Between Iraq
and a Hard Place
by Elizabeth Handley
What's an unelected president to do? With our country turning away from
the hyped-up, smoke-and-mirrors "war on terror" and toward the
realization that corporate greed, dishonesty, and hypocrisy have made a
shambles of our economy, it sounds like a good time to invade Iraq.
The Bush administration has been shameless in using the "war" to distract
Americans from taking a critical look at how the nation is being led off
a cliff
by a group of men who have shredded the Constitution and bled our economy
dry for the benefit of themselves and their wealthy backers. The
dollar and
euro are now just about equal in value and soon, in the words of Dennis
Miller,
the dollar will be the peso's bitch. The deeper the economy sinks
into recession
or worse, the more likely the Bush administration will resort to war to
distract
Americans from the spreading domestic chaos.
Bush has fueled the hatred for the U.S. by intensifying its arrogant and
unilateral
international policies with direct cause-and-effect relationships between
this hatred
and terrorism. The Bush administration refuses to examine the possibility
that
changing certain U.S. foreign policies might allay this hatred to some
degree and
reduce the likelihood of future terrorism against the US. These policies
include the
U.S.'s drive to dominate the world, support for "regime changes,"
and the extremely
controversial issue of total U.S. support for Israel against Palestine.
Iraq violated U.N. resolutions in 1998 by ousting weapons inspectors, but
other nations,
including Israel, have violated U.N. restrictions and we have not tried
to oust their leaders.
Ironically, the U.S. itself has refused to accept weapons inspectors from
countries it
considers hostile. Bush could always implement Article 14 of the
Security Council
Resolution 687 (passed in April 1991) that calls for removing weapons from
this region
including the Zionist state (Israel). The goal of this was to establish
the Middle East a
zone free from weapons of mass destruction, and the objective of a global
ban on
chemical weapons.
Bush's arrogant posturing and hostile language has fueled a growing rage
in the Arab
world such as Jordan and Egypt, straining Saudi-U.S. relations. We already
have military
forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Georgia
and the
Philippines. We are deeply into Colombia as part of the drug war,
and have fairly regular
deployment by special ops in Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Saudi
Arabia,
Turkey, Jordan aren't interested in helping the U.S. "sort out Saddam."
Theodore Roosevelt's famous line "speak softly but carry a big stick"
has been perverted
to Bush's version of "strike first, talk loudly and get in everyone's face."
When Bush states
his aggressive intentions so glibly, why are Americans so acquiescent?
Has Congress forgotten
that it has the constitutional prerogative to declare war? Are lawmakers
simply to genuflect?
Bush made a tactical error from the onset when he ignored the painstaking
peacemaking efforts
of his predecessor, turning attention to the Middle East only after the
tragedy of Sept. 11.
With its admission that an alleged link between Saddam and the Sept. 11
attacks doesn't exist,
the Bush administration has lost its most compelling argument for invading
Iraq. In the end,
the case for Saddam as a supervillian and the next target of Bush's "war
on terror" hung on a
slim thread: an alleged meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohamed Atta
and an Iraqi diplomat.
That thread has snapped as the FBI and CIA now state no such meeting occurred.
Bush blamed Iraq, and Rumsfeld went before NATO demanding they support
an invasion of Iraq.
But on questioning America's basis for this war, Rumsfeld absolutely refused
to answer and instead
offered, "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
Huh? One thing is certain and
that is if the White House had any "secret" evidence, war with Iraq would
be a fait accompli.
The Sept. 11 hijackers were not from Iraq nor did the money trail lead
to Baghdad. Instead
investigators found a cash highway emerging from wealthy fundamentalists
of Saudi Arabia,
a nation that produced 15 of the hijackers and bin Laden himself.
To Bush Sr.'s embarrassment,
Saddam survived in office longer than he did, and now the son is hell-bent
on ousting Saddam as
the centerpiece of his otherwise undefined foreign policy. Bush's
increasing hostility toward Iraq
seems to be driven more by the failures of the Afghan campaign than by
any threat coming from
Saddam. Can't find bin Laden? Bomb Saddam!
Scott Ritter, a 12-year Marine Corps veteran, former UN weapons inspector
in Iraq, and a card-carrying
Republican who voted for Bush states the impending war on Iraq is based
on speculation and rhetoric,
entirely devoid of fact, but does have everything to do with the mid-October
scheduling of this conflict
and the midterm Congressional elections to follow a few weeks later.
Ritter spent seven years in Iraq
with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams and states unequivocally that
they had successfully
stripped Iraq of 90-95% of their weapons of mass destruction and that the
ravages of the Gulf War
accounted for a great deal of the missing 5-10%.
IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reported Iraq has "fully cooperated"
with the routine
annual inspections since 1991.
Pentagon officials say a projected death rate of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S.
soldiers is "acceptable."
The arrogance of such chilling scenarios is further compounded by the lack
of estimates of the number
of "acceptable" Iraqi deaths. The U.S. sanctions against Iraq, according
to UNICEF and other
humanitarian organizations, are killing 5,000 children monthly (well over
700,000 to date). Dennis Halliday,
former UN oil-for-food coordinator said in his resignation speech 9/30/98,
"We are in the process of
destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as
that. It is illegal and immoral."
His successor, Hans von Sponeck, who also resigned because of the effects
of the sanctions denounced
U.S. claims that Iraq is mismanaging the resources acquired through the
oil-for-food program.
More Bush lies.
France, Russia and China, three of the five permanent members of the U.N.
Security Council, are calling
for an end to the sanctions. Regrettably the U.S. and Britain, also
permanent members, hold veto power
over any such proposal. Meanwhile, U.S. and British planes have flown
over 200,000 sorties over Iraq
since the end of 1991. This "forgotten air war" has continued at
the cost of $2 billion yearly.
An Iraqi invasion comes down to opportunistic politics and a decade of
hard anti-Saddam rhetoric that has
boxed the Bush administration into a rhetorical corner. Bush Sr.
and Clinton realized that Saddam remains
virtually coup-proof. In 1998, the Republican-controlled Congress
(you know, the same Republican Congress
that blocked all of President Clinton's and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt's
efforts to reign in corporate
fraud, the same Republican Congress that was successfully lobbied by the
current SEC Chairman Harvey
Pitt to deregulate and turn a blind eye., and the same Republican Congress
that just passed a resolution
making it more difficult for people to file for bankruptcy even though
Enron, WorldCom, etc. have stolen
their jobs, 401s and pensions) passed the Iraqi Liberation Act demanding
the removal of Saddam.
The removal of Saddam became a plank for the GOP in the 2000 election.
But once installed in the
White House, Bush came to realize what his father and Clinton already knew,
tough talk was easy
but removing Saddam from power was not. .
Iraq has the second largest oil reserves on earth and the U.S. buys some
68% of all the oil produced
in Iraq. The INC - the Iraqi National Congress - supports this baseless
conflict and has intimated that
should the U.S. invade and put them in power, the U.S. will have all the
oil we want. And sadly there
are many petroleum-addicted people in government and business who would
shed innocent blood for
this opportunity.
Of note, although Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said he has imposed no press
restrictions on the
impending war with Iraq, Pentagon sources have said that while the secret
war plans have been drawn up,
they don't include any provision for taking reporters along allowing them
to cover the action. According to
CNN's Jamie McIntyre, "They plan to fight the war and then tell the press
and public how it turned out."
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Joseph Biden (D) says Congress
would support Bush
in a first-strike policy against Iraq if there is a "clear and present
danger and the president can make the
case that we're about to be attacked." But, Biden added, "to the
best of my knowledge, there is no
evidence to suggest that there is a plan to attack the United States."
Bush might have more luck saying his father left his wallet in Baghdad
and he just wants to dash in
with 10,000 troops to get it. Or perhaps that Iraq has been chosen
as the site for the 2004 Republican
National Convention and he needs to send in a "scouting party."
And for anyone interested in placing a wager, check out the Dubya Invasion
Pool at www.dimfuture.net.
Their premise is that it's probable Bush is going to use military force
in a poorly-thought-out manner most
likely as a "naked ploy to raise his approval rating." Fifty bucks
says he hits Iraq when his numbers hit 56.