Bush's 'weapons of mass destruction' hoax
Big lie masks real motives for Iraq war
Politicians debate tactics for Middle East domination
By Brian Becker
The Bush administration's preparations for a massive
onslaught on Iraq are rapidly advancing. So too is
international cooperation between anti-war and progressive
working-class organizations that are striving to urgently
create a broad, worldwide movement to stay the hand of the
Pentagon.
There exists vast potential for anti-war mobilization. If
one had the power to take a public opinion poll of the 6
billion people who inhabit the planet, only an infinitesimal
percentage would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In the region where the conflict is slated to take place
there is already widespread anger against the United States for
threatening new war against Iraq while the U.S. sends $15
million every day to finance Israeli terror against the
Palestinian people.
Every government in the Middle East--including Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait--wants to see an end to the conflict with Iraq. The
Arab League Summit in Beirut in March showed that all 22
governments want to improve relations with Iraq. Saudi Arabia
and Iraq have since re-opened their long-closed border. Syria
and Lebanon have normalized their relations with Iraq.
While world public opinion is decidedly against Bush's war
drive, it will take a mass peoples' movement--in the streets,
workplaces, communities, campuses and high schools--to stop the
coming war.
A debate on tactics
While there are divisions and debates between the U.S.
administration and the governments of France, Germany, Russia,
Japan and the other U.S. "allies," it would be naïve to
believe that any of the imperialist governments will stand up
to the might of the Pentagon war planners.
As with the political establishment in Europe, there are
sectors inside the U.S. capitalist establishment that have
grave misgivings and fear about a war in the Middle East that
is so brazenly aggressive. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, a national
security advisor to President George W. Bush and his father 10
years ago, went on national television on Aug. 4 to warn that a
U.S. invasion of Iraq "could turn the whole region into a
cauldron and, thus, destroy the war on terrorism."
Scowcroft and others fear the war could provoke revolution
and anti-U.S. ferment in this strategic region that contains
two-thirds of the world's known oil resources. But these
establishment figures won't stop the war. Nor should we expect
meaningful opposition inside the halls of the U.S.
Congress.
The supposed "debate" in the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on July 31-Aug. 1 over the coming war against Iraq is
a clear indication that the political and military
establishment are in harmony over the basic strategic
assumptions promoted by the Bush administration.
"President Bush has made clear his determination to remove
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power--a goal many of us in
Congress share," Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar, the
highest-ranking Democrat and Republican in the Senate
Committee, announced in a joint statement.
What passes as grand democratic debate in Congress is a
polite "gentlemen's" consultation over the best strategy: war
or sanctions?
The "debate" is strictly confined to selecting the best
means to accomplish the goal of U.S. domination over Iraq:
* new military invasion and air war to install a pro-U.S.
regime, or
* maintain economic sanctions coupled with routine
low-intensity bombing. (U.S. and British planes bombed Iraq on
six separate occasions in the last four weeks, according to an
Aug. 5 Associated Press dispatch.)
This is just a debate about the most politically effective
way to kill large numbers of Iraqis.
In the 1991 Gulf War more than 100,000 Iraqis died as the
U.S., Britain and France dropped more than 88,500 tons of
explosives on Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and other cities during the
42-day onslaught. (Wall Street Journal, March 20, 1991)
Sanctions took even more lives. UNICEF reports that well
over 1 million Iraqi civilians died from malnutrition and
disease brought on by airtight economic sanctions in the 11
years since the war ended.
Following the Senate debate, Biden, the leading Democrat on
foreign policy issues, went on "Meet the Press" Aug. 4 to
signal that the economic sanctions would now be replaced by
all-out war.
"I believe there probably will be a war with Iraq," he
stated. "The only question is, is it alone, is it with others,
and how long and how costly will it be?"
Answering Bush's war propaganda
The tasks facing the new international anti-war movement
include developing a popular and effective answer to the White
House propaganda machine. Bush and the Pentagon are working
non-stop to demonize the victims of their planned attack, while
creating a credible pretext for war.
Working people in the United States, and especially the
youth, must be able to learn the real causes for the coming
conflict and learn how to respond to the Pentagon's lies.
Otherwise people will be susceptible to the pro-war hype and
frenzy that are being cynically generated to prepare public
opinion for war.
The main argument used by the White House to scare up
support for an invasion is that "Saddam Hussein must be
prevented from acquiring or developing chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons--a.k.a. weapons of mass destruction."
