1.3.2002. WE ARE NOW AT WAR WITH IRAQ

Part One - The war has started.
Summary: since the adoption of the UN Charter, unilateral declarations of war are illegal, hence they are not made officially. Bush has in effect declared war and demanded unconditional surrender (`regime change`), and statements from Blair and Hoon in the last few days have committed the UK to this war.

Part Two - The outlook
Summary: These verbatim extracts from a recent seminal Washington Post article by respected journalist Walter Pincus confirm that : the actual hostilities against Iraq have been delayed until the autumn, mainly because the US has not got enough bombs. The only major obstacle remaining is the support of Turkey. 200,000 US ground troops will be involved.

Introduction: why the war is a bad thing.
1. If you accept the official story of the New York attacks, it opens up an irrelevant second front in the war against Al Quaida which has by no means been won.
2. It underlines Bush/Blair double standards, implicitly condoning Israel's ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and Israel's illegal nuclear arsenal, inflaming world opinion, making further Al Quaida attacks more likely.
3. It will cause an immense wave of human suffering in Iraq as `smart bombs` go off target and, if the war runs beyond schedule, are replaced by traditional bombs.
4. If successful it will boost the Bush agenda of US supremacism, neglect of global warming and promotion of the oil economy.
5. Most of Saddam Hussein's alleged crimes were committed while he was a US/UK ally: by failing to prosecute his accomplices here Bush/Blair have already destroyed the justification for the war.

Part One - The War has Started

Acording to the UN charter war is legal only in self defence and only with the approval of the UN security council. This is the most important principle of international law. Most of the wars since the UN Charter have been undeclared wars because they have not had this approval, for instance in Vietnam and recently in Kossovo. The war against Iraq in 1991 was generally accepted as legal in principle because it had the authorisation of the Security Council.

Western governments have produced several arguments for waging war without the support of the Security Council, but they all leave a massive problem for democracy (which wars are often claimed to defend): when is the right time to debate the decision to go to war? And in the period before the hostilities actually commence, how does anyone know whether we are at war or not?
In the current case of Iraq, for instance, Tony Blair stated repeatedly over a period of months that there would only be an attack on Iraq if evidence was produced which was `incontrovertible` or `a hundred percent certain` that Iraq was a party to the September 11 attack on New York.

Since the apparent victory in Afghanistan the US has asserted that it wants both the unconditional acceptance by Iraq of the arms inspectors AND a regime change AND that it is preparing for an armed attack on Iraq. This is probably the nearest that there will ever be to a declaration of war and contains, in second world war parlance, the extra demand for an unconditional surrender. The US has also stated that it sees an axis of evil encompassing Iran and North Korea which perhaps amounts to a declaration of war against two more countries.

Of course we would all like to believe the reassuring patter from Bush/Blair and hope that a deal can be reached, but after the experience of the wars that have followed the fall of the Soviet Union this is hope versus experience. Observer political editor Kamel Ahmed reported on Sunday 23 February (front page) that Downing Street is anonymously briefing that the decision to go to war has already been made. 

What could Bush gain from such a war? Take a look at where Bush would be without it (this is one of many reasons that so many people in the US believe the New York attack was an inside job): it is indisputable that on any count apart from the one which the Republican majority on the Supreme Court recognised was illegal, Bush lost the election. In normal times that, the Enron scandal and the recession would have sunk Bush without trace. Blair, too, is tied up in Enron as well as the other `rent boy` corruption scandals. The Labour Party has taken money from Enron and Blair made the extraordinary appointment of tory strategist John Wakeham, the accountant and Enron board member who now faces investigation, to head the commission to reform the House of Lords.

At first European politicians appeared to distance themselves from this new war. However on 27 February Tony Blair told Australian TV that in principle he supported the Bush axis of evil declaration. This would imply that Tony Blair has now joined the war against Iraq on our behalf of the British people, and perhaps also against Iran and North Korea. I complained to the BBC that they had given insufficient coverage to this declaration. This morning (March 1st) Defence Minister Hoon was interviewed on Today for approximately five minutes by Ed Sturton who conspicuously failed to press Hoon on several key points which Hoon refused to answer. The details of what Hoon said confirm that we are now at war with Iraq although major hostilities have not yet commenced for logistical reasons.

Here are some of the statements Hoon made, followed by the questions Sturton should have asked but did not.
1. Allowing arms inspectors back into Iraq would `go a long way` to satisfying the US/UK demands.
Questions: Why does it not go the whole way? Exactly what would satisfy US/UK demands? (Even the declaration of war against Hitler made specific demands)

2. Sturton stated that there was `not a scrap` of evidence that Iraq was complicit in the New York attacks. Hoon conspicuously failed to deny this.

3. Hoon stated that Iraq `threatens our security`
Questions: In what way? Do they have intercontinental ballistic missiles? Which arab governments agree that Iraq theatens them? (Iraq is a full member of the Arab League) Is our security in fact bound up with the security of Israel, which is currently in more flagrant breach of international law than Iraq?

4. Hoon stated `no decisions have been taken`.
Questions: How does this square with the leak from Downing Street and statements from Washington, described as our closest ally, that force is to be used to accomplish a regime change?

Part Two - The Outlook for the War

Editors at The Washington Post have titled the article below Anti-Iraq Rhetoric Outpaces Reality, with the implication that war is not inevitable. The text however does not permit this interpretation. It is only the timing which is in question. My comments are in brackets thus: (comment - IJH)

First though, here are a couple of relevant facts on the Iraq question.

Fact One: All Saddam Hussein's crimes cited by Bush/Blair were committed while he was an ally of US/UK. These are the chemical attack on the Kurds (we supplied the chemical precursors), the war against Iran (the CIA supplied the satellite pictures which tempted Saddam to launch the war against Ayatollah Khomenei) and the invasion of Kuwait (the US embassador told Hussein they had `no position` on the dispute with Kuwait only days before the invasion).

Fact Two: Hussein stated that he would withdraw peacefully from Kuwait if Israel would withdraw from its illegal occupation of the West Bank. This offer was refused by the US who promised arab allies that Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank would be addressed after the war against Iraq.
 
Exracts from Washinton Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58051-2002Feb23.html

By Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 24, 2002; Page A01

At Boeing Co.'s high-tech factory in St. Charles, Mo., three shifts are
working 24 hours a day turning out smart bombs to replenish Air Force and
Navy inventories that ran dangerously low during the Afghan war.

Pentagon planners say it will take six months to produce enough Joint Direct
Attack Munitions (JDAMs), the precision systems that guided 1,000-pound
bombs to Taliban and al Qaeda targets, to contemplate an attack on Saddam
Hussein's Iraq.

Bush administration rhetoric has fueled speculation that a military move
against Iraq could be imminent. But the military reality is that it could
take up to a year before the United States is ready to launch a coordinated
assault likely to achieve the administration's goals of destroying Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction capability and replacing Hussein's regime.

(snip)

Beyond the resource demands of the military, conditions inside Iraq and the
surrounding region are still far from optimal. And much of the rest of the
world, including countries whose support is seen as critical, remains
skeptical or openly hostile to a direct attack.

In recognition of these realities, the administration has developed a
strategy of short- and long-term actions designed to ensure that all the
elements it sees as necessary for success eventually will converge.

Many of the initial military steps are well underway, based on a working
assumption that an attack would begin with a massive air assault on Iraqi
antiaircraft defenses and known weapons-of-mass-destruction sites, ideally
guided by friendly forces on the ground. This would be followed by the entry
of major units of U.S. troops, equipped to withstand chemical or biological
weapons attacks.

"Our objectives in Iraq can only be met with forces on the ground," said an
official inside the Pentagon with long experience on policy and planning
issues. "We can't inspect [chemical weapons facilities] from the air."

In addition to accelerated weapons production, planners are deeply immersed
in assessing manpower and equipment and basing needs, factoring in variables
including the ongoing Afghan operation and the possibility that new crises,
at home or in places such as the Middle East, the Philippines and Colombia,
could divert attention and resources.

(snip)

The assumption is that either Hussein will acquiesce, something the
administration views as unlikely, or his continued refusal will help
convince the world that all peaceful options have been exhausted.
(In fact Hussein has agreed in principle to let tham back, Bush/Blair are likely to follow the strategy used against Milosevic and demand that the arms inspectors have the powers and numbers of an occupying army - IJH)

Regional Opposition

Vice President Cheney's tour of 11 countries in the region next month is
designed to listen to the concerns of government leaders, assure them that
no precipitous action will be taken, demonstrate that the United States is
putting in place a comprehensive, workable plan and ask their advice and
assistance while emphasizing the seriousness of U.S. intent.

Virtually every country in the region has publicly opposed a U.S. military
attack on Iraq. Their leaders say privately they would be happy to wake up
one morning and find Hussein gone.

(snip)

Status of Saudi Base

(snip)

Former Pentagon official Eliot Cohen, now director of strategic studies at
the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International studies, said he believes
that U.S. forces would be better off if they could operate from Saudi
Arabia, but that only Turkey and Kuwait were essential. Bahrain, Oman and
Kuwait are already providing bases for U.S. use in Afghanistan and in the
southern "no-fly zone" the United States, Britain and France (in fact France pulled out from this illegal operation several years ago- IJH) have imposed
over Iraq since the Gulf War. U.S. patrols over the northern "no-fly zone"
use the Turkish air base at Incerlik.

Yet some of those countries have already expressed public reluctance to
allow their facilities to be used for a U.S. assault on Baghdad. Although
Hussein's departure would ease tensions in the area, Kuwaiti Defense
Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah recently told Reuters, "We will not
allow any military operation against any state from our country without
international cover," presumably meaning U.N. approval. (In fact Bush/Blair could claim approval under the Gulf War resolutions, as they do for the current bombing of Iraq - IJH)

(snip)

Air Losses Expected

When and if an air assault begins on Iraq, experts agree it will take less
than the 39 days needed during the 1991 Gulf War to silence Hussein's air
defenses. But Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings
Institution, pointed out that U.S. and coalition forces lost 86 aircraft
during that effort, one-third of them in the first few weeks of the war, and
most of those were low-flying aircraft, hit by Russian and Chinese versions
of the shoulder-launched, U.S.-made Stingers.

This time around, with much of Iraq's urban air defenses, along with
chemical and biological weapons labs, believed concealed in and around
mosques, hospitals, schools and homes, such low-flying planes may be the
only way to attack without killing and wounding thousands of civilians that
often results from high-altitude bombing even when smart weapons are used.
Unlike in Afghanistan, O'Hanlon said, the U.S. public must be prepared for
air losses.

Hussein's assumed possession of unconventional weapons requires the United
States to make them a first-round target. The administration's repeated
declaration that Hussein's elimination is a goal equal to eliminating his
weapons is seen as heightening the likelihood that he would use such
weapons.

"What deterrent is there on Saddam Hussein since we have told him his head
is on a platter?" Boyd asked. "We can never suppose he will do anything but
use chemical or biological warfare."

(UK Foreign Secratary Douglas Hurd stated during the 1991 war that the co-alition would respond in kind to the use of weapons of mass destruction ie use tactical nuclear weapons. This is probably why they incorrectly call chemical weapons dating from the First World war weapons of mass destruction - IJH)

Iraqi medium-range mobile Scud missiles, so difficult for the United States
to locate and destroy during the Gulf War, could easily hit Kuwait and
Israel. U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq in the years following the war found
chemical weapons traces in Scud warheads.

The use of smart bombs in Afghanistan has greatly diminished from a peak of
about 80 a day, Air Force Secretary James C. Roche said in Senate testimony
last week, and "we're able to build inventories up again." Boeing's JDAMs,
$20,000 kits that fit onto unguided bombs to turn them into precision
weapons, are being produced at roughly 1,500 a month, expanding to 2,000 a
month by next year.

(snip)

Boyd said that the U.S. "cakewalk" anticipated by
some will "never happen." Although 100,000 Iraqis deserted and 80,000
surrendered in the Gulf War, he said, this time "they will be fighting on
their own soil."

Former Pentagon officials in touch with current planners say as many as
200,000 U.S. ground troops may be needed. By comparison, 60,000 U.S.
military personnel are in the Central Command region – 4,000 of them on the
ground in Afghanistan – Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers
testified this month.

A 200,000-troop commitment would require a massive support presence,
triggering additional call-ups of reserve and National Guard units. Call-ups
generated by the domestic response to Sept. 11 and the Afghan fighting have
already put 35,000 Americans on active duty. Army Secretary Thomas E. White
told senators last week that the services have become "quite concerned about
retention," given the current extended mobilizations.

Domestic requirements, he said, including 6,000 National Guard troops now
deployed at airports, and 5,000 at seaports, power plants and other
infrastructure sites, plus rotations in Bosnia and Sinai peacekeeping
forces, were "stressing the force, clearly."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company