[casi] War the Dow and oil games .....

["farbuthnot" <asceptic@DELETETHISfreenetname.co.uk>]

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Published on Thursday, July 18, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Will the White House Distract Attention from Their Corporate Corruption With
War Against the "Evil One" in Iraq?
by Tom Turnipseed
 
With increasing evidence evolving that President Bush and Vice-President
Cheney are caught up in corporate corruption of their own creation and new
polls showing that the public is beginning to perceive their perfidy, the
danger of desperate men going to war to distract the public is appalling.
On July 16, 2002 the Dow Jones lost ground for the seventh straight day.
Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan appeared before a Congressional
committee attacking dishonest corporate executives and "an infectious greed"
as causing "considerable uncertainty" in the U.S. economy. His wife, Andrea
Mitchell reported on the Brian Williams Show that "Hawks favoring an attack
(on Iraq) are winning in the White House". The same day both Paul Krugman
and Nicholas Kristof chronicled the continuing saga of George W. Bush's
slick and unsavory business deals as an official of Harken Energy and the
Texas Ranger's baseball team in essays entitled "Bush and The Texas Land
Grab" and "Steps To Wealth" on the op.ed. page of the New York Times.
Also on July 16, the Ipsos-Reid/Cook Political Report released polling data
from July 11-14 revealing that only 42% of those polled would vote to
re-elect Bush and the Zogby Poll reported that Bush's approval rating had
dropped to 62%, down from 74% in February. The Zogby Poll reported that one
in three Americans feel they are worse off than a year ago and 51% said they
are less likely to invest in the stock market. Pollster John Zogby said,
"Two out of three likely voters tell us they have an IRA or 401k. One look
at their quarterly report and there goes confidence in the economy and the
government. We are looking at a very close election....this is THE issue."
The week before the September 11 terrorist attacks, voters gave Bush a 50%
positive and 49% negative job rating, so it is apparent to White House
strategists that war works wonders for his popularity.
Maybe that's why Andrea Mitchell now reports the war hawks are winning in
the White House debate over how and when to make a "regime change" in Iraq.
Maybe that's why one of those hawks, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, is in Turkey offering that economically troubled Muslim NATO
state an easing of the more than $4 billion owed the U.S. for arms purchases
as well as promising to push for congressional approval of a $228 million
aid package for Turkey.
Wolfowitz said, "Turkey stands to benefit enormously" by a regime change in
Iraq. The U.S. maintains airbases in Turkey. U.S. and Britain have used them
for flights to enforce a no-fly zone over Northern Iraq. Turkey is publicly
opposed to any military action against neighboring Iraq and has lost
billions in trade since backing the U.S. in the 1991 Gulf War and observing
subsequent trade sanctions, but the White House hawks seem determined to
bribe and browbeat their leaders into going along with a U.S. invasion of
Iraq. Wolfowitz also promised the Turkish leaders that the U.S. did not want
an ethnic Kurdish state in Northern Iraq. The Turks fear an independent
Kurdish state because of their 17 year war against the Kurds in which more
than 20,000 Kurds were killed.
The War Hawks who rail against Saddam, the evil one, and accuse him of using
poison gas on his own people, refer to the Kurds as the victims but Kurdish
leaders in Northern Iraq say they will refuse to cooperate with any
U.S.-inspired action to overthrow Hussein. Massoud Barzani, the leader of
one of the two main political parties that control the Kurdish enclave in
Northern Iraq said last month that, "The Iraq issue won't be solved by
military or covert action." The Kurds have bitter memories of their 1975
struggle with Baghdad when the U.S. abruptly withdrew its support. Some of
the Shi'ites in Southern Iraq have opposed Hussein but they also remember
the duplicity of George Bush, Sr. who encouraged them to rise up against the
Hussein government after the Gulf War but had their rebellion crushed
without any help from the U.S.
The U.S. news media parrots the propaganda of the U.S. foreign policy
establishment and the Bush administration about the imminent Iraqi threat of
fomenting terrorism and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, but
virtually ignores evidence presented by credible sources like American Scott
Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector based in Iraq, who says that Iraq is
effectively disarmed. Mainstream U.S. media has also ignored the blatant
fact that the U.S. foreign policy establishment is determined to control the
oil reserves of Iraq at any and all costs.
With lawsuits alleging crooked accounting tactics used by Dick Cheney as CEO
of Halliburton Co. to personally enrich himself, The Washington Post
reported that from 1997 till 2000 with Cheney at the helm, the Halliburton
Co. did $73 million worth of business with Saddam the evil one. They sold
him oil production equipment and spare parts through their subsidiaries in
spite of U.S. imposed economic sanctions against Iraq.
During the Gulf War we bombed Iraq's eight multi-purpose dams, destroying
flood control systems, irrigation, municipal and industrial water storage,
and hydroelectric power. Major pumping stations were targeted and sewage
facilities were destroyed. Article 54 of the Geneva Convention prohibits
attacks on "drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works".
After such deliberate destruction, we used sanctions to prevent Iraq from
rebuilding, knowing epidemics would ensue. The United Nation's Children's
Fund (UNICEF), estimates that well over a million Iraqis have died as a
result. In 2000, UNICEF said that thousands die every month including many
children who are without necessary medicine due to the sanctions. No wonder
Bush doesn't want an International Criminal Court to have jurisdiction over
the U.S. U.S. policy makers could be charged with genocide! Will Bush/Cheney
cover their corruption with more war and killing of innocents?
Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia,
South Carolina. www.turnipseed.net


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