August 31, 1998: Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter is interviewed for PBS Newshour

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What was happening in your investigations that made you feel you had to resign?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Well, basically, is the investigations had come to a standstill were making no effective progress, and in order to make effective progress, we really needed the Security Council to step in in a meaningful fashion and seek to enforce its resolutions that we're not complying with.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Could you describe the most recent investigation that you wanted to undertake. Give us a little detail about it and what happened to derail it.

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Well, basically, the investigations that I was tasked with carrying out by the executive chairman involved looking at exposing the means by which Iraq hides their prohibited weapons and weapons capabilities from the special commission. We needed to expose this methodology so that they used so we could get at the weapons, themselves.

And the investigation has been going on for several years now, and this summer we were in the process of resuming these inspections, you know, in accordance with the agreement reached by Kofi Annan and Saddam Hussein in accordance with the Security Council resolutions that said Iraq had to comply or face severe consequences, so we're trying to get back on task. We had some very specific information, which led us to believe we could go to locations where we would find aspects of this hidden weaponry, of these hidden components, and also uncover how Iraq actually went about hiding these weapons from the commission.

We had very specific information, and we believe that if we'd been allowed to accomplish this inspection, we could have achieved meaningful disarmament results.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And why weren't you allowed to accomplish it?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Well, again, we have a problem with this-with the United States. On April 6th, the President of the United States submitted a report to Congress in which he clearly states that a diplomatic solution had been tried. We have a memorandum of understanding, and the marker's on the table now. Iraq must be held accountable for the agreement that they have signed with the Secretary-General and which was endorsed by the Security Council in its Resolution 1154. If Iraq didn't, there would be the severest consequences.

You had this statement on the one hand, but on the other hand, this administration's saying, wait a minute, we can't go forward with aggressive inspections because they will lead to a confrontation with Iraq, but let's understand the confrontation is because Iraq will not comply with the law passed by the Security Council. So we weren't allowed to do our job out of fear of a confrontation in which the United States would not be able to muster the required support of the Security Council to respond effectively or to respond in a manner which they had said they would respond in Resolution 1154.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Who specifically blocked the investigation?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Well, I mean, now we're getting down to who made the phone calls. The bottom line is the people held accountable are the national security policy team of the United States. Policy is made in policy coordination meetings, where the principal people meet. This would be Sandy Berger, the national security adviser; Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state; and other principal personnel from the State Department, from the Department of Defense, from the intelligence community.

They will meet and they will decide on policy issues. And it's this body that makes a determination that they needed to basically put pressure on the special commission to slow down, to postpone, to cancel certain operations because they would lead to confrontation, which the United States was not willing to step up to.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And how many inspections were blocked in this way?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Well, I mean, the list is actually quite long over the years. But since November there-since November of 1997, I would say that there have been a half dozen or so inspections, which have been either delayed or postponed or canceled outright, due to pressure exerted on the executive chairman by the United States.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, we just heard the UNSCOM chairman, Richard Butler, saying that there had been conversations with the secretary of state and others, but that he was never pressured, that it never crossed the line. Is that untrue?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Look, Richard Butler is the one that has to make that decision. He's the executive chairman. He makes the call. You know, that's his determination. What I will say is that, you know, Madeleine Albright, you just showed a clip of her saying that they've been the strongest supporter of UNSCOM. In fact, they're the ones who stand at the back of UNSCOM. That's absolutely correct.

And you have your friend who's supposed to be backing you up as you carry out implementation of the law that they're encouraging you to execute and that friend calls you up and says excuse me, if you try and do this job, we're not going to be able to back you up, we don't agree with this. I believe Richard Butler would be under an awful lot of pressure, whether he wants to state that that was the case or not, but you just don't go forward with an inspection when the friend that you're requiring to back you up says they won't support it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ritter, as you know, this change has been described by some people as tactical, that the secretary of state and others wanted to wait until they had support in the Security Council to move forward with these more confrontational investigations. What's your response to that?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: This is lunacy. The bottom line is we haven't had-the United States hasn't had this kind of Security Council support for many years now, and Security Council support is eroding, eroding in large part because of a lack of American leadership. I don't know what they're waiting for. The Security Council is on a gradual, even a steep slide downhill in terms of its ability to support, or willingness to support the special commission. And there's no indication that anything the United States has been doing would turn the Security Council around. So I don't know-it sounds an awful lot like an excuse.
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ritter, does Iraq still have prescribed weapons?

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Iraq still has prescribed weapons capability. There needs to be a careful distinction here. Iraq today is challenging the special commission to come up with a weapon and say where is the weapon in Iraq, and yet part of their efforts to conceal their capabilities, I believe, have been to disassemble weapons into various components and to hide these components throughout Iraq.

I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measure the months, reconstitute chemical biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program.

September 3, 1998: Ritter testifies in a similar manner before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations on U.S. policy regarding Iraq weapons inspection and Iraq's capacity to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction in a very short period of time.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee; last week I resigned my position out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq. I can speak to you today from firsthand experience about the effectiveness of American policy or lack thereof, with respect to the United Nations's effort to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. I sincerely hope that my actions might help to change things.

It was very sad to hear the secretary of State on Tuesday night giving an interview from Moscow challenging my credentials. She told the world through CNN that Scott Ritter doesn't have a clue about what our overall policy has been, that we are the foremost supporters of UNSCOM. I do have a clue, in fact several, all of which indicate that our government has clearly expressed its policy in one way and then acted in another. Such clues include various statements by the secretary of State, a report to Congress on 6 April by the president of the United States and several statements made to me and to other UNSCOM officials at a variety of inter-agency briefings held at the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House. If these were the only clues, the administration's record would be impressive. However, I can say without fear of contradiction and with the confidence that most of my former colleagues agree with me that those clues derive from the practical experience obtained on the ground in Iraq and behind the scenes at the United Nations tell another story: that the United States has undermined UNSCOM's efforts through interference and manipulation, usually coming from the highest levels of the administration's national security team, to include the secretary of State herself.

Iraq today is not disarmed, and remains an ugly threat to its neighbors and to world peace. Those American who think that this is important and that something should be done about it have to be deeply disappointed in our leadership. I'm here today to provide you with specific details about the scope and nature of interference by this administration in UNSCOM, the debilitating effect that such interference has on the ability of UNSCOM to carry out its disarmament mission in Iraq and to appeal to the administration and to the Senate to work together to change America's Iraq policy back to what has been stated in the past: full compliance with the provisions of Security Council resolutions, to include enabling UNSCOM to carry out its mission of disarmament in an unrestricted, unhindered fashion.

September 9, 1998: Security Council resolution 1194 unanimously condemns Iraq's decision to suspend cooperation with UNSCOM, terming Iraq's actions a totally unacceptable contravention of Iraq's obligations; demands Iraq rescind its decision and decides not to conduct the 60-day sanctions reviews until Iraq does so and the Commission reports to the Council that it is satisfied that it has been able to exercise its full range of activities, including inspections.

September 24-25, 1998: UNSCOM holds a second international expert meeting in New York to discuss the results of 1998 analyses conducted on remnants of Iraq's missile warheads.

September 29, 1998: Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) introduces H.R.4655, a bill "To establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq". Co-sponsored by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Ca) the bill will ultimately be known as "The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998"

September 29, 1998 Former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter tells BBC radio why he left the international team investigating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

October 5, 1998: HR 4655 passes the House, 360 - 38, with 36 not voting. Republicans vote 202-9 with 16 not voting, Democrats 157-29 with 20 not voting, among them are Nancy Pelosi (Ca) and John Murtha (Pa).

October 6, 1998: UNSCOM submits its semi-annual report to the Security Council (S/1998/920).

October 7, 1998: HR4655 passes the Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent.

October 8, 1998: The House of Representatives vote for impeachment proceedings to begin against President Clinton. The House judiciary committee will be given wide powers to draw up detailed charges based on 11 allegations by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr in his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair.

October 9, 1998: "[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - Letter to President Clinton. - Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others,

October 10, 1998: Senator Kerry follows up on the Senate floor

Mr. President, there are two subjects that I wish to bring to my colleagues' attention this afternoon. First, I want to talk about an issue of enormous international consequence--the situation with respect to Iraq. For the last 2 months, as we know, Saddam Hussein has been testing, yet again, the full measure of the international community's resolve to force Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. That has been the fundamental goal of our policy toward Iraq since the end of the gulf war and is reflected in the U.N. agreements reached in the aftermath of the war.

Two months ago, on August 5, Saddam Hussein, formally adopting a recommendation that had been made by the Iraqi parliament 2 days earlier, announced that Iraq would no longer permit U.N. weapons inspectors to conduct random searches in defiance of its obligations under those U.N. resolutions that were adopted at the end of the war, and also in violation, I might add, of its agreement last February with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, to give UNSCOM teams, accompanied by diplomatic overseers, unconditional access to all sites where UNSCOM believed that Iraq may be stockpiling weapons or agents to make those weapons.

Let's understand very clearly that ever since the end of the war, it has been the clear, declared, accepted, and implemented policy of the United States of America and its allies to prevent Saddam Hussein from building weapons of mass destruction. And as part of that agreed-upon policy, we were to be permitted unlimited, unfettered, unconditional, immediate access to the sites that we needed to inspect in order to be able to make that policy real.

Iraq's defiance and the low-key--some would say weak--response of the United States and the United Nations initially went unnoticed, in part because of other events, including the dual bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the obvious fascination with domestic events that have dominated the headlines now for so many months. Those events, frankly, have continued to obscure the reality of what is happening in Iraq; and, accordingly, the reality of the potential threat to the region--a region where, obviously, the United States, for 50 years or more, has invested enormous amounts of our diplomatic and even our domestic energy.

