MIDEAST NEWS DIGEST
LaRouche Comments on Factors Needed To Stop Iraq War
In the New Year's statement, "The Weeks of Crisis Before Us," Democratic 2004 Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche comments on the Middle East, saying, "There is no competent reason for the U.S. to continue its currently aversive policies toward Iraq.... The influence of the U.S.A. and its available partners in the Middle East, is enormous. Why waste, or even ruin that region, with ventures which any astute diplomat would avoid?" LaRouche's campaign has already launched a drive to distribute 1 million copies of this statement (see EIW EDITORIAL for full text) in the U.S. in the next two weeks.
LaRouche has also warned, in a series of international speaking appearances, that while the Iraq war has been stoppedfor the momentthe Likud-linked warmongering "Chickenhawks" in the Bush Administration are desperately frustrated at the delay of their timetable to launch a unilateral war against Iraq in the early part of 2002.
In a Dec. 17 commentary, LaRouche criticized the impotence of Israeli and other observers who resort to "betting" on the inevitability of the Iraq war, in reaction to the "Chickenhawk" ravings, instead acting to help stir the institutions of the U.S. Presidency into averting war. The commentary by LaRouche said, in part:
"For political analysts, or bookmakers or bookkeepers steeped in the tradition of crap-shoots and Belmont Park 'boat races,' " such betting is obviously correct. "However, in the real world of thinkers, rather than gamblers, the relevant questions are two. First, 'Will those U.S. institutional forces which have blocked the war thus far, suddenly collapse at this stage?' Second, instead of the psycho-sexually impotent: 'Were those forces to collapse now, what are the statistical chances of war?' but, rather: Were President Bush, for example, to launch such a war, what would be the countervailing consequences of his launching such a wild-eyed act of folly?' The second question must be answered against the background of the first. The question is of the same class of implications as, 'If the German generals were to permit President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor, would Hindenburg's Germany, and its generals, benefit in the end?'
"For people who actually think, such are the lines along which the lurking threat of a general outbreak of an Iraq war is considered by competent strategic thinkers now. The outbreak of such a war, would mean that the U.S.A. were on the road to its own self-destruction, that the relevant institutional forces of the U.S.A., like the German generals who failed to force Hindenburg not to appoint Hitler, had lost the required margin of moral fitness to survive. A July 1944 would be awaiting the military cadres who failed to stop the Hitler appointment already in January 1933. That is the forecast which all competent thinkers would be making.... The problem is, that all too many ... tend to think like fatalistic bookkeepers or social-democratic and kindred devotees of 'histomat,' rather than those true, adult human beings called 'voluntarists.' "
Mubarak To Inaugurate Water Project To Make the Desert Bloom
Work in progress on the mega-development project of Toshka has made great leaps forward, an official Egyptian government report revealed Dec. 28. The report announced that President Hosni Mubarak would inaugurate the two main components of the Toshka project within a few days.
The components are the giant pumping station and the Sheikh Zayed canal. The giant pumping station, built at a cost of LE 716.9 million, is one of the world's largest, said the report, prepared by the Middle East News Agency. It quoted engineer Kamal el-Sherbini, a resident manager at the project site, as saying that the station, supported by 21 pumps, was built to lift Lake Nasser water into the Sheikh Zayed canal, which is 164 feet higher.
About 98% of the construction work in the station is complete, he said. It is a new epoch in construction representing the proper way to usher Egypt into the 21st century, the report said. The Aswan High Dam will power the station, named after the President, 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the northeast.
Lake Nasser, the reservoir created by the dam, is west of the Sheikh Zayed canal by some 50 kilometers. The water will be channelled by four sub-canals into 540,000 acres (218,000 hectares) of potentially fertile desert land. The dam allowed the reclamation of 1 million feddans (more than one million acres) and a changeover from one crop per year to several.
The Toshka project, whose implementation began in 1997, aims to make the desert bloom northwest of Abu Simnel, famed for the colossal Pharaonic temple rescued from Lake Nasser after the Aswan High Dam was built in the 1960s. The project, whose expenditure has reached LE 5.8 billion, aims to reclaim and cultivate some 540,000 feddans around Toshka to tackle the population explosion and crowded cities, the report said. The scheme is part of the South Egypt Development Project that aims to double the amount of cultivated land in Upper Egypt. The government hopes that at least 2 million people will settle in Toshka's 540,000 acres.
Oops! Cracks in Israel's 'Model Democracy'
On Dec. 30, EIR's Washington correspondent confronted State Department spokesman Phil Reeker on two counts: the Israeli Labor Party's complaints that the U.S. was giving them the cold shoulder, in deference to rightwing warmonger Ariel Sharon, and the existence of U.S. concernsif anythat the Israeli elections might not be "fair and aboveboard," in light of Israeli press coverage about corruption in the Sharon's Likud Party, vote-buying, Russian Mafia money, and the like in the Likud Central Committee election and primaries. Reeker expressed confidence in the fairness of elections in Israel. He added this was an "internal" matter for the Israelis, and said he had not been monitoring the Israeli press of late and hadn't seen "the specific reports" referred to. Reeker was also confident that the Israeli press would be doing its job in the election coverage.
The Israeli press may be doing a better job than Reeker. On Jan. 3, the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported quite a different picture than carte blanche endorsement of Israeli fairness. Ha'aretz reported that a statement by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was being seen as a warning to Israel that it should reverse the decision of its election commission to bar two Arab-Israeli candidates.
Boucher said, "This is something we're following closely. We're of course interested in broad participation in the political process in Israel, as we are elsewhere. I'm not commenting on particular individuals or the parties or the political aspects of this. I'm commenting on the question of the broadest possible participation in the political process." Boucher added that this principle applies to all, "And Israel should not be an exception."
LaRouche Associate Jacques Cheminade Featured at Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi
Jacques Cheminade, leader of "Solidarité et Progrés," the French section of the international LaRouche movement, gave a lecture at the Zayed Centre For Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Dec. 30.
A ZCCF press release reported that Cheminade called for establishing an international commission for a Dialogue of Civilizations which would include Pope John Paul II, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, and UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan to promote this tendency and support a real dialogue among cultures and cooperation in economic projects. The English-language Gulf News also reported on Cheminade's presentation.
Cheminade also dealt with other topics, such as the internal situation in France and the importance of the recognition of the role of Islam as an integral part of the political changes in France. He also stressed that, should Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna win in the coming Israeli elections, it would increase the chances of a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Arab nations. The lecture was followed by a press conference. Further details appear on the Centre website, http://www.zccf.org.ae.
Rumsfeld ExposedAgainfor Arming Saddam Hussein with Chemical Weapons
On Dec. 30, 2002, the Washington Post finally caught up with Lyndon LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review, in providing the embarrassing details of how United States leaders, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former President and Vice President George H.W. Bush, and others armed Iraq with the "weapons of mass destruction." In exposing the hypocrisy of the Iraq war drive, EIR published a reminder of the dirty deals of the 1980s, in an Oct. 18, 2002 article entitled, "41 Questions to Bush Administration on U.S.-Iraq Relations in the 1980s."
The Washington Post's front-page article of Dec. 30, entitled "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds," by Michael Dobbs, begins with the uncomfortable paradox of stated U.S. claims today, and documented U.S. policies yesterday, vis-à-vis Iraq. "High on the Bush Administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq," the article begins, "are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally. Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now Defense Secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special Presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld travelled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an 'almost daily' basis in defiance of international conventions."
Highlighted in the Post story is how U.S. policy shifted during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, moving from an initially neutral position to support for Iraq, as soon as Iran showed strength, dating to summer 1982. The Post writes: "To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan Administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan-era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do 'whatever was necessary and legal' to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran" (emphasis added).
The directive was issued amid reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons. And, "on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official ... told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to 'almost daily use of CW' against the Iranians." But, writes the Post, the Reagan Administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld. "Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard 'any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West.' When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report."
UN Inspectors Found 'Zilch' in Evidence of Iraqi WMD
"We haven't found one iota of concealed material yet," stated one of the UN inspectors working on Iraq, reported the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 31. The inspector, who spoke on condition that he wouldn't be named, said the UN teams have not encountered a single place in Iraq that has been "off-limits" to them.
The source added, "We need intelligence reports if they exist.... We can't look for something which we don't know about. If the United States wants us to find something, they should open their intelligence file and share it with us so that we know where to go for it." In the words of the L.A. Times, the inspector said that "he and his colleagues feel acute pressure from Washington to find something soon. But if the U.S. has provided its long-promised intelligence, they haven't seen it yet."
The statements by the inspector are in violation of the strict secrecy rules that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and other officials have imposed. But, the article reports that the Iraqis are providing complete access to facilities, even bedrooms of palaces, and manufacturing plants that had been closed off during the previous inspections that went on from 1991 to 1998. Two days later, the Washington Post reported that inspectors are going to "step up" their tactics in order to try to "catch" the Iraqis unprepared, but the Post also had to admit that there has been no interference by Iraq.
No Reason for Military Action Against Iraq Now
On Dec. 31, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, interviewed by Israeli military radio, said that "Iraq is cooperating and the inspectors have been able to do their work in an unimpeded manner, and I don't see an argument for military action now. We need to do everything to disarm Iraq and the inspectors have been given fresh powers, which I think they are using well." He said the inspectors may give an interim report before Jan. 27.
Senior political figures from the U.S. and Europe fully agree that Iraq war should be off the table.
*Dec. 31: Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who served in President Clinton's first term, wrote in an op ed in the New York Times that President Bush must step back from his "fixation on attacking Iraq" and "reassess his Administration's priorities." He argues that the nuclear threat from North Korea is "more imminent than those posed by Iraq," and added that it, too, can be solved without military action, but with "sustained diplomatic efforts with China, South Korea, and other countries of the region."
*Dec. 28: British commentator Stephen Glover writes in the Spectator that "For Britain, war is not, in fact, inevitable," despite the massive efforts by the British government and Blair-linked media, to engage in "cynical warmongering." Glover especially takes the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid and the Hollinger-owned Daily Telegraph to task, for putting out wild government propaganda about supposed giant terrorist threats to Britain in order to have the media and public opinion "softened up" and "sucked into the plot." The Spectator, also owned by Hollinger, has become a key mouthpiece for what are called "Old Tories," traditional conservatives opposed to the war in Iraq.
*Dec. 30: In a year-end interview with Der Spiegel, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stated, "We have to do everything for a peaceful resolution [in Iraq], even if our hope is growing smaller and smaller. Naturally, it depends on Baghdad's commitment to cooperate. But at the same time, we must not accept any inevitability, just because troops are being massed. The German government will not deploy German troops for combat in a highly dangerous conflict, whose necessity as a last resort is not 100 percent convincing."
Containment of Saddam Hussein has worked, so far, Fischer adds. "The terrorism of Sept. 11 was the attempt to provoke the Western world into a Clash of Civilizations. To this day, I cannot recognize any link to the Iraq problem. We are tied up well enough with the war against terrorism. Therefore, it would be wrong ... to proclaim regime change in Baghdad a supreme priority."
U.S. Airstrikes on Iraq Are Material Breach of UN Resolutions
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri declared, in a letter of protest sent Dec. 30 to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, that U.S. air strikes against Iraq are a "material breach" of UN Security Council resolutions. The immediate incident was the Bush Administration's Dec. 26 air strike in southern Iraq, which the Iraqis say left three dead and 16 wounded. The letter charged the strike was a "terrorist act," adding, (without further specifics reported) that it had been carried out "with a direct participation of the rulers of Kuwait."
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