Blood On Their Hands

by John Pilger; January 29, 2003

William Russell, the great correspondent who reported the carnage of imperial wars, may have first used the expression "blood on his hands" to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance, order the mass killing of ordinary people.

In my experience "on his hands" applies especially to those modern political leaders who have had no personal experience of war, like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony Blair.

There is about them the essential cowardice of the man who causes death and suffering not by his own hand but through a chain of command that affirms his "authority".

In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity.

The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the "highest authority".

Blair is about to commit both these crimes, for which he is being denied even the flimsiest United Nations cover now that the weapons inspectors have found, as one put it, "zilch".

Like those in the dock at Nuremberg, he has no democratic cover.

Using the archaic "royal prerogative" he did not consult parliament or the people when he dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a foreign power, the Washington regime.

Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and ambitions of "endless war" and "full spectrum dominance" are a matter of record.

All the world knows their names: Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Perle, and Powell, the false liberal. Bush's State of the Union speech last night was reminiscent of that other great moment in 1938 when Hitler called his generals together and told them: "I must have war." He then had it.

To call Blair a mere "poodle" is to allow him distance from the killing of innocent Iraqi men, women and children for which he will share responsibility.

He is the embodiment of the most dangerous appeasement humanity has known since the 1930s. The current American elite is the Third Reich of our times, although this distinction ought not to let us forget that they have merely accelerated more than half a century of unrelenting American state terrorism: from the atomic bombs dropped cynically on Japan as a signal of their new power to the dozens of countries invaded, directly or by proxy, to destroy democracy wherever it collided with American "interests", such as a voracious appetite for the world's resources, like oil.

When you next hear Blair or Straw or Bush talk about "bringing democracy to the people of Iraq", remember that it was the CIA that installed the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad from which emerged Saddam Hussein.

"That was my favourite coup," said the CIA man responsible. When you next hear Blair and Bush talking about a "smoking gun" in Iraq, ask why the US government last December confiscated the 12,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration, saying they contained "sensitive information" which needed "a little editing".

Sensitive indeed. The original Iraqi documents listed 150 American, British and other foreign companies that supplied Iraq with its nuclear, chemical and missile technology, many of them in illegal transactions. In 2000 Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office Minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of lawbreaking British companies. He has never explained why.

As a reporter of many wars I am constantly aware that words on the page like these can seem almost abstract, part of a great chess game unconnected to people's lives.

The most vivid images I carry make that connection. They are the end result of orders given far away by the likes of Bush and Blair, who never see, or would have the courage to see, the effect of their actions on ordinary lives: the blood on their hands.

Let me give a couple of examples. Waves of B52 bombers will be used in the attack on Iraq. In Vietnam, where more than a million people were killed in the American invasion of the 1960s, I once watched three ladders of bombs curve in the sky, falling from B52s flying in formation, unseen above the clouds.

They dropped about 70 tons of explosives that day in what was known as the "long box" pattern, the military term for carpet bombing. Everything inside a "box" was presumed destroyed.

When I reached a village within the "box", the street had been replaced by a crater.

I slipped on the severed shank of a buffalo and fell hard into a ditch filled with pieces of limbs and the intact bodies of children thrown into the air by the blast.

The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. A small leg had been so contorted by the blast that the foot seemed to be growing from a shoulder. I vomited.

I am being purposely graphic. This is what I saw, and often; yet even in that "media war" I never saw images of these grotesque sights on television or in the pages of a newspaper.

I saw them only pinned on the wall of news agency offices in Saigon as a kind of freaks' gallery.

SOME years later I often came upon terribly deformed Vietnamese children in villages where American aircraft had sprayed a herbicide called Agent Orange.

It was banned in the United States, not surprisingly for it contained Dioxin, the deadliest known poison.

This terrible chemical weapon, which the cliche-mongers would now call a weapon of mass destruction, was dumped on almost half of South Vietnam.

Today, as the poison continues to move through water and soil and food, children continue to be born without palates and chins and scrotums or are stillborn. Many have leukaemia.

You never saw these children on the TV news then; they were too hideous for their pictures, the evidence of a great crime, even to be pinned up on a wall and they are old news now.

That is the true face of war. Will you be shown it by satellite when Iraq is attacked? I doubt it.

I was starkly reminded of the children of Vietnam when I travelled in Iraq two years ago. A paediatrician showed me hospital wards of children similarly deformed: a phenomenon unheard of prior to the Gulf war in 1991.

She kept a photo album of those who had died, their smiles undimmed on grey little faces. Now and then she would turn away and wipe her eyes.

More than 300 tons of depleted uranium, another weapon of mass destruction, were fired by American aircraft and tanks and possibly by the British.

Many of the rounds were solid uranium which, inhaled or ingested, causes cancer. In a country where dust carries everything, swirling through markets and playgrounds, children are especially vulnerable.

For 12 years Iraq has been denied specialist equipment that would allow its engineers to decontaminate its southern battlefields.

It has also been denied equipment and drugs that would identify and treat the cancer which, it is estimated, will affect almost half the population in the south.

LAST November Jeremy Corbyn MP asked the Junior Defence Minister Adam Ingram what stocks of weapons containing depleted uranium were held by British forces operating in Iraq.

His robotic reply was: "I am withholding details in accordance with Exemption 1 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information."

Let us be clear about what the Bush-Blair attack will do to our fellow human beings in a country already stricken by an embargo run by America and Britain and aimed not at Saddam Hussein but at the civilian population, who are denied even vaccines for the children. Last week the Pentagon in Washington announced matter of factly that it intended to shatter Iraq "physically, emotionally and psychologically" by raining down on its people 800 cruise missiles in two days.

This will be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War.

A military strategist named Harlan Ullman told American television: "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before."

The strategy is known as Shock and Awe and Ullman is apparently its proud inventor. He said: "You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes."

What will his "Hiroshima effect" actually do to a population of whom almost half are children under the age of 14?

The answer is to be found in a "confidential" UN document, based on World Health Organisation estimates, which says that "as many as 500,000 people could require treatment as a result of direct and indirect injuries".

A Bush-Blair attack will destroy "a functioning primary health care system" and deny clean water to 39 per cent of the population. There is "likely [to be] an outbreak of diseases in epidemic if not pandemic proportions".

It is Washington's utter disregard for humanity, I believe, together with Blair's lies that have turned most people in this country against them, including people who have not protested before.

Last weekend Blair said there was no need for the UN weapons inspectors to find a "smoking gun" for Iraq to be attacked.

Compare that with his reassurance in October 2001 that there would be no "wider war" against Iraq unless there was "absolute evidence" of Iraqi complicity in September 11. And there has been no evidence.

Blair's deceptions are too numerous to list here. He has lied about the nature and effect of the embargo on Iraq by covering up the fact that Washington, with Britain's support, is withholding more than $5billion worth of humanitarian supplies approved by the Security Council.

He has lied about Iraq buying aluminium tubes, which he told Parliament were "needed to enrich uranium". The International Atomic Energy Agency has denied this outright.

He has lied about an Iraqi "threat", which he discovered only following September 11 2001 when Bush made Iraq a gratuitous target of his "war on terror". Blair's "Iraq dossier" has been mocked by human rights groups.

However, what is wonderful is that across the world the sheer force of public opinion isolates Bush and Blair and their lemming, John Howard in Australia.

So few people believe them and support them that The Guardian this week went in search of the few who do - "the hawks". The paper published a list of celebrity warmongers, some apparently shy at describing their contortion of intellect and morality. It is a small list.

IN CONTRAST the majority of people in the West, including the United States, are now against this gruesome adventure and the numbers grow every day.

It is time MPs joined their constituents and reclaimed the true authority of parliament. MPs like Tam Dalyell, Alice Mahon, Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway have stood alone for too long on this issue and there have been too many sham debates manipulated by Downing Street.

If, as Galloway says, a majority of Labour backbenchers are against an attack, let them speak up now.

Blair's figleaf of a "coalition" is very important to Bush and only the moral power of the British people can bring the troops home without them firing a shot.

