Disarming Iraq, monitoring power and resistance
Michael V. Deaver
Library of Congress
The flickering image of a boiler-like machine on a television screen at a United Nations office here [Baghdad] indicates that the monitoring system imposed on Iraqi industry four years ago [1991] is achieving its aim of preventing President Saddam Hussein from building weapons of mass destruction.... A little green line, constantly expanding and contracting at the bottom of the screen at the United Nations office, means the picture is being relayed live from a camera trained on an instrument known as a vacuum furnace on a factory floor somewhere in Iraq.1
Last month [December 1997], the United Nations weapons inspectors thought they were closing in on a long-sought prize: computer hard disks that contain the records of Iraq's entire program of weapons of mass destruction.... But the Iraqis stalled for 20 minutes, as inspectors watched from a distance while the old hard drives were whisked away and replaced with new ones. When the inspectors finally got permission to enter, the equipment ran only computer games.2
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Michael V. Deaver is Visiting Lecturer and Academic Coordinator of the Civic Education Project in Russia. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and has taught courses on international relations and comparative politics in Russia as a Civic Education Project fellow for three years. | 
