Max van der Stoel, Special U.N. Rapporteur of Iraqi Human Rights, reports widespread continuing violations of human rights in Iraq, torture and execution, and displacement and retention of political dissidents and ethnic minorities. (U.N., A/52/476, 15 October 1997)

Saddam Hussein was hardly the only one in the Middle East at the time, but a combination of under-the-surface changes highlighted and gave unsettling detail to his rule and the internal situation. Though the human rights community—some in that community—focused on American blame (in the bombing inside Iraq during Desert Storm or the effects of the use depleted uranium), the repression inside the country came as no surprise. But for a U.S. national security system that had ignored Iraq’s domestic situation, all of a sudden there was the “intelligence” that comes in with an intense and intimate presence to support assistance to the Kurds, enforcing the no-fly zones, support for U.N. inspectors and then abundant covert actions. A good part of the U.S. military and intelligence communities were focused on Iraq, with the flow of information to follow.

Finally, as U.S. intelligence used the U.N. presence to increase clandestine spying—particularly eavesdropping from inside Baghdad—the details of Saddam’s absolute rule and nepotism, cruelty and corruption increased. The dynamic was inscrutable: was the intelligence needed to support U.S. policy or did the intelligence drive it? When the Clinton administration finally said that there could be no normalization of relations—even if Iraq eliminated its WMD and satisfied the U.N. inspectors—there was no end game but war.

Van der Stoel shouldn’t be criticized for his report—and nor should the human rights community—but they, too, became agents for inevitable war. And what does it have to do with 9/11? Only that Iraq became dominant and overwhelming as a problem, diverting attention from terrorism, while those drawn to al Qaeda saw the plight of Iraq—they’ve killed one million Iraqi children, Osama bin Laden said many time—as further “proof” of American perfidy and the West’s campaign to destroy the Middle East.