Press reports of the administration's efforts to intervene in, or at minimum, to influence UNSCOM's inspection process and the resignation of American UNSCOM inspector, Scott Ritter, focused the spotlight briefly on our Iraqi policy and raised some serious and troubling questions about our efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The principal question raised was a very simple one: Are those efforts still intact, or has our policy changed?

Last month, press reports suggested that administration officials had secretly tried to quash aggressive U.N. inspections at various times over the last year, most recently in August, in order to avoid a confrontation with Iraq--this despite repeatedly demanding the unconditional, unfettered accesses that I referred to earlier for the inspection teams. Scott Ritter, the longest serving American inspector in UNSCOM, charged at the time that the administration had intervened at least six or seven times since last November when Iraq tried to thwart UNSCOM's work by refusing to allow Ritter and other Americans to participate on the teams, in an effort to delay or postpone or cancel certain UNSCOM operations out of fear of confrontation with Iraq.

Those were serious charges. We held an open hearing, a joint hearing between the Armed Services Committee and Foreign Relations Committee on these charges. There were some protestations to the contrary by the administration and a subsequent effort to ensure that the Security Council would maintain the sanctions against Iraq, but, frankly, nothing more.

In explaining his reasons for resigning, Scott Ritter stated that the policy shift in the Security Council supported `at least implicitly' by the United States, away from an aggressive inspections policy is a surrender to Iraqi leadership that makes a `farce' of the commission's efforts to prove that Iraq is still concealing its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.

Administration officials have categorically rejected the notion that U.S. policy has shifted, either in terms of our willingness to use force or support for UNSCOM. They have also disputed Ritter's charges of repeated U.S. efforts to limit UNSCOM's work...

The fact of the matter is, in my judgment, the U.S. response and that of the Security Council to Saddam Hussein's latest provocations are different in tone and substance from responses to earlier Iraqi provocations.

Three times in the last 11 months Saddam Hussein has launched increasingly bolder challenges to UNSCOM's authority and work. In November, he refused to allow American inspectors to participate on the teams. Although that crisis ultimately was resolved through Russian intervention, the United States and Britain were leading the effort to push the Security Council to respond strongly. In subsequent weeks, Saddam Hussein refused to grant UNSCOM access to Presidential palaces and other sensitive cites, kicked out the team that was led by Scott Ritter, charging at the time that he was a CIA spy, and threatened to expel all inspectors unless sanctions were removed by mid-May.

By February, the United States had an armada of forces positioned in the gulf, and administration officials from our President on down had declared our intention to use military force if necessary to reduce Iraq's capacity to manufacture, stockpile or reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction, or to threaten its neighbors.

Ultimately diplomacy succeeded again. In a sense, it succeeded again. It averted the immediate crisis. One can certainly raise serious questions about how effective it was with respect to the longer-term choices we face. But certainly in the short term, Secretary General Kofi Annan successfully struck an agreement with Iraq to provide UNSCOM inspectors, accompanied by diplomatic representatives, full and unfettered access to all sites. There is little doubt that this agreement would not have been concluded successfully without the Security Council's strong calls for Iraqi compliance combined with the specter of the potential use of American force.

Saddam's latest provocation, however, Mr. President, strikes at the heart of our policy, and at the capacity of UNSCOM to do its job effectively. As long as the U.N. inspectors are prevented, as they are, from undertaking random no-notice inspections, they will never be able to confirm the fundamentals of our policy. They will never be able to confirm what weapons Iraq still has or what it is doing to maintain its capability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Yet, when confronted with what may be the most serious challenge to UNSCOM to date, the administration's response, and that of our allies and the United Nations, has been to assiduously avoid brandishing the sword and to make a concerted effort to downplay the offense to avoid confrontation at all costs, even if it means implicit and even explicit backing down on our stated position as well as that of the Security Council. That stated position is clear: That Iraq must provide the U.N. inspectors with unconditional and unfettered access to all sites.

Secretary Albright may well be correct in arguing that this course helps keep the focus on Iraq's defiance. It may well do that. But it is also true that the U.N.-imposed limits on UNSCOM operations, especially if they are at the behest of the United States, work completely to Saddam Hussein's advantage.

They raise questions of the most serious nature about the preparedness of the international community to keep its own commitment to force Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and the much larger question of our overall proliferation commitment itself. They undermine the credibility of the United States and the United Nations position that Iraq comply with the Security Council's demands to provide unconditional and unfettered access to those inspectors. And, obviously, every single one of our colleagues ought to be deeply concerned about the fact that by keeping the inspectors out of the very places that Saddam Hussein wants to prevent them from entering, they substantially weaken UNSCOM's ability to make any accurate determination of Iraq's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons inventory or capability. And in so doing, they open the door for Iraq's allies on the Security Council to waffle on the question of sanctions.

I recognize that the Security Council recently voted to keep the sanctions in place and to suspend the sanctions review process. But, Mr. President, notwithstanding that, the less than maximum level of international concern and focus on the underlying fact that no inspections take place, the continuation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, and the fact that Saddam Hussein is in complete contravention of his own agreements and of the U.N. requirements--that continues to be the real crisis. And Saddam Hussein continues to refuse to comply.

Since the end of the gulf war, the international community has sought to isolate and weaken Iraq through a dual policy of sanctions and weapons inspections. Or, as one administration official said, to put him in a `box.' In order to get the sanctions relief, Iraq has to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and submit to inspections. But it has become painfully apparent over the last 11 months that there are deep divisions within the Security Council particularly among the Permanent 5 members over how to deal with Saddam Hussein's aggressive efforts to break out of the box.

Russia, France and China have consistently been more sympathetic to Iraq's call for sanctions relief than the United States and Britain. We, on the other hand, have steadfastly insisted that sanctions remain in place until he complies. These differences over how to deal with Iraq reflect the fact that there is a superficial consensus, at best, among the Perm 5 on the degree to which Iraq poses a threat and the priority to be placed on dismantling Iraq's weapons capability. For the United States and Britain, an Iraq equipped with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons under the leadership of Saddam Hussein is a threat that almost goes without description, although our current activities seem to call into question whether or not one needs to be reminded of some of that description. Both of these countries have demonstrated a willingness to expend men, material and money to curb that threat.

France, on the other hand, has long established economic and political relationships within the Arab world, and has had a different approach. Russia also has a working relationship with Iraq, and China, whose commitment to nuclear nonproliferation has been less than stellar, has a very different calculus that comes into play. Iraq may be a threat and nonproliferation may be the obvious, most desirable goal, but whether any of these countries are legitimately prepared to sacrifice other interests to bring Iraq to heel remains questionable today, and is precisely part of the calculus that Saddam Hussein has used as he tweaks the Security Council and the international community simultaneously.

Given the difference of views within the Security Council, and no doubt the fears of our Arab allies, who are the potential targets of Iraqi aggression, it is really not surprising, or shouldn't be to any of us, that the administration has privately tried to influence the inspection process in a way that might avoid confrontation while other efforts were being made to forge a consensus. But now we have to make a judgment about the failure to reinstate the inspection process and ask ourselves whether or not that will destroy the original `box' that the administration has defined as so essential to carrying out our policy.

Is it possible that there is a sufficient lack of consensus and a lack of will that will permit Saddam Hussein to exploit the differences among the members of the Security Council and to create a sufficient level of sanctions fatigue that we would in fact move further away from the policy we originally had?

To the extent that his efforts are successful, we will find ourselves increasingly isolated within the Security Council. In fact, it is already clear that some of our allies in the Security Council are very open to the Iraqi idea of a comprehensive review of its performance in dismantling all of its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons--a review which Iraq hopes will lead to a lifting of some if not all of the sanctions.

I think the question needs to be asked as to how long we can sustain our insistence on the maintenance of sanctions if support for sanctions continues to erode within the Security Council. If it is indeed true that support is eroding--and there are great indicators that, given the current lack of confrontation, it is true--then the question remains, How will our original policy be affected or in fact is our original policy still in place?

In April, Secretary Albright stated that, `It took a threat of force to persuade Saddam Hussein to let the U.N. inspectors back in. We must maintain that threat if the inspectors are to do their jobs.'

That was the policy in April. Whether the administration is still prepared to use force to compel Iraqi compliance is now an enormous question. The Secretary says it is, but the recent revelations raise questions about that.

In addition, it seems to me that there are clear questions about whether or not the international community at this point in time is as committed as it was previously to the question of keeping Iraq from developing that capacity to rob its neighbors of tranquility through its unilateral development of a secret weapon program.
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I would point out also that there are experts on Iraq, those in the inspections team, those at the U.N. and elsewhere in our international community, who are very clear that Saddam Hussein's first objective is not to lift the sanctions. His first objective is to keep Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program--that will come ahead of all else.

The situation is really far more serious than the United Nations, the Congress or the administration have made clear to the American people or demonstrated through the level of diplomacy and focus that is currently being placed on this issue. It is not simply about eliminating Saddam Hussein's capacity to threaten his neighbors. It is about eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological, and nuclear. Failure to achieve this goal will have a profound impact, I believe, on our efforts with respect to our other nonproliferation efforts including completion of our talks with Russia and the ultimate ratification of the START II treaty by the Duma.

In recent conversations that I had with Chairman Butler, he confirmed that Saddam Hussein has only this one goal--keeping his weapons of mass destruction capability--and he further stated with clarity that Iraq is well out of compliance with U.N. resolutions requiring it to eliminate those weapons and submit to inspections and out of compliance with the agreement that he signed up to in February with Kofi Annan.

