MEANWHILE....BACK IN IRAQ (and Vietnam)

"The Security Council began to streamline its vetting procedures in March 2000, when the total value of blocked contracts stood at about 1.7 billion dollars. In his letter, Sevan said a total of 1,854 contracts were now on hold, worth a total 4.956 billion dollars. They included orders for 4.28 billion dollars worth of humanitarian supplies and for 676 million dollars worth of oil industry equipment."

- from 'UN alarmed by contract blocking of Iraq oil-for-food programme,' reported by Agence France Press, 9th January 2002

"In 30 years in Washington I've never seen anything quite like it. They're being treated like enemies because of a policy disagreement."

- Richard Perle, US Defense Policy Board Chairman and reiterated by former CIA Director James Woolsey, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, 10th January 2002

Perle was describing the US State Deptartment decision to suspend funding to the INC citing financial irregularities. The INC (Iraqi National Congress - in opposition to Saddam Hussein) had been pledged $97 million and were given a January 15th 2002 deadline to produce accounts. The State Department announcement came 10 days ahead of schedule. The INC informed them that undercover sources in Iraq would be compromised by full disclosure.

A CHAMBER OF HORRORS NEXT TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN
by
Andy Kershaw

The Independent
1st December 2001

I thought I had a strong stomach - toughened by the minefields and foul frontline hospitals of Angola, by the handiwork of the death squads in Haiti and by the wholesale butchery of Rwanda. But I nearly lost my breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in southern Iraq.

Dr Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were displayed colour photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called "congenital anomalies", but what  you and I would better understand as horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies were head-spinningly grotesque - and thank God they didn't bring out the real thing, pickled in formaldehyde. At one point I had to grab hold of the back of a chair to support my legs.

I won't spare you the details. You should know because - according to the Iraqis and in all likelihood the World Health Organisation, which is soon to publish its findings on the spiralling birth defects in southern Iraq - we are responsible for these obscenities.

During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched creatures in the photographs - for they were  scarcely human - are the result, Dr Amer said.

He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.

Then the chair-grabbing moment - a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.

Depleted uranium has an incubation period in humans of five years. In the four years from 1991 (the end of the Gulf war) until 1994, the Basrah Maternity Hospital saw 11 congenital anomalies. Last year there were 221.

Then there is the alarming increase in cases of leukaemia among Basrah babies lucky enough to have been born with the full complement of limbs and features in the right place. The hospital treated 15 children with leukaemia in 1993. In 2000 it was 60. By the end of this year that figure again will be topped. And so it will go on. Forever.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.1 billion years. Total disintegration occurs after 25 billion years, the age of the earth.

In any other country, in which the vital drugs are available, 95 per cent of these infant leukaemia cases would be treated successfully. In Basrah, the figure is 20 per cent. Most   heartbreakingly, many children on the road to recovery go into relapse part way through treatment when the sporadic and meagre supply of drugs runs out. And then they die.

By the United Nations' own admission 5,000 Iraqi children die every month because of a shortage of medicines created by sanctions imposed by ....the United Nations.

Tony Blair, on numerous occasions, has misled Parliament and the country (perhaps unwittingly) by saying that Saddam Hussein is free to buy all the medicines Iraq needs under the oil-for-food programme. This is not true. Oil for food amounts to just 60 cents (40p) per Iraqi per day and everything - food, education, health care and rebuilding of infrastructure - has to come out of that. There simply is not enough to go around.

And has Mr Blair heard of the UN Security Council 661 Committee? If he has, then he keeps quiet about it. The committee was certainly unknown to me until I toured the shabby hospitals of Basrah.

This committee, which meets in secret in New York and does not publish minutes, supervises sanctions on Iraq. President Saddam is not free to buy Iraq's non-military needs on the world market. The country's requirements have to be submitted to 661 and, often after bureaucratic delay, a judgement is handed down on what Iraq can and cannot buy. I have obtained a copy of recent 661 rulings and some of the decisions seem daft if not peevish. "Dual use" is the most common reason to refuse a purchase, meaning the item requested could be put to military use.

So how does the 661 committee expect Saddam Hussein to wage war with "beef extract powder and broth"? Does 661 expect him to turn on the Kurds again by spraying them with "malt extract"? Or to send his presidential guard back into Kuwait armed to the teeth with "pencils"? Pencils, you see, according to 661, contain graphite and therefore could be put to military use. (Tough on the eager schoolchildren of Basrah who have little with which to write).

Across town at the Basrah Teaching Hospital, the whimsical rulings of 661 are not so comical. Dr Jawad Al-Ali, the director of oncology, trained in the UK and a member of the Royal College  of Physicians, talked of an "epidemic" of cancers in southern Iraq. "The number of cancer cases is doubling every year. So is the severity of the cancers, and there has been a big increase in cancer among the young," he said.

Last week he was struggling to treat 20 cancer patients with "a huge shortage of chemotherapy drugs" and just two days supply of morphine. "We are crippled," he said, "by Committee 661."  The doctor applied for, but was denied, life-saving machinery - deep X-ray equipment, blood component separators, even needles for biopsies. All, said 661, could have military use.

Tell that to Mofidah Sabah, the mother of four-year-old Yahia. The little boy has both leukaemia in relapse and neuroblastoma, a cancer behind the eye that has bulged and twisted his left eyeball in its socket. Ms Sabah travels miles every day to sit and cuddle her son on his grubby bed. If Yahia lived in Birmingham, his chances of survival would not be in much doubt. But not in Basrah. "I'm afraid he will not live very long," Dr Amer whispered.

Ms Sabah said: "I will leave everything to God, but I want God to revenge those who attacked us." Yahia's illness is not her first brush with tragedy. She lost 12 members of her family during an Allied bombing in 1991. Her husband, a soldier, fought in the Gulf war. He is still in the Iraqi army and has just been reposted, to Qurna, 50 miles north of Basra and among the contaminated former battlefields. Qurna, according to legend, was the site of the Garden of Eden.

Birth defects and toxins.
By
Malcolm Hooper.

Letter to The Guardian
28th March 2002

Your report on a boy born without eyes (Boost for parents' court fight, March 25), indicated the involvement of benomyl, a plant fungicide, in causing this condition. Benomyl is a member of the methyl benzimiadazolecarbamates which are widely used in human and veterinary medicine for the treatment of various worm infections, particularly in developing countries. Important compounds include albendazole, mebandazole and netobimin. These compounds are also associated with destructive teratogenic effects. I have not seen any reports on anophthalmos cases (babies born without eyes) associated with these compounds, but this data may well be in company files. If it is, then it must be published. If not, then studies are urgently needed. A recent study in Iraq, following the Gulf war, has identified 20 anophthalmos cases out of a birth cohort of 4,000. The natural occurrence of these tragic cases is one in 50 million. The Iraq rate is some 250,000 times the expected one.

The extensive poisoning of Iraq's environment by chemical and biological toxins, including depleted uranium dust, suggests that anophthalmos might arise
following exposure to a wide range of toxins, not just benomyl and related compounds.

Malcolm Hooper

Chief scientific adviser to the Gulf war veterans.

http://www.rense.com/general27/3big.htm


The 3 Big Lies About Iraq
by
John Pilger

30th July 2002
                                            

1) Lie Number One is the justification for an attack on Iraq - the threat of its "weapons of mass  destruction".
     
Few countries have had 93 per cent of their major weapons capability destroyed. This was reported by Rolf Ekeus, the chairman of the United Nations body authorised to inspect and destroy Iraq's arsenal following the Gulf War in 1991. UN inspectors certified that 817 out of the 819 Iraqi long-range missiles were
destroyed. In 1999, a special panel of the Security Council recorded that Iraq's main biological weapons facilities (supplied originally by the US and Britain) "have been destroyed and rendered harmless." As for Saddam Hussein's "nuclear threat," the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iraq's nuclear weapons programme had been eliminated "efficiently and effectively". The IAEA inspectors still travel to Iraq and in January reported full Iraqi compliance. Blair and Bush never mention this when they demand that "the weapons inspectors are allowed back". Nor do they remind us that the UN inspectors were never expelled by the Iraqis, but withdrawn only after it was revealed they had been infiltrated by US intelligence.           

        
2) Lie Number Two is the connection between Iraq and the perpetrators of September 11.            
           
There was the rumour that Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, had met an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech Republic last year. The
Czech police say he was not even in the country last year. On February 5, a New York Times investigation concluded: "The Central Intelligence Agency has
no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is convinced that Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda or related terrorist groups."
           
