NOTES ON WAR
POLICY WITH IRAQ
The Conservative Caucus
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NOTES ON WAR
POLICY WITH IRAQ |
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Read Howard Phillip's 1998 Statement: Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of February 28, 2005 MILITARY SPENDING IN IRAQ UNDERCUTS DEFENSE OF U.S. "[A] President-elect Kerry probably would not have dared suggest the far-reaching cuts Mr. Bush plans. And he surely would [have] faced difficulty getting them enacted, given pervasive concerns about his judgment on national security. …" NAVY, MARINE CORPS, AND AIR FORCE AT RISK "If Mr. Bush makes the mistake – political, as well as strategic – of emulating defense-cutting Kerry Democrats, there will be adverse effects especially for the services most critical to rapid power projection: the Navy-Marine Corps team and the Air Force. Unfortunately, these units stand to be reduced to the condition of the U.S. Army – too small, inadequately armed and not flexible enough to meet various challenges – for which the administration has lately been sharply criticized. "After all, to protect funding for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is making the cuts required by the Office of Management and Budget on key research and development and procurement accounts. For example:
SDI TO BE SLASHED "Nowhere is it likelier that John Kerry would have cut back Pentagon spending than in the portfolio of the Missile Defense Agency. Yet, here too, President Bush is said to be considering $5 billion in reductions over the next five years. These could essentially eliminate the most promising means of performing boost-phase missile intercepts (namely, using an airborne laser and/or from space); preclude building out the initial, very modest deployment of ground-based interceptors; and sharply curtail sea-based anti-missile defenses. So much for the robust, layered missile defense Mr. Bush promised to put in place." BUSH HOLDS OFFICE WITH KERRY DEFENSE POLICY "If the proposed defense budget cuts go forward, the American people would be entitled to feel they have been subjected to a classic ‘bait and switch.’ They rejected the candidate whose record had been one of voting against every major weapon system. They accepted the Bush-Cheney team’s criticism of Mr. Kerry that he could not be trusted to keep us safe. "Now, the guys they elected seem poised to hollow out the military in ways that will make the recent tempest over the lack of ‘up-armored’ Humvees in Iraq pale by comparison." Source: Frank Gaffney (president of the Center for Security Policy), The Washington Times, 1/11/05, p. A15 Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of June 30, 2004 VOLUNTEER SOLDIERS CONSCRIPTED FOR EXTENDED TOURS IN IRAQ "The Army announced Wednesday that it would require soldiers to extend their active duty if their units were bound for Iraq and Afghanistan, a move that could keep thousands of troops in the service for months longer than they expected over the next several years. "The announcement, which expands an existing program that applies to many troops already in the two countries, means that soldiers who had planned to retire, move to other Army jobs or leave the military when their enlistments expired will be required to stay for the length of their units’ deployment in either of the two combat zones. That could range from a few extra weeks to more than a year. Commanders will be allowed to make exceptions in special circumstances. … "The Army has already been scrambling to keep up its troop strength in the two countries. The tours of about 20,000 soldiers were extended by 90 days this spring to fill the gap. In recent weeks, the Army announced that it will send 3,600 troops from South Korea to Iraq to relieve pressure on Army troops there. And for the first time ever, the Army is looking to deploy to Iraq an elite unit that serves in desert training exercises, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Irwin, Calif. "Also, for the first time in more than a decade, the Army is combing through the Individual Ready Reserve, the nation’s pool of former soldiers, looking for specialists with critically needed skills. So far, 618 soldiers have been called back to duty under the program. " ‘The Army is just running out of creative ideas for coping with the level of commitment that Iraq requires,’ said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. ‘It’s clear there was a fundamental miscalculation about how protracted and how intense the ground commitment in Iraq would be.’ "The new move standardizes what had been a piecemeal program that had affected specific units, including those now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Army has extended the tours of 45,000 soldiers, using the policy on an ad hoc basis depending on its needs. But now, any unit designated to go to Iraq or Afghanistan will automatically fall under the new, widened policy. "The Army’s move is expected to draw criticism from some soldiers, their families and possibly employers. ‘It’s playing havoc with people’s plans,’ said Joyce Raezer, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, an advocacy group in Alexandria, Va. ‘It affects people who made plans that didn’t involve the Army.’ " A BREACH OF CONTRACT "Other critics of the policy, while stopping short of comparing it to the draft, say it has elements of forced conscription that violate the spirit of the all-volunteer armed forces. "In an Op-Ed article in Wednesday’s New York Times, Andrew Exum, a former Army captain who served in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division, called the stop-loss policy ‘a gross breach of contract.’" NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED " ‘Many if not most of the soldiers in this latest Iraq-bound wave are already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan,’ Mr. Exum wrote. ‘They have honorably completed their active-duty obligations. But like draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq.’ … "With virtually all of the Army’s 10 active-duty divisions either serving in, preparing for or returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, there are fewer pools of active-duty troops from which to fill out deploying units. " ‘They realized they cannot mix and match from other units,’ said Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments here. ‘At the same time, they don’t want to lose the best people they have going into a dangerous situation. This is a consequence of an Army structured to run sprints that is now running a marathon.’ " Source: Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 6/3/04, pp. 1, A12 IRAQ WAR HAS BEEN WAGED INCOMPETENTLY AT THE TOP, WASTING THE COURAGE AND SKILL OF U.S. TROOPS "[T]he war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, and with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casualties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadership." NO DECLARATION OF WAR "Before the war’s inception, and even after September 11, the Bush administration, having promised to correct its predecessor’s depredations of the military, failed to do so. The president failed to go to Congress on September 12 to ask for a declaration of war, failed to ask Congress when he did go before it for the tools with which to fight, and has failed consistently to ask the American people for sacrifice. And yet their sons, mainly, are sacrificed in Iraq day by day." INADEQUATE EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES COST LIVES "When soldiers are killed because they do not have equipment (in the words of a returning officer, ‘not enough vehicles, not enough munitions, not enough medical supplies, not enough water’), when reservists are retained for years, and rotations canceled, it is the consequence of a fiscal policy that seems more attuned to the electoral landscape of 2004 than to the national security of the United States. APART FROM IRAQ, MILITARY SPENDING IS LOW "Were the U.S. to devote the same percentage of its GNP to defense as it did during the peacetime years of the last half-century, and the military budget return to this unremarkable level, we would be spending (apart from the purely operational costs of the war) … almost twice what we are spending now. …" VICTORY IS IN THE MIND OF THE ENEMY – – – THAT WAR HAS BEEN LOST "Once the Army and Marines were rolling, their supply lines were left deliberately unprotected, and are vulnerable to this day. Why? … From the beginning, the scale of the war was based on the fundamental strategic misconception that the primary objective was Iraq rather than the imagination of the Arab World, which if sufficiently stunned, would tip itself back into the heretofore easily induced fatalism that makes it hesitate to war against the West. After the true shock and awe of a campaign of massive surplus, as in the Gulf War, no regime would have risked its survival by failing to go after the terrorists within its purview. But a campaign of bare sufficiency, that had trouble punching through even ragtag irregulars, taught the Arabs that we could be effectively opposed." SHORT-TERM ANARCHY BETTER THAN LONG-TERM AGONY? "Mistakenly focused on physical control of Iraq, we could not see that, were we to give it up, the resultant anarchy might find a quicker resolution than the indefinite prolonged agony through which our continuing presence has nursed it. Seeking motivation after the fact, we decided to make Iraq a Western-style democracy, and when that began to run off the rails, to make Iraq the mere model for a Middle East filled with Western-style democracies. Of course, instead of a model to inspire them (of which they have many, such as Switzerland), what the Arabs need is first the desire, and then a means to overcome the