This is the original text of a document written for the Campeace website in December 2002

1) Doesn't Iraq possess nuclear weapons?

The UN has documented that Iraq's known nuclear weapons production facilities were completely eliminated by the weapons inspectors between 1991-98. Has this capacity been recreated since then? Nuclear weapons cannot readily be built in caves: they require modern factories and massive industrial input, as well as the purchase of complicated equipment that Iraq cannot produce alone, all of which which would have been near impossible to hide (particularly as centrifuge facilities emit detectable gamma radiation). To make a case that avoids these facts, Bush and Blair have relied on misleading rhetoric. For example, to claim that Iraq "retains the infrastructure needed to build" a nuclear weapon (as Bush warned the UN) is different to claiming that it is building one. It refers primarily to the continued employment of scientists who formerly worked on the nuclear weapons programme.

2) Doesn't Iraq possess chemical and biological weapons?

According to former UN weapons inspectors, Scott Ritter (a conservative American), by 1998 90-95% of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons had been "verifiably eliminated", including "all the factories used to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons." After that point, Iraq may have possessed some stores of biological agents acquired primarily from the US in the 1980s. However, their potency expired, and Iraq lacks the delivery systems such as long-range missiles to turn them into weapons that could threaten other states.

3) Isn't Iraq in breach of UN Security Council resolutions?

It is. But there are scores of other UN resolutions currently being breached by many different states, and in comparison with some of these Iraq's violations are few and minor. The majority of serious offenders, such as Israel and Turkey (which have each breached more resolutions than Iraq and on more serious points) are close allies of the US and have enjoyed its protection. If Bush was serious about enforcing the credibility of the UN, he would pursue these too.

4) Didn't Iraq expel UN weapons inspectors in December 1998?

Iraq did not expel them: the inspectors were pulled out, in violation of a Security Council understanding, providing the trigger that Bill Clinton wanted to launch his Desert Fox bombing campaign.

5) Isn't Iraq's recent hostility to weapons inspectors a sign of guilt?

Iraq's opposition to weapons inspections increased as it became clear that the US was using them to spy on military targets to aid its ongoing bombing campaign. This abuse of the inspection regime angered many on the Security Council and amongst the weapons inspection team, and has been widely reported in the American press.

6) Haven't George Bush and Tony Blair repeatedly cited the evidence of an Iraqi nuclear defector that Saddam Hussein restarted a nuclear weapons programme in 1998?

This reference is principally to Khidhir Hamza. Hamza spoke publicly about his information in 1998, but defected in 1994-although the CIA refused to accept him, as they knew (based on excellent intelligence from 1991 defectors) that he wasn't the bomb-maker he claimed to be. In spite of making a name for himself by giving talks and interviews, he has refused to debate the issue with Scott Ritter, who claims to possess documentary evidence that would expose him. Bush and Blair ignore this in their speeches.

7) Hasn't Iraq used chemical weapons in the past?

Yes, in the 1980s Iraq used lethal chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish civilians. Yet, even knowing this, the US and UK bolstered Saddam Hussein's rule by the sale of military equipment, including consignments of organisms used in anthrax, and provided satellite intelligence to allow Iraq to target Iranian soldiers with chemical weapons. The difference now is not that chemical weapons have become a moral issue for the US, but that Hussein no longer serves their interests.

8) Doesn't Iraq support terrorism?

In spite of attempts by the Bush administration to suggest otherwise, no evidence whatsoever has been provided linking Iraq with Al-Qaeda or the September 11 2002 attacks on America. In fact, radical Islamists despise the secularism of states such as Iraq, and Bin Laden considers Hussein apostate.

9) Isn't the proposed war about enforcing the rule of the UN Security Council?

The US cajoled, bullied and bribed the Security Council into supporting a new resolution. George W. Bush repeatedly declared that if the UN didn't provide sanction for his planned war, USA would go it alone. That would have been illegal by the UN charter, revealing his contempt for the UN.

10) Isn't America attempting to enforce the rule of international society in general?

The US pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty on climate change and the ABM treaty on limiting ballistic missile proliferation. It has attempted to scupper UN attempts to create a standing International Criminal Court to try war criminals, afraid that this would criminalize US military tactics such as high-altitude aerial bombardment that factors in civilian casualties as 'collateral damage.' When the International Court of Justice ruled that the US was in breach of international law in its attacks on Nicaragua, it simply ignored the ruling. The US has demonstrated little interest in supporting any international bodies, except when they further its own ends.

11) Isn't there a moral obligation to oppose ruthless tyrants?

Undoubtedly. But the US has, in recent years, supported General Suharto, Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet, and a host of other cruel tyrants when they have supported its interests. At the moment, the US is backing an emerging new cadre of authoritarian leaders such as Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan, and General Musharraf of Pakistan. US relations with such leaders are apparently dictated by short-term interests rather than moral principles.

12) Isn't it important to prevent the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction?

Indeed it is. But the US itself has more weapons of mass destruction than all other states combined, and is the only state that has used nuclear weapons, yet resists international attempts to monitor or disarm them. Israel is the world's greatest recipient of US military and other forms of aid, yet is a state that has not only acquired a vast nuclear arsenal and the ability to deliver it, but has invaded and attacked its neighbours, and stands in breach of scores of UN resolutions- in contrast to Iraq's 16.

13) George W. Bush has declared that Iraq is in league with Iran and North Korea in an 'axis of evil' that threatens the free world. Shouldn't this axis be stopped?