Mr. President, I believe there are a number of things we could do, a number of things both in covert as well as overt fashion. There is more policy energy that ought to be placed on this effort, and I believe that, as I have set forth in my comments, it is critical for us to engage in that effort, to hold him accountable.

October 14, 1998: The House judiciary committee chairman Henry Hyde announces the impeachment inquiry will concentrate its focus on two core charges: that Mr Clinton lied under oath and attempted to obstruct justice.

October 22-23, 1998: UNSCOM convenes a further international expert meeting to discuss the 1998 analysis of samples taken from remnants of Iraq's special warheads. The report of the meeting is submitted to the Council.

October 27, 1998 - Richard Butler says tests carried out by international scientists confirm that Iraq filled missile warheads with the deadly nerve agent VX before the 1991 Gulf War.

October 28, 1998 - The Iraqi army embarks on a training exercise to enable hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens to defend themselves.

October 31, 1998: Iraq announces that it will cease all forms of interaction with UNSCOM and its Chairman and to halt all UNSCOM's activities inside Iraq, including monitoring. The Security Council, in a statement to the press, unanimously condemn Iraq's decision to cease all cooperation with UNSCOM.

October 31, 1998: President Clinton signs the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998:

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 - Declares that it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.
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Urges the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law.

Expresses the sense of the Congress that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people and democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, including convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to the foreign debt incurred by the Hussein regime.

The Congress makes the following findings:

(1) On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, starting an 8 year war in which Iraq employed chemical weapons against Iranian troops and ballistic missiles against Iranian cities.

(2) In February 1988, Iraq forcibly relocated Kurdish civilians from their home villages in the Anfal campaign, killing an estimated 50,000 to 180,000 Kurds.

(3) On March 16, 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurdish civilian opponents in the town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds and causing numerous birth defects that affect the town today.

(4) On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and began a 7 month occupation of Kuwait, killing and committing numerous abuses against Kuwaiti civilians, and setting Kuwait's oil wells ablaze upon retreat.

(5) Hostilities in Operation Desert Storm ended on February 28, 1991, and Iraq subsequently accepted the ceasefire conditions specified in United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) requiring Iraq, among other things, to disclose fully and permit the dismantlement of its weapons of mass destruction programs and submit to long-term monitoring and verification of such dismantlement.

(6) In April 1993, Iraq orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate former President George Bush during his April 14-16, 1993, visit to Kuwait.

(7) In October 1994, Iraq moved 80,000 troops to areas near the border with Kuwait, posing an imminent threat of a renewed invasion of or attack against Kuwait.

(8) On August 31, 1996, Iraq suppressed many of its opponents by helping one Kurdish faction capture Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish regional government.

(9) Since March 1996, Iraq has systematically sought to deny weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) access to key facilities and documents, has on several occasions endangered the safe operation of UNSCOM helicopters transporting UNSCOM personnel in Iraq, and has persisted in a pattern of deception and concealment regarding the history of its weapons of mass destruction programs.

(10) On August 5, 1998, Iraq ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM, and subsequently threatened to end long-term monitoring activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNSCOM.

(11) On August 14, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-235, which declared that `the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations' and urged the President `to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.'.

(12) On May 1, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-174, which made $5,000,000 available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition for such activities as organization, training, communication and dissemination of information, developing and implementing agreements among opposition groups, compiling information to support the indictment of Iraqi officials for war crimes, and for related purposes.

October 31, 1998: Denis Halliday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, resigns his postion in protest. The BBC:

The outgoing co-ordinator of the UN oil-for-food deal in Iraq, Denis Halliday, has launched a scathing attack on the policy of sanctions, branding them '' a totally bankrupt concept''.

In his surprise remarks, Denis Halliday, said his 13-month stint had taught him the "damage and futility" of sanctions. ''It doesn't impact on governance effectively and instead it damages the innocent people of the country,'' he told Reuters news agency.

"It probably strengthens the leadership and further weakens the people of the country.'' Mr Halliday, who has resigned after more than 30 years with the United Nations, leaves his post in Baghdad on Wednesday. He was co-ordinator of the programme that allows Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil to buy food, medicine and other supplies.

He said maintaining the crippling trade embargo imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait was incompatible with the UN charter as well as UN conventions on human rights and the rights of the child. But Mr Halliday believed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan favoured a fresh look at sanctions as a means of influencing states to change their policies - in Iraq's case making it scrap its weapons of mass destruction, and long-range missiles. "I'm beginning to see a change in the thinking of the United Nations, the secretary-general, many of the member states, who have realised through Iraq in particular that sanctions are a failure and the price you extract for sanctions is unacceptably high.''

His comments follow criticism recently by a top UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, of the US and UK for failing to take a tougher line over the inspections.