The consequences of not speaking out go well beyond an attack on Iraq. Washington will effectively take over the Middle East, ensuring an age of terrorism other than their own.

The next American attack is likely to be Iran - the Israelis want this - and their aircraft are already in place in Turkey. Then it may be China's turn.

"Endless war" is Vice-President Cheney's contribution to our understanding.

Bush has said he will use nuclear weapons "if necessary". On March 26 last Geoffrey Hoon said that other countries "can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons".

Such madness is the true enemy. What's more, it is right here at home and you, the British people, can stop it.

Read more!

Peter Lee: 'The imagined empire'

Date: Thursday, January 30 @ 09:49:19 EST
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Peter Lee

We live in an imagined empire.

Bush and Cheney and the neocon cabal dream of it, and strive indefatigably to realize it.

Its heartland shares the boundaries of our republic but is fundamentally different.

It is a national security empire that finds its purpose and justification in never-ending wars that purport to protect us against an ever-multiplying host of current, future, and potential threats.



But the national security empire wages wars of opportunity, not necessity. It goes to war not only to pre-empt threats. It also seeks to pre-empt competition, independence, and even the simple sense of security sought by states that seek an existence beyond the empire?s shadow. Its objective is to control resources, dominate regions, and deny prosperity and security to enemies, rivals, and bystanders alike.

The empire is fundamentally undemocratic. It has its own caesars and centurions, who may hold offices in the republic but exercise their full citizenship in the empire and shape its policies in secret councils. Decisions are taken and targets chosen according to the criteria of imperial advantage, in despite of the interests of the republic in whose name they are proclaimed.

Today the agenda of the nascent empire is colliding with the needs of the beleaguered and distracted republic.

Witness Bush?s flailing efforts to bumrush us into invading Iraq by pushing the twin tower/anthrax hot buttons.

Bush?s State of the Union address may have solidified his standing with the knucklehead block of 30% or so of Americans who will follow him anywhere (figuratively), including into a military, humanitarian, and diplomatic inferno in Iraq.

But to the rest of the country and the world it has become painfully clear that 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction pretexts and ?material breach? procedural snares do not justify Bush?s unnatural lust for the Iraq war, or the indecent haste with which he is rushing into it.

The traditional dogmas of our republic cannot explain a war that is not retaliatory, defensive, or plausibly pre-emptive, but is at the same time immensely costly, risky, and divisive.

Finally the mainstream op-ed pages are starting to tiptoe around Bush?s imperial vision of ?remaking the Middle East? and ?unleashing the tidal wave of democracy? in search of enlightenment. As if this notoriously incurious and callous evangelical Christian president has been overwhelmed by altruistic love for the Muslims of the remote Middle East!

But the idea that Bush?s humanitarian impulses are best exercised by a billion dollar a day war that will rain 800 cruise missiles on Baghdad is absurd.

If we want to remake the Arab Middle East, why not put pressure on Saudi Arabia to democratize? Not only is it a precarious client state with an unpopular regime, it was home to the majority of the 9/11 hijackers and remains a source of ideological comfort and financial support to radical Islam.

For that matter, don?t just pick up the phone and complain and cajole--invade Saudi Arabia! We already have real smoking guns up the yazoo relating to the support of the economic and political elite for al-Qaeda. By a lucky coincidence, we already have 2 carrier groups and 100,000 troops at the Saudi doorstep! Not only that, over the last 30 years we?ve stuffed the desert out there with troops and military bases; we have intimate knowledge of the country; we?ve cultivated close connections with all the business people and politicians who run things; and we have an endless supply of U.S. educated, oil-loving, and amiable Saudi princes ready to serve as our Quislings.

Let?s turn Saudi Arabia in that oily beacon of democracy and human rights that we promise will illuminate the entire Middle East!

Too bad it?s not going to happen. Short of invading Israel, it would be the best way to raise our standing in the Arab world. And it would be a real cakewalk, not like the fast-forward massacre we have in mind for Iraq.

The American agenda for the Middle East is domination, not democracy. The objective is not just oil?it is empire.

The American republic does not need to control Iraq?s oil. Greed, the free market, the ingenuity of oil traders, and the rapacity and duplicity of governments would ensure that somehow our anxious, thirsty SUVs would be able to drink their fill from Iraq or whatever other country wants to sell to the world?s biggest consumer of oil

But the military logic of the national security empire demands control over oil, and the power that control brings. The empire?s homeland?America?is deficient in petroleum resources. So is the empire?s major 21st century rival?China.

In the chess game of empire, controlling the oil of the Middle East means keeping it out of the hands of the Russians and perfidious French, assuring its supply to America, and denying it to China. With the lever?or club?of Middle Eastern oil safely in American hands, the U.S., secure in its military and economic ascendancy, can dictate terms to the cowering world without fear of rebuke or a petroleum-related embarrassment.

The Bush administration has not been bashful about its ambitions for world hegemony and its desire to quash any potential rivals. And crushing Iraq is a logical first step in making the Middle East America?s back yard, sticking a finger in Russia?s eye, and making the Chinese get on their knees to beg Uncle Sam for some of that sweet Arab crude to keep their economy going.

But Bush has been loath to explicitly make the case for invading Iraq as a stepping stone to empire and expose his think-tank certainties to public examination and democratic endorsement. At first blush this might seem odd. Americans relish being Number 1, and have a stoic appreciation for the sacrifices pre-eminence demands?as long as they are borne by someone else. Furthermore, our ineffable self-regard makes us consider our military adventures abroad a welcome favor instead of a bloody imposition on the hapless locals we conquer.

But Americans are leery of empire, with good reason. The basic math is not too hard to figure out. The general public pays for the war, sacrifices its sons and daughters, and endures whatever terrorist horrors our opponents are able to dish out against the homeland. And the reward ismore wars. War with Iran, virtually assured. War with Syria, if they don?t knuckle under quickly enough. Then maybe a big one, war with North Korea and/or China if the Chinese decide that they must seize Taiwan before U.S. dominance forecloses that option forever.

If the American empire prevails, the power is real, to be enjoyed by the select few whose mission is to preserve and increase it. But the physical and economic security it promises the rest of us is a mirage.

It is an empire won at our expense, and at the cost of our wealth, our lives--and our republic.

Because after our constitution has been subverted in pursuit of power; when our democracy has been sacrificed to the demands of empire; and our economy has been consumed in the furnace of this war, the imagined empire will become real.

And we become subjects instead of citizens.

We don?t need this imagined empire. What we need is a real democracy. And we need to fight for it now.

Copyright 2002 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at halcyondays@attbi.com.

Read more!

Peter Lee: 'The imagined empire'

Date: Thursday, January 30 @ 09:49:19 EST
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Peter Lee

We live in an imagined empire.

Bush and Cheney and the neocon cabal dream of it, and strive indefatigably to realize it.

Its heartland shares the boundaries of our republic but is fundamentally different.

It is a national security empire that finds its purpose and justification in never-ending wars that purport to protect us against an ever-multiplying host of current, future, and potential threats.



But the national security empire wages wars of opportunity, not necessity. It goes to war not only to pre-empt threats. It also seeks to pre-empt competition, independence, and even the simple sense of security sought by states that seek an existence beyond the empire?s shadow. Its objective is to control resources, dominate regions, and deny prosperity and security to enemies, rivals, and bystanders alike.

The empire is fundamentally undemocratic. It has its own caesars and centurions, who may hold offices in the republic but exercise their full citizenship in the empire and shape its policies in secret councils. Decisions are taken and targets chosen according to the criteria of imperial advantage, in despite of the interests of the republic in whose name they are proclaimed.

Today the agenda of the nascent empire is colliding with the needs of the beleaguered and distracted republic.

Witness Bush?s flailing efforts to bumrush us into invading Iraq by pushing the twin tower/anthrax hot buttons.

Bush?s State of the Union address may have solidified his standing with the knucklehead block of 30% or so of Americans who will follow him anywhere (figuratively), including into a military, humanitarian, and diplomatic inferno in Iraq.

