So what was in the news on the day the President “prepared” the American public for war? Well, the Dow Jones dropped again — down perhaps 4,000 points since our President took office (which in another world might merit a front page headline or two every now and then). Yesterday the unemployment rate rose another tenth of a point to 5.8%. The Democratic leadership in Congress finally peeped over the coming war. Sen. Daschle criticized our “rushing to war without adequate concern for the ramifications of doing so unilaterally or with a very small coalition of nations.” This, in the Washington Post, passes for “lambasting” the President’s war policy.
Meanwhile the President held a rare press conference, decisively plunking for a “multilateral” approach to the North Korean problem (i.e. we’ll never sit opposite them alone). In recent days he also mentioned the military option in Korea (“If [efforts to persuade North Korea] don’t work diplomatically, they’ll have to work militarily”], while his associates began to muster B-52s and his Secretary of Defense threatened to pull US troops back from the Korean border areas or out of the South altogether. (“Separately, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday the stationing of U.S. troops near the border with North Korea has become intrusive to South Korea, adding that forces could be moved south of the capital or even out of South Korea altogether.”) Assumedly, if all went well, only Koreans would be left to die in Korean War II. ()
The President also reassured us about his sentiments (“I pray for peace”), while the New York Times spoke of “a solemn effort to rally Americans and allies” on the front page, of a “serene” president in an inside analysis, and in the lead editorial of a “somber” president. But press conferences are in the eye of the beholder, it seems. Columnist Tom Shales of the Washington Post had another view of the President’s mood last night (Bush’s Wake-up Call Was a Snooze Alarm)
“Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war?… There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks. Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements — pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless.Watching him was like counting sheepThe contrast between the foggy Bush of last night and the gung-ho Bush who delivered a persuasive State of the Union message to Congress not so long ago was considerable it hardly seems out of order to speculate that, given the particularly heavy burden of being president in this new age of terrorism — a time in which America has, as Bush said, become a “battlefield” — the president may have been ever so slightly medicated. He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill.” (Thanks to Bob Fertik of www.democrats.com for pointing this piece out to me.)
The President reassured us as usual yesterday that we were going to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction. As it turned out, there was some other news about such weapons in the paper, though you could only find it in England. Future Saddam-like proliferators will evidently have to face an even more advanced American arsenal in the future — and what might that arsenal consist of? Well, Julian Borger of the Guardian reports today (Pentagon wants mini-nuke ban to be lifted), in that arsenal could well be… “mini”-nuclear weapons.
“The Pentagon has asked the US Congress to lift a 10-year ban on developing small nuclear warheads, or ‘mini-nukes,’ in one of the most overt steps President George Bush’s administration has taken towards building a new atomic arsenal. Buried in the defence department’s 2004 budget proposals, sent to congressional committees this week, was a single-line statement that marks a sharp change in US nuclear policy.
“It calls on the legislature to ‘rescind the prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons”…. A Pentagon official said yesterday the research ban on smaller warheads ‘has negatively affected US government efforts to support the national strategy to counter WMD, and undercuts efforts that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats.'”
The President reassured us as usual yesterday that we were going to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction. As it turned out, there was some other news about such weapons in the paper, though you could only find it in England. Future Saddam-like proliferators will evidently have to face an even more advanced American arsenal in the future — and what might that arsenal consist of? Well, Julian Borger of the Guardian reports today (Pentagon wants mini-nuke ban to be lifted), in that arsenal could well be… “mini”-nuclear weapons.
“The Pentagon has asked the US Congress to lift a 10-year ban on developing small nuclear warheads, or ‘mini-nukes,’ in one of the most overt steps President George Bush’s administration has taken towards building a new atomic arsenal. Buried in the defence department’s 2004 budget proposals, sent to congressional committees this week, was a single-line statement that marks a sharp change in US nuclear policy.
“It calls on the legislature to ‘rescind the prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons”…. A Pentagon official said yesterday the research ban on smaller warheads ‘has negatively affected US government efforts to support the national strategy to counter WMD, and undercuts efforts that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats.'”
Below you’ll find an interesting interview with a Russian weapons expert who suggests that Iraq in this coming war will, in essence, be a laboratory for the testing of the latest weaponry from the American military-industrial complex. I think he’s wrong to imagine that this is at the heart of what’s at stake, but it’s an aspect of war American-style that is much underemphasized here.
Yesterday, I received the following e-note from Mike Klare, an update on the scheduling of war. I reproduce it mainly because it gave me the chills. I felt like I was watching one of those small lights blinking off all over Europe in August 1914.