November 4, 1998: The UNSCOM Executive Chairman informs the Council (S/1998/1032) that, as a result of Iraq's actions, the Commission is not in a position to provide the Council with any level of assurance of Iraq's compliance with its obligations not to retain and not to reestablish proscribed activities.

November 5, 1998: Security Council resolution 1205 unanimously condemns Iraq's actions and demands that Iraq rescind immediately and unconditionally its decisions of 31 October and 5 August.

November 11, 1998: The United Nations withdraws most of its staff from Iraq.

November 14, 1998: CNN

The United States has rejected Iraq's latest offer as unacceptable. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said Saturday night that Baghdad's offer to comply was "neither unequivocal nor unconditional."

Berger asserted the terms Iraq placed on its compliance had already been found unacceptable by the United Nations Security Council. And Berger warned that to accept the Iraqi offer now would only lead to another crisis down the road.

Berger also said there was every reason to be skeptical of the offer from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to comply fully with inspections. "We've seen this before, broken and unfulfilled promises," Berger explained. "So-called positive answers that turned negative over time."

The security adviser said the United States was not negotiating with Iraq and that the only acceptable response from Baghdad would be a statement of complete compliance with U.N. resolutions.

When asked how long Hussein had to make an acceptable response of compliance, Berger said he would not comment, but he did say it would not be an unlimited amount of time.

"We were poised to take military action, we remain poised to take action," Berger said when a reporter asked if President Clinton had given the order for attacks to begin.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday if there are any conditions attached to Iraq's offer to allow weapons inspectors to resume their work, then the Iraqi offer is unacceptable.

"There can be no negotiation, no further deals, no more amendments to what they have agreed," said Blair. "In the meantime, our forces remain on alert to the possibility of military action at any time without further warning."

Blair also said experience showed Hussein is not a man to be trusted. "We all know, too, that it is only the threat of force that has ever allowed us to achieve any of our objectives in respect to him," said the prime minister.
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Pentagon sources say Clinton had already ordered a cruise missile strike against Iraq, when Baghdad's last-minute offer to allow U.N. inspections prompted the president to call off the attack.

Sources say B-52 bombers, armed with cruise missiles, were already in the air, having left their base in the United States, when the order came to stand down.

U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf were at "general quarters" and were less than an hour away from launching "hundreds" of cruise missiles, sources say, when the strike was halted.
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Pentagon officials said there has been no change in the plans for the deployment of 140 additional aircraft and 4,000 additional troops to the Persian Gulf region.

Air Force officials said 55 planes have left the United States for bases in the region, and by the end of Saturday, at least 12 more will have left.

Officials say all the additional planes should be in the region by Monday or Tuesday.

If all the forces, troops and planes move, it will take 10 days to two weeks to complete the buildup.

Pentagon officials say six B-52 bombers from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, loaded with air-launched cruise missiles, are at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state and have not yet moved to the Persian Gulf region.

Six others left Saturday morning from Barksdale Air Force Base to fly directly to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, sources say.

November 15, 1998: Press Statement by the President of the Security Council in which the Council takes note of Iraq's statement of 14 November to cooperate fully with the Special Commission and the IAEA. The Council members underline that their confidence in Iraq's intentions needs to be established by unconditional and sustained cooperation with the Special Commission and the IAEA in exercising the full range of their activities. The Council members also reaffirm their readiness to proceed with the comprehensive review once the Secretary-General has confirmed, on the basis of reports from the Special Commission and the IAEA that Iraq has returned to full cooperation on the basis of resolution 1194 (1998) and the Council President's letter of 30 October to the Secretary-General (SC/65/96-IK258).

December 3, 1998: UNSCOM submits the first of a series of weekly reports on its activities during the period 17 November to 2 December 1998. The report covers inspection activities during that period and also provides an account of correspondence exchanged with Iraq regarding matters such as the provision of documents, clarifications on a number of points previously raised with Iraq and asking that Iraq provide new substantial information on its biological weapons program.

December 8, 1998: Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler reports that Iraq is still impeding inspections. Cooperation ends between Iraq and inspectors when the country demands the lifting of the U.N. oil embargo. UNSCOM and the IAEA pull their staffs out of Iraq in anticipation of a US-led air raid on Iraqi military targets.

December 9, 1998: The Special Commission submits its second weekly report to the Security Council describing monitoring activities and the difficulties encountered in the course of those activities, including blockage at a site.

December 11, 1998: The House Judiciary Committee approves three articles of impeachment on a 21-16 party line vote, passing them to the full House of Representatives. The three articles accuse Clinton of lying to a grand jury, committing perjury by denying he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, and obstructing justice. Clinton declares himself "profoundly sorry" and willing to accept censure.

December 12, 1998: The committee approves a fourth article of impeachment on a party-line vote, accusing Clinton of abusing power in a direct parallel to Watergate-era language.

