People's Democracy

Bush-Blair Want Blood At All Costs

Nagen Das from London

 DESPITE the fact that millions of people around the world want peace - as demonstrated by opinion polls and anti-war marches in different cities of the world - George Bush and Tony Blair are bent on wanting blood. They have dismissed the twelve thousand page Iraqi dossier on weapons in less than twelve minutes. Bush is now ready to order thousands of his troops in the Gulf states to kill and maim millions of Iraqi’s, including women and children, for no reason. 

This is clear, going by the developments which took place at the UN Security Council on December 19, when the UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix give his first assessment of inspections in Iraq.  The subsequent statements given by the US and Britain, make it clear that both these nations are preparing to attack Iraq by the end of January (some British newspapers have already mentioned the date which could be around January 27). Both these countries, which do not care to tell the world what evidence they hold for launching a totally unjustified attack on any country, at the moment are making brisk preparations to strike.

More so, they have ignored the appeal made by the chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to provide all evidence they have to his team so that the inspections can achieve something concrete. The British prime minister Tony Blair has asked the British forces to be prepared for the possibility of war against Iraq.  In the Bush administration’s first detailed pronouncements on Iraq’s dossier on its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programme, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell declared that Baghdad had missed its final chance to avert a war.

With the deployments currently under way, president George Bush could go to war soon after January 27, when the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is to report to the UN security council on the progress of the inspections.  As Bush gave his formal assent to deploying a further 50,000 US soldiers in the Gulf, Blair delivered his Christmas message to UK forces in which he “apologised” for the uncertainty they faced but said it was inevitable.

Strange, a premier of a country himself is pushing his troops into war and then apologising. Blair seems to be making a desperate bid to turn the people’s attention from the messy affairs of 10, Downing Street, which include revelations of his wife’s dealing with a conman in purchasing prime real estate in London, and the growing opposition to the introduction of  new fees for higher education. 

“At the moment we simply don’t know whether Iraq will be found in breach of the United Nations resolution,” Blair told the British Forces Broadcasting Service. “If it is, and if we discover they have been refusing to cooperate properly with the UN inspectors, then we have always made clear that we will go back to the security council, that we will be prepared to use force.” Later, Blair stressed that war could be avoided if president Saddam Hussein cooperated. On what it is not clear!

Speculation that the end of January would be a key moment in decision-making was heightened when officials in Berlin confirmed they had received an American request to provide troops to guard US bases in Germany at that time. Washington asked for about 2,000 soldiers. Germany is expected to formally answer the request in the New Year.

The US currently has 71,000 troops, mostly army and air force, stationed around Germany. Despite German government opposition to a war with Iraq that has strained relations with Washington, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said last month that Germany will grant over-flight and transit rights to US forces.

BLIX DEMAND

Both the US and Britain seem to have become so deaf and blind in their greed for oil in Iraq, that they are not even prepared to listen to the UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.

Blix has said that  the United States and Britain should give United Nations weapons inspectors more intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. “If the UK and the US ... have evidence, then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where this stuff is,” Blix told BBC radio.  The appeal by Blix followed the statement by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he accused Iraq of “deception” and “lying” in the 12,000-page weapons inventory it handed over to the UN.  In his first appraisal of the dossier, Blix noted that Iraq maintained it had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs “and that none have been designed, procured, produced or stored” since the last inspections regime ended four years ago.

Blix said that western governments claimed to have evidence to the contrary, but that inspectors were currently not in a position “to confirm Iraq’s statements, nor in possession of evidence to disprove it.” The inspectors “don’t get all the support we need” from western governments, he said.  But America is just interested in invoking the trigger phrase for war on Iraq, accusing Baghdad of being in “material breach” of its UN obligations to fully disclose its weapons arsenal.

But what is baffling is that neither the Americans nor their ‘more loyal than the king’ British government have been able to spell out what has been the breach committed by Iraq.

A bellicose atmosphere was also evident in London where the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, warned that Iraq was inching towards conflict. “There has already been one trigger pulled. They now, in a sense, have their finger on the other trigger,” he said.

The weapons inspectors can also expect to come under increasing pressure, with the US and Britain calling for more regular reports to the security council. The next report from the inspectors is expected in January.

REAL REASON ATTACK

Renowned scholar and one of the leading opponents of US foreign policy, Noam Chomsky, during his recent visit to London has made clear, the real intention behind the US-Britain joint efforts to attack Iraq.

“The US-British power now is globally dominant on the surface. Many people across the world agree with Nelson Mandela that there’s a major threat to world peace and it comes from the dangerous policies of trying to bully others that come from Washington. Even the US national press recognises this. A story in the national press a couple of weeks ago pointed out that “the world is now more concerned about the unbridled use of American power than about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein”, Chomsky said, exposing the real intention behind attacking Iraq.

He said there was a mini-war going on between the US and Britain over the Middle East, particularly over oil. Britain recognised that the “economic imperialism of US business interests is proactive under a cloak of nebulae and avuncular nationalism that is trying to elbow us out”, but at the moment both of them want to share the spoils from Iraq, for that they are united.

WORRIES

International aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the event of a war in Iraq, which could leave millions without food or shelter.  UNICEF, the children’s charity, has already begun to move supplies to neighbouring countries while the World Food Programme is moving food it intends to provide for nearly a million people for one month. Aid officials say the United Nations’ ‘Oil for Food’ programme - under which tens of millions of Iraqis live on meagre rations - would be suspended during any military action, leaving them facing starvation or reliant on emergency food aid.

The UN, which drew up a request at a meeting in Geneva last week for $37.3 million from donor countries to tackle the issue, is increasingly worried about the scale of any potential disaster.

In Britain, Clare Short’s Department for International Development admitted last night that it was now holding ‘regular discussions on general contingency preparedness’ for a range of possible outcomes in the Middle East.