Posted on 28-1-2003

Two B's In A Box
The Guardian, Monday January 27, 2003

Deservedly disconcerted by unsuspected depths of public and allied
scepticism on Iraq, the US and Britain are increasingly tying themselves in
verbal and policy knots. Tony Blair asserted in a BBC interview yesterday
that the UN inspectors "should have whatever time they need" to do their
job in Iraq. This is entirely sensible. But in the very same breath, Mr
Blair confused the issue by indicating that "whatever time they need"
amounts to no more than a few additional weeks and certainly not months.
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, is struggling with the same
paradox, it seems. "We are in no great rush to judgment today or tomorrow,"
he said in Davos. But the day after tomorrow or the day after that? Mr
Powell apparently felt unable to offer any assurances so far into the future.

Mr Blair raised questions about what the inspectors' job actually is and
therefore what criteria will be used to decide whether it has been
satisfactorily completed. Iraqi disarmament is widely understood to be the
UN's objective. But it now seems that a claim of a war-triggering "material
breach" may be based not only on convincing evidence of secret chemical or
biological weapons projects (so far lacking). It may be based not only on
the discovery of covert nuclear bomb-making or blatant obstructionism
(similarly lacking). It may also be based, it transpires, on an absence of
"active" Iraqi cooperation, as defined by Britain and the US in vague,
ever-broader terms.

Despairing of conclusive proof and losing the battle for public opinion,
the US and Britain are not just moving the goalposts. They are widening the
goalmouth and doubling the size of the penalty area. After all, the WMD
sites pinpointed in Mr Blair's dossier last year have now been inspected;
nothing incriminating has been found. The US has been feeding its famous
intelligence to the inspectors; nothing incriminating has been found.
Palaces have been raided, scientists interviewed, defunct warheads seized -
and while there is much that remains unsatisfactory, nothing that remotely
justifies a resort to war has been uncovered.

Nobody ever said this process was going to be easy. Nobody was under any
illusion that Saddam Hussein, after years of circumventing international
controls, would suddenly turn over a new leaf. The fact that he is a liar
as well as an ogre is hardly a surprise. Since 1991, the challenge has
always been how best to deal with that fact, using a mix of military and
diplomatic pressure, without recourse to yet more violence. It is still
unclear what happened to weapons-related material that Iraq once owned. But
with inspections only eight weeks old, that argues for continuation, not
cancellation. This must surely be the UN's view, too, after Hans Blix's
interim report today.

It is certainly not helpful or convincing to claim an absence of proof is
itself proof. It is certainly not helpful for the US to crow that, whatever
Iraq does, Saddam is doomed. It is almost self-deceptive for Mr Blair to
promise that Britain will act without a second resolution only if the
inspectors say they have been thwarted and the UN cannot agree what to do.
All the world knows that the US, not Mr Blix, will ultimately decide
whether the inspections are working, that Mr Powell and others already say
they are not, and that Britain is already inflexibly committed to backing
the US. In the days of containment, the stated aim was to keep Saddam "in
his box". Now it is Mr Blair who is boxed in, verbally, diplomatically and
politically. George Bush will try to screw down the lid when they meet
later this week. For Mr Blair, too, time is running out.