USA Will Go Without Casus Belli

At the time while pacifists organize protest actions against a war in Iraq, George W. Bush’s assistants actively discuss if the USA needs a casus belli or not. And votes in the US Administration divided: some people think that evidences must be presented to the world before a war is waged, and others insist that the situation is clear about Saddam Hussein’s regime and the USA is free to attack.

The Iraqi leadership seems to be perceiving this internal struggle and actively demonstrates its compliance to the world: they reveal their “secrets” to UN inspectors and help with searches of warheads in the Iraqi storehouses. Nevertheless, these efforts seem to be useless if we take into consideration that the disputes in  the American administration concern just the necessity of casus belli. 
 
Washinton Times reports with reference to an anonymous, but official source that it has been determined that an attack at Baghdad may start within February 21-28. By this very period Americans will be able to deliver sufficient ground troops to the conflict zone, they will also have enough time to prepare the US aviation in the Turkish and Persian Gulf bases in order to be ready to wage a war in several directions at once. However, no official decision concerning attacking Iraq has been made yet. As the source informing Washington Times reports, America cannot wait till summer, as US soldiers cannot fight in hot weather.
 
The US authorities still dispute over the number of targets for aviation attacks in Iraq. It is said that officials from the US Department of State insist that number of targets must be reduced. The officials probably do so because they understand that they will have to explain the reasons of all attack failures at future press conferences. Military men, on the contrary, want to act in a big way; they can any moment say that they were just doing their duty. Sources informing the American press insist that another air operation in Iraq won’t be as long as the previous one, and the number of targets will be smaller.
 
George W. Bush still hesitates which side to take. Washington Times informs that positions of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are strict. Like other governmental officials, they insist that Iraq keeps on breaking the world order and hasn’t yet shown the place where weapons of mass destruction are stored, as it is demanded by the UN resolution #1441.
 
In a Sunday program on the Fox television, Donald Rumsfeld said: “Whether Iraq is going to cooperate or not, we must find it out in the nearest weeks, not months or years.” In his words, inspectors may spend years in searches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they won’t be a success. It seems that the US Secretary of Defense believes that bombing may make the searches easier.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell is one of those who want to demonstrate evidence proving that Iraq has different kinds of weapons. For instance, such evidence as the empty warheads discovered in Iraq last week. In an interview to CNN Powell said that the warheads were exactly the weapon possession of which Iraq denies. He says, the empty warheads are the evidences proving that Iraq “doesn’t disarm and refuses to cooperate with the UN inspectors.” Although Powell’s politics differs from the positions supported by Rumsfeld and Rice, it all the same gives Iraq little chance.

As American analysts say, those who are behind Rumsfeld and Rice are finally the winners of this backstairs combat. It means that the USA won’t worry about a casus belli very much, it will just choose a moment which would be convenient for the US military men. Unfortunately, important problems are settled at quiet political backstage talks, but not at loud pacifist demonstrations.

Sergey Borisov
PRAVDA.Ru