AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we move now to Baghdad. The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Saturday Iraq will let U.N. weapons inspectors to return only under a comprehensive agreement that would prevent an attack by the U.S. and lift the U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Tariq Aziz said, quote, “If there is a solution that maintains Iraq’s sovereignty, dignity and legitimate rights and prevents aggression, we are ready.” Meanwhile, West Virginia Congressmember Nick Rahall, former U.S. Senator from South Dakota James Abourezk and media critic Norman Solomon met with an Iraqi Cabinet minister in Baghdad over the weekend. Abourezk said it would be immoral for America to attack Iraq without provocation.

Norman Solomon is with us right now, media critic and writer, in Baghdad.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

NORMAN SOLOMON: Hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you talk about your trip and who you’ve spoken with and met with this weekend?

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, it was a delegation organized and sponsored by the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I’m executive director. We arrived early Saturday in Baghdad and met during the weekend with several fairly high-ranking officials, including Tariq Aziz. We had a two-hour meeting with him, also with the speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, who had previously invited members of Congress to come to this country for a few weeks to bring any weapons inspectors that they, the U.S. congresspeople, would choose to go anywhere in the country. Of course, that was immediately ignored and rebuffed several weeks ago by the powers that be in Washington.

And our delegation, while it included a sitting member of Congress who has been in the House of Representatives of the United States for 25 years, as well as a former U.S. senator, did make the trip here. We were not engaged in any sort of weapons inspection. We were here to break the ice. We were here to, for the first time in many years, have a member of the U.S. Congress engage in dialogue with high-ranking Iraqi officials and not exchange threats while doing it. So, this was, in that sense, I think, a step forward.

AMY GOODMAN: What did Tariq Aziz say?

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, I think he was fairly downbeat and defiant. He also parsed and walked through — I mean, he’s very analytical person — walked through the flaws in the propaganda from the White House. At one point, when Tariq Aziz was discussing the stance of the U.S. government vis-à-vis this demand for a full and unfettered access by weapons inspectors, Aziz described the situation as “doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t.” And by that, he meant that the U.S. position is, you know, Iraq has got to let in the weapons inspectors, full and unfettered access, all of that, but the U.S. position is also that whether Iraq lets in those weapons inspectors as demanded or not, the United States of America intends to bring about a, quote, “regime change,” unquote, which means go to war and massacre a lot of people in Iraq. So, you know, this is rather a transparent strategy from the U.S. government to use the weapons inspector issue as, you know, a supposed high moral ground, but at the same time it’s not really the essence of what they’re after. They want to start bombing Iraq, evidently, invade in large quantities of soldiers, and they want to overthrow the government. And that is really the gist.

You know, there’s another aspect that popped up in the discussion with Tariq Aziz that was new to me, and I think very thought-provoking and should make us ponder just the extent to which the U.S. has been putting Iraqis up against the wall and shoving them, leaving almost no options that are worthwhile whatsoever. Tariq Aziz was responding to our urging. The delegation was urging throughout the weekend that the Iraqi government bring in, allow in full and unfettered access from the weapons inspectors, because it seems to be the only way to get a shift in the political dynamic in the United States and around the world to forestall what George W. Bush and Rumsfeld and the gang clearly have in mind, which is, you know, a massive military assault. And what Tariq Aziz said, which initially sounded counterintuitive, is that he said a delay of an attack on Iraq is not necessarily a better option from the standpoint of Iraq. And, you know, initially, that would seem to be nonsensical, but he went on to explain that last time, as is well documented by The New York Times, although they had forgotten it promptly after reporting it in January of 1999, the UNSCOM U.N. inspectors were spying for Washington. That’s on the record. There’s no doubt about it. And so, here we are, new demands from Washington to send in a new team of weapons inspectors. And from the Iraqi standpoint, unless there are real safeguards on what those folks are up to and to make sure that they’re not engaged in espionage, then the very act of allowing these folks in would mean that Washington will get much more information about where potential targets are, what are on the ground in terms of places that could be hit with missiles, and, in fact, when and if the U.S. attack did come, it would be much more devastating if in the year 2002 the Iraqis had eventually allowed those inspectors back in.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Norman Solomon. He’s executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington. He’s speaking to us from Baghdad, from the al-Rasheed Hotel. He met, along with a U.S. political delegation, with the deputy foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, over the weekend. He was with former Senator James Abourezk and also West Virginia Democratic Congressmember Nick Rahall. Norman, we have seen the vilification of Scott Ritter returning from Iraq. CNN is doing a complete demonization campaign against him, though he was their darling a few years ago when he was toeing the line of the administration, the former chief weapons inspector, who returned and now is against an attack on Iraq. Is Congressmember Rahall concerned about the same thing?

