Update on House Vote

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The Hastert-Gephardt pro­posal (H.J.R 114) passed the House today on a 296 – 113 vote. The Sen­ate also voted 75 – 25 to limit debate, mean­ing its vote on the war res­o­lu­tion could come as early as tomor­row. This is dis­ap­point­ing as the Spratt amend­ment was a common-sense approach to this whole killin’ Iraqis busi­ness. (For a glimpse of alter­na­tives, Here’s a PDF that com­pares the var­i­ous House and Sen­ate pro­pos­als.)
All of this may be moot, how­ever because sources on Cap­i­tal Hill are say­ing that Bush doesn’t want war at all! That come Nov. 5, Bush will sud­dently start talk­ing about how the United Nations is a use­ful body after all, and that inspec­tors will be allowed to do their job. I’m told Bush doesn’t want to be look­ing at an occu­pied Iraq two years from now when we have guerilla fight­ing in Bagh­dad sub­urbs, a mas­sive drain on the national econ­omy and a sta­ble oil sup­ply only because United States occu­pa­tion forces keep Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs (not to men­tion Turkomen and Ira­ni­ans) from each oth­ers’ throats. Add to that a daily trickle of body bags as one or two GIs die every cou­ple of days. That wouldn’t be very fun to run on, would it? Espe­cially since Bush avoided the hor­rors of a long, drawn out guerilla war once before!
This would be a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of dog-wagging. At least Pres­i­dent Clin­ton actu­ally tossed some cruise missles around when he was accused of doing it to dis­tract the nation from him “doing it.” In Bush’s case, how­ever war with Iraq will have been talked up, the Mid­dle East desta­bi­lized, the UN insulted and our rep­u­ta­tion trashed with allies — all for short-term elec­tion gains. (Well, not all for short-term gains. No doubt there are plenty of true believ­ers who think that Sad­dam should be blowed up real good, but try­ing to divine the influ­ence of peo­ple like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney et al., is akin to Krem­li­nol­ogy.) A post-election change in rhetoric would prove the influ­ence of “Gen­eral Rove.”

Not so fast, Mr. President

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There is a time when politi­cians should be applauded. This is one of those times. Reps. Spratt of North Car­olina and Rep. Vic Sny­der, D-Ark., will intro­duce into the House debate on war with Iraq this alter­nate res­o­lu­tion. (It’s a PDF to be down­loaded.)
In essence it allows mil­i­tary action but only after the UNSC has been allowed to do every­thing it can, includ­ing mus­cu­lar and intru­sive inspec­tions. If the UNSC fails in its duties, the Pres­i­dent must come back to Con­gress and ask for autho­riza­tion for war against Iraq. (It actu­ally says “mil­i­tary force” instead of war, but still.)
In the case of shoot­ing, “the Pres­i­dent should endeavor to form a coali­tion of allies as broadly based as prac­ti­ca­ble to sup­port and par­tic­i­pate with United States Armed Forces, and should also seek mul­ti­lat­eral coop­er­a­tion and assis­tance, specif­i­cally includ­ing Arab and Islamic coun­tries, in the post-conflict recon­struc­tion of Iraq.“
And this:

In the event that the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil does not adopt a res­o­lu­tion as described in sec­tion 3, or in the event that such a res­o­lu­tion is adopted but does not sanc­tion the use of force suf­fi­cient to com­pel Iraq’s com­pli­ance, and if the Pres­i­dent deter­mines that use of the United States Armed Forces is nec­es­sary for such com­pli­ance, the Pres­i­dent should seek autho­riza­tion from Con­gress to use mil­i­tary force to com­pel such compliance.

Clear enough? In essence, come back to us, Mr. Pres­i­dent, when you’ve got some proof. Proof that Iraq is the clear and present dan­ger you say it is, and proof that the UNSC is an impo­tent orga­ni­za­tion that can’t do its job. Only then do you get the guns.
The House rules com­mit­tee has allowed this res­o­lu­tion in, so the whole House may vote on it. It likely won’t pass, but it’s a saner voice than what we’re hear­ing from the White House.
I don’t know Spratt or Sny­der or other other spon­sors of this res­o­lu­tion, but I sus­pect that I should. Thank you, gentlemen.

U.S. troops already in Iraq?

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Hm. Inter­est­ing. Accord­ing to this arti­cle in Pravda (hefty salt-licks should be kept handy), U.S. forces have landed in north­ern Iraq (that would be Iraqi Kur­dis­tan for all you peo­ple keep­ing score) to recon­noi­ter the sit­u­a­tion. I will ping my sources over there and find out what I can for you. On the sur­face, this story is prob­a­bly true.

Saddam to hold referendum on presidency

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No, not on Bush’s pres­i­dency, although I’m begin­ning to think that’s not such a bad idea. (Tech­ni­cally, we have to wait two more years for that chance.) Instead, 11.56 mil­lion Iraqis will vote next week (Oct. 15) on another 7-year term for Sad­dam Hus­sein as the pres­i­dent of Iraq. Gee, who do you think will win? Reuters reports that tha last time such a ref­er­en­dum was held, in 1995, Sad­dam received 99.96 per­cent of the vote of almost 8 mil­lion votes cast.

The ques­tion that occurs to me is, Why now? To con­fer legit­macy on his rule, of course. The first ref­er­en­dum was in 1995, and his “term” is up. An over­whelm­ing vote of sup­port (note this is not an elec­tion since that would imply there are other can­di­dates) from the Iraq peo­ple can be trot­ted out and pre­sented to the world as “proof” that Sad­dam should not be deposed. But no one really believes that the vote is full and fair, so who the hell is he try­ing to impress?

This story offers some clues, I feel. The top­pling of a “legit­i­mate” pres­i­dency for Sad­dam (and he is the rec­og­nized head of state, for bet­ter or for worse) would mean that no head of state is in the area is safe. As Iraqi Deputy Prime Min­ster said on Wednesday:

“No Arab coun­try is free of the threat, even if it takes part along­side Amer­ica in the aggres­sion against Iraq,” Aziz told reporters in Dam­as­cus. “Don’t think that (they are safe) if they make nice state­ments and offer bases to the Amer­i­cans. When the crime ends, they will be made to sub­mit to Amer­ica and Zionism.”

So, Iraq’s no doubt over­whelm­ing sup­port for Sad­dam, as evi­denced by the vote count, will be used as pro­pa­ganda to be fed to the masses in other Arab coun­tries who are already deeply antag­o­nis­tic to United States’ actions. It should be noted that pres­i­dents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Bashar Assad of Syria, both sec­u­lar Arab lead­ers of coun­tries with tense rela­tions with the United States, reg­u­larly receive 90+ per­cent of the vote against non-entities. And like Iraq did in the 1980s, Egypt receives a great deal of aid from the United States. (Granted, Egypt gets it because of the Camp David accords and Iraq got it because it was fight­ing Iran, but still.)

Could Iraq be send­ing a mes­sage not just to the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity but specif­i­cally to Egypt and Syria, two of the most impor­tant allies of the United States in the Gulf War in 1991? This might be the case, espe­cially since Assad is also a Baathist, like Sad­dam. Hm.

Announcing www​.back​-to​-iraq​.com

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Well, it’s up, obvi­ously. If you’re read­ing this, the back​-to​-iraq​.com domain name has prop­a­gated out through the Net and all is work­ing well… Again, kudos to supe​ruser​.net for get­ting me up and run­ning so quickly. And extra kudos to Move­able­Type for cre­at­ing very cool soft­ware to run these blogs.
Some infor­ma­tion: This blog will be about things Iraq: What’s hap­pen­ing there and war prepa­ra­tions here at home. There will occa­sion­ally be per­sonal infor­ma­tion, but it’s not really about me. It’s about the world. To that end, please con­sider donat­ing some cash through either Pay­Pal or Ama­zon to the right. The funds col­lected will be used to send me back to Iraq for more report­ing, at which you gen­er­ous souls will get a first look.
So that’s about it. There’s a lot of items com­ing in the next day or so, but since I have a 9 a.m. meet­ing with Microsoft tomor­row, I’ll call it a night and pack it in.