U.S. troops are training in Kuwait, and U.S. commanders are drawing up battle plans, as President Bush rushes to war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
But in the game of Stratego, Hussein has again one-upped Bush.
Iraq’s defiant acceptance of the United Nations resolution gives inspectors unfettered access and, thankfully, slows Bush’s march to war.
In a nine-page letter, delivered last week to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Iraq accepted the resolution despite its “bad conditions.”
The resolution gives inspectors the right to go anywhere at anytime and promises “serious consequences” if Iraq fails to cooperate.
The sticking point with Iraq has always been unlimited access, U.S. troops trampling through its presidential palaces and government ministries.
From 1991 to 1998, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled Hussein’s ability to use and share weapons of mass destruction.
Yet before they could finish the job, Hussein kicked inspectors out and accused them of being spies.
The United States denied the allegations at first, but later admitted the truth.
The inspectors acted as spies and collected data on Iraqi military and intelligence agencies, and even on Hussein himself.
But this time Hussein didn’t have much choice.
It was either allow the all-access inspections or have U.S. bombs raining on Iraq, killing innocent civilians and destroying Iraq’s infrastructure.
Iraq emphatically denies that it has weapons of mass destruction.
But North Korea does, along with Iran, Russia, Cuba, China and the United States.
Yet Bush and his hawks would never allow a foreign power to inspect the Pentagon, the CIA or the White House.
That’s because Bush knows that such a move is a threat to a country’s security and sovereignty, and so does Hussein.
Calling Bush a liar, whose lies will be exposed, Iraq has promised to send another letter to Annan showing that the U.N. resolution violates international law.
Whether Bush is a liar, at least on this issue, remains to be seen.
And until the Dec. 8 report on Iraq’s weapons inventory, doubt remains over whether Hussein is the evil threat that Bush claims, or if Bush’s motives are soaked in oil.
But if the United States would stop its global intruding, robbing nations rich in resources and killing their poor in the name of capitalism and democracy, it wouldn’t harbor paranoid delusions about who has nuclear weapons and who doesn’t.
And Americans wouldn’t have to live with the fear of terrorism that the United States has brought to so many.
The Temple News editorial board members are:
• Jeremy Smith, Editor in Chief
• Mike Gainer, Managing Editor
• Brian White, News Editor
• Kia Gregory, Opinion Editor
Letters to the editor can be submitted via our Web site @ www.temple-news.com under the “submissions” link. They can also be dropped off at the Temple News office located in the Student Center, Room 315.
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