US embassy cable - 03OTTAWA679

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 OTTAWA 000679 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/CAN, WHA/PDA 
WHITE HOUSE PASS NSC/WEUROPE 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: KPAO, KMDR, OIIP, OPRC, CA, TFUS01, TFUS02, TFUS03 
SUBJECT:  MEDIA REACTION: IRAQ; NORTH KOREA 
 
IRAQ 
1.   "Liberating Iraqis is main justification for war" 
Columnist Rosie DiManno writing from Jordan made the 
following observations in the liberal Toronto Star 
(3/10): "The most urgent and compelling reason 
for invading Iraq is the one never mentioned by 
bickering diplomats at the United Nations: 24 million 
Iraqis, 24 years of barbarous misrule, government by 
thuggery.... But world leaders are pragmatic and 
utterly selfish, with a keen eye to geopolitical 
interests, even as they invest themselves with noble 
motives - all this duplicitous keening about avoiding a 
catastrophic war. That might be what drove millions of 
people around the world to protest against war in Iraq, 
but it has precious little to do with the bellicose 
objections in Washington, Paris, Beijing, and let's 
throw in Berlin, which at least can honestly attest to 
the disastrous consequences of military belligerence. 
The Germans have been chastened into an appreciation 
for peace and diplomacy.... There are a multitude of 
reasons for attacking Iraq. It's 
to the United States' discredit that U.S. President 
George W. Bush has done such a poor job of itemizing 
them. He botched the rightness of war by only latterly 
addressing the liberation of Iraqis, which should have 
been first on the list, and which British Prime 
Minister Tony Blair has managed to put at the centre of 
his war threat. Washington has cast about for 
validations of war: first it was about protecting 
American security from Saddam's nasty weapons cache; 
then it was about the security of Israel, then the 
security of the region, then Saddam's alleged links to 
Al Qaeda, and finally a stunning democratization of the 
Mideast, starting in Baghdad. No wonder the public's 
confused, credulous.... I don't understand why 
liberating Iraqis - Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians, 
Turkomans - from despotic tyranny has such little moral 
traction. I don't understand why the basic human values 
so precious to Canadians are deemed a luxury too taxing 
for the international community to deliver to Iraq. I 
don't understand the U.N.'s continuing tolerance of 
rogue regimes, so long as they don't export tyranny 
beyond their borders. I don't understand why the Iraqi 
people matter so little." 
 
2.   "War against Iraq senseless" 
Columnist Tom Brodbeck stated in the conservative 
tabloid Winnipeg Sun (3/10): "It's one thing for the 
United States and their so-called coalition of the 
willing to argue that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is 
a menace to the world who ought to be extinguished. 
It's quite another for them to bomb Baghdad without the 
approval of the United Nations and argue they're doing 
so to enforce a series of broken UN resolutions. That's 
hypocrisy in its purest form. If the U.S. and others 
feel they have enough justification to declare war 
against Iraq, whatever that justification may be, 
nobody can really stop them. But I wish they wouldn't 
insult my intelligence by telling me they're doing so 
to enforce a series of UN resolutions.... The UN passes 
resolutions all the time. But they have rules on how 
those resolutions should be enforced. They have a 
Security Council with voting members who have the sole 
authority to enforce those resolutions. Anyone else, 
including a `coalition of the willing,' who tries to 
enforce them is not enforcing UN resolutions, they are 
acting outside the UN. You can't have it both ways. You 
can't say you're enforcing UN resolutions and then spit 
in the eye of the institution that created them. It's 
one of the many deficiencies in the pro-war argument. 
Another major flaw is the argument that Iraq is 
`linked' to terrorist cells, whatever that means.... 
But when asked for evidence that Iraq was behind 9/11, 
the White House always fails to deliver.... It's 
perhaps that assertion that erodes Bush's credibility 
more than any other. When you don't have a strong case 
for action, you reach. And George W. is reaching.... 
The bottom line today, though, is that nothing is going 
to happen overnight in Iraq, except for a possible U.S.- 
led war.... The United Nations is combing though Iraq 
looking for and actively destroying arms. UN chief 
inspector Hans Blix is reporting continued progress and 
co-operation. The eye of the world is on Iraq and they 
can't attack anyone or really do anything. They're 
incarcerated. 
Under these circumstances, I don't know how any logical 
thinking person could in good conscience approve of 
military action against Iraq, killing tens of thousands 
of innocent people, creating an explosively dangerous 
environment in the Persian Gulf and substantially 
increasing the threat of terrorism in the United 
States. It simply makes no sense." 
 
