| . Reasons for war examined . |
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Lawrence Smallman "We must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy." --- Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials "An attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." --- President Carter, State of the Union Speech, Jan 23rd 1980 "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."--- Advice of US sixth President, John Quincy Adams, who as Secretary of State in 1821 opposed American intervention in support of Greek independence "Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor with traditional goals for his aggression. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is the object of his aggression. Rather, Saddam’s problem with the U.S. appears to be that we stand in the way of his ambitions. He seeks weapons of mass destruction not to arm terrorists, but to deter us from intervening to block his aggressive designs." --- Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Present Ford and Bush "While Iraq’s missiles can reach Israel, they can’t touch American soil. Before the US government can claim to be acting in self-defense, it must present compelling evidence that terrorist groups linked to Hussein, or Hussein himself, are both willing and able to launch an imminent attack on the American homeland." --- Professor Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale "I have been provided with no evidence that would cause me to believe Iraq poses a more significant threat today than one or two years ago when the Bush Administration was content with containment." ---Congressman Peter DeFazio, Oct 10th 2002 "A war initiated by the United States to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq under the present circumstances, and without UN Security Council authorization, would be tantamount to a war of aggression." --- Dr. David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Weapons of Mass Destruction "There is no such thing as a long range Iraqi missile with an effective biological warhead." --- Dr. Meir Steiglitz, Israeli Strategic Defense Analyst "It is unlikely that Iraq currently possesses an offensive chemical weapons capability comparable to its pre 1991 level. its ability to disseminate efficiently CW agent with missile warheads is extremely limited and unlikely to cause large casualties." --- International Institute for Strategic Studies Dossier "Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction: a net assessment." Sep 9th 2002 "The Iraqi air force now has approximately 200 fighter planes in active service but with low serviceability levels. Of this inventory, only about 20 are advanced planes that have any ability to confront most of the planes possessed by the United States or Israel. The rest are old planes from the 1970s, or even before."--- General Shlomo Brom (ret.), Senior Research Associate Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University "Bush and Blair are pulling their publics by the nose, once again covering their hollow, patriotic jingoism with shoddy intelligence." --- Dr. Imad Khadduri, former Iraqi nuclear scientist (defected), Feb 14th 2003 [Bush’s] "comparison with the League of Nation’s failure to
stand up before Japanese, Italian and German aggression in the 1930s
is completely ahistorical. The Axis powers were heavily industrialized
countries that had conquered vast stretches of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Today’s Iraq, by contrast, is an impoverished Third World country that
for twelve years has been under the strictest sanctions in world history.."
---Dr. Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the
Peace & Justice Studies Program "I am indeed concerned that the magnitude of America’s power has convinced U.S. leaders that this country has been anointed the guardian of the world. They may have the best of motives, but their policies will nevertheless appear malign to people in other countries, who will naturally resent hegemony. That resentment cannot be good, either for the American people or the other countries in which it grows." --- Dr. Sheldon Richman, Senior Fellow at Future of Freedom Foundation, Fairfax, Virginia "I doubt whether you would have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, if the members of the Nobel committed had been aware of your intense contribution to the production of Israel’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction," --- Issam Makhoul, Knesset Member addressing Shimon Peres, Feb 2nd, 2000 "Nuclear terrorism is as dangerous for Saddam as it is for Americans, and he has no more incentive to give Al-Qaeda nuclear weapons than the United States does – unless, of course, our country makes clear it is trying to overthrow him." --- Professor John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy, University of Chicago Regarding UN Resolutions "While the Clinton Administration did serious damage to the UN, the Bush presidency – with its repudiation of even minimal multilaterism, its hostility to existing arms control treaties, its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and its efforts to undermine the International Criminal Court – created a pattern of anti-UN diplomacy never before seen in Washington." --- Dr. Richard Falk, Professor of International Law, Princeton "Having stated last Friday that he [George Bush] did not believe Iraq would accept UN inspectors, he responded to Iraq’s prompt, unconditional acceptance by calling any reliance on it a "false hope" and promising to attack Iraq alone if the UN does not act." --- Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General in letter to Kofi Anan, Sep 20th 2002 "UN Security Council Resolution 446 and 465 require that Israel evacuate all if its illegal settlements on occupied Arab lands. The United States, however, insists the fate of its illegal settlements is a matter of Israel Palestinian negotiations….The most extensive violator of UN Security Council resolution is Israel, by far the largest recipient of US military and economic aid." --- Dr. Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program "We support Israel in its refusal to accept a clearly hostile UN inquiry into its defensive actions in the West Bank and Gaza. At a time when a cease-fire declaration has been issued and efforts are being made to end the violence, it is outrageous that the UN Human Rights Commission has chosen to vilify Israel with this unfair and biased resolution." --- Abraham Foxman, National Director of Anti-Defamation League, New York "The Security Council … calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguard." --- United Nations Security Council Resolution 487. June 19th 1981 (Unimplemented) "Turkey remains in violation of UN Security Council resolution 353 and 354 calling for its withdrawal from Northern Cyprus, which this NATO ally of the United States has occupied since 1974." --- Dr. Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program "The resolution [1441] does not endorse the use of force, it redefines the Iraq crisis, at least in the international arena, as one of disarmament, not overthrow," --- Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of International Institute of Policy Studies, Nov 8th 2002 Threat of Terrorism and Proliferation "Iraq developed these weapons [CW] with the help of the United States and the West. No matter how many times Iranians shouted that Iraq was using chemical weapons, they were ignored. I don’t know why the United States has suddenly become kinder than a mother for the suffering of our chemical weapons patients…. The United States let him develop, stockpile and use these weapons. Now suddenly it's changed. The fact is that the United States is only after its own interests. It doesn't care about what has happened to people " --- Dr. Hamid Sohrabpour, pulmonary specialist and Director of Iran’s Chemical Treatment Program. [The United States] "actively supported the Iraq war effort by supplying the Iraqi’s with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis and by closely monitoring third country arm sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." --- Howard Teicher, former National Security Council official, affirms US complicity with Saddam Hussein in signed affidavit dated Jan 31st 1995. "The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism – car bombing and so on – so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns … Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate." --- Tom Carew, former SAS soldier active in Afghanistan Aug 13th 2000 "Iraq and al-Qaeda are not obvious allies. In fact, they are natural enemies. A central tenet of Al-Qaeda’s jihadist ideology is that secular Muslim rulers and their regimes have oppressed the believers and plunged Islam into historic crisis … Mr. Hussein has remained true to the unwritten rules of state sponsorship of terror: never get involved with a group that cannot be controlled, and never give a weapons of mass destruction to terrorist who might use it against you." --- Daniel Benjamin, former Member of US National Security Council "The idea that he [Saddam] might be connected with Osama Bin Laden is ridiculous." --- Uri Avnery, former Member of the Knesset and leader of Gush Shalom Movement ‘An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken." --- Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Present Ford and Bush "The Israelis announced back in 1991 that they supported the idea of a freeze in Middle East arms transfers, yet it was the United States that rejected it". --- Dr. Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program US aid to Israel is "little more than an American subsidy to US arms manufacturers." --- Matti Peled, former Israeli Major General and Knesset Member "North Korea is the world’s number one exporter of missile technology and equipment." --- John Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Oct 3rd 2002 Promoting Democracy and the Future "There are places where the US leaders would not want to see majoritarian democracy, such as in Pakistan, where they sponsor a military dictator, and in Saudi Arabia, to name two cases. In places where the American administration would not like the outcome of a popular vote, there is no push for democracy." --- Dr. Sheldon Richman, Senior fellow, Future of Freedom Foundation, Virginia "I don’t want to try to put our troops in all places at all times. I don’t want to be the world’s policeman." --- Governor Bush, election campaign 2000. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." --- Lord Acton, 1887 "We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started." --- General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret.), Special Advisor to the Secretary of State, and former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command "A real public debate is needed not only to revitalize representative democracy but to head off an unnecessary war likely to bring widespread death and destruction as well as heighten regional dangers of economic and political instability, encourage future anti-American terrorism and give rise to a US isolationism that this time is not of its own choosing."--- Dr. Richard Falk, Professor of International Law, Princeton Aug 19th 2002 Conclusion "Bush and his team have not spent much time addressing the reasons that the terrorist chose to attack symbols of American economic and military power. They have simply used the blunt instrument of military force to strike out at a regime viewed as dangerous. The United States under the Bush administration appears more like a helpless flailing giant than a country basing its responses on reason, law and morality." --- Dr. David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation "Preventive war is a war of aggression and does not come under the definition of a Just War." --- Archbishop Renato Martino, Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, and Holy See’s former representative at UN "Grief for those killed and wounded in war will be all the more agonizing if their loss results from an armed conflict that could have been avoided, without compromise to the common good." --- Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, head of Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales "A military attack on Iraq is obviously criminal; completely inconsistent with urgent needs of the peoples of the United Nations; unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in light of the unknown facts, out of proportion to other existing threat of war and violence; and a dangerous adventure risking conflict throughout the region and far beyond for years to come." --- Ramsey Clark, former US attorney General. "Our reason for going to war is because we don’t know what he has. In other words, we are going to go to war over another intelligence failure. I mean the whole process and the whole thought that leads us to a strategy that is so weak and so ineffective and incapable of meeting our requirements is amazing at this time." --- General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret.), Special Advisor to the Secretary of State, and former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command. |
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