Sauce for the Goose: Madeleine Albright’s Lies About Iraq Make Her Another Candidate for Resignation, Impeachment

Scott Ritter for SecState?

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post adds appalling detail to a story
first reported two
weeks ago: Citing sources inside the United Nations and Clinton Administration, the paper
reveals that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has, over the past ten months,
personally
and repeatedly interfered with the conduct, timing and character of international
inspections in Iraq.

The Truth Will Come Out

After the initial news reports broke in mid-August in the London Times, Mrs.
Albright issued a
Clintonesque categorical denial: “I do not tell Chairman Butler what to do.”
Subsequently, in
an op.ed. published in the New York Times on 17 August, she recast her position,
making use — as
the President she serves has so often done — of wording that shaded and obscured the truth:

“Supporting UNSCOM is at the heart of our efforts to prevent Saddam Hussein from
threatening his neighborhood, and we are proud to be its strongest backer….We
have…staunchly defend[ed] UNSCOM and its chairman, Richard Butler. We have
supported his conduct of intrusive inspections while seeking to insure that Saddam was
not able to exploit this effort to the disadvantage of the U.N. inspection team in the
Security Council.” (Emphasis added.)

In fact, according to the Post, the Secretary of State has been meddling in
the “conduct of
intrusive inspections” since last November. What is more, she and her minions have done so for
reasons that seem to have more to do with avoiding a confrontation with Saddam than with
preserving UNSCOM’s freedom of action. Most appalling of all, however, is the extent to which
these actions have been accompanied by official dissembling by Mrs. Albright and other U.S.
officials. As the Post put it:

“…Overt U.S. support for the inspectors was accompanied, as Washington and
the Special Commission grew more isolated diplomatically, by increasing
American efforts to prevent the inspectors from exceeding the Administration’s
diminishing capacity to protect them. The resulting U.S. efforts to restrain weapons
searches conflicted with robust public rhetoric in support of the Special Commission’s
right to make what Albright often called ‘unfettered, unconditional inspections’ of any
site in Iraq, at any time. They also coincided, sometimes to the day, with explicit
military threats by American officials against Iraq should it turn the inspectors aside.”
(Emphasis added.)

Mrs. Albright’s deceitful behavior about the Iraqi inspection program is every bit as
obscene
in its way — and vastly more portentous — than that of the President she serves. As
with Mr.
Clinton’s lies, they serve to undercut the credibility of the United States government and can only
embolden this country’s adversaries, starting with Saddam Hussein.

Exit Scott Ritter

As it happens, this indictment of the duplicitous and counter-productive Clinton-Albright
policy
toward the inspections in Iraq was confirmed today by one of those who has heroically tried —
despite Saddam’s provocations and a lack of essential support from Washington — to make
UNSCOM’s weapons checks effective: Chief Inspector Scott Ritter. Maj.
Ritter (USA, Ret.), a
Gulf War veteran with a considerable background in intelligence and on-site inspections,
submitted his resignation to Amb. Butler. He then proceeded to unburden himself in successive
interviews of his frustrations and concerns about the international community’s buckling in the
face of Iraqi obstreperousness.

The Washington Post‘s Jim Hoagland — one of the Fourth Estate’s most
thoughtful and assiduous
critics of the United States’ unraveling policy toward Iraq — described part of the Ritter letter and
the state of mind of its author in a column published today:

“In a letter of resignation redolent with controlled rage and frustration,
[UNSCOM’s]
most effective and aggressive inspector said the U.N. Security Council had
become ‘a sounding board for Iraqi grievances,’ and had abdicated its responsibility
to disarm Iraq by becoming ‘a witting partner to an overall Iraqi strategy’ to
weaken the United Nations.

“‘Iraq is being allowed to redefine the terms of the U.N. cease-fire resolution that
stopped the Gulf War,’ Ritter, an ex-Marine major and veteran of the 1991
conflict, told me [in New York]. ‘I fought in that war and cannot be part of that.
It would mean that hundreds of Americans would have died in vain.'” href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Other notable quotes from the Ritter letter were published in the Post
today. These include
the following:

• “The Security Council appears to want only ‘the illusion of arms control.'”

• “The issue of immediate, unrestricted access is, in my opinion, the cornerstone of
  any
  viable inspection regime, and as such is an issue worth fighting for. Unfortunately,
  others
  do not share this opinion, including the Security Council and the United States.”

• “Refusal to enforce the Council’s many binding demands for Iraqi compliance ‘constitutes a
  surrender to the Iraqi leadership’ and ‘makes a mockery of the
  mission the staff of the
  Special Commission have been charged with implementing.'” (Emphasis added throughout.)

The Bottom Line

U.S. foreign policy is in complete disarray, thanks in part to the mendacity and incompetence
of
those charged with formulating and administering it. Neither this country nor the billions of
people overseas who rely upon it to provide effective leadership and, if all else fails, to provide
security can long afford such a state of affairs.

At the very least, there is an urgent need — as Martin Peretz has argued in a powerful essay in
the
7 September edition of the New Republic — for congressional
hearings to examine why the U.S.
government has “consistently and conspicuously averted its eyes [from Saddam Hussein’s
violations], passing the buck to the UN, where three of the Security Council’s veto-possessing
members shill for the killer-tyrant” and why “this policy reversal actually included Albright’s
direct interventions against the inspection teams’ specific plans.” Sen. Sam Brownback
(R-KS),
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs
Subcommittee has signaled his intention to get into this matter with Mrs. Albright personally in
hearings he intends to hold next month. House International Relations Committee
Chairman
Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) has made inquiries that should lead to counterpart hearings on
the
other side of Capitol Hill.

Even more importantly, as Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) argues in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_153at”>attached op.ed. published in
today’s Washington Times, the United States must adopt a wholly different
approach to
dealing with Iraq:

“The time has come for the United States to regain the will to accomplish what we
sent Gen. Schwarzkopf and our troops to do in the Gulf war — to end the threat posed
by Saddam Hussein to his neighbors and the international community. To accomplish
this goal, we need to develop a clear strategy to replace the current regime and
then begin the process of rebuilding the Iraqi opposition, undermining Saddam’s
regime through the free flow of information via Radio Free Iraq and other outlets,
systematically publicizing Iraqi abuses to shore up international support for sanctions
and working to indict Saddam as a war criminal to further lessen the legitimacy of his
regime.”⁽²⁾

Finally, those who are engaged in willful lying to the American people about their
personal
conduct or professional performance must be held accountable. Particularly where such
behavior has the gravest of implications for the national security — as is the case with U.S.
policy toward Iraq — they must resign or be impeached. It is a terrible irony that Scott
Ritter
has felt obliged to do the former when it is he who should remain in place — or be
promoted —
and when it is those who have undercut him and his mission, i.e., President Clinton and Secretary
Albright, who should “in the name of God, go!”

– 30 –

1. It could also mean that many times that number will be slaughtered
in the future by a Saddam
freed of both inspections and sanctions.

2. For more on what such a strategy should entail, see the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled
‘Serious Consequences’: If Clinton Means IT, Here’s the Alternative to His Failed
Strategy of
‘Containing’ Saddam (No. 98-D 33, 24 February
1998).