NEW YORK (AP) — Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.
Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country.
The Iraq war taught him that "deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators," ElBaradei writes in "The Age of Deception," being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.
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He is harshest in addressing the Bush administration's 2002-2003 drive for war with Iraq, when ElBaradei and Hans Blix led teams of U.N. inspectors looking for signs Saddam Hussein's government had revived nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs.
He tells of an October 2002 meeting he and Blix had with Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others, at which the Americans sought to convert the U.N. mission into a "cover for what would be, in essence, a United States-directed inspection process."
The U.N. officials resisted, and their teams went on to conduct some 700 inspections of scores of potential weapons sites in Iraq, finding no evidence to support the U.S. claims of weapons of mass destruction.
In his own memoir, published last November, Bush still insisted it was right to invade to remove a "homicidal dictator pursuing WMD." But the ex-president also wrote of a "sickening feeling" when no arms turned up after the invasion, and blamed an "intelligence failure" for the baseless claim, a reference to a 2002 U.S. intelligence assessment contending WMD were being built.
But that assessment itself offered no concrete evidence, and Bush and his aides have never explained why the U.S. position was not changed as on-the-ground U.N. findings came in before the invasion.
ElBaradei cites examples, including the conclusion by his inspectors inside Iraq that certain aluminum tubes were designed for artillery rockets, not for uranium enrichment equipment to build nuclear bombs, as Washington asserted.
The IAEA chief reported this conclusion to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27, 2003, and yet on the next day Bush — in a "remarkable" response — delivered a State of the Union address in which he repeated the unfounded claim about aluminum tubes, ElBaradei notes.
Similar contradictions of expert findings occurred with the claim, based on a forgery, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, and an Iraqi exile's fabrication that "mobile labs" were producing biological weapons.
"I was aghast at what I was witnessing," ElBaradei writes of the official U.S. attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls "aggression where there was no imminent threat," a war in which he accepts estimates that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.
In such a case, he suggests, the World Court should be asked to rule on whether the war was illegal. And, if so, "should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a 'war crime' and determine who is accountable?"
Formidable political and legal barriers would seem to rule out such an investigation. But ElBaradei, citing the war-crimes prosecution of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, sees double standards that should end.
"Do we, as a community of nations, have the wisdom and courage to take the corrective measures needed, to ensure that such a tragedy will never happen again?" he asks.
For the record, I don't know if he is guilty of a war crime but there is certainly enough evidence to support a trial.
The US went to war based largely on a lie told by an Iraqi named Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka Curveball. Old Curveball is very proud of the lies he told.
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The Guardian quoted al-Janabi as saying: "I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that."
Although some intelligence agents were skeptical of Curveball's story, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reported in 2004 that the Central Intelligence Agency "withheld important information about Curveball's reliability" from analysts dealing with the case.
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The Politian who says and sticks to not sending troops to any foreign land unless we are attacked will get my vote. I am getting pretty sick of paying a high percentage of my income to fund invasions and military occupations of third world countries who are in a basic civil war...often caused by our clandestine operations. Bring them home and take care of the US not someone else.
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Too busy with fishing to spend much time here.
Last edited by Champlain Islander; 04-22-2011 at 03:17 PM.
Not even close. Perhaps why don't you try and start with Rumsfeld's book and then go from there. He does an excellent job at laying everything out on the table. It's worth a read and a lot just may surprise you. Remember, 17 UN resolutions, 1 fail peace agreement and about 23 reasons to remove Sadam.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
If Bush is guilty of war crimes, wouldn't Obama (and the rest of Congress) be an accessory?
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I love Christmas lights. They remind me of the people who voted for Obama. They all hang together; half of them don't work, and the ones that do, aren't that bright.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do
not understand, no explanation is possible.
A golf course is a willful and deliberate misuse of a perfectly good rifle range.
Not even close. Perhaps why don't you try and start with Rumsfeld's book and then go from there. He does an excellent job at laying everything out on the table. It's worth a read and a lot just may surprise you. Remember, 17 UN resolutions, 1 fail peace agreement and about 23 reasons to remove Sadam.
Exactly, who is going to procecute?
It would kinda be like me pulling myself over and give myself a ticket for speeding.
You would have to procecute, most of congress, the whole admin, and most of Nato.
Not even close. Perhaps why don't you try and start with Rumsfeld's book and then go from there. He does an excellent job at laying everything out on the table. It's worth a read and a lot just may surprise you. Remember, 17 UN resolutions, 1 fail peace agreement and about 23 reasons to remove Sadam.
I've read his book, and I definitely recommend it.
Bush - Prosecute for War Crimes?
