Problems with current U.S. policy.

Although the senior Bush administration assembled strong international support for the 1991 Gulf War, subsequently the U.S. has taken an increasingly unilateralist stance toward Iraq. In early 2002, the Bush administration began warning that it was not enough for Iraq simply to allow UN inspectors to return; what was required was nothing less than a "regime change" in Baghdad, imposed by invading American forces if necessary. This was the first test of a new doctrine of "preemption," whereby the United States reserves the right to invade and overthrow any government that it deems a potential threat to U.S. interests, a position that violates the United Nations Charter and basic principles of international law developed over the past century.

Iraq still has not recovered from the 1991 war, during which it was subjected to the heaviest bombing in world history. Since the war, the U.S. has insisted that UN sanctions not be lifted until Saddam Hussein is ousted. However, other UN members originally agreed to extend the sanctions only until Iraq complied with demands to dismantle its WMD capability and address other outstanding issues from the 1991 cease-fire resolution.

Rather than encouraging popular opposition, the sanctions have resulted in an unprecedented level of poverty, and the dependence of the population on the central government for rations has further consolidated Baghdad's grip on power. Given the serious humanitarian consequences of the sanctions, combined with their ineffectiveness, by the mid- to late-1990s most UN Security Council members supported lifting nonmilitary sanctions altogether. The United States has blocked such efforts, though the sanctions were modified.

By the time Iraq agreed to a return of UN inspectors in September 2002, WMDs were only one of a litany of issues raised by the Bush administration to justify an invasion. Many of Washington's accusations--including human rights abuses, violations of UN Security Council resolutions, and the harboring of terrorists--were either gross exaggerations or were not unique to Iraq. The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998 declared that Iraq's nuclear capability had been completely dismantled. According to some UNSCOM inspectors, 95% of the country's chemical weapons were accounted for and destroyed. Much of the biological weaponry has also been destroyed; there is some debate over how much remains or has since been developed. And whatever remaining functional ballistic missiles Iraq may have capable of delivering WMDs are of dubious reliability and probably number less than two dozen.

The Bush administration has also been unable to explain what might motivate this impoverished third world country either to launch a first strike against the world's one remaining superpower or to pass on such precious technology to a terrorist group it could not control. Saddam Hussein has repeatedly valued his survival in power above all else, and he knows that any attack against the United States or its allies would be suicidal. Yet despite the absence of any direct evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, a means of deploying them, or the motivation to launch a suicidal offensive use of such weaponry, the Bush administration still maintains that the Iraqi regime is an intolerable threat to American security and must be overthrown.

Iraq is in clear violation of some sections of UN Security Council Resolution 687 as well as subsequent resolutions reiterating demands for Iraqi disarmament and related concerns. However, only the UN Security Council has the prerogative to authorize military responses to violations of its resolutions; no single member state can do so unilaterally. A unilateral U.S. invasion, therefore, would be a clear violation of international law. Moreover, as in most wars, innocent civilians will suffer the most.

Despite efforts to link Iraq to the ongoing war against terrorism, the Bush administration has been unable to show any firm evidence that the strongly secular Baathist regime is supporting the Islamic fundamentalist Al Qaeda network. Ironically, when Iraq was most active in its support of international terrorism during the 1980s--bankrolling the now-defunct Abu Nidal group and other radical secular nationalists--the U.S. dropped Iraq from its list of states sponsoring terrorism. Today, Iraq is back on the list, although the State Department's most recent report on international terrorism failed to find any direct Iraqi support for terrorist activities.

In contrast to the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, today there is virtually no support within the Arab or Islamic world for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Indeed, such an attack could result in an outburst of anti-American protests and extremist violence, possibly threatening a number of pro-Western regimes. Furthermore, a U.S. invasion of Iraq would meet with far greater resistance than during the Gulf War: rather than facing poorly trained conscripts in flat open desert, American forces could end up fighting loyal, heavily armed elite units in the densely populated center of the country.

Finally, U.S. double standards have greatly harmed American credibility in the region. Most Arabs and many others around the world question why Washington insists on singling out Iraq for its alleged possession of WMDs while raising no objections to such allies as Israel and Pakistan developing nuclear weapons and sophisticated missile systems. This is particularly duplicitous, given that UN Security Council Resolution 687, which the U.S. claims to be enforcing through the sanctions and bombing, calls for "establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery."

Key Problems

* A United States war on Iraq is illegal without explicit approval of the UN Security Council, and Washington's policies of "preemption" and "regime change" violate basic principles of international Law.

* The Bush administration has failed to provide evidence that Iraq threatens the United States with weapons of mass destruction or that it is linked with the Al Qaeda network.

* During the 1990s, UN inspectors succeeded in eliminating most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems.