| Author | Message | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 6:31 pm Post subject: Iraq Invasion: British MP Asks "Why Now"?: |
| Iraq Invasion: British MP Asks "Why Now"?:
Forwarded:
-----Original Message-----
From: SAVIDGE, Malcolm
Sent: 25 February 2003 14:39
Subject: Why Now?
Dear Colleagues,
As a contribution to the current debate, please find an article [both below and attached].
It seeks to investigate the origins within the United States of the demand for war with Iraq . Where possible, the websites of the organizations which originally published the documents are given, so that readers may check them themselves.
Best Regards,
Malcolm
<<Why now - Iraq article.doc>>
Why now?
Malcolm K Savidge
MP for Aberdeen North
Convener, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Security & Non-Proliferation
"Why now?" Tony Blair has asked repeatedly. The Prime Minister and others have sought to answer the question of the reasons for contemplating full-scale war against Iraq at this time.
Saddam's previous aggression against Iran and Kuwait is sometimes cited. However, he seems to have been successfully contained and deterred from further attacks on his neighbours for over a decade.
Hussein's horrific human rights record has also been referred to. But, since he has been committing these atrocities for decades, this does not seem likely to be the main reason that military action is being considered at present.
The British government has placed heavy emphasis on his breaches of UN resolutions. However, since many of the most vociferous advocates of war in the United States are fierce critics of the United Nations and were notoriously reluctant to use the UN route, this seems unlikely to have been their original reason for demanding an attack on Iraq.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that Iraq has fairly low stocks of missiles, many of them limited in range and accuracy. Even on the higher assessments in the UK government dossier and the report by the US Director of Central Intelligence, Iraq's missile capability is much lower than it would have been in the past.
Weapons of mass destruction have been cited as a main cause for war. As the US National Academy of Sciences has pointed out, though "weapons of mass destruction" can be a useful phrase, it dangerously blurs the massive difference between nuclear weapons and most forms of biological or chemical weaponry.
There is common agreement that Iraq has not yet achieved a nuclear weapons capability.
In the 1980's, Iraq built up considerable stocks of biological and chemical weapons with the assistance of a number of countries including all five of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. As a result mainly of the earlier inspection programs together with previous military action, it is most unlikely that its present stocks of these weapons are as large as they were in the past.
In the 1980's, Saddam used these weapons against both Iran and internal enemies, and it is therefore suggested that he would not respond to the threat of a deterrent response. However, during the Gulf War, he was deterred from using these weapons by a warning of overwhelming retaliation. He is a homicidal rather than a suicidal maniac with a murderous obsession with his own self-preservation.
It has been suggested that Iraq might pass on weapons of mass destruction to unconditional terrorist organizations, like al Qaeda. However, intelligence services are sceptical of claims by politicians of current links between Saddam and al Qaeda. While the CIA report, which the Senate forced George Tenet to make public, stated that though they did not believe that Saddam was either likely to use these weapons or supply them to unconditional terrorists, they did think that these possibilities could be increased by launching war against him. There are a number of other far more likely sources from which unconditional terrorists could obtain such materials.
Even cumulatively none of these reasons seem to adequately answer the question: Why now? Perhaps we should ask other questions.
Would we be considering imminent war with Iraq if Al Gore had been recognized as the winner of the US Presidential election? Would we be considering war if George Bush had not appointed to key positions leading right wing hawks who had been urging war with Iraq for years?
Perhaps we should seek the answer to "Why now?" in the writings of those hawks. Where possible I shall give the web sites on which the original documents were published, so readers can make their own judgement.
In 1996, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a joint US/Israel right wing think-tank, published "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." [Published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies at www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm <http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm>]. It was produced by a working group chaired by former US Assistant Defense Secretary, Richard Perle and included his former Special Counsel Douglas Feith, now US Under Secretary of Defense. It was prepared for Israel's new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to advise him how to change from a policy of "land for peace" to a policy of "peace through strength." Its objective was to retain within Israel all the occupied territories, including the Golan Heights. It advocated "effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," both as "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right," and as a means of "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." It suggested, "restoring a Hashemite kingdom in Iraq," and among other things promoted two of Perle's favourite concepts "the principle of pre-emption rather than retaliation alone" and missile defence - "it would broaden Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel but care very much about missile defense". [Their italics]
On 26 January 1998, Richard Perle was one of the signatories of an open letter to President Clinton from "The Project for the New American Century". [www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm <http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm>]. Some of the other signatories are now prominent in the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton. The letter demanded the "removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power." Among the reasons given are his chemical and biological weapons, the "safety of US troops in the region...allies like Israel...and the hazard to a significant portion of the world's supply of oil."
On 19 February 1998, another open letter was sent to the President from the "Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf." Richard Perle was one of two main signatories. Supporting signatories included Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Bolton, and Feith. It demanded "a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime" concentrating on Iraq's biological and chemical munitions as a reason, "it is the only country which has used them - not just against its enemies, but its own people as well." [http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_33at]
The letter also refers obliquely to the ongoing impeachment of Clinton, and accusations that he was soft on Iraq rapidly became an additional line of attack on the President. Accordingly, regime change in Iraq started to become an article of faith among some right-wing Republicans.
By early 2000, Condoleeza Rice gives removal of Saddam as a basic feature of the Bush foreign policy Presidential platform (Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2000. P.62).
In September 2000, "The Project for the New American Century" published "Rebuilding America's Defenses" [<http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf>] which includes in its key objectives that US military forces should "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars"; and "develop and deploy global missile defenses ... to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world." It includes the following passage, which seems to imply that conquest of Iraq should be a strategic objective for the US, irrespective of either WMD or Saddam Hussein:
"Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
On 11 September, within hours of the atrocity, Richard Perle was on British television demanding two responses: the development of missile defence and war on America's known enemies whether or not they had any connection with the terrorist attacks.
According to Bob Woodward, on the 12th of September Rumsfeld suggested attacking Iraq - as well as al Qaeda - at the National Security Council, a policy to which he and his deputy Wolfowitz had long been committed. "Before the attacks, the Pentagon had been working for months on developing a military option for Iraq." [Bob Woodward, "Bush at War", pp. 48f]
On 15 September, Rice, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld are alleged to have urged war against Iraq on the grounds that it was an easier target than Afghanistan. [Woodward, pp. 74-85]
Condoleeza Rice told the "New Yorker" 'that she had called together senior staff people of the National Security Council and asked them to think seriously about "how do you capitalize on these opportunities" to fundamentally change American doctrine, and the shape of the world, in the wake of September 11th.' [Lemann, N., "The Next World Order", New Yorker, April 1, 2002. P. 44]
Tony Blair has expressed a commonly stated view: "11 September made a difference to the way America views such things". [Hansard, 24/11/2002,c22]. It might be more accurate to say the hawks have shamelessly exploited 11 September to promote a predetermined agenda
War on Iraq ties in with two other dominant themes in neo-conservatism. The advocates of National Missile Defence had designated certain unpleasant dictatorships as "rogue states". Extreme advocates tend to define "rogue states" in simplistic terms as having an insane tyrant, driven by hatred of the USA, seeking weapons of mass destruction and missiles solely in order to attack the US and so insane as not to respond to the threat of nuclear deterrence. Such advocates suggested that these diverse "rogue states" all cooperated together and nicknamed this "Club Mad". President Bush speaks of the "Axis of Evil".
In 1990, two rival working-groups, chaired by Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz respectively, reported to Dick Cheney, then US Defense Secretary, on future policy options. The latter group produced a very hawkish agenda on which they kept working. Their theories were developed by neo-conservatives during the Clinton era, becoming the declared basis of "Rebuilding America's Defenses" [p ii] and are reflected in such Bush administration documents as "The National Security Strategy", "The Nuclear Posture Review" and "The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction". They reveal a sharp change in emphasis from arms control and diplomacy to military aggression including pre-emptive war. [Lemann, pp. 42-48, provides a useful summary of some of this.] Iraq is seen as the first rogue state on which to apply this doctrine.
An extraordinary story in the highly reputed Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, alleges that Richard Perle, now a senior advisor to the Defense Department as Chair of the Defense Policy Board, which reports to Douglas Feith, is still pursuing his original 1996 objectives. In 2002 Perle invited Pentagon chiefs to a meeting, where Ha'aretz reports:
"According to information that reached a top official in the Israeli security services, the researchers showed two slides to the Pentagon officials. The first was a depiction of the three goals in the war on terror and the democratisation of the Middle East: Iraq - a tactical goal, Saudi Arabia - a strategic goal, and Egypt - the great prize.
"The triangle in the next slide was no less interesting: Palestine is Israel, Jordan is Palestine, and Iraq is the Hashemite Kingdom." [Ha'aretz, Perles of wisdom for the Feithful, 1 October 2002]
In the same article, Ha'aretz noted that a prominent member of the Hashemite royal family, Prince Hassan, the uncle of King Abdullah of Jordan, played a prominent role in the meeting arranged in London last year for the Iraqi opposition in exile.
Doubtless, many other hawks do not share Perle's dream. Indeed, so many diverse reasons are given for war with Iraq, that the impression is created that this is being driven more by an ideological obsession than any particular objective.
From his talks with administration officials, last April Nicholas Lemann forecast how this desired conflict would be achieved: "A drama involving weapons inspections in Iraq will play itself out over the spring and summer, and will end with the United States declaring that the terms that Saddam offers for the inspection, involving delays and restrictions, are unacceptable. Then, probably in the late summer or early fall, the enormous troop positioning, which will take months, will begin." [Lemann, p48]
UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was reasonable, if reasonably interpreted. Intrusive inspections under threat of military action and using technology, which has considerably improved in the last decade, in conjunction with modern surveillance, could achieve disarmament much more effectively than was possible in the early '90s.
However, the Bush administration demanded positive cooperation by Saddam Hussein in voluntarily handing over his arsenal in a short period, while at no time giving a united and unequivocal guarantee that the US would not subsequently invade anyway. This does not seem like an ultimatum intended to achieve a peaceful resolution.
"Why now?" can also be applied to the rush to war. Is the timetable dictated less by any immediate threat than by US domestic politics and military and climatic considerations?
In conclusion, perhaps we should ask another question: "Why not?" Possible dangers of launching war include, as the CIA suggested, that it could provoke Saddam, when facing impending destruction, to attempt to use his biological or chemical weapons. If he attacked Israel then that could evoke a nuclear response. Another risk is that it could lead to the dispersal of some of the materials or personnel from his WMD programme. King Abdullah of Jordan warned that destabilizing such a volatile area could open a Pandora's box. Since conspiracy theorists could genuinely trace the war's roots to a right-wing 'Zionist plot', there is a particular danger of provoking Arabic - and indeed Islamic - feeling around the world, and thus inflaming terrorism and inadvertently achieving Osama bin Laden's ambitions. For Britain, there is a particular threat. While here in the UK, Tony Blair may generally have been seen as a moderating influence for peace on the Bush administration; elsewhere, he maybe viewed as an essential co-conspirator in war mongering - making us a future target. Pre-emptive war sets a dangerous precedent. Who does the West attack next? Who follows that example? Is the concept not dangerously close to what were condemned as international crimes in Counts 1 and 2 of the Nuremberg Tribunal? Finally if, as Nelson Mandela has suggested, this is a recipe for "international anarchy"; then, in a world in which weapons of mass destruction cannot be disinvented, humanity will face a bleak future.
Based on the above which was recently circulated by MP Malcolm Savidge to his fellow Members of the British Parliament (MP's), the British government is waking up to the nefarious JINSA Zionist extremist agenda which is pushing US to war...
The US government (with its oil company connections) also wants to keep the US dollar (vs. the EURO) as the standard currency for international oil dealings according to the academic essay by William Clark which can be found via the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/02/22/the-real-reasons-for-the-upcoming-war-with-iraq.php
The JINSA Zionist extremist cabal (of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Elliott Abrams, and John Bolton) has basically hijacked the Bush regime and is pushing US to its long desired war on Islam (to begin with the invasion of Iraq) for greater Israel and oil (Robert Fisk of the London Independent mentions in the following article that Dick Cheney was on the board of advisors for JINSA before becoming Vice President and helped put the other JINSA Zionist extremists into power in the current Bush regime):
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=332011
Included below is that "Men from JINSA and CSP" article from "The Nation" magazine which Mr. Fisk mentions in his article referenced above:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest&c=1
JINSA Zionist Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' before Bush Presidency:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php
Conflict of Interest for JINSA Zionist Extremists (in Bush Regime) who are Pushing US to war for Greater Israel and Oil:
http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamhughes30.htm
Iraq and Control of Middle East well Underway:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/02/23/war-for-iraq-and-control-of-middle-east-well-underway.php
JINSA Zionist Extremists Also Contributed to Current N. Korea Crisis
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/23/jinsa-zionists-contributed-to-n-korea-crisis-also.php
This Zionist extremist agenda of JINSA (which is pushing for the US to attack Iraq and then Iran and Syria) is confirmed by what JINSAN John Bolton mentioned in Israel recently (according to what is mentioned in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper article which can be accessed via the following URL):
We'll deal with Syria, Iran after Iraq War - says JINSA Zionist John Bolton who is at the US Department of State:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/17/we-ll-deal-with-syria-iran-after-iraq-war-john-bolton.php
JINSA Zionist Extremists at Pentagon to Control Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/04/radical-jinsa-zionists-at-pentagon-to-control-iraq.php
War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/10/the-war-on-iraq-conceived-in-israel.php
Israeli sources say war imminent; Iran and Syria next:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/15/israeli-sources-say-war-imminent-iran-and-syria-next.php
Kurdish Leaders Enraged by 'Undemocratic' American Plan to Occupy Iraq:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=379060
Would be a Lot Cheaper for US to Just Cut Aid to Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/02/23/would-be-a-lot-cheaper-to-just-cut-aid-to-israel.php
I think that France will more than likely courageously veto (unless it thinks of its oil interests at the last minute), but the JINSA Zionist extremists will push forward anyway... What really irks me more than anything is how that JINSA Zionist extremist Paul Wolfowitz mentions that he would like to "liberate" the Arabs of Iraq and that such is one of the main reasons for putting into play his long desired invasion of Iraq and beyond.. Completely insincere... If he was so concerned about "liberating" Arabs, why don't we send our troops into Gaza and the West Bank to "liberate" the Arabs of occupied PALESTINE?!
Forwarded:
JINSA Zionist Extremists to have US Military Occupy Iraq for Years...
I just read in the article (included below) that the JINSA Zionist extremist ("Israel Firster") cabal (of Doug Feith and company in the Bush regime) has not even given much thought to the occupation of Iraq as they are planning to have US forces remain in Iraq for years (how is the US government going to afford that?!).
The Pentagon has already sent 100,000 body bags and 6,000 coffins for expected US casualities as a result of the coming invasion of Iraq, so the Bush regime is obviously expecting mass US casualities ( the latest New York Times poll conveys that only 45 percent of the US public supports an invasion of Iraq if mass US casualities result, and we all saw the "Blackhawk Down" film about US troops in Somalia).
http://www.maxlogan.com/the_nation.htm#The%20Whole%20World%20is%20Against%20This%20War.
Bush's Presidential Malpractice
by David Corn
If a doctor handed you a strong medication--saying you had no choice but to swallow it--but didn't talk to you about the host of new ailments and problems that might be caused by the medication, that would be damn irresponsible. Well, meet George W. Bush, M.D. He has been claiming the United States must take the most extreme measure--war--to keep itself safe and healthy. Yet he has refused to address the knotty matters (post-op complications?) that will follow in the wake of war.
This dereliction of duty--or presidential malpractice--was readily evident on Tuesday when top administration officials appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the future of Iraq. (Looks like its present has been settled: invasion and occupation, unless Saddam Hussein scoots.) At this session, under-Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith noted that while the Pentagon has spent months positioning troops and readying to de-Saddamize Iraq, it only opened an office for postwar planning three weeks ago. At the same hearing, Feith and under-Secretary of State Marc Grossman said there would be at least a two-year US military occupation of Iraq following an invasion. So with the game plan war and occupation--and the Bush administration has been considering taking over Iraq since September 12, 2001--the Pentagon managed to get serious about planning for the post-invasion period merely a month or so before, it seems, the invasion is to come. (The duo did claim that the Pentagon had been thinking about postwar matters for ten months.)
With Feith's and Grossman's testimony, the administration has acknowledged it intends to rule Iraq for quite a while after the war. (Their two-year estimate may be quite optimistic. One former US ambassador quips there are two possible occupation scenarios. Plane One is an occupation that lasts for ten years. Plan Two is an occupation that is supposed to last for five years, but goes on for ten.) So then, how does the Bush White House intend to install (eventually) a democratic government? (Remember this war is also for the liberation of the Iraqi people, as soon as the United States decides it's time for its occupation to end.) How will the US manage the oil industry of Iraq? Who will pay for the construction costs? Who will feed the Iraqi people, most of whom now rely on the Iraqi government for their food supply? "There are enormous uncertainties," Feith said. "The most you can do in planning is develop concepts." Actually, in planning, you can develop plans--hire staff, call in experts, consult with multilateral outfits and aid organizations, and begin drafting proposals. These plans may end up not working. They may have to change. But you can give it a go and, at least, establish a baseline. For his part Grossman observed, "How this transition will take place is perhaps opaque at the moment." From the fog of war to the fog of postwar.
The senators were perturbed. Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the committee, pushed the pair for information on how a transitional government would be kick-started following an invasion. After receiving an insufficient response, he exclaimed (Biden is quite good at exclaiming), "When we're three weeks away from war or five weeks away from war, possibly, you don't know the answer to that? You haven't made a decision yet?" Note to Biden: don't forget you voted to give Bush the right to invade Iraq whenever he deems appropriate, without having to obtain a declaration of war from Congress (or present a workable, confidence-building plan to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee). Grossman, though, did concede that the financial costs of whatever comes in Iraq will be high: "There are things in our own country we're not going to be able to do because of our commitment in Iraq." Somehow that point was not covered in the budget Bush recently submitted to Congress. A printing error? The President is already squeezing domestic spending on such things as heating assistance for low-income Americans while pushing for a variety-pack of tax changes benefiting the well-heeled. And he refused to leave any space in his budget for a war, let alone the potentially more costly occupation.
By the end of the hearing, perturbance had transitioned into dismay. Richard Lugar, the mild-mannered Republican chairman, woefully commented, "What we have heard is not good enough; we are way behind. Who will rule Iraq and how? Who will provide security? How long might US troops conceivably remain? Will the United Nations have a role? Who will manage Iraq's oil resource? Unless the administration can answer these questions in detail, the anxiety of Arab and European governments, as well as that of the American public...will only grow."
It wasn't just the specifics-free presentations of Feith and Grossman that was worrisome. Retired General Anthony Zinni, former head of US Central Command, raised questions that ought to provoke pause. Zinni has been a war-skeptic, one of the leading ex-military voices against striking Iraq, maintaining that Saddam is not an imminent threat, that he is "very well checked," and that now is "the worst time to take this on." (The ranks of this platoon thinned last weekend when former General Norman Schwarzkopf of Gulf War I--who had not, long before, shared his heartfelt opposition to US military action in Iraq with The Washington Post--pulled a quick retreat on Meet The Press perhaps after having heard from the Bush clan.) Zinni, once in charge of humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in northern Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia, knows his postwar stuff. And in his testimony to the committee, he made a few eloquent and troubling points.
"In addressing the issues that might be faced in a post-conflict Iraq, the first question that has to be answered deals with the end state envisioned or desired," Zinni said. "Do we want to transform Iraq or just transition it out from under the unacceptable regime of Saddam Hussein into a reasonably stable nation? Transformation implies significant changes in forms of governance, in economic policies, in regional status, in security structure, and in other areas. Without a determination of the scale and scope of change desired, it is not possible to judge the cost and level of effort required. Certainly, there will not be a spontaneous democracy so the reconstruction of the country will be a long, hard course regardless of whether a modest vision of the end state is sought or a more ambitious one is chosen."
So is it transition or transformation? The President hasn't said which. Nor has the Secretary of State Colin Powell. Nor has Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (the often acting-Secretary of State). Feith and Grossman didn't supply any illumination. But doesn't the public--which will pay for the war and occupation in all ways--deserve to know which vision Bush embraces? Or if he even has one?
Zinni, in a polite but unflinching fashion, noted that he, too, considers the Bush administration unprepared for the post-battle battle. "A lot of thought has been given to the kinds of problems and tasks that we will face in the aftermath," he testified. "I have read several recent studies and pieces produced by groups of knowledgeable people. Generally, these works have, in my opinion, captured the broad requirements and the issues very well. Defining the problem, however, is only half the task. The other half deals with how you solve the problem. I have not seen a lot of specifics in this area." And it's his job, as an armchair-thinker at the Center for Strategic and international Studies, to locate and evaluate such specifics. Yet they're not out there. One example: Zinni said that six out of ten Iraqis depend on the "oil for food" program managed by 40,000 feeding stations run by Saddam's government. No one in the Bush administration, he added, knows if this program can continue to function after an invasion. If not, there will be millions of Iraqis without food. Will the US proconsul in Iraq be ready to feed 12 million or so people? "Who's going to do it?" Zinni asked. "Where are they? You know, if you have hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground formed up into divisions and wings and ask forces at sea, where is the counterpart to these on the other [humanitarian, political, and economic] sides? It isn't going to be a handful of people that drive out of the Pentagon, catch a plane and fly in after the military peace to try to pull this together."
Maybe it will be. This war is not about what comes next. And Bush is not keen to tell the American people what might happen after he "disarms" Saddam. In some instances, a threat may be so pressing that a nation does not have time to consider what is likely to occur after it acts to neutralize that danger. (War boosters like to pooh-pooh war critics who fret over postwar consequences by noting that when the United States entered World War II there were no plans other than those for victory.) But the Bush administration has had many months to consider--and openly discuss--a postwar Iraq, as well as the financial and security costs of maintaining a US military occupation for years. And it has not leveled with the public. In his bellicose speeches, does Bush ever say, "You know, the American people should realize that we may have to stay involved and run Iraq for a number of years and that we will pay for this noble endeavor with higher taxes, diminished services, and/or larger budget deficits. But to protect us and our children and our grandchildren, that's what we need to do"? Such words would give Karl Rove a stroke.
If Iraq is not poised to strike--or to enable another party to strike--the United States, the decision to go to war can be weighed judiciously. Such a deliberation ought to take into account possible consequences and costs. They may not determine the ultimate judgment, but they should to be in plain view. Yet Bush has not been candid. Informed consent is not part of his prewar plan.
And what is the Arab/Muslim world going to think when it confirms that these nefarious (scheming) JINSA Zionist extremists (like Doug Feith and company in the Bush regime) have designs on occupying Iraq for years (for Israel's benefit) as mentioned above:
What Does the Bush Imperial Maffia Really Want?
by William Blum
Which is the more remarkable -- that the United States can openly
announce to the world its determination to invade a sovereign nation and
overthrow its government in the absence of any attack or threat of attack
from the intended target? Or that for an entire year the world has been
striving to figure out what the superpower's real intentions are?
There are of course those who accept at face value Washington's stated
motivations of "liberating" the people of Iraq from a dictatorship and
bestowing upon them a full measure of democracy, freedom and other eternal
joys fit for American schoolbooks. In light of a century of
well-documented US foreign policy which reveals a virtually complete absence
of such motivations, along with repeated opposite consequences, we can
dispense with this attempt by Washington to win hearts and mindless.
Presented here are some reflections about several of the causes that make
the hearts of the imperial mafia beat faster in regard to Iraq, which may be
helpful in arguing the anti-war point of view:
Expansion of the American Empire: adding more military bases and
communications listening stations to the Pentagon's portfolio, setting up a
command post from which to better monitor, control and intimidate the rest of
the Middle East.
Idealism: remaking the world in what the true believers see as America's
image, with free enterprise and Judeo-Christianity as core elements; here is
Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise
Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq): "If we just
let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we
don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this
thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do
very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
Oil: the sine qua non of Middle East policy, yesterday, today and
tomorrow; to be in full control of Iraq's vast reserves, with Saudi oil and
Iranian oil waiting defenselessly next door; OPEC will be stripped of its
independence from Washington and will no longer think about replacing the
dollar with the Euro as its official currency; oil-dependent Europe may think
twice next time about being so uppity.
Globalization: Once relative security over the land, people and
institutions has been established, the transnational corporations will march
into Iraq ready to privatize everything at fire-sale prices, followed closely
by the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization and the rest of the
international financial extortionists.
Arms industry: As with each of America's endless wars, military
manufacturers will rake in their exorbitant profits, then deliver their
generous political contributions, inspiring Washington leaders to yet further
warfare, each war also being the opportunity to test new weapons.
Israel: The men driving Bush to war include long-time militant supporters
of Israel, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith, who,
along with the rest of the powerful Israeli lobby, have advocated smashing
Iraq for years. Israel has been playing a key role in the American military
buildup to the war. Besides getting rid of its arch enemy, Israel could use
the opportunity to carry out its final solution to the Palestinian question
-- transferring them to Jordan, (liberated) Iraq, and anywhere else that
expanded US hegemony in the Middle East will allow. Iraq's abundant water
could be diverted to relieve a parched Israel.
Written by William Blum, author of "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's
Only Superpower" -- www.killinghope.org
Israel's Proxy War?:
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mshahidalam1.html
Kurdish Leaders Enraged by 'Undemocratic' American Plan to Occupy Iraq:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=379060
JINSA Zionist Extremists at Pentagon to Control Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/04/radical-jinsa-zionists-at-pentagon-to-control-iraq.php
JINSA Zionist Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' before Bush Presidency:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php
Israeli sources say war imminent; Iran and Syria next:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/15/israeli-sources-say-war-imminent-iran-and-syria-next.php
Washington's Zionist Chicken Hawks to Reshape Mid East for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/10/25/washington-s-zionist-hawks-to-reshape-mid-east-for-israel.php
JINSA Zionist Extremist Richard Perle Does Not Speak for the Majority of Americans:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/05/every-patriotic-american-needs-to-access-this.php
John Pilger: Urgency of Saving Lives:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/02/16/john-pilger-urgency-of-saving-lives.php
The Threat of "Transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) in Israel and Palestine:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/15/the-threat-of-transfer-in-israel-and-palestine.php
TOO MANY SMOKING GUNS TO IGNORE: ISRAEL, US JEWS, IRAQ:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/28/too-many-smoking-guns-to-ignore-israel-us-jews-iraq.php
UN REMARKS by Foreign Affairs Ministers of Syria and France (especially comments by Syria about US/UN double standard in not enforcing paragraph 14 of UN Security Council Resolution 687 against Israeli weapons of mass destruction as well):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/14/un-remarks-by-foreign-affairs-ministers-of-syria-and-france.php
Iraqi Ambassador: UN/US Double Standard with Israeli Nuclear Weapons:
The UN (US) double standard for Israel with paragraph 14 of UN Security Council Resolution 687 against Iraq (which calls for the Middle East to be a zone free of weapons of mass destruction as mentioned below by the Iraqi UN Ambassador) is completely unjust (especially when it comes to Israeli weapons of mass destruction):
Iraq Turns Spotlight on Israel at U.N. Arms Body:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/31/iraq-turns-spotlight-on-israel-at-u-n-arms-body.php
The Return of Zionist Extremist Elliott Abrams:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/04/return-of-zionist-extremist-elliott-abrams.php
Israeli Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth with 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/16/israeli-spy-rumors-fly-on-gusts-of-truth-with-9-11.php
HISTORY MADE AS MORE THAN A MILLION MARCH FOR PEACE:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12646938&method=full&siteid=50143
http://www.maxlogan.com/the_nation.htm#The%20Whole%20World%20is%20Against%20This%20War.
"The Whole World is Against This War."
by John Nichols
"The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it," declared South African teenager Bilqees Gamieldien as she joined a Cape Town antiwar demonstration on a weekend when it did indeed seem that the whole world was dissenting from George W. Bush's push for war with Iraq.
Millions of protesters marched into the streets of cities from Tokyo to Tel Aviv to Toronto and Bush's home state of Texas to deliver a message expressed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to a crowd of more than one million in London: "It's not too late to stop this war."
Crowd estimates for demonstrations of the kind being seen this weekend are always a source of controversy, especially when nervous politicians -- like British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- try to convince journalists and the public to dismiss the significance of the protests even before they begin. But, faced with a historic show of dissent, even the constantly spinning Blair had to acknowledge that the cost for his unwavering support of the Bush administration on Iraq is turning out to be "unpopular" in his own land.
Britain's Guardian newspaper described the London march as the largest peace demonstration in the country's history. The headline on Sunday morning's Observer newspaper read, "One million. And still they came," and announced that the "massive turnout surpassed the organizers' wildest expectations and Tony Blair's worst fears." Organizers of the British march estimated that as many as 1.5 million were cheering as London Mayor Ken Livingstone told the crowd, "So let everyone recognize what has happened here today: that Britain does not support this war for oil. The British people will not tolerate being used to prop up the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years."
German police said 500,000 marched in Berlin, while organizers put the number considerably higher. In Rome, an estimated one million marched on a day when newspapers reported that polls show 85 percent of Italians do not support a war to disarm Iraq. Organizers put the size of the Madrid crowd at 600,000, while city officials said as many as 1.3 million took to the streets in Barcelona. At least 300,000 people gathered in cities across France.
The protests spread around the globe, to Canada and Mexico, to Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands and Russia, and to Bahrain, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Iraq, South Korea Thailand.
New York's streets were jammed by a crowd that stretched 20 blocks down the city's First Avenue and overflowing onto Second and Third avenues. Estimates of the actual turnout varied wildly, but it seemed reasonable to suggest that at least 300,000 protesters converged for the midtown rally site where Archbishop Desmond Tutu, actors Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover, singers Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte and US Rep. Dennis Kucinich appeared. "Peace! Peace!" shouted Tutu. "Let America listen to the rest of the world -- and the rest of the world is saying: 'Give the inspectors time.'"
Among those expressing opposition to plans for war was Adele Welty, whose son, Timothy, was a firefighter killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "Timothy was at the World Trade Center on September 11 to save lives," said Welty. "I don't feel that he would sanction innocent lives either in this country or in Iraq being shed in his name."
The larger-than-expected crowds that rallied around the world fed a renewed confidence among peace activists that the message of signs carried at one of the weekend's first rallies -- in Auckland, New Zealand -- might yet turn out to be right: "We can stop this war."
As yachting's America's Cup opened Saturday in that New Zealand city, a plane chartered by Greenpeace circled over the harbor pulling a huge banner with the words: "No War, Peace Now."
"Bugga off bully boy Bush" was the chant on the streets of Auckland as thousands of anti-war demonstrators proudly launched a weekend of protests. "Millions of people around the world are rallying today to say no to war and New Zealand is the first country to send this message," said Greenpeace's Robbie Kelman. "Countries like New Zealand must add their weight to efforts for a peaceful solution to this crisis."
The point of the global protests, according to Kucinich, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who will travel to Iowa this week to launch a bid for the Democratic presidential race as an explicitly anti-war candidate, was to add grassroots pressure to the diplomatic push to avoid war.
Echoing the view of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who successfully thwarted a Bush administration to ramp up support for war at Friday's United Nations Security Council meeting, the protests around the world argued that war is not justified at a point when evidence indicates that U.N. inspectors are making progress toward disarming Iraq.
Dramatic early evidence of global antiwar sentiment came from Australia, where an estimated 200,000 people filled the streets of Melbourne Friday to protest their government's support of US plans to attack Iraq.
"This is a huge statement by the people of Melbourne, and the people of Australia to John Howard: that he's gone the wrong way and should turn around," said Australian Senator Bob Brown, a Green, who last week led a successful effort by senators to censure Australian Prime Minister John Howard for dispatching troops to the Persian Gulf region. "The people of Australia don't see this as our war."
Organized by labor, religious and student groups, the Melbourne protest was so large that commentators were speculating on the prospect that Howard could face serious political turmoil over his decision to back US President George W. Bush's push for war with Iraq. Signs at the demonstration Friday announced that this would be "Howard's End." And Australian Senator Natasha Stott Despoja told the crowd, "It is an amazing scene here with you today in a show of solidarity to send a strong message to Prime Minister Howard and the Australian government that Australians don't want war."
The Australian demonstration was described by reporters on the scene as the largest the country has seen in more than 30 years. And it was just the beginning of an around-the-world show of opposition to moves by the US, Britain and a handful of allies to force the United Nations to effectively endorse an preemptive attack on Iraq.
More than 600 demonstrations are expected to take place in communities around the world on -- from San Francisco to New York to London to Seoul, and from Antarctica to Iceland -- by the end of the weekend mobilization. Demonstrations are expected to take place in at least 60 countries. Most of the demonstrations were peaceful, although there were skirmishes in Athens; in New York, where police attempted to prevent marchers from getting near the United Nations; and in Colorado Springs, where arrests were made after demonstrators blocked a road near an Air Force base.
The New York demonstration was one of more than 200 planned for this weekend in US cities from Augusta, Maine, to Yakima, Washington, and Wausau, Wisconsin. What was supposed to be a relatively modest Los Angeles demonstration grew so large that television reporters there were reporting breathlessly on the "massive" show of opposition to war. Actors Martin Sheen and Mike Farrell and director Rob Reiner joined a march that filled Hollywood Boulevard from curb to curb for four blocks. Police claimed 30,000 turned out, while organizers said the crowd ultimately swelled to almost 100,000.
The swelling crowd sizes at Saturday's rallies in the US led organizers of a Sunday march in San Francisco to predict that it could turn into one of the largest demonstrations that west coast city has ever seen.
While weekend demonstrators in the US and Britain were seeking to change the minds of their leaders, crowds in Germany and France were expressing support for moves by the French and German governments to block Bush administration initiatives at the UN. "Help to prevent new suffering, new destruction and new death," read a sign carried by survivors of the Allied bombing of Dresden at the close of World War II. Saturday's huge protests in Berlin mocked U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's criticisms of European war foes, with signs reading, "Old Europe is Against the War."
No leader could have felt more pressure Saturday than Britain's Blair, whose personal approval ratings have dipped dramatically as he has continued to side with Bush's position on war.
Understanding that a switch by Blair could force Bush to rethink his position, Jesse Jackson flew to London to join rock stars, actors, playwrights, former Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella and former British parliamentarian Tony Benn, who recently traveled to Iraq to interview Saddam Hussein, for the Hyde Park rally. "Iraq is a challenge that must be put in perspective. It is not the priority that Bush and Blair have made it to be," Jackson said after arriving in London.
Among those marching with Jackson and the others was British author John Mortimer, long one of the most prominent members of Blair's Labour Party. Noting revelations that Blair's government doctored intelligence reports to create a false impression that they revealed clear and present dangers from Iraq, Mortimer said in announcing his decision to join the London demonstration: "We are being persuaded into war by lies and half truths. A secret service document, making it clear there is no evidence of a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, is disregarded. A 10-year-old article by an undergraduate is presented, and solemnly referred to by Colin Powell as if it were the latest government report, and no effort has been made for our Government to tell the truth about it."
KUCINICH BID: US Representative Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, confirmed Sunday that he will launch an exploratory committee in preparation for a presidential bid. One of the most outspoken foes of war with Iraq in Congress, Kucinich appeared at Saturday's anti-war rally in New York.... | |  | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 8:34 pm Post subject: Kucinich & Perle, 9-11 & Israel in Am Foreign Policy |
| Russert Inter: Kucinich & Perle, 9-11 & Israel in Am Foreign Policy decision
Date: 2/25/03 11:24:00 AM Pacific Standard Time
Russert: needs compliments on bringing up ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security the Realm.’ however, HE allowed Perle to escape....Russert needs an email asking for disclosure on the alliance and the role of THINK TANKS IN AMERICAN POLITICS . Russerts email address: mtp@nbc.com
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe the president of the United States would risk the lives of American men and women for oil?
REP. KUCINICH: I think that to answer that question would be to put a focus on a person, (SADDAM) and I think the policy is what we have to talk about, that this policy to go against Iraq was promulgated even before 9/11, and the day after 9/11, the secretary of Defense in a meeting of the National Security Council said we could use this moment to go after Iraq, even though there was no connection. I think that when a president commits the young men and women of this country to battle, that it should only be when there is an imminent threat to this country, and that—I believe most sincerely that one of the motivating factors involved in this effort to strike against Iraq is the desire on the part of some to be able to control the oil interests in Iraq. I believe that.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Perle, there’s been discussion about the role of Israel and the formulation of American foreign policy regarding Iraq. Let me show you an article from The Washington Times, written by Arnold DeBorograf: “The strategic objective is the antithesis of Middle Eastern stability. The destabilization of ‘despotic regimes’ comes next. In the Arab bowling alley, one ball aimed at Saddam is designed to achieve a 10-strike that would discombobulate authoritarian and/or despotic regimes in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Emirates and sheikhdoms. The ultimate phase would see Israel surrounded by democratic regimes that would provide 5 million Israelis—soon to be surrounded by 300 million Arabs—with peace and security for at least a generation. ...The roots of the overall strategy can be traced to a paper published in 1996 by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank. the document was titled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security the Realm.’ ...Israel, according to the 1996 paper, would ‘shape its strategic environment,’ beginning with the
removal of Saddam Hussein... ...Prominent American opinion-makers who are now senior members of the Bush administration participated in the discussions and the drafting that led to this 1996 blueprint.”
Can you assure American viewers across our country that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?
MR. PERLE: Well, first of all, the answer is absolutely yes. Those of us who believe that we should take this action if Saddam doesn’t disarm—and I doubt that he’s going to—believe it’s in the best interests of the United States. I don’t see what would be wrong with surrounding Israel with democracies; indeed, if the whole world were democratic, we’d live in a much safer international security system because democracies do not wage aggressive wars.
(NOTE: Perle, twists on the topic concerning the links to Israel, THAN dilutes the subject to an attack on the oil question) & Russert let it slide.
But please allow me to say: I find the accusation that this administration has embarked upon this policy for oil to be an outrageous, scurrilous charge for which, when you asked for the evidence, you will note there was none. There was simply the suggestion that, because there is oil in the ground and some administration officials have had connections with the oil industry in the past, therefore, it is the policy of the United States to take control of Iraqi oil. It is a lie, Congressman. It is an out and out lie. And I’m sorry to see you give credence to it.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me...
REP. KUCINICH: I want to answer that. And that is that I think all over America, people are aware this administration has not made a case to go to war in Iraq. And people are asking, “Well, if America is not at threat, then what’s this about?” And many people are wondering: “How did our oil get under their sand?”
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Perle, Wesley Clark, the former NATO allied commander, was on this program last week and he said this is not a necessary war, it’s an elective war. And then he went on to talk about some of the things the president has to say and do in the coming weeks. Will the president, should the president, talk to the American people about what will happen inside Iraq if there is a war, with the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds? Will it come apart? What will happen in the Arab streets, in Egypt, Saudi Arabia? What will happen in Pakistan? What happens if Saddam Hussein launches a chemical weapon at Israel? What do the Israelis do? What will be the costs, the consequences, the fallout? How long will we be there? How expensive will it be? Will we be perceived as conquerors or liberators? When do you think the president should take the American people through this in an orderly and thoughtful way?
MR. PERLE: Well, I think he’s done it in bits and pieces up until now. I’m sure there’ll be a more comprehensive presentation, if it comes to war, on the eve of that war. Nobody can say precisely what’s going to happen in the turbulence of a war, but there is a positive vision. Wes Clark is besieged by doubts and questions. He is after—running for president, so—but let me say that the positive view is that the liberation of Iraq will free the Iraqi people from what has been a nightmare and we will hear from the Iraqi people once they are liberated about what life has been like. We will also find the weapons of
mass destruction when Iraq has been liberated, so that has the potential significantly to change the climate.
MR. RUSSERT: And you’re convinced we will find Saddam Hussein?
MR. PERLE: Well, I don’t know whether we’ll find Saddam, but if Saddam is separated from his police state, he’s of no consequence. I believe that there is a very good chance that in the aftermath of Saddam’s removal, we will see the beginnings of a democratic Iraq, and that has the potential to transform the thinking of people around the world about the potential for democracy, even in Arab countries where people have been disparaging of their potential for democracy.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, same question, do you believe the president should come forward and talk about the risks, the consequences, the challenges of a war with Iraq and the costs and how long we’ll be there?
REP. KUCINICH: Well, I think it’s important that he do so. When you had his former economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, stating a war could cost $200 billion, when you have Professor Nordhouse, a Yale economist, saying the cost could be anywhere from $99 billion to over a trillion dollars, I think it’s important for the president to explain how he intends to meet the domestic needs of this country, for education, for health care, for repair of our infrastructure and at the same time conduct a war. I think people are going to want to know, how can we give Turkey $26 billion to buy a vote and their support
when we can’t meet our domestic needs?
This war will have a devastating effect on our domestic economy. It will cost us jobs; it won’t gain jobs. It will hurt our ability to meet the needs of our country, and I think the president of the United States has a responsibility to tell the American people, especially since it cannot be demonstrated that Iraq represents an imminent threat to this country, why we should be willing to sacrifice not only our men and women, the treasure of our nation, but also our national economic priorities to go to war against Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: As you well know, you announced you’re running for the Democratic presidential nomination this week, and you made an announcement that caused a lot of eyebrows to be raised about abortion. You’ve been pro-life your entire career, over a 90 percent approval rating from the National Right to Life Committee, a 0 from NARL, the National Abortion Rights League, and then suddenly you announce for president and turned on a dime and said, “I’m pro-choice on this issue.” This is what the National Right to Life Committee had to say: “On February 16, 2003 Mr. Kucinich announced he would
henceforth protect ‘abortion rights.’ Clearly, Dennis Kucinich has abandoned the ‘little guy’—and the ‘little girl’—out of fear of the influence of extreme pro-abortion special interest groups in the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process.”
( complete interview provided on the link)
-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Subj: Perle says Bush Regime allowed 9.11 to happen!
Date: 2/24/03 9:39:04 PM Pacific Standard Time
Perle Says Bush Regime was Criminally Negligent in Permitting 9-11 Attack to Occur
This was an astonishing exchange on Meet the Press:
"RICHARD PERLE: The lesson of September 11 was that you shouldn't have been voting on September 12 because we should have acted against al-Qaeda before that. We saw the camps. We heard the communications. We knew that they were planning additional acts of terror as they had undertaken previous acts of terror. And we waited. We failed to take action in a timely manner...
REP. KUCINICH: Are you saying that to be critical of President Bush? Is that what you're saying?
MR. PERLE: I'm critical of the failure to recognize the threat that Osama bin Laden posed before - everything we did after September 11 could have been done before September 11."
