----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Robert Dean" <qualiall_2 at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Cc: <wny-discuss at lists.riseup.net> Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 9:34 AM Subject: U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq Including Big Invasion Next Year
<.....> But senior officials now acknowledge that any offensive would probably be delayed until early next year, allowing time to create the right military, economic and diplomatic conditions. These include avoiding summer combat in bulky chemical suits, preparing for a global oil price shock, and waiting until there is progress toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. <.....>
=================
It would be hard as hell for the US to attack Iraq from anywhere other than SA and if they acquiesce while their tweaked UN 242 plan is floundering SA itself could buckle under the strain....
THE ROVING EYE The age of the human missile By Pepe Escobar
BAGHDAD, AMMAN, BEIRUT - One prays that George W Bush and the Pentagon army of Scorpion Kings are ready to really grasp Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's message delivered to Crawford, Texas, that the Arab world just cannot take any of these developments anymore: Israel's and Ariel Sharon's military despotism, the US endorsement of these policies, and the double standard that the Bush camp applies to dealing with Arabs and Israelis.
In blunt terms not usually associated with the politely circuituous Arab way of weaving thoughts, Arab diplomats confirmed to Asia Times Online that an increasingly impatient Prince Abdullah told Bush that "moderate" - ie, pro-American - Arab regimes are about to crack up. Most of them have been reaching the breaking point under the stresses of two extremely powerful opposing forces: the demands of the Arab street to open the borders with Israel so that jihadis can go to fight alongside the Palestinians, and American pressure on Arab governments to "understand" Israel's position.
After snubbing the whole planet and even the president of the United States himself, Sharon was given an extra week to wind up his assault on the West Bank. The Arab world couldn't have been more petrified when Bush called Sharon "a man of peace". Abdelbari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arab Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, wrote that "calling Sharon a man of peace - when people of conscience all over the world are demanding that he be tried as a war criminal after the massacres he has committed - is a declaration of contempt for all Arabs and Muslims, an insult to their feelings, and a total endorsement of the Israeli ethnic cleansing policy currently being enforced in the West Bank".
American inaction may be explained by the lack of political will in Washington to do anything substantial as Republicans are now competing with Democrats for the Jewish vote - a much easier task after the emergence of Christian fundamentalists and their brand new Jewish friends. But America may have to pay a very high price for its inaction - as Prince Abdullah told Bush.
The "Arab mandate" carried by Prince Abdullah, based on his "land for peace" proposal approved at the Beirut summit, goes straight to the point. Israel just has to remove its troops and its illegal settlements from occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza - and keep the rest of the country. Arab governments and the Arab street simply cannot understand why the US cannot accept this fair deal. Israel is the only remaining colonial power in the world today. The West Bank and Gaza cover only 22 percent of historic Palestine. Eight years after the Oslo Agreement, the Palestinian Authority - now destroyed by Israeli tanks and missiles - has jurisdiction over no more than a dozen city limits. That's all. And even that can be cancelled by the drop of a missile.
No one knows yet how to fit Prince Abdullah's "land for peace" proposal with Sharon's proposal of an international conference on the Middle East that excludes big players Europe, the United Nations, Russia, Syria and Lebanon: a conference "with no partners and no participants", as expressed by Yossi Sarid, a member of the opposition Meretz Party in Israel. Sharon wants the US to hold a diluted conference attended only by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Morocco. Sharon keeps saying the West Bank is not occupied at all. The insult is not only to history, but to successive US governments in favor of a "land for peace" deal based on UN Resolution 242 - basically the model for Prince Abdullah's proposal.
Torrents of analysis all over the Arab world - from crude Baghdad statements to well-articulated pieces in Lebanon - keep stressing the same points. Sharon does not believe in an equitable peace agreement with his nemesis Arafat - nor with anyone else for that matter. He will refuse to implement any UN resolution. His conference idea was a trick to cover up for the Jenin camp massacre. He may be planting the idea now to resurrect it later - maybe after Iraq is again attacked by the US.
