[Nasional-e] PENTAGON PREPARES FOR BIG WAR

[Ambon]

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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 28, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WITH MEDIA SPOTLIGHT ON INSPECTIONS, 
PENTAGON PREPARES FOR BIG WAR

By Fred Goldstein

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has succinctly summed 
up the Bush administration's real attitude toward the 
inspections process that is about to begin in Iraq. Rumsfeld 
was giving an interview and taking calls for Infinity 
Broadcasting on Nov. 15.

According to a CNN dispatch of that day, a caller asked 
Rumsfeld, "What if no weapons of mass destruction were found 
by U.N. weapons inspectors inside Iraq?"

"What it would prove would be that the inspections process 
had been successfully defeated by the Iraqis," said 
Rumsfeld.

Thus, after laboring mightily to force the UN Security 
Council to pass a belligerent, threatening resolution 
demanding inspections, everything Washington is doing and 
saying indicates that the Bush administration regards the 
entire process as nothing but a stepping stone in the 
preparation for war.

"With the United Nations chief weapons inspector in Baghdad 
readying his team to start work next week," wrote the Wall 
Street Journal on Nov. 19, "the Bush administration is 
quietly pressing him to make key changes in his 
organization, including doubling the number of inspectors 
and accepting what he says are generous offers of U.S. 
equipment and transportation....

"U.S. officials also are combing through intelligence 
reports to come up with a list of priority sites for 
immediate inspection and crucial scientists to interview," 
continued the Journal. "U.S. officials say they want the 
earliest and most intrusive test" of the Iraqi government. 
"The U.S. has already held three to four hours of discussion 
with Unmovic [the UN agency involved] about possible 
inspection sites."

The U.S. was pushing to add its own intelligence officials 
to the inspection team, but Hans Blix, the head of the team, 
declined. Both sides settled for a Canadian official.

Washington is trying to completely take over the inspections 
process in order to be in a better position to declare the 
Iraqi government "in breach" of the UN resolution and also 
to gain valuable military information to assist in an 
invasion.

WORLD OPINION DECISIVELY AGAINST THE WAR

But Blix has multiple problems with Washington. First of 
all, he has to maintain the credibility of the UN force. 
"The credibility of the last UN weapons-inspection team was 
badly damaged," continued the Journal dispatch, "by 
disclosures that it had worked closely with the Central 
Intelligence Agency, Britain's MI6 and Israel's Mossad-
passing on information that was potentially useful for 
military strikes."

Second, he has to cope with world public opinion, including 
both the masses and governments, who are overwhelmingly 
opposed to a U.S. invasion.

With the exception of the British, most of the other 
imperialist governments are being dragged into the war 
reluctantly. This is not because they are pacifists. On the 
contrary, these ruling classes have a history of engaging in 
the most bloody colonial enterprises in Asia, Africa, the 
Middle East and Latin America.

Their reluctance stems from the fact that Wall Street is 
holding all the cards by virtue of its gigantic, high-tech 
military machine. For the other imperialists there is little 
to gain and much to lose by a U.S. war to conquer Iraq.

The European and Japanese imperialists would much prefer to 
confine their competition with the U.S. ruling class to the 
economic and political sphere, where the playing field is 
more level. They all have giant industrial, financial and 
commercial monopolies capable of doing battle with Wall 
Street. But none of them can hold a candle to the Pentagon.

As for the billions of workers and peasants, and the general 
worldwide population, the vast majority opposes not only a 
U.S. invasion of Iraq but Washington's intervention 
anywhere.

These are the pressures on Blix and the UN inspection team.

RESOLUTION CONTAINS TRIGGER FOR WAR

In the last analysis, however, Blix must satisfy the 
overlords in the White House and the Pentagon who are 
demanding a pretext for war. During the preparations in 
Washington for submitting the U.S. resolution to the UN 
Security Council, Blix and the head of the International 
Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed el Baradei, were brought to 
Washington for an interview.

"A crucial moment in the Washington end game," wrote the 
Washington Post of Nov. 10, "came 10 days ago when Powell 
invited chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed 
Baradei--both deeply disdained at the Pentagon as weaklings 
incapable of standing up to Hussein-to meet with Bush, 
Cheny, Rice and Wolfowitz.

"The meetings helped convince Bush that Blix wanted the same 
tough inspections that he did, and that a pared-down version 
of the original resolution guidelines would still guarantee 
intrusive, unyielding inspections. 'They acquitted 
themselves really well,' a senior official in Powell's camp 
said of Blix and el Baradei. Carping at the Pentagon 
stopped."

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal article said that most 
Washington officials "believe that [Blix] will do the right 
thing," that is, give the U.S. the excuse to go to war.

The resolution, which was roundly denounced by the 
government of Iraq even as it was forced to accept the 
inspections, has an inherent trigger for war that was set by 
Washington. A Dec. 8 deadline was set up as a moment for the 
Iraqis to basically confess to the offense of which they 
have been accused by the Bush administration.