Perle's argument is conclusive proof that the Bush administration - in which he plays a key role - was CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT in failing to take action to prevent the 9-11 attack. It's time for the families of the 9-11 victims to consider a negligence lawsuit against George W. Bush.
for transcript:
Transcript for Feb. 23 | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 8:43 pm Post subject: Iraqis Will Not Be Pawns in Bush & Blair's War Game |
| Subject: Iraqis Will Not Be Pawns in Bush & Blair's War Game
The Guardian (UK)February 20, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Comment
Iraqis will not be pawns in Bush and Blair's war game An American attack on my country would bring disaster, not liberation
By Kamil Mahdi
Having failed to convince the British people that war is justified, Tony
Blair is now invoking the suffering of the Iraqi people to justify bombing
them. He tells us there will be innocent civilian casualties, but that
more will die if he and Bush do not go to war. Which dossier is he reading
from? The present Iraqi regime's repressive practices have long been known, andits worst excesses took place 12 years ago, under the gaze of GeneralColin Powell's troops; 15 years ago, when Saddam was an Anglo-Americanally; and almost 30 years ago, when Henry Kissinger cynically used Kurdishnationalism to further US power in the region at the expense of bothKurdish and Iraqi democratic aspirations. Killing and torture in Iraq is not random, but has long been directlylinked to politics - and international politics at that. Some of the
gravest political repression was in 1978-80, at the time of the Iranianrevolution and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. But the Iraqi people'sgreatest suffering has been during periods of war and under the sanctions
of the 1990s. There are political issues that require political solutionsand a war under any pretext is not what Iraqis need or want. In government comment about Iraq, the Iraqi people are treated as acollection of hapless victims without hope or dignity. At best, Iraqis aresaid to have parochial allegiances that render them incapable of political
action without tutelage. This is utterly at variance with the history andreality of Iraq. Iraqis are proud of their diversity, the intricacies oftheir society and its deeply rooted urban culture. Their turbulent recent history is not something that simply happened toIraqis, but one in which they have been actors. Iraqis have a rich modernpolitical tradition borne out of their struggle for independence from
Britain and for political and social emancipation. A major explanationfor the violence of recent Iraqi political history lies in thedetermination of people to challenge tyranny and bring about politicalchange. Iraqis have not gone like lambs to the slaughter, but have fought
political battles in which they suffered grievously. To assert that an
American invasion is the only way to bring about political change in Iraqmight suit Blair's propaganda fightback, but it is ignorant anddisingenuous. It is now the vogue to talk down Iraqi politics under Saddam Hussain asnothing but the whim of a dictator. The fact is that leaders cannot killpolitics in the minds of people, nor can they crush their aspirations. The massacres of leftists when the Ba'athists first came to power in 1963
did not prevent the emergence of a new mass movement in the mid-1960s. Thesecond Ba'ath regime attempted to buy time from the Kurdish movement in
1970 only to trigger a united mobilisation of Kurdish nationalism. Saddamco-opted the Communist party in the early 1970s only to see that party'sorganisation grow under a very narrow margin of legality before he movedagainst it. In the 1970s, the regime tried to control private economicactivity by extending the state to every corner of the economy, only toface an explosion of small business activity. The regime's strict secularism produced a clerical opposition with a massfollowing. When the regime pressurised Iraqis to join the Ba'ath party,independent opinion emerged within that party and Saddam found itnecessary to crush it and destroy the party in the process. In the 1980s,the army was beginning to emerge as a threat, and the 1991 uprising showed
the extent of discontent. In the 1990s, Saddam fostered the religiousleadership of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, only to see the latteremerge as a focal point for opposition. Even within Saddam's family andclose circle, there has been opposition. Of course Saddam Hussain crushed all these challenges, but in every casethe regional and international environment has supported the dictatoragainst the people of Iraq. It is cynical and deceitful of Tony Blair topretend that he understands Iraqi politics and has a meaningful programmefor the country. Iraq's history is one of popular struggle and also of
imperial greed, superpower rivalries and regional conflict. To reduce thewhole of Iraqi politics and social life to the whims of Saddam Hussain isbanal and insulting. Over the past 12 years of vicious economic blockade, the US and Britainhave ignored the political situation inside Iraq and concentrated onweapons as a justification for their policy of containment. UN resolution688 of April 1991, calling for an end to repression and an open dialogueto ensure Iraqi human and political rights, was set aside or used only forpropaganda and to justify the no-fly zones. Instead of generating a real political dynamic backed by internationalstrength and moral authority, Iraqis were prevented from reconstructingtheir devastated country. Generations of Iraqis will continue to pay theprice of the policy of sanctions and containment, designed for an oil glutperiod in the international market. Now that the US has a new policy, it intends to implement it rapidly andwith all its military might. Despite what Blair claims, this has nothingto do with the interests and rights of the Iraqi people. The regime inIraq is not invincible, but the objective of the US is to have regimechange without the people of Iraq. The use of Iraqi auxiliaries isdesigned to minimise US and British casualties, and the result may behigher Iraqi casualties and prolonged conflict with predictably disastroushumanitarian consequences. The Bush administration has enlisted a number of Iraqi exiles to providean excuse for invasion and a political cover for the control of Iraq.People like Ahmad Chalabi and Kanan Makiya have little credibility amongIraqis and they have a career interest in a US invasion. At the same time,the main forces of Kurdish nationalism, by disengaging from Iraqi politicsand engaging in internecine conflict, have become highly dependent upon USprotection and are not in a position to object to a US military onslaught.The US may enlist domestic and regional partners with varying degrees ofpressure. This in no way bestows legitimacy on its objectives and methods, and itspolicies are rejected by most Iraqis and others in the region. Indeed, themain historical opposition to the Ba'ath regime - including variousstrands of the left, the Arab nationalist parties, the Communist party,the Islamic Da'wa party, the Islamic party (the Muslim Brotherhood) andothers - has rejected war and US patronage over Iraqi politics. Theprevalent Iraqi opinion is that a US attack on Iraq would be a disaster,not a liberation, and Blair's belated concern for Iraqis is unwelcome. · Kamil Mahdi is an Iraqi political exile and lecturer in Middle Easteconomics at the University of Exeter | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 10:38 pm Post subject: The Madness of Empire |
| The Madness of Empire
The War Party's militarized strategy will unite the world against us.
http://www.amconmag.com/02_24_03/cover.html
By Scott McConnell
Recently the novelist John le Carré wrote in the Times of London that the
United States has entered a "period of madness" that dwarfs McCarthyism or
the Vietnam intervention in intensity. One generally would not pay much
attention to the cynical British spy-tale weaver, never especially friendly
to America. But concern about America's mental health is more broadly in the
air, spreading well beyond the usual professional anti-Americans. It is now
pervasive in Europe, and growing in Asia, and when Matt Drudge posted le
Carré's piece prominently on his website, it got passed around and talked
about here in ways it never would have five years ago.
The proximate cause of le Carré's diagnosis is Washington's plan for a
pre-emptive war against Iraq, a nation whose weapons pose no threat to the
United States and that has no substantial links to al-Qaeda or 9/11. The
U.S. would fight this war virtually without allies, though a few countries
might be dragged into the fray against the will of their populations. But
mad or not, this drive toward war is not mania of sudden onset but
ratification of a neo-imperialist strategy that has been germinating in
neoconservative circles since the end of the Cold War.
A new war against Iraq was a gleam in the eye of a small but influential
group long before 9/11. In 1998, the newly established Project for a New
American Century (PNAC), an advocacy group chaired by Weekly Standard editor
Bill Kristol, began sending open letters from prominent foreign policy
hawks. First, it wrote to the Clinton administration calling upon the United
States to "remove Saddam's regime." When its advice was ignored, PNAC asked
Republican Congressional leaders to push for war. The signatories included
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (now number two at the Pentagon), Elliott
Abrams (recently appointed to the National Security Council as a director of
Mid-East policy), William Bennett, John Bolton (now Undersecretary of
State), and the ubiquitous Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy
Board and often considered the central figure the interlocking web of
neoconservative think tanks.
PNAC's ambitions go well beyond Saddam's overthrow. Immediately after 9/11,
the group began pushing to expand the war against other Muslim states,
calling for the U.S. to target Hezbollah and its sponsors, Iran and Syria.
PNAC also wants the U.S. to stop trying to foster a peace between Israel and
the Palestinians, advocating withdrawal of the small amount of aid the U.S.
gives the Palestinian Authority and granting full support to Israel's right
wing Likud government.
These tactical measures are elements within a broader vision of a more
militarized U.S. foreign policy, carried out without allies if necessary. In
the final year of the first Bush administration, Paul Wolfowitz penned a
memo under the aegis of then Secretary of Defense Cheney, calling for the
United States to ramp up its defense spending in order to deter any other
country from "even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." China,
Russia, Germany, and Japan were to be intimidated from seeking more power in
their own regions. After the Wolfowitz draft was leaked to the press, it
received widespread ridicule, and the Bush I diplomats rushed to reassure
allies that Wolfowitz's views did not truly reflect American foreign policy.
But during the 1990s they did become the views of the neoconservatives,
packaged under the slogan "benevolent global hegemony" touted by Kristol and
Robert Kagan. The positions of the neoconservative foreign policy team in
exile (a sort of shadow subcabinet during the Clinton years) were fleshed
out in a PNAC book, Present Dangers, which called for the U.S. to "shape the
international environment to its own advantage" by being "at once a European
power, an Asian power, a Middle Eastern power, and of course a Western
Hemisphere power" and to "act as if instability in important regions of the
world ... affect[s] us with almost the same immediacy as if [it] was
occurring on our own doorstep." In practice this meant assertive risk-taking
virtually everywhere. Jonathan Clarke, reviewing the volume in the National
Interest, wrote, "If the book's recommendations were implemented all at
once, the U.S. would risk unilaterally fighting a five-front war, while
simultaneously urging Israel to abandon the peace process in favor of a new
no-holds-barred confrontation with the Palestinians." This book has become
the blueprint for the foreign policy of George W. Bush.
Only recently has it become commonplace (outside of the Marxist Left) to
call this new policy imperialist. President Bush himself still shuns the
word, telling a Veterans Day audience, "We have no territorial ambitions. We
don't seek an empire." But a surprising number of foreign policy analysts,
in the neocon orbit and beyond, have picked up the "I" word and run with it.
Max Boot, a former Wall Street Journal editor who wrote a book about
America's splendid little wars writes in the Weekly Standard about "troubled
lands [that] cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once
provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets." Kristol
co-author Robert Kagan prefers the term "hegenomy" to empire, and many
neoconservatives stress that the new American imperialism will differ from
the bad old European sort because it will be welcomed by its subjects. The
American Enterprise Institute's Joshua Muravchik has written a primer on
"exporting democracy" whose phrases now pop up regularly in Bushite
rhetoric.
The war for democracy is meant to bring about eternal peace. A television
sound-bite of the neo-imperialists is "democracies don't fight one another,"
though the generalization seems to ignore the bloodiest war in the 19th
century (America's Civil War) and arguably the one that brought about the
end of Europe's global pre-eminence (World War I). Never mind. The coda is
always Wilsonian, a claim that pre-emptive war will bring forth a springtime
of power to the people of the politically stagnant region.
None of this is entirely new of course: America's previous burst of imperial
expansion at the turn of the 20th century was accompanied by plenty of talk
about liberating our "brown brothers" from Spain's evil dominion and, later,
teaching Latin Americans to hold clean elections and "elect good men." The
phrases have come down to us through history class, but we do not remember
the elections because, by and large, they never took place.
Nor, it should be remembered, did the older European imperialists consider
themselves exploiters. The rulers and rhetoricians of France's and Britain's
empires were quite confident that they were bringing the benefits of
science, law, and rationality to poorer and backward peoples. Such claims
were self-serving but not entirely fanciful. Contrary to the standard
Leninist critique, imperialism was not a one-way transfer of wealth from
colony to metropole: Britain and France made large investments in capital
and education in their empires, in part producing the educated modernizing
nationalist class that eventually threw them out. Though some American hawks
have let on that establishing military bases astride the world's major oil
arteries would not be a distasteful burden, in today's Washington the war
against Iraq is not spoken of as an opportunity for plundering the region's
vital resources. The war will be fought to liberate the Iraqi people: never
before in the annals of neoconservative rhetoric have Arabs been talked
about so solicitously. (Cynics might note that Commentary and the Weekly
Standard showed little prior interest in bringing the benefits of democracy
to the three million Palestinians under Israeli occupation, where American
influence could have been brought to bear readily at almost any point in the
past thirty-five years.)
The prospects of this new militarized imperialism ought to be gauged by how
well it might succeed. Would it make Americans more secure? What are its
chances of democratizing the Middle East?
The strongest neo-imperialist case study is Japan, re-fashioned under
American military occupation from a semi-feudal militaristic dictatorship
that waged aggressive war into a semi-capitalist, reasonably democratic, and
very peaceable ally and trading partner of the United States. But the
differences between Japan and the Islamic nations our present-day
imperialists want to occupy are stark. Appreciation for the West and
democratic ideas was well rooted in Japan. The Japanese began to borrow
furiously from the West once Commodore Perry landed in 1853, in science and
military technology of course, but also in the world of ideas. Reading the
Western philosophes became a fad during the Meiji Restoration, which
initiated voting for Parliament in 1889 and had universal male suffrage by
the 1920s. Pushing the process along was an indigenous "liberty and popular
rights movement," which spawned dozens of autonomous political groups.
"Loyal opposition" was not an alien idea. Moreover, Japan's bureaucracy-a
samurai-based elite class that pre-dated the Meiji Restoration-was ready to
implement democratic reforms and put its own stamp on the new regime.
General MacArthur had much on which to build. Moreover, every country in
Asia wanted Japan transformed. The imposition of an entirely new order from
outside-MacArthur and his crew ended up writing the internal laws,
redistributing property, re-shaping the economy, and imposing a
constitution-was considered legitimate throughout the region. The
circumstances in the Mid-East, where American invasion is opposed vigorously
in the region and by three of the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council, could not be more different.
If prior conditions made Japan receptive to the imposition of democracy from
without, the general success rate of imperial powers in molding occupations
to their liking is poor. Both Britain and France tried mightily to form a
suitable "indigenous" elite in their colonies, neither with much success.
The ascending middle classes demanded access to education, but British and
French administrators quickly learned the more natives were educated, the
more colonial rule angered them. Britain gave up its empire without too much
strife, but France was driven out of Indochina by a bloody guerilla war and
from an Algerian colony (bound to the mother country with "indissoluble
links" according to the language of the time) by a fierce campaign of
terror. One hears echoes of the arguments made by colonialist Frenchmen in
the mouths of America's neo-imperialists: if the Algerian nationalists
prevailed, they would subject the Algerians to all the horrors of
autocratic, quasi-fascist domination. Such arguments were, as Raymond Aron
wrote at the time, true but irrelevant: colonized people rated national
independence more highly than they did the rights of the individual.
This is especially true in the Islamic world. Roger Scruton in The West and
the Rest comes to this conclusion on the deeper divergences in political
culture that seem to flow from Islam and Christianity respectively: "The
virtues of Western political systems are, to a certain kind of Islamic mind,
imperceptible-or perceptible, as they were to Qutb and Atta, only as hideous
moral failings. Even while enjoying the peace, prosperity, and freedom that
issue from a secular rule of law, a person who regards the shari'a as the
unique path to salvation may see these things only as signs of spiritual
emptiness or corruption." Perhaps skeptical thinkers like Aron and Scruton
are wrong and the neocon cheerleaders for imperialistic democracy-imposition
are right, but one would not want to bet America's future on it.
Then there is the reaction of the world to consider, after the United States
rains cruise missiles on Baghdad, seizes the Iraqi oil fields and "the next
day" (as Ariel Sharon urges) prepares for war against Iran. One can imagine
that the Saudis will fall into a political panic, that Europe will be
enraged, that Russia and China will be cooly hostile and begin to make
plans. What impact would the Iraq invasion have on the international system?
During the Clinton years, quite a few international affairs specialists
wondered why American pre-eminence had not given rise to the kind of
counterbalancing and ganging up against the leading power that classic
international relations theory and diplomatic history would lead one to
expect. Russia and China briefly eyed one another as allies, the Europeans
griped, but nowhere did major countries come close to forming real military
alliances to counter America's strength. Why not?
The most persuasive answer came from Joseph Joffe, a conservative
pro-Atlanticist German. He wrote that while there was plenty of smoldering
resentment of American power, no one felt it necessary to ally against it.
The United States was a hegemon "different from all its predecessors.
America annoys and antagonizes, but it does not conquer. ... This is a
critical departure from the traditional ways of the high and mighty. For the
balance of power machinery to crank up, it makes a difference whether the
rest of the world faces a huge but unusually placid elephant or a caniverous
tyrannosaurus rex." America is an elephant that lumbers but does not crush
and that uses its hegemony to create "public goods"-institutions that the
rest needs for security and economic growth.
If America invades Iraq, the bottom will fall out of this argument. The
first consequence would probably be sharp drop in international co-operation
against terrorism, especially terrorism directed against the United States.
After that, we can contemplate new alliances: Russia and China, Europe and
the (unoccupied) Middle East, an international system in rapid flux but
increasingly focused on restraining American power. Of course, the United
States will always have Israel as its friend.
