| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 7:37 am Post subject: The Manufactured And Real Iraq Crisis |
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> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-02/03herman.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> The Manufactured And Real Iraq Crisis February 03, 2003
> By Edward Herman
>
> With enough power and chutzpah it is possible for an aggressive and
over-armed state to manufacture a crisis and pretend that the crisis lies
with the threatened victim rather than with the aggressor state. Today, the
United States has not only manufactured one crisis but two: The first is
Saddam Hussein's alleged failure to disarm; the second is North Korea's
attempt to acquire nuclear arms.
>
> The first REAL crisis is the determination of the United States to attack
Iraq, depose Saddam Hussein, and establish a dependent regime in that
country, AND the failure of the "international community" to oppose this
blatant plan of aggression in violation of the UN Charter. The second REAL
crisis is the failure of the international community to vigorously contest
the Bush administration's announced plans to militarize space, to abandon
the Nuclear Test Ban and Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaties, to threaten
preemptive wars to stifle challenges to its domination, and to refine and
possibly use nuclear weapons. North Korea's nuclear plans clearly follow in
the wake of those developments, along with the U.S. inclusion of North Korea
in the "axis of evil," so that the North Korean "threat" is derivative and
miniscule in comparison with that posed by the big bully.
>
> There is a third REAL threat attributable to the big bully, namely the
ongoing serious ethnic cleansing being carried out by Israeli leaders in
Palestine, in violation of international law and in opposition to a global
consensus. This deadly process has intensifed under the protection of the
Bush administration's carte blanche to "man of peace" Ariel Sharon and the
diversion provided by the Iraq "crisis," and it may escalate further under
the cover of the U.S. attack on Iraq. This third real threat is closely tied
to the first, not only operationally but in terms of intent, as numerous
high Bush administration officials have "dual loyalties" and are at least
partially serving Likud-Israeli interests.
>
> In the propaganda outpourings of the Bush administration, however, their
"patience" with Saddam Hussein has run out and, given his "growing menace"
(Bush), he must be removed by force. This "crisis" has been completely
contrived by Bush officials, just as the Guatemala crisis of 1954--based on
alleged Soviet proxy aggression!--was fabricated. Every Bush administration
argument is false or irrelevant, and the "international community" is once
again having to expend much effort trying to appease and contain the bully.
However, that community has not had the guts to straightforwardly oppose
him, and the puny efforts to appease via a revised inspections system have
actually given him further weaponry--he has "gone along" with the
inspections, so what more can be asked of him before he does what he planned
to do anyway?
>
> That Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) threaten U.S. national
security is laughable--even if he has a few such weapons (unproven), he has
no delivery systems that could reach the United States and he may not wish
to commit suicide. On the other hand, U.S. WMD not only threaten Iraq but
anybody else who crosses the administration, which has even announced an
intention to preemptively attack enemies of choice and to ignore
international law.
>
> Saddam Hussein does pose a threat to his neighbors, but much less so than
Israel, which has more powerful armed forces and, even more important, is
under the protection of the United States, which has sanctioned numerous
Israeli attacks on neighbors, systematic ethnic cleansing in the occupied
territories, and Israel's acquisition of a large WMD arsenal. Saddam can't
make a move across borders because the United States is waiting to pounce;
but Israel can do so because the United States regularly vetoes any
condemnation of Israeli invasions and would not abide an attempt to halt
Israel by force. Saddam was generously supplied with WMD by the United
States and Britain in the 1980s when he was fighting Iran, so apparently his
possession of them is not inherently threatening, but only when not serving
approved U.S.-British ends. It is well-known--though not reported and
reflected on in the U.S. media--that the United States seized the 12,000
page Iraq report on its WMD in order!
> to remove some 8,000 pages that detailed U.S. and other Western company
and official provision of WMD to Iraq in earlier years. Leaving that
material in would have shown U.S. approval of the weapons whose possession
is now deemed a huge menace, demonstrating that the pretense of menace is
blatant hypocrisy.
>
> Since the 1980s, and under the impact of war, sanctions and the
inspections regime, Iraq's military capability and WMD have been drastically
reduced, with high level inspectors claiming that at least 90-95 percent of
Saddam's stocks of chemical weapons have been destroyed, and the IAEA
contending in 1998--and as recently as January 27, 2003--that he has no
nuclear weapons or meaningful nuclear weapons program (Bush's contention in
his State of the Union Message that Saddam "had" such a program and "was
working" on methods of enriching uranium is therefore misleading if not
outright lying). Saddam's "threat" must therefore be much much smaller than
in the period when he was using WMD with U.S. and British approval. That he
now poses a "growing menace" justifying a war is therefore a
misrepresentation of fact and a cover for a semi-hidden agenda.
>
> There is also the claim that Saddam Hussein has produced a "crisis" by his
failure to cooperate with the inspection system, disarm, and obey Security
Council rulings. But the inspection system, like the "sanctions of mass
destruction," has always been a U.S.-British mechanism for punishing Iraq
until there was a "regime change." Numerous U.S. officials have said that
the sanctions would not be lifted until Saddam is removed. This has been a
violation of the original settlement agreement of 1991, which called for
terminable inspections and made no mention of required regime change. All
participants except the United States and Britain have felt that a 90-95
percent WMD removal sufficed; and it is worth repeating that the partners
who have disagreed are the ones who most lavishly supplied Iraq with those
weapons in the 1980s, and opposed any condemnations of Saddam for using
them!
>
> The legal basis of the charges against Iraq is therefore fatally
compromised by the fact of multiple U.S. and British violations of the terms
of Security Council Resolution 687--including, in addition to imposing the
illict objective of regime change, the use of inspections for locating
non-WMD miitary targets (recently acknowledged by longtime Executive
Chairman of UNSCOM, Rolf Ekeus), the unauthorized "no-fly zone" patrols and
attacks, and the transformation of the sanctions system into a mode of
punishment of an entire people, with enormous civilian casualties. The
sanctimonious U.S.-British call for enforcement of Security Council
resolutions also flies in the face of their double standard on this matter:
Israel is not only permitted to acquire WMD, it can repeatedly ignore
Security Council rulings without any penalty whatsoever.
>
> The imminent war is therefore based on considerations that have nothing to
do with Saddam's dictatorship or military threat. Key members of the Bush
administration had announced an aim of "toppling Saddam Hussein" back in
2000 in the publication of the Project for the New American Century, Robert
Kagan's and William Kristol's edited volume entitled Present Dangers, where
Saddam's military threat and WMD were barely mentioned, but the need to
control an important resource-rich area was openly acknowledged. These and
other Bush administration officials have also been notorious for their
strong support of Likud and Israeli ethnic cleansing, three of them--Richard
Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser--even having contributed to a
strategy paper for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996. The Bush
administration's protection of Sharon's state terrorism and the imminent
attack on Iraq serve expansionist Israeli interests well. This factor, along
with the desire to take advant!
> age of military superiority to show the world who is boss, to firm up
contol of an oil-rich territory, and to provide a cover for Bush's domestic
policies, gives us the real motives behind the manufacture of the Iraq
"crisis."
>
> There has been a desperate Bush administration search for plausible
reasons to "topple Saddam Hussein"--ties to Al Qaeda, aversion to
dictatorship and concern for Iraqis, Saddam's growing menace, evasions of
inspections and disrespect for Security Council resolutions, etc. But they
are merely excuses, some false, some trivial, all profoundly hypocritical,
designed to justify an aggression based entirely on other political and
strategic considerations.
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