From owner-imap@chumbly.math.missouri.edu Thu Dec 12 07:30:14 2002
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 21:00:20 -0600 (CST)
From: Brian
Article: 148289
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
NEW YORK -- Arms inspections are a hoax,
said Tariq Aziz,
Iraq's deputy prime minister, in a forthright and chilling
interview with ABC News last week. War is inevitable.
Aziz is the smartest, most credible member of President Saddam Hussein's otherwise sinister regime - my view after covering Iraq since 1976.
What the U.S. wants is not regime change
in Iraq but rather
region change,
charged Aziz. He tersely summed up the Bush
administration's reasons for war against Iraq: Oil and
Israel.
Aziz's undiplomatic language underlines growing fears across the Mideast that U.S. President George Bush intends to use a manufactured war against Iraq to redraw the political map of the region, put it under permanent U.S. military control, and seize its vast oil resources.
These are not idle alarms.
Senior administration officials openly speak of invading Iran, Syria,
Libya and Lebanon. Influential neo-conservative think-tanks in
Washington have deployed a small army of experts
on TV, urging
the U.S. to remove governments deemed unfriendly to the U.S. and
Israel.
Washington's most powerful lobbies - for oil and Israel - are urging the U.S. to seize Mideast oil and crush any regional states that might one day challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly or regional dominance.
The radical transformation of the Mideast being considered by the Bush administration is potentially the biggest political change since the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty in which victorious Britain and France carved up the Ottoman-ruled region.
Possible scenarios under review at the highest levels:
Iraq will be broken up into three semi-autonomous regions: Kurdish north; Sunni centre; Shia south. Iraq's oil will be exploited by U.S. and British firms. Iraq will become a major customer for U.S. arms. Turkey may get a slice of northern Iraq around the Kirkuk and Mosul oil fields. U.S. forces will repress any attempts by Kurds to set up an independent state. A military dictatorship or kingdom will eventually be created.
The swift, ruthless crushing of Iraq is expected to terrify Arab states, Palestinians and Iran into obeying U.S. political dictates.
regime change.The U.S. will anyway undermine the ruling Ba'ath regime and young leader, Bashir Assad, replacing him with a French-based exile regime. France will get renewed influence in Syria as a consolation prize for losing out in Iraq to the Americans and Brits. Historical note: in 1949, the U.S. staged its first coup in Syria, using Gen. Husni Zai'im to overthrow a civilian government.
liberatedIraq; more remotely, for Saudi Arabia and/or Syria.
The lines drawn in the Mideast by old European imperial powers are now to be redrawn by the world's newest imperial power, the United States. But as veteran soldiers know, even the best strategic plans become worthless once real fighting begins.