Realities Behind the BUSH WAR Speech - Phony War "Debate" (fwd)

["Clement M. Henry" <chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu>]

Here are some articles from the British press to give you some
international perspective on what is happening.

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 09:52:48 -0400
From: Mid-East Realities <MERL@middleeast.org>
To: MER <MER@middleeast.org>
Subject: Realities Behind the BUSH WAR Speech - Phony War "Debate"

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* Major Spy Scandal Brings Northern Ireland Peace Process to Collapse
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     WAR LOOMS SOON - THE WAR "DEBATE" IS A PHONY POLITICAL SCAM

                        "Bush speech...a facade of repeated
                        emotional manipulation and fear mongering."

                        "...a larger plan to promote the most
                        significant expansion of US global military
                        presence since the end of the cold war."

MID-EAST REALITIES - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 10/8/2002:
    If presented in a graduate course on International Relations George Bush's speech last evening might manage a passing grade...but with all kinds of red pencil marks, repeated requests for detail and clarification, numerous corrections about history, and pointed notations about false analogies and misleading passages.  It was the C Student performing his best after a great deal of psychological makeup and political coaching cleverly designed to mask all the inadequacies and distortions behind a facade of repeated emotional manipulation and fear mongering.
    The US, UK, and Israeli militaries and intelligence agencies are preparing for war as early as next month; with ongoing special operations and covert actions already underway.
    The American Congress will cave this week, passing a general resolution whose interpretation will be left for Bush to twist however he wishes.
    The U.N. is once again being cowered; and one way or another is all but certain to be manipulated by American threats and pressures into acquiescence, as has been the rule for so many years now.
     These three articles from The Guardian, The Independent, and The Nation -- all published this week -- help explain what is really going on and what the American public watching cable and network news will never be told or understand.



                        THE DEBATE ABOUT IRAQ IS PHONY -
                             THE DECISION HAS BEEN MADE

                   Nothing and No One Will Stop This Drift Towards War

                                        by Martin Woollacott

[The Guardian - UK - 4 October]:   George Bush is bent on war against Iraq. All the world knows it, from Blackpool to Baghdad, and from Paris to Moscow. That is why the maneuvering over United Nations resolutions and arms inspections has an unreal quality. It is just possible that UN-approved coercive inspections, of a kind that would so humiliate Saddam Hussein that he might fall without war, can prevent a conflict. But, aside from this thin chance, international diplomacy now is less about preventing war than about preventing an open break between America and Europe and Russia.

It is also about what other powers will be able to say about the war after it is over, and what influence they will have on postwar American policy. That they tried to prevent it, if it proves a disaster, that they were supportive, if it proves a success, that they kept it within the bounds of international law, or that America and Europe can still act together, whichever way it goes.

In other words, we are not discussing what we seem to be discussing but something else. This may not be either honest or rational, but reaction partakes of the quality of action, and going to war against Iraq in the way that the US plans to do is not a rational project. Let us add at once that few enterprises of this kind have been rational. Was the Vietnam war rational? Was the Falklands war rational? Is Chechnya rational? Saying an Iraq war is not rational does not mean that reasoning has not gone into the decisions which led to the policy. "Reasoning" and "rational" are not the same.

An Iraq war looms because a group of American conservatives, now very influential inside and outside this administration, came to the conclusion years ago that Saddam had challenged the US and got away with it, and that his victory could not be allowed to stand.

Not allowed to stand because he might once again disturb a region of political and economic importance to the US, and because he might threaten Israel, a cause as dear to the hearts of most of this group as the security of America itself, or understood as indistinguishable from it.

Not allowed to stand, also, just to show how feeble the previous Democratic administration had been. Not allowed to stand, finally, because the US could not be seen to be thwarted. It set the wrong precedent. Let the precedent, rather, go the other way and show that a tyrant who defied America would regret that choice. Others would take note. It may be that an Iraq war will be above all a war of example.

It could be said that all this is rational on its adherents' terms. The irrationality lies not on that side but in the way they have looked at the risks that have to be weighed against the possible benefits, and in the larger scheme of which their Iraq project is a part. Whether such a war will increase American and Israeli security, or strengthen the America-centered world order, the proponents of war cannot know and will not know, perhaps, for quite a long time after the war is over.

There is more uncertainty here than there always is in war planning, because of the imponderables of weapons of mass destruction and of the effect of a conflict on Muslim attitudes. Then there is the imponderable of what the Bush hawks would do with a victory, of whether they would go on to try to re-order the whole of the Middle East in an over-ambitious surge that could lead to disaster.

The critics, of course, also have no foreknowledge. The one thing that can be said for certain about wars is that the risks and costs, political as well as purely military, are almost always either underestimated, as in Vietnam, or exaggerated, as they were in Kosovo and Afghanistan. The coming war is clearly not being rationally discussed in the US. With only a few exceptions, dissent has fastened on detail, pace and style. Republicans are committed, with a few honorable exceptions, to the position that the administration's policy is unarguably right. Democrats, again with a few exceptions, are committed to the principle that they must not be seen to be against the war, in case it is a huge success, but should have sounded enough warning notes to be able to accuse the Republicans of mismanaging it in case it turns out for the worse.

The rational position on Iraq is neither that war is absolutely necessary to deal with an increasingly dangerous Saddam nor that war is an absolutely crazy and immoral undertaking. It is perhaps best put by saying that some of the consequences of a successful war, above all the liberation of the Iraqi people, are very desirable, but that the risks of war are nevertheless higher than the risks of carrying on with some form of containment.

If the decision was still in play, then debate should be vigorously joined on this issue. But the decision is not still in play. Debate on whether the war is right or wrong will not now influence the Americans. What happens when an enterprise of this kind is undertaken by a great power is that nations and other groups consult their interests. The arguments now are not about right and wrong, but about where interests do or do not coincide.

At one end of the spectrum are sections of the Iraqi opposition. They do not worry themselves over the fact that the fate of the Iraqi people has never been high on the administration's list. It is enough for them, as one Iraqi puts it, that "the US has decided it is in their interests to do what we want them to do".

The Labour government under Tony Blair is in an oddly similar position in that Blair sees an Iraq war as a continuation of the humanitarian interventions of the 90s. For him, it will be about rescuing the Iraqi people, and about trying to reconcile American power with the international institutions in which Blair believes far more than does the Republican right wing.

As for other European states, their common concern is to limit the damage to the American-European relationship. Europe does not wish to find itself alone, after the war, looking at an alienated America in one direction and at a dangerously disturbed Middle East in another.

We are bumping along towards a conflict which will settle much more than the fate of Iraq. Its outcome will surely shape both American politics and the whole of international life for years to come. Some good may come of it, and certainly some bad. In what measure is to some extent still open to human control. How to exercise that control is the difficult question now faced by all nations.



               NATO USED THE SAME OLD TRICK WHEN IT MADE
                 MILOSEVIC AN OFFER HE COULD ONLY REFUSE

                                              By Robert Fisk

[The Independent - 4 October 2002]:  It's the same old trap. Nato used exactly the same trick to ensure that it could have a war with Slobodan Milosevic.

Now the Americans are demanding the same of Saddam Hussein - buried well down in their list of demands, of course. Tell your enemy that you're going to need his roads and airspace - with your troops on the highways - and you destroy his sovereignty. That's what Nato demanded of Serbia in 1999. That's what the new UN resolution touted by Messrs Bush and Blair demands of Saddam Hussein. It's a declaration of war.

It worked in 1999. The Serbs accepted most of Nato's Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-government in Kosovo, but not Appendix 8, which insisted that "Nato personnel shall enjoy ... free and unimpeded passage and
unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."

It was a demand that Mr Milosevic could never accept. US troops driving through Serbia would have meant, in these circumstances, the end of  Yugoslav sovereignty.

But now we have the draft UN resolution which Presidents Bush and Blair insist the UN must pass. Arms inspection teams, it says, "shall have the right to declare for the purposes of this resolution ... ground and air-transit corridors which shall be enforced by UN security forces or by members of the UN [Security] Council".

In other words, Washington can order forces of the US (a Security Council member) to "enforce" these "corridors" through Iraq - on the ground - when it wants. US troops would thus be in Iraq. It would be invasion without war; the end of Saddam, "regime change", the whole shebang.

No Iraqi government - even a Baghdad administration without the odious Saddam - could ever accept such a demand. Nor could Serbia have accepted such a demand from Nato, even without the odious Slobodan. Which is why the Serbs and Nato went to war.

So here it is again, the same old "we've-got-be-able-to-drive through-your-land" mentality which forced the Serbs into war and which is clearly intended to produce the same from Saddam.

America wants a war and here's the proof: if the United States truly wished to avoid war, it could demand "unfettered access" for inspectors without this sovereignty-busting paragraph, using it as a second resolution only if the presidential palaces of the Emperor Saddam remained off-limits.

