Leading American political dissident Noam Chomsky says we needn't fear Saddam Hussein because the reviled Iraqi leader doesn't possess any nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear weapons are of no use unless people know you have them,” Chomsky told a roomful of journalists at McMaster University yesterday.

“If I have nuclear weapons in my garage and nobody knows it, I can't use them as a threat or a deterrent. You have to make it obvious you have them. But the minute Saddam indicates he has them, it's suicide. The moment Iraq lets on it might have nuclear weapons, it will be obliterated.”

Yesterday's press conference kicked off the noted linguist's week-long visit to the Steel City, including two public lectures that sold out within an hour of tickets becoming available. Organizers say people from across the region and as far away as Montreal called for tickets. Hundreds had to be turned away.

Graeme McQueen, a McMaster professor of religious and peace studies, chalks it up to “people's desire to listen to an informed person who has the courage to tell the truth. In a time of lies and great danger, this can be an intoxicating experience.”

A slim volume simply titled 9-11, containing excerpts of Chomsky's interviews with journalists from around the world immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attacks in the United States, remains on the best-seller lists in the United States, Canada and abroad. In his book, Chomsky says he's been quoted by the mainstream media much more often since 9-11 than he ever was before.

Yesterday, he said he's constantly in demand to give public talks and that he hasn't seen an audience of fewer than 3,000 people in a long time. And everybody wants to talk about the impending war on Iraq.

“There's huge opposition to it, in fact, it's completely without historical precedent,” Chomsky said. “There are huge demonstrations of protest.

“Ask yourself, when in the entire history of European imperialism, counting the U.S. as part of Europe, has there been massive opposition to a war before it's begun? People mention Vietnam but the U.S. had been attacking South Vietnam quite publicly for four or five years. They had practically destroyed the country before there was any protest.”

He boils down the present situation to “two extreme positions” :

• That the Bush administration believes it alone has the authority it needs to attack Iraq.
• The Arab League endorsed the UN Security Council resolution calling for Iraqi disarmament with explicit guarantees from Secretary of State Colin Powell that the resolution “is not a trigger for war.”

“The Arab League statement is calling for regional disarmament, not just Iraqi disarmament,” Chomsky noted, adding their position goes back more than a decade, predating the Gulf War and, in fact, might have prevented it.

Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait was on the table but was contingent upon a conference on regional problems of armament threats “which is really code for Israeli weapons of mass destruction.” He says the proposal was turned down by the U.S. and not reported by the mainstream media.

Even retired general Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. strategic forces who once had the American nuclear arsenal under his command, pointed out in recent years that “the main problem of proliferation in the region is Israel's nuclear capacities which are far beyond anyone else's and part of the U.S. system of regional and global dominance,” Chomsky said.

No one in the Middle East is in favour of a war on Iraq, he noted, even Kuwait and Iran, which were both invaded by Iraq.

“Most people in the region hate Saddam Hussein but they don't fear him because they know there isn't much he can do. The only people afraid of Saddam Hussein are Iraqis … and for good reason … and the U.S., and they're terrorized by George Bush telling them that if he doesn't do something, they're going to bomb us tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, the war on Iraq is serving to distract voter attention from tax cuts for the rich, a fiscal crisis manufactured to justify cuts to social spending and an environment facing destruction, Chomsky said.

(The Hamilton Spectator, Nov. 12, 2002)