But to the rest of the country and the world it has become painfully clear that 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction pretexts and ?material breach? procedural snares do not justify Bush?s unnatural lust for the Iraq war, or the indecent haste with which he is rushing into it.

The traditional dogmas of our republic cannot explain a war that is not retaliatory, defensive, or plausibly pre-emptive, but is at the same time immensely costly, risky, and divisive.

Finally the mainstream op-ed pages are starting to tiptoe around Bush?s imperial vision of ?remaking the Middle East? and ?unleashing the tidal wave of democracy? in search of enlightenment. As if this notoriously incurious and callous evangelical Christian president has been overwhelmed by altruistic love for the Muslims of the remote Middle East!

But the idea that Bush?s humanitarian impulses are best exercised by a billion dollar a day war that will rain 800 cruise missiles on Baghdad is absurd.

If we want to remake the Arab Middle East, why not put pressure on Saudi Arabia to democratize? Not only is it a precarious client state with an unpopular regime, it was home to the majority of the 9/11 hijackers and remains a source of ideological comfort and financial support to radical Islam.

For that matter, don?t just pick up the phone and complain and cajole--invade Saudi Arabia! We already have real smoking guns up the yazoo relating to the support of the economic and political elite for al-Qaeda. By a lucky coincidence, we already have 2 carrier groups and 100,000 troops at the Saudi doorstep! Not only that, over the last 30 years we?ve stuffed the desert out there with troops and military bases; we have intimate knowledge of the country; we?ve cultivated close connections with all the business people and politicians who run things; and we have an endless supply of U.S. educated, oil-loving, and amiable Saudi princes ready to serve as our Quislings.

Let?s turn Saudi Arabia in that oily beacon of democracy and human rights that we promise will illuminate the entire Middle East!

Too bad it?s not going to happen. Short of invading Israel, it would be the best way to raise our standing in the Arab world. And it would be a real cakewalk, not like the fast-forward massacre we have in mind for Iraq.

The American agenda for the Middle East is domination, not democracy. The objective is not just oil?it is empire.

The American republic does not need to control Iraq?s oil. Greed, the free market, the ingenuity of oil traders, and the rapacity and duplicity of governments would ensure that somehow our anxious, thirsty SUVs would be able to drink their fill from Iraq or whatever other country wants to sell to the world?s biggest consumer of oil

But the military logic of the national security empire demands control over oil, and the power that control brings. The empire?s homeland?America?is deficient in petroleum resources. So is the empire?s major 21st century rival?China.

In the chess game of empire, controlling the oil of the Middle East means keeping it out of the hands of the Russians and perfidious French, assuring its supply to America, and denying it to China. With the lever?or club?of Middle Eastern oil safely in American hands, the U.S., secure in its military and economic ascendancy, can dictate terms to the cowering world without fear of rebuke or a petroleum-related embarrassment.

The Bush administration has not been bashful about its ambitions for world hegemony and its desire to quash any potential rivals. And crushing Iraq is a logical first step in making the Middle East America?s back yard, sticking a finger in Russia?s eye, and making the Chinese get on their knees to beg Uncle Sam for some of that sweet Arab crude to keep their economy going.

But Bush has been loath to explicitly make the case for invading Iraq as a stepping stone to empire and expose his think-tank certainties to public examination and democratic endorsement. At first blush this might seem odd. Americans relish being Number 1, and have a stoic appreciation for the sacrifices pre-eminence demands?as long as they are borne by someone else. Furthermore, our ineffable self-regard makes us consider our military adventures abroad a welcome favor instead of a bloody imposition on the hapless locals we conquer.

But Americans are leery of empire, with good reason. The basic math is not too hard to figure out. The general public pays for the war, sacrifices its sons and daughters, and endures whatever terrorist horrors our opponents are able to dish out against the homeland. And the reward ismore wars. War with Iran, virtually assured. War with Syria, if they don?t knuckle under quickly enough. Then maybe a big one, war with North Korea and/or China if the Chinese decide that they must seize Taiwan before U.S. dominance forecloses that option forever.

If the American empire prevails, the power is real, to be enjoyed by the select few whose mission is to preserve and increase it. But the physical and economic security it promises the rest of us is a mirage.

It is an empire won at our expense, and at the cost of our wealth, our lives--and our republic.

Because after our constitution has been subverted in pursuit of power; when our democracy has been sacrificed to the demands of empire; and our economy has been consumed in the furnace of this war, the imagined empire will become real.

And we become subjects instead of citizens.

We don?t need this imagined empire. What we need is a real democracy. And we need to fight for it now.

Copyright 2002 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at halcyondays@attbi.com.

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Kurt Nimmo: 'Inventing crimes: The FBI-CIA entrapment tag team'

Topic: The Constitution & Civil Liberties

By Kurt Nimmo

So evil are terrorists they will stop at nothing to destroy America. One such example of this hatred for our TV-watching, mall-shopping way of life surfaced recently in a plot uncovered by the FBI. A Minnesota man, Ilyas Ali, stands accused of selling a whole lot of hashish and heroin so he might buy Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and sell them to the dreaded al-Qaeda who would, of course, take out 747s packed with kindergarten children and grandmothers. Ali, a naturalized US citizen born in India, and two Pakistanis will be sent to San Diego to face charges. Maybe a layover at Camp X-Ray is in order? Or maybe a side trip to one of those infamous interrogation dungeons in Jordan, Egypt, or Morocco?

Sarcasm aside, Ali says he was set-up by FBI agents. It was a good old-fashioned American ethic that ensnared the hapless Ali -- a greedy and unchecked desire for money. After $100,000 was stolen from his St. Paul, Minnesota, grocery store, Ali was befriended by two men he later identified as FBI agents; one claimed to be a drug dealer and the other a weapons specialist.



As the drugs-for-weapons plan matured, Ali told an AP reporter from a jail, the FBI agents paid to fly him twice to Pakistan and once to Hong Kong. The agents said they would finance the whole sordid affair. "We just said OK, OK, because we wanted the money," Ali told Dirk Beveridge of AP. He had no drug connections and claims not to know anybody in al-Qaeda. Moreover, he says there is a tape of his conversation with the FBI agents. "There is absolutely nothing in that tape," Ali said. "We didn't mention the Stingers. The only one who mentioned the Stingers was the federal agent."

The case of Ali and the Pakistanis dovetails nicely with the propaganda of the Bushites (since terrorism and drugs are twin evils threatening the good people of America). John Ashcroft has characterized the case as a reminder "of the toxic combination of drugs and terrorism and the threats they can pose to our national security." It may eventually turn out to be a "toxic combination" dreamed up by scheming FBI agents and conniving bureaucrats in the Justice Department. Since there seems to be little if any al-Qaeda activity threatening Our Way of Life presently -- even though we are warned every few weeks of imminent (and unsubstantiated) attack by tenebrous doers of evil -- the FBI may need to "stimulate" threats in lieu of the real McCoy.

The FBI wouldn't do that, would they?

Sure they would. During the heyday of COINTELPRO, the FBI routinely used entrapment against members of the civil rights and antiwar movements. In a later and much publicized case known as Abscam, the FBI (at the behest of the Justice Department) used agents posing as Arab businessmen to contact various public officials for the purpose of offering bribes in return for political favors. "Before the Abscam sting against members of Congress in 1980," writes Alan Ehrenhalt, "the idea of inventing crimes and using them to tempt public officials was virtually unheard of in this country."

If the FBI and Justice Department have no problem using Gestapo-like tactics in orchestrated witch hunts against public officials, what do you think they would do to unknown Indian grocers from Minnesota, especially now with USA PATROIT on the books and the courts rolling over like trained dogs on writs of habeas corpus? The specter of terrorism (especially terrorism created in CIA-funded Afghan camps) gives the FBI and CIA a perfect excuse to return to the good old days of COINTELPRO/Operation CHAOS-like operations.

In fact, with a spooky merging of CIA and FBI operations (increased "cooperation" between the two agencies has resulted in at least one CIA officer at each of the 56 FBI field offices, according to Associated Press reporter John J. Lumpkin), we can likely expect more spurious terror scams, entrapment scenarios, heavy-handed surveillance of political "targets," and who knows what else (even assassination attempts were permitted, or at least not punished, under COINTELPRO [see Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers, South End Press).

But setting people up is not limited to John Ashcroft's Justice Department and Robert Mueller's FBI -- the Pentagon wants to get in on the action with something called P2OG, or Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group. P2OG would roll together CIA and military covert ops personnel (a "robust, global cadre of retirees, reservists and others who are trained and qualified to serve on short notice, including expatriates") who will work to "stimulate reactions" among those deemed terrorists by the Bushites. After setting up so-called terrorists the US military would ?counterattack,? i.e., kill them (no messy extradition or legal procedures required; think Kamal Derwish, a US citizen, killed in Yemen by the judge, jury, and executioner of a CIA-launched Hellfire missile for the crime of riding in a car with Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly the ?mastermind? behind the alleged al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole).

If you think P2OG would be confined to faraway lands where terrorists run free, think again -- and take note of the above-mentioned integration of the CIA and FBI currently underway across America. If Mossad can off its enemies in America, why not the CIA? If onetime CIA director Bush Senior can give a wink and a nod to Pinochet's Operation Condor -- which resulted in the car bombing murders of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt -- why not carte blanche for the all-American P2OG from Maine to California?

Consider Operation CHAOS, the illegal snooping by the CIA on law-abiding American citizens in the late 60s (in direct violation of their charter). As Verne Lyon writes, "[i]n the classified document creating the DOD [or the Domestic Operations Division, a super-secret branch of the CIA] the scope of its activities was to 'exercise centralized responsibility for the direction, support, and coordination of clandestine operational activities within the United States,'" activities kept secret from Congress and the hoodwinked American people. In other words, we have no clear idea of the full extent of Operation CHAOS covert ops (if these were anything like CIA ops elsewhere, people not only lost their jobs, but often their lives).

Beyond the shores of America, the CIA financed and encouraged the torture, disappearance, and murder of "socialists and communists" (i.e., people who disagreed with US-supported ruling elites and military dictatorships) in Guatemala, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Bolivia, Chile, and elsewhere. Keep in mind that the current crop of far right wing types in the Bush White House and Pentagon sharpened their teeth on Iran-Contra, a covert op with CIA participation (two CIA agents, Clair George and Duane Clarridge were indicted for lying to Congress in the scandal).

Finally, it pays to remember REX 84, the CIA-inspired plan concocted by the NSC?s Oliver North and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) calling for the suspension of the Constitution under a number of scenarios (such as war) and included the establishment of 50 State Defense Forces, to be composed of members of local law enforcement and military reserve agencies, who would round up and detain political dissenters (for more on REX 84, see Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death Threats, and the FBI, South End Press).

As the expeditious passage of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA) demonstrates, the Bush administration is serious about the surveillance of those they consider political enemies. Since not many phantom al-Qaeda terrorists are using the internet (regardless of what "US officials" say about internet cafes in Peshawar) or phones to plot their nefarious deeds, the logical conclusion is the FBI and CIA will use USAPA primarily against American citizens. As with COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS, the idea is to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize" (as J. Edgar Hoover put it) the opposition with an onslaught of wiretaps, undercover plants, agent provocateurs, poison pen letters, black bag jobs, and other scurrilous tactics.

It's possible Ilyas Ali planned to sell Stinger missiles to al-Qaeda, but then it is also possible he was set-up by the FBI. In its ambitious plan to expand the US corporate and military imperium across the globe, the Bush administration is determined to show the world that al-Qaeda (and Saddam Hussein, who will be shortly merged with the mythical al-Qaeda into a formidable Hydra) are shadowy, dogged, mercurial, homicidal, and will never stop their pernicious war against the Good and the Brave (that is, so long as there are profitable natural resources available for plunder in "failed states" around the world). Thus the war on terrorism is not only open-ended but interminable.

Will Bush unleash his own version of REX 84 as the much delayed but obviously impending attack against Iraq explodes? War is always a good excuse to go after political enemies, particularly when those enemies are growing in strength (as the incipient antiwar movement, Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay notwithstanding, has shown). As the US plunges into war, think of the Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917), the anti-sedition section of the Smith Act (1940), McCarthy's inquisitions during the Korean War, and the ravages of COINTELPRO during the Vietnam War. Think of the FBI to wanting to harm Martin Luther King's public reputation and destroy his political influence. Think of the actress Jean Seberg, so smeared by the FBI she committed suicide. Think of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, shot to death by the Chicago police after the FBI told the cops the pair had numerous guns and explosives and would shoot any police officer who entered their building.

While throwing placard-waving grandmothers in FEMA camps may be the stuff of paranoid fantasies, the very real and threatening potential of increased surveillance and the undermining of popular political movements by FBI-CIA collusion is something almost certain to happen. There will, as well, be more than a spate of politically expedient frame-ups and entrapments on the Bush engineered road to ultimate tyranny.

In the not too distant future, the victims of these dirty tricks will not only be named Ali, but Smith, Robertson, and Adams as well.

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Bishop Frank T. Griswold III, the senior Anglican bishop in the United States, told the Religious News Service earlier this month that he finds the current president's rhetoric about Iraq "reprehensible."

"Quite apart from the bombs we drop, words are weapons, and we have used our language so unwisely, so intemperately, so thoughtlessly that I am not surprised we are hated and loathed everywhere I go," the bishop said, adding, "I'd like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States."

Griswold said the world has every right to loathe the United States because "they see us as greedy, self-interested and almost totally unconcerned about poverty, disease and suffering."

Bush, 78, and a former ambassador to the United Nations, addressed the bishop's remarks from a personal and public policy perspective.

"I found these quotes offensive, and knowing the president as I do, I found them uncalled for. And I can tell you they hurt this loving, proud father very much," Bush said, adding that if the president does decide that he must use force, he will not make the decision lightly.

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Lies, damned lies and more damned lies

JON CARROLL
Monday, January 27, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

URL: http://www.sfgate.com./cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/27/DD10169.DTL

THERE IS A staggering chutzpah to the Bush administration's approach to public relations. They don't bother to deal with facts already in evidence; they just say whatever they want us to believe and deflect all questions and contradictions.

They believe that consistency doesn't matter because no one is paying attention. They believe that policy analysis is for wonks, and that the great American public wants broad strokes and stirring rhetoric. Already, they have trotted out the increasingly resentful ghosts of the tragedy of Sept. 11 to support everything from police-state surveillance measures to a war against a nation uninvolved in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Soon we'll find out that the terrorists are all involved in a plot to broaden abortion rights.

It used to be that Colin Powell sort of told the truth most of the time. But now he's gone over to the dark side. He insisted last week that the president had not made a decision about whether to go to war. The president is consulting with allies and waiting for the inspectors to report. He has no timetable.

For six months, this administration has been devoted to regime change in Iraq. This is not a guess; they said so. For six months they have believed that February is the best time to begin a war; the weather is likely to be the most favorable then. This is also not a guess; this was part of Pentagon briefings.

So now it's very late January, and suddenly the inspections have been declared a failure unilaterally. The Bush administration's efforts to manipulate the U.N. Security Council have proved futile, so they've decided to denounce the recalcitrant members.

GERMANY AND FRANCE represent "the old Europe," said Donald Rumsfeld, failing to describe where the "new Europe" might be located -- perhaps wherever Tony Blair is brownnosing this week.

(Actually, what with the euro and open borders, Germany and France represent a really new Europe, a united trading entity that can be a real competitor to the United States. But they don't agree with the American bully, so they must be denigrated, even if the epithet is meaningless.)

Powell also said other nations would join our fight, but he declined to name them. I guess Qatar is on board, and perhaps we have bribed Turkey enough to sign on, but even the current government of Israel is wavering. Israel is wavering about the advisability of a war against an Arab nation? Anyone want to check those plans again?

AND IT IS not only about the war that the administration betrays its true nature. Remember when Bush tried to dodge the Enron bullet by making a folksy speech about protecting the small investor? Late last week, the New York Times reported that the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission was preparing to water down rules governing business lawyers and accountants.

In other words, the laws that failed to protect us last time around are about to get weaker. Why? Because of lobbying from the Bush administration's one true constituency, large corporations and their lobbying groups.

This is on the heels of a report that more than 1,000 banks are actually encouraging overdrafts, for the first time in their history. Not just permitting them, encouraging them. Yes, please, spend more than you earn, so we can charge you fees and penalties and late fees on the fees, in effect loaning you the money at absurdly high interest rates.

When you point out that these new policies disproportionately affect the poor, you are accused of bringing up "class warfare." Well, yeah. That conflict has been going on for a while, and we didn't start it. The administration is dedicated to fighting a two-front war: against them over there, and against us over here.

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"Shock and Awe": Guernica Revisited

Gar Smith, AlterNet
January 27, 2003

Forget Osama. Forget Saddam. The Pentagon's newest target is the city of Baghdad.

US military strategists have announced a plan to pummel the Iraqi capital with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st Century's Guernica.

On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed.

The Pentagon now predicts that its Baghdad blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. "The sheer size of this has never been... contemplated before," one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," a city of 5 million people.

The Pentagon dubbed its cold-blooded attack plan "Shock and Awe" -- a bizarre conjunction of trauma and admiration. Shock and awe were the very emotions that Americans experienced on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, like the 9/11 terrorists, Bush and Co. are planning a similar act of almost unparalleled ferocity -- a devastating premeditated attack on a civilian urban population.

Bush seems determined to follow in the footsteps of Hulagu Khan and Tamerlane, the Mongol warlords who laid bloody waste to Baghdad in 1258 and 1401.

But destroying Baghdad will not uncover hidden chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (if, in fact, any exist). Destroying Baghdad will not capture, topple or kill Saddam Hussein. Shock and Awe's expressed goal is simple: to destroy the Iraqi people "physically, emotionally and psychologically."

Ironically, this was also the goal of the Nazi strategists who destroyed Guernica. The town had no strategic value as a military target, but--like Baghdad--it was a cultural and religious center. Guernica was devastated to terrorize the population and break the spirit of the Basque resistance.

Surely cruise missiles have been programmed to demolish the Baath Party Headquarters, presidential palaces and Republican Guard compounds. But have missiles also been preset to obliterate the al-Qadiriya Shrine, the Tomb of Imam al-A'dham and the Mosque of Sheik Abdul Qadir al-Ghailani?

We now know that there was no military need to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaski. The detonations were intended to demonstrate to the world -- and to the Soviet Union, especially -- that the US had a functioning superweapon. Having sole possession of "The Bomb" gave Washington the power to dominate post-war world politics.

Similarly, the destruction of Baghdad seems designed to underscore Bush's belligerent warning to the rest of the world: "You're either with us or you're against us."

Washington's new National Security Strategy describes an America dominating the world militarily, politically and economically.

In a report published a month before the US presidential elections, the conservative Project for the New American Century insisted on instituting a "global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests."

This ringing endorsement of hyper-imperialism was co-authored by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Jeb Bush -- none of whom ever volunteered for military service.

Today, thousands of citizen volunteers from around the world are converging in Iraq to stand as nonviolent "human shields" in hopes of forestalling a US assault. The brave men and women in this international "Peace Army" include anti-war activists, religious witnesses, retirees, US military veterans and members of families who lost loved ones in the September 11 attack.

Mr. Bush repeatedly complains that Saddam Hussein deserves to be removed from office because "he killed his own people."

If Mr. Bush fails to promptly courtmartial the officials who came up with the Shock and Awe atrocity, he may soon find himself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr. Hussein and facing history's judgement as another ruthless leader who "killed his own people" in a mad bid for power.

Gar Smith, former editor of the Earth Island Journal, now produces The-Edge, a weekly online environmental newsmagazine.

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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Robert Fisk: The wartime deceptions: Saddam is Hitler and it's not about oil

27 January 2003

The Israeli writer Uri Avnery once delivered a wickedly sharp open letter to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who sent his army to defeat in Lebanon. Enraged by Begin's constant evocation of the Second World War ? likening Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945 ? Avnery entitled his letter: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is Dead."

How often I have wanted to repeat his advice to Bush and Blair. Obsessed with their own demonisation of Saddam Hussein, both are now reminding us of the price of appeasement. Bush thinks that he is the Churchill of America, refusing the appeasement of Saddam. Now the US ambassador to the European Union, Rockwell Schnabel, has compared Saddam to Hitler. "You had Hitler in Europe and no one really did anything about him," Schnabel lectured the Europeans in Brussels a week ago: "We knew he could be dangerous but nothing was done. The same type of person [is in Baghdad] and it's there that our concern lies." Mr Schnabel ended this infantile parallel by adding unconvincingly that "this has nothing to do with oil".

How can the sane human being react to this pitiful stuff? One of the principal nations which "did nothing about Hitler" was the US, which enjoyed a profitable period of neutrality in 1939 and 1940 and most of 1941 until it was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. And when the Churchill-Roosevelt alliance decided that it would only accept Germany's unconditional surrender ? a demand that shocked even Churchill when Roosevelt suddenly announced the terms at Casablanca ? Hitler was doomed.

Not so Saddam it seems. For last week Donald Rumsfeld offered the Hitler of Baghdad a way out: exile, with a suitcase full of cash and an armful of family members if that is what he wished. Funny, but I don't recall Churchill or Roosevelt ever suggesting that the Nazi führer should be allowed to escape. Saddam is Hitler ? but then suddenly, he's not Hitler after all. He is ? said TheNew York Times ? to be put before a war crimes tribunal. But then he's not. He can scoot off to Saudi Arabia or Latin America. In other words, he's not Hitler.

But even if he were, are we prepared to pay the price of so promiscuous a war? Arabs who admire Saddam ? and there are plenty in Jordan ? believe Iraq cannot hold out for more than a week. Some are convinced the US 3rd Infantry Division will be in Baghdad in three days, the British with them. It's a fair bet that hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqis will die. But in the civil unrest that follows, what are we going to do? Are American and British troops to defend the homes of Baath party officials whom the mobs want to hang?

Far more seriously, what happens after that? What do we do when Iraqis ? not ex-Baathists but anti-Saddam Iraqis ? demand our withdrawal? For be sure this will happen. In the Shia mosques of Kerbala and An Najaf, they are not going to welcome Anglo-American forces. The Kurds will want a price for their co-operation. A state perhaps? A federation? The Sunnis will need our protection. They will also, in due time, demand our withdrawal. Iraq is a tough, violent state and General Tommy Franks is no General MacArthur.

For we will be in occupation of a foreign land. We will be in occupation of Iraq as surely as Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And with Saddam gone, the way is open for Osama bin Laden to demand the liberation of Iraq as another of his objectives. How easily he will be able to slot Iraq into the fabric of American occupation across the Gulf. Are we then ready to fight al-Qa'ida in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan and countless other countries? It seems that the peoples of the Middle East ? and the West ? realise these dangers, but that their leaders do not, or do not want to.

Travelling to the US more than once a month, visiting Britain at the weekend, moving around the Middle East, I have never been so struck by the absolute, unwavering determination of so many Arabs and Europeans and Americans to oppose a war. Did Tony Blair really need that gloriously pertinacious student at the Labour Party meeting on Friday to prove to him what so many Britons feel: that this proposed Iraqi war is a lie, that the reasons for this conflict have nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, that Blair has no business following Bush into the America-Israeli war? Never before have I received so many readers' letters expressing exactly the same sentiment: that somehow ? because of Labour's huge majority, because of the Tory party's effective disappearance as an opposition, because of parliamentary cynicism ? British democracy is not permitting British people to stop a war for which most of them have nothing but contempt. From Washington's pathetic attempt to link Saddam to al-Qa'ida, to Blair's childish "dossier" on weapons of mass destruction, to the whole tragic farce of UN inspections, people are just no longer fooled.

