Who are the No. 1 War Criminals?

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Saddam

Norman Schwarzkopf, the man who was asked by George Bush I to annihilate Saddam, was once invited by the Shah of Iran to set up his secret police, the savak Small world indeed. He later became commander of centcom (Central Command for the Middle East). Those days it was considered normal - and in line with international law - that us airplanes bombed Iranian oil platforms at sea, because the Iranian leadership was considered quite mad. Washington considered Saddam an ally, because he was fighting against the Ayatollahs. And Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia, Jordan, Britain, France and West-Germany helped Iraq in its mortal battle against Iran.

In 1989, however, the cia & Associates began to formulate War Plan 1002 to counter, what was perceived as a Soviet threat towards the Gulf. In 1990, centcom headquarters staged computer games called Internal Look, to test its war plans. In spite of lraq having defeated Iran, centcom continued to consider Iraq a Kremlin ally, therefore Saddam remained a threat to the region, as Milosevic was a threat to the Balkans. General Schwarzkopf testified early in 1990 before the Senate, that Saddam was a danger for everyone in the Middle-East. The Iraqi leader knew of this conspiracy against him and he complained at an emergency Arab Summit in Baghdad that Washington was mobilizing its Arab allies against him. Of course, this was true and a full-scale cia operation. In July 1990, Saddam renewed his complaints and said that Kuwait was conspiring to hurt the Iraqi economy. Of course, this was also true, because Kuwait was being used as bait by the warmongers in Washington to further enrage Saddam hoping he would walk straight into the set trap. And, of course, he did, with both feet.

Kuwait had rested untill 1899 under Ottoman Turkish rule. The reigning sheik asked British protection. In 1921, Sir Percy Cox of the British Colonial Office drew a line on the map separating Kuwait permanently from Iraq. In practice, it meant Iraq lost its access to the Persian Gulf. Understandably, all Iraqi leaders struggled with a desire to regain its lost territory. In 1972 Baghdad nationalized the oil industry. One day before this was done, Nixon and Kissinger hatched a plot with the Shah of Iran to begin arming the Iraqi Kurds. The Kurds are being used by the cia to destabilize Saddam. Hence, Baghdad has employed Nixon-Kissinger type methods, including chemical warfare, copying the us example in Southeast Asia, against Kurd cia collaborators. This does not mean that Kurds, like everyone else, should be denied the right to have their own state and stop being refugees for ever. Listening to us Congressional representatives - or for that matter reading western commentators - calling Saddam a war criminal for his murderous policy toward the Kurd minority, equals the pot calling the kettle black.

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Saddam was caught in the cia noose. He invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Bob Woodward, in another book, The Commanders related, how Saddam, knowing that Washington could not be trusted, double-checked with us ambassador, April Glaspie (48), how her Government would react if Iraq was to march into Kuwait bringing order into chaos. Dick Cheney had said, that the us ‘would stick with its friends.’ What did it mean? ‘We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait,’ she replied.⁷⁰ us Army Chief, Colin Powell was relieved, when he saw Glaspie's cable, because he felt there was room for negotiation. But, the invisible government had an improved War Plan 1002-90 ready, and this was the moment to unleash the cia dogs. No negotiations: war!

Woodward reconstructed step by step with precision how George Bush formed his grand alliance to attack Baghdad with an international assemblage of armed forces totalling some 600.000 soldiers to destroy Saddam. The Arab turncoat, Hosni Mubarak, received 8 billion dollars in debts to the west to be written off in exchange for sending Egyptian cannon fodder to join the Bush grand assault on his Arab brothers in Iraq. November 29, 1990, the Security Council passed Resolution 678 authorizing military force to drive Iraq from Kuwait if Saddam had not left by January 15, 1991. In a last ditch effort to prevent war from breaking out Secretary-of-State, James Baker and his Iraqi counter-part Tariq Azis met January 9, 1991 in Geneva. Baker handed Azis a letter from father Bush, that Iraq was to be wiped out if Kuwait was not evacuated by Iraqi troops immediately. Azis refused to carry the letter to Baghdad and handed it back to Texas cowboy Baker.

January 17, 1991 the United-States & Co. began to bomb Iraq with some 2.000 planes daily, an air assault that was to last 42 days and had never been seen in the region before. There were the usual mishaps, like the one with the public shelter in Baghdad, when a us precision bomb accidentally scored a direct hit, by which some 1.500 civilians were killed. Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of President Lyndon Johnson was in Baghdad during the bombardments by his nation's pilots. He became so enraged, that he fired letters off to the Secretary-General of the un, Xavier Perez de Cuellar and to President Bush to limit the bombing of military targets and stop the mass killing of civilians. ‘The United Nations must not be an accessory to war crimes,’ he cautioned de un.

In his book, The Fire This Time Clark explained how he assisted in setting up a Commission of Inquiry for an International War Crimes Tribunal.⁷¹ He drafted 19 detailed preliminary charges of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the us Government, ‘all based on evidence already available as measured by international laws defining crimes against peace and war crimes. These laws included The Hague

70 Bob Woodward, The Commanders, Simon & Schuster, New-York, 1991, p.p. 212.

71 Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, Thunder Mouth's Press, New-York, 1992.

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and Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Charter.’ He continued, ‘This book shows how the us Constitution and the un Charter were violated, and describes the international laws defining war crimes. It analyses the American media's failure to adequately inform the American public and world public opinion: an essential element in understanding the tragedy and preventing its repetition. This failure made possible the celebration of a slaughter and reveals the helplessness of a world, however democratic, that is ignorant or misinformed, even when its life is at stake.’⁷²

Clark's eyewitness report said: ‘A careful look at American involvement in the region reveals that the us Government, and not Iraq, bears prime responsibility for the war, which was planned in Washington long before the first Iraqi soldier entered Kuwait. The us used the Kuwaiti royal family to provoke an Iraqi invasion that would justify a massive assault on Iraq to establish us dominion in the Gulf.’ Actually, it is incomprehensible, that while Washington has been playing the same dirty tricks over and over again, nations and leaders everywhere, can be for ever lured like meek sheep into the next cia trap, like organizing a coalition of peace loving nations attacking Kosovo 8 years later.

Bob Woodward drew similar conclusions as Clark following talks in Washington to the leading players of Operation Desert Storm. While Senator Sam Nunn of the Armed Services Committee still wanted to know from Bush Sr., Cheney and Powell if a war was in the vital interests of the United-States, these men had made up their minds to go ahead no matter what anybody said. Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, wondered aloud about the rush to go to war: ‘Every-one is so impatient,’ he said. There have been, no doubt, eyebrows raised around the world, when the same clique of jingoist troublemakers returned in one way or the other after the election stolen in 2000, that actually was won by Al Gore with no less than 600.000 popular ballots. Bush junior occupies the White House solely courtesy of a partisan and crooked decision by a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives. No-one dares to suggest, as yet, that the return of another Bush clan was engineered by the cia and the invisible government. Yet, few were really surprised at events during the Florida election. Americans have become accustomed to reprehensible conduct by those who lead their country. Neither is anybody going to be surprised if at some future date someone is going to spill the beans in Washington and divulge that Small George took over from Big George and kidnapped the White House from Al Gore in an undercover operation by the invisibles in order to open the palace gates once more to former Cold War militants and oil barons of Texas.

Woodward's reconstruction of White House decision-making to destroy the Kremlin's closest ally in the Middle East - as the Bush clan saw it - is a chilling tale bordering

72 Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, Thunder Mouth's Press, New-York, 1992, Preface XVII-XVIII.

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delusion and madness. For obvious reasons the cia raised alarm about Saddam's imaginary power, that he perhaps could march from Kuwait to the Saudi capital Riyadh, only 275 miles away. General Brent Scowcroft of the White House expressed the opinion, that Saddam had to be removed one way or the other and it had to be done by the cia in secret. We know what this could mean sending him the Mafia with poisoned cigars, deadly toothpaste, or god knows what else.

Bob Woodward discovered that father Bush had in the end ordered the cia to begin preparations for a covert operation to destabilize the Saddam regime. He wanted an all-out effort to strangle the Iraqi economy. Anti-Saddam resistance groups inside or outside Iraq should be given all the necessary assistance. The cia should start selecting leaders who could take over from Saddam. This reminds us of Fidel. Washington has been aiming to remove him one way or the other since 1960. Woodward quotes the senior Bush as having said in 1990, ‘If there ever was a case for covert action undertaken in the national interest, this is it.’ He asked Cheney, Powell and Schwarzkopf to come to Camp David to discuss the military options to topple Saddam.⁷³ One reads these lines as a European and wonders whether Americans have gone collectively crazy, that they no longer realize, that such thinking and behaviour of their President is clearly of a criminal nature and to most people in the world totally unacceptable. Who empowered the White House to behave as a global public prosecutor?

Judge Clark's Chapter III dealt with war crimes against Iraq's civilian population and is a sickening shocker. There were 109.000 overflights in 42 days unloading 88.500 tons of explosives. ‘The bombing of Iraq's cities and infrastructure had nothing to do with driving Iraq from Kuwait. It was intended to cripple a developing Third World country that was a politically independent military power in the region,’ he wrote.⁷⁴ He discovered, that in July 1990, prior to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, ‘war games at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina identified 27 strategic sites in Iraq, projecting Baghdad as an aggressor. On August 7, five days after the invasion of Kuwait this number was enlarged to 57 and after that to 87 strategic targets inside Iraq to be destroyed.’

In July another possible ‘war game’ against Iraq was conducted at the Naval War College. The question: how to respond to an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Three realistic options were discussed:

1	to assassinate Saddam.
2	punitive raids on vital targets as refineries, pipelines and power lines and
3	bringing in ground troops with air support to the Arabian peninsula.

Clark: ‘ln reality each option was pursued.’ The us Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Dugan added to re-

73 Bob Woodward, The Commanders, Simon & Schuster, New-York, 1991, p.p. 238.

74 Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, Thunder Mouth's Press, New-York, 1992, p.p. 59.

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porters, that one ultimate aim would be down-town Bagdad. Hermann Göring reasoned the same way when he bombed the heart of the city of Rotterdam in 1940 to force Holland to surrender to Nazi Germany. General Dugan added: ‘If I want to hurt you, it would be at home, not out in the woods some place.’ This was too close to the truth even for then Secretary of Defence, Dick Cheney, who fired the general. Ramsey Clark explained, that Bush had stressed, that the us build-up in Saudi-Arabia had been of a defensive nature, while Dugan's statements betrayed us plans, that Washington was not only planning an offensive war, but was to target civilians.

Noam Chomsky has analysed article 51 of the un Charter, which states that individual or collective self-defence against armed attack is permissible in the case of armed attack until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Washington had over the years developed the unalterable position that national interests of the us preclude the acceptance of any external constraints, which in practice means, we do as we please, un or no un. That was the attitude with which Hitler and Mussolini brought down the earlier League of Nations in Geneva as an effective instrument of international law and order. The un Charter was designed to subordinate the national interests to global interests. The problem the world is faced with at the start of the 21ste century is, that there is momentarily only one all powerful super-state that behaves as Super Rogue Power, because it ranks global interests secondary to its national interests and is totally convinced it has the right to behave that way, in spite of the Charter of the un or any other international treaties.

When Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the un travelled in 1998 to Baghdad to try to mediate the us-Iraq military impasse Mrs. Madeleine Albright bluntly said, she wished him well, ‘and when he comes back we will see what he has brought and how it fits our national interest.’⁷⁵ In Albrights words, Washington ‘will act multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.’ Fascist reasoning has been polluting the minds of the visible and invisible decision-makers in Washington for a long time. Globalisation will never ever become a reality, if the most powerful economy in the world continues to be ruled by gangsters and rogue elements, who refuse to abide by principles of international law and instead follow vigilante tactics backed up by a universal fear for intercontinental missiles with multiple nuclear warheads.

75 Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, The Rule of Force in World Affairs, Southern Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000. p.p, 12-33.