These charges of possessing "weapons of mass destruction" are laid by the same ruling class that dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, taking hundreds of thousands of lives--the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used. The same rulers have mounted assault after assault on peoples who organize to fight for their national sovereignty or to threaten the imperialist order. And those very same rulers have continued to develop their own arsenal to equip an imperial armed forces of more than 1 million troops.

We should point out, however--while noting this hypocrisy--that the U.S. rulers do express a real material interest when they howl for Iraqi and north Korean disarmament. They want to ensure that Washington maintains its relative monopoly of such an offensive arsenal, to use it as a weapon of blackmail against rebel peoples and countries, and also against their imperialist rivals.

Presenting the destruction of its atomic bombs by South Africa’s government in 1989 as a positive example for Iraq to follow, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice added new falsehoods and hypocrisy to Washington’s record.

Rice failed to explain that the apartheid regime that took that step had just before been decisively defeated at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, by Cuban, Angolan, and Namibian forces. The popular victory had helped to impel further struggles by the black majority inside South Africa itself. The racist government saw the writing on the wall, and took the step to prevent such weapons from falling into the hands of a majority-rule government.

One straightforward answer to the U.S. imperialists’ two-faced stance was expressed by Cuban ambassador Carlos Lechuga in a 1963 speech to the United Nations in a debate on another "nonproliferation" pact--the Treaty on Partial Prohibition of Nuclear Tests. "Cuba cannot be a signatory to this Treaty while one of the signatory powers is...executing a policy towards our country, which...is in effect a state of undeclared war," he said. In the early 1960s Washington organized a counterrevolutionary invasion against Cuba, which was defeated at the Bay of Pigs, and carried out a naval blockade during the 1962 "missile crisis."

Working people around the world need to reject the arguments of the imperialists and support the right of north Korea or any other semicolonial country or workers state to prepare their defenses in the way they think best.  
 
Related articles:
Washington and London ready brutal war on Iraq
War drive stirs many to protest  
 
 
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