The United Nations Gave Him An Inch: Now He Wants His Mile

-Frank Salvato

Well, if you didn't think it was going to happen then either "Hi, I'm
amazingly naïve" is your middle name or you are doing the "ostrich" and
sticking your head in the sand to avoid the truth but either way you are
kidding yourself. As the United States stands poised to liberate the Iraqi
people from the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein, in an effort to rid the
world of one of its most successful terrorist enterprises, it would seem
that his war has already begun. As is the "master manipulator's" grandiose
nature, and having already acquired the assistance of France, Germany,
Russia and China, among others, he is now trying to make additional headway
on the political front by going on the offensive with the United Nations.
Yes, Saddam is now demanding things from the UN. Incredible, isn't it? It is
a testimony to his audacity and tenacity if nothing else.

After Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix and IAEA Director General
Mohammed ElBaradei gave their reports to the UN Security Council last week,
reports that neither confirmed nor denied Iraq's compliance with resolution
1441 and which failed to mention the newly discovered drone aircrafts and
munitions (both capable of delivering biochemical weapons to Iraqi
neighbors), it appears that Saddam feels the verbiage of those reports
suggests that he is in compliance with the resolution. Remarkably, because
of this assumption by the brutal dictator the Iraqi government has issued a
letter to the United Nations demanding that all sanctions imposed after the
Gulf War be lifted, that Israel surrender its weapons of mass destruction
and remove itself from the occupied territories and that the UN brand the
United States and Britain as, get this, liars. These demands are being
issued in the face of the fact that he remains in material breech of UNSC
Resolution 1441 and has no intension of ever complying with its demands.

Certain things beg to be addressed here and why Blix and ElBaradei omitted
important pieces of information from their reports to the Security Council
is just one of them. With the glaring omissions of information on the
unmanned drones and the biochemical warheads that were found one must almost
certainly call into question both the thoroughness of their established
reporting techniques and the requirements for what must be reported. But
perhaps the most disturbing idea here is whether Blix and ElBaradei are
manipulating the reporting process to slant the opinion of those on the
Security Council by purposely omitting critical data. This idea should send
chills down everyone's spine but until there is an explanation from Mr. Blix
and Mr. ElBaradei we can only speculate the reasoning and pray that it is
not due to incompetence.

Saddam's assertion that he is in compliance with resolution 1441 comes amid
reports of newly found evidence that he possesses drone aircraft not unlike,
but much less sophisticated then our own Predator drones, which have been
effective in our quest to eliminate the oppressive Taliban rule in
Afghanistan. These Iraqi drone aircraft are designed to deliver biochemical
weapons and could be used to inflict damage on Iraq's neighboring nations
and coalition forces should military action start. Further, it is being
reported that warheads and delivery systems have been uncovered by the UN
inspectors that are specifically designed to deliver biochemical weapons.
These warheads are believed to have initially been imported from foreign
countries (Hhmm, perhaps France, Germany and Russia?) but eventually were
produced indigenously, sources reported to The New York Times and to Fox
News. Both of these weapons systems are in direct violation of not only the
cease fire agreement, which brought the end to the Gulf War and which
everyone conveniently seems to forget about, but to every Security Council
resolution that addresses Iraq's weapons program.

One of the demands that Saddam makes has to do with Israel. Now, when Israel
became a part of UN Resolution 1441 is beyond me. Perhaps they were
incorporated into the mix while I slept or while I was making my move from
the radio in my car to the news on television or while I was in the shower
but I completely missed it. What becomes very clear with this statement is
that Saddam is trying to escalate his non-compliance issue to a level that
would address the Middle Eastern problem in total. To say the least, he is
in no position to demand that the UN force Israel to do anything. His
obvious attempt to bring about the dual of the Arab States against the
Western World serves only to validate the thought that he wants to be the
icon of the Arab World, their leader, their savior from the wicked Western
civilization but what it proves is his underlying hatred for Israel. To be
honest, if you were the leader of a country in a region where all your
neighbors wanted to kill you simply for existing, would you agree to hand
over the only things that deter the bloodshed from happening? The chances of
Saddam getting the UN to ask Israel to turn over their nuclear weapons is
like asking Osama bin Laden to simply knock on The White House door to turn
himself in. It isn't going to happen. These two issues are completely
separate and should remain so.

Another of the demands he makes in his letter is that the sanctions that
were placed on Iraq after the Gulf War be lifted. This is a ridiculous
request. The sanctions were put into place in order to bring a change to the
Iraqi government's attitude toward its people and its weapons. They have
changed neither. To lift the sanctions would be to reward Saddam's regime
for doing absolutely nothing. They have not ceased waging the terror war
that is in place toward the Iraqi people and as the world knows they have
not disarmed. In fact, they have been shooting at allied aircraft ever since
1992, which is in complete violation of the cease-fire agreement that ended
the Gulf War. For those actions alone the United States is justified in
going into Baghdad. For that reason alone the United States doesn't have to
ask for consensus from the United Nations.

But what is perhaps the ultimate hypocrisy is that Saddam wants the United
Nations to brand the United States and Britain as "liars". If this weren't
so infuriating it would be hilarious. Here is a man who has done nothing but
lie for the last 12 years not only to the United Nations but to the world
community as well. He has hidden weapons that he has claimed he doesn't have
only to have them turn up again and again. He has claimed that missiles
found by the UN inspectors were simply forgotten about and that aluminum
tubes that could only be used for the development of nuclear weapons were
attained for anything but. It has been lie after lie after lie and it has
almost come to the point where those of a lesser attention span are starting
to think that maybe he is telling the truth. It is absolutely sickening what
he is getting away with thanks to those self-absorbed members of the world
community, namely France, Germany, Russia and China.

The March 17th deadline may come too soon as the United States tries to
obtain the nine-vote Security Council goal, vetoes be damned, but with the
weather becoming a factor the deadline shouldn't come too long after. The
real mandate that action be taken expeditiously is the development that a
connection has been established between the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, a
group with proven connections to al Qaida, and Iraq. A cell phone used in an
attempted bomb detonation in the southern city of Zamboanga in the
Philippines was also used to contact Iraqi diplomat Husham Husain, an Iraqi
consul. He was also contacted a day after a bombing that killed 3 including
an American soldier.

The "master manipulator", confident that his spin has worked with the
lemmings of the anti-war movement and the mainstream media worldwide is
starting to spin to the UN hoping that some of them are lemmings as well.
Let's hope that those who could make a difference in the outcome of this
passage of history do make a difference. Let us all hope that they see
through the brand of lies and deceit that Saddam Hussein chooses to shop to
the world. The alternative is nothing less than brutal.

Frank Salvato is a common man and independent writer from the Midwest who has spent time traveling throughout the world while going about his life. His views are entirely his own. He can be contacted at TheRant@attbi.com. His writings can be seen at www.therant.us.

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