GET
OUT THE BIG GUNS
It's
not like it hasn't happened before. Weapons of mass distraction
are the biggest guns in any sitting President's arsenal, and
if you think the most ravenously opportunistic politician
in American history would balk at such a ruthless act of pure
political calculation, then just ask the relatives of the
poor night watchman killed when
Clinton bombed that pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan.
Remember when the CIA was swearing up and down that the El
Shifa factory outside of Khartoum was the focal point of a
nefarious terrorist plot – naturally spearheaded by all-purpose
villain Osama bin Laden – to wreak biological and chemical
havoc on the region? A year later, they admitted that it
was all a "mistake" – and of course it was just a
coincidence that Clinton gave the order to bomb on
the night of Monica Lewinsky's return to the grand jury. Are
we in for a repeat of those halcyon days?
PERLE
OF WISDOM
With
trouble for Gore brewing on the domestic front – at least
until Larry
Flynt releases those
photos – both the Democratic
and Republican
presidential candidates are seemingly engaged in a chest-beating
contest over the prostrate body politic of Iraq. Richard
Perle, prominent neoconservative
foreign policy maven and a Bush advisor, averred that
"Governor
Bush has said ... he would fully implement the Iraq Liberation
Act. We all understand what that means. It means a serious
and sustained effort to assist the opposition with a view
to bringing down Saddam's regime. In 31 years in Washington,
I have not seen a sustained hypocrisy that parallels the current
administration's public embrace of the Iraq Liberation Act
and its dilatory tactics aimed at preventing any progress
taking place under the act. That will not be the case in a
Bush administration."
 CLINTON
IN HELL
What
better way to respond than to escalate the almost daily bombing
of Iraq? Over a million Iraqis – most of them children
– have died
since the imposition of draconian sanctions, but this cannot
matter to Bill Clinton – since he will burn in the deepest
darkest province of Hell no matter what he does. After all,
what difference will a few more dead Iraqis make to our sociopathic
chief executive?
LIBERATION
THROUGH STARVATION
 Perle
understands the "Iraq Liberation Act" – but most ordinary
Americans have never even heard of it. If they had,
it might never have passed to begin with. For this is just
another foreign aid boondoggle, a $97 million subsidy to the
fractured and fractious Iraqi "opposition" – a motley
crew of Islamic fundamentalists, revolutionary Marxists, professional
opportunists, and frustrated democrats in exile who
recently split into pro-US and anti-US factions. The Iraqi
National Accord, made up of Iraqi
military and dissident Baathist party cadre, broke away
from the US-funded Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella
opposition group, on strategic grounds: the INC has no support
inside Iraq because it is widely and accurately seen as the
cat's-paw of a hostile foreign power. As a mother cradles
her dying infant in her arms, cursing Uncle Sam for starving
a baby to death, the father is unlikely to take up arms in
the service of his child's killers. This is a public relations
challenge that not even the Clintonian masters of "spin" have
been able to surmount, but it hasn't stopped the Republicans
from complaining that the Clinton administration has disbursed
only $20,000 of the appropriations authorized by the Iraqi
Liberation Act. A recent
news item, however, has me wondering. . . .
OF
COURSE I BELIEVE YOU. . . .
In
Amman, Jordan, a curious advertisement appeared in local newspapers:
the US Army Corps of Engineers is soliciting bids for a "well"
near the border town of Treibel, but a few miles from Iraqi
territory. Printed in small type, it caused a large outcry
as Islamic and leftist parties issued a joint declaration
condemning the plan: "Digging an artesian well for the U.S.
army usually happens on US territory or a US base. As Jordan
is a sovereign Arab country, digging a well on its soil for
US forces is a diminution of sovereignty." What a charmingly
archaic conception these guys have: they actually believe
that respect for Jordan's alleged "sovereignty" will in any
way deter the US government from doing what it damn well wants
to in that or any other region of the world. Now the exact
need for a well in the middle of the desert, especially one
so close to Iraq, may seem somewhat suspicious to inveterate
conspiracy theorists and other paranoids, but you and I believe
the explanation proffered by US embassy spokeswoman Danna
Shell, who told Reuters the well project "was tied to funding
of a clinic under a worldwide humanitarian assistance program
by the US Department of Defense to the tune of $55 million"
– don't we?
A
VASSAL STATE
Like
hell we do. The report also cited an unnamed diplomat, who
remarked that "if the US was going to build a military installation
on the Iraq border they would not advertise it in the papers."
But why not advertise what everyone already knows anyway
– that Jordan is a vassal state of the Americans, with
no more right to assert its so-called "sovereignty" than it
had under the Ottoman Turks, the Seljuks, the Parthian empire,
or the Romans? Shell claims that this "humanitarian project"
is being carried out "in cooperation with the Jordanian army,"
as it no doubt is, and it looks like some of that Iraqi "liberation"
money is being spent – on Clinton's September
surprise.
RITTER'S
REVISIONISM
Ritter,
previously
demonized by the Iraqis as American arrogance incarnate
– a man who wanted to "kick down doors" to get the goods
on Iraq's alleged weapons stockpile – has done a complete
about-face since stepping down from his official duties. Here
is a man who was at the very core of the American effort to
disarm Saddam Hussein saying that it is time to not only lift
the sanctions, but to rethink our entire policy toward Iraq's
disarmament, and his recent article
in Arms Control Today has caused a sensation. Ritter
exposes how the US-British insistence on Iraq's complete and
utter prostration has led, ironically, to a period of completely
unmonitored Iraqi rearmament – setting up Saddam for
another round of attacks. This is the self-perpetuating fraud
at the very heart of the US-British policy: Iraq is a convenient
punching bag, which is being pummeled more or less constantly,
the punches coming faster and harder as Election Day 2000
approaches. As Ritter put it to the Independent:
"The
ironic thing is that the longer the inspectors stay away from
Iraq, the more time the hardliners there have to rebuild their
weaponry. The intelligence services of the US, Britain and
Israel realise, but there is nothing they can do while the
US Administration wants to keep Iraq as the whipping boy they
can wheel out at times of domestic difficulties."
