HURRIYET- Columnist Oktay Eksi comments on the Iraqi crisis. A summary of his column is as follows:
Yesterday the months-long hopes of US President George W. Bush were dashed. More than 200 weapons inspectors who have scoured Iraq for more than two months on behalf of the United Nations and searched nearly 400 areas proved incapable of showing that Saddam Hussein possesses any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The whole world was waiting for the report to be presented to the UN Security Council on behalf of these inspectors. The report stated, in sum, ‘Iraq hasn’t cooperated sufficiently with the inspectors process. It hasn’t told us what happened with the weapons we know it had previously. It has failed to allow U2 spy planes to conduct air reconnaissance. Iraqi scientists have been reluctant to give us evidence.’ This situation shows that the Iraqi scientists have had the dignity not to betray their own country to foreigners. We should congratulate them.
Now everybody is waiting Bush’s annual State of the Union Address later today. We will see how Saddam can be guilty for his non-existent weapons. Likewise, when the Bush administration began to suspect that the UN report wouldn’t provide a smoking gun, it shifted tactics, saying that whatever the report stated, Saddam should be punished.
Now we are at a critical stage. In other words, we’re at a point where the basic principles which all of humanity tried to establish over the past 200 years are being flouted and ignored. Thousands of years ago, people fought over the choice of a mate. Then they fought over land. Then religion and wealth became rationales for war. However, whatever the reason, all wars make the losing sides poorer, and the winning sides richer. The 19th and 20th centuries were spent trying to establish this basic truth. Of course at the same time, people continued to wage war just as before.
Now it’s sad that the US is ignoring the United Nations, which is the product of efforts to solve international conflicts through peaceful means, and so people are obliged to live in a world in which the powerful dominate. Although nobody seems to believe in the assertions of Bush and his deputies on this issue, the world is being led into an ugly, meaningless war just because the US wants to dominate oil supplies in the Middle East. Unfortunately Turkey isn’t far removed from the region where this war will take place, and the Turkish people are in serious jeopardy due to claims which are both irrelevant to us and untrue. Now there’s only one thing that can be done: hope that God will grant Bush a single moment of wisdom.

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION