Iraq Invades Kuwait Beginning the Gulf War – Page 2

Fabricated Report of Iraqi Troop buildup

The following description is taken from Swans.com:

The U.S. administration made the claim that the Iraqis had amassed troops and tanks along the Saudi border and were poised to invade the kingdom. This claim was widely relayed by the main media. The only problem with these allegations was that they were utterly false. The former Soviet Union had provided satellite pictures, taken on September 11 and 13, 1990, of the border (actually, they were selling the pictures for $1,500 each) that clearly indicated that no concentration of Iraqi troops and equipment was in sight. Major news organizations like ABC News (Sam Donaldson) or The Washington Post (Bob Woodward) sat on the pictures and never used them. The only U.S. news organization that indeed published them was a regional paper, The St. Petersburg Times (Florida). Those pictures clearly showed, however, the concentration of U.S. troops on the Saudi side of the border! John R. MacArthur (and Ben Haig Bagdikian) documented this falsity in their book, “Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,” University of California Press; reprint edition 1993; ISBN: 0520083989. MacArthur also cited these facts in his above-mentioned speech. Brian Becker debunked this claim in detail in his report. Jean Heller, the Editor of The St. Petersburg Times hired a U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Reagan Administration, and a former image specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Peter Zimmerman, to analyze the satellite photographs, to no avail. There simply were no Iraqi troops poised to invade Saudi Arabia.

The “Incubator Story”

The following description is taken from HERE.

“The readers may recall the testimony before Congress on October 10, 1990 of a 15-year old Kuwaiti woman, Nayirah (her last name was kept confidential). She had witnessed a terrifying deed by the Iraqi invaders of Kuwait. In her own words: ‘I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.’ The story about the 312 babies made the news with a vengeance. President Bush (that would be George I) repeated it. The line in the sand was drawn. Like Racak, it turned public opinion and Congress on the path of war. Months later we learned that Nayirah was the daughter of a Kuwaiti prince, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Ambassador to the U.S. She had left Kuwait before the Iraqi invasion. The story had been entirely fabricated by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton. Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who chaired the hearing was co-chair (with Republican Rep. John Porter) of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation that occupied free office space in Hill & Knowlton’s Washington, DC office.” One of the best documentation of this hoax can be found in a fascinating book, “Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry” by John C. Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, 1995; (Common Courage Press; ISBN: 1-56751-060-4). Stauber and Rampton are Executive Director and Editor, respectively, of PR Watch, a newsletter published by the Center for Media and Democracy. An excerpt of the book on this PR issue was published in June 1996 by Claire W. Gilbert in her fine publication Blazing Tattles and can be read on line HERE and HERE. It’s an extraordinary read. Last May 2002, the former Hill & Knowlton staffer who was handling Nayirah made the claim that the story was true in O’Dwyer’s PR Daily, an online access to the inside news of Public Relations but was forcefully rebuked by PR Watch Editor, Sheldon Rampton.

The Devastating Effects of Sanctions

Four days after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, on August 6, 1990, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 661, imposing comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and creating a committee to monitor them.

The U.S. agreed to a cease fire with Iraq in February 1991. The cease-fire agreement required Iraq to eliminate its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and missiles with a range over 150 kilometers. Set forth in U.N. security resolution 687, the agreement tied the lifting of U.N. sanctions to the destruction of Iraq’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” arsenal. The no-fly zones over two-thirds of Iraq (north and south) were imposed by the U.S., France, and Britain a year and a half after the Gulf War. The United Nations never sanctioned them, and France has since withdrawn from participation. The no-fly zones violate international law. According to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, Iraq has the right to defend itself, including from U.S. and British overflights of the no-fly zones.

The United Nations “Oil for Food” program became operational in 1996 and was instituted by the Iraq Sanctions Committee. All contracts for aid (emergency supplies as well as infrastructure equipment) requested by Iraq had to be approved by the Sanctions Committee. Each member country could place a hold on any contract it considered to have “dual use,” that is, both civilian and military use. The U.S. repeatedly exercised its prerogative to withhold supplies to Iraq, vital to the civilian population.