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, I certainly can’t speak for Congressman Rahall, but I am concerned, because, as you point out, what happened to Scott Ritter was that as soon as he deviated strongly from the Washington line, he began to be the target of, essentially, character assassination. And all of a sudden he was instead of being a wise and insightful hero, he was a jerk and not credible, and so on and so forth.

I think we’re at a key moment right now. The Washington Post ran a sizable article this morning talking about Congressman Rahall’s statements after the meetings we had here this weekend in Baghdad. Representative Rahall is now on his way back to Washington. He’ll get back tomorrow afternoon. And the right-wing militarists and quite a few liberal militarists, as well, predictably, I think, will have the knives out.

And so, I think it’s very important for people to understand that this is coming and to express support, not only for Congressman Nick Rahall, but also to push and pull and plead and demand that, wherever you are, your representatives in Congress hear from you in the next 24 hours: You want them to step up to the plate. You want them to make public statements in support of Representative Rahall and his effort to pull the United States back from the brink of this insane war scenario. We have the responsibility to do this, not maybe tomorrow, not maybe next week, today. Pick up the phone. Call your congressional representative. Go down in person. If you need to, sit in. If they don’t have the guts to go to Baghdad, at least they can back up someone who did in the U.S. Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Norman Solomon. What about the allegations of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein is about to get nuclear weapons, has biological and chemical weapons? What was the response of Tariq Aziz and the other Iraqi officials you met with?

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, they continue to say that they have no weapons of mass destruction, and so on and so forth. Scott Ritter has made a very good point, that you need evidence before you can draw conclusions. I must say that if — and I emphasize “if” — Iraq has been pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons, that would put them in the company of many, many countries around the world, and I would have to scratch my head to really understand and believe that it is more terrible to try to acquire nuclear weapons and not have them than to have tried to accumulate nuclear weapons and to have them and to have them on missiles like Israel does in this region, and somehow that’s A-OK. So, you know, we’re back to this issue of double standards and the willingness to support the development of nuclear weaponry in some countries and to call it intolerable in others. Everybody knows that if any power in this region is going to use nuclear weapons in the next five, 10 or 15 years, overwhelmingly, the most likely source of that nuclear attack would be Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Saudi Arabia is indicating that it might let the United States use its military bases for an attack on Iraq, if the U.N. Security Council passes a resolution backing military action. What is the response of people in Iraq right now?

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, I mean, that’s unclear. They can’t be happy about it. The strategy has been so consistently, in the many instances of the U.S. invading and launching missiles at various countries in the last 20 years, is to use carrots and sticks, to go to the Security Council and bribe and threaten various member states to at least abstain. And, of course, the same process goes on on Capitol Hill. The U.S. government has made it clear that it wants the United Nations’ approval for an attack, but if the Security Council balks, the U.S. has said it’s going to attack anyway. And I think people in Iraq understand pretty well that unless the White House can be dissuaded from its current plan, which is to attack no matter who objects, then we’re in extremely deep trouble. I mean, I’ll just say that I’m looking out the window right now at a sunny afternoon across the skyline of Baghdad, and it’s incomprehensible that any power, much less a superpower, would use its military might to attack a civilian area like this one. It would be a massive crime against humanity. Let’s not read about it later. Let’s stop it now.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, New York Times is reporting Jordan is worried that the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will force all Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan under the cover of a U.S. war in Iraq. Have you heard about this?

NORMAN SOLOMON: I hadn’t heard about it. It would certainly be consistent with what is euphemized as “transfer,” the ethnic cleansing program that the Israeli government has been proceeding on throughout this year.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Norman Solomon is in Baghdad at the al-Rasheed Hotel. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. You are listening to Democracy Now!

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Page, “Collateral Damage,” singing this weekend in Seattle, where there was a gathering of hundreds of media activists to protest the meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters that was taking place there. The alternative was called Reclaim the Media.