Sunday, September 28, 2003

Beans are spilled..

pv vivekanand


THE BEANS are out now. It has now been made clear that
the Bush administration took the decision to invade
Iraq on Sept.17, 2001, six days after the aerial
assaults in New York and Washington offered the
perfect opportunity to wage war against America's
enemies and bag the biggest oil price of all - Iraq.
The only question that remained was the timing of the
war and the build-up to justifying military action.
The administration tried to link Sadddam Hussein with
Osama Bin Laden but failed; then it was suggestions
that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was a
terrorist threat and this suited the US well since no
one could prove whether Saddam had WMD or otherwise.

On Sept.17, 2001, President George Bush signed a top-
secret directive to the Pentagon to
begin planning military options for an invasion of
Iraq, according to highly reliable sources in
Washington.
The directive was signed at a meeting attended by
hawks like Defence Secretary Ronald Rumseld and
National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice. Secretary
of State Colin Powell had reservations about the move
and he was bluntly told that he was free to quit the
administration if he did not like the decision, said
the sources. Obviously, Powell opted to stay on and
became part of the plot as anyone else involved.
Since then, it was a question of justifying the
planned invasion and building up the scenario to
launch the invasion of Iraq and a group of pro-Israeli
hawks were more than glad to oblige by fabricating
evidence and drumming up Israeli-inspired political
influence in Congress and intellgence services to do
the groundwork of the war.
However, Afghanistan figured in between; military
experts say that the war that the US waged against
Afghanistan beginning in October 2001 was as much as
a "dress rehearsal" for the invasion of Iraq as
military action aimed at destroying Osama Bin Laden's
Al Qaeda and its Taliban backers. Never mind that not
a single hijacker on Sept.11 came from Afghanistan.
Part of that build-up to war against Iraq was
establishing reasons. And that entailed dramatic
reversals of Washington's firm assertions that Saddam
Hussein was a caged lion that could be manipulated at
will and was kept "contained" since the 1991 war that
ousted Iraq from Kuwait.
Bush administration officials had declared before
Sept.11, 2001 that Saddam Hussein was no longer a
threat to anyone - the international community, the
Middle East and the Gulf states.
After all, it was then an American need to convince
the world that Washington's stragey of "containing"
both Iraq and Iran were working.
In February 2001, Powell said in Cairo: "He (Saddam
Hussein) has not developed any significant capability
with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is
unable to project conventional power against his
neighbours."
In May 2001, Powell reiterated that Saddam had not
been able to "build his military back up or to develop
weapons of mass destruction" for "the last 10 years."
Washington's firm policy, he claimed, had been
successful in keeping the Iraqi leader "in a box."
In June 2001, Rice said iraq had been rendered weak,
divided and militarily defenceless, with Saddam
deprived of control the northern part ofthe country.
"We are able to keep his arms from him. His military
forces have not been rebuilt," she said.
How come the situation changed so dramatically in less
than a few months, with the same Powell and Rice, as
well as Bush himself and others in Washington,
declaring that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction
and posed a threat not only to his neighbours but also
to the region and the international community,
including mainland US?
In November 2001, more than a month into the war, the
writing was clear on the wall that the US was going to
invade Iraq, when Bush included Iraq in his "war
against terror" by saying that any country which had
weapons of mass destruction to "terrify its
neighbours" was a legitimate target.
The broader plot came to the fore a few months later,
when Bush described iraq, iran and North Korea as the
"axis of evil."
The course of events since a few hours after the
Sept.11 attack has been brought out by investigations,
interviews and research that went into making a
British television documentary -- Breaking the
Silence. It makes clear that the Bush administration
as well as the British government of Tony Blair
collaborated and created falsehoods and reasons
justifying the invasion of iraq and hoodwinking the
American public and distracting the media from
exposing the real reason for the military action.
In secret meetings that were never reported in the
mainstream media, US officials had indeed referred to
the real reasons, starting with Rumsfeld himself.
According to John Pilger, who made the documentary,
the idea that the Sept.11 attacks could be turned into
a reason for attacking Iraq came from Rumsfeld.
Pilger writes in London's Mirror newspaper:
"At 2.40pm on September 11, according to confidential
notes taken by his aides, Donald Rumsfeld... said he
wanted to 'hit' Iraq  — even though not a shred of
evidence existed that Saddam Hussein had anything to
