|
While its
contents remain classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35
pertains to the stockpiling and deployment of tactical nuclear
weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with
CONPLAN 8022.
In recent
developments, there are reports that Washington is planning to
launch air attacks from military bases in Romania and Bulgaria.
"American forces could be using their two USAF bases in Bulgaria
and one at Romania's Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran
in April [2007]," according to the Bulgarian news agency
Novinite.
3. The Ultimate War Crime: Using Nuclear Weapons
in a Conventional War theater
Despite
Pentagon statements, which describe tactical nuclear weapons as
"safe for the surrounding civilian population", the use of nukes
in a conventional war theater directed against Iran would
trigger the ultimate war crime: a nuclear holocaust. The
resulting radioactive contamination, which threatens future
generations, would by no means be limited to the Middle East.
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
B61-11 NEP Thermonuclear Bomb |
|
|
4. The "War on Terrorism": Pretext to Wage War
In 2005,
Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed
USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan "to be employed in
response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United
States". Mass casualty producing events, involving the death of
civilians are being used to galvanize public opinion in support
of a military agenda. The deaths of civilian are used to justify
preemptive actions to defend the American homeland against an
alleged outside enemy, who are identified as "Islamic
terrorists".
Mass
Casualty Producing Events
"A
terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur]
somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States
of America – that causes our population to question our own
Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to
avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event."
General Tommy Franks,
"We are
on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right
major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."
(David Rockefeller)
"As
America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may
find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy
issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and
widely perceived direct external threat." (Zbigniew Brzezinski
in the Grand Chessboard)
The
presumption was that if such a 9/11 type event involving the
deaths of civilians (mass casualty producing event) were to take
place, Iran would, according to Cheney, be behind it, thereby
providing a pretext for punitive bombings, much in the same way
as the US sponsored attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001,
allegedly in retribution for the alleged support of the Taliban
government to the 9/11 terrorists
More
recently, several analysts have focused on the creation of a
"Gulf of Tonkin incident", which would be used by the Bush
administration as a pretext to wage war on Iran
5. The Real Objective Of This War Is Oil
The oil lies
in Muslim lands. The objective is to take possession of the oil,
transform countries into territories and redraw the map of the
Middle East
War builds a
fake "humanitarian agenda". Throughout history, vilification of
the enemy has been applied time and again with a view to
ultimately justifying war and war crimes.
Demonization
of the enemy serves geopolitical and economic objectives.
Likewise, the campaign against "Islamic terrorism" (which is
supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of
oil wealth. The term "Islamo-fascism," serves to degrade the
policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim
countries, while also upholding the tenets of "Western
democracy" and the "free market" as the only alternative for
these countries.
The US led
war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in
gaining control over more than sixty percent of the world's
reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants
also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out
of the region.
MIDDLE EAST
THEATRE OF WAR
Muslim
countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United
Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria,
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess
between 66.2 and 75.9 percent of total oil reserves, depending
on the source and methodology of the estimate.
In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent
of total oil reserves. Western countries including its major oil
producers ( Canada, the US, Norway, the UK, Denmark and
Australia) control approximately 4 percent of total oil
reserves. (In the alternative estimate of the Oil and Gas
Journal which includes Canada's oil sands, this percentage would
be of the the order of 16.5%.
The largest
share of the World's oil reserves lies in a region extending
(North) from the tip of Yemen to the Caspian sea basin and
(East) from the Eastern Mediterranean coastline to the Persian
Gulf. This broader Middle East- Central Asian region, which is
the theater of the US-led "war on terrorism" encompasses
according to the estimates of World Oil, more than sixty percent
of the World's oil reserves. (See table below).
Iraq has five times more oil than the United
States.
Muslim countries possess at least 16 times more
oil than the Western countries.
The major non-Muslim oil reserve countries are
Venezuela, Russia, Mexico,
China and
Brazil. (See table)
The
victims of war crimes are vilified Demonization is applied to an
enemy, which possesses three quarters of the world's oil
reserves. "Axis of evil", "rogue States", "failed nations",
"Islamic terrorists": demonization and vilification are the
ideological pillars of America's "war on terror". They serve as
a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.
The Battle
for Oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil.
The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying
military action including the mass killing of civilians. The
Middle East Central Asian region is heavily militarized. (See
map). The oil fields are encircled: NATO war ships stationed in
the Eastern Mediterranean (as part of a UN "peace keeping"
operation), US Carrier Strike Groups and Destroyer Squadrons in
the Persian Gulf and the Arabian deployed as part of the "war on
terrorism".
REDRAWING THE MAP OF THE NEW
MIDDLE EAST
6. Historical Background: From Hiroshima to the
Preemptive Warfare Doctrine
What are the
historical roots of this military agenda? What is the balance
sheet of US sponsored war crimes extending from 1945 to the
present?
