by Kerry Thomas
March 4, 2007
In April 2005 I took the time to respond to some criticism I
received about an editorial I had written on the virtues of capitalism. As I wrote then, normally I wouldn’t give these
letters the time of day. It’s just not
much of a challenge to get into a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
When you write opinion
pieces, you get criticism. It goes with
the territory. It’s part of the
exercise of freedom of speech.
This latest criticism comes from one John Kocovsky of Hazelhurst,
Wisconsin, appearing in the March
2, 2007 edition of the Lakeland Times newspaper. It’s his feeble attempt to refute a claim I made in a column
about how we are seeing a re-writing of Iraqi
history vis-a-vie
American military involvement there.
I wrote, “All
too often, history’s facts get re-written so as to better fit a political
agenda. We’re seeing such a re-write
now regarding America’s involvement in Iraq.
The most common refrain heard today is “Bush lied. There were no weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq.”
Because of the restraints of column space in that newspaper, I had
to edit my
response down to fit as best I could.
I have no such restraints here, so here it is:
I want to thank John Kocovsky for doing such a good job
illustrating the very points I addressed in my earlier letter to the editors of
the Lakeland Times, regarding the re-writing of Iraqi history.
Normally I wouldn’t waste your time or mine by responding in a
point-by-point analysis of a critique of my views. I value our freedoms of speech and the press, and I would not
dare to infringe on anyone’s constitutional rights to give voice to their
opinion. However, although John
Kocovsky doesn’t directly call me a liar, his little quote about “conservative
means never letting go of a lie” was clearly aimed at me.
Anyone who’s taken the time to follow my opinions here can readily
see that I am more a libertarian than a conservative. Just ask people in the Vilas County Republican Party or various
“conservative” blogs online if they think I’m a “true conservative.” I’m not, at least as that term is used
today.
My position, that we are seeing a revision in Iraqi history to suit a political agenda, is only reinforced in Mr. Kocovsky’s letter. According to Mr. Kocovsky, President Bush’s administration is characterized by “ineptness, bad decisions and mismanagement.” But that opinion isn’t part of any political agenda, is it?
Mr. Kocovsky then tries eight separate times to refute my
positions. Only problem is, his
refutations only reinforce my positions.
He admits in his first claim that my version of Iraqi
history is true. Mr. Kocovsky continues
to reinforce my position that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) with his statement that United Nations inspector Scott Ritter claims Iraq
destroyed 90-95% of their WMDs under his watch (1991-1998). That left 5-10% of Iraq’s WMD programs
intact, in 1998.
If you’re a soldier in the field, or simply a citizen in the
streets, do you really care if you’re attacked by only 5-10% of the WMDs your
enemy has?
In January 1998, Scott Ritter’s inspection team
in Iraq was blocked from certain weapons sites by Iraqi officials. When President Clinton and the U.N. Security
Council failed to take action against Iraq for their ongoing failure to
cooperate fully with inspectors (a breach of U.N. Security Council Resolution
1154), Ritter resigned from the United Nations Special Commission on August 26,
1998.
In his letter of resignation, Ritter said the Security
Council's reaction to Iraq's decision earlier to suspend co-operation with the
inspection team made a mockery of the disarmament work.
U.N. inspectors were ordered out of Iraq by the United
States, shortly before President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox in
December 1998. Thereafter, weapons inspectors
were denied access to Iraq.
Shortly thereafter, Ritter nade this statement on the
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
“I think the danger right now is that without
effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short
period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological
weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even
certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program.”
Scott Ritter’s
tenure as a weapons inspector in Iraq ended in August 1998. For the next four and a half years, there
were no international inspections of Iraq’s weapons capabilities. Subsequent speculation by Ritter, and Mr.
Kocovsky, as to Iraq’s weapons capabilities after 1998 was just that,
speculation.
Using a little thing called common sense, think back to the time
of World War II. How long did it take,
using 1940’s technology, for America to develop an atomic weapon, once the
decision had been made to pursue such a program? The timeline of the Manhattan
Project went something like this.
FDR approved the development program on October 9, 1941. The first successful atomic detonation
happened July 16, 1945. Less than 4
years.
If the research had already been done, and the technology proven,
and the results and how-to information were readily available from public
literature, and given the power and capabilities of modern computer technology,
might such a nuclear or other WMD program be developed in a shorter
timeframe? And if a sovereign country
were determined to acquire their own WMD program, under threat of war, might
they place a high priority on such development?
Mr. Kocovsky was
gracious enough to admit that my version of the Congressional authorization for
use of American military force against Iraq was accurate. Except Mr. Kocovsky truncated the language
of the authorization, leaving off the part that authorized the President to use
military force “as he determined to be necessary and appropriate.”
Mr. Kocovsky goes on to nit pick at my positions, ignoring the
dates of my claims, saying such things as Iraq violated 17 U.N. Security
Council resolutions, not, as I wrote, “at least 16.” Hmm, is 17 at least 16? The reason I wrote 16 was that the 17th
UNSC resolution simply gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to comply with the
previous 16 resolutions, or face serious consequences.
I wrote that between October 10, 2002 and March 20, 2003, Saddam
Hussein used that time to hide and move his weapons programs. Mr. Kocovsky asks for proof.
I cited three prominent officials: Georges Sada, the number two
official in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force; Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon,
former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force, the top job in the Israeli
military, analogous to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the
American military; and former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon All
three of these officials made similar claims about Iraq moving its WMD program
to Syria.
Georges
Sada oversaw Special Republican Guard brigades that loaded WMDs onto two
converted Iraqi Airways planes and moved
them to Syria. Ariel Sharon made a similar statement in a December 23,
2002 Israeli television interview: “Chemical
and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved
from Iraq to Syria.” In December 2005, Moshe Yaalon stated
that Iraq had "transferred chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”
Mr. Kocovsky then uses the tried and true tactic of discrediting
those who made the statements, rather than addressing the statements
themselves. Mr. Kocovsky admits the flights
I wrote about, transferring Iraq’s WMD technology to Syria, took place. But then he gets confused as to the
difference between fighter jets and cargo planes.
As I wrote,
these flights attracted little international attention because they occurred at
the same time that Iraq was supposedly sending relief to Syria for a dam
collapse. The flights were accompanied
by a ground convoy of trucks carrying similar materials.
Mr. Kocovsky further questions the accuracy of the quote from
Moshe Yaalon. But Mr. Kocovsky relies
on media reports of the April 2004 statement made by Yaalon, using terms like
“perhaps” and “possibly” to question the accuracy of that statement. My letter specifically referenced the
statement made by Yaalon in December 2005.
In that 2005 interview Yaalon told the New York Sun reporter who was
conducting the interview, with no equivocation, “ He (Saddam Hussein)
transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Mr. Kocovsky all but ignores the statement made by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. According to Mr. Mr. Kocovsky, Sharon's statement “is
just supposition, there is no proof or even backup other than Sada's unverifiable
assertion.”
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that history has shown
that, as far as the Middle East is concerned, Israeli intelligence has a far
more accurate and believable track record than either the United States or the
United Nations intelligence sources.
Mr. Kocovsky goes on to state that “the U.S. Defense Department
said in 1998, in its MCTL report, that Iraq had ‘poor product quality for their
nerve agents’ and ‘bastardized binary munitions’ for the delivery of chemical
weapons.”
Tell that to the people of Halabja.
Halabja has come
to symbolize the worst of the repression of the Iraqi Kurds. Halabja was a town of 70,000 people located about
8-10 miles from the Iranian border. It
became the target of conventional and chemical bomb attacks over three days in
March of 1988.
During those
three days, the town and the surrounding district were unmercifully attacked
with bombs, artillery fire, and chemicals.
The chemical weapons were the most destructive of life. The chemicals used included mustard gas and
the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX.
At least 5,000
people died immediately as a result of the chemical attack, 75% of which were women
and children. It is estimated that up
to 12,000 people in all died during the course of those three days. This was not the only
chemical attack ordered by Saddam. It
was just the worst.
Mr. Kocovsky
tries to explain how certain chemical weapons only have a limited shelf
life. He reasons that since these
weapons have a limited shelf life, that they must have deteriorated over time
and were no longer viable weapons. My
question would then be, what makes you think a country that develops chemical
and biological weapons makes one batch of them, then stops further
development? Wouldn’t you want to
continue to develop and manufacture these weapons to replace those that were
deteriorating?
Mr. Kocovsky
draws the conclusion that Iraq’s chemical/biological WMDs were no longer
viable, which only serves to reinforce my position that Iraq did have
WMDs in the first place.
Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction. They had the
capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.
And they demonstrated a willingness to use weapons of mass destruction.
The weapons
themselves may or may not have been lethal at any given point after 1998, but
Iraq already had the ability and means to make mustard gas and the nerve agents
sarin, tabun, and VX at that time. And
that technology was transferred to Syria in the days leading up to the March
20, 2003 invasion by coalition forces.
To date, this
weapons technology has not been discovered in Syria. Why not? In the words of
General Yaalon, "No one went to Syria to find it."