as an opener on discussing what the nation and wolrd face:
t r u t h o u t | Perspective Thursday, 10 October, 2002
By William Rivers Pitt
The sun may well rise tomorrow and find this article irrelevant. The Congressional
decision train, bound for Bush's war on Iraq, very well may have already left the
station. A goodly number of Democrats, and virtually every Republican in the House
and Senate appear to have made up their minds on the matter, well in advance of the
expected Thursday night vote to approve or alter Bush's resolution for war. Still,
it is important for this information to be known.
For the record: There is no case for war in Iraq. There is no proof whatsoever that
Saddam Hussein poses a threat to America or his neighbors. The marvelously absurd
Catch-22 we have heard so often is that Hussein is a mortal threat, and yet will be
a pushover in battle. There is no proof that Hussein retains any functional aspect
of the chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs that were totally dismantled
and destroyed by the UNSCOM weapons inspectors from 1991 through 1998. Repeated
attempts by the United Nations to reinsert more inspectors have been spurned by the
Bush administration in favor of combat.
Back in 1991, when Hussein had vast stockpiles of these weapons, he did not use
them when American forces were bulldozing through his country. When he fired SCUD
missiles into Israel, there was no mustard gas or other chemical agent attached to
the nose comes, and there could very well have been.
The only time Saddam Hussein has used these weapons was during the 1980s,
while in the paid employ of the American government under Reagan, which gave him
most of the stuff in the first place. Should an American army arrive in downtown
Baghdad, however, and should the dire rhetorical salvos of the
Bush administration prove correct, American solders may come face to face with
botulinin toxin. You can put Israel on the firing line right next to G.I. Joe.
The irony is rich, wretched and deadly: Hussein only used these weapons when he was
a vassal of America, after receiving these weapons from America, never against
Americans, and may only actually use them against America - in the rare chance he
still possesses them - if we invade.
The idea that Hussein has connections to al Qaeda terrorists is laughable; Hussein
is a secular dictator who has crushed Islamic fundamentalism for 30 years. Bin Laden
and al Qaeda despise him and want him dead. Hussein would sooner stick his face into
a running chainsaw as give weapons of any kind to al Qaeda, because the end result
of either action would be the same.
The concept of bringing democracy to Iraq through war, proffered by the Bush
administration, is a joke. Democracy in the western sense means majority rule, and
the majority in Iraq is comprised of Shiite Muslims who are ideologically and
theocratically aligned with the extremist mullahs in Iran. The rest of the Iraqi
population is comprised of Kurds, who will not be allowed to rule Iraq or anything
else because of Turkey, and by the Sunnis, from whose vicious tribal politics came
Saddam Hussein.
Democracy in Iraq is a concept that terrifies our allies in the region, most
notably Saudi Arabia. Given the fact that the House of Saud appears to have great
management control over the House of Bush, it is profoundly unlikely that anything
resembling democracy will ever come to exist in Iraq through this loomingprocess.
Whomever rules there after the 'regime change' will be as bad as Hussein, or worse.
Bush's resolution speaks of making war on the "region," not just Iraq, thus giving
him legal cover for total war upon the entire Middle East. This is the passionate
dream of the extremist neo-conservative hawks within the Bush administration who are
actually running American foreign policy and the War on Terror:
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
The resolution for war as it now stands is nothing more or less than a legal
blessing to extend eternal war across the planet. George W. Bush is not running this
government, and this war is not just about Iraq. It is about oil, and it is about
power. Nowhere in this is anything having to do with the protection and
well-being of American citizens. Should we attack Iraq with the purpose of
removing Saddam Hussein, there will be no easy repeat of the Gulf War. American
troops will face house-to-house combat in the streets of Baghdad, a city of five
million people.
One former combat general interviewed on a cable news station predicted the
possibility of American casualties amounting to a battalion a day. In order to
prosecute this urban war, Baghdad will have to be 'reduced' via aerial bombardment
and artillery, which is likely to cause tens of thousands of civilian
deaths.
The resulting outrage - termed the 'Al Jazeera effect' after the Arabic news station
that will broadcast the shattered bodies of Iraqi civilians all across the Middle
East - will spawn new and more horrible terrorist attacks on our shores.
Last, but not least, it is painfully obvious to any clear-headed person that the
Bush administration has pushed this war to remove Enron, Harken, Halliburton, Arthur
Andersen and the woeful state of our economy and the stock market off the front
pages and out of TV news rotation.
Andrew Card, the White House Chief of Staff, looks at his President in terms of
marketing. In fact, he was quoted last August as saying that the administration
would not bring up war against Iraq at that point, because August is a bad time to
introduce new products.
No one can deny that this Iraq issue was sprung as a trap to snare Congressional
Democrats, and their followers, in an enraged tailspin that would serve to blast the
terrible economic news out of mainstream view. The fact that this political trap is
matched by a very real intention within the Bush administration to
go to war only magnifies the reality of the dangerous times we live in. Many are
ready to throw up their hands and give up on the Democrats, who appear poised to
hand Bush everything he wants on this matter.
This is the final aspect of the trap, timed to create disgust within the Democratic
electorate on the eve of the all-important mid-term elections. The Thursday vote on
war with Iraq may well come out wrong in the minds of many Americans. Let the above
stand in the record; they have heard all this before, and if they vote for war in
the face of the data, they will have some tall explaining to do when the deal goes
down. Do not, however, forget who started this mess in the first place.
The Bush administration is pushing for war as a political tactic and as a means to
wrap their arms around the petroleum available. When voting day comes on November
5th, remember that. A Bush administration with control of the House, Senate and
Supreme Court would be a menace on a level we have not to
date experienced, and that is saying something. Remember that, too.
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William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. He is the author of two books
- "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and
"The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in April 2003 from Pluto Press.
An eye for an eye will only serve to make the whole world blind.
--Mahatma Gandhi
