It’s Iraq. It’s Now.

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday March 29, 2003 10:18 by Malatested - Anarchist Federation contact at afireland dot cjb dot net

And so, without any level of legal justification, any pretence of popular support, and any sense of moral decency, the U.S. and its ever so ‘minor partner’, the U.K., have taken it upon themselves to escalate hostilities against Iraq; hostilities which have continued in the form of daily aerial attacks and murderous sanctions since the last days of Gulf War I. The fact that 42% of Iraq’s population are children is of no apparent interest to the hawks in the Whitehouse and Downing Street.

The U.N. and the Inevitability of War

With or without the fig leaf of a second U.N. resolution, the U.S. was always going to invade. Iraq is the weakest link, and the most strategic target, in a region that contains two-thirds of the world’s proven oil resources. But Iraq is just the beginning. According to George Bush Snr.’s former speechwriter, David Frum:

An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein –and the replacement of the radical Ba’athist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans. (1)

Plans for an ultimate invasion of Iraq have been in the (oil) pipeline for years. Richard Perle, chairman of the powerful Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon, set up the ‘Project for the New American Century’ (P.A.N.A.) back in the mid-nineties –a crypto-fascist elite whose co-founders represent a who’s who of Bush Junior’s backroom staff. These include none other than Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld (yes, the man who shook Saddam’s hand back in 1983), and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Before their man Bush wangled himself into power, P.A.N.A. were already lobbying the Clinton administration for ‘regime change’ in Baghdad, and recommended diverting $48 billion dollars from obviously less worthwhile projects like Medicare and education. The loot was to be invested so that the U.S. “can fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars” (2).

Safe to assume then that there really was no way of rolling back the inevitable push for war. Or was there?

Leaving aside the obvious advantages of direct action as witnessed by the Scottish train drivers who refused to transport munitions back in January, the Italian blockade of trains carrying U.S. personnel soon afterwards, and by our very own campaign to stop refuelling at Shannon, there has been a more ‘legal’ precedent that U.N. member states could have opted for to bring an end to the stalemate over the recent resolutions.
To consider this, we need to go back to 1956, following Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal. Britain and France’s (re: Britain and the U.S. today) gung-ho attempt to retake Suez was a last flexing of a failing, withered muscle that operated under the illusion that at least some part of global hegemony lay with them and not with their patron across the Atlantic. Eisenhower demanded the invasion to stop, but U.S. backed resolutions in the U.N. were vetoed by both France and Britain (re: Russia and France today). So what did Eisenhower do? He appealed to the General Assembly under a procedure called ‘Uniting For Peace’. Under this, he demanded that British and French troops lay down their arms, and withdraw. Within a week, they had.

‘Uniting for Peace’ (U.f.P) was a procedure originally adopted by the Security Council so that the U.N. can act even it is stalemated by vetoes, or the threat of vetoes. Resolution 377 provides that if there is a “threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression”, the General Assembly can meet and recommend a course of action to “maintain or restore international peace and security”. Now, this is something the U.S. obviously believes in. After all, they have used U.f.P more than anyone else.

Not much about this in your daily newspapers?

Media Control

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men… The people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions, which are in consonance with their sacred laws.

A British general –F.S. Maude -made this solemn promise to the Iraqi people. It wasn’t last week, though. It was in 1917, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of British forces in Iraq. Sound familiar? Not so long afterwards, Winston Churchill would rain down mustard gas on the ‘uncivilised tribes’ of Kurds who may have otherwise have attempted establishing their own ‘institutions’ to create their own ‘wealth’.

The media has reached an almost unparalleled level of servile dishonesty in the last few weeks. Barely credible are the early morning ritual of pictures of shelled Iraqi positions and shrivelled Iraqi corpses strewn across the desert sand. Completely absent among the euphemisms used are words such as ‘murder’ and ‘death’.
The pro-U.S. frenzy whipped up by tabloids and broadsheets alike is symptomatic of how consent has always been manufactured by the establishment, but its attainment of new peaks of obviousness may only prove self-defeating in the long-term. While Blair was lauded for his fiery attack on the pink-eyed liberals in the House of Commons, no mention was made, strangely enough, about the comments of erstwhile foreign minister Robin Cooks’ the day before when he claimed, in his resignation speech, that “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term”. Balance this against chief Blair’s’ later remarks:

We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history and intelligence, (Saddam) decided unilaterally to destroy these weapons. I say such a claim is palpably absurd.

