Dismissing Iraq's concession, U.S. readies oil-grab
By Richard Becker
The Bush administration wants a new war against Iraq. And
Bush and company want the people of the U.S. and the world to
believe it's because of a "grave threat" posed by Iraq's
"weapons of mass destruction."
That phony pretext for war went up in smoke on Sept. 17.
On Sept. 16, Iraq's government sent an official letter to
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stating that Iraq
would allow UN weapons inspectors to return without conditions,
"to prove that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction."
But Washington won't take "yes" for an answer.
The White House's predictably arrogant response was to
denounce Iraq's offer for the unconditional return of the
inspectors. For those who have believed that Iraq's weapons
were the real issue, this denunciation might have seemed
somewhat surprising.
What Washington's reaction shows is that Iraq's purported
weaponry is not the issue at all. If it were, the Bush
administration would have welcomed Iraq's statement.
Instead, the White House, in its official statement,
demanded "a new, effective UN Security Council resolution that
will actually deal with the threat Saddam Hussein poses to the
Iraqi people, to the region, and to the world. ...
"This is not a matter of inspections," the Sept. 17 White
House statement continued. "It is about disarmament of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime's compliance
with all other Security Council resolution. This is a tactical
step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong UN Security Council
action. As such, it is a tactic that will fail. It is time for
the Security Council to act."
The White House statement is just more disinformation and
propaganda. Iraq, a country severely weakened by 12 years of
war and blockade, poses no threat to its neighbors, much less
to the United States. Iraq has nothing to match up with the
Pentagon's vast array of high-tech and nuclear weaponry.
All of the surrounding governments have spoken out in
opposition to a new U.S. war--an unlikely position if they
believed themselves threatened by Iraq.
U.S. aims to start a war
Its imperial arrogance aside, the only real content of the
U.S. statement is that it makes clear that Washington is vastly
expanding its demands on Iraq.
The Bush administration's plan for a new UN Security Council
resolution would be to impose conditions on Iraq that no
sovereign state could accept. One much-discussed idea is
so-called "muscular inspection," i.e., sending in up to 50,000
heavily armed U.S. and British forces to do the
"inspecting."
The objective of such a resolution would not be to resume
weapons inspections, but instead to start a war.
The Bush plan is to make the conditions so intrusive and
onerous that Iraq would have only two choices: Surrender its
sovereignty as an independent state or refuse to accept the
resolution. Washington would then try to make it appear that
Iraq itself was responsible for the war.
Such a Security Council resolution would be like the
Rambouillet accord, the U.S./NATO ultimatum that preceded the
Yugoslavia war.
In Rambouillet, France, in February 1999, then-Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright proposed a "peace agreement" to the
Yugoslav government that called for the U.S. and NATO to have
free and complete access to all of Yugoslavia. In other words,
NATO and U.S. troops would have been authorized to occupy
Yugoslavia immediately.
Albright told Yugoslavia that Rambouillet was a
take-it-or-leave-it deal--"no negotiations." When the Yugoslav
federal parliament voted to accept all of the Rambouillet
accord except for the U.S./NATO occupation, the bombing
began.
A similar scenario appears to be in the making in relation
to Iraq. Hours after the release of the White House statement,
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CNBC: "Saddam Hussein has
got to go, there's got to be a regime change."
Mandela condemns White House
The UN weapons inspectors left Iraq on Dec. 15, 1998, at the
orders of the Clinton administration. The following day, the
U.S. and Britain began an intensive bombing campaign labeled
"Operation Desert Fox" against Iraqi cities, towns and military
sites.
A few weeks later it was revealed that the weapons
inspectors had been acting as spies, providing the Pentagon
with information used for targeting Iraqi facilities and
personnel in Desert Fox.
Given the constant U.S./British bombing raids on Iraq since
the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and the threat of a new
all-out attack, it is not hard to see why Iraq has been opposed
to the return of the UN inspectors/spies.
Contrary to the impression conveyed by the corporate media
here, most of the world is strongly opposed to a new U.S. war
against Iraq. Few have spoken out more strongly that former
South African president and liberation fighter Nelson
Mandela.
On Sept. 12, Mandela said in an interview that "the attitude
of the United States of America is a threat to world peace."
Mandela said the decision to attack Iraq was "clearly ... a
desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United
States of America."
Mandela, citing former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, said
it was known that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and
that Israel possessed such weapons, but no one was saying
anything about it.
Mandela's response to the White House statement of Sept. 17
was quoted by Reuters news service: "We must condemn this
because they think they are the only power in the world. They
are not and they are following a dangerous policy.
"What right has [Bush] to come in to say that offer is not
genuine? We must condemn that very strongly," Mandela said.
"That is why I criticize most leaders all over the world of
keeping quiet when one country wants to bully the whole
world."
The South African government said it hoped that Iraq's
announcement "should lead to the lifting of sanctions."
Socialist Cuba spoke out strongly against a new war through
its Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. Addressing the UN
General Assembly on Sept. 14, Perez Roque said in part:
"A new war against Iraq seems inevitable, an escalation of
the situation of permanent aggression that this people has
endured during the last 10 years. 'Preventive war' is talked of
now, in violation of the spirit and letter of the Charter of
the United Nations. Cuba proclaims here that it is opposed any
new military action against Iraq."
Real aims of new U.S. war
The real aims of Washington's war drive have nothing to do
with weapons of mass destruction or human rights violations,
and everything to do with control of the world's oil supply.
The U.S. rulers have wanted to take control of Iraq, Iran,
Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region, which holds two-thirds
of global petroleum reserves, for more than six decades.
Control of world oil resources not only means unimaginable
profits, it is also a key factor in the U.S. drive for
unchallenged global domination.
An article in the Sept. 15 Washington Post, entitled, "In
Iraqi War Scenario, Oil is Key Issue," points to what U.S. oil
companies hope to gain.
"A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could
open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from
Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France
and other countries, and reshuffling world petroleum markets,
according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi
opposition."
Iraq has more than 10 percent of the world's proven oil
reserves--112 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia.
The Post article makes it clear that the aim of a new war
will be the recolonization of Iraq. A new puppet regime in
Baghdad would be ordered to de-nationalize Iraq's oil and turn
it over to U.S. capitalist oil companies.
Ahmed Chalabi, the notoriously corrupt exile leader of the
CIA-funded "Iraqi National Congress" who is working to burnish
his credentials in Washington as a possible future puppet
ruler, told the Post that he "favored the creation of a
U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields.
"American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," said
Chalabi.
No statement could better express the real reason the Bush
administration is so anxious to get on with the invasion.
Reprinted from the Sept. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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