         
3) Lie Number Three is that Saddam Hussein, not the US and Britain, "is blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching the people of Iraq." (Foreign Office minister Peter Hain).
           
The opposite is true. The United States, with British compliance, is currently blocking a record $5billion worth of humanitarian supplies from the people of Iraq. These are shipments already approved by the UN Office of Iraq, which is authorised by the Security Council. They include life-saving drugs, painkillers,
vaccines, cancer diagnostic equipment.
           

The number of MPs who have signed an early day motion against an attack on Iraq is now at 148. Please contact your MP and demand that he/she sign their name to this action against Blair.

Go to www.faxyourmp.com, type in your postcode your MP name will appear.

In the box provided, copy and paste the EDM below into your letter requesting that he/she add their name to the list. (You can keep your letter as simple or as detailed as you like). Press send and the letter will automatically be delivered to your MP. Simple.
           
           
EDM 927 MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAQ

Mahon/Alice

"That this House is aware of the deep unease among honourable Members on all sides of the House at the prospect that Her Majesty's Government might support United States military action against Iraq; agrees with Kofi Annan that a further military attack on Iraq would be unwise at this time; believes that such a course of action would disrupt the already fragile stability in the Middle East; and instead urges the Prime Minister to use Britain's influence with Iraq to gain agreement that United Nations weapons inspections will resume."

A Toxic Burden

Despite mounting scientific evidence, Washington refuses to accept the deadly legacy of its chemical warfare in Vietnam.

by
George Sanchez
June 24, 2002

US planes sprayed an estimated 72 million liters of toxic defoliant over southern Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. A team of scientists is providing new evidence confirming the devastating legacy of America's chemical weapons program in Vietnam - a legacy which officials in Washington continue to question.

During a four-day conference in Hanoi this March, a group of Canadian and Vietnamese consulting firms unveiled research data showing how deadly chemical byproducts of the powerful defoliant Agent Orange continue to contaminate the soil, food and water in an isolated Vietnamese valley. The researchers further found that areas where large amounts of Agent Orange were spilled - particularly US special forces bases and dump sites -act as poisonous chemical 'reservoirs,' posing a long-term threat as the contaminants gradually seep into the surrounding lands.

American and Vietnamese officials signed an agreement during the March conference directing the two governments to cooperate on future research of Agent Orange. Still, while Washington is providing Vietnamese scientists with technical advice and some equipment to aid in the research, the agreement does not commit the US to provide any direct aid to help clean up the contamination -- something Vietnamese officials say they will continue to pursue.
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/up_agentorange.html

The propaganda machine keeps on chugging, particularly in this piece from The Economist, which not only twists facts, but contains outright lies, which I have duly noted. Also note the scant lip service paid to the fact that Hussein's weapons program was actively supported by his former allies, the US and UK.

Saddam and his sort

Toppling Saddam Hussein would be to strike three birds with one stone

In the litany of anti-American criticism, one of the main charges is that the arrogant superpower ignores multilateral laws and procedures and goes its own unilateral way. A prime example is said to be its headstrong desire for a "regime change" in Iraq, a plan virtually all its allies except Britain currently oppose. It must just be a Bush family feud, say some, given the elder Bush's failure to complete the Gulf war in 1991. Or a macho disregard for others' views, led by Republican hawks. Yet Iraq is actually the best example there is of America following multilateral procedures, which an arrogant unilateralist called Saddam Hussein proceeded to flout. The question, then, is what you do when international deals and procedure are broken. Sit back and pretend it hasn't happened?

That, alas, has been the multilateralist approach. During the 1980s, Saddam sought to develop nuclear weapons (along with biological and chemical ones) despite having sworn not to do so by signing the NPT. He used chemical weapons during his long war against Iran, and then on his own people in Kurdish areas. In 1991, after Saddam had invaded Kuwait and then been defeated in the Gulf war, the United Nations voted in its Resolution 687, which required Iraq to disclose, destroy and abandon all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and associated research, as well as long-range missiles. It laid down a timetable for inspection and removal which was originally envisaged to last one year, during which economic sanctions were imposed as an enforcement mechanism. The sanctions permitted some exports of oil in return for imports of food and medicine.

Yet Iraq did everything it could to thwart and evade such disarmament, stringing the process out for seven years before eventually kicking the UN inspectors out altogether.

[This 'kicking out the inspectors' myth has appeared so many times in the western press that it has taken on the aura of 'fact.' What actually happened was this: Amid great controversy over their impartiality and alleged links to US intelligence, the UN inspectors were evacuated from the country due to fears for their safety, on direct orders from UNSCOM chairman Richard Butler, just prior to the US and UK 'Desert Fox' attack, which itself had no UN authorisation, and which actually began whilst Butler was delivering his report to the UN Security Council, none of whom had been informed of the start of military action. How's that for 'kicking out the inspectors'? It should be noted, however, that Iraq did indeed go to a lot of trouble to hide its' weapons programmes, but with a fully armed and nuclear capable Israel a few hundred miles away, is it really any wonder they wished to retain some deterrent capability?]

Although during that time much progress was made in detecting and destroying weapons materials, Iraq was also shown to have lied at every stage - for example, about having ever produced a deadly nerve agent called VX, a denial it then replaced with a claim it had made only 200 litres, until the UN inspectors proved it had made at least 3,900 litres. So even what was discovered and admitted to cannot be considered definitive.

In the four years since the inspectors last visited Baghdad, four things have happened. First, Iraq rejected a much diluted new inspection regime, which offered a suspension of sanctions if it had been accepted. Second, Iraq succeeded in spreading the story that the sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children - which they have, but the sanctions would have been gone long ago if Saddam had co-operated with the UN.

[Anybody who has read the complete Chronology of Sanctions pages on this site will understand just how absolutely outrageous and completely false this claim is. The political games and contant moving of the goalposts rendered any Iraqi compliance almost meaningless. A US official even bragged about it to the Washinmgton Post, describing their actions as 'fooling around in the [UN] Security Council' and 'keeping things static.' It is also imperitive to note that the US refuses to accept inspectors from either the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons AND the International Atomic Energy Agency at its' weapons sites if it feels that members of the inspection team are at odds with their 'interests' or represent any threat to US sovereignty, precisely the charges levelled by Iraq at the inspection teams in their country. Israel also denies permission to inspection teams from the IAEA to vist their nuclear facilities, and they attacked Iraq's Osirac reactor in 1981.]

Third, in 2001 Russia blocked a proposal to target the sanctions more specifically at particular imports while allowing more exports of oil. Fourth, while the
UN's failed policy continued to be "enforced" by sanctions and by two "no-fly" zones policed by American and British aircraft in northern and southern Iraq, Saddam has been free to resume his weapons programmes, funded by oil and other exports channelled through a thriving black market.

At every stage, the multilateral approach has failed, blocked by Iraq or by permanent members of the UN Security Council, chiefly France and Russia. Those countries, China and others have been circumventing the sanctions. Recently Russia has changed its ways, to a degree, and has at last agreed to a modified (so-called "smart") sanctions regime. But what can be done now? All the options are terrible:

1) Continue with containment, ie, the status quo, allowing Iraq to blame America (to which the UN sanctions are ascribed) for children's deaths while rebuilding its weapons programme.

2) Demand that Iraq submit to a new inspections regime.

3) Give up altogether and wait till Saddam does something aggressive or barbaric that he can be punished for. This would make him a hero to those Arabs who like the thought of him seeing off the West.

4) Try to get a UN consensus to support an American-led invasion, intended to depose Saddam and to bring in a new regime willing to abide by Iraq's past international commitments.

5) Just invade, hoping that success will convince others that it was a good idea.

The apparent multilateral consensus is for either the second of these options or the fourth, though agreement is not universal even on those measures. And the question still arises: what do you do if either measure is (in effect) voted down or, in the case of a new inspections agreement, fails? Thus, the limit to a purely multilateral approach, under the ambit of the 1945 UN Charter, is exposed. Beyond economic sanctions, which have already failed or been scuppered by UN members, there is no enforcement mechanism except for American leadership. And that is what is likely to happen. There will be a multilateral process along the lines of option two. It will fail. And then America will invade.

It will be right to do so. Without an enforcement mechanism as a last resort, treaties and conventions designed to control the spread of the ghastliest weapons will ultimately collapse. There has to be a military sanction, albeit used extremely reluctantly. The trouble is that with these sorts of weapons, that sanction cannot wait until a nuclear or biological attack has taken place. It has to be applied pre-emptively.

But when? America has been saying at least since 1997 that it wants Saddam's regime to go. The case for acting soon is that it has already been left so long that America's credibility is damaged, and that the momentum gained by success in Afghanistan is there to be exploited. The case against is that with Israel and Palestine locked in violent conflict, no Arab country will support an invasion as they did the Gulf war in 1991. Saddam may be helping to stir up that conflict, and he may have links with the al-Qaeda terrorists, but little evidence of either has been disclosed.

In practice, the timing will be determined pragmatically. America will attack once the multilateral process has been under way for a while and has failed, and at a time that looks propitious. That choice is unlikely to be made while the Israeli-Palestinian war remains hot. Unless America has some clear evidence up its sleeve, it would be best advised to keep the case for invasion separate from the pursuit of al-Qaeda: the need to enforce the world's controls on weapons of mass destruction would make it strong even had September 11th never happened. The link to terrorism is a distraction.

Contrary to what some gung-ho armchair strategists say in America, an invasion would carry big risks. Those are not mainly of opposition by allies, though militarily the invasion would be a lot easier with logistical help from at least Kuwait and Turkey. The risks are that there could be large numbers of civilian Iraqi casualties if (probably when) Saddam uses them as shields, and that he might use whatever chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons he possesses. In either event the war could become very costly, including in American lives, and Saddam could seek to achieve a stalemate. Since failure looks unthinkable for the Bush administration, it would surely fight on. But the risk is then of Iraq becoming a new Vietnam, or Korea.

There are, though, big strategic gains to be had from a successful invasion, which are likely in the end to make the effort irresistible. First, there is the potential effect on would-be weapons proliferators all around the globe of a signal that international norms will ultimately be enforced. Both Iran and North Korea, the others named as in "the axis of evil", have already been showing signs of greater willingness to talk. Syria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt and others among the "at least 25" countries said by Bill Clinton's defence secretary, William Cohen, to possess or be trying to get hold of such weapons would also think at least twice.

Second, depending on what regime replaces Saddam's, a pacified Iraq could help tilt the balance inside its neighbour, Iran, between reformists favouring a friendlier relationship with the West and more democracy, and the anti-American, generally clerical, hardliners. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, America supplied Iraq with some weapons in order to prevent Iran from dominating the region, a move that has yet to be forgotten, let alone forgiven. If Iraq, Russia and Pakistan all become more stable and less hostile, many justified Iranian worries will evaporate - after a period, to be sure, of fierce condemnation of American interference.

Third, a pacified, disarmed Iraq, under a new government, would provide the chance for a new start in America's dealings with the rest of the Arab world. It badly needs one. Thanks to unholy but necessary trade-offs made in past decades it is not only tarred with the brush of supplying Israel with money and arms but also with doing the same for a repressive regime in Egypt, as well as offering support to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Democracy exists nowhere, but economic failure and popular disenchantment exist almost everywhere.

This is the swamp in which fundamentalist or messianic terrorism has been able to breed, directed first at local regimes (especially Egypt's) but then, during the 1990s and on September 11th, at America. Somehow, the swamp has to be disinfected, even if it cannot be drained altogether. The first step in doing so will be the removal of Saddam Hussein. But that will be only the beginning of a long journey.

Source: ECONOMIST 29/06/2002

Suddenly the White House is concerned for the well being of ordinary Iraqi people when the loss of oil imports is involved. The hypocrisy is beyond belief. A chart below this article shows where the majority of Iraqi oil actually goes to.

Bush administration opposes U.S. ban on Iraqi
28th June 2002


WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The Bush administration told U.S. lawmakers working on a final energy bill that it "strongly" opposed any congressionally imposed ban on Iraqi oil shipments to the American market.

The administration said it was worried that such an oil ban would go against White House support for the United Nations program that allows Iraq to sell oil in order to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods.

Congressional negotiators trying to craft an energy package will have to consider a provision in a Senate-passed energy bill that would block Iraqi oil exports to the United States. Energy legislation cleared by the House of Representatives does not have such a ban.

In a letter Thursday to negotiators, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham urged lawmakers to keep the Senate's Iraqi oil ban out of any final energy bill that is sent to President George W. Bush for his signature.

"The administration strongly opposes a unilateral ban on U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil...as this would only undermine our own interests," Abraham said.

The energy secretary said an export ban would allow Iraq to sell oil and collect revenue outside of UN control.

"A shift of UN Oil-for-Food volumes away from U.S. purchasers would increase, not lessen, the opportunity for Iraq to seek kickbacks outside of the program, which U.S. purchasers are not allowed to pay," Abraham said.

The oil import ban would also likely hurt the U.S. economy, as Iraq is the sixth biggest oil supplier to the United States. Last year, Iraq shipped an average 778,000 barrels of crude per day to the U.S. market.

Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska pushed to have the import ban included in the energy legislation passed by the Senate in April. The Senate's bill would ban imports of Iraqi oil until Baghdad allowed United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. Iraq has not allowed weapons inspectors in the country since December, 1998.

Imports also could not resume until Iraq stopped smuggling petroleum to circumvent a U.N. oil-for-food program, and Iraq ended its policy of paying the families of suicide bombers against Israel.

Ironically, in his letter to the negotiators, Abraham asked lawmakers to include a provision in the final energy bill to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he said contained enough crude to replace the amount of oil the U.S. imports from Iraq for 40 years.

From: "R A I N" <abie@iafrica.com>
Subject: The RAIN Newsletter (24-6-2)
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 15:58:14 +0200

IRAQI OIL EXPORTS

Main destinations of exports 2000(d) % of total
US 46.2
Italy 12.2
France 9.6
Spain 8.6

Main origins of imports 2000(d) % of total
France 22.5
Australia 22
China 5.8
Russia 5.8

(a) Economist Intelligence Unit estimates.
(b) Actual.
(c) Iraqi government census.
d) Derived from partners' trade returns; subject to a wide margin of error.

SOURCE: Country Risk Service.
(c) 2002 The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited. All rights
reserved.

Iraq Says U.S. Drops Incendiary Bombs in Northern Province.

BAGHDAD,
June 5 (Xinhua)

Warplanes of the United States last week dropped incendiary bombs in the northern Neineva Province and caused fires in the barley fields, the state-run Iraq TV reported on Wednesday.

The "criminal" U.S. jets dropped incendiary bombs in the areas of Al-Hamdani and Hamam Al-Alil in the Neineva Province, causing fires in the barley fields, the TV report said.

TV footage showed what were believed to be the U.S. jets dropping incendiary bombs, fires in the barley fields and people using fire engines to extinguish the fires. "The fires were put out by civil defense brigades with the help of local villagers," the report said.

Neineva Province has been included inside the so-called northern no-fly zone, along with a similar one in southern Iraq.

U.S. and British planes have been patrolling the two no-fly zones since the 1991 Gulf War with the claimed aim of protecting the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from the persecution of the Iraqi government.

Iraq does not recognize the air exclusion zones and has regularly opened fire at the Western planes enforcing the two no-fly zones.

TOPPLING HUSSEIN STILL IN PLANNING

MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL (WI)
25th April 2002

Washington -The Bush administration remains determined to mount military operations against Iraq and is moving forward with a plan to topple Saddam Hussein, perhaps as soon as the end of this year, according to administration officials and private specialists.

Many officials and specialists believe that Washington must first help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before proceeding with its plans for Iraq. But within the Bush administration, there is a growing belief that removing the Iraqi dictator and creating a more representative government in Baghdad would help bring about a political solution in the Middle East, rather than make it more difficult.

"Strategically, the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime is now more critical than ever," said Robert Pfaltzgraff, president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis at Tufts University. "The current situation in the Middle East would be dramatically transformed by this. The eradication of Saddam would tip the balance in the region and facilitate the resolution or dampening of the conflict in the West Bank."

According to James Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to 1995, bringing an acceptable end to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff must rely in part on the overthrow of the Iraqi regime. "If we can get democracy to start spreading in the Middle East, that is the only way you are going to get a Palestinian government that is willing to negotiate with the Israelis," he said.

Diplomatic efforts are under way to bring regional allies over to Washington's view. Some of them -- including Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- have expressed reservations about military action against Hussein. But administration officials assert that public opposition to the U.S. strategy does not always translate into opposition in private conversations between U.S. officials and their Middle East counterparts.

"We still have the support we need," said a U.S. official who asked not to be named.

Besides, the kind of widespread support during the 1991 Persian Gulf War would not be needed this time, according to military specialists.

"We do need Turkey and Kuwait," Woolsey said. "I think we'll be able to get those with the right package."

As for Saudi Arabia, he said, "I don't think their support is essential."

