Saddam's Missile Deal
Documents discovered in Iraq, and interrogations of Iraqi officials based on those documents, show that for two years prior to the invasion, Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain banned missile technology from North Korea. The New York Times reports:
"For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials.
"The officials now say they believe that those negotiations — mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government — were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles. Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials." The transaction apparently fell apart when North Korea accepted Saddam's $10 million down payment, but then refused to ship the missile technology.
Of course, the Times being the Times, it can't just admit that the attempted missile deal demonstrates that Saddam was a danger to the region, as the administration has consistently said. Rather than saying, "the administration has been proved right," the Times says: "Bush administration officials have seized on the attempted purchase of the missiles, known as the Rodong, and a missile assembly line to buttress their case that Mr. Hussein was violating United Nations resolutions, which clearly prohibited missiles of the range of the Rodong."
Got that? Officials "seized on" the attempted missile purchase to "buttress their case" that Saddam was violating U.N. resolutions. When a news account says that someone "seizes on" evidence to "buttress" a case, it means that the case is weak. In reality, however, there is no doubt whatsoever that Saddam was in violation of a number of U.N. resolutions. Even Bush's bitter enemies concede that fact. And the case President Bush made for the Iraq invasion was always based, most fundamentally, on Iraq's ongoing violation of U.N. resolutions relating to his weapons programs. The North Korean effort was just one of many undeniable such violations.
