Issue #37
February 28, 2005
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International Iraq by Rev. David Weissbard George Santayana wrote that "Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it."
The events of the last couple of months have had a very familiar feel to me - as if I've been here before. I was ordained to the Unitarian Universalist ministry in 1965. The year before, on August 4, 1964, the President of the United States had gone on television to announce that the North Vietnamese torpedo boats had launched an "unprovoked attack" on two American destroyers in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, and that we were in the process of retaliating. Two days later, the Congress of the United States, with only two dissenting votes (Senators Gruening and Morse) , passed the fateful Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which served as the sole basis for the war in Vietnam which ended in the deaths of more than 50,000 American men and women, and who knows how many Vietnamese.
The thing about it is that the whole thing was a massive lie perpetrated upon the American people. The Pentagon Papers revealed that we had begun secret active military engagement with the North Vietnamese in January, (Operation Plan 34A), and that specifically South Vietnamese boats under the orders of an American general, had raided the North Vietnamese in that area the previous week. One of the Navy pilots who was flying overhead the night of the alleged attack, later Admiral James Stockdale, said, "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets - there were no PT boats there . . . there was nothing there but black water and American fire power." [http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html ]
The president and the secretary of defense and the join chiefs of staff all lied to the American people. There is evidence that people in the media knew it was a deception, but chose not to report it.
We could have won that war against the tiny nation of Vietnam, but the problem was that we were constrained by some fundamental scruples, and the fact that the reporters were there, telling the American people some of what was happening.
Our leaders have learned from that history. Now, when we go to war, reporters are only allowed to attend press briefings at which they are shown doctored or totally staged videos of what the government claims is happening. It wouldn't be safe for them to be closer to the action. Safe for whom?
We are again being lied to, and told copious half-truths in an attempt to once again delude the American people into a military adventure which can only damage our nation in the eyes of the world. Most of the world is laughing at our naivete, our gullibility - laughing on the outside but crying on the inside out of fear as to where this will lead.
The President, in his speeches to the United Nations in September, and to American people last week painted pictures that were so distorted that most of those who knew anything about the reality were appalled.
Saddam Hussein is not a nice guy. He is brutal. He is vicious. It is also true, however, that the government of the United States was holding his hand while he committed most of the atrocities to which we now point as evidence of his brutality.
We point to the war between Iraq and Iran. We actively supported Iraq and, in fact, provided Saddam Hussein with the means and intelligence for using chemical weapons against the Iranians. Of the $100 billion Iraq spent on the war, $40 billion was provided by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. The Reagan administration provided $400 million in loan guarantees and urged the Import-Export bank to provide another $500 million. We provided license for the purchase by Iraq of equipment for the production of atomic weapons. Then President Bush offered $1 billion in loan guarantees. The United States provided the specially equipped helicopters that were used by Hussein to spread chemicals over the Kurdish people, and when there was an attempt to condemn his actions at the UN, the United States prevented it. Who was a key US representative in Bagdad? Donald Rumsfeld.
In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: "Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination." [http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm]
Yes, it is true that Iraq invaded Kuwait. It happened the day after the American ambassador assured Saddam Hussein that we would not care if he did, after all, Kuwait was formerly a part of Iraq. Suckered him on that one!
When it came to getting UN support for the Gulf War, the United States resorted to economic bribes of reluctant Security Council members, and immediately punished one that refused to knuckle under by cancelling an aid package which was underway. Our ambassador reportedly told their ambassador, "You will regret that vote."
UN Security Council resolution 687, which was the cease-fire resolution for the Gulf War, provided that there would be an independent weapons inspectorate, an end to the threat of war, a clear timetable for the lifting of economic sanctions, and the creation of a weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East (which meant the end of Israel's nuclear arsenal.) As the chair of the British Labour Party's anti-war group has pointed out, the United States stands in clear violation of each of the four points.[http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg01636.html] We saw to it that the inspectors were not independent, we promised the sanctions would not be lifted, we continue to support the buildup of arms in the region, and we have never stopped hostile actions against Iraq. We and the British declared, without any UN action, what we call "no fly zones" in which we have said Iraq cannot fly over its own country, and we have continued to fly spy planes and bombers over Iraq's air space. We have recently stepped up those flights and the numbers of bombs they are dropping, as if we are hoping that they will shoot one of them down to provide a new Gulf of Tonkin type excuse.
