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(16) Late incoming notes
Hans von Sponeck, the former UN humanitarian aid co
ordinator for Iraq (1998-2000), has been advising Saddam
to call Bush's bluff and let the weapons inspectors return
to Baghdad. After a recent inspection trip of his own,
Sponeck reported in The Guardian that as it stands Sad
dam could easily let the inspectors back in again, since it's
clear that Iraq poses no threat to anyone. Could it be, that
Washington does not want the inspectors to return in fear
of another political affront of the first order, namely that
Iraq does no longer have weapons of mass destruction?
Scott Ritter, former American chief inspector for UNS
COM (United Nations Special Commission) has been ar
guing for some time that Iraq did not posses any capacity
to produce weapons of mass destruction (End Game,
Scott Ritter, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1999). There
fore, why are Bush and Blair hell bent on shedding blood
not only of US and British soldiers, but of countless Iraqis
as well? Their policy vis-à-vis Iraq is like Hitler revisited.
***
Andrew Alexander of the London Daily Mail studied the origins of the Cold War. In March 1946 Winston Churchill delivered his notorious ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri. The British prime minister took a cue from Joseph Goebbels. The Nazi propaganda minister could have been writing the Churchill speech, with its warning of the red peril threatening the west. Stalin was evil. Truman and Churchill were angels. Therefore, they created the phoney myth, that the Soviets were about to invade western Europe, which in turn made the creation of NATO a military necessity. Immediately, the mad arms race began to spiral. Following World War II, the US turned in the largest Hitlerite military-industrial complex the world had ever seen since the allies destruction of the Nazi war machine. Researcher Alexander discovered recently in Soviet archives, that never at any time did Stalin consider attacking the West. Truman and Churchill deliberately started the Cold War legend about the deadly dangers of the USSR exactly the same way as the Bushes are now saddling the world with all this bunkum about an Axis of Evil (North Korea, Iraq and Iran) supposedly threatening the US and all of mankind. Out of the good-ness of their hearts Americans pose as saviours of us all by going to war to these nations that are absolutely threatening no-one.
***
The Gulf War of father Bush cost and estimated 61.1 billion dollars, of which 48.4 billion was paid for by the socalled allies of Washington. Will the White House, apart from tailwagger Blair, have any sucker nations pick up 80 per cent of the tab for another US oil crusade? Some day in the future, another journalistic researcher, someone like Andrew Alexander, will prove on the basis of the historic record, that Bush and Blair were making up these
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mega fairytales to whip up public opinion to support their endless sabre-rattling for the sake of oil profits among the weaker nations. Simon Tisdall reported in The Guardian (July 31, 2002), that Bush was already refining other bellicose plans for regime change in Iran. Teheran, too, is according to the Gang of Four piling up weapons of mass destruction, according to standard White House hogwash.
***
William Pfaff, columnist for the Los Angeles Times reported, that following 09-11 notable tension and distrust is colouring US relations with Europe. He stressed, the post Cold War alignments could be overturned by European nations overnight, if the Bush Administration continues its unilateral policies and simply ignores the opinions of its allies. Pfaff suggested that European members of the grand alliance, who are almost unanimously opposed to a US-UK invasion of Iraq, could deny the use of Europeans NATO assets on the basis that such an unprovoked act of war does not fall under NATO's article five. This was used to agree to the War on Terrorism. Pfaff stressed, that ‘NATO no longer serves to protect Europe from any threat. The USSR threat is gone. For Europeans, NATO is an expensive relic of the Cold War.’ He continued, ‘Richard Holbrooke once said (to some European indignation), that the United States is a European power, and so it is, as long as NATO exists.’ Pfaff further suggested, ‘A polite mutiny by some or all of the European NATO countries on the war with Iraq would certainly produce what Saddam Hussein might describe as the mother of all trans-Atlantic rows, but in the end the USA would back down.’ Murdered politician Pim Fortuijn thought along these lines. Washington asked the US ambassador in The Hague to visit him and test his views. Weeks later Fortuijn was shot.
