*Ø* Blogmanac November 14, 1998 | Saddam Hussein offers compliance

Did Iraq really expel the UNSCOM weapons inspectors in 1998? Bush said so in his State of the Union. Cheney also told the world this falsehood.
The Almanac says it's an often-repeated error, or lie, one of 31 Myths of the 'War on Terrorism' and Iraq.

Here's what really happened.

On November 14, 1998, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, after having ceased to comply with UN weapons inspectors on October 31, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan offering to facilitate the inspections. On December 16, Australian Richard Butler, head of the UN weapons inspection team (UNSCOM), withdrew the team from Iraq, to protect his staff from the air strikes that the US and UK governments were threatening.

Within hours, Operation Desert Fox began: the US and UK began pre-emptively bombing Iraq – hundreds of cruise missiles raining down on the country, marking the start of strikes to punish the Baghdad government. An avalanche of US and British propaganda was published by a mostly unsuspecting world media, justifying the aggression and ignoring the destruction of Baghdad’s utilities and the deaths of many innocent civilians and service people. On ABC's This Week (September 27, 2003), Colin Powell publicly lied that the Clinton administration “conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he [Butler] had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out.”

Funeral services were 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.”

US bombs food storage, schools, college, maternity centres
Several weeks after the strikes, the UN children's fund, UNICEF, made a first preliminary assessment of damage to civilian facilities. They reported the destruction of a rice warehouse in Tikrit in northern Iraq, damage to ten schools in the southern port city of Basra, 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.

Since Butler’s forced withdrawal in the face of US-UK threats, many Western media and politicians have usually pretended to the public that Iraq “expelled” the team.

The events surrounding the withdrawal are recounted in Butler's book, Saddam Defiant: (2000):

“I received a telephone call from US Ambassador Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission ... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be ‘prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.’ I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff from Iraq.”

Oft-repeated error of fact
The ‘mistake’ (that UNSCOM was ejected by Hussein in 1998) has been made not only by pro-war people such as George W Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address (‘the axis of evil’ speech), Dick Cheney, Alexander Rose, the Canadian right-wing Washington correspondent of the National Post, and the editorial writers of the Sunday Times. It has also been made by those who have shown concern for the humanitarian situation in Iraq, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, UK Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Menzies Campbell, and the usually trustworthy Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker. The BBC often makes the same incorrect assertion, although it usually acknowledges its error when it is pointed out to them.

Butler was pro-peace for Iraq
Richard Butler became a fierce critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, strongly criticising Australian Prime Minister Howard and marching with more than a quarter of a million others in the Sydney pro-peace march on February 16, 2003. On the morning of the peace march, he told ABC interviewer Terry Lane:

“I believe that there is a very real prospect now that the United States of America will attack Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council. That is contrary to international law, it should not happen, and I believe the consequences of such an action could be possibly catastrophic. I also finally believe that war is almost certain not to be the solution to any of the problems that are posed by Saddam Hussein, and they are real problems. The smaller reason, not so small for we Australians, is, I don't know how to put this as simply as possible ... Let me just say that I'm sick to death of the lies that we're being told about this by the Prime Minister of Australia. I heard him again this morning on a national television interview, and it was shocking, it was astonishing to hear him duck and weave, including by the way, say that in answer to a question about the possible deaths of Iraqi women and children, that something broadly like, 'Well, you know, that was unfortunate but it was their fault that Saddam Hussein was their president, and that's how it goes'. Astonishing, and I'm really deeply distressed by his position …

“International law is important here, and we mustn't commit the terrible mistake and folly in our pursuit of a criminal, by ourselves breaking the law. Because then it brings the whole system into disrepute and that is what I fear we face if the Americans go it alone here. We will trash 50 years of post World War II international law and replace it with the rule that might is right, and that's what we've been trying to get away from.” Source

Myths of the ‘War on Terrorism’ and Iraq

Iraq crisis timeline
Chronology from UNSCOM website

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