Armageddon in Iraq

Some time ago I flew to London after a visit in Riyadh with fellow journalists as guests of the Saudi government. I arrived a day after a mammoth demonstration in protest of a US war against Iraq had reportedly clogged the streets of this beloved city that is second home to me. One of those who led the protest was Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector. By coincidence, I had just picked up a slim 76-page book with the title "War on Iraq" subtitled What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know from a WH Smith airport outlet. It has three chapters: A Splendid Little Armageddon, Iraq in the 20th Century, a brief history and an interview with Scott Ritter by William Rivers Pitt. As a former UN Weapons Inspector (UNSCOM) in Iraq, Ritter speaks from a first hand experience. He also wants readers to know that he is coming from a patriotic viewpoint, had been with the Marines and a Republican who had voted for George Bush but nevertheless wished to be a "vocal opponent of the impending war." The interviewer, William Rivers Pitt, is described as an activist and an expert on the Middle East living in Boston.

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The value of the book is that it gives an account different from what most Filipino readers would read. It says President George W. Bush has invested a lot of political capital in the war with Iraq making it inevitable and blames three men who led him into it: Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. He quotes Perle’s statement in NY Times, "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that would set back the war on terrorism." The book says the facts do not support the case for war against Iraq, that while Saddam Hussein may be abhorrent he does not personify 20 million Iraqis, and that as one who was among the first UN team of inspectors, Ritter spoke authoritatively when he said "it is doubtful in the extreme that Saddam Hussein has retained any functional aspect of the chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons programs so thoroughly dismantled by the UN inspectors who worked tirelessly for seven years." Ritter thinks that the economic sanctions against Iraq have made Saddam incapable of any functioning mechanized military. Neither does it have connections with the terrorists who struck America. That is probably why France and Germany have put their foot down to any precipitate war. The crucial date is January 27 when UN inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei will be making their report.

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I had visited Iraq once in the past when it was an American ally in the Iran-Iraqi war but as part of a group of visiting European journalists. My impression then was it was a paranoid and intensely suspicious country. In fact, I was with the group which included an Observer journalist of Middle East origin who was later executed for spying. I have to look at my notes on that visit for specific names but I remember having been invited by the journalist to join a group at the English pub in Baghdad one evening that I declined. That was the evening when it was alleged that the journalist had wandered into a military camp and collected dust which he claimed would prove that nuclear testing was being performed near the area. That was many years ago and I must say that the impression formed was my own.

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Other people have come and gone to and from Baghdad, including many Filipinos who have different experiences and impressions. I did remember that Filipino workers there would laugh among themselves when they come home and were greeted with sympathetic remarks from customs inspectors at the NAIA who said, "Ay kawawa naman yan mga yan. Galing pala sa Iraq, walang mga kuwarta yan, hayaan na ninyo." The fact was Iraq, being a socialist country, paid some of the highest wages in the Middle East. This is not to say that life was idyllic but only to say that Filipinos at home really do not know much about life in Baghdad that other Asians have made a point to know more about and profited from it. Filipinos at home can only claim ignorance of both the good and bad sides of it.

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I understand a big group from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry visited Baghdad and some of them have returned and secured purchase contracts under its UN-supervised trade. A member of the group told me she was so surprised at what she saw because of preconceptions of a closed and cruel society. Not so, she says. There is a very large Christian community there and very active women who are presidents of trading companies. According to her, all the countries around us in Asia as well as from South America and Europe are doing good business with the Iraqi government. More Filipinos could do business if they are informed. Her concern is that trade with Iraqi government agencies is one way of creating jobs for our own people. It’s funny she says but she never felt insecure among Iraqis especially the women who have been very helpful. "They are even more Christian than some of us," she says and was surprised that they venerated the Virgin Mary.

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Her impressions are not unique. Baghdad was the site of a trade fair and she met many businessmen and women of different nationalities during her visits and they said the same thing. We may not like Saddam Hussein but the Iraqis, at least those she met support him and that has to do with the fact that they have not known any other government for a long time now. Those who have been in Iraq recently speak of a preparedness to fight in defense of their country. Ritter spoke of a government that is firmly entrenched, having seen over thirty years of Ba’ath Party rule. "The Ba’ath Party has seeped into every aspect of Iraqi life – cultural, economic, educational, political. It’s irresponsible to oversimplify what’s going on here, to try to somehow separate Saddam Hussein from the rest of the political machinery. It doesn’t work that way. I’m realistic in understanding that the Iraqi government is much stronger inside Iraq than most people give it credit for. I don’t think people should take the Iraqi government too lightly. It’s a brutal regime that has shown a disregard for international law and a definite disregard for human rights. … He’s significant player, but for us to personify a nation of more than twenty million peple in one man is grotesquely ignorant," Ritter said in the interview.

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So what’s the solution? He thinks the way out is for the US to re-engage diplomatically so that representatives from both countries can begin exchanging viewpoints. A war would claim thousands of innocent victims. Ritter predicts a worst scenario that if the US or Israel used nukes against Iraq, Pakistan and Iran would turn over nuclear capability to terrorists. That would be Armageddon.

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My e-mail address: [email protected] or [email protected].