By Richard Becker

It should be apparent by now to even the most casual
observer that a major goal of U.S. foreign policy is to
overthrow the government of Iraq, deprive that country of its
sovereignty, and reduce it to the status of a colony.

They even have a name for it in Washington: "regime change."

There is virtually no debate at the top on the legitimacy
and desirability of this aim--just some minor differences of
opinion over how best to achieve it.

For nearly a decade the U.S. rulers have waged war against
Iraq and its people by military, economic, financial,
political and diplomatic means. The United States funds,
sponsors, trains and organizes political and military
opposition to the Iraqi government.

What drives U.S. policy, which has remained virtually
unchanged under both the Republican Bush and Democratic
Clinton administrations?

In short, it's for domination and profit: domination of the
key Persian/Arabian Gulf, which holds up to two-thirds of the
world's petroleum reserves, and the immense profits to be made
by exploiting those fabulous resources. Iraq itself sits atop
a sea of oil. It is ranked second in the world in reserves.

This reality, of course, must be concealed to the greatest
degree possible, especially from the U.S. public. It wouldn't
go over very well to tell people that the Pentagon is spending
$50 billion to $60 billion a year to blockade and starve Iraqi
children in order to safeguard the present and future profits
of Exxon, Chevron and Citibank.

So the modern-day incarnations of Nazi Propaganda Minister
Josef Goebbels in the State Department and White House have
spun a different story. They are motivated by their deep
"concern" over "human rights violations" and "weapons of mass
destruction" in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, Iraq's president, is
relentlessly presented in their bought media as the
personification of all that is evil--"worse than Hitler," they
sometimes say.

As if the U.S. ruling class, with its blood-drenched history
at home and abroad, and armed to the teeth with every
imaginable nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional
weapon, could really be "concerned" about either Iraq's
internal policies or armaments.

ANTI-SANCTIONS MOVEMENT

Unfortunately, some in the anti-war and anti-sanctions
movement have taken a position that, unintentionally or
otherwise, lends credence to the imperialist policy makers'
arguments.

This viewpoint can be summarized as follows: 1) Economic
sanctions are wrong because they are causing great suffering
among the Iraqi people, while not hurting the regime; 2)
Saddam Hussein should be indicted as a war criminal and
removed from office; and 3) economic sanctions should be
"delinked" from military sanctions, meaning that economic
sanctions should be ended while military sanctions are kept in
place.

A letter currently circulating in Congress argues this line.

This position implicitly credits the U.S. government, and
the United Nations Security Council which it dominates, as
qualified to sit as judge and jury on Iraq. In other words,
the U.S. government is legitimate and the Iraqi government is
not.

Moreover, this position gives credit to U.S. policy's stated
and phony aims by agreeing with them. "Yes," this perspective
says, "Saddam is evil. He must be replaced by a democratic
government and Iraq must be disarmed so that it cannot
threaten its neighbors."

This view disregards, in addition to Iraq's right to self-
determination, the fact that it is the United States, not
Iraq, which is the greatest military threat and violator of
human rights--in the Middle East and around the world.

There is no greater proof of the U.S. leaders' criminality
than the sanctions themselves.

Nine-and-a-half years of near-total blockade have killed at
least 1.25 million Iraqis and inflicted unimaginable suffering
on a whole country and people. To call the sanctions genocidal
is no exaggeration.

OPPOSITION TO SANCTIONS

Opposition to the sanctions has grown around the world,
especially in the two years since the February 1998 crisis
that brought the United States to the brink of a major new
military attack on Iraq. In the Middle East, the opposition is
so wide, deep and bitter that even some of the most pliant
U.S. client regimes feel compelled to call for the blockade to
be lifted.

Three of the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council--Russia, China and France--favor ending the sanctions.

But the U.S. leaders want to keep the sanctions, which they
see as a vital element in their "regime change" strategy. As
they were designed to, the sanctions have destroyed or
severely weakened much of Iraq's infrastructure, industry and
agriculture, as well as the country's military capacity. The
latter had always been wildly exaggerated in the Western
media.

The sanctions, along with continued bombing raids, are
intended to grind down Iraq and its people. The United States,
as President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and other top U.S. officials admitted during the 1998
crisis, intends to keep sanctions in place until the current
government is removed or overthrown.

To do this, they must keep alive the myth that Iraq
possesses fearsome weapons or the capacity to produce them,
with which it threatens its neighbors.

Enter UN Security Council Resolution 1284.

The Security Council passed Resolution 1284 in December
1999, after nearly a year of rancorous debate. It supposedly
provides for lifting the sanctions on Iraq if the country
agrees to allow UN weapons-inspection teams to return and
verify that Iraq no longer has any more "weapons of mass
destruction."

For eight years, Iraq was the most inspected country in
history. Hundreds of UN weapons-inspection teams, known as
UNSCOM, made thousands of visits to every corner of the
country.

Twenty-four-hour video cameras were set up in every factory
that was deemed to have "dual-use technology." "Dual-use"
means that a facility has the potential to produce military as
well as civilian goods--as does much of modern industry
anywhere.

Yet the sanctions and the horrific suffering of the Iraqi
people remained unchanged. In the fall of 1997, Iraq halted
the inspections, declaring they would not be allowed to resume
until it was made clear how and when they would lead to an end
to the blockade.

In addition, the Iraqis charged that many of the inspectors
were actually spies for the government most committed to
maintaining the sanctions indefinitely: the United States.
While U.S. officials and media at first ridiculed this charge,
even they were forced to admit that it was true a few months
later.

Weapons inspection began again in March 1998. They continued
until December, when the UNSCOM teams fomented a new crisis,
leading to the intensive U.S./ British bombing of Iraq for
four days, Dec. 16-19, 1998. Since that time, there have been
no inspectors in the country.

RESOLUTION 1284--A TACTIC TO MAINTAIN SANCTIONS

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, speaking to
delegates from the Iraq Sanctions Challenge in Baghdad on Jan.
18, described the U.S. position as "pretending to seek a
solution" in the year-long Security Council negotiations.

Resolution 1284, Aziz said, "presents that sanctions would
be suspended if Iraq cooperates. But Iraq has cooperated for
many years, from 1991 to 1998, and got as a reward missiles
and bombs.

"If you watch CBS News or read the New York Times," Aziz
continued, "you would hear that there is a resolution to end
sanctions, but the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein refuses
and so is responsible for the miserable situation. It's
propaganda."

Under Resolution 1284, Aziz explained, Iraq would be subject
to even more strict controls than under the old system. The
resolution invokes all the past UN resolutions against Iraq,
and adds the word "verification" to the mission of the weapons
inspection team. This means that Iraq must prove that no
"weapons of mass destruction," nor the capacity to produce
them, exists.

Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. attorney general who headed
the recent Sanctions Challenge to Iraq, points out that "it's
impossible to prove a negative, to prove that no weapons exist
in an area as large as Iraq." And in fact, as Clark explained,
that is exactly the point: to set conditions that cannot be
met, thus allowing the sanctions to continue without limit.

There are no provisions for financial arrangements or
controls in Resolution 1284. The subject was left for later
discussions. Given that Iraq has received less than one-third
of the value of the $19 billion in petroleum it has sold under
UN Resolution 661--the so-called "Oil for Food" deal--the new
financial arrangements are likely to be even less
satisfactory, according to Aziz and other Iraqi officials.

Clearly, Resolution 1284's real objective is to keep the
sanctions in place while making it appear that Iraq itself is
responsible for their continuation.

`DUAL-USE' BULLS

At the same time, $6 billion in contracts under the "Oil for
Food" resolution remain blocked by the Security Council. The
vast majority of contracts to repair the damaged water,
sewage, electrical and other infrastructure have been denied
or put on hold.

The usual excuse given by the United States and Britain,
which lead the way in blocking contracts, is that the
commodities in question could be "dual use." So neither pipes
nor chlorine, both desperately needed to rehabilitate the
water system, have been allowed into the country.

The extreme to which the "dual-use" pretext can be taken was
illustrated by Iraq's recent attempt to import 15 breeding
bulls. The contract was denied. When asked why, State
Department mouthpiece James Rubin replied, "It's not the bulls
we have a problem with, it's the vaccine that goes with them."

Rubin claimed that the vaccines, necessary for modern animal
husbandry, could be used to make biological weapons.

The story of the 15 bulls shows just how bankrupt the
"delinking" argument is. In reality, it plays into the hands
of those who want to perpetuate the sanctions forever, or
until a government to their liking is established in Baghdad.

The anti-war and anti-sanctions movement needs to call for
the unconditional lifting of the genocidal sanctions, an end
to the constant assaults on Iraq's sovereignty, and for the
United States to get out of the Middle East, where it has done
so much damage over the past half-century.

                         - END -

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