The White House has focused on this bogus argument because
it has no other. Every effort was made to connect Iraq to the
Sept. 11 attack and later to the anthrax attacks in the autumn
of 2001.
But there was no evidence of a connection, so Bush simply
broadened the scope of the "war on terrorism" by proclaiming
that Iraq, Iran, north Korea and other "evil" countries would
be considered terrorist and subject to preemptive military
attacks.
What made them terrorists? Bush said they were "trying to
acquire weapons of mass destruction."
Iraq certainly did possess and use chemical weapons in the
1980s. Both Iraq and Iran used such weapons against each other
in that brutal and reactionary war. But these weapons were not
"frightening" to the U.S. at the time of their use.
Donald Rumsfeld, the current secretary of defense, was
meeting in Baghdad with Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders
in December 1983 and March 1984, and improving U.S.-Iraqi
relations on behalf of the Reagan administration when the
allegations concerning chemical weapons surfaced. But this was
when the U.S. was encouraging Iraq's war effort as part of a
strategy to weaken and exhaust the Iranian Revolution.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq did not use chemical or
non-conventional weapons, but the U.S. did. It dropped tons of
depleted uranium weapons all over Iraq.
It is important to deconstruct the piece of propaganda
regarding "weapons of mass destruction." It is the only pretext
available to the war-makers and it needs to be answered
effectively.
The facts are very crucial to understanding the duplicity of
U.S. strategy. The U.S. is employing a classic Catch-22 public
relations technique aimed at demonizing Iraq before an
uninformed and unsuspecting public.
Background to Operation Desert Fox
Iraq agreed in 1991 to let in UN weapons inspectors--a
condition imposed by the United States at the end of the Gulf
War. The U.S. insisted that economic sanctions would be lifted
only after inspectors verified that Iraq was free from
non-conventional weapons.
But for the last four years it has been the U.S. government
that has worked hard at manipulating the UN so that there would
be no inspectors in Iraq, thus eliminating any chance of ending
sanctions.
After the U.S.-dominated team carried out 9,000 inspections
over nearly eight years, Iraq demanded in 1998 that the UN/U.S.
economic sanctions be ended. Most governments in the UN favored
lifting sanctions.
The demand to end the sanctions was gaining irresistible
momentum.
This prompted the Clinton administration to withdraw the
weapons inspectors on Dec. 12, 1998, on the pretext that Iraq
was not "fully cooperating," creating the impression that Iraq
was leading inspectors on some wild goose chase or blocking
their path.
Clinton argued that the U.S. had no choice but to bomb Iraq
because it was blocking meaningful inspections.
In fact, the United Nations Special
Commission--UNSCOM--cited only five "obstructions" to the 423
inspections conducted between Nov. 18-Dec.12, 1998. One was a
45-minute delay before allowing access. Another was Iraq's
rebuff to a demand by a U.S. inspector that she be able to
interview all the undergraduate students in Baghdad
University's Science Department.
Two other cases of Iraq's alleged non-compliance had to do
with UNSCOM's request to inspect two establishments on
Friday--the Muslim holy day. Since the establishments were
closed, Iraq asserted that the inspections must be held another
day or that an Iraqi official would accompany the
inspectors--in accordance with an agreement between UNSCOM and
Iraq regarding Friday inspections.
Less than 48 hours after the inspectors were withdrawn from
Iraq, the Pentagon began the massive bombing campaign known as
Operation Desert Fox on Dec. 16-19, 1998. U.S. and British
warplanes dropped more than 1,000 missiles and bombs on the
country during those four days.
Two weeks after Operation Desert Fox, U.S. officials
publicly admitted the weapons inspectors were intelligence
agents who provided Pentagon bombing planners with bombing
coordinates. (New York Times, Jan. 7, 1999)
Predictably--and justifiably--the Iraqi government announced
that it would no longer cooperate with the UN weapons
inspections.
Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice
President Richard Che ney now routinely bellow that Iraq has
denied weapons inspectors access to the country for four years;
Iraq is intransigent and defiant of UN resolutions.
And thus, the U.S. has cynically crafted the chief rationale
for the coming invasion.
Iraqi diplomacy rebuffed again
Bush, Rumsfeld and Co. reveal the depth of their cynicism
and duplicity as they work overtime now to make it nearly
impossible for weapons inspectors to return to Iraq. That would
slow down the invasion plan--their biggest fear of all.
