contrary to what the RWEs spout
"It's unpatriotic not to stand up, look them in the eye, and ask the questions they don't want to hear - they being those who have the responsibility, the ultimate responsibility - of sending our sons and daughters, our husbands, wives, our blood, to face death."
__________________________________________
Originally, this was the "Kissinger plan,'' says James Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He lost his state department job for publicly criticizing administration plans to control Arab oil back in 1975 when Henry Kissinger was secretary of state. "I thought they were crazy then and they're crazy now,'' Akins tells the Star, adding that Congress studied plans to control Persian Gulf oil and concluded the idea was absolute madness. "I thought this whole thing was dead. But now you've got all these `neo-cons' in power, and here we go again,'' says Akins, a Washington-based consultant. "They figure once they take over Iraq, they don't have to worry about the Saudis.''
Akins adds: "These people with their imperial ideas see themselves as part of the Great American Empire." The players have moved steadily through the Republican presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush and Bush himself. They include: Vice-president Richard Cheney, a former oilman, like Bush, and defence secretary during his father's Persian Gulf War in 1991; Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, once Reagan's personal emissary to the Middle East when Saddam was a U.S. friend and staunch ally; Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, who began publicly calling for war against Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks; and Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness'' for his political stick-handling.
They are joined by think-tankers from organizations such as the Project for the New American Century, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the American Enterprise Institute. Bush recently chose an American Enterprise Institute forum, rather than the White House, to deliver a major prime-time speech to the American people to make the case for war. Bush often mentions Iraqi oil, a jarring focus for a president on the brink of war.
"We will seek to protect Iraq's natural resources from sabotage from a dying regime and ensure they are used for the benefit of Iraq's own people,'' he said in last week's radio address. Colin Robinson, an analyst with the Washington-based Centre for Defence Information, says: "The United States can stand well-accused of trying to dominate the whole region for its oil. But conspiracy theories are usually too complicated for everybody to carry them off." Friedman says the 1991 war left unfinished business, the "status quo'' of Saddam in power. Not so this time, he says, in a war which, as U.N. diplomats dither, has already begun.
In recent weeks, British and U.S. warplanes strayed outside "no-fly'' zones to bomb Iraqi surface-to-air missiles. Robinson describes these zones, set up by the U.S. and Britain after Desert Storm as "barely legal'' in terms of international law. As well, U.N. officials report violations of the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait by U.S. soldiers. But the real devastation should begin within days.
"We've got everything we need. We're just waiting on the word, the decision from the president," Maj.-Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, told the Washington Post last week from Kuwait. First comes aerial bombardment, an extraordinary 1,500 bombs every 24 hours during the time it takes heavy mechanized divisions to move up from Kuwait to Baghdad. Big heavy bombers, from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, buttressed by screaming navy and air force jets will pound Iraqi sites, picked by aerial drones and U.S. and British Special Forces already in Iraq. Defence contractors are eager to test out new gadgetry. One new bomb is the 9,000-kilo MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Burst). "Well, it's very efficient,'' says Friedman. "Let's say you've got a large concentration of Republican Guard units, instead of having to do repeated bombing sorties, you can take out a battalion (500 to 600 troops) with one bomb.''
Friedman's sources in theatre tell him there are "terrific fights between defence department officials and field commanders who are raring to go now.'' He says time is the enemy of troops in the field. Sandstorms at the end of March, for example, could play havoc with laser targeting systems. Without the anticipated "northern front'' through Turkey, there are plans for C-130s to ferry troops to northern Iraq, as well as missions for U.S. Marines and Special Forces to secure oil sites throughout Iraq. "The U.S. military cannot be defeated on the conventional battlefield,'' says military analyst Pike. But what about the variables? How much of a threat is Saddam? What about chemical and biological weapons? "We gonna find out,'' says Pike.
Meanwhile, Iraqi exiles, opposed to Saddam, have been meeting with U.S. and British oil executives, promising access and leases in return for political power. And, the U.S., as Friedman points out, on the brink of world hegemony, is going to find out who its friends are. "I do so enjoy Canadians (against the war) getting so obsessed with human rights, and then pay no attention to places like Venezuela,'' says Friedman, who thinks Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is next on Bush's military agenda. "I read the Canadian press and I wonder what planet your country is on. "We have allies, and we are going to see who they are,'' he concludes. "If France, if Canada, can't support us in opposition to Saddam Hussein, you can't say you are our allies. Canada consistently says it's an ally of the United States of America ... we'll see, won't we?''
globalpolicy.org |