police states that oppress them, neither of which a reconfigured Iraq, were it possible, would supply. Japan and Germany are often cited in defense of this overreach, but rather than freeze our armies in place and set them to policing and civil affairs as we fought through the Second World War, we waited until we had won." ONE SOLDIER PER 240 IRAQIS –– BUT IT’S NOT NYC "Having decided to remake a country of 26 million divided into warring subcultures with a shared affection for martyrdom and unchanging traditions, the administration thought it could do so with 100,000 troops. Israel, which nearly surrounds the West Bank, speaks its language and has 37 years of experience in occupation, keeps approximately (by my reckoning) one soldier on duty for every 40 inhabitants and 1/13th square mile, and the unfortunate results are well known. In Iraq we keep one soldier per 240 inhabitants and 1.7 square miles. To put this in yet clearer perspective, it is the same number of uniformed police officers per inhabitant of the City of New York. But the police in New York are not at the end of a 9,000-mile supply chain (they live off the land at Dunkin’ Donuts), they do not have to protect their redoubts, travel in convoys, maintain a hospital system, run a civil service, reform a government, build schools, supply electricity, etc. And, most importantly, they do not have to battle an angry population that speaks an alien language, lives in an immense territory, and is armed with automatic weapons, explosives, suicide bombers, and rocket-propelled grenades. Imagine if they did, and you have Iraq. Imagine if then the mayor said, ‘We don’t need anything further, it’s just a question of perseverance: Bring it on,’ and you have the Bush continuum. … "The military must be reconstituted so that it has a surplus of power without having to choose between transformation and tradition, quality and numbers, heavy and light: All are necessary. This is expensive, and would require more plain speaking and less condescending manipulation from those who govern, but would allow for the quick and overwhelming application of force, unambiguous staying power, coverage of multiple contingencies, and, most importantly, deterrence. It is always better to deter an enemy than, by showing weakness, to encourage him to take the field." Source: Mark Helprin, The Wall Street Journal, 5/17/04, p. A20 Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of September 30, 2003 $87 BILLION MORE FOR IRAQ, BUT CHENEY SAYS U.S. AIRLINERS TOO EXPENSIVE TO PROTECT AGAINST MISSILE ATTACK TIM RUSSERT: "There’s grave concern about surface-to-air missiles shooting down American commercial aircraft. Should we not outfit all U.S. commercial airliners with equipment to detect and avoid that?" VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: "Well, there are technologies available. They are extremely expensive if you’re going to put them on every airliner. You’ve got to make choices here about, you know, when you’re dealing with a risk, there may be certain aircraft flying into certain locales that are especially vulnerable that you may want to deal with. But I wouldn’t automatically go to the assumption that we need to put the most sophisticated system on every single airplane. …"PACIFICATION AT ANY PRICE? TIM RUSSERT: "In terms of costs, Mr. Vice President, there are suggestions again – it was a misjudgment by the administration or even misleading. ‘Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House’s National Economic Council, projected the "upper bound" of war costs at $100 billion to $200 billion.’ We’ve already spent $160 billion after this $87 billion is spent. The Pentagon predicted $50 billion: ‘The administration’s top budget official [Mitch Daniels] estimated that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion…he said…that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence Lindsey, Mr. Bush’s former chief economic adviser, were too high.’ And Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, went before Congress and said this: ‘We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own [reconstruction], and relatively soon. The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years.’ It looked like the [administration] truly misjudged the cost of this operation." VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: "No. I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that you could say that this is the administration’s estimate. We didn’t know. …"TIM RUSSERT: "Is the $87 billion the end of it? Will the American people be asked for any more money?"VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: "I can’t say that. It’s all that we think we’ll need for the foreseeable future for this year." Source: Excerpted from transcript of Meet the Press, 9/14/03Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of April 30, 2003
