By Norm Dixon
The United States is moving inexorably towards another bloodbath in Iraq. Disregarding overwhelming worldwide opposition and hampering proposals for peaceful compromise, Washington seems determined to launch a massive, unilateral air bombardment against a Third World country kept poverty stricken and virtually defenceless by a seven-year economic blockade.
The lurid fear-mongering by senior US officials — amplified by the mass media — over Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's supposed possession of hidden "weapons of mass destruction" is a smokescreen behind which US imperialism can yet again enforce its political and economic hegemony over the strategic oil-rich Middle East.
The arrival of 6000 US troops in Kuwait on February 16 brought the number on the ground to 10,000, with another 20,000 on warships. More than 300 warplanes are on stand-by. While a formidable force, it is a far cry from the almost 500,000 troops and 2000 aircraft that devastated Iraq in 1991. It seems the US is intent on duplicating the lethal carpet bombardment of Iraq in the first days of the Gulf War, in which tens of thousands of civilians died.
Another important difference is that the US has been unable to secure widespread international support for its new adventure. A majority of Security Council permanent members — France, Russia and China — openly oppose the use of force.
Arab governments are firmly against the military operation, reflecting the anger of their people at the suffering of the Iraqi people and at the hypocrisy of the US demanding that UN resolutions be respected by Iraq while ignoring Israel's defiance of UN resolutions.
Silence over Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and its threat to use them is contrasted with the US hysteria over the possibility that Iraq may retain the remnants of a program to create chemical and biological weapons (developed in cooperation with the west in the late 1980s).
The Arab League has been working closely with France and Russia to find a compromise to the stalemate over UN weapons inspector access to Iraq's presidential buildings.
Aftermath of 1991
The 1991 one-sided blitzkrieg resulted in the slaughter of more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians and conscripts in just six weeks.
The country's entire military, economic and public infrastructure — including water treatment plants, sewage systems, hospitals, food processing and pharmaceutical plants, most power stations and bridges — was shattered as high explosives equivalent to seven Hiroshima-type atomic bombs rained down on industrial and residential areas alike.
Sanctions made reconstruction impossible. Iraq was prevented from selling oil, the source of 95% of export earnings before the war. Sanctions prevented Iraq importing medicines, chlorine for water purification, fertilisers and pesticides for agriculture and spare parts for water and sewage plants. The result has been deadly epidemics, malnutrition and a health system that could not cope.
In May 1996, then US UN ambassador, Madeleine Albright, was asked by a TV reporter: "We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. That's more than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?". Albright replied: "This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it."
UNICEF estimates that at least 1.2 million children have died as a result of sanctions since 1991. Another 400,000 elderly and sick have died. More than 1 million children are malnourished.
Sharp differences between the former allies have emerged over the sanctions and their purpose. As early as 1994, France, Russia and China were arguing, while supporting the continuation of sanctions, that the Security Council should commend Iraq's progress towards disarmament and its cooperation with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM).
Russia argued for a date for an end to the oil embargo to be set. The US opposed this strenuously.
In 1995, France joined Russia to push for an end to the oil embargo. Under this pressure, in 1996, Washington reluctantly agreed to allow Iraq to sell US$2 billion worth of oil every six months to buy food and medicine.
Moscow and Paris were motivated by the billions of dollars owed them by Iraq. France, Iraq's largest European trading partner, was also keen to win reconstruction contracts.
Governments around the world are unhappy at US laws that penalise companies from third countries which ignore US-imposed embargoes or sanctions in the region. Iran, Libya and Sudan are subject to such sanctions, and several European, notably French, oil companies are affected.
US policy in the Middle East is aimed at ensuring that no country — especially one that attempts to determine its own course or rally anti-imperialist opposition — is strong enough to challenge US dominance or threaten its closest allies.
Oil
The reason is simple. As General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the 1991 attack on Iraq, told the US Congress in 1990: "Middle East oil is the west's lifeblood. It fuels us today, and being 77% of the free world's proven oil reserves, is going to fuel us when the rest of the world runs dry."
It is estimated that oil accounts for 25% of all US profits from the Third World.
The role of sanctions — supplemented by air attacks in 1993 and 1996 — is to keep Iraq militarily and economically weak. It would be a bonus if this triggered a coup to replace Hussein with a more pliant ruler.
Late last year, pressure again mounted for an end to the sanctions. In November, Iraq demanded that the UN set a date for sanctions to be lifted. This call was supported by French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine. France and Egypt called for the amount of oil that Iraq is allowed to export every six months to be increased to US$5.2 billion.
Iraq charged in November that US inspectors working with UNSCOM were deliberately prolonging sanctions by refusing to certify that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the capacity to produce them, had been destroyed. UNSCOM arms inspection teams are dominated by US and British experts.
Iraq demanded the right to reject inspectors it considered security risks (a right that the US demands in relation to inspections of US chemical weapons facilities) and that the teams include more members drawn from the other three permanent members of the Security Council. Russia, France and China immediately volunteered more arms experts to join UNSCOM.
The US has taken such a hardline stance that it would require Iraq to dismantle its economy to comply. It is possible to make biological agents in a 10-litre home brew kit. Many fertilisers, pesticides and household chemicals can be used to make deadly weapons.
UNSCOM has used the fact that it has yet to find "unaccounted for" materials as evidence that Iraq is hiding the stuff. But 2945 experts have spent seven years delving into every nook and cranny, installing 24-hour video cameras and lights to record every industrial plant that could make a weapon, making over 2180 inspections, many arriving unannounced in its five special helicopters. US spy aircraft and satellites, able to read the number plate on a car, have not located the hiding places.
Iraq accused UNSCOM chairperson Richard Butler of adopting "the aggressive posture" of the US when, on January 27, he made headlines by claiming that Iraqi missiles were loaded with anthrax and botulism and ready "to blow away Tel Aviv". Russia and China demanded that Butler substantiate the claim before the UN Security Council.
In a letter published in the January 30 New York Times, Butler admitted he had "no such knowledge".
Presidential buildings
The immediate pretext for the US rush to war was Iraq's move to make eight buildings where Hussein resides and works off limits to UNSCOM inspectors. Citing the example of William Ritter, the head of a UNSCOM inspection team who is a former US military intelligence analyst, Iraq said it believed inspectors from the US were a threat to Hussein's security.
Such a position is not surprising, since high level US political and military figures have been openly debating the merits of "taking out" Hussein for years, more intensely in recent months.
Washington seized on this decision as an excuse for another round of bombing and to scuttle moves to relieve the pressure on Iraq.
The US has continually blocked a compromise formula devised by the Arab League that would allow UNSCOM investigators, supplemented by diplomats from members of the Security Council, access to all sites earlier placed off limits. Attempts by Russia, France and China to have UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan take this proposal to Baghdad were stalled by Washington.
On February 18, the US finally allowed Annan to present a version of the plan to Baghdad on the condition, announced US UN ambassador Bill Richardson, that "there should be no deals, no compromises". Richardson added the US reserves "the right to oppose any arrangement that does not protect Security Council resolutions and what we perceive to be America's national interest".
"America's national interest" means keeping Iraq prostrate before US military power, keeping Middle East oil firmly under US control and sending a message to Third World peoples and imperialist trading competitors that it is the world's only superpower.