If Saudi Arabia, which is home to a U.S. military air operations center, does not go along with an Iraq operation, U.S. forces have been bulking up their facilities in nearby Qatar to use as a backup.

The US twists arms in the Middle East
by
Dan Plesch
NEW STATESMAN
1st April 2002

Dan Plesch reveals that, in return for supporting a new Gulf war, Turkey could get Iraqi oilfields

Many countries have spoken out against the Bush administration's plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but it would be a mistake to suppose that they will in fact cause trouble if the bombs start to fall. Washington has a long record of bringing its allies into line.

Take Turkey. Its prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, continues to oppose publicly the idea of attacking Iraq. But there is every reason to believe that the US has already offered control of Iraq's northern oilfields to Turkey in return for its support in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what informed sources in Washington tell me; and it is confirmed by press reports of what Richard Perle, an influential adviser in the Bush administration, said while he was in Ankara with the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

The oil-rich Mosul area has been disputed since the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War. The British drew the maps and invented the states that exist today. Turkey disputed the British decision to give the Mosul province to the new Kingdom of Iraq, but finally accepted it in a treaty signed in 1926.

The issue remained dormant until Iraq, under Saddam, attacked Iran in the mid- 1980s. Weakened by the war, Saddam invited Turkey to crush Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. At this time, a total collapse of the Iraqi state seemed entirely possible and Turkish interest in the oilfields revived, particularly in the Turkish media. Yet when George Bush Snr raised the "Mosul option" in the wake of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, the government in Ankara declined the "invitation". It feared an Arab backlash against redrawing the borders and it was not anxious to acquire more territory populated by Kurds.

In 1995, however, 35,000 Turkish troops attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq, an act ignored by the British and US governments who had made much of their protection of the Kurds from Saddam Hussein. As the Turkish troops withdrew, President Suleyman Demirel said: "The border on those heights is wrong. Actually, that is the boundary of the oil region. Turkey begins where that boundary ends. Geologists drew that line. It is not Turkey's national border."

He retracted these statements after Arab protests. But Turkish interest has continued, and today the Turkish national oil company is drilling new wells in the Khumala field as part of a UN-sanctioned oil-for-food programme. Turning this commercial presence into a guaranteed supply of cheap oil, courtesy of a new puppet regime in Baghdad, may be the carrot that the US is offering Turkey. It would go some way to compensating for the decade-long loss of trade with Iraq that has damaged the Turkish economy.

But oil is not the only, or even the biggest, lever that the US has over Turkey. It also funds half its IMF and World Bank loans.

As it happens, the US is now less reliant than it was on Turkish airbases, as it is taking over huge former Soviet airbases in Bulgaria and Romania. But Turkey's army has a reputation for brutal effectiveness, and the US would like to make use of it. Turkish forces are already serving in Kabul, and are set to take on a greater role. Such power-projection fits into the nationalist objectives that Turkey has pursued in the Caucasus and Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One US option in Iraq - an alternative to the more commonly mentioned options, including an invasion through the Gulf and support for internal uprisings - is to seize one or more airbases in the country and use these to launch commando and larger ground-force raids. Such "in-country" bases are essential for special forces operations, as proved to be the case in Afghanistan - you cannot perform effective missions on day trips. And this is where the Turks come in: their forces could help to secure a main operating base inside Iraq. If, in the process, they crush Kurdish "terrorists", Washington will not complain.

The real objective of the US in Iraq is to destroy the idea that anyone can fight America and get away with it. For US conservative strategists, this was Bush Snr's strategic failure in the Gulf war. Once the US has bases in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, military operations against Iran, next on the list of "axis of evil" countries, become more viable. This approach to the axis of evil may seem too reckless to take seriously, and there is no certainty that the Americans will pursue it, but we should not underestimate the White House's determination to destroy its enemies.

So what should Britain and Europe do? In the short term, if Europe offered more economic support, Turkey could afford to be more flexible and independent in handling Washington's demands. In the longer term, Europe should remove its dependency on Gulf oil, which leaves it reliant on the US military's ability to control supplies.

Wind, solar and fuel-cell technology could provide our energy and transportation needs. If we developed them, we would have freedom of action in the Middle East and be able to form a policy more independent of the US. As we plan for 2010 and 2020, energy independence offers a far more practical and - to use a fashionable phrase - "asymmetric" strategy for reducing the sources of conflict and increasing our power than an attempt to compete with the Pentagon by creating a European army.

Dan Plesch is senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and the author of Sheriff and Outlaws in the Global Village (Menard Press, £5)

Now the US uses its' muscle on the UN Security Council to bully member states with promises to allow them to sell humanitarian aid to Iraq. That these goods are destined for sick and starving people seems to be of no consequence whatsoever.

Block on Russia's Iraq contracts lifted.

The US lifted blocks on more than $200m (GBP140.8m) worth of Russian contracts last week in an attempt to win Moscow's agreement to refocus United Nations' sanctions against Iraq, diplomats said.

The release of the contracts, described as a sweetener, secured Russia's approval last week - after a year of protest - of a list of goods that countries could sell to Iraq without violating sanctions.Washington is expected to release additional Russian contracts in the next few weeks, lifting the total value of the deal to nearly $750m, according to one diplomat.

The US had blocked many of the humanitarian contracts on the grounds that they could be misused by Iraq for military purposes. Others were delayed by a lack of information submitted by the seller. A US official, however, disputed that the release of the contracts was linked to last week's breakthrough with Russia, saying the US had been working to reduce the estimated $5bn of contracts that are currently on hold.

The so-called "smart-sanctions", which were one of the first Iraq policy initiatives taken by Colin Powell, US secretary of state, refocus current sanctions to ease the export to Iraq of humanitarian goods without increasing the amount of money covertly going to Iraq's regime. Iraq vehemently opposes them.

"The timing isn't totally coincidental," said one diplomat. Another was more blunt saying the decision marked the boldest move yet by the US to use the holds to buy political agreement.Last June, the US released more than $80m of Chinese contracts it had blocked in order to gain Beijing's support for an
earlier resolution retooling UN sanctions.

Last week, the US released a contract it had blocked last August. The contract was for $105m worth of electricity equipment for a thermal power station, to be sold to Iraq by Technopromexport of Russia.

The second largest contract was for $58m of vehicles for the food-handling sector, to be sold by JSC Hydromash Service, also a Russian company. Other Russian contracts released in the past week included, $34m for the agricultural sector, $13.2m for telecommunications equipment, $7.1m for bulldozers, $3m
for water sanitation equipment and $2m in the oil sector.

Overall, Russian contracts released totalled $237.5m, diplomats said. The number of blocked contracts belonging to all countries fell 5 per cent or by $280m in the week ending March 29, the UN reported on Tuesday.

The UN's oil-for-food programme allows Iraq to export its crude oil and buy humanitarian products. Any country on the UN's Security Council can block a contract for products going into Iraq.

Russia has been under pressure from Baghdad not to go along with the new policy on sanctions.

Russia is Iraq's biggest trading partner and its closest ally on the Security Council.

The constant US wrangling, or 'playing about in the council' as one US official put it, has caused the Oil For Food programme to verge on the point of collapse. Aside from coercing other member states as to which contract they will or won't allow to be unblocked, the US introduced the 'retroactive' pricing scheme, by which traders have to buy the oil in advance without knowing what the price is. This was designed, they claimed, to put a stop to illegal oil smuggling by the Iraqi government, which amounts to less than 2% of all revenue flowing into the country. The result of retroactive pricing has been disastrous, causing almost 25% of all revenues from reaching the OFF programme.

UNITED NATIONS
Reuters
Feb 27 2002

The U.N.-Iraq humanitarian program, meant to ease the impact of sanctions, is facing a financial crisis because of reduced oil exports caused by a political deadlock among Security Council powers, a senior U.N. official warned.

Unless changes occur quickly, the "implementation of the program may grind to a halt," Benon Sevan, the U.N. undersecretary-general in charge of the Iraqi oil-for-food program, said on Tuesday.

"I think we are in deep trouble as far as funding of the program is concerned." he said after briefing the 15-member council. "There is no money for new contracts."

Fresh from a one-month visit to Iraq, Sevan said the Security Council's sanctions committee was politically paralyzed on Iraqi policies. Its new initiative of retroactive oil pricing was delaying bidders for contracts, causing a 24 percent drop in Iraqi crude exports since November.

The policy was instituted by the United States and Britain to keep Baghdad from charging oil contractors an illegal premium, outside of the humanitarian program

Sevan also again lashed out at the $5 billion worth of contracts blocked by the United States, despite his frequent pleas to release the most important ones.

"The work of the Security Council committee has bogged down almost to a standstill. One could say - without any hesitation - that the work of the committee is paralyzed with numerous issues awaiting action for long periods of time," Sevan said.

"We already are witnessing major cracks in our capacity to implement the program effectively, with so many political and procedural hurdles," he said.

In another astute political move, Saddam Hussein shows he's just about the brainiest guy in the region.....not. But are his actions any more stupid, cruel and irrational as the US bombing missions over Afghanistan that dropped food as well, in packaging written in a foreign language, much of it ending up in minefields? Is it any more indecent than Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children in the streets? And how come the US doesn't chastise their allies for giving the same support to the Palestinians, no matter how deranged you may think it is.

SADDAM INCREASES REWARD FOR SUICIDE BOMBERS' KIN BUT PALESTINIANS SAY MOTIVE IS REVENGE, NOT GREED

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH (MO)
4th April 2002

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has increased reward money for the relatives of suicide bombers to $25,000 from $10,000.

The move has drawn sharp criticism from Washington. But Palestinians say the bombers are driven by a priceless thirst for revenge, religious zeal and dreams of glory - not greed.

Since Iraq increased its payments last month, 12 suicide bombers have struck inside Israel, including one man who killed 25 Israelis, many of them elderly, as they sat down to a meal at a hotel to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. The families of three suicide bombers said they had recently received
payments of $25,000.

The devout Muslims among the bombers, a majority, believe they will go to heaven as martyrs and spend eternity in the company of 72 virgins. In grainy, farewell home videos, they often read passages from the Muslim holy book, the Quran, and praise God. The suicide attackers believe that after the deed,
their families will win the adulation of friends, neighbors and strangers.

The other motive seems to be a strong yearning for revenge. Relatives of many of the bombers recall how many of the young men's formative years were spent in Israeli jails. The mother of one bomber said her son once watched Israeli soldiers beating his father.

Mahmoud Safi, leader of a pro-Iraqi Palestinian group, the Arab Liberation Front, acknowledged that the support payments for relatives make it easier for some potential bombers to make up their minds. "Some people stop me on the street, saying if you increase the payment to $50,000, I'll do it immediately," Safi said. He also suggested that most such remarks were made in jest.

Saddam has said the Palestinians need weapons and money instead of peace proposals and has provided payments throughout a year and a half of Israeli-Palestinian battles. "I saw on Iraqi TV President Saddam saying he will continue supporting the (uprising) even if it means selling his own clothes," said Safi.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saddam's payments inspire a "culture of political murder."

"Here is an individual who is the head of a country, Iraq, who has proudly, publicly made a decision to go out and actively promote and finance human sacrifice for families that will have their youngsters kill innocent men, women and children," Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

Saddam is not the only one giving money. Charities from Saudi Arabia and Qatar - both U.S. allies - pay money to families of Palestinians killed in the fighting, including suicide bombers.

Bush Has Saddam in His Sights

By Evan Thomas
With John Barry, Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Roy Gutman, Colin Soloway, Tamara Lipper and Daniel Klaidman in Washington,
and Martha Brant with President Bush.

Bush Has Saddam in His Sights - The Bush agenda is nothing less than the re-assertion of American power in the world, and Iraq is the next target.

WANTED:

One Iraqi general (a colonel will do) able to evade secret police, depose Saddam Hussein and unify warring Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. Must have iron will but democratic instincts. Secularized Muslim preferred. No human-rights violators need apply.

Sound far fetched? Finding the right man who can topple Saddam Hussein without plunging Iraq into civil war, and who can simultaneously please Washington and the anti-American Arab masses, is a tall order. The task is so difficult that, in many sophisticated circles, it is deemed to be impossible. President George W. Bush's bellicose rhetoric has provoked a rumble of disbelief and disapproval among the pundits, think-tank experts, congressional staffers and retired diplomats who form a kind of Permanent Foreign Policy Establishment. Bush can't really be serious about knocking off Saddam, they say. Can he?

He can. The Bush administration has not figured out the "how" or the "when," say senior administration officials, but the president appears determined to overthrow the Iraqi strongman. The timetable, says one top official directly involved in the planning, is "not days or weeks-but not years, either." National-
security adviser Condoleezza Rice has said that the president is "a patient man," but another top adviser told NEWSWEEK, "Time is not on our side. We cannot afford to wait for Saddam to get a nuclear weapon." Deterring Saddam is no longer enough, says this source: "He is too capable of making a massive mis-calculation"-by actually using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against America or its allies.

Behind Bush's threats against Iraq-and his vigorous waging of the war on terrorism-is a broader agenda, say his closest advisers. And that is nothing less than the reassertion of American power in the world-by a greater willingness to use force, with or without the support of allies, even at the cost of American casualties. Some of Bush's top advisers believe that after the Vietnam War, the pendulum swung too far in the direction of multilateralism and anti-interventionism. Now they are trying to shove it back.

This has come as something of a surprise from a president who, as a candidate, promised to be strong yet "humble" in the pursuit of American interests abroad. Especially since 9-11, Bush has shown unapologetic leadership. "I don't care about the polls," the president tells advisers. (Easier to say, concedes
one, when the approval rating is more than 80 percent.) But in Iraq, at least, there is a real risk that the president will overreach. Overthrowing Saddam could transform the Middle East, secure American interests, even give a lift to the bogged-down Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But it could also lead to a cataclysm of unforeseen dimensions.

The chief proponents of this new assertiveness, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have been waiting for their chance for a long time. More than 25 years ago, when Cheney and Rumsfeld were bright young men in the Gerald Ford administration (Cheney as Ford's chief of staff,
Rumsfeld in the same job he has today), the "imperial presidency" was in retreat. Vietnam and Watergate had given a bad name to executive power. Congress and the press were in the ascendancy. Scandals and the blame game became the daily routine of government. At the Pentagon and the CIA, once
bastions of gung-ho, can-do spirit, the bureaucracy congealed, slowed, grew risk-averse. Rumsfeld and Cheney came to believe that in the eyes of the world, America had become a paper tiger-formidable-looking, but too often ponderous and gun-shy. More than a year ago, when he was first chosen to be
secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld told Bush that a crisis was sure to come, and that the new president would have to be willing to "lean forward"-to show the world that America would no longer back down. Bush heartily agreed, Rumsfeld recounted to NEWSWEEK in an interview last month. That crisis arrived with a vengeance on September 11.

These days, the damn-the-torpedoes mood at the top levels of the Bush administration seems right out of the 1950s. In his warning to the president, Rumsfeld's choice of words was revealing of the time warp. "Forward leaning" is an old cold-war euphemism; CIA officials in the late '50s and early '60s were instructed to "lean forward" in their "action memos" to higher-ups. After a long period of self-doubt and decline, the CIA is now urgently gearing up to run covert actions-shades of the agency's plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). "Psychological warfare," all the rage in the early years of the cold war, when capitalism and communism were competing around the globe for "hearts and minds," is making a comeback. After Pentagon reporters questioned the role of the newly established Office of Strategic Influence, Secretary Rumsfeld pledged that the Defense Department
would not plant false stories. But the PR consultants hired by the Pentagon, the Rendon Group, have a history of running "black ops," say intelligence sources. Among them: a rumor campaign after the gulf war to convince Iraqis that Saddam is sexually impotent. (The Rendon Group denies feeding any falsehoods to the media.)

In the pursuit of evil, will the Bush administration lean too far forward? "Dirty tricks" run by the CIA have a way of backfiring. In the late 1950s the agency hired some porn stars to portray Indonesian President Sukarno having sex with prostitutes. The blue movie was intended to make Sukarno look depraved to his Islamic followers. CIA officials would later chuckle at their own naivete: many Indonesians cheered their leader's apparent sexual prowess. More damaging was the reputation of the CIA for backing repressive right-wing strongmen against popular revolutionaries.

On Iraq, there may be a balance wheel in the Bush machine: Secretary of State Colin Powell. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the administration of Bush "41," General Powell was an avatar of restraint, cooling off policymakers who believed that armed intervention could be cheap or easy. Moderates have been counting on Powell to rein in Bush "43's" hard-chargers, too. So there was some surprise and disappointment in establishment circles when, in recent press interviews and statements to Congress, Powell pointedly echoed the president's "axis of evil" rhetoric and warned that the United States would stand up to Iraq, alone if necessary. Some Bush advisers say that Powell, a good soldier, has simply saluted and signed on with his commander in chief's campaign. But one old foreign-policy hand who is close to Powell saw a more sly operator at work.

"Colin's tactics have changed," says this source, "but his heart hasn't." A master of the Washington game, Powell may see that the best way to head off a disastrously precipitous incursion into Iraq is to play possum on the inside. Bush has ordered his advisers to come up with a practical plan for "regime change" in Iraq. After examining all the options in a methodical way, the president, like Powell, may be convinced that there are no easy ways to get rid of Saddam. Better to continue to contain the Iraqi strongman through more effective economic sanctions and the threat of force.

Without question, Saddam is a hard target. Some of Rumsfeld's civilian advisers at the Pentagon want to apply the lessons of Afghanistan to Iraq. The Taliban was toppled by small groups of American Special Forces, joining up with local insurgents on the ground to blast enemy positions with precision-guided weapons launched from American warplanes. In Iraq, however, the United States may have trouble finding a surrogate force to take on Saddam's Republican Guard, which has been substantially rebuilt since it was routed in the gulf war. Ex-London banker Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the best-known opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, is derided by spooks and diplomats as an opportunist with no real following in Iraq. The CIA, meanwhile, is busily looking for its own Man on a White Horse to ride into Baghdad. It is doubtful that volunteers are rushing forward. Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shiites in the south still bitterly complain that the CIA abandoned the opposition to the tender mercies of Saddam's secret police after the gulf war.

The hawks assert that once the revolution begins and the American bombs start to fall, the Iraqi people, many of whom hate and fear their ruler, will rise up in rebellion. In this scenario, Saddam's own Republican Guard will march on the palace. But what if the troops stay in their barracks and the people do not
welcome their liberators with open arms? American ground soldiers will have to grind it out-house to house, if necessary. Pentagon officials shudder at the prospect of urban street-fighting; "Black Hawk Down" was all too realistic a movie. The Joint Chiefs say that invading Iraq will require between 100,000 and 200,000 U.S. troops. (During the gulf war, America sent 500,000 troops to the region, but that was overkill, and since then smart bombs have gotten smarter.)

The United States is likely to get the grudging cooperation of Iraq's neighbors, Turkey and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia will be harder. At a minimum, the United States will need to use Saudi airspace to refuel its warplanes, and the only state-of-the-art air-command center in the region is at the Prince Sultan Air Base in the Saudi desert. The Saudi princes have already said that they oppose an American attack on any Arab capital, Baghdad included. When he travels to the Middle East in two weeks, Cheney is expected to try to change their minds. The Saudis will want reassurances that the United States will stick around to
clean up the mess after Saddam falls. They may also want American support for a still-emerging Arab peace initiative to try to control the interminable and ever-bloodier conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Bush "43" would like to forge a coalition along the lines of the new world order put together by his father for the gulf war. But America's European allies are threatening to stand on the sidelines with their arms crossed. Conceivably, the Bush administration could muster some support by provoking a casus belli. This spring the U.N. Security Council is expected to demand that Saddam allow in international arms inspectors to identify and eliminate his WMD. If Saddam says no, there may be more support for U.S. intervention. Bush administration officials fear, however, that Saddam will play the fox and say yes.
Washington does not want to be drawn into the exasperating game of Lucy-and-the-football that Saddam played with U.N. inspectors during the Clinton administration. A senior administration official told NEWSWEEK that the United States will demand "total, unfettered, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year"
inspection rights. Saddam is not likely to permit arms-control inspectors into his bedroom.

There is one more uncertainty in the campaign to get rid of Saddam, and it is the most frightening. The Iraqi strongman is not a suicidal religious fanatic; he does not appear to want to die a martyr's death. But what if he feels trapped, believing that the Americans really are coming for him, dead or alive? Will he lash out and try to use his chemical or biological weapons? Before the gulf war, Bush "41's" secretary of State, James Baker, quietly warned Saddam that if Iraq used a WMD, the United States would no longer feel constrained in its own use of weapons. Rather than risk the nuclear incineration of Baghdad, Saddam did not fire off any rounds from his chem-bio arsenal. But American war aims in 1991 did not include "regime change"; in the next war, Saddam's demise will be the war aim.

Bush's team may advise the president that Saddam lacks the capacity to use a WMD against the United States or its allies. But intelligence is always imperfect; Bush's advisers will not be able to offer any guarantees. The president alone will have to decide. That will be the moment when he weighs the true cost of fighting evil and feels the real burden of command.

Source: NEWSWEEK 04/03/2002

WASHINGTON
Reuters
Feb 27 2002

Depleted stocks of precision weapons, reluctant allies and a will to do the job properly in Iraq all work against America launching military action against Baghdad any time soon, defense and political analysts say.

Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that the United States is preparing a massive military campaign against Iraq, particularly after the president branded Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea.

But several analysts said U.S. action - if it took place at all - was unlikely in the next six months for both military and political reasons.

They pointing to depleted laser-guided weapons stocks after the war in Afghanistan and opposition from key nations such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as some NATO allies. Retired Adm. Steve Baker, who commanded the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier during the Gulf War, said the United States would only attack Iraq when it was certain it had "overwhelming force" to be successful and not before.

"For that reason, I don't see it happening at the very earliest until fall this year or spring next year. Any kind of failure or less than 100 percent success in Iraq is totally unacceptable, particularly to the Bush administration."

"I don't think we would ever contemplate a limited response. The risk is too high," he said. Baker said laser-guided weapons were now at "war-time reserve levels" and that weapons manufacturers were working around the clock to boost supplies.

Raising jitters over military action, President George W. Bush has repeatedly warned Baghdad in recent weeks that Washington would not stand by while Iraq developed weapons of mass destruction and refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country. However, Arab leaders and some Europeans caution any military action against Iraq would smash global cooperation against terrorism and further destabilize the region. Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said if the Pentagon were planning a low-risk campaign against Iraq, it would take several months before any bombing began.

"I think the military would be more than happy to say 'look we are still not done with Afghanistan and we don't want to be fighting a war on two fronts,'" he said.

Another factor pointing against imminent action was the windy spring weather in Iraq, which brought with it dangerous sand storms that played havoc with military equipment.

"A September to March time frame would be a more attractive window (for military action), I would think," said Krepinevich.

Echoing other views, Krepinevich predicted the United States would push heavily for U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and then use Baghdad's anticipated refusal to muster international support for strong military action.

While massive military action was unlikely soon, Baker suggested the United States might send in covert forces to suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites in Iraq to prove to the world that it was dangerous.

"If we had credible evidence ... of chemical and biological facilities that are there in Iraq, that helps out our effort quite a lot."

The following article from the New York Times is a rarity in that it actually gives some accurate historical background. Kurdish wariness about supporting US moves against Saddam Hussein is provoked by bitter memories of previous US betrayal.

Kurds, Secure in North Iraq Zone, Are Wary About a U.S. Offensive.

ERBIL, Iraq, July 6 2002

As the United States considers ways of accomplishing President Bush's call for an end to Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, Washington's goal of a "regime change" in Baghdad is running into strong reservations from Iraqi Kurdish leaders who would be crucial allies in any military campaign.

These leaders, interviewed in their strongholds in northern Iraq in the last week, say flatly that they would be reluctant to join American military operations that put Kurds at risk of an onslaught by Iraqi troops of the kind they suffered after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. A Kurdish uprising then that was encouraged by the first President Bush was brutally suppressed by Mr. Hussein, and American forces failed to intervene as thousands of Kurds were killed.

No group has suffered more from Mr. Hussein's 23-year-old rule than the Kurds, who lost tens of thousands of lives to Iraqi offensives in the 1980's and 90's. The most brutal attacks, cited by the present President Bush recently as part of the justification for toppling the Iraqi ruler, involved Iraqi use of poison gas at Halabja and dozens of other towns and villages in the northern Kurdish districts during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that ended in 1988.

Still, no Iraqis have benefited more from Western support in the last decade than the Kurds. Protected by a "safe haven" declared by the United Nations and a "no-flight zone" patrolled by American and British warplanes, the Kurds, with barely 40,000 troops and only light weapons, have built a 17,000-square-mile
mini-state that arcs across a 500-mile stretch of Iraqi territory bordering Syria, Turkey and Iran.

The threat of Western airstrikes has kept Iraqi armored battalions immobilized to the south, often within artillery range of Kurdish strongholds like Erbil, a sprawling city of 750,000 people 250 miles north of Baghdad. In this "liberated area" of soaring mountains, fertile foothills and semi-desert, the Kurds have built a society with freedoms denied to the rest of Iraq's population.

The Kurdish-controlled area has opposition parties and newspapers, satellite television and international telephone calls, and an absence of the repressive apparatus that has prompted international human rights organizations to brand Mr. Hussein's Iraq a terror state.

The drawback is that all this exists outside international law, and could be made permanent only by a new government in Baghdad that embraced freedoms for all of Iraq.

But while an American-led military campaign to topple Mr. Hussein holds out the possibility of making their freedoms more secure, the Kurdish leaders, backed by almost every Kurd who discussed the issue, said Washington would be asking them to put all they have gained from their decade of autonomy at risk of a fresh Iraqi offensive.

"We are not ready to take any risks, and if we are not sure of the outcome of any step, then we are not ready to take that step, because we are not sure of improving our circumstances," Massoud Barzani, leader of one of the two main Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said at his mountaintop headquarters outside Salahuddin, north of Erbil.

He added, alluding to the centuries of oppression Kurds suffered from Turks, Arabs and Persians, "This is a golden era for Iraqi Kurds."

Their concerns are so deep that the Kurds have set aside political differences among themselves to speak with a common voice on the possibility of American action against Mr. Hussein. After a history of internecine strife, including a brief civil war in 1996, Mr. Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have divided the northern territory into two separate areas, each with its own government and army.

But at their respective headquarter cities, Erbil and Sulaimaniya, the reluctance of the Kurds to support American moves against Mr. Hussein is expressed in virtually identical terms. Leaders in both cities said officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency visited the Kurdish territory this year to discuss American options, and had also met with Kurds in Washington and Europe.

At one meeting in Europe this spring, Kurdish officials in Sulaimaniya said, Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani, bitter rivals for years, sat down together to meet with American officials. Their main message, the Kurdish officials said, was that Washington should not expect Kurds to subordinate their own safety to
American priorities. "Nobody has suffered more from Saddam than the Kurds," one senior official said. "We told the Americans, 'This time, the Kurds will put their own interests first, and last.' "

Although the Kurds' fear of again being abandoned by the United States seemed real, the greater fear seemed to be of Mr. Hussein. An official in Erbil acknowledged that the Kurdish leaders, in publicly discouraging American military action, were signaling to the Iraqi leader that the Americans, not the Kurds, were his adversaries. "Saddam is our shadow," the official said. "He's always there, right behind us, and we don't want him to think that we're drawing the Americans in to overthrow him."

Concern among the Kurds seems certain to increase with the failure in Vienna on Friday of the latest talks between the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and Iraqi officials aimed at resuming United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq. The inspections are to determine whether Baghdad is continuing efforts toward building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as Washington has charged, and to destroy any programs that are found.

Many United Nations members, including important American allies, see a resumption of weapons inspections, suspended after Mr. Hussein drove inspectors from Baghdad in 1998, as the only way of forestalling American military action. United Nations and Iraqi officials said talks would continue in Europe in coming months, but Washington viewed the Vienna meeting as a watershed. Iraqi officials placed blame for the talks' failure on an "American plot" to prepare for a military attack.

In an American-led campaign, Kurdish territory would be a crucial platform for a ground assault.

In one plan discussed in Washington, American forces, with Kurdish and other Iraqi opposition fighters, would seek to replicate the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, using the Kurdish-controlled areas and troops much as the territory and troops of the Afghan Northern Alliance were used.

But the Kurdish leaders, in the interviews, said they would resist any American actions aimed at toppling Mr. Hussein unless Washington gave "guarantees" in advance. They said these would include an undertaking that a future Iraqi government would adopt a democratic political system, with a federal structure that provided for wide-ranging Kurdish autonomy in the north.

In effect, this would require Washington to promise that Kurds would maintain effective control of the area they now rule. But it is far from certain that other Iraqi opposition groups drawing support from the country's Arabs would agree, partly because of the Baghdad's reliance on revenues from the north's oil fields.

The Kurdish leaders spoke with a sharp edge of distrust for the United States, which they said had "betrayed" Iraqi Kurds at crucial moments in the past, most recently during the Iraqi onslaught against the Kurdish uprising in 1991. Mr. Barzani and other leaders also referred bitterly to events in 1975, when the
United States encouraged Iraqi Kurds to ally themselves with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in a territorial dispute with Iraq, only to back a reconciliation between Iran and Iraq that left the Kurds exposed to a military crackdown by Baghdad.

Mr. Barzani coupled this bitterness with a reminder that Washington's hawkishness on Iraq is led by a president whose father, many Iraqi Kurds contend, let them down in 1991.

After American troops liberated Kuwait, then stopped at Iraq's southern border, the first President Bush encouraged Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south to "take matters into their own hands." He then withheld American military support when their uprisings drew savage retribution from
Baghdad.

When they discuss American plans, the Kurdish leaders reserve their harshest condemnation for any attempt to topple Mr. Hussein by C.I.A.-led covert action, possibly by fomenting a military coup. Reports from Washington have said Mr. Bush this year strengthened a presidential directive authorizing the C.I.A. to mount covert operations inside Iraq with the aim of toppling Mr. Hussein, and authorized American agents to kill him if necessary in self-defense.

But Barham Salih, who heads the government in the eastern half of the Kurdish territory under the authority of Mr. Talabani, said American officials had been told bluntly that the Kurds would oppose any attempt to topple Mr. Hussein by a coup. "We are not interested in exchanging one dictator for another," Mr. Salih said. "We want a democratic, pluralistic, responsible government in Iraq, and that cannot come from a coup."

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES
08/07/2002

Iraq - Country outlook.

COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

OVERVIEW:
The Economist Intelligence Unit believes it is highly likely that the regime of the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, will be overthrown during the forecast period. This would be achieved by a US aerial and ground campaign in support of local forces. The new government would be encouraged by the US to include a broad spectrum of representatives, but is likely to be led by a Sunni Arab. Until any military campaign begins, US and UK efforts to challenge illegal Iraqi oil surcharging will continue to hurt oil production, but smuggled oil exports will provide significant revenues to the regime. The possibility of war will increase economic uncertainty, while an eventual military campaign will cause disruption to oil production. However, once the regime is overthrown, the inflow of aid, the lifting of sanctions and the beginnings of foreign investment will lift the economy.

DOMESTIC POLITICS:
The Economist Intelligence Unit believes there is a strong likelihood that a US land-based military assault on Iraq will take place during the forecast period. For all its experience and ruthlessness, the regime would not survive such an attack, and Iraq's elite military units could only succeed in delaying the collapse of the regime. The Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, and his associates would either be quickly captured or forced to flee the country. Either way an interim government could be expected to be in place by the end of 2003.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:
In the face of US determination to be rid of Mr Hussein's regime, Iraq's efforts to improve its international position are likely to prove futile. Major US allies in the region, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have recognised this new-found resolve, while statements of opposition to military action, where they do occur, appear half-hearted. Having recognised that the US is likely to push ahead with an attack, these states are likely to extend support (covertly
perhaps) to the US administration in order to exercise some influence in a post-Saddam political settlement. The same dynamics appear to apply at the UN Security Council, where there are signs that Iraq is further losing support, even from formerly steadfast allies, such as Russia. Again, the possibility of a post-Saddam influence might apply as Russia, China and France all have substantial oil contracts waiting to be activated once sanctions are lifted.

POLICY TRENDS:
While Mr Hussein remains in power, UN sanctions will remain in force. These allow Iraq to export oil in return for regulated imports of humanitarian goods, leaving little scope for an independent economic policy. The effective use of traditional instruments, such as fiscal and monetary policy, has been all but negated through the collapse of the domestic market economy since the imposition of sanctions in 1990. Iraq's most effective policy tool is therefore its oil policy, which will remain focused on bypassing UN sanctions and maximising sources of export revenue that flow directly to the regime. As well as maintaining or augmenting smuggling networks that export, Iraq has often cut its oil exports in order to try to extract concessions from the UN or to oppose UN policy. The three most recent occasions were November 2000, December 2000 and June 2001. It remains possible that Iraq will cut oil-for-food exports at various times over the forecast period to pursue its goals if, as expected, the six-month rollover occurs in May.

INTERNATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS:
The global economy has experienced its most severe deceleration since the 1974 oil price shock. We do not now expect the US economy to recover from this slump until 2003, when it will post growth of 3.6%. The global economy will follow this trend.

ECONOMIC GROWTH:
The absence of economic data for much of the past two decades makes it impossible to assess GDP with any accuracy. With oil accounting for most of Iraq's output and the non-oil sector largely stagnant, it is however safe to assume that Iraqi GDP growth will broadly track the changes in the country's oil production levels. US and UK initiated "holds" on the UN sanctions committee, including for the oil industry, are not likely to ease significantly unless the regime is replaced. We think that an eventual change of regime will, following an end to sanctions, boost oil production, and that an economic recovery,
stirred by emergency aid and reconstruction projects, would occur.