3.   "Arrogant Bush sets stage for final U.N. showdown" 
Editorial page editor Haroon Siddiqui suggested in the 
liberal Toronto Star (3/9) that, "George W. Bush has 
brought the world to the brink of one war and plunged 
it into another: the war that he is hell-bent on 
unleashing on Iraq, and the other on the diplomatic 
front, where he has torpedoed the Atlantic alliance, 
undermined moderate Muslim allies and is about to sink 
the system of international law that has helped govern 
the world since World War II. For this, we can blame 
Saddam Hussein, of course, but also America - more 
precisely, the Bush administration. Its unmatched 
arrogance, staggering dishonesty and extraordinary 
incompetence at international relations have 
set the stage for the coming week's showdown, not 
between enemies but friends.... Since last week, the 
Bush mission has also been about establishing democracy 
in Iraq and liberating Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny - 
the strongest moral point in the American arsenal but 
totally ineffective in light of its own past patronage 
of the tyrant, its callous discounting of Iraqi 
suffering under economic sanctions and the fact that 
its bombs will kill many Iraqis before freeing them. 
American disdain for international law 
is also on display in the stepped-up bombing of Iraqi 
defences in and around the north and south no-fly 
zones.... So, the war has begun before it has begun.... 
Meanwhile, the simplest and the most profound questions 
remain unanswered: Why war now, especially when it 
lacks international legitimacy, 
both in law and in the court of world public opinion? 
Why abandon the inspections precisely when they are 
beginning to work? Why risk the entire U.N. system? Why 
risk geopolitical upheaval? More importantly, why risk 
inflicting a humanitarian catastrophe on an already 
crushed people?" 
 
4.   "There must be a better 'bastard'" 
Former publisher Hartley Steward commented in the 
conservative tabloid Ottawa Sun (3/9): "Of all the 
bastards in the world available to hate these days, 
surely Americans are the least intelligent choice.... 
In fact, President Bush and his administration, in 
light of the Twin Towers attack, have shown surprising 
restraint. They have tried patiently to explain their 
intent to a world often reluctant to listen. They have 
painstakingly made their case. It is downright absurd 
to direct hatred toward the U.S. as if the world's only 
superpower could not be a victim. Absurd and 
transparently opportunistic. The new rules of war, the 
suicide bomber's and the terrorist's rationale that no 
one is innocent in war, make it entirely possible. It 
is so obvious, one is almost embarrassed to point it 
out: the real object of hatred here is Osama bin Laden 
and his Islamic extremists. We should save our curses 
for the madmen who flew airliners into the Trade Center 
towers, killing innocents who were doing nothing more 
than putting in a day's work. We should direct our 
animosity toward rogue states like Iraq who refuse to 
comply with UN disarmament orders; who thumb their 
noses at the free world. We should husband our hatred 
for the psychotic and brutal dictators who rule by fear 
and murder and employ poison gas against their own 
people. We should save our name-calling for those who 
seek and build weapons of mass destruction to let loose 
on the world. It is Saddam Hussein who is the bastard 
here." 
 
5.   "France is a true friend" 
Foreign affairs columnist Eric Margolis observed in the 
conservative tabloid Ottawa Sun (3/9): "...It seems at 
times that President Bush is even more 
eager to bomb Paris than Baghdad. In fact, the 
administration has been treating France like an enemy, 
rather than America's oldest ally and intimate friend. 
Neo-conservatives even accuse France of anti-Semitism, 
a disgusting slander. Far from being an enemy, France 
has been doing what a true good friend should do: 
telling Washington its policy is wrong and dangerous, 
unlike the handkissing leaders of Britain, Spain and 
Italy, who crave Bush's political support, or the East 
European coalition of the shilling, ex-communist 
politicians pandering to Washington for cash.... 
Bush's crusade against Iraq will go on with or without 
Turkey. The war will be akin to throwing a grenade into 
a huge hornet's nest. France, which lives next to the 
Arab world and has 5 million Muslim citizens, warns an 
invasion and occupation of Iraq will roil the entire 
region, spark more terrorism, and hit Europe with a 
dangerous backblast. But Bush couldn't care less, as he 
would say. While Bush prepares war against demolished 
Iraq, he is ducking the surging nuclear confrontation 
with North Korea, which, unlike Iraq, truly threatens 
North America.... America's friends and neighbours, led 
by France, the mother of  diplomacy, rightly warn the 
steroidal Bush 
administration to halt its rush to war. President 
Chirac and Foreign Minister de Villepin deserve the 
Nobel Peace Prize. Americans owe France an apology, and 
a hearty 'merci mon ami'" 
 
6.   "The damage done without a shot being fired" 
Columnist Jeffrey Simpson remarked in the leading Globe 
and Mail (3/8): "...Those who believe that inspections 
are working and can produce additional positive results 
must concede the point: Inspections would fail without 
a credible threat of force. Or they would make such 
little progress as to mock the latest UN resolution's 
demand for 'immediate, active and 
unconditional' disarmament. You can't have one without 
the other, and it is naive to believe otherwise. Saddam 
Hussein's regime will never disarm, in whole or in 
part, without the threat of being toppled in a war.... 
The French and most of the world opposed military 
action because they feared its consequences; the 
Americans and their few allies supported such action 
because they feared the consequences of no action. 
Without a shot being fired, enormous damage has already 
been done to the transatlantic arrangements that stood 
these countries in such good stead for so many decades. 
To the Americans, it will seem axiomatic now that their 
great German friends and their perfidious French ones 
will play the anti-American card, so that neither they 
nor the disorganized European Union should be factored 
into future U.S. foreign policy decisions. Nor should 
the 
increasingly irrelevant NATO.... The more the United 
States feels itself abandoned, misunderstood and 
opposed by countries it had counted on as friends, the 
less it will reflect on what it has done to bring about 
this state of affairs than on the weakness, 
unreliability and fecklessness of those erstwhile 
friends whose support is not worth all the bother." 
 
7.   "A deadline fit for the Security Council" 
The leading Globe and Mail editorialized (3/8): 
"...[I]sn't an ultimatum precisely what's necessary? 
Isn't the credible prospect of war precisely what is 
needed now to avoid it, by forcing an Iraqi change of 
heart?... Ultimately...the issue isn't a precise date. 
It is the need to bring this to a head. Mr. Hussein's 
game of cat-and-mouse cannot be allowed to continue. 
And the U.S. and British troops cannot remain 
indefinitely in a state of battle readiness. The 
members of the UN Security Council came together last 
November and unanimously passed Resolution 1441. They 
should come together again early next week and pass the 
resolution giving Mr. Hussein a final deadline of March 
17. War may still be the outcome. But, if so, Mr. 
Hussein will have been given every chance to avoid it." 
 
8.   "The hawks of Iraq" 
The conservative National Post opined (3/8): "...We 
concede there are real arguments for opposing war - 
though we do not find them convincing. Peaceniks, 
however, should resist the urge to use Saddam's victims 
as props. It is ordinary Iraqis who have the most to 
gain from a U.S.-led invasion, and the most to lose 
should war opponents get their way." 
 
9.   "Enough of the weasel words." 
The conservative tabloid Ottawa Sun declared (3/8): 
"...[L]et's give Saddam one last, last chance - an 18th 
resolution giving him until March 17 to disarm - only 
11 days sooner than the March 28 deadline in the 
'Canadian compromise.' But then the UN must show 
whether it is relevant. If Saddam chooses not to 
comply, then we believe that even if the war resolution 
fails to gather the necessary nine of 15 Security 
Council votes, or if France, China or Russia vetoes it, 
then the U.S. and Great Britain should lead a coalition 
of willing nations to disarm Saddam. 
He is a tyrant. 
He terrorizes his own people. 
He has attacked three neighbours. 
He has pursued weapons of mass destruction. 
He supports terrorists and terrorism. 
Should he supply chemical or biological weapons to 
terrorists, the world will see a horror that would 
dwarf 9/11. Back down now and the UN will send 
a message to tyrants and terrorists everywhere that it 
is open season on the rest of us. Time to decide." 
 
NORTH KOREA 
10.  "They could be on their own" 
Editor emeritus Peter Worthington wrote in the 
conservative tabloid Ottawa Sun (3/10): "...This may 
sound ingenuous, but what America should do seems 
obvious. Dealing with North Korea is even simpler than 
dealing with the South. There's growing unrest in South 
Korea against the U.S. military presence which, since 
the ceasefire in the war 50 years ago, has protected 
the South from the North.... Some think America should 
forget about Saddam Hussein and concentrate on bringing 
North Korea to heel. That said, the nasty anti-American 
demonstrations in South Korea demanding the U.S. 
military leave are upsetting.... What's hard to 
understand is why the 
Americans stay if South Koreans want them gone. True, 
the majority want American troops handy and know the 
North is up to no good, but the massive protests that 
lambaste the U.S. must irritate the hell out of 
Americans. If I were President George Bush, I'd be 
tempted to say to South Korea - publicly and bluntly - 
that if you want us gone, we'll go; you work out what 
you can with your fruitcake neighbour. That'd panic 
South Koreans, and restore common sense.... Although 
North Korea's nuclear weapons program is no direct 
threat to America, selling nuclear technology to rogue 
regimes and terrorists is. This is all Kim Jong-il has 
to sell.... North Korea wants - demands - direct 
negotiations with the U.S., which, in turn, prefers 
multinational talks that include Russia, China, 
Australia and Japan. Since Kim Jong Il reneges on 
agreements and his word means nothing, why talk? What 
North Korea wants is bribes and payoffs. Blackmail. All 
it has to barter are weapons and soldiers. North Korea 
has no allies, with the possible exception of Cuba's 
Fidel Castro.... The soft approach rarely works with 
tyrants. Once Saddam Hussein has been eliminated, North 
Korea should be duck soup, providing President Bush 
doesn't waver or waffle." 
 
CELLUCCI