Chuck O'Connell
PREDICTIONS: Iraq and the NATO war against Yugoslavia
Tue Apr 1 01:29:47 2003
208.152.73.117

By CHUCK O'CONNELL

Back in 1999 after looking at the sanctions program against Iraq and the NATO war against Yugoslavia, I made a few predictions to my students which I have reiterated each subsequent year. Those predictions were as follows:


1. The U.S. would invade Iraq.

2. The U.S. would project military power into the Caspian - Central Asia region.

3. The European Union would seek to dissociate itself from U.S. foreign policy and chart its own course.

Why did I make these predictions and why have they come true?

Foretelling a U.S. war against Iraq was fairly easy to do. The explanation is that the U.S. backed sanctions program was designed to destroy the country economically and militarily; in effect, it was a form of siege warfare designed to degrade the target (Iraq) making it much easier to conquer. Added to the sanctions program was the imposition of northern and southern "no-fly" zones which not only effectively denied to the Iraqi military the airspace over the country's northern and southern perimeters but also allowed the U.S. and UK air forces to bomb northern and southern Iraq to pieces on a regular basis. The U.S. thus softened up the invasion routes for the conquest of Iraq. In short, the coming war represents a continuation of the ongoing war against Iraq. It will be Phase III. Phase I was Desert Storm - kicking Iraq out of Kuwait. Not knowing how the Iraqi Army would perform on its home soil and not having a suitable replacement for Saddam Hussein, the U.S. began Phase II - siege warfare plus bombing to reduce Iraqi defenses while a replacement could be found for Hussein. This low intensity warfare has finally accomplished its task and now the "necessary" reasons for invasion have been trotted out to justify the war and occupation.

"But why invade Iraq?", the students asked. Answer: The Baath regime (which the U.S. helped come to power in 1963 by assisting its coup against a previous Iraqi government) no longer served as the compliant vassal of U.S. political economic interests in the region. The Baath's eventual leader, Saddam Hussein - like other U.S. protégés before him (Ngo Dinh Diem in Viet Nam, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Manuel Noreiga in Panama) developed illusions of autonomy and began to pursue policies inimical to the visions of Washington. In seeking to expand his role as a grand Arab leader free of U.S. constraints, Hussein "crossed the line". His crimes which heretofore had been ignored were given wide airplay to shift public opinion against him.

"When he was seen as an agent of U.S. policy, [Hussein's] crimes were conveniently ignored. One of my favorite pictures on my desk is the 1983 photo of Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld - yes, that Rumsfeld! - shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad; soon thereafter, the U.S. began supplying biochem weapons to Iraq.

The occupation of Iraq will allow the U.S. to reassert control of the oil fields which had been contracted out to foreign competitors (France, Russia, and China) and also to position itself militarily on the western flank of Iran (the other part of the "axis of evil"). With this move, the U.S. will have Iran almost surrounded: American troops are on Iran's eastern flank in Afghanistan, southern flank with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, and western border in Iraq. With the Iraq "threat" erased after the removal of Hussein, watch the White House and media develop the new "threat": Iran.

This extension of U.S. military might throughout the Middle East/Persian Gulf region into Central Asia (the 'stans) is a process that extends back to the fall of the old American ally, the Shah of Iran, and the subsequent loss of Persian oilfields to U.S. control. Since 1980 the U.S. has built up its airlift and sealift capabilities in the region and developed new bases to preposition itself for war. In 1997 the Army dropped 500 paratroopers into Kazakhstan to test its airlift capabilities for war in Central Asia and in 1999 took Central Asia out of the Pacific Command and put it into the Central Command which oversees the oil rich Middle East. This put the Central Asian countries (which abut the Caspian Sea and Iran) into the sphere of plans for Mideast warfare.

New predictions:

1. The Iraqi oilfields will not be put in the hands of the Iraqi people; they will be privatized and awarded to appropriate corporate investors.

2. The French, Russians, and Chinese will lose their existing contracts to develop the Iraqi oilfields and Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, and British Petroleum will become the major players in Iraq. The rebuilding of the damaged oilfields will go to Vice-President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton.

3. None of the foregoing will constitute "proof" that the war was for oil profits.It will simply be "coincidence".

4. Democracy will NOT come to Iraq. What will happen is that some very rich exiled Iraqi who has made it clear in the past several months to the State Department and CIA that he is and will be forever and ever in complete agreement with what ever the Americans want in Iraq shall become the new ruler. He will be labeled by the U.S. press as a democratic wonder and indeed may have the trappings of "elections" (just as Hussein had "elections"). But the people of Iraq will be no more "free" than the people of Kuwait are today (even though we "liberated" them 12 years ago).

5. Iraq will not be rebuilt into an affluent middle class nation. Oil profits will flow to a small upper class and the mass of people will be forgotten by the prowar crowd and the government that waged the war to save the Iraqi people from Hussein. Eventually the misery of the Iraqi people will be blamed on the Iraqis themselves.

6.The Kurdish problem will not go away because the Turks (the "allies" Bush tried to buy for 26 billion dollars) will not accept a Kurdish nation.

7. Bush will not solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; on the contrary, it's not unlikely that the Sharon government might use this war for some "population transfer" under the rationale of fighting terrorism.

8. The U.S. war against Iraq will further the efforts of the EU, Russia, and China to develop the political and military strength to check the U.S. This will be a longterm process but they will either do it or become vassals. Their main fear is not that ExxonMobil gets Iraqi oil profits but that the U.S. will have effective military control over the bulk of their oil supplies from Saudi Arabia though Iraq to the new fields of the Caspian. Such control will give the U.S. unprecedented leverage over these nations because the U.S. will dominate a region containing 70% of the world's energy reserves.

9. Watch the White House and the media begin to increase the demonization of Iran. Pressure will be put on Tehran to submit to U.S. demands. If the leadership in Iran fails to comply with U.S. demands, then America will be "forced" to stand up to another threat to world peace.

That's enough for now. "


Source: Predictions About the Iraq War
by Chuck O'Connell

Chuck O'Connell teaches sociology at the University of California Irvine.
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March 31, 2003

Berating the Generals

The Siege of Washington

By WAYNE MADSEN

March 25, 2003 may serve as a crucial turning point in American history. On that day, George W. Bush displayed his increasingly erratic and irresponsible behavior before America's top military leadership. The friction between Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on one hand and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the other was evident at the afternoon Pentagon press briefing. This reporter had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers at a swank reception for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai a few months after U.S. troops launched Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Myers demonstrated that he is an affable individual and not one to bask in the conceitedness of constant media attention.

Trailing the pompous Rumsfeld into the briefing room, Myers' jaws were tight and his lips were pursed as he stared straight down at his notes during Rumsfeld's opening statements. I was in the military long enough to know when someone has either just been chewed out or has had it out with his superiors. It doesn't matter if you're wearing four stars on your shoulders or one stripe on your sleeves, the telltale signs are always same.

Myers, on two occasions, appeared to differ with Rumsfeld. One was on the issue of Iran's conduct during the war. Myers said Iran had done nothing to make him unhappy. Rumsfeld, however, chastised Iran for supporting and training Iraqi Shia militia in Iraq. In a few days, Rumsfeld obliquely warned both Iran and Syria of the potential for U.S. retaliation against them. When Myers was asked about Iraq's possible use of chemical weapons, the general responded that no such weapons had yet been used. Rumsfeld indicated that he expected Iraq would use chemical weapons and warned that there was a retaliatory plan to deal with such an occurrence.

The gulf between Rumsfeld and his neo-con advisers is now wider than both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Add to this the increasingly nasty and un- presidential demeanor of George Bush. Pentagon insiders report that Bush, in a not-too-rare Hitleresque moment, used his March 25 visit to the Pentagon to berate the Joint Chiefs for the conduct of HIS war. Moreover, Rumsfeld did nothing to defend his generals and admirals from such a verbal beating by a draft dodging and often AWOL member of a posh and cozy Texas Air National Guard unit. Rumsfeld, from the outset of his Pentagon stint, treated his generals and admirals like dog crap. They were not even invited to Pentagon planning meetings. These were reserved for Rumsfeld's coterie of neo-con gargoyles like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, outside and well- paid "consultants," and wet-nursed GOP political hacks.

Bush, who fancies himself a "born-again" Christian, is actually a foul- mouthed and erratic alcoholic. For example, the "pretzel" incident had nothing to do with a pretzel. While watching a football game at the White House, the "leader of the free world" got so drunk he fell right on his face and blamed it on his inability to remember his mother's missive about chewing all one's food before swallowing. Such alibis and ruses are the trademarks of drunks. During the presidential campaign Bush called a New York Times reporter a "major league asshole." In 1986, a clearly drunk and disorderly Bush told The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt, "You fucking son of a bitch . . . I saw what you wrote. We're not going to forget this." The rich frat boy was irate about an article Hunt wrote about Bush's father. Time magazine is reporting that during a March 2002 briefing for three senators by Condoleezza Rice, Bush poked his head into a White House meeting room and bellowed, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out!"

But for Bush to vent his spleen on America's military leadership defies logic and clearly demonstrates that he is mentally unfit for his office. Never mind the fact that Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, was harangued by Rumsfeld and his chickenhawks for suggesting not enough troops were provided for the invasion of Iraq. The head of the U.S. Army's V Corps, Lieutenant General William Wallace, said of Iraqi forces, "the enemy we're fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against." Score two for the generals and nothing for the neo-con draft dodgers who planned this idiotic war.

Richard Perle, the ethically-challenged former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and virtual agent for the Russian-mafia dominated Likud government of Israel, got it completely wrong in the hours leading up to the war when he suggested, along with a pathetic Iraqi opposition capo, that U.S. troops would be met with "flowers and candy" upon entering Iraq. Obviously, Perle's military experience does not permit him to distinguish between flowers and candy and bullets and mortar rounds. It is a shame that Rumsfeld still can't pry his lips from Perle's backside. After Perle resigned as chairman of the advisory board amid a financial scandal involving personal war profiteering, Rumsfeld praised him and asked him to remain as a board member.

The fact of the matter is that Bush, Rumsfeld, the other war makers in the administration, and their political allies in Britain, Denmark, Australia, and Spain, are all dangerous megalomaniacs. On March 30th, Rumsfeld continued his deception by claiming on Fox "News" that Bush's war coalition has expanded to 66 countries. This is a bald-faced lie. Some of the countries on the list published by both the White House and Pentagon claim they are not members of any coalition and never have been. The list is false propaganda. It is worthy of Joseph Goebbels

Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop said the State Department told him his country had been listed by mistake. But Slovenia remains on Bush's coalition list. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Allan Kemakeza, said his country was erroneously listed as a member of the coalition. But the Solomons, which don't even have a military, remains on the White House list.

The White House and Pentagon lie purveyors include Croatia in their coalition but Croatian President Stipe Mesic has condemned America's war on Iraq as "illegitimate." The White House claims the Czech Republic is a coalition member but the country's president, Vaclav Klaus, said that anyone who thinks democracy can be imposed on Iraq is "from another universe." Klaus means that people like Bush, Tony Blair, Rumsfeld, and the other neo-Crusaders are just plain nuts. Indeed they are.

U.S. ambassadors in Canada, Norway, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica, and New Zealand have publicly condemned the host governments for failing to support the U.S. war on Iraq. Such behavior in modern times is unprecedented. Bush heralds Tonga's accession to his pitiful coalition but continues to lose the support of major countries like Italy, Norway, and South Korea. Also, Bush just can't understand why the "Grecians" and "East Timorians" are opposed to his unlawful war.

As U.S. troops began to get bogged down in Iraq with heavy Iraqi resistance and sporadic supply lines, forcing the down to one meal ration a day instead of three, U.S. Marines were handed a pamphlet called a "Christian's Duty." The Marines were exhorted to pray for Bush, his family, and his staff and then mail in a pledge form to Bush to prove that such prayers were rendered. I cannot even begin to fathom a young American military man or woman, risking life and limb on an Iraqi battlefield for U.S. oil companies, being asked to pray for the likes of Ari Fleischer, Andy Card, or John Ashcroft. It rates about a "10" on the puke meter.

But I have a better idea for our brave troops who are being mishandled by the crowd that incrementally seized unconstitutional power between January 20, 2001 and in the weeks after September 11th. Instead of being forced to offer prayers for Bush and his cabal, their commanders should seek a pledge of their support for a military action to return the United States to its people.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, armed with enough support from their subordinate commanders, troops, and civilian staff, could place a team of Delta Force commandos and armor on the South Lawn of the White House and in front of the North Portico on Pennsylvania Avenue. Using large loudspeakers designed for use in civil action campaigns like the ones currently taking place in Umm Qasr, Basra, and Safwan, Iraq, the Delta Force commander would instruct the Secret Service to exit the White House and lay down weapons. Five minutes should be sufficient. They should then secure the "football" and the military officer who maintains it. The football is actually a large briefcase that contains the nuclear firing codes and it would have to be quickly separated from the madmen in the White House.

Bush, Cheney, Card, Rove, Fleischer, Rice, and the rest should then be taken into custo