Saddam Hussein kept accusing the weapons inspectors of being spies, obviously just an excuse to hide things. After we insisted that the inspectors pull out (they were not kicked out, as we claim), it was revealed in congressional hearings that the United States had been using the United Nations inspectors to plant bugs in Iraqi government offices so the CIA could listen in. When we started to bomb again, the sites bombed were those sites that had been targeted by the UN inspectors. They were spies.
The US administration repeatedly claims that the inspections were a failure. That is a lie. They were highly successful. While they trot out some of the CIA agents on the teams to testify to the failings of the inspections, there is abundant evidence that they were very successful in destroying Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear war making facilities - again, facilities that the US had helped construct!
Scott Ritter, one of the chief UN inspectors, and himself a conservative Republican, has repeatedly testified to Congress and anyone who will listen, about the success of the arms inspections. He engaged with repeated fights with Dick Spertzel, the person in charge of the biological inspections who repeatedly refused to do any inspecting. Why refuse? According to Ritter, "He consistently said he wasn't going to carry out investigations that provide circumstantial evidence to support Iraq's contention they don't have these weapons."
Because of his integrity, Ritter has not been given the opportunity to testify about Iraq in any of the recent hearings. [There is an excellent little book out titled War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know by William Rivers Pitt and Scott Ritter.]
He has been clear that the weapons which the inspectors missed are all subject to deterioration and any stockpiles they might have missed are now worthless. Our satellites would reveal any construction of new plants to produce such weapons, and there is no evidence. And so Don Rumsfeld says to us, "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." And we are supposed to take that seriously!
We are being told that the Iraqi's are about to rebuild their nuclear sites. The administration claims that the International Atomic Energy Agency has verified that Iraq is on the brink of having nuclear weapons. What the IAEA actually said, on its April 2002 fact sheet is, "There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." Then we say, "Well, they could build them if they get the fissionable material from somewhere else." That is, of course, true. It is also true that almost any college student could build an atomic bomb from plans available on the internet if they obtained the fissionable material.
The President and the British Prime Minister keep pointing to aluminum pipes the Iraqi's have purchased as proof that they are building facilities to develop bomb material. The fact is that aluminum pipes of the type they have purchased are not really useable for that purpose.
We claim that the region and the free world are I danger from Saddam Hussein. We know that at the time of the Gulf War, Saddam had chemical and biological weapons (that we had provided) and he did not use them when his troops were on the run. Why? Because he may be brutal but he is not stupid. There is no reason whatever to think that he would attack Israel or the United States with either chemical or biological weapons, if he had them, because he knows he would be doomed if he did.
Last week the CIA, fed up with the ludicrous "intelligence" that the administration has been putting out, released a letter that said explicitly that there is no imminent threat from Iraq, and that an invasion of Iraq is the only thing they could see as creating such a threat. [http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63775-2002Oct9.html] The administration has been relying on testimony from people who have left Iraq who are paid by the government to tell it what they want to hear. It is a fundamental principle of the intelligence community that one should not rely on defectors without independent verification because they are prone to lying. The majority in Congress, of course, chose to ignore the judgement of the CIA.
There have been repeated attempts by the administration to tie Saddam Hussein to the events of 9/11. The fact is that if there is any nation that Osama bin Laden hates more than the United States, it is Iraq. Saddam Hussein represents the antithesis of bib Laden's Islam. As bad as it is, Iraq is a secular state in which women have the highest freedom relative to men of anywhere in the Middle East. While they may have a common enemy, there is no way that experts believe the two could work together. This is yet another case in which we are being sold a bill of goods.
Saddam Hussein is not an imminent threat to his neighbors. He is not a threat to the United States. It is unlikely that he has any significant supply of weapons of mass destruction. So what is this all about.
I would suggest one thing it is not about, and two it is.
First, let me say what most analysts believe it is not about. Oil. There are vast reserves of oil under the sands of Iraq. The thing is, there is no reticence on the part of Iraq to sell us as much oil as we will buy. There is no reason to believe that Saddam Hussein would ever turn down the money. That's not it. So what is it?