INFLATION:
Inflation will ease but remain high over the forecast period. In 2002 shortages of all goods will persist, even as the variety and volume of goods flowing into Iraq both inside and outside the oil-for-food programme gradually increases. This will encourage price growth to decelerate. We therefore expect that consumer price inflation will decline to 50% in 2002, and to 40% in 2003. However, any military conflict is likely to cause severe shortages, and inflation would therefore rise sharply. The lifting of sanctions following a change in the regime would, however, ease shortages, but trigger a short-term spike in
inflation in the process as imports significantly expand.

EXCHANGE RATES:
For as long as the present regime is in power the official exchange rate will remain at ID0.311:US$1, although at some 8,000 times the black-market rate of
ID2,500:US$1 in January, it will bear no relation to the currency's true value. Reform to the exchange rate is unlikely while sanctions are in place, as the UN restrictions hold Iraq's legal foreign-currency earnings in an external escrow account. If conflict does take place, the expected lifting of sanctions and the
insertion into the Iraqi economy of aid and eventual investment could see the dinar relatively strengthen.

EXTERNAL SECTOR:
As long as sanctions remain in place, the dictates of the oil-for-food programme will restrict Iraqi import spending to 72% of the country's legal export earnings, with the balance, counted as current transfer debits, financing payments to the UN compensation fund and other UN-related costs. However, after factoring in smuggled trade as well as the large surplus that Iraq has built up in its UN escrow account, the current account will continue to fluctuate outside these boundaries. There will remain a large trade surplus this year as a substantial number of Iraqi import requests continue to be either delayed or refused by the UN sanctions committee. Outside of the trade balance, current transfer debits to the UN will remain at 28% of oil-for-food exports. As long as the Iraqi
economy operates under these constraints, then we expect Iraq's current account to register only moderate surpluses in absolute terms. However, if military action leads to sanctions being lifted then Iraq's trade position will probably deteriorate within the forecast period as import holds will no longer be applied by the UN. At the same time the end of sanctions is likely to lead to a dramatic increase in service payments. Overall, the current-account position should improve, given the end, or at least the easing, of transfer debits paid to the UN.

Source: ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT 04/03/2002

UNITED STATES, BRITAIN SEED BAGHDAD WITH SPIES

WASHINGTON TIMES (DC)
17th July 2002

Britain and the United States have begun sending spies into Iraq to stir up rebellion in advance of a prospective invasion next year aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein, according to British military sources and leading British newspapers.

The task of the agents, along with CIA operatives, is to make contact with opponents of Saddam and capitalize on what one military analyst described to
the Times of London as a "popular loathing" of the regime.

The undercover operations are designed to pave the way for a 250,000-strong invasion force - up to 30,000 of them British, the restAmerican.

The assault is expected by next spring, although it could begin as early as January or February, defense sources told The Washington Times.

The stated purpose of the invasion would be to destroy Baghdad's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and possibly nuclear - but the ancillary goal would be to get rid of Iraq's leader. "There is no doubt at all that the region would be a better place without Saddam Hussein," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Baghdad has vowed to behead invaders and repel any attack on its borders.

Military and political analysts have told reporters that the only way Saddam could avoid an attack is to open Iraq's doors to unrestricted access by
United Nations weapons inspectors.

The likelihood that Saddam will continue to refuse, said one senior British diplomat, "is somewhere between extremely high and impossibly high."

Once the invasion is under way, defense officials told the Sunday Times, British special forces and "shock troops" are to begin a sabotage campaign against Iraqi plants and research centers suspected of developing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.

In anticipation of such an attack, Britain already has begun recalling troops from the Balkans and Afghanistan to train as part of the invasion force.

The British contingent is to include a division of infantry and armored brigades totaling 20,000 troops.

A senior Ministry of Defense source told the Daily Telegraph newspaper in London that the invasion force will be supported by up to 50 British fighter jets and an aircraft carrier group composed of destroyers, frigates and a submarine.

"Troops have been pulled back from the Balkans and Afghanistan in preparation for a spring attack against Iraq," the source said flatly. He added that "I believe the fighting would be relatively straightforward until we got to Baghdad. That's where it could get messy."

Defense sources told The Washington Times that plans call for a two-way assault on Iraq - a largely American attack striking out of Turkey into the northern part of the country and a British-led incursion into the south from Kuwait.

In aligning himself with President Bush, Mr. Blair is taking something of a political risk.

One recent public opinion poll indicated that more than half of British voters oppose joining an American-led operation against Iraq. More than 100 members of Parliament from Mr. Blair's own ruling Labor Party have signed a petition opposing British involvement. But with a sizable parliamentary majority, the prime minister himself will almost certainly survive, whatever happens. Mr. Blair also can expect considerable opposition from other powers in
the 15-member European Union. Russia also opposes military action against Iraq.

Up to 15,000 British forces might have to remain stationed as part of an "occupation force" for up to five years in a postwar Iraq to prevent the country from fragmenting, British intelligence warned Mr. Blair, the Telegraph reported.

The cost of maintaining such a force could overwhelm Britain's already tight defense budget and quickly eat up the $5.5 billion in extra funds the
government is allocating for defense spending over the next three years.

A good way to find out where the next 'war' is going to be is to check the global movements of oil, as this article reveals.

U.S. military seeks to ship fuel to Mideast Gulf.

LONDON,
Reuters
March 15 2002

The U.S. military is seeking more oil tankers to move aviation fuel and diesel supplies to military bases, one of them in the Middle East Gulf, shipbrokers
said on Friday.

Shipping sources said the chartering of oil tankers to carry different military grades of fuel had intensified over the last month.

"This pattern of chartering has been well-established post September 11, but it is very active at the moment," a broker said. Tanker brokers were among the first to detect signs of the U.S. preparations for its strikes against Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is touring Europe and the Middle East to drum up support for possible military action against Iraq, which some Western diplomats believe could come as early as September.

A Norwegian broker said U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) had issued a tender for an oil tanker to move 220,000 barrels (30,000 tonnes) of diesel oil in March from "either Japan or South Korea to discharge in the Gulf".

The source said late on Thursday MSC had issued another tender for a tanker to move an equivalent amount of military jet fuel from Yosu in South Korea to Sasebo in Japan.

Brokers said time charters were being used for the U.S. purchases, a process by which ships are contracted for a specified period of time, years in some cases, to avoid detection on the spot market.

"It's a clever way for the United States to hide military purchases and movements of fuel," one said

Brokers have said the U.S. military has already moved 100,000 tonnes of aviation fuel to Diego Garcia, a military base in the Indian Ocean, this month. The U.S. uses Diego Garcia, which belongs to Britain, for flights over Afghanistan.

Those ships carried JP-5 fuel, a safe high flashpoint fuel for use on aircraft carriers to power F-14 and F-18 fighters.

Shipping brokers said they could not confirm whether the U.S. military had yet fixed the vessels to move an additional 30,000 tonnes of aviation fuel sitting in South Korea to Sasebo in Japan, and 30,000 tonnes of diesel also in South Korea to Diego Garcia.

"There have been tenders but I don't know if they were fixed in the end," one source said.

Iraq slams US denial of visas to Iraqi delegation to criminal court meetings.

Text of report by Iraqi news agency INA web site

United Nations
15 July 2002

Iraq has condemned the US authorities' failure to issue entry visas to the Iraqi delegation to take part in the International Criminal Court Preparatory Committee meetings.

In a statement delivered during the Preparatory Committee meeting, Dr Abd-al-Mun'im al-Qadi, Iraq's envoy to the United Nations, said the concerned US authorities did not grant entry visas to the Iraqi delegation to the Preparatory Committee meetings, which prevented the Iraqi experts from participating.
 
Al-Qadi said that denying them visas is a violation of the Headquarters Agreement signed between the United Nations and the United States. It also shows that the United States does not abide by the UN General Assembly resolutions, which request the host country to grant visas to states participating in UN activities.

He said this measure is considered a violation of all international laws and norms concerning diplomatic immunity and privileges, adding that this was aimed at obstructing the work of the Iraqi mission and limiting its UN General Assembly activities.

The Iraqi delegation consisted of three experts, who participated in the previous Preparatory Committee sessions. They applied for visas on 7 June 2002 but approval was not granted. Thus the delegation could not participate in the 10th and last session of the International Criminal Court Preparatory Committee meetings, which were held in New York from 1 to 12 July 2002.

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