Its Not Iraq Only

by Syed Atiq ul Hassan

Its Not Iraq only: Bush wants to complete his father’s unaccomplished dream

Even if George W. Bush (Jr) claims that he is fighting against terrorism in the interest of democracy, peace and freedom, the world is witnessing divergent upshots in the masses particularly in the Muslim world. Today, the world is looking more in parts and drifting towards more divisions politically and religiously. Looking the balance-sheet and the historical facts from Bush senior to Junior one finds yet it is not fight for civilization or aiming to wipe-out terrorists instead it is a mission of those white house occupants - clusters of Bush Senior and Junior - who dream to see America as dominating the world by controlling the maximum natural resources of the globe and ruling the world by power. From Panama, Haiti to Iraq and Afghanistan billions of dollars spent on engineering the dirty games through CIA, other agencies and puppets-heads of US allies to retain the US supremacy in the world.

Analyzing the personal characteristics of Bush Sr. and of those who are running the current administration of Bush Jr, one finds that they have been involved in CIA-led or US army-led operations in various parts of the world in different times to eliminate those individuals, government heads or groups who could not serve the US interest.

George Bush Sr. worked for the CIA when the US was fighting its war against the Vietnam in the 1960s where about two million civilians died in that war. Bush Sr. went on to head the CIA when the brutal reign of terror and mass murders were witnessed.

In 1973, the CIA architected the coup in Chile against the democratically elected regime of President Salvador Allende, which saw thousands of trade unionists and others killed or disappeared. In the year after that coup the CIA helped coordinating operation Condor, which involved the assassination and murder of trade unionists and people who opposed repressive regimes in Latin America.

In Panama, Bush found the opportunity to flex his leadership muscle by sending in US paratroopers to capture General Manuel Noriega, head of the Panamanian government.

Bush kept his eyes closed during the horrible civil war in former Yugoslavia, as more than 20,000 Muslim residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina lost their lives to Serbian militiamen in 1992. In Bosnia, a murderous civil war erupted, characterized by ethnic cleansing, torture, and the wholesale slaughter of civilians nonetheless Bush administrator took any action or raises any voice against the horrible mass genocides as it was considered not in the interest of US.

Just one week before the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq; Saddam Hussain was assured by the then US Ambassador, April Glaspie, that the US would not intervene in inter-Arab disputes with the go-head signal. The pledge made sense to Saddam because the US had eagerly courted his regime during the prior two years, especially in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair. After all, the CIA had shared information on Iran with Saddam's intelligence agency, and supported billions of dollars in agricultural loans and undercover private loans that had been siphoned off by the ruling B’aath Party leadership. In addition, US sold over 2 billion dollars of sophisticated equipment to Iraq which Saddam used in his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons development programs. When Saddam Hussain refused to leave Kuwait by the January 15, 1991 deadline - set by the United Nations - Bush launched ‘Operation Dessert Storm’. The massive air attack by US-led Airforce devastated Iraqi forces and defenses. Five weeks later, the non-stop bombing on Iraq was followed by a full-fledged ground assault, employing hundreds of thousands of US-led ground troops. Exactly 100 hours after the ground war began Kuwait was free from Iraqi troops. After the war, Bush collected the full cost of the war—$35 billion—from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, other Gulf States. US administration declared that the recession which US was facing prior to Gulf War was recovered due to $9 billion dollars arms sale to Arab country in the Gulf War.

During 1999 and 2000, the US and its partner in the Gulf, Britain, have dropped 20,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying homes and other civilian property. There is no legal pretext for these attacks.

It is worthwhile to mention here that it was Bush who eradicated the proposed enforcement and verification mechanism for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, originally passed in 1972. The enforcement mechanism could have been used as a lever to prise open Iraq for arms inspections. In March 2002, the United States removed Jose Bustani, head of the Organization to Prevent Chemical Weapons, from office. George Monbiot of the Guardian has written that it was because Bustani's efforts to include Iraq in the Chemical Weapons Convention, thereby opening it to weapons inspections.

Today, Bush Sr. is guiding his son (Bush Jr.) with the help of his old mates to follow his bloody footsteps. The administration of George W. Bush Jr. is packed of those who possess the record of being associated with dreadful activities in their period of command. For instance; Dick Cheny, the Vice President, was George Bush Sr's defense secretary and zealously pushed for the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. Cheney boasted about the gruesome killing of Iraqis in briefings to the US Congress. He is a former member of the board of arms giant TRW. His wife, Lynn Cheney, recently left the board of arms company Lockheed Martin.

