Free Novel Read

Neo-Conned! Again Page 4


  Rice was confirmed, as the majority of the Senate urged the opposition to “look to the future” and not to “dwell on the past.” We ignore the past at our peril, however, for similar methods and warnings are cropping up in the debate over Iran. Those who favor military action are again making the threat appear closer than it is by minimizing the substantial technological and engineering obstacles that Iran must overcome to be able to enrich uranium and manufacture a weapon. Those who favor diplomatic solutions, even our closest allies, are given short shrift. The United States is standing aside from the efforts of the European Union to negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program and, by this inaction, it will doom the effort. We will undoubtedly hear stories of the brutality of the Iranian regime, coupling the danger of Iran someday getting nuclear weapons with the President's call to end tyranny. There may well be an orchestrated campaign to build support for an attack on Iran that will be as determined as the campaign to build support for the invasion of Iraq.

  Those who hope not to repeat the mistakes of the past would do well to read the informed accounts of recent history contained in this valuable volume.

  Joseph Cirincione

  Director for Non-Proliferation

  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

  January 2005

  INTRODUCTION

  Oil, War, and Things Worth Fighting For

  ………

  Scott Ritter

  ON THE EVE of America's invasion of Iraq, I watched with great interest the debate between arch-hawk Richard Perle and archdove Dennis Kucinich (then a Presidential hopeful) on NBC's Meet the Press (February 23, 2003). One exchange in particular caught my attention. Mr. Kucinich, when asked about the fundamental motivation for the Bush administration's push for war with Iraq, said, “… the fact is that, since no other case has been made to go to war against Iraq, for this nation to go to war against Iraq, oil represents the strongest incentive.” Then Richard Perle retorted: “I find the accusation that this administration has embarked upon this policy for oil to be an outrageous, scurrilous charge for which, when you asked for the evidence, you will note there was none. There was simply the suggestion that, because there is oil in the ground and some administration officials have had connections with the oil industry in the past, therefore, it is the policy of the United States to take control of Iraqi oil. It is a lie, Congressman. It is an out and out lie.”

  In the past, I used to resist the suggestion that Bush's war with Iraq was about oil. It just didn't seem to make any sense. Oil is about business, and business is about making money. Any oil man worth his salt would know that it makes better business sense to invest $50 billion in Iraqi oilfield refurbishment over five years, raising production rates from the current level of 1.5 million barrels per day to an estimated 7 million, than it would to spend $200 billion – the current low end of the costs of the Iraq war – to invade Iraq, knowing that the end result would likely be the destruction of the Iraqi oil production infrastructure. Yet when I heard Richard Perle making the same argument, I was suddenly suspicious. He is, after all, not just a manipulator of truth, but he is in fact anti-truth – especially when it comes to Iraq. So I decided to reexamine my stance on the war-for-oil thesis, and found that the case for such a link becomes quite clear, once subjected to closer scrutiny.

  In 2003, Richard Perle chaired the influential Defense Policy Board (DPB), and used the access to the inner circle of American power that this non-governmental position enjoys to wield considerable influence over senior policy makers both at home and abroad. While this position does have its limits, there is no denying that the former chairman of the DPB serves as the ideological focus for the neoconservatives currently populating the elected and politically-appointed ranks of the Defense Department. As such, Perle was only too aware of the post-war plans for the multi-billion dollar reconstruction bonanza that was to be unleashed once the Pentagon assumed military governorship of occupied – or in Perle-speak, “liberated” – Iraq.

  Those lucrative contracts were to be doled out exclusively to U.S. and U.S.-allied companies. Bids were already accepted, on a no-competition basis, before the war, from companies such as Halliburton. Among those deals were contracts for oil field refurbishment and operations, which meant that for a period of at least two to five years, Iraq's oil would be – as it is today – under the control of American oil companies, operating under the umbrella of a U.S. military government, or a U.S. military-backed government, if one accepts as legitimate the highly questionable elections of January 30, 2005. Given the dearth of national security justifications for the war, how could our war in Iraq be about anything other than oil? The current – and remorselessly rising – $200 billion price tag for war will prove a boon for defense contractors who produce the weapons of war, while the post-war “need” for reconstruction and refurbishment will provide billions of dollars more in government-funded contracts, assuming that the American military can create sufficient “peace” to allow any construction to take place. This orgy of war-related spending and profit-taking translates into a massive economic incentive program for defense-and oil-sector businesses (sectors historically close to the Bush-Cheney White House) while the American taxpayer foots the bill.

