inside the glass house

WMD issue backfires on Bush
NEW YORK - President George Bush's self-inflicted jokes about his obsessive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq raised many a laugh at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington DC last week.

In one of the skits photographed earlier and projected on a television screen, Bush was shown virtually crawling on his knees looking for those elusive weapons - not in Iraq – but inside his own White House Oval Office.

"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he kept saying. "Nope, no weapons over there", he said looking behind curtains. "Maybe under here", he said, as he looked under the furniture. But unfortunately for Bush, the jokes, which kept the audience in stitches of laughter, backfired.

The Democrats (obviously for political reasons) and some family members of soldiers who had died in Iraq condemned the jokes as "tasteless" and "insensitive".

The war on Iraq, which was launched to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, has already cost the lives of nearly 600 Americans (with over 3,000 wounded) and over $100 billion (and that's a billion with a 'b') in US taxpayer money.

But since the US has still not found any nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in Iraq – a search that risked American lives – Bush was accused of making fun of a flawed American foreign policy gone astray. Last week was also a week of political devasatation for the Bush administration – once again over the Middle East.

Richard Clarke, former White House chief of counter terrorism, dropped a political bombshell by publicly accusing the president of not doing enough to prevent the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001.

Clarke also charged that Bush "in a very intimidating way" gave the impression to his staff that he wanted them to come back with a possibly concocted story that Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks on the US – when it wasn't.

And Clarke said that American soldiers are dying in Iraq "for the president's own agenda, which had nothing to do with the war on terrorism."

The charge also undercut Bush's re-election campaign strategy which proclaims that he is the only American presidential candidate who can successfully fight terrorism against the US. Clarke made the accusatations before a bi-partisan US Commission investigating the September 11 attacks. "The reason that I am strident in my criticism of the United States is that by invading Iraq, the president of the United States has greadly undermined the war on terorrism," he said.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration responded angrily to the charges and accused Clarke of playing politics in an election year and trying to promote a new book – "Against All Enemies"– where he scruplously elaborates on his thesis.

At the United Nations, the Bush administration also came under fire last week for casting the only negative vote against a Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its targetted assassination of the wheel-chair bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.

Since the US exercised its veto, the resolution was not adopted despite the fact that 11 of the 15 countries in the Security Council – China, Russia, France, Angola, Chile, Pakistan, Spain, Algeria, Benin, Brazil and the Philippines – supported it. The only three countries to abstain were Britain, Germany and Romania.

But notwithstanding the overwhelming support of Council members, Israel was spared the condemnation of the United Nations – once again. The US – as it usually does – stood all alone defending Israel, while the whole world around it was vehemently condemning the extra-judicial killings.

Conceding to American pressure, the Arab Group modified its resolution to also include condemnation of "all terrorist attacks against any civilians, as well as all acts of violence and destruction."

But even this amendment could not stop the Bush administration from using the veto to protect Israel from censure by the Security Council. US loyalties to Israel were apparently far greater than its commitment to peace in the Middle East.

Since the creation of the United Nations, this was the 79th veto cast by the US, second only to the former Soviet Union which has exercised its veto 120 times, mostly during the Cold War.

The US decision to protect Israel from condemndation contrasted sharply with strong denunciations that came from Western Europe and leaders of the Arab world.

A joint statement by foreign ministers of the 15-member European Union (EU) was forthright: "Not only are extra-judicial killings contrary to international law, they also undermine the concept of the rule of law which is a key element in the fight against terrorism."

Even Britain, which abstained on the resolution, broke ranks with Washington to condemn Israel. "It's unacceptable, it's unjustified and it's very unlikely to achieve its objective," British foreign secretary Jack Straw told reporters.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was equally outspoken when he publicly condemned the assassination and reiterated that extra-judicial killings are against international law. He called on the government of Israel "to immediately end this practice."

But these warnings will obviously continue to go unheeded – as long as the US sticks to the impaired notion that Israel can do no wrong.

Back to Columns