International Socialists

Eric Ruder

Eric Ruder answers all the most important questions surrounding the planned US assault on Iraq

George W. Bush wants war with Iraq, and his administration has launched a full-scale public relations campaign to build support. If you listened only to the mainstream media, you might think that the case for a military assault to bring about a "regime change" is completely airtight.

Iraq has developed "weapons of mass destruction" in order to threaten the US and its neighbours. Saddam Hussein is an "evil madman" who has shown his willingness to use these weapons in wars with other nations and against "his own people." And Iraq has defied United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors for a decade. But at every step in this argument, US officials rely on exaggeration, half truths, rank hypocrisy, or outright lies – and the media eats it up. Let’s look at each point in turn.

Does Iraq have weapons of mass destruction?
After enduring decimation in the first Gulf War and more than a decade of UN sanctions, it’s highly unlikely that Iraq has a threatening arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, George W. Bush has repeatedly warned that Saddam Hussein somehow continues to develop vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons and that Saddam has also begun a nuclear weapons program.

Citing satellite photos, Bush asserts that Iraq has reconstructed buildings at a site formerly alleged to be part of Iraq’s nuclear programme, and Bush says that Iraq tried to purchase high strength aluminium tubes and other equipment needed for constructing gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."

Author and activist Robert Jensen points out the absurdity of this claim: "That’s the equivalent of saying, ‘If Iraq had a nuclear weapon, it would have a nuclear weapon.’ Creating the other components of a nuclear bomb would be relatively easy; the fissile material is the issue."

The CIA also seems to dispute Bush’s assertions. A recent CIA report says it will take at least five years for Iraq to develop the uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon. And the report admits that the aluminium centrifuge tubes are often used for conventional weapons not prohibited by UN resolutions. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies makes the same point. "Iraq does not possess facilities to produce fissile material in sufficient amounts for nuclear weapons," and "it would require several years and extensive foreign assistance to build such fissile production facilities."

Does Iraq pose a significant threat to its neighbours or the US?
Bush portrays a war against Iraq as necessary for protecting the Middle East from Saddam Hussein, but Iraq’s neighbours oppose a US war. And that includes Kuwait, the nation that Iraq invaded in 1991.

The idea that Iraq has the capacity to or the interest in launching missiles against the US isn’t even taken seriously by the CIA. In March 2001, the CIA admitted that "[m]ost agencies believe that Iraq is unlikely to test before 2015 any [intercontinental ballistic missiles] that would threaten the United States, even if UN prohibitions were eliminated or significantly reduced in the next few years."

Bush has warned that Iraq "has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas" and that "we’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." This is extremely far fetched, according to military experts. Iraqi airspace is closely watched by US radar systems. A slow-moving unmanned plane would be shot down the moment it left Iraqi airspace and would never reach the US – at least 5,500 miles away.

"As a guesstimate, Iraq’s present holdings of delivery systems and chemical and biological weapons seem most likely to be so limited in technology and operational lethality that they do not constrain US freedom of action or do much to intimidate Iraq’s neighbours," said Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

In an attempt to tie the war on Iraq to the US "war on terror," Bush has repeatedly raised the spectre of ties between Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. Again, this is not only far fetched but unsubstantiated. Iraq is a secular regime hostile to Islamic fundamentalist opposition, while Al Qaeda has been a critic of Iraq’s secularism. But beyond the fact that Iraq and Al Qaeda are natural enemies rather than allies, no evidence linking Iraq and Al Qaeda has been turned up even though the FBI and CIA have vigorously sought it out.

Why won’t Iraq allow UN weapons inspectors into the country?
In truth, Saddam Hussein agreed in early September to allow weapons inspectors to re-enter the country. But US officials feared that Iraq might actually pass such a test. So Secretary of State Colin Powell personally pressed chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix not to enter Iraq until a new, tougher resolution authorising inspections was passed by the UN Security Council. The truth is that the US has no intention of allowing Iraq to pass the test of weapons inspections. The US wants to use Iraq’s supposed lack of cooperation with inspectors as its rationale for war to accomplish its main goal – "regime change."

But the US has still managed to succeed in portraying Iraq as unwilling to allow inspectors into the country. In December 1998, the US ordered UN inspectors out of Iraq ahead of Operation Desert Fox – one of the heaviest bombing campaigns against Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. But today, the official version of events – repeated again and again in the mainstream media – is that the bombing was in response to Saddam Hussein’s expulsion of weapons inspectors from Iraq.

Just a few weeks later, the Boston Globe reported in January 1999, that Iraq’s long-standing accusations that the US was using the UN weapons inspection teams to spy on Iraq were true. "US intelligence agencies, working under the cover of the UN, carried out an ambitious spying operation designed to penetrate Iraq’s intelligence apparatus and track the movement of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein," wrote the Globe. This intelligence, it turns out, was used to select targets during Desert Fox.

If Iraq wasn’t always the most cooperative with weapons inspectors, this revelation explains why. To top it all off with a healthy dose of hypocrisy, the US has refused to allow international inspectors into its own chemical and biological weapons facilities, citing "proprietary commercial interests."

But didn’t Saddam Hussein gas his own people?
This is the most cynical reason given for war against Iraq. That’s because the US was good friends with Saddam Hussein when the Iraqi military used poison gas to suppress the Kurdish opposition in 1988, killing up to 5,000 people in the village of Halabja. What’s more, the US had supplied Iraq with the precursors necessary to build biochemical weapons – anthrax, botulism, and a slew of other toxic stuff. After the Halabja "incident," the US downplayed the attack, issuing nothing more than a rote criticism.

But the hypocrisy runs much deeper still. The US supplied Iraq with all sorts of chemical and biological weaponry long after it knew that Saddam was using these weapons in its war against Iran. Nevertheless, the US administration provided "crop-spraying" helicopters to Iraq (subsequently used in chemical attacks on the Kurds in 1988), gave Iraq access to intelligence information that allowed Iraq to "calibrate" its mustard attacks on Iranian troops (1984), seconded its air force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts (from 1986), approved technological exports to Iraq’s missile procurement agency to extend the missiles’ range (1988), and blocked bills condemning Iraq in the House of Representatives (1985) and Senate (1988).

Only now, when the US is making a case for war against Iraq, does it want to call attention to Iraq’s use of chemical and biological weapons. But no one should take the US government’s newfound concern for the people of Iraq seriously. On the short list of candidates to replace Saddam after the regime change is none other than General Nizar Al-Khazraji, the field commander in charge of the attack on Halabja!

So if it’s not about weapons of mass destruction, why is the US pursuing war against Iraq?
Every once in a while, the real war aims of the US do sneak into the mainstream press. A September 10 article in the Boston Globe explains how the most hawkish players in Washington think tanks and military circles – once relegated to the margins – are on the verge of making their grand designs into official policy. It’s worth quoting at length:

Iraq, the hawks argue, is just the first piece of the puzzle. After an ouster of Hussein, they say, the United States will have more leverage to act against Syria and Iran, will be in a better position to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will be able to rely less on Saudi oil. "The goal is not just a new regime in Iraq. The goal is a new Middle East," said Raad Alkadiri, an Iraq analyst with PFC, a Washington-based energy consulting organisation. "The goal has been and remains one of the main driving factors of pre-emptive action against Iraq." A friendly Iraq – home to the world’s second-largest oil reserves – would provide an alternative to Saudi Arabia for basing US troops. Its oil reserves would make Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, less important in setting prices, he said. In general, others contend, a US-allied Iraq could work to diminish the influence of OPEC, long dominated by Saudi Arabia, over oil supplies and prices.

Iraq’s oil reserves are vast – about 11 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves or 112 billion barrels. The whole world knows about the importance of Iraq’s oil reserves – the question is who will control its flow.

Iraq’s oil is certainly a worthy enough prize on its own – especially if you happen to own a major oil corporation. But Washington’s war planners are looking at the big picture. They’re aiming at an even bigger prize. War against Iraq "would be the culmination of a plan ten years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the ‘American imperialists’ that our enemies always claimed we were," wrote Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in late September. This goal, in fact, explains why the US doesn’t hesitate to issue the UN ultimatums or worry much about what happens after Saddam is toppled. The point is to show that the US can and will pursue its military and economic interests anywhere in the world without regard to any other nation.

The National Security Strategy document released recently – known generally as the Bush Doctrine – formulated this vision of the US as the world’s unchallenged superpower. It defended the pre-emptive use of US military power, including regime change and the use of nuclear weapons; the refusal of Washington to be bound by any international treaty or organisation; the prevention of the emergence of any strategic rival; and the explicit linkage of US economic and military policy.

In the short run, there’s another reason that the US is pushing for war against Iraq at this moment. Israel’s war on the Palestinians has had the effect of making the US hold on the Middle East more tenuous by alienating Arab regimes that the US once counted as allies. This has accelerated the Bush administration’s timetable for bringing a "friendly regime" to power in Iraq so that it can continue to maintain military bases in the region.

Does it still make sense to oppose the war if the US gets the backing of the UN or a significant number of European countries?
War against Iraq – whether under the auspices of the UN or the US and its allies – will take a tremendous human toll. The first Gulf War in 1991 killed as many as 200,000 Iraqis in a matter of weeks. And since then, UN sanctions have taken the lives of at least one million more – according to the UN’s own figures – and turned the lives of ordinary Iraqis into a living hell.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Iraq was a relatively developed Middle Eastern country with a highly developed infrastructure, a decent health care system, and one of the highest literacy rates in the region. But the UN has overseen the economic and social devastation of Iraq. The US claims that it has no gripe with the people of Iraq and yet has insisted that UN sanctions prohibit the import to Iraq of so-called "dual use" goods – goods that can potentially be used for military purposes. This includes staples of a modern economy such as chlorine, which is essential to water purification.

Indeed, many of Iraq’s children die from diarrhoea caused by drinking contaminated water. Between 1990 and 2000, Iraq’s infant mortality rate increased by an astonishing 160 percent – the next worst increase was in Kenya at 24 percent. The UN claims to operate a humanitarian "oil-for-food" programme to alleviate the suffering in Iraq. Under the program, Iraq can export oil to pay for food, but this programme only generates US$172 per person – hardly enough to sustain the nutritional, let alone medical, needs of the population.

Finally, whether the war is given the blessing of a UN Security Council resolution or not, the aims of the war – US domination of Iraq and the Middle East – will remain unchanged.