there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence. DOES IRAQ pose a significant threat to its neighbors or the U.S.?
The Bush administration portrays a war against Iraq as necessary for protecting the Middle East from Saddam Hussein: but Iraq's neighbours oppose a U.S. war. And that includes Kuwait, the nation that Iraq invaded in 1991.
The idea that Iraq has the capacity to or the interest in launching missiles against the U.S. isn't even taken seriously by the CIA. In March 200l, the CIA admitted that
"most agencies believe that Iraq is unlikely to test before 2015 any [intercontinental ballistic missiles] that would threaten the United States, even if UN prohibitions were eliminated or significantly reduced in the next few years."
In an attempt to tie the war on Iraq to the U.S. "war on terror," Bush has repeatedly raised the spectre of ties between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Again, this is not only far-fetched but unsubstantiated. Iraq is a secular regime, hostile to Islamic fundamentalist opposition, while alQaeda has been a critic of Iraq's secularism.
But beyond the fact that Iraq and alQaeda are natural enemies rather than allies, no evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda has been turned up even though the FBl and
"I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States," said Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who studied the rise of the al-Qaeda netBUT DIDN'T Saddam "Hussein gas his own people?
This is the most cynical reason given because the U.S. was good friends with Saddam Hussein when the Iraqi military used poison gas to suppress the Kurdish opposition in 1988, killing up to
What's more, the U.S. had supplied Iraq with the precursors necessary to build bio chemical weapons - anthrax, botulism, and a slew of other toxic stuff. After the Halabja "incident," the U.S. downplayed the attack.
But the hypocrisy runs much deeper still The U.S. supplied Iraq with all sorts of chemical and biological weaponry long after it knew that Saddam was using these weapons in its war against Iran.
"The U.S. Secretary of State acknowlNo evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda has turned up despite the vigorous efforts of FBI and CIA That's ... edged that he was aware of reports of Iraqi use of chemical weapons from 1983, and a United Nations team confirmed Iraqi use in a report of 16 March 1984," according to Labour Against War, a British antiwar organisation that produced its own "dossier" to
•provided "crop-spraying" helicopters to Iraq (subsequently used in chemical
• gave Iraq access to intelligence information that allowed Iraq to "calibrate" its mustard attacks on Iranian troops (1984),
seconded its air force officers to work War, forcing 1.5 million people to flee their homes. SO IF IT'S NOT about weapons of mass destruction, why is the U.S. pursuing war against Iraq?
September 10 article in the Aboon Globe explains how the
most hawkish players Washington think tanks and military circles - once relegated to the margins - are on the verge of making their grand designs into official policy. It's worth quoting at length:
Iraq, the hawks argue, is just the first piece of the puzzle. After an ouster of. • • •• Hussein, they say, the United States will have more leverage to act against Syria and Iran, will be in a better position to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will be able to rely less on Saudi oil.
"The goal is not just a new regime in Iraq. The goal is a new Middle East," said Raad Alkadiri, an Iraq analyst with PFC, a Washington-based energy consulting organSHOR
"The goal has been and remains one of the main driving factors of preemptive action against lraq."
A friendly Iraq - home to the world's second-largest oil reserves - would provide an alternative to Saudi Arabia for basing U.S. troops. Its oil reserves would make Saudi • • • • Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter, less important in setting prices, he said
In general, others contend, a U.S.-allied Iraq could work to diminish the influence of OPEC, long dominated by Saudi Arabia, over oil supplies and prices. This kind of honest talk is kept to a minimum, however.
"The administration doesn't want oil to be part of the war discussion because it undercuts the reasoning that the rush to war is because of an imminent [Iraqi] military threat," Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, told the San Francisco Chronicle
"If the real motives were made clear -clausti alstance February 2003 17
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