- The objective of war, wrote the great
military thinker Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, is not victory, but to shape
the peace that follows.
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- Without clear, strategic objectives for
a post-war period, starting a conflict is merely mindless brutality. This,
alas, is precisely the direction in which the US is headed over Iraq.
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- War fever and jingoism, fanned by an
uncritical, cheerleading media, grip the United States. Seventy-one percent
of Americans, most of whom could not find Iraq on a map, want to see it
pulverized anew.
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- Exactly 100 years ago, a similar nationalist
frenzy produced the lopsided Spanish-American War. Today, the cry is: `Take
Out Saddam!' Back then it was, `Remember the Maine!'
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- President Bill Clinton, up to his neck
in sleaze, may unleash a new war on Iraq to distract the public from his
growing legal and moral problems. The man who dodged the draft in wartime
plans to use the US military to save his political skin. No matter thousands
of Iraqi civilians and some American servicemen may die.
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- Republican leaders Newt Gingrich and
Trent Lott are beating the war drums. Though bright men, like many Republicans
and conservatives, they have no grasp of the Mideast's serpentine complexities.
They see the Mideast with comic strip simplicity. These small-town politicians
writ large mistakenly believe the solution to America's imperial problems
in the Mideast is simply swinging the big stick. The world could pay dearly
for this dismaying combination of international vigilantism, arrogance,
and ignorance.
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- Consider: :
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- *The US bombs Iraq for days, killing
large numbers of troops and civilians. Saddam survives. What then? He will
proclaim another victory against the world's superpower. There will be
widespread revulsion towards the US. Under international law, Iraq has
the right to attack nations - like Kuwait and Bahrain - if they allow US
warplanes to launch attacks from their soil. This week, Russia's Boris
Yeltsin rightly warned of unpredictable dangers arising from an American
attack.
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- * Iraq's remaining stores of chemical
and biological weapons(CB) cannot be totally eliminated. Claims they can
be expunged by bombing are nonsense. Iraq has no nuclear program left.
Its strategic weapons consist of limited quantities of poison gas, V-series
nerve agents, and biological agents. But Iraq cannot deliver them at any
distance. These CB weapons are likely hidden in mountains, deserts or
swamps, not in Saddam's palaces. .
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- Hitting chemical sites could release
toxic clouds, killing thousands of civilians - as almost occured in Baghdad
in 1991. Gulf War Syndrome that affects so many US servicemen was most
likely caused by the foolish demolition of Iraqi chemical weapons stores
by the US Army..
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- * Chemical/biological weapons are relatively
easy to manufacture. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require little space
and can be hidden in a small, non-nondescript building. CB technology
is a genii that's out of the bottle. Note: Iraq's CB technology was provided
by Britain and the US during the 1980's for use against Iran. The only
way to eliminate CB technology from Iraq is by killing 22,000 Iraqi military
technicians and scientists.
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- * All major Mideast powers now have chemical
and, some, biological, weapons which, Arabs and Iran maintain, were developed
mainly to counter Israel's huge nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal.
If Saddam is overthrown, Iraq's next ruler will immediately begin rebuilding
his strategic CB and, later, nuclear, weapons.
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- * Saddam is a dangerous brute. All previous
Iraqi rulers since the 1950's have also been thugs. It takes an iron hand
to rule chronically unstable Iraq. Unless Iraq, which has the Mideast's
second largest oil reserves, is to be partitioned between Turkey and Iran,
a Saddam act-alike will be needed to run this mutant stepchild of British
imperialism. Iraq's next ruler will probably be as ruthless as Saddam,
but smarter.
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- * Virtually unnoticed by the world, the
US has given Turkey a green light to begin annexing northern Iraq, with
its rich oil fields. Under the pretext of fighting Kurds, the Turkish
Army is inching its way towards Mosul. The US scourges Iraq for trying
to annex Kuwait, while encouraging Turkey to annex part of Iraq.
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- * Iraq is not the deadly menace American
propaganda makes it out to be. Without missiles, and only a handful of
aircraft, Iraq has little offensive capability. Once US- imposed sanctions
are lifted, however, Iraq will begin rebuilding its forces, but this will
take many years.
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- * US human intelligence(humint) in Iraq
is awful. In 1996, the Clinton Administration badly botched an attempt
to assassinate Saddam and overthrow his regime, including terror bombings
of civilian targets in Baghdad. CIA's Iraqi network was broken and rolled
up. Israel's Mossad has become a major supplier of humint on Iraq, The
data from Israel is crafted to serve Israel's strategy of pressing the
US into another war with Iraq.
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- * If the US strikes, it will try to kill
Saddam, using newly developed BLU-109B/113 bombs that can penetrate 3 meters
of concrete. Assassinating foreign leaders is against US law. The law,
however, is suspended when dealing with the Mideast.
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- * An attack on Iraq will not be a UN
operation. The core majority of the Security Council - Russia, France
and China- strongly oppose attacking Iraq. So the US, with Britain tagging
along, will unilaterally go to war with Iraq. Stripped of the UN fig leaf,
we see the realpolitik: : US determination to crush Iraq for daring challenge
its Oil Raj in the Mideast.. .
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- * The lightweight US Secretary of State,
Madeleine Albright, insists diplomacy has been exhausted. But contrast
Clinton's policy towards North Korea, which, unlike demolished Iraq, is
a real international threat.
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- North Korea has nuclear weapons, gas,
and germs. It threatens to use them against South Korea, Okinawa, Japan
and 37,000 US troops in Korea. Washington is buying off hungry North Korea
by giving it a two nuclear reactors, oil, food and medicine. Why not
buy hungry Iraq's good behavior? After all, a mere eight years ago, wicked
Saddam used to be a close US ally. .
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- The US has painted itself into a corner
by demonizing Iraq and wildly exaggerating the threat from Baghdad. Saddam
keeps making the US look foolish. After all his threats, if Clinton backs
down over Iraq, Republicans will crucify him. America's allies and Russia
are frantically trying to fashion a face-saving diplomatic exit from this
mess that will allow Washington to proclaim victory.
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- Diplomacy is clearly the way out. But
the US has made clear it will keep Iraq in prison, and torment its people,
until they overthrow Saddam, Iraqis must be able to see an end to crushing
sanctions and a return to normal relations. A nation cannot be kept in
permanent solitary confinement. Saddam is not a lunatic; he can be encouraged
to acceptable behavior. The world would be better without Saddam and his
like, but we may have to live with him. And a lasting Mideast peace won't
come until Israel allows a viable Palestinian mini-state, and joins some
kind of regional CB arms control program.
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- This crisis will probably hasten the
end of Iraq's 7-year isolation. US policy towards Iraq has been a total
fiasco. Ironically, Great Brinksman Saddam may yet emerge the victor in
his long test of wills with Washington.
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- America, the world's sole superpower,
is about to savage a small, defenseless nation of 22 million. Such Saddam-like
behavior is unworthy of both a great, humane democracy, and the proud US
armed forces.
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- This is certainly not America's finest
hour.
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