On Aug. 1, the day the Senate hearings concluded, Iraq's
foreign minister released a letter sent to UN General Secretary
Kofi Annan announcing that Iraq was ready to resume discussions
about the possible re-admission of UN weapons inspectors. Given
the experience of the past, however, when so-called inspectors
were actually gathering coordinates for cruise missile attacks,
Iraq wanted discussions first to set terms.
Iraq also offered to allow a delegation of U.S.
congressional representatives, accompanied by arms experts of
their choice, to tour sites in Iraq where they suspect weapons
of mass destruction are hidden.
Far from defusing the U.S. war drive, however, the Bush
administration immediately dismissed the Iraqi invitation to
discuss the return of the weapons inspectors or the invitation
to an arms control delegation from Congress. Colin Powell,
secretary of state, and frequently portrayed as less hawkish
than the other Bushies, made it clear that the U.S. wouldn't
take "yes" for an answer from Iraq.
"Inspection is not the issue, disarmament is ... we have
seen the Iraqis fiddle with the inspection system before,"
Powell said dismissively while stopping over in the
Philippines. (The Observer, Aug. 4)
Another official, John Bolton, U.S. under-secretary for arms
control, was even more blunt: "Our policy ... insists on regime
change in Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether
inspectors go in or not." (British Radio 4 Today show, Aug.
4)
Who are the real terrorists?
If the production of weapons of mass destruction is the
criteria to affix the terrorist label, then clearly George W.
Bush presides over the biggest terrorist enterprise now or at
any time in world history.
The U.S. has the largest nuclear arsenal--more than 6,000
nuclear missiles and bombs. It has spent $4 trillion on nuclear
weapons since 1945. When it had a monopoly on these weapons it
did not hesitate to use them against civilian centers--up to
200,000 civilians were instantly incinerated in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.
Bush is spending hundreds of billions on militarizing outer
space. The recently-released Pentagon military doctrine
includes a declaration of its right to first use of nuclear
weapons against Iraq, north Korea, Iran, China and Russia. The
U.S. has Trident submarines and U.S. aircraft carriers carrying
nuclear weapons 24 hours a day as the imperial fleet roams the
seven seas.
The U.S. government used chemical weapons in Vietnam,
spraying Agent Orange over vast parts of that country.
Thousands of U.S. GIs and an unknown number of Vietnamese
people died, or live difficult and painful lives from the
after-effects.
Today, the U.S. government manufactures chemical and
biological weapons, a fact that was routinely denied and only
admitted after the anthrax attacks of 2001.
And the U.S. government--led by both Democrats and
Republicans--has knowingly and deliberately killed more than 1
million Iraqi civilians through the quieter, less dramatic
weapon known as economic sanctions. This weapon that has killed
5,000 children every month for 12 years must be regarded as a
weapon of mass destruction.
A war to dominate oil resources
Bush and the Pentagon want to control Iraq and the entire
Middle East. This has been a primary focus of U.S. foreign
policy for more than a half-century.
Before the Arab nationalist revolutions overthrew the
corrupt pro-Western monarchies in the region in the 1950s and
1960s, more than 50 percent of all U.S. corporate overseas
profits came from the region.
Iraq experienced a profound anti-feudal and anti-colonial
revolution in 1958 that brought down the British-backed
monarchy. Within one week of the revolution, President Dwight
D. Eisenhower sent 10,000 marines to occupy Lebanon in fear
that the Iraqi Revolution would spread.
Fearing retribution for taking control of its own natural
resources, Iraq waited until 1972--when the U.S. military was
bogged down in Vietnam--before it nationalized its
western-owned oil fields.
When Iraq nationalized its oil industry it became the target
of CIA covert operations. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and
the Shah of Iran met in May 1972 and began a massive covert
operation to foment a Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq--an
area that contains half of Iraq's oil supply.
Today, Iraq has oil reserves of 112 billion barrels, second
only to Saudi Arabia, according to Middle East Economic
Survey.
The real goal of the planned invasion of Iraq is to undo or
reverse the process of de-colonization and nationalist
revolutions that restricted the previously unfettered authority
of western capitalist corporations to dominate and profit from
the vast natural resources of the Middle East.
For U.S. imperialism, and its policymakers in Washington and
Wall Street, the goal is to secure U.S. control over these
strategic resources that are vital to a modern economy.
The writer is a co-director of the International Action
Center and a spokesperson for the ANSWER coalition.
Reprinted from the Aug. 15, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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