The denials that this war has anything to do with oil are as unconvincing as Colin Powell's claim last week that Iraq's oil would be held in trusteeship for the Iraqi people. Trusteeship was exactly what the League of Nations offered the Levant when it allowed Britain and France to adopt mandates in Palestine and Transjordan and Syria and Lebanon after the First World War. Who will run the oil wells and explore Iraqi oil reserves during this generous period of trusteeship? American companies, perhaps? No, people are not fooled.

Take the inspectors. George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and now, alas, Colin Powell don't want to give the inspectors more time. Why not, for God's sake? Let's just go back to 12 September last year when Bush, wallowing in the nostalgia of the 11 September 2001 crimes against humanity, demanded that the UN act. It must send its inspectors back to Iraq. They must resume their work. They must complete their work. Bush, of course, was hoping that Iraq would refuse to let the inspectors return. Horrifically, Iraq welcomed the UN. Bush was waiting for the inspectors to find hidden weapons. Terrifyingly, they found none. They are still looking. And that is the last thing Bush wants. Bush said he was "sick and tired" of Saddam's trickery when what he meant was that he was sick and tired of waiting for the UN inspectors to find the weapons that will allow America to go to war. He who wanted so much to get the inspectors back to work now doesn't want them to work. "Time is running out," Bush said last week. He was talking about Saddam but he was actually referring to the UN inspectors, in fact to the whole UN institution so laboriously established after the Second World War by his own country.

The only other nation pushing for war ? save for the ever-grateful Kuwait ? is Israel. Listen to the words of Zalman Shoval, Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon's foreign affairs adviser, last week. Israel, he said, would "pay dearly" for a "long deferral" of an American strike on Iraq. "If the attack were to be postponed on political rather than military grounds," he said, "we will have every reason in Israel to fear that Saddam Hussein uses this delay to develop non-conventional weapons." As long as Saddam was not sidelined, it would be difficult to convince the Palestinian leadership that violence didn't pay and that it should be replaced by a new administration; Arafat would use such a delay "to intensify terrorist attacks".

Note how the savage Israeli-Palestinian war can only ? according to the Shoval thesis ? be resolved if America invades Iraq; how terrorism cannot be ended in Israel until the US destroys Saddam. There can be no regime change for the Palestinians until there is regime change in Baghdad. By going along with the Bush drive to war, Blair is, indirectly, supporting Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (since Israel still claims to be fighting America's "war on terror" against Arafat). Does Blair believe Britons haven't grasped this? Does he think Britons are stupid? A quarter of the British Army is sent to fight in a war that 80 per cent of Britons oppose. How soon before we see real people power ? 500,000 protesters or more in London, Manchester and other cities to oppose this folly?

Yes ? an essential part of any such argument ? Saddam is a cruel, ruthless dictator, not unlike the Dear Leader of North Korea, the nuclear megalomaniac with whom the Americans have been having "excellent" discussions but who doesn't have oil. How typical of Saddam to send Ali "Chemical" Majid ? the war criminal who gassed the Kurds of Halabja ? to tour Arab capitals last week, to sit with President Bashar Assad of Syria and President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon as if he never ordered the slaughter of women and children. But Bush and Blair said nothing about Majid's tour ? either so as not to offend the Arab leaders who met him or because the link between gas, war crimes and Washington's original support for Saddam is a sensitive issue.

Instead, we are deluged with more threats from Washington about "states that sponsor terror". Western journalists play a leading role in this propaganda. Take Eric Schmitt in TheNew York Times a week ago. He wrote a story about America's decision to "confront countries that sponsor terrorism". And his sources? "Senior defence officials", "administration officials", "some American intelligence officials", "the officials", "officials", "military officials", "terrorist experts" and "defence officials". Why not just let the Pentagon write its own reports in TheNew York Times?

But that is what is changing. More and more Americans ? aware that their President declined to serve his country in Vietnam ? realise that their newspapers are lying to them and acting as a conduit for the US government alone. More and more Britons are tired of being told to go to war by their newspapers and television stations and politicians. Indeed, I'd guess that far more Britons are represented today by the policies of President Chirac of France than Prime Minister Blair of Britain.

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The message from the Bush camp: 'It's war within weeks'

· Washington now concentrating on timing
· State of union address to 'turn up the heat'
· Blair faces nightmare scenario over war decision

Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill and Simon Tisdall
Friday January 24, 2003
The Guardian

President George Bush is determined to go to war with Saddam Hussein in the next few weeks, without UN backing if necessary, according to authoritative sources in Washington and London.

The US president is "to turn up the heat" in his state of the union address on Tuesday.

"The pressure comes from President Bush and it is felt all the way down," a European official said. "They're talking about weeks, not months. Months is a banned word now."

Mr Bush wanted the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, to force the issue of military action by presenting evidence of Saddam Hussein's violations of UN resolutions immediately after weapons inspectors give their report to the UN on Monday. In Washington circles such an event is being referred to as the Adlai Stevenson moment.

The "Adlai Stevenson moment" has become Washington shorthand for the US presentation of its intelligence case. Stevenson was the US ambassador to the UN at the time of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, who dramatically confronted the Soviet envoy with vivid aerial photographs of nuclear missiles being unloaded in Cuba.

Downing Street was alarmed by the Bush administration's sudden haste in moving towards a climax. It was adamant that the decision to go to war should not be declared before Tony Blair flies to Camp David for talks with Mr Bush next Friday.

An informed source in Washington said: "Blair is a good guy. They won't want to do that to him. They want it to look like he played a part in the policy-making but the decision has been made."

A key moment will now be the state of the union address. According to a Washington source, the US administration remains divided along old fault lines about the precise timescale of war. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wants Mr Bush to set a clear and imminent deadline. But Mr Powell, is resisting, asking for a little more time for diplomatic coalition-building.

But both sides of the divide are making it increasingly clear that the end result will be military action, with or without UN backing.

The chief White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, yesterday brushed off mounting anti-war feeling across Europe, led by France. It was "entirely possible that France won't be on the line", he said, adding that Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain and "virtually all of the eastern European countries" would provide support.

Mr Powell echoed this, saying: "I don't think we will have to worry about going it alone."

The impatience within the White House for action against Iraq came on a day in which the cracks in the international coalition against Iraq widened. China and Russia joined France and Germany in warning the US against precipitate action and calling for Washington to work within the UN.

The German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, revealed the extent of European anger over the US position when he told Washington to "cool down". The Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said: "Russia deems that there is no evidence that would justify a war in Iraq."

But Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, ratcheted up the rhetoric by claiming that Iraqi scientists were at risk of death. "We know from multiple sources that Saddam has ordered that any scientists who cooperate during interviews will be killed, as well as their families," he said.

Britain believes it has won a short reprieve before the US presents its own intelligence evidence against Saddam Hussein, in effect a declaration of war, but only for a fortnight at most.

Mr Bush will lay out the broad case for toppling President Saddam next Tuesday but White House officials insist the speech, a year after the president coined the phrase, "axis of evil", will stop short of being a declaration of war. That will await a more detailed presentation of intelligence evidence in the next few weeks, after Mr Blair visits Camp David.

"We said that has to be a substantive consultation, not a fait accompli," one British official said. The British argument is that the longer the US waits before showing its hand, the better the case it will have to put before the UN security council, as the inspectors come across more Iraqi infringements.

The Foreign Office had initially sought to defuse the rising tension around next Monday's inspectors' report by denying that it represented a "moment of truth", but in recent days a source conceded: "That was never going to be realistic. Of course it's important."

At his meeting with Mr Powell yesterday, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, clung to the official line. "There are still ways that this can be resolved peacefully," he said. Mr Straw repeated that the British preference is for a second UN resolution before any further action against Iraq but Mr Powell, in a change of tack, refused to commit himself to seeking a second resolution.

One of the factors behind Washington's haste appears to be the annual rise in temperatures in the Iraqi desert over the next few months. In theory, US and some allied troops have the capacity to fight in any weather but the effectiveness of both soldiers and equipment diminishes rapidly when the temperature rises over 35C.

"The planes have been designed for the cold war. They start losing lift, carry lighter loads, and must make shorter runs when the temperature goes over 35," said one government official involved in Anglo-American debates over the timing of an attack.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Sharon derides EU peace efforts

Israeli leader says only the US view is relevant

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday January 20, 2003
The Guardian

Ariel Sharon yesterday dismissed European peace efforts as anti-Israeli and said only the US matters in deciding the fate of the Palestinians.

The prime minister's comments followed an interview with Newsweek magazine released yesterday in which he was asked about the efforts of the Quartet - the US, UN, EU and Russia - to map out a road to peace. "Oh, the quartet is nothing! Don't take it seriously! There is [another] plan that will work," he said.

Asked to outline the plan, Mr Sharon restated his position that Yasser Arafat had to be stripped of power, a prime minister should be appointed to head a Palestinian administration and there should be fundamental reform of security organisations.

Later, the prime minister's office issued a clarification claiming that he did not mean to dismiss the Quartet's efforts, only to say that Israel was closest to the US view of how peace should be brought about.

But at a press conference yesterday evening aimed as much at voters in next week's general election as any foreign audience, Mr Sharon derided European peace proposals and said that the only member of the Quartet of relevance is the US.

"The [European] attitude towards Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians should be balanced. Once it's balanced, you are welcome to participate," he said.

"For instance, the US now says, and maybe the Russians also, that in order to move the peace process faster, Mr Arafat should be removed from the major decisions and a prime minister appointed in order to put a barrier between Mr Arafat, who can stay as a symbol if he wants, and the government."

"[The Europeans] do not understand that in order to move things forward, Arafat should be removed from any influential position."

European officials say they have been pressing for the appointment of a prime minister but argue that as long as Mr Arafat commands popular support among Palestinians he cannot simply be bypassed.

In a sarcastic aside, Mr Sharon said: "I feel an envy and jealousy that the Europeans and all those other countries have time to deal with our problems. I hope the time will come when things are peaceful enough here for me to dedicate time to helping the Europeans with their problems."

The Israeli prime minister's comments follow his recent confrontation with Tony Blair after Mr Sharon refused to allow Palestinian leaders to leave the West Bank to attend a London peace conference.

In yesterday's comments, Mr Sharon overstated the extent to which the US and Israel are in agreement on the "road map" that envisages a Palestinian state within three years.

He laid out conditions - "an end to terror and violence", dismantling "terrorist" groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and "complete cessation of incitement" - that he said the Americans had agreed were to be met before further steps could be taken towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

But the latest road map produced by the US does not require conditionality. Instead, Israel and the Palestinians would move in parallel, each implementing reforms.

American and European diplomats say Mr Sharon's position would hold the whole process hostage to the killing of a single Israeli by any Palestinian group that opposed a settlement. Mr Sharon's domestic critics say that is exactly what he wants.

The opposition Labour party leader, Amram Mitzna, said Mr Sharon's comments revealed that he is not really interested in peace.

"Ariel Sharon is not ready to withdraw settlements, to separate from the Palestinians or to give up the illusion of Greater Israel," he said.

The Palestinian information minister, Yassir Abd Rabbo, said Mr Sharon's comments put the onus on the Americans to prove the Israelis wrong.

"The Americans cannot prove they are serious about a Palestinian state as long as they protect Sharon," he said.

Mr Sharon said he was unconcerned at comments by the US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, reported yesterday, that after Iraq, Washington would focus on the Palestinian question and, in particular, settlements in the occupied territories. His comments were seen as significant in Jerusalem as he is one of the highest ranking Jewish members of the Bush administration and an unabashed supporter of Israel.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Plan: Tap Iraq's Oil

U.S. considers seizing revenues to pay for occupation, source says

By Knut Royce
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

January 10,2003, 9:55AM EST

Washington - Bush administration officials are seriously considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq's oil to help pay the cost of a military occupation, a move that likely would prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq.

Officially, the White House agrees that oil revenue would play an important role during an occupation period, but only for the benefit of Iraqis, according to a National Security Council spokesman.

Yet there are strong advocates inside the administration, including in the White House, for appropriating the oil funds as "spoils of war," according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the dialogue.

"There are people in the White House who take the position that it's all the spoils of war," said the source, who asked not to be further identified. "We [the United States] take all the oil money until there is a new democratic government [in Iraq]."

The source said the Justice Department has urged caution. "The Justice Department has doubts," he said. He said department lawyers are unsure "whether any of it [Iraqi oil funds] can be used or has to all be held in trust for the people of Iraq."

Another source who has worked closely with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney said that a number of officials there too are urging that Iraq's oil funds be used to defray the cost of occupation.

Jennifer Millerwise, a Cheney spokeswoman, declined to talk about "internal policy discussions."

Using Iraqi oil to fund an occupation would reinforce a prevalent belief in the Mideast that the conflict is all about control of oil, not rooting out weapons of mass destruction, according to Halim Barakat, a recently retired professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University.

"It would mean that the real ... objective of the war is not the democratization of Iraq, not getting rid of Saddam, not to liberate the Iraqi people, but a return to colonialism," he said. "That is how they [Mideast nations] would perceive it."

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of an occupation would range from $ 12billion to $ 48billion a year, and officials believe an occupation could last1 1 / 2years or more.

And Iraq has a lot of oil. Its proven oil reserves are second in the world only to Saudi Arabia's. But how much revenue could be generated is an open question. The budget office estimates Iraq now is producing nearly2 . 8million barrels a day, with 80 percent of the revenues going for the United Nations Oil for Food Program or domestic consumption. The remaining 20 percent, worth about $ 3billion a year, is generated by oil smuggling and much of it goes to support Saddam Hussein's military. In theory that is the money that could be used for reconstruction or to help defer occupation costs.

Yet with fresh drilling and new equipment Iraq could produce much more. By some estimates, however, it would take 10 years to fully restore Iraq's oil industry. Conversely, if Hussein torches the fields, as he did in Kuwait in 1991 , it would take a year or more to resume even a modest flow. And, of course, it is impossible to predict the price of oil.

Laurence Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Board governor who chaired a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference in November on the economic consequences of a war with Iraq, said that conference participants deliberately avoided the question of whether Iraq should help pay occupation or other costs. "It's a very politically sensitive issue," he said. "... We're in a situation where we're going to be very sensitive to how our actions are perceived in the Arab world."

Meyer said officials who believe Iraq's oil could defer some of the occupation costs may be "too optimistic about how much you could increase [oil production] and how long it would take to reinvest in the infrastructure and reinvest in additional oil."

An administration source said that most of the proposals for the conduct of the war and implementation of plans for a subsequent occupation are being drafted by the Pentagon. Last month a respected Washington think tank prepared a classified briefing commissioned by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's influential director of Net Assessment, on the future role of U.S. Special Forces in the global war against terrorism, among other issues. Part of the presentation recommended that oil funds be used to defray the costs of a military occupation in Iraq, according to a source who helped prepare the report.

He said that the study, undertaken by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, concluded that "the cost of the occupation, the cost for the military administration and providing for a provisional [civilian] administration, all of that would come out of Iraqi oil." He said the briefing was delivered to the office of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense and one of the administration's strongest advocates for an invasion of Iraq, on Dec.13 .

Steven Kosiak, the center's director of budget studies, said he could not remember whether such a recommendation was made, but if it was it would only have been "a passing reference to something we did."

Asked whether the Pentagon was now advocating the use of Iraqi oil to pay for the cost of a military occupation, Army Lt. Col. Gary Keck, a spokesman, said, "We don't have any official comment on that."

NSC spokesman Mike Anton said that in the event of war and a military occupation the oil revenues would be used "not so much to fund the operation and maintaining American forces but for humanitarian aid, refugees, possibly for infrastructure rebuilding, that kind of thing."