This is pure fantasy. There is no evidence of such a conspiracy; Iran and Iraq lost hundreds of thousands of troops fighting each other in the 1980s, and Islamist Iran is fundamentally opposed to the ideology of communist North Korea. It is too ridiculous for words to imagine that these impoverished 'third world' states could combine in some dastardly plan to overwhelm the massed forces of the US, Europe, Japan, NATO and Australia: do they plan to overrun four continents?!

14) Isn't Saddam Hussein's Iraq undemocratic?

Without question: yet it is certainly not less democratic than the corrupt oligarchies that rule neighbouring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with US military and economic support. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have been replaced by a network of US-backed warlords who care not one iota for democracy. If Bush was genuinely bothered about democracy, he would start by forcing his current allies to change.

15) Wouldn't 'Regime Change' be a blessing?

The US has made clear it wants to be rid of Saddam Hussein, whose departure would surely be lamented by few. Yet, under what authority can one state decide to replace a foreign leader it doesn't like? In opposing Milosivic when attacking Yugoslavia in 1999 the US invoked NATO; to invade Panama and overthrow Noriega in 1989 it acted alone; and now it seeks to use the UN to justify an attack on Iraq to remove Hussein. Yet, dictators still friendly to the US remain safe. If the US, as the most powerful state in the world, simply decides what states it doesn't like and invades them, is the cause of international law furthered or undermined?

16) Hasn't Saddam Hussein shown callous disregard for his own people?

He has, leading his country into ruinous wars against Iran and the US and its allies. Yet UN sanctions have themselves wrought devastation on Iraq, by preventing it from being able to restore its basic infrastructure. According to UNICEF and the WHO, sanctions have killed over one million people since 1990, nearly 60% being children under seven, and 4,500 children die every month from starvation and preventable diseases- a six-fold increase since 1990. In 1998 Denis Halliday resigned as the UN Aid co-ordinator for Iraq in protest, saying that "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral."

17) Hasn't Tony Blair's close engagement with the USA tempered George Bush's approach?

George Bush has been forced to seek UN authorisation for his war not because Blair supported him, but because everyone else refused to.

18) If Iraq really presents no great military threat to the US, why would it bother to invent one?

US political identity over the half century from 1945, and the functioning of the military-industrial complex, depended upon the existence of its adversary, the Soviet 'evil empire', against which it defined itself in positive terms as a moral crusader. The collapse of the USSR threatened to loosen the military and cultural hegemony of the US as its forces were no longer needed across the world, and also the lock of the Republican Party on the White House. The idea of an 'axis of evil'of states supporting terrorism has replaced the USSR in the conservative imagination, justifying wars that cement US economic control of the third world, the expansion of a NATO alliance that had been deprived of an enemy, and massive increases in military expenditure that include terrifying plans to militarise space. With its technologically unrivalled forces now operating in some 140 of the world's 180 countries, the US is the most powerful global state in world history, and translates this power into economic advantage.

19) As the USA no longer imports most of its oil from the Middle East, isn't it mistaken to claim this conflict is about economics?

It is true that the USA supplies most of its oil needs from the Americas: yet American oil companies have invested heavily in the Middle East, where they make enormous profits. With the Saudi-US alliance souring since September 11, a compliant regime installed in Baghdad would offer the US a safer base in the Gulf, and open the prospect of massive new financial opportunities for US oil companies to exploit the world's second largest proven oil reserves. These companies traditionally have strong links with the Republican Party.

20) Aren't all these objections just anti-Americanism?

While a minority anti-war protestors may be driven by an unpleasant dislike of America, this comment is 'playing the race card' to avoid uncomfortable truths. As these points have shown, some of the most outspoken opponents of the Bush war plans have been American. These are Americans who agree with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark that, "Any remaining hope the peoples of the United Nations have to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war through the United Nations would be crushed by another United States attack on Iraq."

AND FINALLY, WE WOULD ASK THESE QUESTIONS OF THOSE THAT SUPPORT WAR IN IRAQ:

If the doctrine of pre-emptive invasion to prevent a theoretical future threat from arising were to become common practice in international affairs, how would this reduce the frequency and intensity of military conflict? How would we prevent a US-UK invasion of Iraq from being perceived as a conflict between the West and Muslim countries, thus becoming a rallying target for radical terrorist groups? Osama bin Laden frequently refers to Iraq in his speeches. If the basing of US forces in Pakistan has lead to a murderous campaign against Christian minorities; if minor Australian involvement in the Afghanistan war contributed to the Bali bombings in revenge; and if an ill-considered comment about the Muslim faith during the 'Miss World' contest in Nigeria left over a hundred dead in rioting, what impact would an unprovoked invasion of Iraq (for naked national interests) have?

The USA stands for many noble principles, but its foreign policy, like that of all states, is geared primarily towards promoting the national self-interest of its ruling classes. In its national security doctrine published in September 2002, the White House declared that it would in the future act to prevent rival states acquiring weapons capabilities comparable to its own. This is a doctrine of the permanent global military hegemony of one state that believes it is the bearer and defender of universal civilisation, and is prepared to engage in massive wars around the world to enforce that. The Iraq crisis is a stage towards enacting that principle. Is this the sort of world that will ensure peace, justice, trust between nations and security for all? Those who oppose war in Iraq do not so because we admire Iraq or dislike America, but because we are not convinced that the Bush war plans contribute in any positive way to a realisation of that vision.