WHO ARE THE WAR CRIMINALS:
BUSH IS NOT THE ONLY WAR CRIMINAL ON THE BLOCK
US war
crimes and atrocities should be seen as the direct consequence
of a foreign policy and military agenda, which supports US
corporate interests, including the oil giants, the Wall
Street financial establishment and the big six defense
contractors.
The Middle
East war is the culmination of a history of US sponsored
military interventions.
The bombing
of Hiroshima was the initial landmark leading to the formulation
of a "preemptive" nuclear doctrine, where nukes are to be used
in the conventional war theater.
There is a continuum: the bombing of Hiroshima was presented to
public opinion as "safe for civilians" because Hiroshima was
identified in President Truman’s August 9, 1945 radio address as
"a military base".
"The
World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this
first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of
civilians.."
(President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation,
August 9, 1945,
Listen to
Excerpt of his speech, By going through Truman’s
diary, one has the distinct impression that he firmly believed
that Hiroshima was a military target. Was he briefed on the
consequences of the atom bomb?(President
Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945).
Similarly, the use of nukes against Iran is presented as an act
of self-defense, which according to the Pentagon, will minimize
the risk of "collateral damage" and protect the lives of
civilians.Prior the invasion of Iraq, the use of tactical
nuclear weapons had been contemplated as a means to assassinate
Saddam Hussein:
"If Saddam
was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case
could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to
assure killing him and decapitating the regime" (.Defense News,
December 8, 2003).
More
generally, mini-nukes are considered safe to be used in a
conventional war theater:
"What's
needed now is something that can threaten a bunker tunneled
under 300 meters of granite without killing the surrounding
civilian population." (Pentagon Official quoted in Michel
Chossudovsky, 2006,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060217&articleId=1988
These
statements, which reflect US nuclear doctrine promote according
to Federation of American Scientists (FAS) "the illusion that
nuclear weapons could be used in ways which minimize their
‘collateral damage’, making them acceptable tools to be used
like conventional weapons." (See
http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001 / click v54nl, italics
added)
7.
America’s Wars of the "Post War Era"
What is
referred euphemistically as the "post war era" is in fact a
period of continuous war and militarization. Since the end of
the Second World War, this "long war" seeks to establish US
hegemony worldwide.
This period
is marked by a succession of US sponsored theater wars (Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia), various
forms of military interventions including low intensity
conflicts, "civil wars" (The Congo, Angola, Somalia, Ethiopia,
Sudan) military coups, US sponsored death squadrons
(Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand,
Philippines), covert wars led by US intelligence , etc.
This entire
period (1945- present) has been marked by a succession of US
sponsored wars and military-intelligence interventions in all
major regions of the World (see map below).
Accounting
for these various operations, the United States has attacked,
directly or indirectly, some 44 countries in different regions
of the developing world, since August 1945, a number of them
many times (Eric Waddell, 2003):
"The avowed
objective of these military interventions has been to effect
‘regime change’. The cloaks of "human rights" and of "democracy
were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and
illegal acts." (Eric Waddell, 2003)
The foreign
policy underpinnings of what is now referred to by Bush
officials as the "long war" are to be found in what is known as
the "Truman Doctrine", first formulated by foreign policy
adviser George F. Kennan in a 1948 in State Department brief.
What this
1948 document conveys is continuity in US foreign policy, from
"Containment" to "Pre-emptive" War. It states in polite terms
that the US should seek economic and strategic dominance through
military means:
Furthermore,
we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its
population. This disparity is particularly great as between
ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot
fail to be the object of envy and resentment.
Our real
task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of
relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity without positive detriment to our national security.
To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality
and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be
concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the
luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. (…)
In the
face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now
with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking
with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the
aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of
a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting
ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and
refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should
cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives
such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going
to deal
in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by
idealistic slogans, the better
(George f. Kennan, 1948 State Department Brief)
8.Destroying Internationalism
The planned
disintegration of the United Nations system as an independent
and influential international body has been on the drawing board
of US foreign policy since the inception of the United Nations
in 1946. Its planned demise was an integral part of the Truman
doctrine as defined in 1948. From the very inception of the UN,
Washington has sought on the one hand to control it to its
advantage, while also seeking to weakening and ultimately
destroy the UN system. The outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan
became a tool of US foreign policy.
In the words
of George Kennan:
"Occasionally, it [the United Nations] has served a useful
purpose. But by and large it has created more problems than
it has solved, and has led to a considerable dispersal of our
diplomatic effort. And in our efforts to use the UN majority for
major political purposes we are playing with a dangerous weapon
which may some day turn against us. This is a situation which
warrants most careful study and foresight on our part.
(George Kennan, 1948)
In our
efforts to use the UN majority for major political purposes we
are playing with a dangerous weapon which may some day turn
against us. This is a situation which warrants most careful
study and foresight on our part.
(George Kennan, 1948)
Although
officially committed to the "international community",
Washington has largely played lip service to the United Nations.
In recent years it has sought to undermine it as an institution.
Since Gulf War I, the UN has largely acted as a rubber stamp. It
has closed its eyes to US war crimes, it has implemented
so-called peacekeeping operations on behalf of the
Anglo-American invaders, in violation of the UN Charter.
9. From the Truman Doctrine to the
Neo-Conservatives
The
Neo-conservative agenda under the Bush administration should be
viewed as the culmination of a (bipartisan) "Post War" foreign
policy framework, which provides the basis for the planning of
the contemporary wars and atrocities including the setting up of
torture chambers, concentration camps and the extensive use of
prohibited weapons directed against civilians.
From Korea,
Vietnam and Afghanistan, to the CIA sponsored military coups in
Latin America and Southeast Asia, the objective has been to
ensure US military hegemony and global economic domination, as
initially formulated under the "Truman Doctrine". Despite
significant policy differences, successive Democratic and
Republican administrations, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush
have carried out this global military agenda.
10. US War Crimes and Atrocities
This entire
"post war period" is marked by extensive war crimes resulting in
the death of more than ten million people. This figure does not
include those who perished as a result of poverty, starvation
and disease.
What we are
dealing with is a criminal US foreign policy agenda.
Criminalization does not pertain to one or more heads of State.
It pertains to the entire State system, it’s various civilian
and military institutions as well as the powerful corporate
interests behind the formulation of US foreign policy, the
Washington think tanks, the creditor institutions which finance
the military machine.
War crimes
are the result of the criminalization of the US State and
foreign policy apparatus. We are dealing specifically with
individual war criminals, but with a process involving decision
makers acting at different level, with a mandate to carry out
war crimes, following established guidelines and procedures.
What
distinguishes the Bush administration in relation to historical
record of US sponsored crimes and atrocities, is that the
concentration camps, targeted assassinations and torture
chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of
intervention, which sustain "the global war on terrorism" and
support the spread of Western democracy.
11. Mechanisms of US Intervention
US sponsored
crimes are not limited to the casualties of war and the physical
destruction of the nation’s infrastructure.
Countries
are destroyed, often transformed into territories, sovereignty
is foregone, national institutions collapse, the national
economy is destroyed through the imposition of "free market"
reforms, unemployment becomes rampant, social services are
dismantled, wages collapse, and people are impoverished.
In turn, the
nation’s assets and natural resources are transferred into the
hands of foreign investors through a privatization programme
imposed by the invading forces.
12. The Perdana Initiative: Reversing the Tide of
War
The Perdana Initiative to Criminalize War seeks
to break the consensus.
Once that consensus is broken, the shaky
legitimacy of the "Global War on Terrorism" collapses like
a deck of cards. The War criminals in high office do not have a
leg to stand on.
To reverse the tide of war requires a massive
campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the
land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods,
workplaces, parishes, mosques, schools, universities,
municipalities, on the dangers of a US sponsored war which
contemplates the use of nuclear weapons. The message should be
loud and clear: It is not Iran which is a threat to global
security but the United States of America and Israel.
Debate and discussion must also take place within
the Military and Intelligence community, particularly with
regard to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, within the
corridors of the US Congress, in municipalities and at all
levels of government. Ultimately, the legitimacy of the
political and military actors in high office must be challenged.
There seems to be a reluctance by members of Congress to
exercise their powers under the US Constitution, with a view to
preventing the unthinkable: the onslaught of a US sponsored
nuclear war. The consequences of this inaction could be
devastating. Once the decision is taken at the political level,
it will be very difficult to turn the clock backwards.
Moreover, the antiwar movement has not addressed the US
sponsored nuclear threat on Iran in a consistent way, in
part due to divisions within its ranks, in part due to lack of
information. Moreover, a significant sector of the antiwar
movement considers that the "threat of Islamic terrorism" is
real. "We are against the war, but we support the war on
terrorism." This ambivalent stance ultimately serves to
reinforce the legitimacy of the US national security doctrine
which is predicated on waging the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT).
At this juncture, with the popularity of the Bush-Cheney regime
at an all time low, a real opportunity exists to
initiate an
impeachment process, which could contribute to
temporarily stalling the military agenda.
The corporate media also bear a heavy
responsibility for the cover-up of US sponsored war crimes.
Until recently these war preparations involving the use of
nuclear weapons have been scarcely covered by the corporate
media. The latter must also be forcefully challenged for their
biased coverage of the Middle East war.
