OxBlog

Thursday, November 06, 2003

# Posted 12:51 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

SADDAM'S FINAL PEACE MISSION: The NYT has just put up a detailed investigative report about an apparent effort by Saddam to broker a last-minute deal with the United States. Basically, Saddam was offering the US the chance to conduct its own inspections.

According to Imad Hage, the Lebanese Christian intermediary who was running messages to the Pentagon for Iraq, the Iraqis "understand the days of manipulating the United States are over." I find that hard to believe. As far as I can tell, the Iraqis were playing for time at the last minute, hoping that further inspections might delay an American invasion until after the summer -- during which time either opposition to the war would mount or the US would find it impossible to keep 150,000 troops on the ground in the Middle East.

To the NYT's credit, correspondent James Risen states up front that Saddam's "overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed." While that kind of statement comes pretty close to editorializing in favor of the Bush Administration's position, it does balance the suggestion elsewhere in the article that the United States missed a valuable opportunity to avoid an unnecessary war. Although you have to wonder: if Saddam was so interested in peace, why did he invest so much effort in deceiving the UN inspectors?
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