But the source who contributed to the Marshall report said that its conclusions reflect the opinion of many senior administration officials. "It [the oil] is going to fund the U.S. military presence there," he said. "... They're not just going to take the Iraqi oil and use it for Iraq's purpose. They will charge the Iraqis for the U.S. cost of operating in Iraq. I don't think they're planning as far as I know to use Iraqi oil to pay for the invasion, but they are going to use it to pay for the occupation."

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Plan: Tap Iraq's Oil

U.S. considers seizing revenues to pay for occupation, source says

By Knut Royce
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

January 10,2003, 9:55AM EST

Washington - Bush administration officials are seriously considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq's oil to help pay the cost of a military occupation, a move that likely would prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq.

Officially, the White House agrees that oil revenue would play an important role during an occupation period, but only for the benefit of Iraqis, according to a National Security Council spokesman.

Yet there are strong advocates inside the administration, including in the White House, for appropriating the oil funds as "spoils of war," according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the dialogue.

"There are people in the White House who take the position that it's all the spoils of war," said the source, who asked not to be further identified. "We [the United States] take all the oil money until there is a new democratic government [in Iraq]."

The source said the Justice Department has urged caution. "The Justice Department has doubts," he said. He said department lawyers are unsure "whether any of it [Iraqi oil funds] can be used or has to all be held in trust for the people of Iraq."

Another source who has worked closely with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney said that a number of officials there too are urging that Iraq's oil funds be used to defray the cost of occupation.

Jennifer Millerwise, a Cheney spokeswoman, declined to talk about "internal policy discussions."

Using Iraqi oil to fund an occupation would reinforce a prevalent belief in the Mideast that the conflict is all about control of oil, not rooting out weapons of mass destruction, according to Halim Barakat, a recently retired professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University.

"It would mean that the real ... objective of the war is not the democratization of Iraq, not getting rid of Saddam, not to liberate the Iraqi people, but a return to colonialism," he said. "That is how they [Mideast nations] would perceive it."

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of an occupation would range from $ 12billion to $ 48billion a year, and officials believe an occupation could last1 1 / 2years or more.

And Iraq has a lot of oil. Its proven oil reserves are second in the world only to Saudi Arabia's. But how much revenue could be generated is an open question. The budget office estimates Iraq now is producing nearly2 . 8million barrels a day, with 80 percent of the revenues going for the United Nations Oil for Food Program or domestic consumption. The remaining 20 percent, worth about $ 3billion a year, is generated by oil smuggling and much of it goes to support Saddam Hussein's military. In theory that is the money that could be used for reconstruction or to help defer occupation costs.

Yet with fresh drilling and new equipment Iraq could produce much more. By some estimates, however, it would take 10 years to fully restore Iraq's oil industry. Conversely, if Hussein torches the fields, as he did in Kuwait in 1991 , it would take a year or more to resume even a modest flow. And, of course, it is impossible to predict the price of oil.

Laurence Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Board governor who chaired a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference in November on the economic consequences of a war with Iraq, said that conference participants deliberately avoided the question of whether Iraq should help pay occupation or other costs. "It's a very politically sensitive issue," he said. "... We're in a situation where we're going to be very sensitive to how our actions are perceived in the Arab world."

Meyer said officials who believe Iraq's oil could defer some of the occupation costs may be "too optimistic about how much you could increase [oil production] and how long it would take to reinvest in the infrastructure and reinvest in additional oil."

An administration source said that most of the proposals for the conduct of the war and implementation of plans for a subsequent occupation are being drafted by the Pentagon. Last month a respected Washington think tank prepared a classified briefing commissioned by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's influential director of Net Assessment, on the future role of U.S. Special Forces in the global war against terrorism, among other issues. Part of the presentation recommended that oil funds be used to defray the costs of a military occupation in Iraq, according to a source who helped prepare the report.

He said that the study, undertaken by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, concluded that "the cost of the occupation, the cost for the military administration and providing for a provisional [civilian] administration, all of that would come out of Iraqi oil." He said the briefing was delivered to the office of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense and one of the administration's strongest advocates for an invasion of Iraq, on Dec.13 .

Steven Kosiak, the center's director of budget studies, said he could not remember whether such a recommendation was made, but if it was it would only have been "a passing reference to something we did."

Asked whether the Pentagon was now advocating the use of Iraqi oil to pay for the cost of a military occupation, Army Lt. Col. Gary Keck, a spokesman, said, "We don't have any official comment on that."

NSC spokesman Mike Anton said that in the event of war and a military occupation the oil revenues would be used "not so much to fund the operation and maintaining American forces but for humanitarian aid, refugees, possibly for infrastructure rebuilding, that kind of thing."

But the source who contributed to the Marshall report said that its conclusions reflect the opinion of many senior administration officials. "It [the oil] is going to fund the U.S. military presence there," he said. "... They're not just going to take the Iraqi oil and use it for Iraq's purpose. They will charge the Iraqis for the U.S. cost of operating in Iraq. I don't think they're planning as far as I know to use Iraqi oil to pay for the invasion, but they are going to use it to pay for the occupation."

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US will attack Iraq 'without UN backing'

By Toby Harnden
(Filed: 10/01/2003)

America will not delay a war with Iraq until the autumn and is prepared to launch military action against Saddam Hussein without further United Nations authorisation, a senior Bush administration adviser said yesterday.

Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board and a hawk whose views carry considerable weight, rejected suggestions from British ministers and senior Foreign Office officials that plans for an early war should be put on hold.

Mr Perle, who is close to Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said he did not expect the UN Security Council to reach agreement on the use of force but had little doubt that George W Bush, the US president, would press ahead regardless and lead a coalition to victory.

"I'm assuming that we will not get a consensus on the Security Council but it may be possible to get it," he said. "It would be a great mistake to become dependent on it and take the view that we can't act separately.

"That would be an abrogation of the president's responsibility."

Mr Perle stressed that as an outside adviser he could not speak for the Bush administration. But with Mr Rumsfeld and his ally Vice-President Dick Cheney, now the driving force behind US foreign policy, his pronouncements have taken on increasing importance.

Mr Perle said inspectors would not find actual weapons in the face of Iraqi concealment. "If that's the test, we're never going to find a smoking gun," said Mr Perle.

He criticised Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, for his handling of the inspections. He said inspectors had mainly visited previously known sites.

"They are the last place you would expect Saddam to put something," Mr Perle said. "You would have to be a complete idiot to do that. The inspectors returning to known sites makes Blix look foolish."

The Swede "has a history from when he was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Saddam built a nuclear capability right under his nose", he added.

Mr Perle suggested that American patience with the UN inspections process was limited and closely linked to the military timetable that makes it very difficult to fight a war after March because of the searing heat.

He said: "If there's no change in Saddam's attitude I think there'll be a reluctance to continue this without a clear indication that our patience will be rewarded by a UN Security Council consensus.

"A consensus would be a useful thing and I think we'd be willing to wait a little longer to get it but not a long time."

Mr Perle said America had been right to go to the UN to seek Resolution 1441, passed unanimously in November, because it "produced a consensus in support of significant demands" but the UN had only a limited role in dealing with Saddam.

"The question now of course is whether the UN having done that [passed 1441] will insist that its demands be met or revert to its previous posture which was to pass resolutions but not take the actions necessary to ensure compliance with them."

He expressed doubt that Tony Blair had asked or would ask Mr Bush to delay war until the autumn and accused those who sought such a delay of being opposed to ousting Saddam in any event.

Although Mr Perle did not mention them, a number of US State Department diplomats are implacably opposed to war.

They were encouraged by the views of the ministers and the Foreign Office, reported in The Telegraph yesterday, as well as recent comments by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that the chances of war were "60:40 against".

Mr Perle said: "There are nations on the UN Security Council against taking military action so they will try to slow any movement towards military action."

America and its allies, he insisted, already had the legal and moral justification for war. "We might be acting without a resolution from the UN authorising it but I think the administration can make a strong case that Saddam's defiance of a variety of resolutions passed previously could be understood to justify military action."
Related reports

Blair calls for time on Iraq


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