("Quid coniuratio est?")
RETROSPECT ON IRAQ vs. U.N. (Round 1)
After the smoke had cleared, we last saw the champ strutting off, leaving Iraq stretched out flat on the canvas, apparently K.O.ed.
Yet the contender now has amazed us all by rising from the canvas and signalling that he is ready for more. So before we go into round 2 of the championship fight, let us take a moment to analyze the action thus far:
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Let us first seek the opinion of retired Brigadier General Russell S. Bowen (The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed, Carson City: America West, 1991) as to how he sees the first round.
BOWEN: On July 25, 1990, eight days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie met with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. The following is a transcript of their discussion:
GLASPIE: I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. As you know, I have lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your other threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship not confrontation regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?
HUSSEIN: [sounds like, "Who's sane?"] As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days: I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. When we [the Iraqis] meet [with the Kuwaitis] and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.
GLASPIE: What solutions would be acceptable?
HUSSEIN: If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab, our strategic goal in our war with Iran, we will make concessions [to the Kuwaitis]. But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq [i.e. including Kuwait], then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. What is the United States' opinion on this?
GLASPIE: (Pause, then she speaks very carefully) We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.
BOWEN: On September 2, 1990, one month after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, British journalists obtained a tape and transcript of the above Hussein-Glaspie meeting. Astounded, they confronted Ms. Glaspie.
JOURNALIST 1: (Holding the transcripts up) Are the transcripts correct, Madam Ambassador? (Ambassador Glaspie did not respond).
JOURNALIST 2: You knew Saddam was going to invade [Kuwait], but you didn't warn him not to. You didn't tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite, that America was not associated with Kuwait.
JOURNALIST 1: You encouraged this aggression -- his invasion. What were you thinking?
GLASPIE: Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.
JOURNALIST 1: You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed, he would give up his Iran [Shatt al Arab waterway] goal for the "whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be." You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as an historic part of their country!
BOWEN: (Ambassador Glaspie said nothing, pushing past the two journalists to leave.)
JOURNALIST 1: America green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signalling Saddam that some aggression was okay, that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumeilah oil field, the disputed border strip and the gulf islands, territories claimed by Iraq?
BOWEN: (Again, Ambassador Glaspie said nothing as a limousine door slammed and the car drove off.)
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Let's bring in Sherman Skolnick, of the Citizens Committee to Clean Up the Courts. Sherman, I understand that beneath the surface, President Bush and Saddam Hussein were long-time business partners. Could you tell us about that?
SKOLNICK: The press has published, without too many details, that there was $200 billion in oil shipments from Iraq to the West over the past five years and that Saddam Hussein siphoned off kickbacks of 5 percent. That's $10 billion.
The press did not see fit to mention -- at any time -- who [else] was involved in those kickbacks. It was none other than Saddam's partner in private business ventures -- George Herbert Walker Bush.
["Major Media Hides Bush-Saddam-BCCI Kickback Scam". The Spotlight, August 19, 1991.]
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Hmmmm..... But what about those news stories we kept hearing about, well, for example, that Iraqi soldiers were tearing babies out of incubators and stealing the incubators? Let's ask Robert Parry, author of Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1992). What about those incubator babies?
PARRY: A key witness, who alleged that babies were left to die after being pulled from incubators, was introduced at congressional hearings only as 'Nayirah,' her last name withheld supposedly for security reasons. [The witness was,] in reality, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington... Exhaustive studies of the incubator issue by Middle East Watch and other human rights groups concluded that the incubator claims were false propaganda. However, as the war clouds built in late 1990, the charges were effectively exploited by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile and repeated by President Bush in speeches, whetting the public's demand for revenge against Saddam Hussein and his army.
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O.K. But at least it was a good, clean fight. We "whupped 'em good." Right? Let's ask Dr. Helen Caldicott. What about it, Dr. Caldicott. Was it a good clean fight?
CALDICOTT: How can this country, with such noble principles, have gone so astray? How can they have gone to the [Persian] Gulf, using the weapons of highest technology in the history of the human race, and slaughter men who are running away? Who are driving their trucks, getting away? Retreating.
How could they have buried 250 people alive? Because they wanted to drive their tanks over a trench full of men.
"Oh, well," a Pentagon spokesman said. "Well. It doesn't matter. You either bayonet people or you shoot them or you bury them alive. It doesn't make any difference."
According to the Nuremberg principles, that man would be hanged! (I don't believe in capital punishment.)
But where the hell has this country gone? Of the people who were killed who were civilians in Iraq, 60 percent were children. With their legs blown off. And the men who flew the planes came back and said, "It was a wonderful mission!" And they didn't see the blood. And the whole country cheered and flew flags and tied yellow ribbons on everything they could find.
["The New World Order". Talk by Dr. Helen Caldicott. Available from Pacifica Archives.]
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Hmmm.... I see that round 2 is beginning. The combatants are approaching each other. So we'll have to thank our panel of experts and now we take you to ringside, where round 2 is about to begin...
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."