Global Eye -- Open Book

By Chris Floyd

Some cynics claim that George W. Bush and his closest advisors 
-- whom cynics cynically refer to as "bloodthirsty corporate pimps" 
-- are just a bunch of vicious, shifty liars. But this column takes 
enormous umbrage at the heaping of such unsupported calumny upon the 
good names of these great leaders. They have been maligned, slandered, 
falsely accused. For when it comes to their plans for world conquest, 
these so-called "pimps" are as honest as the day is long.  

As we all know, the rape of Iraq (or as future historians will doubtless 
call it, "The Dawn of the Shiite Empire") was planned openly several 
years ago by a hard-right agitprop cell led by Dick Cheney and Don 
Rumsfeld. Now it turns out that the recent big-monkey chest- beating 
aimed at Syria -- threats of sanctions, "surgical" strikes, and
"regime 
change" -- was also carefully planned, by many of the same people, 
long before the Bush Regime seized power.  

As we've often reported here, in September 2000 the Cheney-Rumsfeld 
outfit, Project for the New American Century, proudly published their 
blueprint for the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout 
Central Asia and the Middle East. They even foresaw the need for what 
they called a "Pearl Harbor-type event" to galvanize the American public 
into supporting their ambitious program. Their reasons for this program 
were also stated quite openly: to ensure U.S. political and economic 
domination of the world, while strangling any potential "rival" or any 
viable alternative to the rapacious crony capitalism favored by the 
PNAC extremists. This dominance would be enforced by the ever-present 
threat -- and frequent application -- of violence. (A tactic known 
elsewhere as "terrorism.")  

PNAC was also very honest about the role of Iraq in this crusade for 
empire, stating plainly that the need for a U.S. military presence in 
the area "superseded" the "issue of the regime of Saddam
Hussein." 
There was no sanctimonious posturing about "liberation," weapons of mass 
destruction or terrorist connections. To dominate the oil wealth centered 
in that region -- and hence the economic/political development of the 
world in the coming decades -- they needed a military presence in Iraq; 
it's as simple as that.  

And now they've got it. Again, it's all quite open -- for anyone who 
cares to look. Last week, the Pentagon announced that it "expects" 
(i.e., "demands") to have "long-term access" to at
least four major 
military bases in Iraq, The New York Times reports. (Rumsfeld -- or 
"Shifty" as cynics like to call him -- later issued a weasel-worded 
non-denial denial.) Although the hundreds of thousands of armed and 
angry Shiite Muslims currently clamoring for an Islamic state in 
Bush's new satrapy may yet cause a spot of bother for the sahibs, 
for now the generals and arms dealers installed as Iraq's new rulers 
believe they will still be sitting pretty in Fort Pretzel and Carlyle 
Air Base throughout the "new American century." This was, after all, 
the purpose of the recent slaughter -- as Cheney and Rumsfeld told 
us plainly years ago.  

A few months before PNAC's prophetic 2000 report, an allied group 
with an overlapping membership published a similar document outlining 
steps to be taken against Syria: first "tightening the screws" with 
denunciations and economic sanctions, then escalating to military 
action, as Jim Lobe of Inter- Press Agency reports. The architects 
of this document included Elliot Abrams, the convicted perjurer now 
running Bush's Middle East policy; Douglas Feith, one of Shifty's 
top aides; Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary to Colin Powell, and 
influential Pentagon advisors such as David Wurmser, Michael Leeden 
and everyone's sweetheart, Richard "Influence-Peddler" Perle.  

The report sprang largely from the loins of the United States 
Committee for a Free Lebanon, a curious grouping of right-wing 
American Christians, right-wing American Jews, and a sprinkling 
of Lebanese exiles. They object -- rightly -- to the fact that 
Syria has maintained "long-term access to major military bases" 
in Lebanon, using this minatory presence to exercise undue sway 
over Lebanon's political and economic life. Of course, some cynics 
would say this situation is remarkably akin to Israel's own 
18-year occupation of, er, Lebanon, or the United States' 
decades-long -- and still-continuing -- military presence in 
Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Panama, etc. 
But you know what cynics are like.  

The USCFL also provides highly insightful and very nearly literate 
analyses of vital regional issues, such as its seminal paper, "Even 
Arabs Don't Like Arabs." But the mindset of the group -- whose 
members now stalk the corridors of power in Imperial Washington 
-- is perhaps best displayed in its thoughtful 2001 treatise, 
"A Petition Demanding War Against Governments That Sponsor Terrorism" 
(Except, of course, for governments who enforce their will by the 
ever-present threat and use of violence -- i.e. terrorism -- but are 
run by nice white men educated at Yale and Oxford.)  

Here, the proto-Bushist group demands that six "rogue nations" 
-- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and Sudan -- "turn over 
their governments to the United States" on pain of massive military 
response. The United States will then "occupy these territories until 
proper governments" -- ones that allow "long-term access" to major 
military bases, no doubt -- "can be established." And just how massive 
should that threatened U.S. military response be? The USCFL is, as 
always, admirably -- and brutally -- forthright: "America must set 
a clear example - identical to that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If 
you tread on me, I will wipe you off the face of the earth."  

Is this what the Bushists are really talking about in their 
fear-mongering diatribes about seeing "terrorism's smoking gun 
in a mushroom cloud"?  

Syria in the Cross-Hairs of Familiar Group of Hawks
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=17541
Inter-Press Agency, April 14, 2003

Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role
http://www.meforum.org/research/lsg.php
The Middle East Forum/USCFL, May 2000

Even Arabs Don't Like Arabs
http://www.freelebanon.org/articles/a362.htm
United States Committee for a Free Lebanon, March 2003

A Petition Demanding War Against Governments That Sponsor Terrorism
http://www.petitiononline.com/CAAT/petition.html
United States Committee for a Free Lebanon, Autumn 2001,

Ex-CIA Chief Gets Tough on Syria
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/
Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1035781087109&call_pageid=968332188492
Toronto Star, April 21, 2003

United States Committee for a Free Lebanon
http://www.freelebanon.org/
USCFL website

Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Military Bases in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/international/worldspecial/20BASE.html
New York Times, April 20, 2003

The Greatest Gulf
http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersoniraq/story/0,12975,939470,00.html
The Guardian, April 19, 2003

How American Power Girds the Globe with a Ring of Steel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,940308,00.html
The Guardian, April 21, 2003


Rumsfeld Denies the U.S. Has Plans for Permanent Iraq Bases
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/22/international/worldspecial/22PENT.html
New York Times, April 21, 2003

An American Mogadishu
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/21/mosul/index.html
Salon.com, April 21, 2003

The Rape of Iraq
http://www.counterpunch.org/block04152003.html
CounterPunch, April 15, 2003

The Unthinkable is Becoming Normal
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3029.htm
The Independent on Sunday, April 20, 2003

Empire vs. Republic
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
Consortiumnews.com, April 21, 2003

Freedom Unbound, and Out of Control
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED22Ak02.html
Asia Times, April 22, 2003

Religion and Politics Resurface as the New Voices of Iraqi Freedom
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,940968,00.html
The Guardian, April 22, 2003

Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn
http://freelebanon.org/articles/a385.htm
Michael Leeden, USCFL, April 2003

Rebuilding America's Defenses
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
Project for a New Century, September 2000

                          -==-

Source: The Moscow Times / Metropolis
http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2003/04/25/120.html


Cheers, Steve..

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