As of March 7, 2003 the date that will always remain in my mind for the rest of my life, it was shown to be very unlikely that Iraq continued to have any WMD or programs to produce them.

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Since 2003, when March 7th comes around I think of all the men, women and children that have died in the Iraq war, all the anger directed at the US by the rest of the world and I think how easily all would have been prevented if we had had a President that was honest, interested in the truth and in doing the right thing. Yes, history records that this latest Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, but the events that should have prevented that war occurred on March 7, 2003.

 

Let’s go back a bit further. Throughout the early to middle part of 2002, the Bush administration had been making accusations that Iraq possessed and was continuing to seek and manufacture Weapons of Mass Destruction. Much of the US political establishment in both parties believed this to be true. The Iraqi government, led by the despot Saddam Hussein, continually issued denials but those denials were deemed not credible by much of the western press and western governments. If Iraq had nothing to hide, the line of reasoning went, why were they not allowing the UN Weapons inspectors into the country to verify this?

 

Efforts to get the UN Weapons inspection teams into Iraq intensified as the year went on, culminating in October 10, 2002 with the US congress passing the Iraq War Resolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq that authorized then President Bush to go to war in Iraq if necessary to enforce UN Resolutions regarding those weapons. Shortly thereafter on November 8, the UN passed resolution 1441 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Security_Council_Resolution_1441 calling for the immediate and complete disarmament of Iraq and demands from Iraq a report of the status of its arsenal of WMD.

 

On November 13, five days after UN Resolution 1441 was passed, Iraq accepted it and allowed the first portion of a new UN Weapons inspection team on the ground fourteen days later.

 

While this would seem to be a positive turn of events, the Bush administration did strange things once these results had been achieved. They continued to press for military action against Iraq. The US pressed several of its allies to issue statements saying that Iraq is a threat to world security and on February 5, Colin Powell went before the United Nations and issued his now infamous speech about how the US is sure that Iraq has weapons and weapons programs that violate various UN Resolutions.

 

I want to remind readers that throughout this period, Iraq was contained as few other countries have ever been in history. More than two thirds of Iraqi airspace, the so-called no-fly zones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_no-fly_zones were constantly patrolled by American fighter planes. If those patrolling planes detected any hostile activity on the ground or in the air, it was immediately engaged and destroyed. Tens of thousands of US troops also remained on station in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

 

I make the above points about the situation because it should be clear that Iraq did not pose a conventional military threat to anyone with the world’s most powerful Air Force flying around the clock combat air patrols over two thirds of the country. No, the only danger Iraq could have posed would have been via Weapons of Mass Destruction and even then, the chance was remote that Iraq could prepare for and mount any kind of WMD attack without pre-launch activities alerting allied reconnaissance aircraft thereby resulting in a strike against those facilities before a launch could even be completed.

 

As of March 7, 2003 the date that will always remain in my mind for the rest of my life, it was shown to be very unlikely that Iraq continued to have any WMD or programs to produce them.

 

On March 7, 2003, the heads of the two UN Weapons Inspection Teams in Iraq issued reports that showed that no Weapons of Mass Destruction had been found in nearly four months of intensive on site inspections. See http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocusnewsiraq.asp?NewsID=414&sID=6 and http://www.un.org/News/dh/iraq/elbaradei-7mar03.pdf and http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=6383&Cr=iraq&Cr1=inspect . Here are some excerpts:

 

Since the arrival of the first inspectors in Iraq on 27 November 2002,

UNMOVIC has conducted more than 550 inspections covering approximately 350 sites. Of these 44 sites were new sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was in virtually all cases provided promptly. In no case have the inspectors seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance of their impending arrival.

 Top United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council today that over the past month Iraq has displayed "active" or even "proactive" cooperation, which has allowed the inspection process to make significant progress, although a number of key disarmament tasks remained to be resolved. 

After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. We intend to continue our inspection activities, making use of all the additional rights granted to us by Resolution 1441 and all additional tools that might be available to us, including reconnaissance platforms and all relevant technologies. We also hope to continue to receive from States actionable information relevant to our mandate. I should note that, in the past three weeks, possibly as a result of ever-increasing pressure by the international community, Iraq has been forthcoming in its co-operation, particularly with regard to the conduct of private interviews and in making available evidence that could contribute to

the resolution of matters of IAEA concern. I do hope that Iraq will continue to expand the scope and accelerate the pace of its co-operation.

 

Turning to biological and chemical weapons, Mr. Blix said there was a significant Iraqi effort under way to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of those arms, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991. As part of that effort, a disposal site was being now re-excavated, unearthing bombs and fragments, which could allow the determination of the number of bombs destroyed at that site.