The B.B.C., meanwhile, under its director of news Richard Sambrook, (who didn’t deign to permit any coverage of the recent anti-war protests in London -confining it to small segments in local news) are, like Blair and co., fully aware of the truth. Their function is simply to conceal it from us.
Take, for example, the charade involving Scott Ritter, chief weapons’ inspector with UNSCOM and someone with the obvious credentials to talk about weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.); someone with a lot to say, therefore, about whether or not there are any W.M.D. remaining in Iraq. Yes, he is allowed to say it. This is, after all, a ‘democracy’, we are told. But unfortunately he is only allowed to say it once, at 3.00 a.m., and on B.B.C.’s digital news channel, B.B.C. News 24. Meanwhile, the usual cabal of media-hawks are given ample airtime to set out the U.S.-U.K. case.

‘Bad news days’, full of stories of ‘friendly fire’ casualties and unexpected Iraqi resistance are reported in lop-sided fashion as more preferable reports suddenly arrive of chemical agents being discovered by advancing ‘coalition’ forces. Basra has fallen, this time definitely, and then it pops up again like a film set in an old western movie. Resistance in Umm Qasr was supposed to have collapsed days ago, but Iraqi forces are still holding out. Iraq has not captured American P.O.W.’s, and then it has. The war is ‘going according to plan’ but ‘unexpected’ at the same time. And as for the recent Basra uprisings? If they are anything like the uprisings in 1991, rest assured that the U.S. will allow Iraq sufficient time to turn their guns on the people. The last thing anybody needs is to run their own affairs, obviously.
And so, information is made public by U.S. Central Command in Qatar (who should know what’s going on) and then it is rescinded…but we are supposed to believe them next time round! Previous events are thrown into the memory hole of debunked history. All of this seems, however, to work. And it works because the overriding currency traded by media and military alike is fear.

Culture of Fear

The use of this ‘fear’ has been round for a long time. The Russians were going to use an airbase in Grenada to bomb mainland U.S. Answer? Invade Grenada. Nicaragua was ‘two days’ marching time from Texas. Answer? Declare a ‘war on terror’ that will wipe out 200,000 lives in Latin America. Its use again is unsurprising: the Republicans in the early 1980’s are the same as the Republicans now –in a slightly reshuffled pack. The massive propaganda effort that is currently bludgeoning the truth is a sign, however, that the U.S. and U.K. governments are worried. They are worried because of the unprecedented popular opposition to the war, greater at this stage, than any opposition to any war ever. And yet, 120,000 extra U.S. troops are being sent out to the Gulf as a result of supposed criticism from parts of this same U.S. population. Now it seems the U.S. military is under strength somehow, and simply bowing to public pressure that is acting now as a commander-in-chief, calling the shots. It’s like Vietnam-in-reverse.
At least, you might say, we have the French to thank for not getting involved. According to Anthony Arnove (3), however, “the French…(are) busily retrofitting its munitions to be compatible with U.S. weapons with U.S. weapons…” In fact they have…
…conspicuously (sent)…an aircraft carrier on manoeuvres just where it would be most useful in military action against Iraq. (4)

WMD

So much has already been written about Saddam’s alleged possession of WMD even though there is a 90-95% probability, according to Hans Blix, that they no longer exist. But what of the U.S.’s growing arsenal of hardware?

According to Victor Slipchenko, one of the leading military analysts in the world, the ‘main purpose’ of the attack on Iraq is the testing out of new weapons. In Bush’s first presidential address in May 2001 he asserted that:

…The armed forces needed to be completely hi-tech, capable of conducting hostilities by the no-contact method. After a series of live experiments –in Iraq in 1991, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan –many incorporations achieved huge profits. Now the bottom line is $50-60 a year.

In August this year (I suppose when the war with Iraq is expected to be done and dusted) the Bush administration will hold a secret meeting…

…to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including ‘mini-nukes’, ‘bunker busters’ and neutron bombs. Generals, government officials and nuclear scientists will also discuss the appropriate propaganda to convince the American public that the new weapons are necessary (5).