Saddam can open his country to the inspectors; he can open even his presidential palaces. But if he doesn't accept the use of "Security Council" forces - in other words, US troops - on Iraqi roads, we can go to war. There's also that other paragraph: that "any permanent member of the Security Council may request to
be represented on any inspection team." In other words, the Americans can demand that their intelligence men can return to become UN inspectors, to pass on their information to the Israelis (which they did before) and to the US
military, which used them as forward air controllers for their aircraft once the inspectors were withdrawn.

All in all, then, a deal which President Saddam - yes, Saddam the wicked, Saddam the torturer, Saddam the lover of gas warfare - could never, ever accept.

He's not meant to accept this. Which is why the Anglo-American draft for the UN is intended to give us war, rather than peace and security from weapons of mass destruction.




                     OPERATION ENDLESS DEPLOYMENT
             by William D. Hartung, Frida Berrigan & Michelle Ciarrocca*

[The Nation, 21 October 2002]:   The Bush Administration's march toward war in Iraq is dangerous in its own right, and should be opposed as such. But the preparations for "Gulf War II" are also part of a larger plan to promote the most significant expansion of US global military presence since the end of the cold war. The Pentagon is determined to maintain access to the rapidly growing network of military facilities it has built or refurbished in the Caucasus, South Asia and the Persian Gulf for decades to come, long after George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein have passed from the global stage.

In the fall of 1999, in his first major campaign speech on foreign policy, Bush criticized the Clinton Administration for sending US troops off on "aimless and endless deployments" that allegedly detracted from their core mission of fighting and winning wars. Bush was primarily referring to US peacekeeping missions in places like Kosovo, but he gave the impression that he was planning to reduce the overall US military presence overseas as well. Three years later, Bush's pledge to seek a more streamlined US global military presence has been cast aside under the guise of fighting "terrorists and tyrants" of Washington's choosing.

Since September 2001 US forces have built, upgraded or expanded military facilities in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan; authorized extended training missions or open-ended troop deployments in Djibouti, the Philippines and the former Soviet republic of Georgia; negotiated access to airfields in Kazakhstan; and engaged in major military exercises, involving thousands of US personnel, in Jordan, Kuwait and India. Thousands of tons of military equipment have been added to stockpiles already pre-positioned in Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf states, including Israel, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar. And discussions are still under way with Yemen about increasing American access to facilities there and establishing an intelligence-gathering installation aimed at monitoring activities in Sudan and Somalia.

These forward bases, many of which have been arranged through secretive, ad hoc arrangements, currently house an estimated 60,000 US military personnel. This includes 20,000-25,000 troops in the Persian Gulf, poised to serve as the opening wave of a US invasion of Iraq.

Funds for training and military aid, which are often used to grease the wheels of US access to overseas military facilities, have been increased substantially since the start of the Administration's war on terrorism. The budget request for training foreign military personnel is up by 27 percent in the fiscal-year 2003 budget, while funding for the government's largest military aid program, Foreign Military Financing, is slated to top $4 billion. The bulk of this additional funding is going to countries like Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India, which had previously been under restrictions on what they could receive from the United States because of records of systematic human rights abuses, antidemocratic practices or development of nuclear weapons. Now these same nations are viewed as indispensable allies in the Administration's war on terrorism.

The new global buildup represents not so much a return to the cold war, when the United States had many more troops stationed overseas than it does today, but rather an elaboration of a new, more flexible infrastructure for intervening in--or initiating--"hot wars" from the Middle East to the Caucasus to East Asia.

Military analyst William Arkin has noted that in the first four months after the September 11 attacks, thirteen military tent cities were hastily assembled to shelter US personnel in nine different countries. Many of the sites include "expeditionary airfields" that were built or upgraded on short notice to facilitate their use by US combat and transport planes.

Despite protestations to the contrary by Pentagon officials, there are questions about how many of the new US forward bases will in fact be temporary. The US Central Command has long been seeking alternatives to Saudi Arabia to use as springboards for future interventions in the Persian Gulf, as well as access to facilities in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. While Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been purposely vague about the length of the US stay at any of the new facilities, Air Force Col. Billy Montgomery, who headed a team that expanded an air base in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, for use by US and allied forces in Afghanistan, told the Washington Post, "I think it's fair to say there will be a long-term presence here well beyond the end of hostilities."

In a mid-August briefing, Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command, suggested that the length of the US military presence in Afghanistan could end up rivaling the fifty-year US presence in South Korea. And if the Bush Administration is not dissuaded from moving full-speed ahead with its plans to invade Iraq, several independent military experts have suggested that an occupying force of 75,000-100,000 troops may be needed to stabilize that country, giving rise to the need for additional formal or informal bases to house US troops.

Growing US Military Presence Since 9/11/01

Qatar: With 600 war planners from the US Central Command scheduled to arrive in November for an "exercise" that could turn into a long-term deployment, it is widely believed that Qatar will serve as the principal base for coordinating US intervention in Iraq. The Pentagon began pouring additional personnel and funding into Qatar's Al Udeid air base in November 2001 in hopes of using it as an alternative to Saudi bases in the event of military action against Iraq. The facility now has a command center with satellite links that will enable it to coordinate thousands of airstrikes daily. The base, which has one of the longest runways in the Middle East, is currently home to roughly 3,000 US personnel and fifty aircraft, including fighters, bombers and reconnaissance and refueling aircraft. There are also 600 US personnel stationed at an air logistics base in Qatar--referred to by Army officials as "Camp Snoopy"--at which C-5 and C-17 cargo planes routinely come and go, bringing supplies for US forces in Afghanistan and the Gulf. Qatar and Kuwait (see below) are also host to more than three dozen 60,000-square-foot warehouses that contain hundreds of US military vehicles, ranging from M-1 tanks and armored personnel carriers to 155-millimeter howitzers.

Jordan: Despite public pronouncements by Jordanian officials that their nation will not serve as a launching pad for a US attack on Iraq, US-Jordanian military cooperation has been increasing. During August, 2,200 personnel of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit were in Jordan for "Operation Infinite Moonlight," which several analysts believe was used as a cover to pre-position additional US military equipment in the Persian Gulf in preparation for war with Iraq. Recent press reports indicate that US forces also have regular access to Jordanian air bases at Ruwayshid and Wadi-al Murbah, both of which are close to the Iraqi border.

Kuwait: Camp Doha is home to 5,000 US Army personnel, plus thousands more that come for regular military exercises in Kuwait. Counting troops in-country for extended exercises and air crews involved in flying F-16 and F-15 aircraft on surveillance missions over southern Iraq, there are now estimated to be more than 9,000 US military personnel in Kuwait. As of the first week of September, 2,000 US troops were en route to Kuwait for "Operation Desert Spring," an exercise slated to last several months. More than sixty military vehicles are being shipped to Kuwait as part of the exercise, apparently in an effort to bulk up the US arsenal there in anticipation of a war against Iraq.

Saudi Arabia: As a tacit side agreement to the controversial 1981 sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia, US contractors built an unparalleled network of air, naval and communications bases in Saudi Arabia that served as the main base of operations for US forces in the Gulf War. The most important of these facilities is the Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, which has served as the coordinating center for air operations over Iraq and Afghanistan. After initially stating that Saudi bases could not be used for a US strike against Iraq, Saudi officials have now stated that the facilities will be available, provided that the intervention is sanctioned by the UN Security Council. There are currently more than 6,000 US Air Force and Army personnel in Saudi Arabia.

Oman: The United States is upgrading an airfield at Musnana for use as an air base that will house everything from fighter aircraft to B-52 bombers. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the United States has used three other bases in Oman to launch airstrikes against Afghanistan. A base at Masirah hosts US P-3 Orion antisubmarine aircraft and AC-130 gunships. Oman is also a major pre-positioning site for the US Air Force, with enough equipment and fuel stored to support three bases and 26,000 support personnel.

Bahrain: The US Fifth Fleet, which coordinates all US combat ships in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean areas, has its headquarters at Manama, Bahrain. Twenty miles south of Manama, Shaikh Isa Air Base hosts US bomber and fighter aircraft, and is expected to serve as the home for a US Air Force expeditionary wing of forty-two aircraft in the near future. Total US personnel in Bahrain number 4,000 or more, most of them in the Navy or Marines.

United Arab Emirates: The United States has no ongoing military presence in the UAE, but the government allows US reconnaissance and refueling aircraft to use its air bases, and there is some US equipment pre-positioned there for use in contingencies like the Bush Administration's planned intervention in Iraq.

Diego Garcia: In August the Pentagon awarded a contract to a Norfolk, Virginia, shipping company to operate eight large "roll-on, roll-off" cargo ships in and around the US base at Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. B-52s based there are likely to come into play in any air war against Iraq; the island may also serve as a stopover point and distribution center for US personnel and equipment headed to the Gulf.

Yemen: The Pentagon is exploring the possibility of building a signals intelligence base on the Yemeni island of Socotra that would be used to conduct surveillance on Somalia and the Horn of Africa. This past June, a US team arrived in Yemen to begin installation of a computerized surveillance system designed to link the capital of Sanaa with data flowing from major seas, airports and border crossings.

Djibouti: In mid-September it was revealed that 800 US personnel, most of them Special Operations forces, have been deployed in the East African nation of Djibouti, poised for deployment in Yemen, Somalia or Sudan in pursuit of alleged Al Qaeda operatives. The Special Forces deployment is backed up by the stationing nearby of the Belleau Wood, an amphibious assault ship with helicopters and Harrier jump jets that can be used to transport US personnel in Djibouti into battle in neighboring nations.

Turkey: Turkey's Incirlik air base, which has served as the launching ground for US airstrikes and surveillance missions over northern Iraq for more than a decade, is home to an estimated four dozen US surveillance and strike aircraft (the exact number is classified). The Pentagon hopes to use Incirlik as a major staging ground in its planned air war against Iraq, and has been courting Ankara with major arms sales, including transfers of Seahawk antisubmarine helicopters, two fully outfitted combat frigates and a pledge to cancel a substantial portion of Turkey's multibillion-dollar military debt to the United States.

Georgia: As part of a two-year, $64 million "train and equip" mission, US Special Forces will be deployed to Georgia to train a 2,000-person antiterrorist force designed to patrol the Pankisi Gorge, an alleged refuge for Chechen rebels and Al Qaeda fighters. Barracks and other facilities for the US trainers will be built in cooperation with the Kellogg Brown & Root division of Halliburton industries.

Afghanistan: The two main US bases in Afghanistan are at Bagram, where the headquarters for US military operations in the country is based, along with roughly 5,000 US personnel; and in Kandahar, where 3,000-4,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division are based, along with a detention facility for Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.

Pakistan: Pursuant to an agreement struck with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last December, US forces have taken over an air base at Jacobabad, in southwestern Pakistan, and are building air-conditioned barracks and a higher security wall. American forces will also continue to use airfields at Pasni and Dalbandin for the foreseeable future, as part of what one Pakistani source predicts will become a "semipermanent presence" of US forces in Pakistan.

Uzbekistan: Roughly 1,500 US troops are stationed at Khanabad, a former Soviet facility that is the largest air base in Central Asia. The US Air Force is scouting sites to set up a more permanent facility in Uzbekistan.

Kyrgyzstan: The Manas air base, also known as the Peter J. Ganci base in honor of a New York City fireman who died in the World Trade Center rescue effort, is home to 2,000 troops--1,000 American and 1,000 from coalition partners Australia, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and Spain. American officials claim that the base will be closed after the war in Afghanistan is over, but sources familiar with the extensive infrastructure that has been built, including a central power plant, a hospital and two industrial-size kitchens, expect US forces to be stationed there for years to come.

Kazakhstan: This past July the United States and Kazakhstan signed an agreement to allow US military aircraft to make emergency landings--for a fee--at Kazakhstan's largest civilian airport, in Almaty. In addition, the Bush Administration has requested $5 million in military aid in the fiscal-year 2003 budget to refurbish an air base in order to establish "a US-interoperable base along the oil-rich Caspian."

Tajikistan: After the September 11 attacks, Tajikistan was one of the first Central Asian states to offer the Pentagon access to bases, overflight rights and the use of its territory by US military personnel. Bases at Khujand, Kulyab and Kurgan-Tyube are available to US forces as needed, but unlike the larger bases in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, they have yet to become a major focus of activity.

Philippines: More than 1,300 US troops were involved in "counterterrorism training" in the Philippines from February through July of this year, assisting local military forces in their efforts to wipe out the remnants of the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla movement, which Philippine security officials claim forged ties with Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s. In parallel to the training mission, US military aid to the Philippines was increased tenfold, from $1.9 million to $19 million. A cadre of 100 US military personnel remained in the Philippines after the larger contingent withdrew in July. The Pentagon plans several other major training missions in the Philippines in the next year.

Sources: Center for Defense Information; GlobalSecurity.org; David Isenberg, "By Infinite Moonlight, US Readies for War," Asia Times, August 29, 2002; US Defense Department; and numerous news stories from the Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and William Arkin's "Dot.mil" column in the Washington Post Online.

* William D. Hartung, a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at New School University, is co-author, with Michelle Ciarrocca, of the institute's report Tangled Web: The Marketing of Missile Defense, 1994-2000. Frida Berrigan is the deputy director of the arms-trade project at the New School University's World Policy Institute. Michelle Ciarrocca is the senior research associate of the arms-trade project at the New School University's World Policy Institute






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