  There is, in fact, a far more substantial case for linking the Bush war with Iraq to oil than there ever was for linking Saddam Hussein to Bin Laden. The Bush-Harkin, Cheney-Halliburton, Condi Rice-Chevron links are beyond dispute, while Secretary Powell's artfully constructed case regarding Saddam-Bin Laden, built around the conveniently shadowy figure of Abu Musab Zarqawi, collapsed like a house of cards when it became known that Powell misrepresented French-supplied intelligence on the subject. Audio tapes from Osama Bin Laden, encouraging the Muslim world to rise up in support of the Iraqi people, also fingered Saddam Hussein as an apostate, someone worthy of being overthrown. The revelations about the Pentagon's post-war plans regarding U.S. control of Iraqi oil reveals the goals of Team Bush to be little more than crude throwbacks to the economically-motivated imperialism of the nineteenth century.

  That these are not mere personal sentiments may be gauged from an article by Ray McGovern, posted at Truthout.com on February 14, 2005. Entitled, “We Need The Oil, Right? So What's the Problem?” his piece deals directly with the oil factor from the perspective of someone with decades of service (in the CIA) to the American national interest.

  His argument is worth noting in some detail.

  Canadian writer Linda McQuaig, author of It's the Crude, Dude, has noted that decades from now it will all seem a no-brainer. Historians will calmly discuss the war in Iraq and identify oil as one of the key factors in the decision to launch it. They will point to growing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the competition with China, India, and others for a world oil supply with terminal illness, and the fact that (as former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has put it) Iraq “swims on a sea of oil.” It will all seem so obvious as to provoke little more than a yawn.

  But that will be then. Now is now. How best to explain the abrupt transition from early-nineties prudence to the present day recklessness of this administration? How to fathom the continued cynicism that trades throwaway soldiers for the chimera of controlling Middle East oil

  In August 1992, Dick Cheney, who was then the secretary of defense – Dick Cheney under a very different President Bush – was asked to explain why U.S. tanks did not roll into Baghdad and depose Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Cheney said: “I don't think you could have done that without significant casualties …. And the question in my mind is how many additional casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not that damned many …. And we're not going to get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

  Later, then-CEO Dick Cheney of Halliburton found himself focusing on different priorities. In the fall of 1999 he complained: “Oil companies are expected to keep developing enough oil to offset oil depletion and also to meet new demand …. So w
here is this oil going to come from? Governments and national oil companies are obviously in control of 90 percent of the assets …. The Middle East with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies.”

  McGovern then gets to the heart of the issue by asking this question: “What had changed in the seven years between Cheney's two statements?” Here's his answer:

  The U.S. kept importing more and more oil to meet its energy needs.

  Energy shortages drove home the need to ensure/increase energy supply.

  Oil specialists concluded that “peak oil” production was but a decade away, while demand would continue to zoom skyward.

  The men now running U.S. policy on the Middle East appealed to President Clinton in January 1998 to overthrow Saddam Hussein or “a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will be put at hazard.”

  In October 1998 Congress passed and Clinton signed a bill declaring it the sense of Congress that “it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein.”

  McGovern then concludes this crucial part of his piece: “Shortly after George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, Vice President Cheney's energy task force dragged out the maps of Iraq's oil fields.”

  Another famous weapons inspector evidently had the same thought process. An April 6, 2005, Associated Press wire quoted Hans Blix as saying – in reference to the possibility that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by oil – “I did not think so at first.” He went on to say, however, that “the U.S. is incredibly dependent on oil,” and that perhaps we “wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market becomes too hard.”

  We should not, however, trivialize the war with Iraq as being simply about oil, since doing so gives the Bush administration a break it doesn't deserve. For above all this is a war of ideology, of a conflict between neoconservative unilateralism and the broader concept of self-determination as espoused by our founding fathers and implied in the Constitution of the United States. Team Bush argues that its policies are designed to defend American democracy, that the Constitution cannot be seen as a suicide pact, a “limiting” feature to be exploited by potential enemies of the state. The argument, however, rings hollow, much like the Vietnam-era argument that “we had to destroy the village in order to save the village.”

  No, the Bush administration's war is a frontal assault on international law and on the U.S. Constitution, through its illegal war of aggression in Iraq. It should serve as a wake-up call to all Americans, who ought to reflect on the oath of office taken by all those who serve our nation to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies – foreign and domestic. In a sense, the Constitution is a suicide pact, because without it we are no longer the United States of America, but some empty shadow of a nation that has lost its heart and soul. It is high time that the American people rallied to the defense of what defines them as a nation, with the understanding that the domestic threat to our national existence posed by the wrongheaded policies of the Bush administration far outweighs any possible foreign threat – real or imagined – posed by people like Saddam Hussein and bin Laden.

  While a somewhat convincing case can be made for linking the Bush war to oil interests, it should nevertheless be understood that in opposing this war with Iraq we are doing far more than saying “no blood for oil.” We are defending the rule of law and the American way of life. And that, in my opinion, is a fight worth fighting.