SYMPATHY
FOR THE DEVIL –
BUT NOT FOR RITTER?
Ritter,
by the way, is facing an investigation into allegations that
he passed on secret information to the Israelis. Naturally,
his very public criticism of the Clinton's administration's
Iraq policy has nothing to do with the FBI investigation,
ongoing since 1996. It has cost him $120,000 so far. "I have
nothing to hide," he says: on the other hand, his Clintonian
pursuers have plenty to hide – but chances are
they will never get called on it. Why aren't conservatives
wearing "we believe you, Scott" buttons and starting up a
defense fund – do you have to be involved in a sex scandal
to get any sympathy around here?
THE
CLOUD OF MYSTERY
 Ritter
makes a convincing and technically detailed argument that
Iraqi weapons facilities have not only been largely destroyed
but are beyond the possibility of regeneration any time in
the foreseeable future. In the face of Ritter's inside knowledge
of the subject, combined with a heroic determination to get
the truth out, the US State Department is stepping up its
propaganda campaign, whipping
up a war scare over renewed accusations of Iraqi rearmament.
While not disputing the perfect legality of Iraq
testing short-range missiles – allowed under the
terms of the UN's disarmament mandate – Washington clouds
the issue with murky accusations about possible military applications
of ordinary materials that have civilian uses. As long as
the Americans reserve the unilateral right to invade Iraqi
territory at will, and insist on utterly destroying not only
Saddam but a
whole generation of Iraqis who are being devastated by
the murderous sanctions, then no arms inspection regime is
possible. Ritter and his Unscom colleagues succeeded in defusing
the threat of another war in Iraq as long as they had
access – but American and British arrogance has prevented
any resumption of the process begun by Ritter. This enables
the US to maintain a cloud of mystery and suspicion over Iraq
as a potential repository of biological, chemical and even
nuclear weapons. As a recent wire story put it: "The State
Department . . . said that in the absence of United Nations
inspectors on the ground in Iraq, uncertainties about the
significance of these activities will persist," said the US
State Department in a written response to a New York Times
report about Iraqi rearmament. "As time passes our concerns
will increase."
THE
TEST
These
"concerns" are increasing exponentially as Election Day looms
larger. Sometime in August, Ritter predicts, the US and Britain
will demand that the arms inspection regime return –
without even offering to discuss the lifting of sanctions.
God help the Iraqis if Gore is still down in the polls. This
would be the real test of the nominees this presidential election
year, a trial-by-fire that would reveal the true moral character
of the candidates, all four of them. We know what to expect
of Gore, but if and when Clinton exercises his option to wag
the dog, expect Dubya to wag his own tail in unison, following
doglike in the wake of the conquering Democrats. Republicans
always manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory –
it's the kind of made-to-order opposition party that governments
everywhere like to have around.
WILL
NADER COP OUT?
As
for Ralph Nader, it is by no means certain that the candidate
of the Greens would reflect his own party's antiwar stance;
Nader has refused to join the Green party, and tends to ignore
the party platform (for example: the party calls for a 50
percent reduction in military spending, whereas Nader says
25 percent). Nader has stubbornly evaded answered foreign
policy questions so far, and it would be interesting to see
his response to the question posed pointblank: War with
Iraq – are you for it or against it?
HE
STOOD UP
There
is only one visible candidate who has spoken
out consistently and eloquently on this question since
1990, when Bush the Elder proclaimed his "New World Order"
would rise over the shattered remnants of a devastated Iraq
– Patrick J. Buchanan. His indictment of the murderous
sanctions – which have been condemned by the Pope, the
parliaments of Europe and Russia, and concerned people all
over the world – alone entitles him to the support
of anyone who doesn't care to be complicit with US war crimes.
It was Buchanan who stood up, virtually
alone, against the War Party during the first "Desert
Storm" unleashed on the Iraqi people. As Barry McCaffrey's
rampaging centurions were shooting
down surrendering Iraqis in cold bold, Buchanan braved
the war hysteria of the laptop bombardiers and dared to say
that we have no real national interest in preserving the throne
of Kuwait. Iraq threatened Israel, and the decrepit and repressive
Saudis most of all, but for daring to point this out Buchanan
became the favorite hate object of politically correct conservatives
– and they spew their vitriol to this very day. Still,
he bravely holds
the banner of peace aloft, and is a standing reproach
to the "amen corner" that says "yes" to every US military
intervention, no matter how farfetched or far afield. The
War Party is deathly afraid of this man, and will stop
at nothing – nothing – to prevent him from
gaining an audience. When I last saw Pat, in Colorado, we
walked down a hallway, talking, in the company of two burly
police officers, one on either side of us: there were cops
all over the place, adding an ominous note to an otherwise
festive occasion.
MEMO
TO THE ELITES
Is
war imminent? Lots of unpleasant events are imminent, I fear,
and we haven't seen the worst of it yet, not by a long shot.
But I'll tell you this: the American people will not stand
for it. Not this time. Let them pull their September surprise.
Let the two major party candidates join hands in a war dance,
and let them try to shut out all opposition in the debates.
They are playing right into the hands of radicals like myself.
For we are just waiting for an opening such as they will unwittingly
provide, that will provoke a backlash of popular resentment
against the arrogance of the elites. To the people that run
this country – and you know who you are –
here is my entirely unsolicited advice: don't do it in an
election year. Heed my warning: you'll be sorry.
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