December 15, 1998: UNSCOM reports to the Security-General concerning UNSCOM's activities and the status of Iraq's cooperation with the Commission in the period since 14 November 1998. The Executive Chairman concludes that Iraq did not provide the full cooperation it had promised on 14 November 1998 (S/1998/1172). The report details a repeated pattern of obstructing weapons inspections by not allowing access to records and inspections sites, and by moving equipment records and equipment from one to site to another.

December 15, 1998: With military action looming, France suspends participation in Operation Southern Watch.

December 16, 1998: The United States and Great Britain begin a four-day air campaign against targets in Iraq, Operation Desert Fox. The stated mission: "to strike military and security targets in Iraq that contribute to Iraq's ability to produce, store, maintain and deliver weapons of mass destruction." UNSCOM withdraws its staff from Iraq.

December 16, 1998: CNN reports responses from key congressional leaders:

"I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time," [Senate Majority Leader Trent] Lott [(R-Ms)] said in a statement. "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question."

"The suspicion some people have about the president's motives in this attack is itself a powerful argument for impeachment," [House Majority Leader Dick] Armey [(R-Tx)] said in a statement. "After months of lies, the president has given millions of people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into battle for the right reasons."
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Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey) called the GOP reaction "as close to a betrayal of the interests of the United States as I've ever witnessed in the United States Congress. It's unforgivable and reprehensible."

"This is a time for our country to be united, even though we're divided on other matters," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota).

He and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Missouri) issued a joint statement defending the timing, saying "any delay would have given (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein time to reconstitute his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and undermine international support for our efforts."
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Rep. Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was unaware that U.S. airstrikes were planned against Iraq until he saw them under way on CNN.

Goss (R-Florida) expressed anger that he was never notified by the White House that a strike was imminent and that no members of the House Intelligence Committee were brought into the loop.

"To be cut out at the eleventh hour is annoying, and it's certainly not helpful," Goss said.

He called the fact he was not contacted "a bad mistake of judgment or an oversight by the White House. ... Today the White House should be looking for friends. It's not a good idea to ambush people."

"It's certainly rather suspicious timing," said Rep. Tillie Fowler (R-Florida). "I think the president is shameless in what he would do to stay in office."

Also quoted was Representative Gerald Solomon of New York, a Marine Corps veteran:

Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-New York) issued a statement with the headline: "Bombs Away -- Save Impeachment for Another Day?"

"It is obvious that they're (the Clinton White House) doing everything they can to postpone the vote on this impeachment in order to try to get whatever kind of leverage they can, and the American people ought to be as outraged as I am about it," Solomon said in an interview with CNN.

Asked if he was accusing Clinton of playing with American lives for political expediency, Solomon said, "Whether he knows it or not, that's exactly what he's doing. When you put our troops in the air or on the ground, you are risking their lives. This president ought to know better. I don't know if he does or not, because he's so unpredictable."

Solomon complained that key congressmen had not been told of the military strike. He said Clinton should have briefed more members of Congress and delayed the attack until early next week.

"It would still be spontaneous," Solomon said. "He could still launch the attack, but it would not have been political the way it is today."

Upon hearing Solomon's remarks, Democratic Rep. Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut went before CNN's cameras to rip into Solomon for his accusation.

"Gerry Solomon's spent a career here making outrageous statements, but as an ex-Marine, he ought to know better," Gejdenson said. "That was an outrageous, outrageous statement."

Gejdenson said the nation cannot tie a president's hands based on developments on Capitol Hill.

"Think of the message," Gejdenson said. "If we tell every country out there that might want to do harm to America's interests that every time there's a political squabble in Washington, the presidency has to be frozen, that's outrageous."
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Some Republicans also were supportive of Clinton's actions. Outgoing House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) said the strikes were an example of "the U.S. leading the world by exercising its military power in an appropriate way."

The responsibility of the United States in this conflict is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to minimize the danger to our troops and to diminish the suffering of the Iraqi people. The citizens of Iraq have suffered the most for Saddam Hussein's activities; sadly, those same citizens now stand to suffer more. I have supported efforts to ease the humanitarian situation in Iraq and my thoughts and prayers are with the innocent Iraqi civilians, as well as with the families of U.S. troops participating in the current action.

I believe in negotiated solutions to international conflict. This is, unfortunately, not going to be the case in this situation where Saddam Hussein has been a repeat offender, ignoring the international community's requirement that he come clean with his weapons program." - Representative Nancy Pelosi (D, CA)

December 17, 1998:The Congressional impeachment vote is postponed until the conclusion of US military action against Iraq.

December 19, 1998: Operation Desert Fox concludes. "On Wednesday when U.S. and British forces launched strikes against Iraq, I stated that we were pursuing clear military goals. And as President Clinton has announced, we've achieved those goals. We've degraded Saddam Hussein's ability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. We've diminished his ability to wage war against his neighbors. Our forces attacked about 100 targets over four nights, following a plan that was developed and had been developed and refined over the past year. We concentrated on military targets and we worked very hard to keep civilian casualties as low as possible. Our goal was to weaken Iraq's military power, not to hurt Iraq's people." - Secretary of Defence William S. Cohen

"As the President's principal military advisor, I am confident that the carefully planned and superbly executed combat operations of the past four days have degraded Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs, his ability to deliver weapons and his ability to militarily threaten the security of this strategically important Persian Gulf region. Gen. Zinni made the same assessment.
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Now that Operation DESERT FOX is over, we will carefully evaluate the forces we need to keep in place in the region to keep an eye on Saddam. Make no mistake about it, we will maintain a significant capability there to defend our national interests and the security of the region as we have for many years. - General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Following the statements above, the Secretary responded to questions from the media:

Q: Do you plan to try to convince the U.N. to send the UNSCOM inspectors back in or is that now a dead issue after the air strikes?

A: It's not at all a dead issue. As a matter or fact, Saddam Hussein will have the burden of demonstrating in some affirmative fashion that he is prepared to allow the inspectors to come back in to be effective. We are not going to simply go through the motions once again where he is able to obstruct their ability to carry out their mission. And so, he must demonstrate a willingness to allow the inspectors to come back and to complete their job. And barring that, we intend to maintain the containment policy which continues to keep the sanctions in place. We'll continue our military as we have been, in place and ready to take action, if it becomes necessary.

Q: If the UNSCOM inspectors are not allowed back in, will there be further air strikes?

A: We are prepared to carry out such air strikes, but we intend to maintain the containment policy and also to make sure that he doesn't threaten the region again. So we'll have our own intelligence observations and make the kind of determination that would lead us to the obvious conclusions.

Q: You use the [word] diminish to describe --

A: Degrade.

Q: "Diminish" to describe the damage done to the conventional capability. What is diminish in your words versus destroy, eliminate?

A: It's less than what he had before and we think significantly less than what was available before in terms of his capacity to move against his neighbors. We've looked at his Republican Elite Guard, so to speak. We have damaged in substantial fashion, their facilities, some of their housing. We have destroyed his missile production capability, at least, in the factory that we targeted. So there is a significant degradation in our judgment of that.

The BBC report on the aftermath of the attacks

:...more cruise missiles were fired on Iraq in Desert Fox than during the entire Gulf War in 1991...

Funeral services have been held for 68 people who Iraqi officials say were killed in the raids. But Iraq's Ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, said: "I'm told that the casualties are in the thousands in terms of numbers of people who were killed or wounded."

But because the Iraqi authorities control journalists' access to damage sites, confirmation of this has been impossible. The UK Ministry of Defence said it was not certain that the full facts about Iraqi casualties would ever be known.

The Iraqi authorities say the air strikes deliberately targeted civilian facilities including hospitals, colleges, residential areas of Baghdad and food storage areas.

Several weeks after the strikes, the UN children's fund, Unicef, made a first preliminary assessment of damage to civilian facilities. They said a warehouse containing rice was destroyed in Tikrit in northern Iraq, ten schools in the southern port city of Basra were damaged, and an agricultural college in Kirkuk in northern Iraq received a direct hit.

They said that in Baghdad medical and maternity centres, a water supply system and parts of the health and social affairs ministries were damaged.

December 21, 1998: In the wake of his impeachment, President Clinton's approval level with the voters leaps 10 points to a personal all-time high of 73 per cent in a Gallup poll. Sixty-eight per cent believe the Senate should not convict Mr Clinton in the pending impeachment trial, while support for resignation falls to 30 per cent. Other polls confirm the trend. CNN's top news stories of the year will list the attack on Iraq as #9, and the impeachment scandal at #1.

December 28, 1998: DoD press release: At approximately 1:30 p.m., Iraqi time, coalition aircraft were attacked by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles fired from sites in northern Iraq. The Iraqis fired three SAMs at Northern Watch aircraft; all missed. Although initial reports claimed that the planes retaliated by launching three HARMs, in fact three F-15Es each dropped two GBU-12 500-pound precision guided munitions (PGMs). Two of the F-15Es hit the SA-3 target site tracking radar and optical guidance unit. The other F-15E had one bomb hit the SA-3 missile site command and control van, and the other hitting the target site tracking radar and optical guidance unit. The other F-15E in the four-ship formation did not drop bombs because he did not have positive target identification. Video footage from U.S. aircraft responding in self-defense to Iraqi aggression on Dec. 28 show that coalition forces attacked the launch sites only after being fired upon. Video of the Iraqi missile firings clearly shows time of their fire prior to any release of coalition ordnance. The SA-3 site used both radar and optics when firing their offensive missiles.

December 30, 1998: An SA-6 site near Talil fires 6-8 missiles at Southern Watch aircraft. F-16s retaliate by dropping six GBU-12 laser-guided bombs on the site. They also launch two HARMs "as a preemptive measure" to deter Iraqi radar operators.

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1999

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2005-11-19 01:26:43