Governmental Positions On The Iraq War Prior To The 2003 Invasion of Iraq - Opposing U.S. Position

Opposing U.S. Position

Some nations that were allies of the United States during the Gulf War were either opposed to the second Iraq war or were reluctant to help with it. Before the war, several countries called on the US to wait for the weapons inspectors to complete their investigations. However, the US and its allies maintained that reasonable patience had been given to Saddam and that it was clear that he was not willing to cooperate with the inspectors, as he beat around the bush whenever the weapons of mass destruction issue came up. This, if not the fact that the inspectors had previously been kicked out of Iraq in 1998 alone, was, according to the war's supporters, sufficient violation of UN mandates to justify more severe action. It should be noted that Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector at the time, says that the inspectors were not kicked out by Saddam Hussein, but were withdrawn by Bill Clinton :

Public perception is that the Iraqis were confrontational and blocking the work of the inspectors. In 98% of the inspections, the Iraqis did everything we asked them to because it dealt with disarmament. However when we got into issues of sensitivity, such as coming close to presidential security installations, Iraqis raised a flag and said, “Time out. We got a C.I.A. out there that's trying to kill our president and we're not very happy about giving you access to the most sensitive installations and the most sensitive personalities in Iraq.” So we had these modalities, where we agreed that if we came to a site and the Iraqis called it ‘sensitive,’ we go in with four people.

In 1998, the inspection team went to a site. It was the Baath Party headquarters, like going to Republican Party headquarters or Democratic Party headquarters. The Iraqis said, “You can't come in – you can come in. Come on in.” The inspectors said, “The modalities no longer apply.” The Iraqis said, “If you don't agree to the modalities, we can't support letting you in,” and the Iraqis wouldn't allow the inspections to take place.

Bill Clinton said, “This proves the Iraqis are not cooperating,” and he ordered the inspectors out. But you know the United States government ordered the inspectors to withdraw from the modalities without conferring with the Security Council. It took Iraqis by surprise. Iraqis were saying, “We're playing by the rules, why aren’t you? If you're not going play by the rules, then it’s a game that we don't want to participate in.” Bill Clinton ordered the inspectors out. Saddam didn't kick them out.

Many argued that, since Iraq had no connection to the September 11, 2001 attacks, going to war against Iraq as part of a broader war on terror was illegitimate. Others opposed to US military action argued that insufficient and, as in the case of the uranium Niger deal, even falsified documents might have been produced in order to show Iraq as "an immediate threat". Accordingly, any such exaggeration would have been contrary to international law. They also claimed that the issue of weapons of mass destruction (if indeed there were any left in Iraq by 2003) could have been solved through continued inspections and diplomacy, and insisted that the weapons issue was merely an attempt to hide American desires to seize oil wells, further a military presence in the Middle East, and frighten other OPEC nations into submission. This position was later supported by Bush's former Secretary of the Treasury Paul Henry O'Neill who stated that the administration had sought for a reason to invade Iraq ever since Bush took office, with potential oil spoils charted in early documents. The Bush camp denies these allegations as ludicrous, though they have admitted that the Niger uranium documents were given to them by a source of questionable credibility and it was simply a mistake on their part to have assumed that the documents told the truth.