Quote of the day from a USA Today portrait, Strain of Iraq war showing on Bush, those who know him say — indicating that the greatest advantage in being the nation’s First Viewer lies in advanced access to the programming schedule:: “Through the day, he regularly watches war coverage on the nearest TV, which is in the private dining room next to the Oval Office. He knows when heavy bombardments of Baghdad are scheduled and sometimes tunes in to see them.”
Finally, we have our first statement from someone who reputedly will be a key figure in the postwar Iraqi government. Sponsored by a group calling itself Americans for Victory over Terrorism, his statement was offered not in Iraq or even in Kuwait, but at a Los Angeles “teach-in” before an audience of college students. The figure is James Woolsey, ex-CIA director under President Clinton, and reputedly a Pentagon nominee for a high position in Iraq’s supposedly all-American future government of reconstruction. He suggested optimistically that we were at the beginning of “World War IV” (the third being the Cold War), a war that “will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War.”
He added, according to CNN, that “the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the ‘fascists’ of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.” But later he added that the targets the United States, perhaps with its Iraqi face on, would be aiming at were wider yet. “Singling out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, he said, ‘We want you nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you — the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family — most fear: We’re on the side of your own people.'”
Che Guevara made famous a slogan in the Vietnam era: “One, two, three, many Vietnams.” It has, in essence, been picked up by the present administration which is promising a future of one, two, three Iraqs (with perhaps a similar chance of success). Here are a few hints of that world to come. Aluf Benn of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports (U.S.: After Iraq, we’ll deal with other radical Mideast regimes) on a “communique” from the Bush administration to Ariel Sharon’s government on future policy in the Middle East. It reportedly says that
“the United States is operating with strong resolution to neutralize the Iraqi threat to Israel. After the war, the message continued, the United States will deal with other radical regimes in the region – not necessarily by military means – to moderate their activities and fight terrorism.
“These current and future U.S. operations will also serve Israel, the American administration says, but have caused tensions between the United States and the Arab world. Israel, the American message says, must play its part to help ease these tensions by taking action with regard to settlements in the territories.
“The message from Washington adds that the current U.S. administration has no illusions about peace and a return to the political process, merely a realistic view of how to manage the conflict.”
A column, On to Damascus, in Mother Jones on-line’s “War Watch” offers a round-up of recent American threats directed at Syria (including Colin Powell’s ominous speech at an AIPAC gathering in which he declared, to much applause, that Syria faces a “critical choice”). It also quotes from right-wing editorials in American papers urging the administration to widen the war and take out Syria right away, and the first rumors from “Israeli intelligence” sources in the New York Post that the missing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have actually been hidden in Syria — after all, we may need some WMD excuse to go in.
“These current and future U.S. operations will also serve Israel, the American administration says, but have caused tensions between the United States and the Arab world. Israel, the American message says, must play its part to help ease these tensions by taking action with regard to settlements in the territories.
“The message from Washington adds that the current U.S. administration has no illusions about peace and a return to the political process, merely a realistic view of how to manage the conflict.”
A column, On to Damascus, in Mother Jones on-line’s “War Watch” offers a round-up of recent American threats directed at Syria (including Colin Powell’s ominous speech at an AIPAC gathering in which he declared, to much applause, that Syria faces a “critical choice”). It also quotes from right-wing editorials in American papers urging the administration to widen the war and take out Syria right away, and the first rumors from “Israeli intelligence” sources in the New York Post that the missing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have actually been hidden in Syria — after all, we may need some WMD excuse to go in.
Another straw in the wind appeared yesterday in the Asia Times (see below), also off a report in Ha’aretz. Hooman Peimani reported that the Sharon government is considering the possibility of restarting (or rebuilding) a pipeline that, over half a century ago took oil from Iraq to Haifa — of course, for this to happen, regime change in Syria is a necessity. (By the way, Jonathan Steele of the Guardian wrote a piece from Damascus early in the week Read the small print: the US wants to privatise Iraq’s oil, which offers a hint or two about the kind of Americanization likely to occur in occupied Iraq.)
I’ve included below as well an interview with Noam Chomsky from the ZNET website in which he considers the present war as a “trial run” for a new world order and a column by Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman in which he discusses the administration “dreams” that have already died in Iraq, no matter how this war — or this phase of this war anyway — ends. His final line is the gloomiest Vietnam era reference I’ve yet run across: “But it’s hard to see light at the end of this tunnel.” Tom
In the pipeline: More regime change
By Hooman Peimani
Asia Times
April 3, 2003An Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, has reported that Israel is seriously considering restarting a strategically important oil pipeline that once transferred oil from the Iraqi city of Mosul to Israel’s northern port of Haifa. Given the Israeli claim of a positive US approach to the plan, the Israeli project provides grounds for a theory that the ongoing war against Iraq is in part a joint US, British and Israeli design for reshaping the Middle East to serve their particular interests, including their oil requirements.
According to the daily, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky considers the pipeline project as economically justifiable as it would reduce the country’s cost of oil imports. This is currently very high, as Israel imports oil from Russia.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with international organizations in Geneva and does research in international relations.
To read more Peimani click here
By Noam Chomsky
ZNET
V. K. Ramachandran : Does the present aggression on Iraq represent a
continuation of United States’ international policy in recent years or a
qualitatively new stage in that policy?
Noam Chomsky : It represents a significantly new phase. It is not
without precedent, but significantly new nevertheless.
This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy
and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that
the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the
U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and
military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will
follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it
could be others.
The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a “new norm”
in international relations. The new norm is “preventive war.”
To read more of this Chomsky interview click here
War backers misled us and themselves
By Jay Bookman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 31, 2003In strictly military terms, President Bush is right: Our progress against Iraq cannot be judged by some arbitrary timetable. Like any military campaign, this war consists not of a schedule, but of a series of objectives. When one objective is achieved, you check it off and move to the next one.
When all of your jobs are finished, you’ve won.
Today, U.S. and British troops are still working their lists, and whether they accomplish a particular objective by Day 12 rather than Day 7 is not all that important. There is no reason to believe that the plan — the military plan — is in danger.
However, the intensity of the resistance we face in Iraq does call into doubt the much larger plan underlying our decision to go to war….