AMERICA AND IRAQ PAY A HIGH PRICE FOR WRONG-HEADED 1991 DECISIONS BY GEORGE H.W. BUSH, COLIN POWELL, AND NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF "American policy in dealing with Saddam Hussein has been a bipartisan chamber of horrors." CLINTON ALSO BLUNDERED BADLY "Consider for example the Clinton administration low point, extensively described in Robert Baer’s CIA memoir, ‘See No Evil.’ Mr. Baer headed a small CIA team in Northern Iraq in 1995, in contact with the two Kurdish factions as well as with Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and a defecting Iraqi general, Wafiq Smarrai, who carried plans from other Iraqi military men for a coup in Baghdad. "The action was to start with a Kurdish attack on Saddam’s army, but at the very last moment Clinton national security adviser Tony Lake sent a pre-emptory telegram which, as Mr. Baer puts it, ‘pulled the plug without warning or a decent explanation. "The INC and PUK (Talibani-led Kurds) went ahead without U.S. support, with initial battlefield success as Iraqi troops surrendered, but the KDP (or Barzani-led Kurds) undercut the offensive. Mr. Lake had Mr. Baer return to Washington to face an FBI investigation of trying to assassinate a foreign leader, namely Saddam Hussein. The following year Saddam invaded the north and wiped out INC and CIA assets. …" THOUSANDS MASSACRED BECAUSE OF POST-DESERT STORM DECISIONS "Republicans were also culpable. During the 1991 Gulf War, the first President Bush gave a speech saying, ‘There’s another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.’ Both Shiites in the South and Kurds in the north responded with widespread insurrections. But U.S. aircraft controlling the skies let the Iraqis fly combat helicopters to suppress the revolts." G.H.W. BUSH LOOKED AWAY AS SADDAM ATTACKED CIVILIANS "During cease-fire negotiations, General Norman Schwarzkopf had agreed to let the Iraqi military fly helicopters because bridges and roads were damaged. ‘That seemed like a reasonable request,’ he told David Frost, ‘And within my charter, I felt it was something that it was perfectly all right to grant.’ But even after the helicopters dropped sulfuric acid and napalm on civilians, the Bush administration let this decision stand; the president’s press secretary reported ‘We do not intend to involve ourselves in the internal conflicts in Iraq.’ " COLIN POWELL FEARED MEDIA CRITICISM IF U.S. CONTINUED TO BATTLE SADDAM "This followed the logic of stopping the Gulf War offensive at the border with Kuwait, indeed returning captured territory to Saddam. Given an opportunity to press on toward Baghdad and ‘regime change,’ administration decision-makers, in particular Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, worried about press coverage depicting the retreating Iraqi troops trapped on a ‘highway of death.’ As the insurrections developed, the U.S. eventually provided some protection with ‘no-fly’ zones in both the north and the south, periodically exchanging fire with Iraqi air defense for the last dozen years." G.H.W. BUSH STATE DEPARTMENT GAVE SADDAM A BLANK CHECK "Controversy still swirls, too, around what message the U.S. conveyed to Saddam before his invasion of Kuwait. An Iraqi transcript showed U.S. ambassador April Glaspie telling him eight days before the 1990 invasion, ‘We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ She later testified that the Iraqis left out a warning insisting that such disputes be settled in ‘a non-violent matter.’ "Ambassador Glaspie’s testimony, however, graphically displayed the State Department ‘mindset’ about Iraq. Though Saddam had already gassed the Kurds and would execute any opposition leader who saw her, policy was directed at turning him into a moderate." IRAN SEEN AS GREATER THREAT "This notion took root during the Iraq-Iran war, and continued after its end in 1988. After the hostage-taking at the American embassy, the U.S. saw Iran as the greater threat, and sought a balance of power in the Gulf. In the five years before the invasion of Kuwait, the House Government Operations Committee found, the U.S. approved 771 export licenses to sell Saddam some $1.5 billion in equipment with military uses, including some that would help develop weapons of mass destruction. The result of the balance was to make enemies of both sides." Source: Robert L. Bartley, The Wall Street Journal, 3/24/03, p. A17 U.S. Policy on Iraq A bipartisan record of appeasement AMERICAN STATESMEN DISCUSS GUIDELINES FOR MILITARY ACTION "The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral … while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies – all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature." – Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 69 "It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War." – Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus #1, June 29, 1793 "Mr. Madison and Mr. Gerry moved to insert ‘declare,’ striking out [the congressional power to] ‘make’ war; leaving to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks. Mr. Sherman thought it stood very well. The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war…. Mr. Gerry never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war…. Mr. Mason was against giving the power of war to the Executive, because not safely to be trusted with it…. He was for clogging rather than facilitating war; but for facilitating peace. He preferred ‘declare’ to ‘make.’ " – [James] Madison’s Notes on the Constitutional Convention, 1787 "No power but Congress can declare war; but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war?… [T]hese remarks originate purely in a desire to maintain the powers of government as they are established by the Constitution between the different departments, and a hope that, whether we have conquests or no conquests, war or no war, peace or no peace, we shall yet preserve, in its integrity and strength, the Constitution of the United States." – Daniel Webster, Speech in Philadelphia, December 2, 1846 (Quotes from The New American, 4/7/03, pp. 29, 30) U.N. RESOLUTION 1441 IS IRRELEVANT, NOT EVEN A GLOBALIST AUTHORIZATION FOR WAR ON IRAQ Steven Been of Tallahassee, Florida writes in a Washington Times letter to the editor (3/17/03, p. A16) that "U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 is not self-executing, and does not authorize the United States or any other country to launch a war against Iraq. Resolution 1441 gave Iraq ‘a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.’ "But, it did not say anything about other countries using force against Iraq. The only mention Resolution 1441 made of other countries (‘member states’ in U.N. lingo), was to request that member states help the inspectors by telling them what we know. As to what would happen if Iraq failed to take advantage of this ‘final opportunity,’ the resolution said only that the Security Council would convene immediately upon receipt of the inspectors’ reports, ‘in order to consider the situation.’ This resolution shows the Security Council’s intent to meet again to decide what to do. It is explicitly not self-executing, and does not authorize the use of military force. "The Security Council knows how to authorize force when it wants to. Resolution 678, issued on Nov. 29, 1990, included the following language: ‘authorizes member states’ … ‘to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660’ (which required Iraq to leave Kuwait) ‘unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements’ previous resolutions requiring it to withdraw from Kuwait. Resolution 678 was an authorization to go to war. Resolution 1441 is no such thing." ATTACK ON IRAQ DEPLETED U.S. CRUISE MISSILE SUPPLY "The U.S. Navy has launched at least two-thirds of the Tomahawk cruise missiles it has in the Middle East during the first two weeks of the war in Iraq, requiring it to rush some of its remaining stock of the missiles to the region. The rapid depletion of its arsenal comes at an awkward time because the Tomahawk’s maker, Raytheon Co., stopped production in 1999 after the Navy ordered a new version that won’t be ready until mid-2004. "Navy officials say they have fired more than 700 of the 1,100 Tomahawks they had in the Middle East from destroyers, submarines and other ships in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea during the current conflict. … "The Navy had a total of 2,000 Tomahawks in its global stocks when the war started. But in the early days of the Iraqi conflict, the missiles were used extensively against targets in and around Baghdad where heavy antiaircraft fire limited fighter jets’ ability to safely conduct bombing raids. The service since has cut back on their use, firing between 15 and 30 a day, a Navy spokesman said. The 18-foot missiles can fly 1,000 miles and use a variety of targeting systems to find their mark. … "The Tomahawk made its debut during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and Raytheon later upgraded it to include satellite navigation capabilities. But the company stopped making Tomahawks when the Navy decided to focus on a cheaper version. Restarting production lines now to replenish Tomahawk stocks would push their price up to $1.4 million apiece – compared with $1 million in 1999, when they last were used in great numbers during the Kosovo conflict." NEW CRUISE MISSILES WILL COST $546,000 APIECE "Raytheon, of Lexington, Mass., is in talks with the Navy to speed production of the next-generation Tactical Tomahawk, which are expected to cost $546,000 apiece. But there is no way any can be ready for the current conflict." Source: Anne Marie Squeo, The Wall Street Journal, 4/3/03, p. A6 BUSH’S "IRAQI FREEDOM" COULD ENSLAVE U.S. TAXPAYERS FOR DECADES "The cost of postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence against former members of