The U.S. Case Against Sudan Crumbles

by Steve Chapman

When you start firing volleys of cruise missiles at a target inside a sovereign nation, you had better have an awfully good excuse. But in the time since the Khartoum factory was blown to bits, the Clinton administration has done a thoroughly incompetent job of defending its action. Much of the rest of the world doesn't believe the U.S. government, and the American people are probably starting to have their doubts as well.

One by one, the explanations offered by the president and his aides have turned out to be full of holes. They said the plant was financed by Osama bin Laden, who is blamed for the bombings of two American embassies in Africa -- but then retreated, saying only that he had ties to the Sudanese military-industrial complex.

They said the factory produced no commercial drugs, but later acknowledged it did. They said it was heavily guarded by the military, but foreigners who had been there said that was nonsense.

U.S. officials said they had a soil sample proving that EMPTA was made there, only to be contradicted by experts who pointed out that it could be the byproduct of the breakdown of pesticides and that a laboratory analysis might easily confuse the chemical with a common agricultural insecticide. They said this agent had no conceivable use except for chemical warfare; the international body that administers the treaty banning chemical weapons, however, affirmed that EMPTA might be made "in limited quantities for legitimate commercial purposes."

The president appears to be getting his intelligence briefings from the people who ran the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation. If that's not bad enough, Clinton's security advisers are also taking the ridiculous position that the United States alone should be the judge of whether Sudan deserved to be the proud recipient of an American missile attack.

As soon as the smoke cleared, the Sudanese government was denying the U.S. charges and demanding an investigation by the United Nations. It even invited an outside inspection of what is left of the pharmaceutical plant to verify that no nerve gas components were produced there.

This is the equivalent of a murder suspect offering to take a polygraph exam. If the United States has the goods on the facility, it should have leaped to accept the invitation as a way to settle the issue beyond any dispute. As one expert quoted in the Chicago Tribune last week said, "I'd be very wary of opening a facility to independent analysis unless I were sure that I would not be found out."

The administration, however, insisted blithely that there was absolutely nothing to be gained by such an inspection. It also assured the world that a UN inquiry into the matter "wasn't necessary," in the words of State Department spokesman James Foley. Why not? Because "we believe we have convincing evidence that satisfied us." National Security Adviser Sandy Berger agreed, saying that he and his colleagues "have very, very little doubt" about the plant.

Ever wonder why foreigners sometimes accuse us of arrogance? People in the rest of the world are not all inclined to declare that anything that is good enough for James Foley is good enough for them.

The 22-member Arab League has called for an independent investigation, and even the British government, which initially endorsed the U.S. attack, is having second thoughts. The Financial Times of London quoted a Foreign Office official who said it has no evidence of its own that the factory was involved in chemical weapons production or that it had any connection to bin Laden.

When the U.S. government launches a unilateral military strike on a country with which we are not at war, it has an obligation to make its full case before the world and cooperate with any reasonable effort to find the truth. Instead, the president and his aides are behaving like the bandits who masqueraded as lawmen in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." When Humphrey Bogart asks to see their badges, their leader replies: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

The rest of the world deserves better. Now that you mention it, so do the American people.