanctions, often with the tacit approval of the United States.
An analysis by Charles Duelfer, the chief American weapons inspector in Iraq, estimated that Iraq generated some $11 billion in illicit revenue and used the money to buy prohibited items. The main routes for these illicit transactions - $8 billion worth - were trade deals that Iraq negotiated with neighboring countries, notably Jordan, Syria and Turkey. By the Senate subcommittee's higher count, Iraq got almost two-thirds of some $21 billion through the trade deals or smuggling.
But these trade agreements had nothing to do with the oil-for-food program, and were hardly a secret. The United States actually condoned Iraq's trade deals with Jordan and Turkey, two allies whose economies suffered from the sanctions. This was a reasonable price to pay for maintaining their support on the main objective - denying weapons of mass destruction to Saddam.
American diplomats tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Syria to stop buying Iraqi oil outside of the oil-for-food program, but did little to crack down on that trade. Syria became a major supplier of military goods to Iraq. This was a failure of American diplomacy, not Kofi Annan.
The UN bureaucracy had no power to prevent these illicit oil or arms deals outside the oil-for-food program. It was the responsibility of member nations to adhere to sanctions imposed by the Security Council. Those members with the most diplomatic, economic and military power were obliged to help enforce them. Thus the primary blame for allowing Iraq to accumulate illicit billions lies with the United States and other Security Council members that winked at prohibited oil sales, mostly for sensible reasons.
So we should have gone to war because the UN member nations couldn't keep themselves in line? My head is spinning.
So it was OK to tell a million different half- and untruths about why we're doing this? Push for war on the basis of shaky evidence? It's all part and parcel of the same mess. You cannot separate the war from its outcome. You can't say "but our intentions were good." The Iraqi people are pretty darn impoverished by this war. They're also terrorized, demoralized, and furious. Not by Saddam anymore, though.
Oh come on, already. Stop the spinning. Every justification just makes it worse.
