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June 05, 2005
Bolton Instrumental in Firing the Man Who Exposed True U.S. Motives for Iraq
So, this very important pre-invasion pre-emption of peace of was engineered by Bolton:
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt José Bustani ``had to go,'' particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
What is worse is that this move to make sure the long-planned war could go ahead as planned without being undermined by actual progress on the question of WMD was exposed in real time, by George Monbiot and others. Let me quote a long passage from his piece from 2002, written five days before Bustani was illegally fired:
The US wants to depose the diplomat who could take away its pretext for war with IraqBy George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 16th April 2002
On Sunday, the US government will launch an international coup. It has been planned for a month. It will be executed quietly, and most of us won’t know what is happening until it’s too late. It is seeking to overthrow 60 years of multilateralism, in favour of a global regime built on force.
The coup begins with its attempt, in five days’ time, to unseat the man in charge of ridding the world of chemical weapons. If it succeeds, this will be the first time that the head of a multilateral agency will have been deposed in this manner. Every other international body will then become vulnerable to attack. The coup will also shut down the peaceful options for dealing with the chemical weapons Iraq may possess, helping to ensure that war then becomes the only means of destroying them.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention. It inspects labs and factories and arsenals and oversees the destruction of the weapons they contain. Its director-general is a workaholic Brazilian diplomat called Jose Bustani. He has, arguably, done more in the past five years to promote world peace than anyone else on earth. His inspectors have overseen the destruction of two million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world’s chemical weapon facilities. He has so successfully cajoled reluctant nations that the number of signatories has risen from 87 to 145 in the past five years: the fastest growth rate of any multilateral body in recent times.
In May 2000, as a tribute to his extraordinary record, Bustani was re-elected unanimously by the member states for a second five-year term, even though he had yet to complete his first one. Last year Colin Powell wrote to him to thank him for his “very impressive” work. But now everything has changed. The man celebrated for his remarkable achievements has been denounced as an enemy of the people.
In January, with no prior warning or explanation, the US State Department asked the Brazilian government to recall him, on the grounds that it did not like his “management style”. This request directly contravenes the Chemical Weapons Convention, which states “the Director-General … shall not seek or receive instructions from any government.” Brazil refused. In March, the US government accused Bustani of “financial mismanagement”, “demoralization” of his staff, “bias” and “ill-considered initiatives”. It warned that if he wanted to avoid damage to his reputation, he must resign.
Again, the US was trampling the convention, which insists that member states shall “not seek to influence” the staff. He refused to go. On March 19th, the US proposed a vote of no-confidence in Mr Bustani. It lost. So it then did something unprecedented in the history of multilateral diplomacy. It called a “special session” of the member states to oust him. The session begins on Sunday. And this time the US is likely to get what it wants.
...
Bustani has suggested that if the Security Council were to support the OPCW’s bid to persuade Iraq to sign, this would provide the US with an alternative to war. It is hard to see why Saddam Hussein would accept weapons inspectors from UNMOVIC —the organisation backed by the Security Council—after its predecessor UNSCOM was found to be stuffed with spies planted by the US government. It is much easier to see why he might accept inspectors from an organisation which has remained scrupulously even-handed. Indeed, when UNSCOM was thrown out of Iraq in 1998, the OPCW was allowed in to complete the destruction of the weapons it had found. Bustani has to go because he has proposed the solution to a problem the US does not want solved.
These are the things to keep in mind everytime the administration says, oops, sorry, "intelligence failures." On the contrary, they knew exactly what they were doing.
Posted by zeynep at June 5, 2005 03:18 PM