But Prince Abdullah may have scored a point if he managed to frame his message in the one and only language Bush actually understands: anti-terrorism. A package solution to the Middle East could defuse an unbearable tension that can turn against the US at the drop of a new suicide bombing - and it could even give the Bush administration the illusion of a window of opportunity to attack Iraq. It would be just an illusion because there are two priorities now for the Arab world - as they were determined in Beirut: a solution to the Palestine tragedy, and a push to reintegrate Iraq with the world.
The emergence of the Arab street is the great phenomenon of these recent tragic weeks - be it a result of Baghdad's carefully orchestrated demonstrations, Beirut's spontaneous middle-class gatherings, or eruptions of anger in the Gulf. The streets are claiming for democratization. The US might enhance its moral stature to sky-high limits and do a service to mankind by really - not rhetorically - supporting political participation in all Arab countries, something that could only happen alongside a just solution to the Palestine issue.
It's very convenient for the West to forget that virtually all Arab modernist and democratic movements were ruthlessly destroyed by the British and French colonial empires in the 19th century, and then under the tracks of US-made Israeli tanks in the second part of the 20th century. Israel's new colonialism - subordinated and endorsed by Washington's imperial stance - is now provoking another even more negative effect. As Lebanese writer Saad Mehio puts it: "Is it a coincidence that Arafat suddenly became a heroic figure not only for the Palestinians but for the entire Arab nation? Is it a coincidence that Arabs now disregard Saddam's brutality and are reconsidering Osama bin Laden's views?"
Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American living in Ramallah, frames the choice: "Either the Palestinian struggle will end with the fate that befell native Americans, or the Palestinians, these suffering 6 million people, will be the Achilles heel of a much larger movement that will tear the US hegemony in the Middle East at its seams."
The eventual explosion of the Arab street may not lead to military coups but to something even more terrible: the age of the suicide bomber. The Arab street will inevitably be drawn to nationalist or religious political forces for which suicide bombing is a viable and effective strategic option. In a sense, if the message of Prince Abdullah is not understood, maybe before the end of 2002 we will see "human missiles" stressing the point in latitudes everywhere.
The cause of so much grief in the Middle East is not suicide bombing - as the Arab street and a great deal of non-Arab homes all over the world are saying. The cause is Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine.
Israel arrested 1,500, detained 3,000 and killed more than 250 Palestinians during the "Protective Wall" campaign. Tourism fell 47 percent. To accomplish this feat, Israel spent US$3 billion that it does not have. Sharon - born in 1928 in Palestine - claims he has "dismantled the infrastructure of suicide bombers". Palestinians say the real purpose was to wreck their institutions - as the images repeatedly broadcasted by Arab TV networks (but not on Western networks) demonstrate - and to destroy hopes of independence.
The behavior of a man and a government utterly without humanity, though, won't stop the bombing - as intellectuals in the Arab world have been stressing: it will bring more bombing. Palestinians keep being assassinated by helicopter-launched missiles. It's hard not to equate Palestinian resistance with Iraqi resistance, as it was formulated this week by Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Baghdad: if the Americans invade Iraq, "they will have to fight each and every individual".
What happened in the Jenin refugee camp may eventually constitute Israel's ultimate nightmare. For the Palestinians, Jenin is a second Sabra and Chatila. The pattern seems to be exactly the same. Yehyia Mustapha, head of the Popular Committee of Sabra and Shatila, says "it's the same man and the same attitude".
In September 1982, Israeli troops surrounded Sabra and Chatila camps on the edge of Beirut. Ariel Sharon, then defense minister and architect of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, ordered Lebanese Christian militiamen to destroy "Palestinian terrorists" supposedly still in the camps. In the three-day massacre, more than 1,000 people - including women and children - were butchered. No wonder Sharon is hated in Lebanon as the "butcher of Beirut". An investigation in Israel attributed to him "personal responsibility" for the massacre. He had to resign as defense minister in 1983 - but shame did not prevent a political comeback as minister and then prime minister.