Saddam Hussein’s government, a panel of national security experts say in a new study." CFR WANTS BUSH TO SPELL OUT FULL MAGNITUDE OF IRAQ COSTS "The panel, consisting of senior American officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. It concludes that President Bush has failed ‘to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs’ of Iraq." NIXONIONS, REAGANITES, BUSHIES, AND CLINTONISTAS AGREE "The panel was led by James R. Schlesinger, secretary of defense in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and Thomas R. Pickering, ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Bush’s father. Others on the panel included Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997 and is now retired, and Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, who served in senior positions in the Reagan administration." MULTIBILLION DOLLAR RECONSTRUCTION OF IRAQ TO BE PAID FOR WITH OUR TAXES "They urged Mr. Bush ‘to make clear to Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq that the United States will stay the course’ in Iraq by financing a ‘multibillion-dollar’ reconstruction program and seeking formal Congressional endorsement of it. … "The report calls particular attention to the lack of planning and inadequate resources devoted to the humanitarian front after the war. Though Mr. Bush has created a new Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, overall planning by international agencies like the World Food Program shows that only $30 million of a $120 million initial requirement for Iraq has been financed. The panel suggested that the White House request an immediate $3 billion for Iraq reconstruction tasks and food aid for the initial postwar phase. …" WILL U.S. TROOPS DEFEND THE OIL COMPANIES IN IRAQ INSTEAD OF THE U.S. HOMELAND? "In appended comments, James F. Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan in the current Bush administration, said that ‘even the lowest suggested requirement of 75,000 troops’ to stabilize Iraq would mean ‘that every infantryman in the U.S. Army spend 6 months in Iraq out of every 18 to 24.’ The report gave credence to a recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, that 200,000 troops would be needed to police Iraq after a war. If that many troops are needed, the report says, the $20 billion a year estimate of costs ‘would be much greater.’ " Source: Patrick Tyler, The New York Times, 3/12/03, p. A11 Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of January 15, 2003 BIG OIL IS PRINCIPAL BENEFICIARY OF BUSH’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL IRAQ WAR Llewellyn Rockwell writes (Mises Daily Article, article@mises.org, 1/8/03) that "the New York Times…recently carried two large articles on Iraq’s oil resources…. The reporter noted, ‘112 billion barrels of proven reserves is also something nobody can overlook….Iraq’s "ability to generate oil" is always somewhere on the table….’ … "[T]he MSNBC story, ‘Iraqi Oil, American Bonanza?’ … says, ‘Iraq’s vast oil reserves remain a powerful prize for global oil companies….a massive rebuilding effort represents a huge opportunity for the companies chosen to tackle it…." CHEVRON AND HALLIBURTON EXPECT TO CASH IN " ‘American oil companies are also hoping to benefit from the industry’s unusually strong ties to the White House. President Bush, himself the former head of a Texas oil company, has pursued a national energy policy that relies on aggressively expanding new sources of oil. Vice President Cheney is the former CEO of oil services giant Halliburton. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron.’ …" "DESERT STORM" WAS FOUGHT FOR "JOBS, JOBS, JOBS" "Recall that it was then-Secretary of State James Baker who said the first Iraqi war was all about ‘jobs, jobs, jobs.’ The line between the owners of capital and the warfare state has never been that clean in American history, and it has arguably never been as conspicuously blurred as it is today. … "[I]f you lose your son in battle, know that this was necessary in order to shore up U.S. domination of the world economy. This is the creed of the global social democrats who champion both military and economic globalization. … "[T]he problem in Iraq is not that Iraq is somehow withholding its oil from the market. For ten years, and even before the first war on Iraq, its oil supplies have been available to the world. In one of the great ironies of modern war history, the first Bush administration waged war, it said, to keep Iraq from withholding its oil resources from world markets. The U.S. then proceeded to enforce a decade of sanctions that withheld most of Iraq’s oil reserves from the market." SADDAM USED CBW WHILE AN ALLY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT "High on the Bush administration’s list of justifications for war against Iraq 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 traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an ‘almost daily’ basis in defiance of international conventions. "The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait – which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq’s acquisition of chemical and biological precursors – is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy." Source: Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, 12/30/02, p. 1 Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of December 31, 2002 CONTROL OF OIL IS KEY TO U.S. LEADERSHIP OF NEW WORLD ORDER "Iraq has 130 billion barrels of proven reserves of oil. This is the second-largest national source of oil after Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein has cut deals with Russian and French oil companies, leaving traditional Anglo-American oil companies out of the loop. Anglo-American oil companies have been the dominant Western participants in the extraction of Middle Eastern oil ever since oil was discovered there. …" CANADA, MEXICO, AND VENEZUELA FUEL AMERICA "The United States buys most of its imported oil from Canada (15%), Mexico (12%), and Venezuela (14%). Middle Eastern countries account for 24% of our imports, which is still in the range of half of our consumption. … "The Western alliance depends on oil. Oil is the most important commodity. To maintain its leadership of this alliance, the United States government must see to it that the price of the central commodity stays low. China and Asia are coming on-stream economically, which means the demand for oil will rise. The CIA has estimated that by 2015, 75% of Persian Gulf oil will go to Asia, with only 10% flowing to the West. …" CONTROL OF CENTRAL ASIAN OIL IS "THE GREAT GAME" "The United States must defend the interests of the alliance by bringing new supplies into production. This was what the invasion of Afghanistan was all about: establishing protection over a new pipeline from the Caspian Sea oil fields, either through Afghanistan and Pakistan and into the tankers, or through Turkey. This pipeline is important if Russia is not to control this flow of oil. The Great Game of the 19th century - Russia, Turkey, England, Afghanistan, and India - is still being fought, but only by surrogates. …" VICTORY IN IRAQ WOULD RESULT IN U.S. CONTROL OF MIDEAST "Once the spigots are controlled by the United States, OPEC will fall into line. The United States will have the ability to cut the revenues of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the OPEC countries. Because governments always expand expenditures to meet revenues, any drastic restriction of revenues will topple existing oil-exporting governments. Once the United States controls the marginal supply of oil, it will also control the regimes of the Middle East. It can then get regime changes any time it likes. Problem: there will be more than one regime change because there will be only one price of oil." 5,000 TROOPS ARE IN SAUDI ARABIA TO GUARD OIL FLOW "The problem with regime changes today is that they are likely to produce radical, anti-Western regimes. This is why the United States still has 5,000 troops in Saudi Arabia. These troops can keep the pipelines open if some Al-Qaeda-type regime takes over." WITH 250,000 TROOPS IN IRAQ, IRAN WOULD ALSO BE SUBJECT TO U.S. INFLUENCE "When there are 250,000 American troops in the region, most of them stationed in Iraq, geography will be in our favor militarily. Iraq borders on Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two other major oil producers in the region. This means that U.S. troops will be able to guarantee open spigots. It will also mean that revolutionaries will be less likely to establish hostile regimes. They will have to content themselves with assassinations, terrorism, and guerilla actions. But this is their specialty anyway in the international division of labor. They are the disloyal opposition. …" OIL IS A BIGGER GOAL THAN REGIME CHANGE "[William] Seidman, a commentator for CNBC, was an adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush senior. He is the former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and also headed the Resolution Trust Company, the federal agency created to bail out the scandal-ridden savings and loans industry in the 1980s. He served as a consultant on the junior Bush’s transition team, and maintains close ties with top administration officials. "According to the Grand Rapids Press, which was alone in reporting the remarks, Seidman told the meeting that he had just come from a State Department briefing in which US plans for a military occupation of Iraq were outlined. "Removing the Iraqi government and installing a US military regime that would control the country’s oil fields is ‘at least as important as eliminating weapons of mass destruction,’ he said. ‘Getting control of that oil will make a vast difference in all sorts of things, but particularly the price of oil.’ " Source: Gary North’s Reality Check, 12/16/02 ( www.dailyreckoning.com/sub/GetReality.cfm. Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of November 15, 2002 U.S. SHOULD ONLY WAGE WAR TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION, THE PEOPLE, AND THE TERRITORY OF THE USA "While we need to treat our retired veterans better, we also should understand that we can best honor both our veterans and our current armed forces by pursuing a coherent foreign policy. No veteran should ever have to look back and ask himself ‘Why were we over there in the first place?’ Too often history demonstrates that wars are fought for political and economic reasons, rather than legitimate national security reasons. "Today’s American soldiers are the veterans of the future, and they should never be sent to war without clear objectives that serve definite American national security interests. They should never fight at the behest of the United Nations or any other international agency. They should never serve under a UN flag, nor answer to a UN commander. They deserve to know that they fight for the American people and the Constitution, and that the decision to send them into battle was made by their own congress rather than by UN bureaucrats who don’t care about them. Only by using American troops judiciously and in service of the Constitution can we avoid the kind of endless military entanglements we witnessed in Korea and Vietnam. We honor our veterans by ensuring that their service to the nation is never in vain." Source: Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.), Texas Straight Talk, 11/11/02 Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of October 15, 2002 ACTUAL DECLARATION OF WAR IS CONSTITUTIONALLY OBLIGATORY Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) writes (Texas Straight Talk, 10/07/02) that "Last week, during a hearing in the House International Relations committee, I attempted to force the committee to follow the Constitution and vote to declare war with Iraq. The language of Article I, section 8, is quite clear: only Congress has the authority to declare war. Yet Congress in general, and the committee in particular, have done everything possible to avoid making such a declaration. Why? Because members lack the political courage to call an invasion of Iraq what it really is - a war - and vote yes or no on the wisdom of such a war. Congress would rather give up its most important authorized power to the President and the UN than risk losing an election later if the war goes badly. There is always congressional ‘support’ for a popular war, but the politicians want room to maneuver if the public later changes its mind. So members take half steps, supporting confusingly worded ‘authorizations’ that they can back away from easily if necessary." DECISION MAKING SHIFTED TO THE UNITED NATIONS "It’s astonishing that the authorization passed by the committee mentions the United Nations dozens of times, yet does not mention the Constitution once. Congress has allowed itself to be bypassed completely, even though much is made of the President’s generosity in ‘consulting’ legislators about the war. The real negotiations took place between the Bush administration and the UN, replacing debate in the people’s house. By transferring its authority to declare war to the President and ultimately the UN, Congress not only violates the Constitution, but also disenfranchises the American electorate. "I don’t believe in resolutions that cite the UN as authority for our military actions. America has a sovereign right to defend itself, and we don’t need UN permission or approval to act in the interests of American national security. The decision to go to war should be made by the U.S. Congress alone. If Congress believes war is justified, it should give the President full warmaking authority, rather than binding him with resolutions designed to please our UN detractors." DONKEYS AND ELEPHANTS ARE BOTH CONSTITUTIONAL JACKASSES "Sadly, the leadership of both parties on the International Relations committee fails to understand the Constitution. One Republican member stated that the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war is an anachronism and should no longer be followed, while a Democratic member said that a declaration of war would be ‘frivolous.’ I don’t think most Americans believe our Constitution is outdated or frivolous, and they expect Congress to follow it. "When Congress issued clear declarations of war against Japan and Germany during World War II, the nation was committed and victory was achieved. When Congress shirks its duty and avoids declaring war, as with Korea, and Vietnam, the nation is less committed and the goals are less clear. No lives should be lost in Iraq unless Congress expresses the clear will of the American people and votes yes or no on a declaration of war."
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