http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/071102iraq.html

Stop the New War in Iraq Before It Starts

By Sarah Sloan

youth organizer for A.N.S.W.E.R.

The U.S. is planning a major, all-out war against Iraq in the coming year, according to a top secret Pentagon document that was leaked to the media.

PLANS REVEALED FOR NEW U.S. WAR IN IRAQ

This document, prepared by the Central Command in Florida, describes a three-pronged attack on Iraq using an air assault, a land invasion, and the use of sea-based forces. This model of an invasion has in other statements from military planners and administration officials been said to include approximately 250,000 U.S. troops, and possibly as many British troops, and to take place at the end of 2002 or the beginning of 2003.

The New York Times on July 5 gave major front page coverage to the leaked Central Command document and wrote that it "indicates an advanced state of planning in the military even though President Bush continues to state in public and to his allies that he has no fine-grain war plan on his desk for the invasion of Iraq."

U.S. plans for a new war in Iraq are not new. For the past ten months, a section of the Bush administration has favored an attack on Iraq. In a July 8 press conference, President Bush said, "It's the stated policy of this government to have regime change. And it hasn't changed. ... I recognize there's speculation out there but people shouldn't speculate about the desire of the [U.S.] government to have a regime change."

This war would be a brazen act of lawless aggression on the part of the U.S. Even by threatening Iraq, the U.S. is clearly in violation of the UN Charter and thus is in violation of international law to which the U.S. is a signatory. Article 2 of the UN Charter requires all countries to "settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered" and states that they must "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state ..." Article 51 of the Charter is the only article permitting individual countries the use of force, and that strictly for purposes of self-defense.

The U.S. is not acting in self-defense. Iraq is not threatening the U.S., or for that manner any other country. In 1991 George Bush senior used Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as the pretext for the Gulf War. Here there is not even a pretext.

Although the U.S. is clearly in violation of the UN Charter and international law, it would be the height of naiveté to believe that the UN will stop this war. The UN functions more or less as a puppet of the U.S. because of its ability to use economic and military coercion to control international bodies, including the UN. To stop the war requires a mobilization of the poor and working people of the world against U.S. government aggression and domination.

NOT JUST TALK

Recent reports indicate military preparations taking place for a new war in Iraq.

A June 27 report in the newspaper "Yeni Safak" from Turkey quoted sources in the Turkish Foreign Ministry as stating that the U.S. had sent 7,000 troops to the Incirlik airbase in the two weeks before the article and that the U.S. planned to increase the number of troops from 7,000 to 25,000 in the next month.

A July 7 report from Amman, Jordan, in "The Observer" reported on preparations for the use of a base on Jordan for a war in Iraq and the arrival of U.S. military advisors. A June 29 report in "As-Safir" from Beirut, Lebanon, also stated that U.S. troops had entered Jordan, as well as northern Iraq. The Jordanian government, which has a majority Palestinian population, officially denies the presence of U.S. forces in Jordan.

NEW WAR IN IRAQ REVEALS BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S TRUE MOTIVES

On the top of Bush's target list for his undefined, unending war against a faceless, nameless enemy has been Iraq. But Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 attack. Endless searching by the CIA turned up nothing.

By taking the war to Iraq, Bush inadvertently reveals that the war on terrorism is not about "protecting Americans" but is an extension of unstated but real pre-existing imperialist strategies and objectives in the oil-rich Middle East.

WEAPONS INSPECTION: A REGIME TO JUSTIFY BOMBING AND SANCTIONS

Recent talks between Iraq and the United Nations negotiating the return of the weapons inspectors have broken down. According to Saad Qassem Hammadi, a representative of the Iraqi government, the outcome of the talks "weren't a surprise for us because U.S. pressure on the UN delegation was known in advance." The U.S. was trying to "block the legitimate demands of Iraq being met . as a prelude to an escalation against the country as part of the American plot." (Agence France Presse, July 6, 2002)

The justification used by both the Clinton and Bush administrations for attacks on Iraq since the Gulf War--including the continuation of sanctions imposed in August 1990 and new bombings--has been Iraq's alleged interference in the weapons inspection regime set up by the United Nations. The New York Times of July 8 repeated the much-propagated lie that "weapons inspections [were] suspended after Mr. Hussein drove inspectors from Baghdad in 1998."

Between 1991 and 1998, the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) carried out 9,000 inspections throughout Iraq. In December 1998, UNSCOM cited only five "obstructions" to the 423 inspections conducted between November 18-December 12, and these five obstructions became the cited U.S. basis for a threatened bombing campaign. It was in anticipation of this U.S./British unilateral bombing action, that the UN ordered all of its personnel to leave Iraq. They were not "driven out of Baghdad" by the government of Iraq. From December 16-19, 1998, the U.S. and Britain carried out "Operation Desert Fox," the heaviest bombing of Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. After this bombing, Iraq refused to allow the weapons inspectors to return. Since then, they have demanded that the sanctions (imposed almost 12 years ago in August 1990) be lifted.