do with the attacks on New York and Washington. 'Go
massive,' the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying. 'Sweep
it all up. Things related and not.'
"Iraq was given a brief reprieve when it was decided
instead to attack Afghanistan," writes Pilger. "This
was the 'softest option' and easiest to explain to the
American people - even though not a single September
11 hijacker came from Afghanistan. In the meantime,
securing the 'big prize' Iraq, became an obsession in
both Washington and London."
Pilger also says that in April last year Condoleezza
Rice said in a secret meeting in April last year that
the the Sept.11 attacks were an "enormous
opportunity" and said America "must move to take
advantage of these new opportunities."
Indeed, Iraq, with 11 per cent of the world's oil
known oil reserves and with immense potential to
challenge Israel - the US' strategic partner in the
Middle East -- was on top of all those "new
opportunities."
How did Blair enter the picture?
It is almost certain that Blair was told of the
American resolve to invade Iraq in a few weeks after
the decision was made in Washington, and the British
prime minister plunged into campaigning for war
immediately there after.
At times Blair appeared to be more determined that
Bush himself to invade Iraq and topple Saddam. That
should explain the series of British government
efforts, including proved falsification of
intelligence documents and "sexing up" of a dossier on
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, that
followed.
In September, Blair told his parliament that
intelligence documents showed that Iraq's "weapons
of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and
growing.
"The policy of containment is not working. The weapons
of mass destruction programme is not shut down. It is
up and running now."
It has now been established beyond any reasonable
doubt that Saddam did not have any weapons of mass
destruction and former chief UN weapon expert Hans
Blix has publicly stated that the ousted Iraqi leader
could have destroyed whatever he had in 1991 itself.
The Iraq Survey Group, an Anglo-American team of 1,400
scientists, military and intelligence experts, which
searched through US-occupied Iraq since June has
failed to uncover any evidence of weapons of mass
destruction. Subsequently, it was not surprising that
the US and UK decided to delay indefinitely the
publication of the team's report, which was supposed
to have been released in mid-September.
American efforts to link Saddam with Al Qaeda also
failed miserably, and it was ironic that Rumsfeld said
in September 2003 that he had never said that the
Iraqi leader had ties with Osama Bin Laden. In
reality, Bush himself and all his aides, including
Rumsfeld, had clearly stated or implied that Saddam
was in collusion with Bin Laden in the Sept.11 attacks
and further plans for similar attacks. It was those
assertions and implied affirmations that led more than
two-thirds of Americans to believe -- as pre-war
opinion polls showed -- that Saddam was the mastermind
of the Sept.11 attacks.
In mid-September 2003, Rumsfeld was asked at a press
encounter why he thought most Americans still believed
Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of Sept.11, he
replied: "I've
not seen any indication that would lead me to believe
I could say that."
In the Breaking the Silence documentary, Ray
McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and personal
friend of George Bush senior, the president's father,
says on record that a group of "crazies" were behind
the plot to invade Iraq.
"They were referred to in the circles in which I
moved when I was briefing at the
top policy levels as 'the crazies'," he says.
"The crazies," says McGovern citing "plenty of
documented evidence," were planning the (invasion of
iraq) for a long time and that 9/11 accelerated their
plan. (The weapons of mass
destruction issue) was all contrived, so was the
connection of Iraq with al Qaeda. It was all PR...
Josef Goebbels had this dictum: If you say something
often enough, the people will believe it."
The "crazies" – or "neoconseratives" —  as it has
turned out since theen, could be seen to include
Vice-President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, John Bolton,
under-secretary of state, Douglas Feith,
under-secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, a deputy
to Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, former chairman and
current member of the Defence Advisory Board, and I.
Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Stephen
Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.
Collaborating with the "neocons" from outside the
administration are former CIA chief James Woolsey and
Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Ford and
Reagan administrations.
L Paul Bremer, the current head of the US occupation
of Iraq, has come from the ranks of the "neocons."
Reports in the American media have said that the
"neo-cons" had set up their own intelligence network
-- taking in material provided by Israel's Mossad
agency -- to build a case for military action against
Iraq and often overlooking or ignoring CIA-gathered
information that would not have suited their case for
US invasion and occupation of Iraq.