Quiz: Are You a Hawk or a Dove on Iraq? Jude Wanniski January 27, 2003

Memo: To Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Take this simple quiz and find out

We post the quiz today, the day the United Nations weapons inspectors make their first report to the United Nations Security Council on their progress to date. We will provide the correct answers tomorrow.

1. Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. True or False.

2. Saddam Hussein has had weapons of mass destruction in the past. True or False.

3. White House officials assert that Iraq has been training terrorists. True or False

4. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda’s terrorist forces have been operating inside Iraq. True or False.

5. In March 1988, Saddam Hussein committed genocide, killing several thousand Iraqi Kurds at Halabja with poison gas. True or False.

6. In August 1988, Saddam Hussein committed genocide, killing 100,000 Iraqi Kurds with machine guns, then burying them in mass graves. True or False.

7. In June 1990, Saddam Hussein asked permission of the United States to settle his border dispute with Kuwait, with force if diplomacy failed. True or False.

8. In 1990, the United States advised Saddam Hussein that his issues with Kuwait were a local matter, and that the U.S. had no diplomatic obligation to defend Kuwait it attacked by Iraq. True or False.

9. Saddam Hussein personally assured the United States Ambassador to Baghdad that he would take no military action against Kuwait if the emir of Kuwait -- in a meeting scheduled to take place in July 1990 -- agreed to end its “economic warfare” against Iraq. True or False

10. After quickly occupying Kuwait, the Iraqi army positioned itself on the border of Saudi Arabia and threatened an invasion, which persuaded King Fahd to join the U.S. coalition. True or False.

11. After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990, Iraq immediately offered to negotiate a withdrawal in response to the UN demand that it do so. True or False

12. Before President Bush gave the go-ahead for Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Saddam Hussein agreed to unconditional surrender, and began moving his troops out of Kuwait. True or False

13. The reason the United States and its coalition allies only lost 143 troops in the Gulf War is that the Iraqi army was ill-equipped, demoralized, and did not put up a fight. True or False.

14. The Iraqi army committed atrocities during the brief occupation of Kuwait, including the killings of Kuwaiti newborn infants by taking them out of their incubators. True or False.

15. When the Gulf War ended in 1991, the United Nations resolved that the economic embargo on Iraq would be lifted if Iraq destroyed its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs within six months. Iraq refused to do so. True or False.

16. White House officials now insist U.S. policy toward Iraq changed from disarmament to “regime change” in the Clinton administration. True or False.

17. In early 1993, Saddam Hussein ordered the assassination of former President Bush while he was visiting Kuwait City, the assassin confessing he had been given a bomb by the Iraqi secret service. True or False.

18. The “No-Flight” zones in Northern and Southern Iraq that have been patrolled since 1992 by the U.S. and British air forces were authorized by the United Nations to protect the Iraqi Kurds in the north and the Iraqi Shi’ites in the South. True or False.

19. Saddam Hussein drove all the Jews out of Iraq after the 1967 Israeli war against Egypt. True or False.

20. In 1998, Saddam Hussein refused to permit the UN inspectors to come onto presidential palace sites and when they insisted, he kicked them out of Iraq. True or False.

21. Even if Iraq now has no nuclear weapons program, it could start one up as soon as the UN inspectors leave and have a nuclear weapon within six months or a year. True or False.