What were the so-called obstructions cited by UNSCOM? One was a 45 minute delay before allowing access. Another was a rebuff to an outrageous demand by a U.S. arms inspector, Dianne Seamons, that inspectors be allowed to interview all of the undergraduate students in Baghdad University's Science Department. Another, on December 9, was the inspection of a small headquarters of the Baathist political party. Inspectors left those premises after they were asked what is the relation between the small headquarters of a party and the disarmament mission. The last two cases of so-called Iraqi noncompliance were this: UNSCOM asked to inspect two establishments on Fridays--the Muslim holy day. The Iraqis told UNSCOM that since these establishments were not open on Friday, the inspectors could visit the establishments, but they would need to be accompanied by Iraqi officials. This is in accordance with the agreement between Iraq and UNSCOM about Friday inspections. These five incidents are the supposed legal basis for raining thousands of powerful missiles into Iraq.

Before 1998, Iraq had long claimed that the weapons inspectors were really a spy operation, injected with U.S. agents to line up targets for future bombings of the country. The U.S. always flatly rebuffed these claims as the wild machinations of Saddam Hussein. It was revealed by former marine Scott Ritter, who had headed an UNSCOM team, that in fact he had been carrying out spy operations for the CIA.

Ritter also stated, "Iraq had been disarmed" since as early as 1997 (Arms Control Today, June 2000). In addition, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors declared in 1998 that Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons technology.

At this point, four years after the last weapons inspectors have been taken out of Iraq, it is not known to the U.S. military planners if in fact Iraq has been able to rebuild any weapons. If Iraq is attacked by the U.S. it is likely to use whatever weapons it has at its disposal.

Iraq is being threatened by the biggest and only military superpower in the world, a country that will have an annual military budget of $500,000,000,000 by the year 2007. The U.S. will soon spend more on the military than all the other countries in the world combined. It has more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined. It has used nuclear weapons against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and carried out devastating bombings of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. It also bombed Libya and invaded Grenada and Panama. Martin Luther King once said, "The greatest purveyor of violence on the planet is the U.S. government."

The best way to protect U.S. and Iraqi soldiers from the danger of exposure to chemical or biological weapons--and all conventional weapons that also kill people--is for the U.S. not to carry out this new war of aggression.

WHY A WAR NOW?

During the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. dropped more than 88,500 tons of explosives in a 42-day period, killing more than 100,000 Iraqis from that relentless bombing. The combined number of soldiers and civilians may be double that. Only 148 U.S. military personnel died during the war - 37 from friendly fire accidents--making the conflict one of the most one-sided massacres in human history.

In 1991, George Bush Senior made the decision not to press the war further into a massive ground invasion of Iraq to topple the government because he knew that scenario would likely lead to thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of U.S. casualties.

George Bush, Sr. was concerned that the people in the U.S. would turn against the war in the event of huge U.S. casualties. Most of the high government officials feared a repeat of what they called the Vietnam Syndrome meaning a massive and militant anti-war movement at home. That's the real reason they didn't "finish the job" (in the words of the war-mongers) with a full invasion of Baghdad and the overthrow of the Iraqi government.

But the war against Iraq has continued by other means. Through a combination of sanctions, covert action and continued (but lower level) bombing--including a major four day campaign December 16-19, 1998, and repeated bombing over "no fly" zones since that time--the U.S. war against Iraq has continued.

This war has had disastrous consequences for the Iraqi people. Economic sanctions imposed on August 1990 have taken the lives of 1.5 million civilians mainly children under the age of five in the twelve years. Sanctions have proven to be a weapon of truly mass destruction for Iraqi babies, 5,000 of whom die each month from malnutrition and hunger-related illness (source: UN Food and Agricultural Organization). Iraq's infrastructure--bombed heavily in 1991--has remained unfixed because of restrictions on the necessary imports.

This U.S. war has continued for over a decade with little knowledge by the U.S. public, and thus more muted public outcry than during the Gulf War, but it has failed to accomplish the U.S. government objective of overthrowing the current Iraqi government and replacing it with one more subservient to U.S. dictates.

The Bush administration is counting on a changed, post-September 11 political atmosphere in which the U.S. people will not denounce a war that includes a high number of U.S. casualties--as Bush senior's administration believed people would in 1991, and as they did during the Vietnam War.

BUILD THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

The A.N.S.W.E.R. - Act Now to Stop War & End Racism - coalition is organizing now against a new U.S. war in Iraq. Join this movement and help build a movement among young and working people, labor unionists, students, peace activists, civil rights activists, community organizers, soldiers and more. It is the united action of the people who can stop even this mobilization by the U.S. government.

For more information, go to http://www.InternationalANSWER.org/

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