Among the list of military options discussed will be the so-called ‘microwave’ bombs which can bring down computer systems, various electronic sources and which, according to Time magazine…(6)

…could destroy nearby heart pacemakers and other life-critical systems in n hospitals or aboard aircraft. (7)

Along with these, we have the fuel-air explosives (F.A.E.s) previously debuting in Afghanistan. According to the N.Y.T Times:

…the above ground blasts produce up to twice the pressure of conventional high explosive charges and searing temperatures above 5000 degrees –far hotter than the fires that toppled the WTC towers. (8)

Not forgetting, of course, the usual array of depleted uranium weapons (D.U.) –one million of which were use in Gulf War I -cluster bombs and daisy cutters.

Emergency Relief

As I write this, the first shipment of food and other necessities is being cleared to dock at partially controlled Umm Qasr. Pictures of grateful ‘liberated’ Iraqis queuing for aid, will, no doubt, be beamed worldwide to reassured sceptics, by equally grateful journalists, ‘embedded’ or otherwise –a repeat of the barely plausible attempts at relief in Afghanistan last year. As usual, this is not the full story.
The Centre for Economic and Social Rights (C.E.S.R.), a research team that recently visited Iraq and which includes former U.N. humanitarian coordinator Hans von Sponeck found that:

·92% of hospitals lack basic medical equipment
·Intra-operative and post-operative surgical care is virtually unavailable
·Damage to electrical and water systems will constrain medical services (a lot has been made of how precision bombing had not affected electricity in and around Baghdad)
·Shortage of antibiotics and other medications (9)

In Geneva last month, UN officials convened an international conference and ‘warned of devastating humanitarian consequences of a war in Iraq.’ The conference, which was hardly reported in the mainstream media, predicted that 2 million Iraqis will be forced to leave their homes while a possible 1.5 million will be forced to flee Iraq completely.

What will happen?

You could almost sense the disappointment in the tone of the media pundits when the so-called ‘shock and awe’ failed to materialise in the first days of the war. We have been led to believe that things are not going according to plan, that the coalition may take longer to achieve its objectives, but that victory will be complete. The most one-sided war in history has been transformed into an almost equal battlefield, and more fatalities are expected as urban guerrilla warfare in Baghdad will render hi-tech weaponry useless. This might be the case, but only if the coalition-of-two decide not to obliterate Baghdad, innocent civilians and all!
So what will happen? Already, even before the war has finished, corporate America is homing in on its prey. U.S. engineering firm Kellogg Brown and Root (part of Haliburton -and yes, that’s Cheney’s old alma mater) has already won the contract to put out oil well fires and repair oil facilities. Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) –who are renown for union busting across three continents -have won the right to handle cargo and shipping at Umm Qasr –the most important docks in Iraq. Other contracts will be sorted out in the next few months, with Blair being thrown the crusts from his master’s table
And what of government, post-Saddam? Apparently military strategy is to incorporate elements of the Ba’ath party in order to ‘maintain stability’ according to the Washington Post. The goal, according to George Packer Dreaming of Democracy, is…

…removing Saddam but letting power stay with his ruling Ba’ath party, mainly minority Sunni Arabs…Ba’ath party officials would be removed from the top levels of the bureaucracy, but those a notch down would be kept on to work with their American superiors. (10)

Iraq, in fact, will be run by a puppet-like, malleable administration under U.S. control while General Tommy Franks will maintain military control.

Conclusion

To conclude then with the obvious. The war has started, innocent people are being slaughtered, and media-military annex is doing its best to serve war to us in palatable portions. Demonstrations have been ignored. Fuel is still flowing into U.S. aircraft at Shannon airport and Fairford in England. But the recent direct action taken in Ireland against Shannon airport, the occupation of the airport by the Catholic Workers and the actions against Top Oil bode well for the future of the movement here.

M@latested

1. George Packer Dreaming of Democracy New York Times magazine March 2 2003
2. John Pilger Disobey March 2003
3. Anthony Arnove The Invasion of Iraq
4. Richard Bernstein and Steven R. Weisman NATO settles rift over aid to Turks in case of war
5. John Pilger Ibid
6. Mark Thompson America’s ultra-secret weapon in ‘Time’ January 2003
7. Seth Schiesel Taking aim at the enemy’s chips in N.Y.T January 2003
8. Andrew C. Revkin U.S. making weapons to blast underground hide-outs N.Y.Y December 2002
9. Anthony Arnove Ibid
10. George Packer Ibid