American Policy Gave Hussein Reason to Deceive

Butler's meeting with Aziz was testy and bitter, perhaps because Aziz grasped American intentions better than Butler. "You understand, Mr. Butler, that the government is working with the Special Commission [the U.N. inspectors] in order to get sanctions lifted," Aziz said. "If there is no prospect of this happening, why should we continue to cooperate? We are ready to face the consequences, including war. Tell the Security Council I said so."

Yet the situation was ambiguous enough for the Iraqis to show some cooperation from time to time. By the mid-1990s, France and Russia were openly lobbying for the end of sanctions. If the inspectors ever declared Iraq free of the prohibited weapons, the Iraqis reasoned, perhaps France and Russia could persuade the United States to relent. Moreover, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, after his controversial meeting with Hussein in 1998, signed a joint memorandum with Aziz in which he "undertook to bring this matter [the lifting of sanctions] to the full attention of the members of the Security Council." Perhaps Annan could use his international prestige and moral force to persuade the United States to change its policy.

Would the United States have backed down? Probably not. Albright had pronounced U.S. policy "unshakeable." Toughness toward Iraq had become one of her trademarks. The chances were high that the United States would veto any attempt by other Security Council members to lift sanctions no matter what the inspectors reported.

We still don't know what motivated continued Iraqi intransigence that led to the U.S bombing and suspension of inspections in 1998.

But Iraqi frustration with U.S. policy may have been a significant factor in the decision by Iraqi officials, representing a weak and humiliated government, to preen and bluster and stand in the way of Butler -- foolish and dangerous behavior that bolstered the view that the Iraqis had a lot to hide. When the new presidential commission investigates the flawed intelligence about Hussein's WMD, it should not overlook the U.S. role in the subversion of inspections.

When the George W. Bush administration took office in 2001, there were no longer any inspectors in Iraq. Intelligence analysts, who believed that Hussein had concealed his WMD programs during inspections, assumed he surely must be expanding them now. The lifting of sanctions became a moot issue.

The new issue was war. By the time U.N. inspectors returned in late 2002, the Iraqis, fearful of a U.S. invasion, cooperated more than they ever had. Resolution 1441 -- the Security Council resolution that served as President Bush's legal justification for war -- did not even mention sanctions. Instead, it declared Iraq "in material breach" of previous U.N. resolutions and threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq continued to defy the U.N. Their new cooperation did not help the Iraqis. Many Bush aides looked on U.N. inspections with contempt -- a feeble exercise by incompetent inspectors fooled time and again by duplicitous Iraqis. Without waiting for the inspectors to finish their work, Bush ordered the invasion.

In 2003, the Security Council did lift sanctions against Iraq, but, as the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations had promised, this came only after the fall of Hussein.