The Israeli army's carefully orchestrated public relations machine went into overdrive talking about "hard fighting" in Jenin, in which "the most humane army in the world" did not intentionally harm a single civilian. UN special envoy Torje Larsen talked instead about "genocide" - a destruction "totally unacceptable and horrific beyond belief", and for this he is now persona non grata in Israel. Sharon is now in fact doing everything to sabotage the work of the UN fact-finding mission which should be arriving this Saturday in Palestine.
The truth is buried among the corpses. But disturbing facts are emerging. According to anonymous Israeli soldiers, after 13 of them were killed in a booby-trapped bomb and crossfire ambush, the army panicked and went on a mad rampage. Palestinian residents of Jenin have exactly the same version of events.
The Israeli army didn't allow ambulances, rescue teams or a single journalist into Jenin - during and 11 interminable days after the "hard fighting". Soldiers even shot at ambulances from the UN Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank and destroyed the agency's three ambulances in Jenin. No one was allowed to bring medication, water, or food, and later search for bodies buried under the rubble.
At least the Independent Media Center (IMC) in Palestine - a web-based, alternative news network - was just a few days old when Israel launched the invasion. IMC Palestine went on doing Internet for the people, by the people: anyone was loading text, photos, audio and video onto the web, trying to convey the extent of the horror in Jenin.
Khaled Abu Sereyah, a 21-year-old refugee from the refugee camp from hell, summed it all up: "Now it's too late. The destruction has already happened. The world ignored us and now all they want to do is have meetings and useless investigations." The cynicism is nothing less than revolting: Israel blocked access to Jenin and then started arguing that no one has the right to say what happened - including civilians who miraculously escaped - because no one had seen it with his own eyes. According to Israelis opposed to Sharon's policies, inside Israel the disinformation campaign almost reached the point of asserting that Palestinians had blown up their own houses over their families.
Jordanian professor Naseer Alomari echoes millions as he condemns the "hijacking of America's war against terrorism" by Sharon: "Can America ask the world for help against the growing danger of terrorism based on moral values, when pro-Israel groups equate their war crimes with America's war against terrorism?"
Prince Abdullah's message is unequivocal. The Arab street is indeed burning. American allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are pleading to America that if Sharon is let loose, their own regimes will crack up: and not only their regimes, but the whole fragile structure of peace with Israel - a direct result of decades of American diplomacy. Hezbollah is threatening - and it has the means to deliver - a "regional war". Saddam Hussein, by stopping Iraq's oil exports iniatially for one month, could finally also move other exasperated OPEC member-countries to action.
Anti-Americanism is the name of the game from the Atlantic to the Gulf.
Former US president Jimmy Carter was the only voice in the American policy wilderness going straight to the point: cut off American aid to Israel and follow American law - insist that American weapons sold to Israel should be used for defensive purposes only. He was instantly repudiated by Colin Powell.
World opinion is increasingly fed up with what it regards as a colonial settler-state - a direct and indirect oppressor of the indigenous Arabs, an overfed Sparta which is a permanent source of regional instability. Amnesty International, during Intifada 2, solemnly declared, regarding Israel, "there is a pattern of gross human rights violations that may well amount to war crimes". If Palestinians were black, Israel today would be a pariah - or rogue - state, subjected to crippling sanctions imposed by the UN and controlled by the US. The West Bank would be regarded by the whole world as a series of shameful Bantustans - where "whites" control everything, even the supply of water and electricity.
The "rogue states" may not be Iraq, Iran, Syria or Libya after all. The rogue state may be Israel.
But there is a price for real peace in the Middle East, argue the Arab Street, Arab intellectuals and people all over the world. The price is to rein in a butcher and the apartheid schemes of the last colonial power on the planet. We have now moved to a completely different ball game in the Middle East. It's not a detail anymore - a matter of reining in Sharon to create the conditions to strike against Saddam. It's the key question of the US protecting its sacrosanct interests in the Middle East from an Arab volcano of extreme anger. If that anger explodes, that would be a true Desert Storm.