|
May 10, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Snitch Envy: Hitchens, Brock and
Whitaker Chambers
John Jonik
Tobacco
and Teens: Criminalizing the Victiims
Vijay Prashad
Fettered Histories:
Tariq Ali and Ahmed Rashid
on Islam
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Analyst Details
The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United States
Omar Barghouti
Israel's Best Interest
May 9, 2002
Alex Lynch
American
Mainstream Media:
Institutionalized Subjectivity
Alexander Cockburn
The Armey Plan:
Palestine to Ft. Worth?
May 8, 2002
James
Masterson
Hysteria
and Panic
About France
Robert Fisk
The Solution to this Filthy War: Foreign
Occupation
Edward
Hammond
and Jan van Aken
Pentagon
Pushed for Offensive BioWeapons Development
David Vest
From Ground Zero to the Bronx
May 7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Bone
Apart:
The Graveyard of Napoleon's Defeated Army
Philip
Farruggio
Muffler
Shop Medicine
Norman
Madarasz
French
Elections:
Pandora's Ballot
Tom Turnipseed
A Travesty of Justice
May 6, 2002
Fran Schor
Invasion
of Iraq:
Coming Soon
Dave Marsh
Love Hurts
John Chuckman
The
Paradoxes of Israel
Rep. Ron Paul
End Corporate Welfare, Pull
the Plug on the Ex-Im Bank
Hussein
Ibish
Devastation
Only Feeds Resistance to Israeli Rule
May 5, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
High and Dry in the Mojave
May 4, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Sharon
the Merciless
and Arafat the Corrupt
Sam Bahour
New United States of Israel
Alexander
Cockburn
Extreme
Solutions:
Priests and Palestinians
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!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
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
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
May
11, 2002
Bombing Iraq:
The
Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign from Turkey & Kuwait
by Patrick Cockburn
The long snouts of anti-aircraft guns are again
protruding from the tops of tall buildings in Iraq. Tank units
have been deployed around oilfields. Special committees drawn
from local leaders of the army, security forces and the ruling
Baath party will try to ensure that any rebellion is quickly
crushed. President Saddam Hussein himself has told people to
store food in case of a new American air war as prolonged as
that of 1991.
President Saddam says that war with the
US will come, but he knows that it is likely to be delayed until
next year. Washington is no longer in quite the confident mood
that it was after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan in
December.
The differences between the situations
in Kabul and Baghdad have become more apparent in the past few
months. Britain, hitherto America's sole ally in its bid to overthrow
President Saddam, is becoming increasingly nervous of the political
opposition at home to military adventures with the US against
Iraq.
Above all, Ariel Sharon's bloody invasion
of Palestinian cities on the West Bank has made it more difficult
for the US to recreate the alliance that drove the Iraqi army
out of Kuwait more than a decade ago.
"Saddam knows that Washington does
not have the appetite for a war this year," said one Iraqi
source.
It is a very different situation from
the Gulf War. Then the alliance against President Saddam was
surprisingly easy to create. The Arab states were terrified by
his conquest of Kuwait. The rest of the world was never going
to let Iraq become the dominant power in the Gulf. The problem
seemed to be overcoming the military strength of the Iraqi army,
tested by eight long years of war with Iran.
Today nobody doubts that the Iraqi army
is a shadow of its former self. Aside from its losses in the
Gulf War, it has not been able to import tanks and other heavy
equipment. But politically it is a far harder task now to create
an alliance with the aim of overthrowing the Iraqi leader than
it was 12 years ago.
Then, the purpose of the US-led coalition
was to restore the status quo by evicting Iraq from Kuwait. It
was a conservative war. What Washington intends today is far
more radical. It is in fact the first attempt to replace a government
by armed force in the Middle East since President Saddam took
the disastrous decision to send his troops across the Kuwaiti
border.
Baghdad will do its best to ensure that
it does not provide the US administration with a pretext for
war. It has softened its line over the return of UN weapons inspectors,
who left in December 1998 just before the US and Britain last
bombed Iraq. In talks with Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general,
in New York last week, Iraqi officials were notably conciliatory.
Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, did not rule out the
return of the inspectors but wanted other issues, such as the
no-fly zones and sanctions, to be discussed.
It is all very frustrating for militant
members of the US administration, such as Vice-President Dick
Cheney and the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who would
like to overthrow President Saddam immediately. They do not want
to become caught up in a diplomatic minuet in which they have
to dance to the same tune as the UN.
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary
of defence and an impatient hawk, even instructed the CIA to
investigate Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat who is the chief
UN arms inspector. Mr Wolfowitz was visibly enraged when the
CIA came back with nothing that would have discredited Mr Blix
and, by extension, the UN weapons inspection team.
These diplomatic manoeuvres are important
because the US task is far more difficult than it was in Afghanistan.
It needs to be able to launch not only a prolonged air offensive
but to build up an army estimated to number between 70,000 and
250,000 troops. In Afghanistan, the Taliban was overthrown by
the opposition Northern Alliance, US air strikes and the defection
of many commanders. The Taliban was also gravely weakened by
the withdrawal of Pakistani and Saudi Arabian support.
The situation is different in Iraq. It
has a powerful centralised state. Only the Kurds, controlling
the three northern provinces of Iraq, would be able to play the
role of the Northern Alliance. Betrayed by the US twice in the
past, in 1975 and again in 1991, the Kurds will not want to go
to war against Baghdad unless there is a US army in place to
protect them.
There are two other ways of removing
Saddam Hussein, but Washington has concluded that neither is
likely to work effectively. It could, as it often has in the
past, hope that a coup led by by dissident army officers in Baghdad
will remove the Iraqi leader. But President Saddam has shown
that he is a master at detecting and eliminating such plots,
with horrific consequences for those involved.
A further option might be to build a
guerrilla army, supported by US air power and special forces.
Something like this worked in southern Afghanistan, but President
Saddam is likely to counter-attack more effectively than the
Taliban.
Washington is shifting towards the idea
of a ground invasion, with an army based in Kuwait and Turkey.
An attack would be preceded by a prolonged bombardment by bombs
and missiles. The Iraqi army is still strong enough to fight
the Kurdish or Iraqi guerrillas, but it is even less capable
of stopping the US army than it was in 1991. Even confirmed fence-sitters
such as the Kurds do not want to be marginalised by failing to
join an American effort to get rid of President Saddam which
succeeds.
It is becoming increasingly difficult
for President George Bush to walk away from his militant rhetoric
about toppling President Saddam. If he does not overthrow the
Iraqi leader then his failure will damage him in the next presidential
election. But already Mr Bush is discovering how much more complicated
it is to change a government in Baghdad than it was in Kabul.
|