Colin Powell Bush's Secretary of State is described as a ‘peacemaker’ in much of the press today. He helped to organize the cover-up of the notorious 1969 My Lai massacre, when US troops massacred 400 Vietnamese villagers. In 1989 Powell helped lead the US invasion of Panama. As a leading general he then oversaw the slaughter during the 1991 Gulf War.

John Negroponte, the man George Bush appointed as ambassador to the United Nations. Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, and was a central organizer of the state death squads unleashed against trade unionists and the democratic opposition. Negroponte had earlier been the officer in charge of Vietnam in the National Security Council between 1971 and 1973.

Richard Armitage, the US Deputy Secretary of State, worked with Oliver North, a key figure in aiding the right wing Contra terrorists in Nicaragua during the 1980s. According to one account his critics had alleged in the past that he was the author of the idea of using heroin to weaken the fighting capability of the Communists in Indo-china and then in Afghanistan.

Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary was a key policy-maker under the former US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He summed up his philosophy by saying, ‘We must destroy states not liking us’.

Elliot Abrams, a ‘human rights specialist’ for Bush's National Security Council. He was Under-Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, and was a principal organiser of the Contra terror.

Today, continuously trying to set-up the grounds for attack on Iraq - Bush inadvertently reveals that the war on terrorism is not about cleaning the world from terrorists or weapons of the mass destructions but is an extension of pre-existing imperialist strategies and objectives in the oil-rich Middle East and to control the Arab and Gulf States including Iran which was a dream-strategy of his father Bush Sr.

Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in US. Endless searching by the CIA turned up nothing. When people killed by anthrax attacks in US, the Bush administration spent months in an ‘intense effort’ to link that Iraq so that the administration would have a reason to launch a new war against Iraq, even after they knew the source of the anthrax was from the US, White House diverting the investigation from this domestic-sponsored terrorism. Unsuccessful in every effort to find a plausible pretext to attack Iraq, Bush has now conveniently redefined terrorism, and thus his next target, by alleging the chosen nation as ‘axis of evil’ and as the countries producing ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

Since the mass destruction of Iraq by US-led forces in 1991, Iraq became the weakened country. The image painted by Bush about Iraq as a threatening ‘evil power’ is ludicrous, a total fabrication. Economic sanctions have taken the lives of 1.5 million civilians, mainly children under the age of five, in the past decade. Sanctions have proved to be a weapon of truly mass destruction for Iraqi babies, 5,000 of whom die each month from malnutrition and hunger-related illness, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.

Iraq has been severely weakened militarily and economically. The US-led UN weapons inspectors conducted 9,000 weapons inspections between 1991 and 1998. Iraq was largely disarmed by 1995. The weapons inspectors left Iraq not because they were expelled by Iraq but because they were ordered out by the US-dominated UN in December 1998 so that the US and Britain could begin the massive bombing campaign of December 16-19, 1998. Since then US and British warplanes have bombed Iraq several times a week for more than three years.

The Bush administration has now been locked into its own war course. Since day one of the crisis, this Bush administration has chosen a path of extreme cynical manipulation of the raw emotion and horror experienced by people in the US on 9/11. Bush and the Pentagon have sought to use the attack as a pretext to use US military domination as the prime vehicle in an unabashed quest for world domination.

While US advising every other nation to reduce the buildup of nuclear and dangerous weapon – US has added $48 billion in the war and defense budget this year is a first step with the intention of even more gargantuan budget requests. By 2007, the annual US defense budget will be nearly $500 billion. The US will soon spend more on the military than all the other countries in the world combined. World public opinion currently opposes a new, massive war against Iraq US allies in Europe and puppets in the Gulf region consider it lunacy.

Even when every single Arab State including Egypt, today, has clearly rejected the Bush plan to attack on Iraq, Bush and his senior cabinet members are keen to find ways and means to attack on Iraq without any clear justification and physical evidence of Saddam’s current development of weapons of mass destruction.

(The writer is a Sydney-based freelance journalist and a political analyst)

Syed Atiq ul Hassan,
Freelance Journalist / Political Analyst.
Phone: 61-2-9707 1535, Fax: 61-2-9709 4867
P.O.Box: A1113, Sydney South NSW Australia.