Mobilize to stop U.S. invasion
Plans revealed for new war on Iraq
By Sarah Sloan
July 16, 2002--The U.S. is planning all-out war against Iraq in the coming year, according to a top secret Pentagon document that was leaked to the media in early July.
The document, prepared by the U.S. Central Command based in Florida, describes a three-pronged attack on Iraq including an air assault, land invasion and sea-based offensive.
This invasion model has been said to include approximately 250,000 U.S. troops, and possibly an equal number of British troops. It calls for the invasion to take place at the end of 2002 or beginning of 2003.
The July 5 New York Times gave front page coverage to the leaked Central Command document. The Times wrote that it "indicates an advanced state of planning in the military even though President Bush continues to state in public and to his allies that he has no fine-grain war plan on his desk for the invasion of Iraq."
U.S. plans for a war in Iraq are not new. For the past 10 months, a section of the Bush administration has favored an attack on Iraq. Earlier leaks hinted at similar war plans.
In a July 8 news conference, Bush said: "It's the stated policy of this government to have regime change [in Iraq]. And it hasn't changed. ... I recognize there's speculation out there but people shouldn't speculate about the desire of the [U.S.] government to have a regime change."
This war would be a brazen act of lawless aggression on the part of the United States. Even by threatening Iraq, the U.S. is clearly in violation of the United Nations Charter and thus in violation of international laws to which the U.S. is a signatory.
U.S. lawlessness
Article 2 of the UN Charter requires all countries to "settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered," and states that they must "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state ..."
Article 51 of the Charter is the only article permitting the use of force by individual countries, and that is strictly for self-defense.
The U.S. is not acting in self-defense. Iraq is not threatening the U.S., or for that manner any other country.
In 1991 George Bush senior used Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as the pretext for the Gulf War. Here there is not even a pretext.
Although the U.S. is clearly in violation of the UN Charter and international law, it would be the height of naiveté to believe that the UN will stop this war. It functions more or less as a puppet of the U.S. because of Washington's ability to use economic and military coercion to dominate the UN and other international bodies.
To stop the war requires a mobilization of the poor and working people of the world against U.S. imperialist aggression and domination.
The invasion plans aren't just talk. Recent reports indicate military preparations are already taking place for a new war against Iraq.
A June 27 report in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak, quoting sources in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, stated that the U.S. sent 7,000 troops to the Incirlik airbase in the last two weeks of June and that it planned to increase the number of troops to 25,000 in the next month.
A July 7 report from Amman, Jordan, in The Observer of London reported on the arrival of U.S. military advisors and preparations to use a base in Jordan for war in Iraq. A June 29 report in As-Safir from Beirut, Lebanon, also stated that U.S. troops had entered Jordan, as well as northern Iraq.
The Jordanian government, which rules over a country that has a majority of Palestinian people and where pro-Iraq sentiment is strong, officially denies the presence of U.S. forces in the country.
Iraq is on the top of Bush's target list for his undefined, unending war against a faceless, nameless enemy. But Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attack. Endless searching by the CIA turned up nothing.
By taking the war to Iraq, Bush inadvertently reveals that the so-called war on terrorism is not about "protecting Americans" but is just an extension of unstated but real preexisting imperialist strategies and objectives in the oil-rich Middle East.
Weapons inspection shell game
Negotiations between Iraq and the United Nations for the return of weapons inspectors have broken down. According to Saad Qassem Hammadi, a representative of the Iraqi government, the outcome of the talks "weren't a surprise for us because U.S. pressure on the UN delegation was known in advance."
The U.S. was trying to "block the legitimate demands of Iraq being met as a prelude to an escalation against the country as part of the American plot," Hammadi said. (Agence France Presse, July 6)
The justification used by both the Clinton and Bush administrations for attacks on Iraq--including the continuation of sanctions and new bombings--has been Iraq's alleged interference with the UN weapons inspection regime.
The July 8 New York Times repeated the much propagated lie that "weapons inspections [were] suspended after [Iraqi President Saddam] Hussein drove inspectors from Baghdad in 1998."
The truth is that between 1991 and 1998 the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) carried out 9,000 weapons inspections throughout Iraq. From Dec. 16-19, 1998, the U.S. and Britain carried out "Operation Desert Fox," the heaviest bombing of Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. It was in anticipation of this U.S./British bombing action that the UN ordered all of its personnel to leave Iraq.
After this bombing, Iraq refused to allow the weapons inspectors to return. Iraq had long asserted that the weapons inspections were really spy operations, infested with U.S. agents lining up targets for future bombings. The U.S. always flatly rebuffed these claims as the "wild machinations" of President Hussein.
But then former marine Scott Ritter, who had headed an UNSCOM team, revealed that in fact he had been carrying out spy operations for the CIA.
Ritter also stated, "Iraq had been disarmed" since as early as 1997. (Arms Control Today, June 2000) In addition, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors declared in 1998 that Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons technology.
Iraq's right to self-defense
Now, four years after the last weapons inspectors left Iraq, U.S. military planners don't know if Iraq has been able to rebuild any weapons. But if Iraq is attacked by the U.S., it has the right to defend itself from that aggression using whatever means are available.
Iraq is being threatened by the only military superpower in the world--a country slated to have an annual military budget of $500,000,000,000 by the year 2007. The U.S. will soon spend more on the military than all the other countries of the world combined. It has more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined.
Washington has used nuclear weapons against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and carried out devastating bombings of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. It has bombed or invaded many other countries, including Libya, Somalia, Grenada and Panama, to name just a few.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The greatest purveyor of violence on the planet is the U.S. government."
The oppressed countries and peoples that are targets of the U.S. drive to dominate the world have a right to defend themselves.
ANSWER--the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism coalition--is organizing against a new U.S. war in Iraq. Readers are urged to join ANSWER and help build a movement among youths and working people, labor unionists, students, peace activists, civil rights groups, community organizations, soldiers and more. It is only the united action of the people that can stop this mobilization by the U.S. government.
For information on future activities or to learn more about ANSWER, visit the Web site www.internationalanswer.org.
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