Consider America's international situation: a country rich and
technologicially advanced, blessed with unusually stable political system,
separated from hostile countries by huge oceans, and still retaining durable
long term friendships with the world's most powerful and successful
democratic states, and requiring serious international police and
intelligence cooperation to deal with its most pressing enemy, al-Qaeda. For
such a nation suddenly to decide that its best and only option to "save
itself" is to embark on a course of imperial expansion, one that will be
opposed vigorously by the rest of the world, seems almost a form of madness. | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2003 2:24 am Post subject: Two men driving Bush into war |
| Two men driving Bush into war
Ed Vulliamy in New York profiles the religious figures behind a 'Texanised
presidency' who believe war will mean America is respected in the Islamic
world
Sunday February 23, 2003
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,901066,00.html
Behind President George W. Bush's charge to war against Iraq, there is a
carefully devised mission, drawn up by people who work over the shoulders of
those whom America calls 'The Principals'.
Lurking in the background behind Bush, his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are the people propelling US policy. And
behind them, the masterminds of the Bush presidency as it arrived at the
White House from Texas, are Karl Rove and Paul Wolfowitz.
It is too simple to explain the upcoming war as 'blood for oil', as did
millions of placards last weekend, for Rove and Wolfowitz are ideologists
beyond the imperatives of profit. They represent an unlikely and formidable
alliance forged between the gritty Texan Republicans who took over America,
fuelled by fierce conservative Christianity, and a faction of the East Coast
intelligentsia with roots in Ronald Reagan's time, devoted to achieving raw,
unilateral power.
Rove and Wolfowitz have worked for decades to reach their moment, and that
moment has come as war draws near. Bush calls Rove, depending on his mood,
'Boy Genius' or 'Turd Blossom'. Rove is one of a new political breed - the
master craftsmen - nurturing a 24-year political campaign of his own design,
but careful not to expose who he really is.
His Christian faith is a weapon of devastating cogency, but he never
discusses it; no one knows if his politics are religious or politics are his
religion. A Christmas Day child born in Denver, as a boy he had a poster
above his bed reading 'Wake Up, America!' As a student, he was a fervent
young Republican who pitched himself against the peace movement.
His first bonding with Bush was not over politics, but the two men's
ideological and moral distaste for the Sixties - after Bush's born-again
conversion from alcoholism to Christianity. Rove was courted by George Bush
Snr during his unsuccessful bid to be the Republican presidential candidate
for 1980.
But Rove's genius would show later, on Bush senior's election to the White
House in 1988, when he co-opted the right-wing Christian Coalition - wary of
Bush's lack of theocratic stridency - into the family camp.
Conservative Southern Protestantism was a constituency Bush Jr befriended
and kept all the way to Washington, defining both his own political
personality and the new-look Republican Party.
When Rove answered the call to come to Texas in 1978, every state office was
held by a Democrat. Now, almost all of them are Republican. Every Republican
campaign was run by Rove and in 1994 his client - challenging for the state
governorship - was a man he knew well: George W. Bush.
'Rove and Bush came to an important strategic conclusion,' writes Lou
Dubose, Rove's biographer. 'To govern on behalf of the corporate Right, they
would have to appease the Christian Right.'
Bush's six years as Texas governor were a dry run for national domestic
policy - steered by Rove - as President: lavish favours to the energy
industry, tax breaks for the upper income brackets and social policy driven
by evangelical zeal.
Bush had been governor for only a year when, as Rove says, it 'dawned on me'
he should run for President; two years later, in 1997, he began secretly
planning the campaign. In March 1999, Bush ordered Rove to sell his
consulting firm - 'he wanted 120 per cent of his attention,' says a former
employee, 'full-time, day and night'.
Rove hatched and ran the presidential campaign, deploying the Bush family
Rolodex and the might of the oil industry and unleashing the most vigorous
direct-mailing blizzard of all time. 'If the devil is in the details,'
writes Dubose, 'he had found Rove waiting to greet him when he got there.'
By the time George W. became President, Rove was the hub of a Texan wheel
connecting the family, the party, the Christian Right and the energy
industry. A single episode serves as metaphor: during the Enron scandal last
year, a shadow was cast over Rove when it was revealed that he had sold
$100,000 of Enron stock just before the firm went bankrupt.
More intriguing, however, was the fact that Rove had personally arranged for
the former leader of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, to take up a
consultancy at Enron - Bush's biggest single financial backer - worth
between $10,000 and $20,000 a month.
This was the machine of perpetual motion that Rove built. His accomplishment
was the 'Texanisation' of the national Republican Party under the leadership
of the Bush family and to take that party back to presidential office after
eight years. Rove is unquestionably the most powerful policy adviser in the
White House.
Militant Islam was another world from Rove's. However, on 11 September,
2001, it became a new piece of political raw material needing urgent
attention. Rove and Bush had been isolationists, wanting as little to do
with the Middle East - or any other corner of the planet - as possible. But
suddenly there was a new arena in which to work for political results: and,
as Rove entered it, he met and was greeted by a group of people who had for
years been as busy as he in crafting their political model; this time, the
export of unchallenged American power across the world.
Rove in theory has no role in foreign policy, but Washington insiders agree
he is now as preoccupied with global affairs as he is with those at home. In
a recent book, conservative staff speech writer David Frum recalls the
approach of the presidency towards Islam after the attacks and criticises
Bush as being 'soft on Islam' for his emphasis on a 'religion of peace'.
Rove, writes Frum, was 'drawn to a very different answer'. Islam, Rove
argued, 'was one of the world's great empires' which had 'never
reconciled... to the loss of power and dominion'. In response, he said, 'the
United States should recognise that, although it cannot expect to be loved,
it can enforce respect'.
Rove's position dovetailed with the beliefs of Paul Wolfowitz, and the axis
between conservative Southern Protestantism and fervent, highly
intellectual, East Coast Zionism was forged - each as zealous about their
religion as the other.
There is a shorthand view of Wolfowitz as a firebrand hawk, but he is more
like Rove than that - patient, calculating, logical, soft-spoken and
deliberate. Wolfowitz was a Jewish son of academe, a brilliant scholar of
mathematics and a diplomat. When he joined the Pentagon after the Yom Kippur
war, he set about laying out what is now US policy in the Middle East.
In 1992, just before Bush's father was defeated by Bill Clinton, Wolfowitz
wrote a blueprint to 'set the nation's direction for the next century',
which is now the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Entitled 'Defence
Planning Guidance', it put an onus on the Pentagon to 'establish and protect
a new order' under unchallenged American authority.
The US, it said, must be sure of 'deterring potential competitors from even
aspiring to a larger regional or global role' - including Germany and Japan.
It contemplated the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry
pre-emptively, 'even in conflicts that do not directly engage US interests'.
Wolfowitz's group formalised itself into a group called Project for the New
American Century, which included Cheney and another old friend, former
Pentagon Under-Secretary for Policy under Reagan, Richard Perle.
In a document two years ago, the Project pondered that what was needed to
assure US global power was 'some catastrophic and catalysing event, like a
new Pearl Harbor'. The document had noted that 'while the unresolved
conflict with Iraq provides immediate justification' for intervention, 'the
need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the
issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein'.
At a graduation speech to the Military Academy at West Point, Bush last June
affirmed the Wolfowitz doctrine as official policy. 'America has, and
intends to keep,' he said, 'military strengths beyond challenge.'
At the Pentagon, Wolfowitz and his boss Rumsfeld set up an intelligence
group under Abram Schulsky and the Under-Secretary for Defence, Douglas
Feith, both old friends of Wolfowitz. The group's public face is the
semi-official Defence Policy Board, headed by Perle. Perle and Feith wrote a
paper in 1996 called 'A Clean Break' for the then leader of Israel's Likud
bloc, Binyamin Netanyahu; the clean break was from the Oslo peace process.
Israel's 'claim to the land (including the West Bank) is legitimate and
noble,' said the paper. 'Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our
rights is a solid basis for the future.' At the State Department, the
'Arabist' faction of regional experts favouring the diplomacy of alliances
in the area was drowned out by the hawks, markedly by another new unit with
favoured access to the White House.
And in Rove's White House, with his backing, the circle was closed and the
last piece of the jigsaw was put in place, with the appointment of Elliot
Abrams to handle policy for the Middle East, for the National Security
Council.
Abrams is another veteran of Reagan days and the 'dirty wars' in Central
America, convicted by Congress for lying alongside Colonel Oliver North over
the Iran-Contra scandal, but pardoned by President Bush's father.
He has since written a book warning that American Jewry faces extinction
through intermarriage and has counselled against the peace process and for
the righteousness of Ariel Sharon's Israel. He is Wolfowitz's man, talking
every day to his office neighbour, Rove. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
