The same has been implied by other insider sources of information. The British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, has alleged that the decision to go to war was made in 2002, at Camp David, in a meeting between Blair and Bush. Multiple other reports have suggested that, in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the neoconservative obsession was to penalize a Muslim, and preferably an Arab, country, with Iraq the chosen target. In these renderings, the Iraq War was a war of ideology, motivated by the fantasy of establishing Iraq as an oasis of democracy that would, in turn, transform the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
Both Blair and Bush have indicated that regime change was at the heart of the motivation to go to war, regardless of the justification cited. Together with a number of their key associates, they significantly inflated the imminence of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons which in fact did not exist.[24] In September 2003, Dick Cheney gave an interview on MSNBC’s Meet the Press in which, in response to pointed questions, he acknowledged that he had “misspoken” before the war. “We never had any evidence that [Saddam Hussein] had acquired a nuclear weapon.”
Bush and Blair similarly promoted statements that proved to have little basis in fact, such as touting Iraq’s import of uranium from Niger based on a transparent forgery (Bush), or declaring Iraq’s capability to launch a chemical weapons attack in forty-five minutes (Blair). Both were deliberately selective in their use of the available facts. And both presided over a war in which, time after time, bombing campaigns and armored assaults made little attempt to protect the civilian population against the indiscriminate use of force, referring euphemistically to civilian deaths and injuries as “collateral damage.”
What should be done about this troubling litany? Should the United Nations request an opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legality of the Iraq War? If the answer is that the war was in fact illegal—and moreover, if consideration is given to the massive civilian casualties incurred—should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a “war crime” and determine who is accountable?[25] Should Iraq request reparations at the International Court of Justice, or another forum, for the damages incurred during a war launched in violation of international law and on the basis of falsehoods?
If we are to live by the rule of law, then the prosecution of war crimes should not be limited to those who lose—the Slobodan Miloševićs of the world—or to the Omar al-Bashirs, who originate from poor and long-oppressed regions. Legal norms, to retain legitimacy, must be uniform in their application. Otherwise, as an international community, we are guilty of applying double standards.
Do we, as a community of nations, have the wisdom and courage to take the corrective measures needed, to ensure that such a tragedy will never happen again?
4
NORTH KOREA, 2003 AND AFTER
The Nuclear Weapons Club Adds a Member
Near the end of 2002, less than a month after UN inspectors had gained reentry into Iraq, the North Korean saga took its own dramatic twist. Over the next few years, we would see the two lead actors in this drama—North Korea and the United States—play out a strikingly familiar script of provocation and counterprovocation, brinksmanship and pacification, on-again, off-again negotiations, with the rest of the international community bereft of the tools to change the dynamic.
The nuclear torch had long since been passed to Kim Jong Il, the son of Kim Il Sung, with little change. The Agreed Framework, an agreement with the United States that specified steps to resolve tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program, was still in place. But both sides were frustrated: the North Koreans, because of U.S. delays in delivering the two light water reactors promised in exchange for a freeze of North Korea’s known nuclear operations; the Americans, because the regime had neither collapsed nor provided any greater insight into its past nuclear activities. Caught in between, the IAEA was maintaining a presence at Yongbyon, monitoring the freeze of the nuclear facilities but unable to conduct meaningful safeguards verification elsewhere in the country.[1]
There had been hints of a thaw in the U.S.–North Korea relationship in the final months of 2000. The outgoing secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, had fêted Kim Jong Il’s emissary[2] in Washington. Pyongyang had issued an invitation to the American president for a visit. Albright herself had been warmly received by Kim Jong Il. Not long thereafter, the new secretary of state, Colin Powell, had signaled the intent to continue the dialogue. “We do plan to engage with North Korea, to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off,” Powell said. “Some promising elements were left on the table, and we’ll be examining those elements.”[3]
But President Bush had a different perspective. In a meeting that same month with Kim Dae Jung, the South Korean president who had won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his “Sunshine Policy” of détente with his northern neighbor, Bush made clear his aversion to dealing with the North Korean regime. By January 2002, North Korea had been lumped into the “axis of evil,” along with Iran and Iraq. Bush was quoted referring to Kim Jong Il as a “spoiled child” and a “pygmy.”[4]
The last feeble signs of progress appeared late that summer when—many years behind schedule—the first concrete was finally poured at the site of the promised light water nuclear power reactor plants, intended to become the cornerstone of a peaceful North Korean nuclear energy program. In September, Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was received by Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang—a diplomatic breakthrough—and the two countries announced their intention to normalize relations.[5]
Then everything changed. The trigger was a report to Washington by U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs James Kelly regarding a recent meeting with North Korean officials. To this day, the details of that meeting are murky, but it appears that Kelly accused the North Koreans of running a secret uranium enrichment program. What Kelly reported was that his North Korean counterpart had admitted to the program’s existence; however, no details were given at the time regarding its nature or scope.
The United States called for inspections of this alleged enrichment program. The news was leaked to the press: immediately, media accounts appeared declaring that North Korea had cheated on the Agreed Framework. Rather than continuing the dialogue to get to the bottom of these “revelations” and address them within the Agreed Framework, the United States persuaded the executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, the organization formed to implement the provisions of the Agreed Framework, to suspend its deliveries of heavy fuel oil to North Korea.[6] The oil shipments, North Korea’s energy lifeline, were brought to an abrupt halt.
Pyongyang responded forcefully, declaring the Agreed Framework dead—because of the U.S. interruption of oil supplies—and announcing that it would restart the Yongbyon reactor. North Korea threatened to expel the IAEA inspectors, resume operations to reprocess its spent fuel, and withdraw from the NPT.
24
In testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, Blair said that his support for the U.S. action was prompted by the fear of “disastrous consequences for a tough stance on WMD and its proliferation—and for [the UK’s] relationship with the U.S.” Blair also described telling Bush in late 2001 that “if [regime change] became the only way of dealing with this issue, we were going to be up for that.” In mid-2002, when Colin Powell wrote in a memo that “We need to make the case…. We need to have the sort of Rolls-Royce information campaign we had at the end of Afghanistan before we start in Iraq,” Blair added in the margin, “I agree with this entirely.” Richard Norton-Taylor, “Tony Blair’s Promise to George Bush,”
25
If the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court were to issue an indictment against specific individuals, then any country party to the convention could legally arrest them if they traveled to that country.
1
IAEA inspectors were there to verify that North Korea was not reprocessing its spent fuel into plutonium, but the Agency’s verification activities were limited in scope to the declared facilities subject to the freeze.
6
KEDO was founded in 1995 by the United States, South Korea, and Japan, to implement the principal energy provisions of the Agreed Framework, including the construction of the two promised light water nuclear power reactors. Until the reactors were completed, North Korea was to be provided with five hundred thousand metric tons of heavy fuel oil annually. As I have noted, North Korea was already complaining of a lack of good faith on the part of the United States and KEDO, because of delays in the light water reactor construction. The suspension of fuel oil shipments was the proverbial last straw.