Bush changes his story on Resolution 1441

If you watched President Bush on TV last night, you heard many of the same messages we’ve all heard for several months (except for that part about exile; that was new). In mentioning U.N. Resolution 1441, Bush said, again, that the “Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm.”

The international debate in the U.N. has taken on a battle of interpretation of late. Those hesitant to launch an attack on Iraq (France, Russia, Germany, etc.) have argued that 1441 was the first step. It created a mechanism through which new UNMOVIC inspectors could begin the process of searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. If additional action was needed, these countries believed, then the U.N. would consider a new resolution authorizing the use of force.

The U.S. has taken an entirely different interpretation. 1441, we’ve argued, was Saddam’s “last chance.” While inspectors haven’t found anything, we know that Hussein has been hiding things from UNMOVIC and he still can’t account for bio and chem weapons he had in 1991. Therefore, we can launch an attack at will, because 1441 told Iraq there’d be “serious consequences” if the inspection process didn’t work. No second resolution is needed; we’re going to war, the U.S. argues.

As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo (who clearly deserves the award for “catch of the day”) explains, there’s a perfectly good reason why France, Russia, Germany, and others believed 1441 was a first step and the Security Council would reconvene to consider military action. It’s because that’s what we told them.

The last day of negotiations in November before the vote on 1441, John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said, “There’s no ‘automaticity’ and this is a two-stage process, and in that regard we have met the principal concerns that have been expressed for the resolution. Whatever violation there is, or is judged to exist, will be dealt with in the council, and the council will have an opportunity to consider the matter before any other action is taken.”

This is unambiguously clear. If there’s a violation, it will be “dealt with in the council.” The council will have “an opportunity to consider the matter” before our cowboy chief executive starts dropping bombs.

As Marshall explained, “What [Negroponte] was saying there was that 1441 was not self-enforcing. Its language and what counted as an infraction was to be decided by the Security Council. This was the price we paid for getting for getting the unanimous vote. What this means pretty clearly is that we cannot claim that Resolution 1441 gives us any basis for doing what we’re about to do.”

Yet that’s exactly what Bush is claiming. The president, apparently, was hoping no one would remember what U.S. officials at the U.N. said in November, because it’s the exact opposite of what the White House is saying now. We said we’d come back to the Security Council before taking action, and then we turned around and said we’re not interested in the Council anymore.

No wonder there’s a feeling of betrayal from our former allies at the U.N. Not only has the president misled everyone about why we need to attack, he’s deceived members of the U.N. about the way in which we’d proceed before an attack.