|
CounterPunch
December
4, 2002
Being Set Up
for a War on Iraq
The
Inspections Are Going Smoothly. What Does Bush Say? "The
Signs Are Not Encouraging"
by ROBERT FISK
In North Carolina last month, a woman attending
a lecture I was giving asked me when America would go to war
in Iraq. I told her to watch the front page of The New York Times
and The Washington Post for the first smear campaigns against
the UN inspectors. And bingo, right on time, the smears have
begun.
One of the UN inspectors, it's now stated--a
man appointed at the behest of the State Department--is involved
with pornography. Another senior official, we're now told--again
appointed at the urging of the State Department--was previously
fired from his job as head of a nuclear safety agency. Why, I
wonder, did the Americans want these men on the inspection team?
So they could trash it later?
Actually, the official drubbing of the
UN inspectors began way back in September when The New York Times
announced, over Judith Miller's by-line, that the original inspections
team may be on a "mission impossible". The source was
"some officials (sic) and former inspectors". Now President
George Bush is banging on again about the Iraqi anti-aircraft
defences firing at American and British pilots--even though  the no-fly zones have nothing to
do with the UN inspections nor, indeed, anything to do with the
UN at all. The inspections appear to be going unhindered in Baghdad.
And what does George Bush tell us? "So far the signs are
not encouraging."
What does this mean? Simply that America
plans to go to war whatever the UN inspectors find. The New York
Times--which is now little more than a mouthpiece for scores
of anonymous US "officials"--has persuaded itself that
Iraq's Arab neighbours "seem prepared to support an American
military campaign". Despite all the warnings from Arab leaders,
repeated over and over again, month after month, urging America
not to go to war, this is the kind of nonsense being peddled
in the United States.
And now the British government has come
up with another of its famous "dossiers"on Saddam's
human rights abuses. Yes, again, we all know how vicious Saddam
is. We knew about his raping rooms and his executions and his
torture when we eagerly supported his invasion of Iran in 1980.
So why is it being regurgitated all over again?
Just take one little point in the latest
British "dossier". It reveals that a certain Aziz Saleh
Ahmed, a "fighter in the popular army", held a position
as "violator of women's honour". Now I happen to remember
that name. Was this not the same Aziz Saleh Ahmed who turned
up on page 287 of a book published back in 1993 by Kanan Makiya,
who formerly called himself Samir al-Khalil? Why, indeed it was.
Aziz Saleh Ahmed is listed as a "fighter in the popular
army" and--you've guessed it--"violator of women's
honour".
There was a controversy about the translation
back at the time, but I've no doubt that there are raping rooms
in Saddam's Iraq. I went inside one in the northern city of Dohuk
in 1991, women's underclothes still lying on the floor. But the
point is, what are we doing rehashing the Aziz Saleh Ahmad story
all over again as if we've just discovered it when it's at least
eight years old and--according to Makiya--was first seen more
than a decade ago?
And yet again, the Americans are trying
to establish links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein
in a desperate attempt to hitch the "war on terror"
to the war for oil (which is what, of course, the Iraqi "crisis"
is all about). Vice President Cheney has been parroting all the
same nonsense about "terror" leaders and Saddam, even
though Bin Laden loathes the Iraqi leader. No one--absolutely
no one--has produced the slightest evidence that Saddam had anything
to do with the international crimes against humanity of 11 September.
But still we are forced to listen to this trash.
Before Christmas or afterwards? I don't
know. I do believe that the US 1st Infantry Division will cross
the Tigris bridges into Baghdad within one week of an invasion.
The first photos will show Iraqis making V for victory signs
at the American tanks. The second batch of pictures will show
Baath party members strung up from lamp-posts by the population
they have suppressed for so many years.
We will presumably use depleted uranium
munitions against Iraqi armour--the same depleted uranium that
was used 11 years ago in the deserts of southern Iraq, where
children are now ravaged by strange and unexplained cancers.
And we will not--repeat this one hundred times--we will not mention
oil.
The most the Iraqi army will do in response
to an invasion--always assuming they don't have nuclear or chemical
weapons--will be to score a stray hit on a Stealth bomber. Who,
it is worth asking, knows the name today of Sgt Zoltan Bercik,
the Yugoslav Hungarian from Vojvodina who single-handedly fired
a liquid-fuelled Neva missile at an American Stealth bomber over
Serbia on 27 March 1999? The only man to bring down a Stealth--and
still his name remains unpublished, his story unknown. But that's
remembering another war in which the cause of the conflict--the
ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Albanians--subtly changed shape
once the war had begun and the ethnic cleansing was under way.
In the meantime, Mr Bush's foreign policy
advisers are busy hatching up the conflict of civilisations.
Take Kenneth Adelman, who is on the Pentagon's Defence Policy
Board. He's been saying that for Mr Bush to call Islam a peaceful
religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make".
Islam is "militaristic" in the eyes of Mr Adelman.
"After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a
peace advocate like Jesus."
Then there's Eliot Cohen of the Johns
Hopkins School of International Studies, who is also on the Pentagon
board. He now argues that the "enemy" of the United
States is not terrorism but "militant Islam". Mr Adelman
and Mr Cohen have not vouchsafed their own religion, but Islam
is clearly being targeted.
Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster--who
used to run a vile radio station in southern Lebanon which uttered
threats against Muslim villagers and UN troops--says that "Adolf
Hitler was bad but what the Muslims want to do to Jews is worse."
Jerry Falwell, one of the nasties of the religious right, called
the Prophet a "terrorist", while Franklin Graham, son
of the same Billy Graham who made those anti-Semitic remarks
on the Nixon tapes, has called Islam "evil". And Graham,
remember, spoke at Bush's inauguration.
We ignore all this dangerous rhetoric
at our peril. Does Mr Blair ignore it? Isn't he aware that there
are some very sinister people hovering around George Bush? Does
he really think Britons are going to be cheer-led into war by
"dossiers" and the constant reheating of Saddam's crimes?
Don't we want the UN inspectors to do their work?
No, I rather think that we are being
set up for war, that Britain will join America in invading Iraq,
whatever the inspectors discover. In fact, we are being prepared
for the awful, incredible, unspeakable possibility that the UN
inspectors will find absolutely no weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq. That will leave us with only one conclusion: they were
no good at their job. They should have been in the oil business.
Yesterday's
Features
Gary Leupp
The Arrest
of General Khazraji
Are the Chickenhawks Crowing?
Sam Bahour
Palestinian
Children of the Night
Saul Landau
The Iraq
Ploy and Resemblances to the Start of the Cold War
Michael Shehadeh
The
Latest War on Terrorism:
a brief History
Edward Said
Misinformation
About Iraq
Sara Cifuentes Ortiz
Life as a Trade Unionist in Colombia
Linda Heard
In Defense of a Princess
William Hughes
You're Ariel Sharon and Life is Good
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
December 1,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal
Gabriel Kolko
Another
Century of War?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes & Lies: The Attack on the Liberty Revisited
Steve Perry
Spank
the Democrats
M. Shahid
Alam
A Predatory
Orientalism
Kurt Nimmo
The Murder
of Iain Hook
Ali Abunimah
Death
& Lies in Palestine
Anthony Gancarski
The
Return of Al Gore?
Joanne Mariner
In Defense
of the Filibuster
Ahmad Faruqui
The Apocalyptic
Vision of the Neo-Con Ideologues
Dave Marsh
Eminem's
Body & Soul
David Vest
On the Lam
from Uncle Sam
Julian Samuel
Bowling
for Columbine
Adam Engel
Piss Off,
NSA!
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Grassroots
Challenge to Iran's Theocracy
Wayne Saunders
This
Mad, Limitless War
Dan Brook
Celebrate
Genocide!
Uri Avnery
"Likud
Has Failed"
Philip Farruggio
Turkeys
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|