By S. H. Moulana
This commentary was published in The Arab News on 23/04/2011
Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed El Baradei has suggested that those who were part of the Bush administration should be probed for war crimes in connection with Iraq.
The former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in his new memoir condemns the lies uttered and the deception practiced by the Bush White House in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. Everybody would agree with his view that the Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for a war of aggression.
El Baradei accused US leaders of deliberate distortion of the truth when they claimed that Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by him and other arms inspectors inside the country. The head of the IAEA from 1997 to 2009, El Bardei was a rallying figure during the recent Egyptian uprising that deposed President Hosni Mubarak.
In his 321-page memoir, he tells of an October 2002 meeting he and the UN chief arms inspector, Hans Blix had with then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others, at which the American leaders sought to convert the UN mission into a cover for what would be, in essence, a US-directed inspection process. The UN officials resisted, and their teams went on to conduct some 700 inspections of scores of potentials weapons sites in Iraq, finding absolutely no evidence to support the US claims of weapons of mass destruction.
El Baradei says that he was aghast to see the US attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls aggression where there was no imminent threat, a war in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.
But George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will never be hauled to The Hague as Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was, because we have two different systems of justice — one for the US and UK and one for Asian and African nations and small powers of Europe.
This commentary was published in The Arab News on 23/04/2011
Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed El Baradei has suggested that those who were part of the Bush administration should be probed for war crimes in connection with Iraq.
The former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in his new memoir condemns the lies uttered and the deception practiced by the Bush White House in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. Everybody would agree with his view that the Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for a war of aggression.
El Baradei accused US leaders of deliberate distortion of the truth when they claimed that Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by him and other arms inspectors inside the country. The head of the IAEA from 1997 to 2009, El Bardei was a rallying figure during the recent Egyptian uprising that deposed President Hosni Mubarak.
In his 321-page memoir, he tells of an October 2002 meeting he and the UN chief arms inspector, Hans Blix had with then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others, at which the American leaders sought to convert the UN mission into a cover for what would be, in essence, a US-directed inspection process. The UN officials resisted, and their teams went on to conduct some 700 inspections of scores of potentials weapons sites in Iraq, finding absolutely no evidence to support the US claims of weapons of mass destruction.
El Baradei says that he was aghast to see the US attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls aggression where there was no imminent threat, a war in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.
But George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will never be hauled to The Hague as Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was, because we have two different systems of justice — one for the US and UK and one for Asian and African nations and small powers of Europe.
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