The Bush administration on Monday unveiled previously classified video of Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries firing on U.S. and British planes to bolster its case that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is violating UN mandates even as he is negotiating the return of international weapons inspectors to Iraq.
The video showed ground bursts filmed by cameras on two U.S. planes and two instances of missiles firing and missing aircraft. It was unveiled as the debate heated up over a U.S. and British effort to impose new conditions for Iraq’s compliance with UN disarmament resolutions.
Also Monday, Russia criticized the U.S. and Britain for increased strikes against Iraqi radar and anti-aircraft sites while Hussein and the United Nations are locked in talks about future weapons inspections.
The video was made by U.S. warplanes and Predator unmanned drone aircraft patrolling the UN-mandated northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq. In one instance, the camera on a Predator aerial drone filmed a surface-to-air missile coming just behind the unmanned plane.
“With each missile launched at our air crews, Iraq expresses its contempt for the UN resolutions,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press briefing.
Ground fire from Iraqi batteries has been common throughout the decade-long no-fly zone patrols, but it has intensified, Pentagon officials say, in recent months. So, too, have the responses from U.S. and British planes, in the form of increased missile strikes on Iraqi radar, anti-aircraft and command sites. Iraq has never shot down a manned plane patrolling the zones.
The briefing on no-fly zones followed a weekend of tough U.S. diplomacy. Some UN member states have expressed concern that the U.S. and Britain are pressing too quickly for a military operation to remove Hussein from power. They favor a return of the weapons inspectors to Iraq as a last chance for Baghdad’s compliance.
At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats on Monday discussed a draft resolution on Iraq with officials from the 10 rotating members of the 15-member Security Council, hoping to build support for the U.S. position that the world body should endorse the use of force if Iraq does not cooperate with inspections.
An official at the U.S. mission to the UN said the proposed resolution would likely be shown to the permanent members Tuesday. No meeting has been scheduled on the measure, according to a UN spokeswoman.
Last week, State Department envoys traveled to Paris, Moscow and Beijing to lobby for the U.S.-sponsored resolution, which would set clear timetables for Hussein to comply with weapons inspections.
Efforts to win approval for the resolution continue in those capitals, the U.S. official said, but added, “there’s a feeling that we need to get things going in New York.”
Russia and France are Iraq’s largest trading partners, and major oil corporations in each nation stand to gain millions in markets and revenues in Iraq. Leaders in both countries have so far expressed disapproval of the U.S.-backed initiative, instead favoring new inspections.
“We must not cut corners,” French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin wrote in an opinion piece to be published in Tuesday’s Le Monde. “We do not want to give a blank cheque to military action.”
To that end, Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Mission, met with Iraq representatives Monday in Vienna to discuss revived inspections. But the White House said those inspections are not pertinent to what Bush is trying to accomplish in the Security Council.
“The meetings in Vienna are focused on the existing resolutions which, the world knows, have not been honored,” presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “And I don’t think that will distract from the focus the president is asking the UN to bring to a new set of resolutions that are tougher and more effective.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday criticized the U.S. and Britain for increased strikes against Iraqi radar and anti-aircraft facilities in the no-fly zones while Hussein and the UN are discussing inspections.
“Anglo-American bombing raids in no-fly zones not only deepen the complicated atmosphere around Iraq but create obstacles in the search for a political-diplomatic settlement of the Iraq question,” the ministry said in a statement.
Rumsfeld denied the video was an attempt to blunt criticism from the Russians, who have expressed opposition to suggestions that military force may be necessary to rid Iraq of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
`This is a reminder again’
“I didn’t know they were going to be released until five minutes ago,” Rumsfeld said of the video presentation, which was given largely by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Iraq’s assaults on U.S. and British aircraft, Fleischer said, underscore the administration’s claims that Hussein cannot be trusted. And while Iraq portrays the anti-aircraft fire as defensive, Fleischer said it is “a very living and vivid display of Iraq’s military intentions.”
“This is a reminder again of how the words of Iraq continue to change but their actions don’t,” Fleischer said.
During the briefing, Myers reported that no-fly zone patrols have been fired on 406 times–206 in southern Iraq and 200 times in the north. After a Sept. 16 letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in which Iraq said it was ready to admit UN inspectors without new conditions, Iraqi batteries have fired on patrol aircraft 67 times, Myers said.
The patrol pilots are “on a combat mission,” Myers said. “That’s how they approach it.”
The air assaults are yielding negligible damage to the Iraqis, Rumsfeld said.
“It’s very difficult for us to do anything about in terms of actually getting at the people that are firing at them on the ground,” Rumsfeld said. “It is . . . difficult for us to impose a level of damage that would make it in their interest to adhere to the UN resolutions, which they consistently refuse to do.”
The White House also expressed anger at statements made over the weekend by Rep. Jim McDermott, one of three lawmakers who visited Iraq.
McDermott (D-Wash.) asserted that Bush may be misleading America about the need to strike quickly at Iraq.
“You don’t start out by putting the gun to their head and saying we’re going to shoot you if you blink,” McDermott said in Iraq.
Fleischer called the statement, “somewhat remarkable. A member of Congress goes to Baghdad, Iraq, where he says that Saddam Hussein needs to be given the benefit of the doubt and that Saddam Hussein may be more believable than President Bush, because [McDermott] says President Bush will mislead the American people.”
Senator cautions White House
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a respected voice on defense matters on Capitol Hill, also had a few cautionary words for the White House on Monday.
At the National Press Club in Washington, Hagel warned that hasty U.S. action against Iraq without the support of other nations could undermine the war on terrorism and thwart any hopes of instituting an effective government in Iraq once Hussein is gone.
“The region will not know peace and progress while Saddam reigns,” Hagel told the Eisenhower Institute. “But it is a mistake to believe that once Saddam is gone, a new peace and prosperity will necessarily reign in the Middle East.”
