http://atimes.com/front/DC14Aa05.html
IT'S WASHINGTON VS THE UNITED STATE OF IRAQ
by Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 14th March
PARIS - A top Iraqi diplomat in Europe, recently arrived from Baghdad,
assures Asia Times Online that the whole Iraqi population will rally behind
Saddam Hussein if and when the country is attacked by the United States.
This means, obviously, a new attack under the Bush "Axis of Evil" doctrine
because Iraq is still being regularly bombed by US and British planes. These
bombings - unlike those in Afghanistan - have simply vanished from the world
media. Nobody knows who or what is being bombed, or who and where are the
victims.
Iraq is subjected to a crippling embargo and UN sanctions (to be reviewed
and possibly extended next May), and it has fallen victim to a humanitarian
crisis that is largely forgotten by the international community. But the
diplomat talks about a population that has refused to surrender, has found
ways to dilute the terrible effects of the embargo and sanctions, and is not
dying of hunger.
While Ariel Sharon's tanks occupy Ramallah and reduce to dust any possible
success of US special envoy Anthony Zinni's mission in the Middle East, Vice
President Dick Cheney has in fact already secured Tony Blair's support in
London for an attack against Iraq. Blair - refered to privately as "lapdog
Tony" by cynical analysts - is extremely embarrassed to be the only European
leader to be put in such a position by the Americans.
Intellectuals of the Iraqi diaspora offer a very plausible explanation for
the boundless Anglo American hatred. It inevitably has to do with oil. The
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created in Baghdad
in 1960. The first secretary general was an Iraqi. The great Iraqi ambitions
in the '60s were independence and economic development. To really achieve
these goals, the country had to have full access to its main source of
income.
When the Baath Party took power in 1968, its main thrust was to provide Iraq
with the technical, managerial and human resources to accomplish a full
process of the nationalization of the oil industry. This mission was to be
carried out by the party's number two, none other than Saddam Hussein. Years
later, Saddam said that nobody believed in it. But in 1972, Iraq was an oil
power - and 100 percent independent from the Western oil cartel.
Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world. The US will never
forgive Iraq for providing the example, and then leading OPEC in its 1973
dismantling of Western control of the world's oil at the time. In doing so,
OPEC destroyed the absolutely essential axis of American strategic control.
And Britain will never forgive the Baath Party for ending more than half a
century of British dominance in the region, and on top of that, opening the
doors of Iraq and the Gulf to France in the form of contracts with Elf-Iraq,
established in 1974.
Since December 1998, Iraq has refused to allow UN inspections related to its
supposed arsenal of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons. The US
assumes - with no proof - that Iraq is dissimulating a vast modernization
program of its military arsenal. The UN was insisting in 1998 that Iraq had
at least 6,000 chemical weapons in stock. Iraqi sources reiterate that these
do not exist, and that under the surveillance of the American intelligence
apparatus the country has absolutely no way of rebuilding its nuclear
capacity.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, is considering all options for an
attack on
Iraq, from internal rebellion to nuclear bombing. Ahmed Chalabi, the main
leader of the Iraqi National Congress - the opposition in exile - is still
making waves at the Pentagon, even though he is now banned by the CIA.
Chalabi's old Republican pals are none other than ultra-hawks Donald
Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, numbers one and two at the Pentagon. Chalabi's
latest political concoction is the building of an enclave in Nassiriya,
southern Iraq, which would be a starting point for a Shi'ite rebellion
against Baghdad. The Pentagon is apparently considering this latest plan as
a viable option: it would be, in the minds of the ultra-hawks, an equivalent
of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban in Kabul.
But, even after the coining of the "Axis of Evil", close cooperation between
the US and Islamist Iraqi Shi'ites seems far-fetched. According to Hamid
al-Bayati, a representative of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, a Tehran-based organization, "it's unacceptable to put
Iran and Iraq in the same bag".
The Iraqi opposition - a myriad of groups with clashing agendas - is
actually in shambles, the realm of gangsters only interested in personal
profit. It desperately needs a unifying leader. There is only one possible
candidate: Najib al-Salhi, a former general of the Republican Guard, Saddam
Hussein's elite corps.
Al-Salhi has been in exile since 1995, first in Jordan and then in the US.
He actually leads a movement of so-called "free" officers, and claims to
still have very good connections inside the Iraqi army. He is not in favor
of a coup in Iraq, but is in favor of what could be described as a popular
and military rebellion staged simultaneously with American intervention.
>From his comfortable position in exile, he believes the Iraqi population
would rally behind the Americans.
But the top Iraqi diplomat, recently arrived from Baghdad, says it's a
matter of national unity: if Iraq is attacked, no one would even imaginebeing a traitor by being in cahoots with the aggressor.
=================================================================
To Post a message on the CANESI list, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage
