THE SCOTSMAN: No morality in leaving Iraqis in the Republic of Fear (MUST, MUST READ!)

THE 199 MPs who voted against the Prime Minister’s hard-line stance against Iraq on Wednesday night - especially the 122 Labour MPs who rebelled against their own government - should read the following paragraphs and think again. It comes from The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack, an American expert on Iraq who has the evidence and testimony to back up everything he writes about the government of the Butcher of Baghdad.

"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents. This is a regime that will crush all of the bones in the feet of a two-year-old girl to force her mother to divulge her father’s whereabouts. This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm’s length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that will burn a person’s limbs off to force him to confess or comply.

"This is a regime that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid, either to break their will or simply as a means of execution. This is a regime that applies electric shocks to the bodies of its victims, particularly their genitals, with great creativity.

"This is a regime that in 2000 decreed that the crime of criticising the regime (which can be as harmless as suggesting that Saddam’s clothing does not match) would be punished by cutting off the offender's tongue.

"This is a regime that practices systematic rape against its female victims. This is a regime that will drag in a man’s wife, daughter or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him.

"This is a regime that will force a white-hot metal rod into a person’s anus or other orifices. This is a regime that employs thallium poisoning, widely considered one of the most excruciating ways to die.

"This is a regime that will behead a young mother in the street in front of her children because her husband was suspected of opposing the regime.

"This is a regime that used chemical warfare on its own Kurdish citizens - not just on the 15,000 killed and maimed at Halabja but on scores of villages all across Kurdistan.

"This is a regime that tested chemical and biological warfare agents on Iranian prisoners of war, using prisoners of war in controlled experiments to determine the best ways to disperse the agents to inflict the greatest damage."

Read his words again - if you can bear to do so - and wonder why any person of goodwill, especially those of goodwill and sense on the Left with a long commitment against dictatorship and for human rights, would not grasp any possibility of overthrowing Saddam Hussein with both hands, rather than oppose it. Liberating Iraq from a terrible tyranny might not be the sole purpose of any Anglo-American invasion. But it would be one of the beneficial consequences to follow military intervention devoutly to be wished and as good a reason as any for going to Baghdad. Those who oppose it condemn the Iraqi people to indefinite incarceration in the Republic of Fear, where barbarism rules. There is no morality in that.

There are, of course, many other brutal regimes in the world. But none is worse than Iraq; and, unlike most of today’s nasty dictatorships, Iraq is presided over by a tyrant determined to spread his writ throughout his region by force, then hold the rest of us to ransom. He has tried before (Iran, Kuwait) and would do so again if he had the means and opportunity to do so.

Inaction will ensure that he does, as sanctions slip and containment frays at the edges - as they have over the past decade, allowing Saddam to generate new oil revenues and rebuild his weapons of mass destruction. A tyrant who tortures his own people is a stain on humanity who should be removed. An expansionist tyrant whose aim is to extend his evil must be removed.

Be in no doubt that Saddam’s ambition, which he has held for over two decades and still holds, is for Iraq to become the regional superpower of the Gulf, to use its oil wealth to develop his military might and dominate the Arab world, with disastrous consequences for Israel and the West. He sees himself as the new Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin rolled into one; indeed, in a children’s book about Saladin, Saddam had his image used for the cover and was referred to as Saladin II throughout. The dreams of a megalomaniac? Not quite: he has put them into practice.

He has attempted to increase Iraq’s wealth and power by forcibly taking first the oil-rich Khuzestan province in Iran and then Kuwait. Both invasions were part of his grand plan for Iraqi hegemony in the Gulf. In that role, he would use the oil weapon to assert his interpretation of Iraqi interests against the West. His dream is to "liberate" Jerusalem, a goal on which he constantly dwells because it would confirm his desire to be an Arab leader of historic proportions. He has been prepared to sacrifice his people and his country’s economic development to build the most formidable military machine in the region (it still is, despite the sanctions). Since the inspectors left in 1998 he has used illegal oil revenues to go on a global spree to acquire the paraphernalia needed for weapons of mass destruction.

Only a massive American military build up stopped him from re-invading Kuwait in 1994. Only another huge Anglo-American military deployment on his borders today has convinced him to allow the weapons inspectors back in. Now he will play his traditional game of playing for time, as a myriad of "useful idiots" in the chancelleries of Paris and Bonn and the Commons in London play into his hands by arguing for delay and giving the inspectors more time.

Saddam knows the more time he is given, the more likely he is to survive. The Americans and the British cannot keep their huge forces in the region indefinitely. If the inspectors are given an open-ended mission, he will bide his time, cheating and retreating, until he is no longer surrounded by forces that can destroy him. Then he will renew his efforts to dominate the region, courtesy of the peace party.

"It is the combination of Saddam’s intentions and his ceaseless efforts to enhance Iraqi capabilities that is most frightening," writes Pollack.

Those who airily dismiss him as a threat - or someone that can be perpetually contained - are kidding themselves, playing into his hands and condemning millions of Arabs to an indefinite hell on earth. The same sort of folk used to say that Mein Kampf was just an inconsequential ramble, not Adolf Hitler's blueprint for European domination. Millions of innocent people paid with their lives in the Second World War for that mistake. How many millions more will die if we make the same mistake again? And how many more Iraqi children have to have their eyes gouged out before those of us who still have eyes to see wake up and support military action?

Another blast from the all-too-recent-past:

Nato's undeclared propaganda war

The Independent 6th April 1999

By Philip Hammond

It takes two sides to fight a propaganda war, yet critical commentary on the "war of words" has so far concentrated on the "tightly controlled" Yugoslav media. We have been shown clips from "Serb TV" and invited to scoff at their patriotic military montages, while British journalists cast doubt on every Yugoslav "claim".

But whatever one thinks of the Yugoslav media they pale into insignificance alongside the propaganda offensive from Washington, Brussels and London.

"They tell lies about us, we will go on telling the truth about them," says Defence Secretary George Robertson. Really? Nato told us the three captured US servicemen were United Nations peacekeepers. Not true. They told us they would show us two captured Yugoslav pilots who have never appeared. Then we had the story of the "executed" Albanian leaders - including Rambouillet negotiator Fehmi Agani - whose deaths are now unconfirmed.

When the Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, who was said to be in hiding, turned up on Yugoslav television condemning Nato bombing, the BBC contrived to insinuate that the pictures were faked, while others suggested Rugova must have been coerced, blackmailed, drugged, or at least misquoted.

They told us the paramilitary leader Arkan was in Kosovo, when he was appearing almost daily in Belgrade - and being interviewed by John Simpson there. They told us Pristina stadium had been turned into a concentration camp for 100,000 ethnic Albanians, when it was empty. Robertson posing for photographers in the cockpit of a Harrier can't have been propaganda. Only the enemy goes in for that sort of thing.

Nato's undeclared propaganda war is two-pronged. First, Nato has shamelessly sought to use the plight of Albanian refugees for its own purposes, cynically inflating the number of displaced people to more than twice the UN estimate.

Correspondents in the region are given star billing on BBC news, and are required not just to report but to share their feelings with us. As Peter Sissons asked Ben Brown in Macedonia: "Ben, what thoughts go through a reporter's mind seeing these sights in the dying moments of the 20th century?"

Reports from the refugee centres are used as justifications for Nato strategy. The most striking example was the video footage smuggled out of Kosovo said to show "mass murder". The BBC presented this as the "first evidence of alleged atrocities," unwittingly acknowledging that the allies had been bombing for 10 days without any evidence.

Indeed, for days, the BBC had been inviting us to "imagine what may be happening to those left in Kosovo". After watching the footage, Robin Cook apparently knew who had been killed, how they had died, and why. Above all, he knew that the video "underlines the need for military action".

The second line of attack is to demonise Milosevic and the Serbs, in order to deflect worries that the tide of refugees has been at least partly caused, by Nato's "humanitarian" bombing. Parts of Pristina have been flattened after being bombed every day for more than a week. Wouldn't you leave? And what about of thousands of Serbian refugees from Kosovo - are they being "ethnically cleansed", too? Sympathy does not extend to them, just as the 200,000 Serbian refugees from Krajina were ignored in 1995. Instead, the tabloids gloat "Serbs you right" as the missiles rain down.

The accusations levelled against the Serbs have escalated from "brutal repression" to "genocide", "atrocities" and "crimes against humanity", as Nato has sought to justify the bombing. Pointed parallels have been drawn with the Holocaust, yet no one seems to notice that putting people on a train to the border is not the same as putting them on a train to Auschwitz.

The media have taken their cue from politicians and left no cliche unturned in the drive to demonise Milosevic. The Yugoslav president has been described by the press as a "Warlord", the "Butcher of Belgrade", "the most evil dictator to emerge in Europe since Adolph Hitler", a "Serb tyrant" a "psychopathic tyrant" and a "former Communist hard-liner".

The Mirror also noted significantly that he smokes the same cigars as Fidel Castro. Just as they did with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf war, Panorama devoted a programme to "The Mind of Milosevic".

Several commentators have voiced their unease about the Nato action from the beginning. But press and TV have generally been careful to keep the debate within parameters of acceptable discussion, while politicians have stepped up the demonisation of the Serbs to try to drown out dissenting voices. The result is a confusingly schizophrenic style of reporting.

The rules appear to be that one can criticise Nato for not intervening early enough, not hitting hard enough, or not sending ground troops. Pointing out that the Nato intervention has precipitated a far worse crisis than the one it was supposedly designed to solve or that dropping bombs kills people are borderline cases, best accompanied by stout support for "our boys". What one must not do is question the motives for Nato going to war. Indeed, one is not even supposed to say that Nato is at war. Under image-conscious New Labour, actually going to war is fine, but using the term is not politically correct.

The limits of acceptable debate were revealed by the reaction to the broadcast by SNP leader Alex Salmond. Many of his criticisms of Nato strategy were little different from those already raised by others, but what provoked the Government's outrage was that he dared to compare the Serbs under Nato bombardment to the British in the Blitz. Tony Blair denounced the broadcast as "totally unprincipled", while Robin Cook called it "appalling", "irresponsible" and "deeply offensive".

The way Labour politicians have tried to sideline critics such as Salmond is similar to the way they have sought to bludgeon public opinion. The fact that Blair has felt it necessary to stage national broadcasts indicates the underlying insecurity of a government worried about losing public support and unsure of either the justification for or the consequences of its actions... <

Philip Hammond is a senior lecturer in Media Studies at South Bank University, London.

The Storm That Threatens Is Not What Kenneth Pollack Thinks
by Richard W. Behan

A review of THE THREATENING STORM: THE CASE FOR INVADING IRAQ
by Kenneth M. Pollack

Now, the face that I see in my mirror
More and more is a stranger to me.
More and more I can see there’s a danger
In becoming what I never thought I’d be.
--from a John Denver song

With broomstick rifles and saucepan helmets, American boys growing up during World War II imitated, in their back yards, the battlefield fighting. I was one of those boys, and we told each other with great pride and patriotism, “America has never started a war and we’ve never lost one.”

Twenty five years after that we lost our first war, and now we’re about to start our first, cheered on by President Bush and by Kenneth Pollack’s new book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq

Mr. Pollack’s habitat is wholly inside the Beltway. He is a product and a denizen of what Kevin Phillips called, in the title of a book, The Arrogant Capital. Governance in Washington DC has become a self-perpetuating permanent structure of self-serving lifetime professionals, elected and otherwise, and it is dominated by corporate campaign money and corporate lobbying. It has suffered a near-total disconnect from the American people at large, as a result.

Mr. Pollack’s book serves the Arrogant Capital well. The Gulf War in 1991, as Senator Robert Dole said, was about o-i-l. Clearly the pending invasion is, too. Direct American control of Iraqi oil reserves—second in magnitude only to Saudi Arabia’s—will bring pleasure and profit to our Petro-Administration and its client corporations. No informed, thinking citizen will deny this, but Mr. Pollack avoids it, speaking only to Saddam’s threat to our physical security.

Saddam Hussein is a psychopathic tinpot with no significant air power or navy, a decimated army, questionable inventories of chemical and biological weapons with no capability for intercontinental delivery, and five years away from his first nuclear device. By what conceivable means can he realistically threaten America, the most heavily armed nation on earth? This is left utterly unexplained in Mr. Pollack’s book.

The book’s case for invading Iraq is no better than President Bush’s, who hasn’t explained, either, but Pollack’s attempt is detailed and sophisticated. He demonizes Saddam in poetry (two stanzas) and prose (424 pages, and 44 more of footnotes), and shows that 3 presidents were so persuaded. Both Bush I and Clinton favored “regime change,” but they lacked popular support for an invasion. 9/11 changed all that, Pollack argues. (Awkwardly: he admits there is no linkage between Saddam and 9/11.) Bush II now has the people with him, the polling indicates (because of successful propagandizing?), and hence faces a choice:

1. Rebuild “containment.” With President Bush frantic to discredit it, this option is underway. It had not begun when Pollack wrote, but he had reasons to reject it, and recently called the current inspections a “trap.”

2. “Deterrence.” Drop the sanctions, pull back the troops, and count on Saddam’s fear of the U.S. (This would abandon the Kurds and the Shi’ites.)

3. “Covert action.” Assassination. (Saddam’s security system is too effective to make this possible.)

4. The “Afghan Approach.” With massive air strikes, encourage a factional revolt. (There is no effective counterforce in Iraq.)

5. Invasion. The “least best,” but the only alternative, really.

Pollack’s options are tactical alternatives to attain the strategic objective designed in the Arrogant Capital.... We need desperately to formulate other, peaceful, humane strategic objectives for our nation, but such rigorous discussion has been deflected. Instead the invasion of Iraq, wrapped in a fraudulent veil of physical security, has been sold to a decent and trusting public by the Bush Administration. An impolite term for this is propaganda, and Pollack’s book contributes to the effort.

He works hard at it. Pollack compares Iraq to Germany in 1938. Hitler was building the most fearsome war machine in history, and appeasement only made more costly his eventual defeat. Pollack sees Saddam as today’s Hitler.

It is not Saddam Hussein, however, who now commands the world’s mightiest military. George W. Bush does. And the threatening storm is not Saddam, either. It is America becoming what we never thought we’d be: a self-serving tyrant on a global scale, willing to unleash its colossus of armed might to advance its parochial, commercial interests. America is becoming on the world stage what Saddam has been in the Middle East.

The subtitle of Mr. Pollack’s book is a monstrous insult to the ideals of American people, and to our history. There is NO case to be made for invading Iraq, or anyone else. We don’t start wars, and American people are justifiably proud of that. Only a government disconnected from its people could propose doing so now—and only a heavily propagandized citizen could find this book appealing.

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