The urgency is the saving of lives. First, let us stop calling it a "war". The last time "war" was used in the Gulf was in 1991 when the truth was buried with more than 200,000 people. Attacking a 70-mile line of trenches, three American brigades, operating at night, used 60-ton armoured earthmovers to bury alive teenage Iraqi conscripts, including the wounded and those surrendering and retreating. Survivors were slaughtered from the air. The helicopter gunship pilots called it a "turkey shoot".
Of the 148 Americans who died, a quarter of them were killed by Americans. Most of the British were killed by Americans. This was known as "friendly fire". The civilians who were killed, whose deaths were never recorded by the American military because it was "not policy", were "collateral damage".
Today, after 13 years of an economic blockade that has been compared with a medieval siege, Iraq is defenceless, no matter the discovery of an odd missile that can reach barely 90 miles. Its ragtag army is woefully under-equipped and awaiting its fate, along with a civilian population of whom 42 per cent are children. They are stricken. Even the export of British manufactured vaccines meant to protect Iraqi infants from diphtheria and yellow fever has been restricted. The vaccines, say the Blair government, are "capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction".
This is the nation upon which the Bush gang says it will rain down 800 missiles within the space of two days. "Shock and awe" the Pentagon calls its "strategy". Meanwhile the weapons inspectors and their morose Swedish leader go about their treasure hunt and a cartoon show is hosted in the UN by General Colin Powell (who rose to the top by covering up the notorious My Lai massacre in Vietnam).
It is all a charade. The Americans want Iraq because they want to control and reorder the Middle East. Their once-favourite dictator, Saddam Hussein, made the mistake of misreading the signals from Washington in 1990 and invading another favourite American oil tyranny, Kuwait. So belatedly, Saddam must be replaced, preferably by another Saddam, though more reliable and less uppity. There is no issue of "weapons of mass destruction". That is a distraction for us and the media.
The wider significance of the promised attack is the rapacious nature of the American state. As Tony Blair has confirmed, North Korea is likely to be "next". I think he is wrong and that Iran will be next. That is what the Israeli regime wants and Israel's wishes are as important to influential members of the Bush gang as oil. Thereafter, there is China. Says Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Institute in Washington: "What radical US nationalists have in mind is either to 'contain' China by overwhelming military force or to destroy the Chinese Communist state."
Michael Leeden former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise Institute , has said: "If we let our vision of the world go forth and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
September 11 2001 was their big opportunity. On September 12 Donald Rumsfeld wanted to use the Twin Towers tragedy as an excuse to attack Iraq, which was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell argued that "public opinion has to be prepared". Afghanistan was the easier option and they were planning to attack it anyway.
The subsequent American endeavour to encircle al-Qaeda in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan was a fiasco and more than 20,000 people, estimates Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, paid the price of that country's "liberation".
Since September 11 America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has repudiated the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, with the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary" - incredibly Geoffrey Hoon, on Blair's behalf, has said exactly the same.
cont...........
Of the 148 Americans who died, a quarter of them were killed by Americans. Most of the British were killed by Americans. This was known as "friendly fire". The civilians who were killed, whose deaths were never recorded by the American military because it was "not policy", were "collateral damage".
Today, after 13 years of an economic blockade that has been compared with a medieval siege, Iraq is defenceless, no matter the discovery of an odd missile that can reach barely 90 miles. Its ragtag army is woefully under-equipped and awaiting its fate, along with a civilian population of whom 42 per cent are children. They are stricken. Even the export of British manufactured vaccines meant to protect Iraqi infants from diphtheria and yellow fever has been restricted. The vaccines, say the Blair government, are "capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction".
This is the nation upon which the Bush gang says it will rain down 800 missiles within the space of two days. "Shock and awe" the Pentagon calls its "strategy". Meanwhile the weapons inspectors and their morose Swedish leader go about their treasure hunt and a cartoon show is hosted in the UN by General Colin Powell (who rose to the top by covering up the notorious My Lai massacre in Vietnam).
It is all a charade. The Americans want Iraq because they want to control and reorder the Middle East. Their once-favourite dictator, Saddam Hussein, made the mistake of misreading the signals from Washington in 1990 and invading another favourite American oil tyranny, Kuwait. So belatedly, Saddam must be replaced, preferably by another Saddam, though more reliable and less uppity. There is no issue of "weapons of mass destruction". That is a distraction for us and the media.
The wider significance of the promised attack is the rapacious nature of the American state. As Tony Blair has confirmed, North Korea is likely to be "next". I think he is wrong and that Iran will be next. That is what the Israeli regime wants and Israel's wishes are as important to influential members of the Bush gang as oil. Thereafter, there is China. Says Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Institute in Washington: "What radical US nationalists have in mind is either to 'contain' China by overwhelming military force or to destroy the Chinese Communist state."
Michael Leeden former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise Institute , has said: "If we let our vision of the world go forth and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
September 11 2001 was their big opportunity. On September 12 Donald Rumsfeld wanted to use the Twin Towers tragedy as an excuse to attack Iraq, which was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell argued that "public opinion has to be prepared". Afghanistan was the easier option and they were planning to attack it anyway.
The subsequent American endeavour to encircle al-Qaeda in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan was a fiasco and more than 20,000 people, estimates Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, paid the price of that country's "liberation".
Since September 11 America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has repudiated the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, with the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary" - incredibly Geoffrey Hoon, on Blair's behalf, has said exactly the same.
cont...........