In the newsletter I mentioned the movie "Wag the Dog." It is a brilliant film from four years ago in which a president's bid for a second term is threatened by a scandal. A spin doctor, played by Robert DiNiro enlists a Hollywood producer played by Dustin Hoffman to create a war against Albania. There is no real war, but the news is leaked and films are made to resemble newsreels. They create a hero, and a song about that hero, and America becomes obsessed with the war and the media and the people forget about the Girl Scout who may have been abused by the president. In the end, the producer wants to take credit for his great success and he has to be killed. It is a strangely funny film, brilliantly written and produced. But the problem is that it does not have the feel of impossibility.
We know there were the invasions of that great threat Granada by Reagan, Panama by Bush, and the bombing of Bagdad by Clinton because of the "discovery" of the alleged assassination plot planned by Saddam Hussein against Bush - all of which seemed designed to distract the American people from troubles at home in order to further political goals.
Last Spring and early summer, the Republicans in Congress were reported to be in deep trouble because of the economy and because of the White House linkage to Enron and the personal involvement of both the President and Vice-President in Enron type deals with their own companies. And suddenly, Iraq captures the headlines and the other issues fade into obscurity. Our media are manipulated as easily in real life as they were in Wag the Dog.
But there is ample evidence that while the congressional elections may have impacted the timing, there is more to this crisis than just that. Just as Hitler's plans were laid out in Mein Kampf, so to the real story here is laid out in a document called, "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" [http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html]published last month by the White House. If enemies had printed it, we would deny it.
That thirty-one page paper lays out our commitment to the creation of an American Empire that will permit no military or economic competition to emerge anywhere in the world. In order to achieve that, it is clear that we must have permanent military bases all over the world. The plan now for Iraq, as has just been revealed, is to install an occupation government, just as we did in Japan after World War II, to "maintain stability in the region." Molly Ivens response to the Strategy paper was:
No. This is not acceptable. This is not the country we want to be. This is not the world we want to make.
The National Security Strategy of the United States - 2002" is repellent, unnecessary, and above all impractical. . . .
All of the experts tell us anti-Americanism thrives on the perception that we are arrogant, that we care nothing for what the rest of the world thinks. Even our innocent mistakes are often blamed on obnoxious triumphalism. The announced plan of this administration for world domination reinforces every paranoid, anti-American prejudice on this earth.
This plan is guaranteed to produce more terrorists, Even if this country were to become some insane, 21st century version of Sparta - armed to the teeth, guards on every foot of our borders - we still wouldn't be safe. Not only would we not be safe, we would not have a nickle left for schools, or health care or roads or parks or zoos or gardens or universities or mass transit or senior centers or the arts or anything resembling civilization. This is nuts. [http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0926-04.htm]
In a calmer tone, the New York Times said, "This sounds more like a pronouncement that the Roman Empire or Napoleon might have produced." Jay Bookman observed in the Atlanta Journal- Constitution:
The lure of empire is ancient and powerful, and over the millennia it has driven men to commit terrible crimes on its behalf. But with the end of the Cold War, a global empire was essentially laid at the feet of th United States. To the chagrin of some, we did not seize it at the time, in large part because the American people have never been comfortable with themselves as a New Rome. Now, more than a decade later, the events of September 11 have given those advocates of empire a new opportunity to press their case with a new president. So in debating whether to invade Iraq, we are rally debating the role that the United States will play in the years and decades to come. Are peace and security beat achieved by seeking strong alliances and international consensus, led by the United States? Or is it necessary to take a more unilateral approach, accepting and enhancing the global dominance that, according to some, history has thrust upon us? If we do decide to seize empire, we should make that decision knowingly, as a democracy.. . . That's what this is all about. [http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/bookman/2002/092902.html ]
The National Security Strategy is, in reality, an elaboration of plans proposed by right wing think tanks in the past. The problem is that those fanatics are now in the administration and are determining America's role in the world.
The vote in Congress this week was not as bad as it was on the Golf of Tonkin resolution, to which it bears a striking resemblance in its implications as well as the deceptions that surround it. The one difference is that thus far the polls show that the American people have not been so bamboozled. When it comes to invasion, support falls below the 50% range. What we need, of course, is the shooting down of some innocent American pilot who is simply doing his duty bombing Iraqi airfields, in order to raise the temperature here.
I fear that we are on the verge of being in the position of the religious people in Germany in the 30's and early 40's. The liberal people of morality and humane values knuckled under for the good of the state. It was only the Evangelicals who had the courage to stand up to Hitler and to say what was happening was wrong.
Where will we be when American bombs start falling on Bagdad? How will we save our own souls?
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