What is needed is to break the conspiracy of
silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the
criminal nature of the US Administration and of those
governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its
so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined
the contours of a police State.
In response to the Perdana initaitve to
criminalize war, it is essential to bring the US-Israeli war
project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in
North America, Western Europe and Israel. Political and military
leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from
within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a
stance individually and collectively against war.
ANNEX
A1
Categorization, Nature of US Intervention (44 countries)
CASUALTIES
ARE NOT LIMITED TO KILLINGS IN THE WAR THEATER OR OTHER
MILITARY-TYPE OPERATIONS,
WE MUST
ALSO ASSESS THE BROAD ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND INSTITUIONAL
MECHANISMS AS WELL AS
THE
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF WAR AND ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
With regard to military and covert intelligence
or other command type operations, we may distinguish between:
TW
Theater War
MC
US Instigated Military Coup
CW
US Sponsored Civil War
MP
Military policing
CO,
Covert Intelligence operation, proxy armies, death squadrons,
Countries
Afghanistan TW CW MC CO,
Angola CW CO,
Argentina MC CO,
Bangladesh MC,
Bolivia MC, Bosnia TW CW,
Brazil MC CO,
Cambodia TW CW CO,
Chile MC CO, Colombia CW CO,
Congo TW CW, Dominican Republic MC MP CO,
El Salvador CW, MC CO,
Eritrea CW, Ethiopia CW ,
Guatemala MC CO,
Grenada MP, Haiti MC MP CO,
Honduras MC MP CO,
Indonesia MC CO,
Iran MC,
Iraq MC TW CO,
Japan TW ,
Laos TW CW,
Lebanon TW CW CO MP,
Liberia, CW,
Macedonia MP,
CW CO,
Mozambique CW CO,
Nicaragua CW CO,
Nigeria CW CO,
North Korea TW CW,
Pakistan MC CO,
Palestine CW CO,
Panama MC MP,
Philippines MC MP CO,
Rwanda CW CO,
Serbia CW CO,
Somalia CW MP CO,
Sierra Leone CW,
South Korea CW TW CO,
Sudan CW MP CO,
Thailand MC CO,
Uruguay MC CO,
Venezuela MC,
Vietnam TW MC CW,
Zimbabwe CW
Historical examples of US sponsored war crimes
SELECTED
COUNTRY CASES
Korea
(1950-1953)
North Korea
lost nearly a third its population of 8 - 9 million people
during the 37-month long "hot" war, 1950 - 1953,
an
unprecedented percentage of suffered by any nation as a result
of an armed conflict.
General Lemay in charge of US operations in Korea candidly
acknowledges that the US killed up to
20 percent
of North Korea's population over that three period of intensive
bombings’
Vietnam
(1954-1975)
According
to Vietnamese sources,
civilian casualties resulting from the Vietnam War were of the
order of 4 million. Out of a population of 38 million during the
period 1954-1975, Vietnamese casualties represent a
12-13%
of the entire population
Indonesia
While
Indonesia was not invaded by US forces, it experienced according
to a CIA report, "one of the worst
mass murders
of the
twentieth century."
Ironically it was the CIA which instigated
this plan.
"The
300-page CIA text fails to acknowledge the direct role of the US
in the massacres It essentially "blames the victims of the
killings -- the supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI)
-- for their own deaths…
The hundreds of
thousands of people shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, or starved to
death were labeled perpetrators, or would-be perpetrators of
atrocities, just as culpable for the murder of the army generals
as the handful of people who were truly guilty."
The
Congo (1998-2000)
The Congo
(1998-2000) and The Sudan were US sponsored "civil wars". Two
years of war in the Congo (1998-2000) caused the deaths of an
estimated
3.8 million people,
mostly from starvation and disease.
Sudan
Two million deaths
resulted from Sudan's 18-year "civil war", which is tied into
securing control over oil reserves.
Nigeria-Biafra
One million people
also died during the US sponsored Nigeria-Biafra conflict of the
late 1960s, which was also linked to oil interests.
Rwanda
(1994-1995)
Between
500,000 and a million people died
as a result of the Rwandan "civil war" and genocide. Recent
reports confirm that the
US and Britain
played a key role in triggering the ethnic massacres.
Global
Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
To become a
Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research
articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title
are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be
displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print
or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact:
crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material
the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by
the copyright owner. We are making such material available to
our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to
advance a better understanding of political, economic and social
issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for
research and educational purposes. If you wish to use
copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must
request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries:
crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2007
The url
address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20070201&articleId=4659
Privacy Policy
© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by
Polygraphx
Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007
END GLOBAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
|
Email
this article to a friend
Print
this article
