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CounterPunch
March 6,
2003
Pappy Bush's 1996 Warning:
"War on
Iraq Would Turn Entire Arab World Against Us"
By JASON LEOPOLD
Former President George Bush predicted in 1996
that if the United States were to engage in another war with
Iraq, one aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the "entire
Arab world would turn against us" and the U.S. would alienate
its allies in the international community.
"To occupy Iraq would instantly
shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us,
and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero," Bush
said in an interview with the BBC marking the five-year anniversary
of the Gulf War.
Moreover, Vice President Dick Cheney
said at an energy conference six years ago that hundreds of thousands
of United States soldiers and Iraqi civilians would die if a
war in Iraq were ever fought on the streets of Baghdad.
"To have brought the (Gulf) war
into the populous Iraqi capital of Baghdad where Hussein is based
would have involved a different type of military operation than
in the desert, and would have put large numbers of Iraqi civilians
and hundreds of thousands of our troops at risk of being killed,"
he said.
Cheney, the former chairman and chief
executive of oil conglomerate Halliburton Co. and former defense
secretary under the first President Bush, was referring to the
1991 Gulf War when the U.S. liberated Kuwait. Cheney also said
in 1997 that if the U.S. were to engage in another war with Iraq
and try to remove Saddam Hussein from power the international
coalition "would come apart," a situation currently
in the making as U.S. relations with France, Germany and Russia
are becoming increasingly strained because our allies will not
back a U.S. led coalition to attack Iraq.
Despite the dire warnings Bush Sr. and
Cheney made six years ago, the current Bush Administration appears
to be on course to launch a full-scale war with Iraq, one that
appears to be more about finding Saddam Hussein and assassinating
the Iraqi President than destroying any weapons of mass destruction
that may or may no be hidden somewhere in the country.
Until that goal is achieved, the U.S.
and the rest of the world will never be safe or at peace; statements
made repeatedly by Republican hawks since the end of the first
Gulf War.
"Unless we can take out Saddam Hussein,
we are going to have to live with Saddam Hussein (for a long
time)," said James Schlesinger, former defense secretary
under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, at a conference
in 1998. Schlesinger noted however that the countries of the
region "don't want us to attack Iraq."
"We keep getting waved off,"
he said.
If the U.S. decides to attack Iraq this
time around urban warfare appears to be inevitable, according
to news reports that quoted senior defense officials.
Cheney said in 1997 that President Bush
was not willing to sacrifice U.S. soldiers' lives by allowing
combat to spread to Baghdad in an effort to locate Saddam Hussein,
a situation which the current Bush Administration seems willing
to do now.
"From the standpoint of the president,
the question was how many additional (U.S.) lives is Saddam Hussein
worth? And his answer was, `Not very many,' " Cheney said.
Cheney said six years ago that capturing
the Iraqi president would be very difficult and would likely
involve a large number of civilian casualties.
"The only way to make certain you
could get him was to go occupy all of Iraq and start sorting
through Iraqis until you find Saddam Hussein," Cheney said
in 1997.
If the U.S. does invade Iraq, the Bush
Administration said the war won't last more than two months and
will not involve a large number of U.S. or civilian casualties.
But Secretary of State Colin Powell warned
President Bush last year that if the U.S. starts a war in Iraq
without the support of a majority of our allies in the international
community, which is the case now, it would be "much more
complicated and bloody" than the first Gulf War.
Jason Leopold
can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
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