It's increasingly being hinted that the warlords of Washington and London have
more intelligence than I gave them credit for. Not Bush and Blair personally -
I'm not backtracking that far! I merely mean that reading between the lines of
recent statements by Geoff Hoon suggests that the information on which the
decision to embark on this war was based was more extensive and more
substantive than what was presented to the world at the time.
The implication is that a senior member or members of Saddam's Ba'ath Party
have been feeding US and/or UK Intelligence agencies with key information since
a long time before the war started. Presumably, the explanation that will
eventually be given for not sharing this information earlier is that they had
to protect their source(s). If we put our skepticism aside, discount the
possibility that this is a deliberate deception intended to imply that a recent
defector has been providing information for a long time, and if we accept this
new revelation at face value, can we imagine a set of circumstances in which
this war is justified?
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Let's say one of Saddam's men is
spilling beans for US or UK agents, and told them that there was ongoing
chemical weapons possession and development in Iraq. Then when UN inspectors
returned to Iraq, the snitch reported a campaign of concealment. Let's even
permit the incredulous suggestion that this informant told them that Saddam was
giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. I'm even going to go one step
further, because the urgency with which the invasion was undertaken gave the
sense of there being some deadline. Let's pull a rabbit out of an empty hat:
Let's imagine that one of Saddam's right-hand men said that a shipment of
weapons grade uranium was due to arrive from Niger at the port of Umm Qasr on
the 20th of March.
Would that make it OK for this "Coalition of the Willing" to unilaterally and
forceably overthrow the government of Iraq? Would it provide sufficient
justification for decimating another generation of young Iraqi men who
allegedly don't support the regime the war is supposedly targeting? Even if
none of the thousands of civilian victims had died, if no non-target buildings
had been hit, the deliberate, "necessary" devastation to Iraq is immense. Is
there vindication for this in the words of a senior Iraqi traitor?
No there isn't. If they had had more to go on than words then they wouldn't
have had to produce the phony Niger document. If they'd had intelligence about
specific chemical weapons sites then they would have been able to lead weapons
inspectors to them. But even if all they had was an anonymous whistle-blower
among the high ranks of Saddam's organisation, surely they would have shared
that fact in private with the Security Council veto holders. They showed no
qualms about presenting unreliable evidence, so the only reason I can imagine
for witholding this information (if indeed they had it) is that they didn't
want to share a postwar, "free" Iraqi market with France, Russia and China. But
in the generous spirit of this piece, I am willing to allow that there might be
another rationale behind the secrecy. Wi th imagination, it might even be
possible to concoct a conspiracy theory that also condones US intelligence
agents tapping the phone lines of UN Security Council delegates.
As you can see, the benefit of the doubt is a brush that paints a colourful
picture. But there is still a surplus of doubt, so bear with me while I paint
the brightest picture possible. What if - in addition to the hypothetical
rationale deriving from this alleged Ba'ath party defector - what if there is
no capitalist ulterior motive underpinning the liberation of the Iraqi people,
but rather a genuine desire to proliferate global human freedom? What if the
scenes of jubilant Iraqis in the streets of Baghdad are not simply an obedient
public dancing and singing the name of their new oppressor as they danced and
sang the name of the previous one, but rather genuine celebrations of a freedom
long dreamed of? What if the accusations against Syria are not the hastily
concocted pretext for a new war, but rather the result of reliable evidence
that Syria is in fact harbouring fleeing Iraqi leaders, and is in possession of
chemical weapons? What if the ultimate outcome of this war is not a punitive
campaign of ongoing bombing, like we saw after the previous Iraq war, or like
we see in Afghanistan to this day, but rather a genuinely independant and
representative democratic government of and for the free people of Iraq,
following the restoration of civil order and the withdrawal of all coalition
forces?
Does this idyllic extrapolated fantasy vindicate war?
It is just conceivable that this far-fetched interpretation of circumstances
would garner sufficient Security Council support for the sort of precision
warfare that was promised before this war began, and which carefully worded,
and carefully illustrated military briefings have reported throughout. But
there are undisputed facts which dispel any notion of this being that kind if
war. Accidents inevitably happen, so I'm not going to dwell on the unfortunate
number of friendly fire casualties, or even the civilians hit by stray
munitions.
For all the optimistic talk of "precision" this and "smart" that, not all the
technology being used by the Coalition of the Willful is conducive to limiting
collateral damage. Cluster bombs are still killing in Vietnam 25 years after
the end of that war, and the depleted uranium bullets and shells that have
peppered Iraq, it's buildings and people are likely to have a much longer term
impact than that.
But almost all commentators overlook the biggest group of victims in this war -
the Iraqi army. Iraqi soldiers are no more culpible for the actions of their
country's regime than American and Britsh soldiers are for the actions of
theirs'. If this is truly a war of liberation, then Iraqi soldiers should share
in that liberation, too; they don't deserve to die any more than coalition
soldiers do. Indeed we were told to expect surrender en masse by Iraqi soldiers
who didn't support the regime. Will someone please explain to me how a
disillusioned Iraqi soldier should go about surrendering to a cruise missile or
stealth bomber.
Due to US military policy ("We don't do body counts" - Gen. Tommy Franks) we
may never know the true extent of the annihilation of Iraqi soldiers. On the
9th of April US forces held only 7,300 Iraqi POWs. In the 1991 war they
captured 83,000, and this time around they were prepared for a "worst case"
scenario of 50,000. It's chilling to realise that they weren't expecting there
to be more than 50,000 survivors from an army reportedly numbering around a
quarter million. Even crediting the claims that some soldiers have returned to
their farms and families, the death toll must be in five and possibly six
figures.
The crux of my argument is this: If Bush and Blair had only genuinely good
motives for engaging in this war in Iraq, why would they go about it with such
indiscriminate violence?
Clearly they wouldn't, and clearly there is a lot more to this war than an
urgent pre-emptive defensive strike, or the liberation of an oppressed people.
The fact that this war was already scripted well in advance of September 11
2001, that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other now senior US administration
officials have, under the banner of the "Project for the New American Century",
been essentially advocating a pre-emptive strike and occupation of Iraq since
the 1990s only hints at the complexity of this Origami Oligarchy.
The assembling of the "Coalition of the Willing" is another mystery entirely.
How did Spain come to be so crucially involved in the pre-war political
manoeuvring in the UN? What led Australia and Poland to send combat troops into
Iraq, and why did the remaining countries in the coalition submit to offering
private and public support?
Perhaps Spanish intelligence was involved from the very beginning. Perhaps
Poland and Australia believed respectively in the righteousness of freeing
Iraqis from an oppressive regime, and ridding the World of weapons of mass
destruction. Perhaps Japan shared the conviction that this war is just, but was
reluctant to become involved, while the Solomon Islands were glad to have no
military to commit, because they were only supporting the war on the reasoning
that backing down would imply a victory to Saddam.
Or perhaps the simple fact is that noone had the gumption to stand up to a
schoolyard bully who has set about terrorising the World. Perhaps other "World
Leaders" ignored their own ideas about right and wrong, justification and
accountability, and ignored their nations' ideas about peace and justice, and
instead tried to buy favour with the bully - to whatever extent they could
afford.
It is obvious that Bush & Co. don't have only genuinely good motives for
engaging in this war. Is it therefore possible that they don't have any
genuinely good motives? Time alone will not tell, and don't expect the
increasingly secretive governments of America and Britain to volunteer any
reliable information.
As the mainstream media scales back its coverage of the war, coincidental with
the scaling back of the fireworks display over Baghdad, it may well turn out
that this supposed Iraqi informant plays a starring role in the climax of this
made-for-TV drama. The White House may never announce it, thus limiting the
number of outright lies they have to tell, but you can be sure the media will
fill in the blanks. Don't be surprised if the mainstream media is no longer
reporting war in Iraq by this time next week.
But also don't be surprised if independant media is continuing to report Iraqis
being killed by US soldiers this time next year.
Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2946449.stm
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html
http://www.presentdanger.org/papers/foretold.html
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030409-120739-6344r.htm
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/iraq/army/
http://timewedo.com/
http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2003/03/21/20030321coalitionlist.html
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