The very idea that a formerly colonial country should have 
to submit to weapons inspections and have its entire 
infrastructure examined by hostile imperialist powers bent 
on recolonizing the country is an outrage. For the U.S. 
government, which has invented, stockpiled and used nuclear 
and other weapons of mass destruction, to have the right to 
go into Iraq and destroy any part of its arsenal is a 
complete violation of sovereignty, the right of self-
determination and the right to self-defense.

Nevertheless, the Iraqis have declared that they have no 
weapons of mass destruction. The inspections are presumably 
to determine whether or not they exist, yet Washington has 
told the government of Iraq that it must disclose its 
biological, chemical and nuclear program by Dec. 8. 
Washington--and the UN Security Council, for that matter--
have demanded a confession in advance of any proof of the 
offense. This is a setup to create a provocation and to 
justify an invasion.

BRITAIN AND U.S. ORGANIZE 'IRAQI' CONFERENCE

The London Guardian reported on Nov. 20 that "A conference 
is to be held in Britain of Iraqi opposition leaders after 
they were told by U.S. officials that they must meet by 
December 10-two days after the UN deadline for Baghdad to 
give a full declaration"of its weapons. The British Foreign 
Office, under the direction of Washington, is organizing the 
conference.

Whether the U.S. is planning to make Dec. 8 the critical 
moment is yet to be seen. But the Wall Street Journal 
reported on Nov. 19 that "U.S. officials say they don't 
expect the teams to go after the most sensitive or 
potentially most fruitful sites until after Dec. 8, when 
Iraq is required to declare its full holdings of proscribed 
weapons. 'We're not going to pick a fight until after they 
declare what they have,' says one top official."

The anti-war movement should not become fixated on or pin 
its hopes on the inspections process. Instead it should keep 
its eyes firmly fixed on what the Pentagon is doing.

According to a New York Times dispatch of Nov. 19, "Next 
month Gen. Tommy Franks will direct exercises at Al Ureid [a 
military base in Qatar] with 600 officers from the 
military's Central Command in Florida in what analysts say 
is a dry run for using the base as a command post for an 
invasion of Iraq." This is the Pentagon's answer to the 
Saudi refusal to allow the Pentagon to command the invasion 
from there.

A day earlier the Times had run a major piece about war 
preparations. Washington is rushing to set up the invasion 
before hot weather arrives. "American diplomats and senior 
military officials-including Gen. Tommy Franks-have fanned 
out across Europe and Southwest Asia in recent weeks 
discussing basing agreements for American troops and 
aircraft, and to determine which nations may contribute 
forces or equipment to an offensive."

"We're making preparations every day," declared Paul 
Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and a hawkish 
architect of the war. "The administration has already begun 
laying the groundwork with dozens of countries for a 
possible attack," wrote the Times.

Heavy military equipment for 30,000 troops is already in the 
region. More M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and 
armored personnel carriers are to be shipped from the U.S. 
soon. B-2 bombers are being positioned in Britain and in 
Diego Garcia, a former British base in the Indian Ocean 
taken over by the U.S.

The Central Command is setting up a headquarters in 
Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. The Marines and Special 
Forces have taken over what used to be the largest French 
foreign military base, Camp Lemonier. They are conducting 
amphibious invasion exercises, including "capturing" towns 
in Djibouti.

In Kuwait the U.S. military is conducting menacing 
operations. "The United States Army has quietly doubled the 
number of its troops in Kuwait," wrote the Times on Nov. 20, 
"and is practicing offensive operations against Iraq close 
to the border. ... Army combat engineers trained to blow 
paths through mine fields. They rehearsed erecting bridges 
under fire so armored forces can continue their thrusts into 
enemy territory." Troops are using howitzers and Apache 
helicopters in terrain identical to Iraq's.

USING NATO FOR THE DIRTY WORK

Bush is on his way to a NATO summit in Prague to strong-arm 
the European imperialists into formally endorsing the U.S. 
war drive, as embodied in the UN resolution. He will also 
bring a proposal for NATO to become formally integrated into 
the U.S. war machine. According to the Times, "one country 
could provide a unit trained for mountain warfare, another 
could contribute decontamination teams for troops facing 
chemical or biological weapons, another military police."

Rumsfeld has also proposed that NATO work on a high-tech, 
rapid deployment force of 20,000 troops to supplement U.S. 
imperialist invasion forces.

Another integral part of the war preparations is the 
campaign by the Justice Department to place hundreds of 
thousands of Iraqis in the U.S. under surveillance. It is a 
terror tactic to whip up the population into a state of 
racist paranoia against Iraqis as well as a way of laying 
the groundwork for a concocted domestic provocation by 
framing up Iraqis in the U.S.

The attempt to assign NATO to a menial role as a lowly 
assistant to the Pentagon and to openly make the United 
Nations a pure appendage of the State Department is a 
measure of the expansionist mentality that prevails in the 
White House and at the summits of the U.S. ruling class.

Given this militaristic, expansionist and repressive 
orientation of the capitalist class, its political machine 
and its media, the only antidote to this war drive is a 
truly mass mobilization to stop it.

- END -

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