International Socialists

Elizabeth Schulte

Elizabeth Schulte reports on new revelations of the Bush gang’s plan for a war on Iraq.


Some 250,000 US Marines and soldiers. Hundreds of warplanes based in as many as eight countries. An air assault against thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and communications sites. Special Operations forces or CIA agents striking depots or laboratories storing suspected "weapons of mass destruction."

These are a few of the details of the US government’s plan for a war on Iraq, as described in a Pentagon document leaked to the New York Times at the beginning of July. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says that he’s determined to sniff out the source of the leak. But since September 11, it has been anything but a secret that Rumsfeld and the rest of George W. Bush’s war team are itching to attack Iraq.

First, there were the frenzied attempts to link Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with the September 11 hijackers. Then the equally frenzied effort to blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks last year. That story fell through, too, but Bush continued his witch-hunt, naming Iraq as part of "the axis of evil" in his State of the Union address.

The regular charge is that Saddam and his regime are assembling "weapons of mass destruction." Unfortunately for the hawks, there’s little evidence of this. Iraq has been in a state of virtual collapse since the 1991 Gulf War, not only because of US bombs, but also because of more than a decade of economic sanctions.

But the Bush gang isn’t letting the truth get in the way. In June, the administration leaked its plan to use Special Operations forces to assassinate Saddam. The leak served the purpose of convincing the Iraqi government that proposed new teams of United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors might well contain killers.

As former inspector Scott Ritter wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Absent any return of weapons inspectors, no one seems willing to challenge the Bush administration’s assertions of an Iraqi threat… The true target of the supposed CIA plan may not be Hussein but rather the weapons inspection programme itself. The real casualty is the last chance to avoid bloody conflict."

The administration’s saber rattling at Iraq, whether openly or through leaks to the media, serves another purpose – shifting attention away from the rotten economy and White House connections to corporate crime.

That’s why not every round of stories about the Pentagon’s invasion plans should be taken as a sign that an attack is coming soon. But the White House wants a war.

It faces some roadblocks, though. Dick Cheney’s tour of the Middle East earlier this year to drum up support ran into stronger than expected opposition from US allies among Arab governments.

The trip came just as Israel was escalating its terror campaign against Palestinians. Arab leaders who want the US to topple Saddam nevertheless won’t openly support Washington if they know this could spark massive anger from below.

Even European leaders have been cautious. Bush’s loyal stable boy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was careful to announce that, while a regime change was "desirable," the objective was "getting the inspectors back in."

A US sponsored "regime change" in Iraq will be harder to accomplish than the quick "victory" in Afghanistan. No one can predict when George W. Bush will strike Iraq. The assault could come early next year – or even sooner. But some things are certain.

Bush Junior is determined to "finish" what his father started in Iraq – protect the US government’s plunder of oil resources in the Middle East and prove that Washington calls the shots.

Opponents of war have to fight him every step of the way.

Planning another slaughter in Iraq


No country since Vietnam has suffered more destruction from US military power than Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War killed an estimated 200,000 people in a period of just six weeks. US warplanes dropped more tons of bombs on Iraq faster than in any other aerial bombardment in the history of warfare.

And when the "war" was over and Iraqi soldiers and civilians were retreating, the US attacked again – turning the road from Kuwait to Basra into the "highway of death."

Then came a decade of economic warfare – in the form of United Nations sanctions. Diseases that had been wiped out decades ago now flourish in Iraq because of shortages of basic medical supplies. Some 5,000 children die every single month because of sanctions.

But still George W. Bush isn’t satisfied. He wants more blood – and the only question is when, not if. The saber rattling has grown louder over the past several months, with more and more "leaked" war plans showing up in the media.

The latest scenario is called the "inside-out" plan. US forces would go after the Iraqi capital of Baghdad – with warplanes pounding a city of five million people and troops carrying out operations in the streets.

Bush claims that he’s after the "evil" Saddam Hussein. Of course, many of the same officials running Bush’s war machine today were extending the hand of friendship to Saddam in the 1980s – when President Ronald Reagan decided to back Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. This with the full knowledge that Saddam possessed chemical weapons and was prepared to use them.

Bush’s plans for war have nothing to do with concerns about democracy or justice. "What talks in the region? Power," raved right-wing Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer earlier this year. "Fear. Respect for American power."

The Bush gang is ready to wreak further havoc in Iraq to show that the US government can do whatever it likes around the globe.

A debate has broken out within the Washington establishment about Bush’s war plans. Some veteran hawks – like Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser and tight Bush family friend, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger – publicly opposed launching a new attack. In the Wall Street Journal, Scowcroft warned that an invasion could unleash "an Armageddon in the Middle East."

These hawks haven’t turned into doves. They’re just worried that this isn’t the right time or the right reason to go after Iraq. After all, the Bush administration has failed to produce any link at all between Saddam and the September 11 attacks – the main justification for Bush’s "war on terrorism."

The US doesn’t have any evidence that the Iraqi regime is producing the "weapons of mass destruction" that Bush claims. And even staunch US allies in Europe and the Middle East are opposing any new US action against Iraq.

Given all the lies that Washington has told during its race to war, it’s no surprise that a majority of people say they support military action against Iraq to oust Saddam. What’s surprising, in fact, is the growing numbers who have doubts – who have begun to question the administration’s claim that a devastated and poverty-stricken society represents a threat to the US. These doubts will only grow as the US moves closer to an all-out assault.

Iraq has been devastated by more than a decade of US war. But the Bush gang has even worse in store. We have to stand up and speak out against Bush’s new war on Iraq before it begins.