***
Western Europe is presently moving to the right. First Spain, Italy and Austria moved to the right. France and the Netherlands followed suit. Germany might make a turn around during upcoming elections. This is all good news for Bush & Co. Nevertheless, the French called the US approach to Iraq ‘simplistic’. Lately they have gone a step further by accusing Bush of being obsessed with the Iraqi leader. Obsessive behaviour means, to be suffering from a persistent and irrational idea accompanied stereotyped and ritualistic acts. It serves to overcome anxiety and calm feelings of guilt. Daddy seems to have transferred this obsession to his son. The headline in The Observer read ‘I will whup Sadam for you, Poppa’. Thank God Hitler did not have a son, to step into his father's war boots! The British sunday paper announced that junior's declaration of war on Iraq was only weejs away.
The French also worry, that NATO might loose interest in supporting the US in the War on Terrorism, should the Americans start attacking countries whose re- | |
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gimes they simply do not like. In Britain unrest is growing, also within the Labour Party, over Blair's highhanded going it alone policy in tandem with Bush.
Rowan Williams, the upcoming archbishop of Canterbury, already said he would not support a British-backed military attack on Iraq. Bush and Blair use the same deceit as they did in the case of Osama bin Laden. They announced to the world that he was guilty and that proof would be submitted. They never did. Now Blair has told parliament, proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction would be given to the Commons in time. His spin doctors and intelligence officers will come up with whatever fabrications they can think off. And, while nobody is buying the balderdash, 20 to 30.000 military personnel will be dispatched to the Iraqi war theatre as Her Majesty's contribution to the massive Goebbels type of trickery this time practiced by socialist Blair of all people. The prime minister is even refusing to commit himself to consulting lawmakers prior to declaring war on Iraq. ‘I am not going to commit myself to any particular form of consultation’, he flatly told the House of Commons on July 25, 2002.
Even Japan and South Korea begin to express public annoyance with the Bush-Blair policy of going it alone. When the Pentagon issued a warning, that China's military threat is increasing, Japanese strategists told The Washington Post, that America should stop its alarmist propaganda. But since the US has presently an alarmist bunch of leaders, having also - Hitler did in the thirties - too many dangerous military tools at their disposal, they are liable to continue to launch global invasions, just as the Nazis engaged in state terrorism in Europe.
***
Where lies the difference between father and son Bush versus Iraq? The father served in the military during World War II, while his son managed to evade taking part in the war in Vietnam. Dad, with a deeper understanding of the horrors of war, stopped short of marching on Baghdad knowing this would amount to a bloodbath for both Americans and Iraqis. Colin Powell concurred. Junior lacks any war experience. The younger Bush is simply reaping the advantages in favour of war from the 09-11 disasters. He clearly banks on anxiety and widespread fear amongst all Americans, who clearly expect additional attacks from Muslim terrorists. The Gang of Four keeps telling the public that chemical, biological and even nuclear attacks must be reckoned with. They also say, without a thread of evidence, that the only foreign potentate capable of supplying these horror weapons to terrorists is Saddam. Therefore he must be destroyed.
Of course, Iraq's huge oil deposits are never mentioned by Houston oil crooks. The US public believes the president to be a man of honour, integrity, and of superior intelligence, who would never lie to them. Hence, his support is still estimated at 70 percent. Nevertheless, hints
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that Iraq would scheme with Al Queda to bring down the Golden Bridge in San Francisco, is just as cuckoo as most of junior Bush's notions about world affairs. He knows nothing about international relations or foreign affairs, and, yet, he is the man who must guide the American people and much of the rest of the world safely through what for him is totally uncharted territory.
***
The Sunday Times headlined at the time of writing, that an attack on Iraq could be launched as early as October 2002. They operate according to the ancient precept that to go to war diverts attention away from problems and failures. As consumer confidence plunges, and the stock markets further go down, the closer Bush and Blair edge towards war. Hitler used the tactic over and over again because he, too, like the US now, was producing far too many guns and not enough butter. The Observer asked in a recent headline why a blueprint for a conflict with Saddam was leaked at a moment when sleaze scandals hit a new peak in NewYork and Washington. According to this British paper, the leak had come from the Pentagon through top officials who opposed going to war against Iraq.
In 1991 a similar situation occurred. Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs, was opposed to the Gulf War. Father Bush and his Defence Secretary Dick Cheney bullied Powell into fighting it. ‘Powell and Cheney have despised each other ever since’, wrote Ed Vulliamy in The Observer. This time, once again, Powell prefers to bluff the Iraqis into concessions rather than dispatching 250.000 troops to the Middle East. War plans are rumoured to have been scaled down to 50.000, including a force of 5.000 dissident Iraqi soldiers. That is the old trick, which worked so well in Afghanistan, having Afghan northern alliance soldiers taking the flak.
On July 27, 2002 The Guardian carried a report by Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton Taylor from New York, that Boeing and other US Krupp factories were already working around the clock producing satellite guided ‘smart’ bombs that would be used in huge air strikes to accompany a ground invasion. Neither Bush nor Blair feel it is necessary to ask a new authorization from the United Nations Security Council to justify their attack. Washington and London do indeed behave as Germany and Italy did in the 30's and 40's. The less that is taken into account that they are also signatories of the UN Charter the better. The world organisation in New York might spoil the fun.
***
Just whatever happens this autumn or early spring, when junior Bush and his hoodlum friend in London seem set to launch an all out attack on a medium sized Arab nation, the outcome of it all will be as disastrous as Korea, Vietnam, Cuba or Afghanistan. The son, like the father, will meet his Waterloo in Baghdad. He, who does not know his history, cannot learn from it either. On July 28,
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2002 president Saddam went on television and challenged Tony Blair to produce the evidence, which he said he would present, that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction. And, if the British prime minister was only fantasizing anyway in order to please his maniacal friend from Texas, then ‘put up or shut up’, Saddam said. (The Times, July 29, 2002).
***
‘Elite units of American special forces are to launch raids on ships and covert attacks on terrorists hideouts in a worldwide drive for victory on the War on Terror’, headlined the Sunday Times of London (August 4, 2002). For an average normal person is this 21st century, such war drums sound like George Orwell all over again. But Americans hear this kind of war language already for years and have come to accept it as a normal state of affairs. They have been chosen by the Lord to keep law and order over humanity.
Super hawk Donald Rumsfeld ordered more radical action to reinvigorate the US anti terrorist offensive. Navy Seal commandos and the Delta Force, America's own Waffen SS elite corps, already received orders on ‘aggressive, unilateral and behind-the-scenes missions’ whereever the New Nazis in Washington deemed necessary. Does the world realize that America's president intends to consider the entire globe as a new hunting ground for freedom fighters? ‘Only crazies would sacrifice the sons and daughters of others for what they call a cakewalk to Baghdad’, testified Anthony Cordesman of the Washington Centre for Strategic and International Studies before a congressional commission in Washington. Rumsfeld will allow his SS squadrons to board foreign vessels by force, if general Charles Holland, chief of the Special Operation Command, deems this necessary. ‘He is impatient,’ wrote Tony Allen-Mills, ‘with the diplomatic niceties of international law enforcement, and determined to inject fresh thinking into the campaign on terror’. What the London Sunday Times correspondent failed to note in his frontpage story was that the behaviour of the Bush II regime in particular seems to have been borrowed straight form the thinking in Hitler's Mein Kampf.
***
George Monbiot summed up the situation around the Guns of August 2002 perhaps most accurately. ‘There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the US government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has done in 20 years.’ (The Guardian, August 6, 2002).
Furthermore, US arguments for a war against Iraq have continuously changed. From the refusal to let weapons inspectors in, to Iraqi flouting UN resolutions, or even sponsoring of Al Queda terrorism, to finally Bush
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flatly coming out putting his real intention on the table: regime change. None of Washington accusations could stand up in court. But Daddy's mortal enemy must be destroyed. The mere thought that junior Bush would be developing a fresh taste to remove whomever leader in the world he would consider unacceptable to him is perhaps the most frightening thought possible in the nuclear age. Fortunately, the Gang of Four are miserable cowards. They know better than to dispatch their SS Blitzkrieg toops into China or Russia. They only will invade small and poorly armed opponents, who will not be unable to defend themselves against the overwhelming US military force. When nations under US attack bring freedomfighters into action. Washington hastens to call them terrorists and treats them like animals, as they do with Al Queda fighters in Guantanomo on Cuba. And what, after Saddam would be defeated? What did Hitler teach Bush? Go into Iran, Syria, Lybia and God knows where else?
(to be continued).
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