Carne Ross, UK delegate to UN for Iraq: War Stories (Sanctions, WMD, Lies)

[muriel_volestrangler]

Carne Ross has been in the news today (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1565074) for remarks that the WMD claims were 'totally implausible'. Here is an article he wrote for the Financial Times at the beginning of this year, talking about how he was invovled in spinning the claims about sanctions, and how other would have done it for WMD. He resigned from the Foreign Office in 2004.

Opponents of sanctions argued that they were unjustified and caused immense human suffering in Iraq. Iraq had demonstrably disarmed; the weapons inspectors' endless probings and questions were nugatory. The counter-arguments were plausible: Iraq had failed on many occasions to co-operate fully with the weapons inspectors, leaving important questions unanswered; Hussein obstructed the operation of the UN's oil-for-food programme, which was designed to lessen the humanitarian suffering. In northern Iraq, where the UN, and not Hussein, fully controlled the programme, all indicators showed the positive benefits of the programme in health, sanitation, education and the like.

It was my job to cull and collate the innumerable statistics, reports and testimonies in support of this latter version of the story and to deploy them in speeches and debates in the Security Council. On the other side of the table, the diplomats opposing sanctions - led by Russia and France - could cite myriad reports detailing the suffering under the sanctions regime and the inequities of the oil-for-food programme. They could provide convincing arguments that the north received an unfair share of oil-for-food funds. Like me, they could deploy an arsenal of facts and details to validate their version of "the truth". But, oddly, they often cited the very same reports that I did, for the UN reports provided ammunition for both sets of arguments.

It was, of course, a complex story that we managed to divide into two distinct and opposing narratives. The atmosphere between the delegations on the Security Council was aggressive and adversarial, as it remained until - and after - the invasion. Political divisions were allowed to degenerate into personal animosities. The Council, its chambers and corridors became a diplomatic battlezone where the more we fought, the more we entrenched our positions into competing blacks and whites. Thus were we able to obscure the more complex, deeper and more important truth, perhaps even the truth.

This was only slowly revealed to me by the many humanitarian workers, UN officials and ordinary Iraqis, including opposition members, who actually lived and worked in Iraq rather than those who wrote or read reports about it. Their human testimony was in the end infinitely more eloquent and convincing, in the main because all of them, without exception, said the same thing. And this was that there was undoubted human suffering in Iraq, of a quite appalling scale, and that not enough was being done - by anyone - to address it. Put this question to a British minister today and he or she will tell you that we tried to ease the impact of sanctions, but it is clear now, and frankly it was clear then, that it was much, much too little, too late. We - the US and UK - could have done a great deal more. Meanwhile, the Russians, French and others in the Security Council could have done a lot more to help control illegal smuggling by Iraq (the main sustenance of the Hussein regime and itself something that reduced the funds for humanitarian supplies) and to support the weapons inspectors.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2005/0128stories.htm

There's a lot more than I can excerpt, including suggestions than the Security Council could easily have enforced the sanctions against smuggling, while letting in trade that would have helped the Iraqi people, but the opposing sides (he blames the French and Russians for going after future contracts from Saddam, as well as the US and UK (which must include himself) for ignoring the suffering of the Iraqis) would never work together.

[evermind]

1. Thanks.. Bookmarked for later perusal! (nt)