In an article, “Throttling Iraq,” published in the Sept-Oct 2000 New Left Review, Tariq Ali described the circumstances confronting the civilian population of Iraq as follows:

A land that once had high levels of literacy and an advanced system of health-care has been devastated by the West. Its social structure is in ruins, its people are denied the basic necessities of existence, its soil is polluted by uranium-tipped warheads. According to UN figures of last year, some 60 per cent of the population have no regular access to clean water, and over 80 per cent of schools need substantial repairs. In 1997 the FAO reckoned that 27 percent of Iraqis were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and 70 percent of all women were anaemic. UNICEF reports that in the southern and central regions which contain 85 percent of the country’s population, infant mortality has doubled compared to the pre-Gulf war period. The death-toll caused by deliberate strangulation of economic life cannot yet be estimated with full accuracy–that will be a task for historians. According to the most careful authority, Richard Garfield, ‘a conservative estimate of “excess deaths” among under five-year-olds since 1991 would be 300,000’, while UNICEF–reporting in 1997 that ‘4,500 children under the age of five are dying each month from hunger and disease’- reckons the number of small children killed by the blockade at 500,000. Other deaths are more difficult to quantify, but as Garfield points out, ‘UNICEF’s mortality rates represent only the tip of the iceberg as to the enormous damage done to the four out of five Iraqis who do survive beyond their fifth birthday’. In late 1998 the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, former Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, an Irishman, resigned from his post in protest against the blockade, declaring that total deaths that it had caused could be upwards of a million. When his successor Hans von Sponeck had the temerity to include civilian casualties from Anglo-American bombing raids in his brief, the Clinton and Blair regimes demanded his dismissal. He too resigned, in late 1999, explaining that his duty had been to the people of Iraq, and that ‘every month Iraq’s social fabric shows bigger holes’. These holes have continued to tear under the Oil-For-Food sanctions in place since 1996, which allow Iraq $4 billion of petroleum exports a year, when a minimum of $7 billion is needed even for greatly reduced services. After a decade, the throttling of Iraq by the US and UK has achieved a result without parallel in modern history. This is now a country that, in Garfield’s words, ‘is the only instance of a sustained, large increase in mortality in a stable population of more than two million in the last two hundred years’. (link)

In an interview for Zmagazine, Phyliss Bennis similarly explained the U.S. sanctions strategy as follows (link):

“…the targets included water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, electrical generating plants, communications centers, on the theory, I suppose, of dual use, that the Iraqi military also needs clean water, sewage treatment, communications, etc. and therefore the fact that the 23 million people of Iraq might be denied clean water was considered an acceptable consequence of that. So there were very direct efforts made by the U.S., and they were very successful efforts, to destroy these kinds of infrastructure centers. The result has been absolute devastation for the civilian population at enormous cost in the future to be repaired. As they erode further, the cost of rebuilding them of course will climb even higher. During this last set of military strikes, Operation Desert Fox, last December, at least one oil refinery was deliberately targeted on the grounds that that particular refinery’s output was being used for smuggling. Whether it was or not, I don’t know. But whether it was or not, it is a violation of international law to deliberately target an economic target, as was chosen here, meaning that everyone in the Pentagon involved in that decision is guilty of a war crime. The inability of Iraq to make those repairs means that the continuation of malnutrition, of inadequate water supplies, and most importantly, perhaps, the largest number of casualties today, is the result of dirty, contaminated water because of inadequate sewage treatment and water treatment facilities. What that means is that children are dying in Iraq of eminently treatable diseases: diarrhea, typhoid, and other contaminated-water-borne diseases, in a country whose advanced health care system was so developed before the sanctions regime and before the bombings that the most important problem faced by Iraqi pediatricians was childhood obesity.”

That the U.S. intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure, including water treatment plants and that this would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (mostly children under the age of five), is not in dispute.

“Several United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents clearly and thoroughly prove, in the words of one author, “beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country’s water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway” (The Progressive, August 2001).”(http://www.geocities.com/iraqinfo/sanctions/sarticles9/mandf.htm)

High ranking U.S. Government officials were openly sanguine about the deaths of Iraqi children resulting from U.S. bombings and sanctions, as in this excerpt from an interview
by Leslie Stahl of Madeleine Albright, broadcast on 60 Minutes on 5/12/96 (VIDEO):

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

The inescapable lesson is that a United States Secretary of State, on the one hand, and some groups that the U.S. government condemns as terrorist, on the other hand, share a common rationale–a belief that the death of innocents, even children, is an acceptable price to pay for one’s political goals. Reporters and editors for the mainstream media are well trained not to make such elementary observations, and as an exercise in patriotism find them inconceivable.

United Nations weapons inspectors were ordered out of Iraq in 1998, not by the Iraqi government, but by the United States. In the words of Scott Ritter, a former U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq:

“The U.S. ordered the inspectors out 48 hours before they initiated Operation Desert Fox military action that didn’t have the support of the U.N. Security Council and which used information gathered by the inspectors, to target Iraq.”http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/17/saddam.ritter.cnna/

U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives

A Los Angeles Times article dated October 27 2002 appearing on the first page of the Business Section provided a possible agenda for the Bush administration for the Middle East. The article, “Iraq Regime Change Could Weaken OPEC” included the byline, “Restoring the country’s oil production capacity might be enough to break the cartel’s grip on world markets,” and included this explanation:

Some industry analysts say the restoration of Iraq’s production capability over the next decade might be enough to break OPEC’s grip on world oil markets, even if Iraq remained a nominal member.
“It’s tough to see Iraq under any circumstances really participating closely with OPEC in the next five years,” said analyst Raad Alkadiri of Petroleum Finance Co. in Washington. “If you have a government in Iraq that is closely tied to the United States and dependent on the United States for its continued power, it is conceivable that it will feel pressure to leave OPEC.”
U.S. Undersecretary of State Grant Aldonas cited the potential economic payoff during a recent trip to Poland. A regime change, he said in Warsaw, would “open up the spigot on Iraqi oil, which would have a profound effect in terms of the performance of the world economy.”

The Washington Post offered a similar analysis in its September 15th, 2002 article entitled, “In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue” [16]. The lead paragraph explains that:

A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries, and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition.

The article also includes some insights into the mechanisms employed by the Bush Administration to leverage international support for an invasion of Iraq:

The importance of Iraq’s oil has made it potentially one of the administration’s biggest bargaining chips in negotiations to win backing from the U.N. Security Council and Western allies for President Bush’s call for tough international action against Hussein. All five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — have international oil companies with major stakes in a change of leadership in Baghdad.”It’s pretty straightforward,” said former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of forcing Hussein from power. “France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we’ll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them.”
But he added: “If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them.”

Concluding Remarks

Saddam Hussein does not deserve support from the progressive community, but Saddam Hussein is not Iraq. It is the people of Iraq who will do most of the dying when and if the U.S. attacks them, and the people of Iraq deserve our support.

The claim that Iraq poses a grave danger to the rest of the world, and to the United States in particular, is so ridiculous that it would not even merit the attention of a rebuttal except for the fact that U.S. government propaganda has been so successful in fabricating that threat. Part of the propaganda success stems from completely unsupported claims that Saddam Hussein is in league with al Qaeda. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has found no credible connection between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden and/or al Qaeda. Moreover, such an alliance is implausible. Iraq is a secular state whereas al Qaeda is fundamentalist, and the two do not mix well.

Militarily, Iraq is far weaker in 2003 than it was in 1990 when the United States defeated Iraq’s armies in a matter of hours. With at least 90% of its pre-Gulf War weaponry destroyed, Iraq is completely vulnerable to outside attack and poses no realistic threat to the United States, or to other countries. The U.S. accusation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction (whether they actually exist or not) is subterfuge for the Bush administration’s real agenda: control of the oil resources of the Middle East.

The hypocrisy of U.S. policy toward Iraq may be seen by comparing it to U.S. policy toward other countries. For example, Israel possesses nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Israel has violated United Nations resolutions; it has threatened and attacked neighboring countries; and Israel is guilty of extensive human rights violations. Yet, there is no talk from Washington of weapons inspections in Israel, much less of an invasion of that country. Indeed, the U.S. arms Israel and provides it with massive economic and political support.

The ultimate hypocrisy in Washington’s focus on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is that the U.S. itself leads the world in the possession and production of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. has weapons of every imaginable variety, including a nuclear arsenal sufficient to obliterate human life on this planet. If weapons of mass destruction were a real concern to Washington, weapons inspections and disarmament would begin at home.

References