  The essays and analysis contained in the volume that follows (and those in its companion and predecessor, Neo-CONNED!) are representative of the reality that not everyone in America has abandoned the obligations that patriotic citizens have to our great nation. They are testimony to the fact that many are still willing to stand up and speak out – even during these dark times, when to do so invites ridicule, invective, and worse. All Americans should read both of these books carefully, and reflect upon what they contain. And then they should resolve not to stand idly by, but rush to defend our country and the common good.

  Scott Ritter

  former Chief Weapons Inspector,

  UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) February 2005

  Before I vote for this resolution for war, a war in which thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or hundred of thousands of people may die, I want to make sure that I and this Nation are on God's side.

  I want more time. I want more evidence. I want to know that I am right, that our Nation is right, and not just powerful.

  —Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.),

  October 10, 2002, before the Senate,

  prior to the vote on war in Iraq

  AN EXERCISE IN CRITICAL THINKING: TODAY'S SHARPEST MINDS TACKLE THE WAR AND ITS CONTEXT

  THE EDITORS' GLOSS: This chapter (adapted from the authors' book Imperial Crusades) argues that the American war against Iraq included a decade of sanctions of questionable legality, and bombing of undoubted illegality – illegal because the “no-fly zones” (NFZs) it purported to enforce were not authorized or created by the UN, as Tariq Aziz pointed out in 1993. What these “NFZs” offered was a pretext for the 2003 war, and even a chance to begin it in 2002. As Robert Dreyfuss reported in The American Prospect (December 30, 2002), Point 8 of UN Resolution 1441 – Iraq's “last chance” – forbade Iraq from carrying out “hostile acts directed against … any member state taking action to uphold any Council resolution.” The U.S. saw this as a reference to the NFZs: if the Iraqis fired on American planes patrolling the NFZs, this point would provide, it was claimed, grounds for war.

  The “hot” war of 2003 actually began in 2002 with increased air strikes during “NFZ patrols,” with the hope that Saddam would strike back and provoke “retaliation.” Michael Smith writes (June 23, 2005, London Sunday Times) that a recently released memo has British Defense Secretary, Geoff Hoon, confirm “that 'the U.S. had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime.'” NFZ bombing increased from virtually nothing in March-April 2002 to 54.6 tons in September. This was all part of the “Plan B,” developed in the event of a failure of “Plan A,” which Smith also detailed: “British officials hoped the [weapons inspections] ultimatum could be framed in words that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright.” Another memo (see Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2005) confirmed that the British ambassador, Christopher Meyer, had “told [U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary] Wolfowitz that UN pressure and weapons inspections could be used to trip up Hussein.”

  The recent revelation (Washington Post, August 3, 2005) of a 2002 finding signed by President Bush, creating a CIA-backed paramilitary force of Iraqi exiles (“the Scorpions”), trained at bases in Jordan and sent before the war to “cities such as Baghdad, Fallujah and Qaim to give the impression that a rebellion was underway and to conduct light sabotage,” completes a dishonest and despicable picture.

  As Michael Smith put it, the real news isn't the famed “Downing Street Memo” but rather “the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the UN to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war [conducted] without the backing of Congress.”

  CHAPTER

  1

  The Thirteen Years' War

  ………

  Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

  THE “WAR,” OFFICIALLY designated by the U.S. government as such and inaugurated with the “decapitation” strike of March 19, 2003, was really only a change of tempo in the overall war on Iraq. It commenced with the sanctions imposed by the UN and by a separate U.S. blockade in August of 1990, stretching through the first “hot” attack of January 16, 1991, on through the next twelve years, 1990–2003: a long war, and a terrible one for the Iraqi people.

  ONE

  On April 3, 1991, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 687, the so-called mother of all resolutions, setting up the Sanctions Committee, dominated by the United States.

  It is vital to understand that th
e first “hot” Gulf War was waged as much against the people of Iraq as against the Republican Guard. The U.S. and its allies destroyed Iraq's water, sewage and water-purification systems and its electrical grid. Nearly every bridge across the Tigris and Euphrates was demolished. They struck twenty-eight hospitals and destroyed thirty-eight schools. They hit all eight of Iraq's large hydropower dams. They attacked grain storage silos and irrigation systems.

  Farmlands near Basra were inundated with saltwater as a result of allied attacks. More than 95 per cent of Iraq's poultry farms were destroyed, as were 3.3 million sheep and more than 2 million cows. The U.S. and its allies bombed textile plants, cement factories and oil refineries, pipelines and storage facilities, all of which contributed to an environmental and economic nightmare that continued nearly unabated over the twelve years.