 

Mr. Blix emphasized that no evidence had so far been found of weapons of mass destruction being moved around by truck, of mobile production units for biological weapons or of underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage, as claimed by intelligence authorities.

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I’ve written numerous articles on the March 7, 2003 weapons inspector reports and talked about them to anyone who seemed interested because it seems unconscionable to me that we went to war using a justification of Weapons of Mass Destruction thirteen days after the UN Weapons inspectors issued these reports saying they hadn’t found any after several months of on the ground inspections.

 

I had been following the progress of the UN weapons inspectors and the day the reports came out, I talked to several of my friends about them and said it is impossible that the President could take us to war right after these reports.

 It is at this point, in my opinion, that going to war and invading Iraq became an unprovoked war of aggression and thus a war crime. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War  

At the very least, plans to go to war should have been postponed until the Weapons inspectors completed their inspections, after which we would have found out what we instead found out the hard way, that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq anymore and there hadn’t been for some time.

 

People talk about many things regarding the run-up to the Iraq war, including blame and justification or lack thereof. In my opinion, all the other issues are close to meaningless in the face of the UN Weapons Inspectors reports of March 7, 2003. You can justify everything that all branches of the US Government did up until then. In fact, as I have written several times, if Bush had responded to those reports by calling off the war and declaring victory for his policy of aggressively confronting Saddam Hussein and getting Weapons Inspection Teams back into the country, it would have been an incredible win for his administration and its Iraq policies. Bush would have assured the safety of the country without having had to go to war.

 The fact that Bush and his administration went to war anyway less than two weeks after these reports means that something else other than the safety and security of the United States and its allies was behind the administration’s desire to go to war. We can argue about what that might be, but it is irrelevant in terms of International Law as only the exigency of an extreme and immediate threat to one’s country or one’s allies is enough to avoid a first strike attack or invasion being classified as an unprovoked war of aggression. In fact, even that is a stretch of what the relevant UN Charter sections say about war. Then Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan made it clear when asked about the legality of the war by the BBC, “Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal." See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3661134.stm  

Regarding US Law, the authorization congress gave the President to go to war, see http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf was specific in terms of why and in what circumstances congress gave permission for war. The relevant portion of the Resolution states:

 

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. 

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After the reports of March 7, 2003, it is impossible to claim justification on either 1, or 2 above. Iraq could no longer be considered a credible threat to the US or anyone else and was not in material breach of any UN Resolutions. President Bush exceeded his authority and broke both US and International Law when he invaded Iraq.

 

Supporters of Bush and his administration are fond of saying that history will validate his administration’s decisions including the decision to go to war in Iraq. I think the opposite is more likely. The more historians examine all the events that led up to the war, the worse the decision to go to war is going to appear. I would love to ask Bush or Cheney or any other member of his administration or any of his supporters one simple question. Why did the administration press so hard for nearly a year to get UN Weapons Inspectors into Iraq only to ignore their findings? I think the truthful answer, which I would never get from any of the aforementioned groups is that they never thought Iraq would agree to let the inspectors back in and that alone would have been a sufficient justification for war. The administration bluffed and Iraq called them on it.

 

Much discussion has been made since the Obama administration took office regarding “truth commissions” that would investigate whether members of the former Bush administration committed crimes regarding torture of prisoners and other issues. My hope is that an investigation is also conducted into the process and decision-making involved in going to war in Iraq with an eye to whether US or International Law was broken. In my opinion, the answers to those questions are obvious. The UN Weapons Inspectors reports of March 7, 2003 should have stopped the Iraq war from happening. Hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed and trillions of dollars in wasted expenditures are the responsibility of those who made the decision to go to war despite those reports.

Authors Website: http://www.ibtimes.com/blog/steven-leser_103/bio/

Authors Bio:
A political blogger for the International Business Times, Steve Leser is a hot national political pundit. He has appeared on MSNBC's Coundown with Keith Olbermann, Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Russia Today's (RT) Crosstalk with Peter Lavelle. But, Leser is most known for his work as commentator and the progressive counterpoint on the very conservative FOX News cable network. Steve Leser has been frequently featured on Your World with Neil Cavuto, Bulls & Bears, and Cashing In against such FOX notables as Neil Cavuto and Stuart Varney. Leser gave the stirring live commentary on FOX as news broke of the resignation of Sarah Palin as Governor of Alaska.

Steve Leser is in demand in New York as keynote speaker for his authority on the power and machinations of Republican think tanks, the economy, health care reform and various other political topics.

Leser is also a political organizer and has held positions within the Democratic Party including District Chair and Public Relations Chair within county organizations.