“Dear friends and colleagues:
For what it’s worth: I was scheduled to do a taping today for a CNN show
on oil to air this Sunday; but I was just called to be informed that the
show has been cancelled to make way for intensified war coverage, as CNN
expects the war to break out soon, as early as next week.I myself am not sure about the onset of war, but if I were to hazard a
guess, I would say the week after next, when many colleges and universities
are on spring break (and so cannot be sites of protest). But if you learn
that UN inspectors are pulling out of Baghdad, you can be sure that the war
is hours away.Regretfully, I cannot think of what else we can do to stop the war. I was
so heartened yesterday to go to Northampton HS, where about 300 students
skipped classes to attend a student-run rally against war – one of dozens
of events like it at high schools and colleges in this region. But
obviously, are protests aren’t being listened to.Now, I fear, we have to plan for what to do AFTER the fighting starts, when
we can expect a rally-round-the-flag hysteria. We must raise the long-term
consequences of war: increased terrorism, anti-Americanism, and the
self-destructive folly of assuming an imperial role in the Middle East.I wish you all my best in these dark times.
Michael”
I add to the mix below two other pieces, the first by Ian Lustick from this week’s Nation magazine manages to demolish one of the icons of our present crop of war-makers, Kenneth Pollack’s book, The Threatening Storm, The Case for Invading Iraq, and then goes on brilliantly to explain the “supply-side war” that’s on its way and why the war-makers are in a rush to the battlements (such as they are in Washington DC). Finally, Dan Pletsch of the Guardian reminds us that the pretty words that go with this war are a con for picking up “the white man’s burden” and reminds us that “the Bushites are not the heirs of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. They are the heirs to those who kept the US out of the League [of Nations], opposed involvement in the Second World War and opposed the creation of the UN.” Tom
“Shock and Awe”
Russian Expert Predicts 500,000 Iraqi Dead
in War Designed To Test Weapons
Rossiyskaya Gazeta in Russian
22 Feb 2003.
www.globalresearch.ca
March 3 2003Interview with military analyst Vladimir Slipchenko by Aleksandr Khokhlov;
Vladimir Slipchenko, is military analyst, doctor of military sciences, professor, and major general of reserves, is a major Russian specialist on future wars.
His predictions of the course of US military operations in Iraq (1991, 1996, and 1998), Yugoslavia (1999), and Afghanistan (2001) coincided almost 100% with what subsequently happened in reality. Today the military analyst predicts the course and outcome of the next US war against Iraq, which the American military themselves have already dubbed Operation “Shock And Awe.”[Khokhlov] Vladimir Ivanovich, so much has already been said about the reasons and causes of the new war in Iraq, but I cannot get rid of the feeling that they are either talking about something entirely different, or not telling the full story…
[Slipchenko] The main purpose of the war is indeed being left out of the picture.
To read more of the Russian weapons expert click here
Storm Warnings for a Supply-Side War
By Ian S. Lustick
The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq
by Kenneth M. Pollack
The Nation Magazine
March 24, 2003There’s nothing like a compelling icon when no compelling argument is available.
That is just how Kenneth Pollack’s book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, is presented by its publisher (the venerable Council on Foreign Relations) and how it is used. It was hailed by the managing editor of Foreign Affairs (which is published by the council as well) as “one of the most important books on American foreign policy in years.” Of course, the overwhelming majority of those who will cite the book to support a US-led war in Iraq will not read it. They will rely on its title, its publication by the Council on Foreign Relations and the titillating biography of the author–a former CIA analyst whose advice to be tough on Iraq went unheeded during the Clinton years. It has become a talisman, not an argument.
To read more Lustick click here
A con trick for Western liberals
How the US and Britain can back democracy and disarmament now
By Dan Pletsch
The Guardian
March 7, 2003The idea that we can invade Iraq to bring democracy and freedom is a confidence trick designed to draw western liberals into providing legitimacy for old-fashioned conquest. We have been here before. In the late 19th century, Christian missionaries provided countless factual accounts of the barbarities of the heathen in Africa which were used to justify intervention and, in the end, the conquest, exploitation and partition of the continent. Iraq is a state created by the British empire after 1918 and was under London’s influence until 1958. We have yet to come to terms with the cruelties of our own empire. But once again, local brutalities are being used to justify our own attacks.
We are told there is no alternative, and that we shouldn’t refuse to do something good because we cannot set right every global wrong.Dan Plesch is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute