[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 5, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E135]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E135]]
                   WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL ON IRAQ

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 5, 2003

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call 
attention to an excellent editorial in today's Washington Post, written 
by the newspaper's editorial staff. They have presented a definitive 
summary of why we must act to disarm Iraq in preserving the safety of 
Americans.

                          The Case for Action

       Even before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's 
     presentation to the United Nations Security Council today, it 
     is clear that Iraq has not complied with Resolution 1441, 
     which offered it a ``final opportunity'' to voluntarily 
     disarm. Neither the U.N. weapons inspectors nor any permanent 
     member of the council contends that Iraq has ``fully'' 
     cooperated, as the resolution requires. Barring a dramatic 
     change of behavior by Saddam Hussein in the coming weeks, 
     that means a military intervention to disarm Iraq would be 
     justified, even if the council passed no further resolutions. 
     Still, there is a larger question that the United States and 
     its allies must answer, and that underlies the debate that 
     will begin: Even if it is lawful, is war the right course? 
     The threshold for deciding on military action must be high, 
     and there are legitimate questions to answer: Is Iraq 
     genuinely a threat to U.S. security, and must it be dealt 
     with now? Given the suffering that every war brings, the 
     potential economic and political costs, and the likelihood of 
     unforeseen consequences, would it be better to settle for a 
     strategy of containing Saddam Hussein through continued U.N. 
     sanctions and inspections? This would involve abandoning the 
     tougher course the Security Council approved by a unanimous 
     vote just 12 weeks ago; but if the Bush administration 
     endorsed it, much of the country--and the world--would 
     approve.
       Yet we believe that it would be a mistake for the United 
     States and its allies, confronted with continued 
     intransigence, to shrink again from decisive action in Iraq. 
     Unless unexpected change takes place in Baghdad, the United 
     States should lead a force to remove Saddam Hussein's 
     dictatorship and locate and destroy its chemical and 
     biological weapons and its nuclear program. The Iraqi regime 
     poses a threat not just to the United States but to global 
     order. The removal of Saddam Hussein would advance the task 
     of containing the spread of weapons of mass destruction to 
     rogue states. It also would free millions of Iraqis from 
     deprivation and oppression and make possible a broader 
     movement to reshape the Arab Middle East, where political and 
     economic backwardness have done much to spawn extremists such 
     as al Qaeda. In contrast, a continued failure to act would 
     send dictators and terrorists a devastating message about the 
     impotence of the United States and the United Nations. It 
     would encourage extremists in their rush for nuclear, 
     chemical and biological weapons.
       That Iraq has the capacity to threaten vital U.S. interests 
     has been clear at least since 1990, when Saddam Hussein's 
     army invaded Kuwait, seized its oil fields and stood ready to 
     move on to Saudi Arabia. Had Saddam Hussein waited the few 
     months that his scientists then needed to complete a nuclear 
     weapon, the United States might not have reversed the 
     invasion; should he acquire them and again seek domination of 
     the Middle East, the West would face a challenge like that 
     now posed by North Korea, with far higher stakes. The 1991 
     Persian Gulf War did not eliminate the Iraqi threat, because 
     Saddam Hussein and most of his army and arsenal survived; so 
     the first Bush administration and the Security Council 
     adopted a strategy of containment. This involved ordering 
     Iraq to give up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, 
     dispatching inspectors to verify that process, and 
     indefinitely extending sanctions that crippled Iraq's 
     economy.
       Those who advocate containment through inspections ignore 
     that strategy's costly failure during the 1990s. Inspectors 
     traipsed through Iraq for seven years as Baghdad defied or 
     ignored one Security Council resolution after the next. The 
     most dangerous chemical and biological weapons were not 
     discovered for four years, and then only with the help of a 
     defector. After that, Iraq stepped up its concealment 
     operation, leaving thousands of tons of chemical and 
     biological materiel and dozens of missiles missing; as 
     inspector Hans Blix reported last week, they are still 
     unaccounted for. Meanwhile, the Iraqi people suffered 
     terribly, even as Saddam Hussein built new palaces. There 
     were widespread reports of deaths through malnutrition and 
     lack of medicine, and many Arab extremists, including Osama 
     bin Laden, reaped political capital by blaming the United 
     States. Eventually, the Security Council's will to maintain 
     the containment regime collapsed, and in 1998 Saddam Hussein 
     was able to drive out the inspectors.
       At the time, there was broad consensus about the lessons 
     and consequences of what had happened. Congress passed, and 
     President Clinton endorsed, a resolution shifting U.S. policy 
     in Iraq from containment to regime change. ``In this century, 
     we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to 
     aggression and illegal behavior is firmness,'' Mr. Clinton 
     said while he still occupied the White House. ``If we fall to 
     respond today, Saddam, and all those who would follow in his 
     footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that 
     they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear 
     message from the United Nations Security Council.''
       Yet Mr. Clinton did fall to respond. Saddam Hussein had 
     four years to strengthen his arsenal, even as the sanctions 
     effectively collapsed. According to Mr. Blix and Western 
     intelligence agencies, he illegally imported hundreds of new 
     missile engines and rebuilt production facilities. He created 
     drones and mobile biological laboratories and sought nuclear 
     material from several nations. Mr. Powell probably will add 
     more to that indictment today. The Bush administration 
     promised a tougher response, but only after Sept. 11, 2001, 
     was it able to summon the will. President Bush, along with 
     most of Congress and the American public, was driven to 
     accept the point made by President Clinton: that the United 
     States, and the world, cannot allow rogue regimes to build 
     deadly weapons in open defiance of international law and the 
     United Nations. The fresh documentation of al Qaeda's hunt 
     for weapons of mass destruction, and the danger that it has 
     or might acquire such weapons from Saddam Hussein, have only 
     sharpened that point.
       The people of Iraq and its region would benefit from an end 
     to the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, who is guilty of some of 
     the most terrible war crimes and human rights violations of 
     the past 50 years. He has tortured, gassed and slaughtered 
     his people and has invaded two neighboring nations. The 
     liberation of Iraq's people would present the United States 
     and its allies with a difficult and prolonged challenge of 
     nation-building. If poorly handled--and reports of the 
     administration's planning so far do not inspire confidence--
     the postwar era could inject serious new problems into a 
     troubled region. But if the goal of preserving a unified Iraq 
     under the administration of a democratic regime were 
     achieved, it could give decisive impetus to nascent movements 
     for reform that exist throughout the Middle East.
       In the end, though, a war in Iraq would not be primarily a 
     humanitarian exercise but an operation essential to American 
     security. President Bush's move toward action on Iraq has not 
     been a bolt from the blue or a departure from past U.S. 
     policy, though the administration's clumsy handling of its 
     arguments and allies has sometimes made it look that way. Nor 
     must it be seen as an exercise in Mr. Bush's new doctrine of 
     preemption, though ideologues on both sides would portray it 
     as such. Rather, it is the completion of a vital mission of 
     international security repeatedly confirmed by the U.N. 
     Security Council, by a Democratic president and by bipartisan 
     majorities of Congress. War is never to be welcomed. But a 
     decade of failed diplomacy and containment has brought the 
     nation and its allies to a point where war may soon be the 
     only credible option for ending the threat of Saddam Hussein.

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