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POETIC LICENCE: US is preparing for possible use of nukes against Iraq

Kaleem Omar

It would make no difference whether Iraq actually had any weapons of mass destruction or not. Washington would simply claim that Baghdad did indeed have such weapons and was “about to use them,” but that the American nuclear strikes had “prevented” this from happening

The reports submitted to the UN Security Council on Monday by Chief Weapons Inspector Dr Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Dr Mohammed ElBaradei, while criticising much of Iraq’s performance over the past two months, was not able to confirm claims by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein is rearming.

The reports will be a key to Washington’s efforts to bolster international support for a war on Iraq and to efforts by sceptics to avert one. So far, however, Britain is the only Security Council member to have jumped on to the Bush war-wagon. The other members, including Germany (the council’s current president) and veto-wielding Russia, France and China, are all opposed to military action against Iraq.

Ahead of the UN weapons inspectors’ presentation to the Security Council on Monday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri described charges by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that Baghdad hasn’t cooperated with the United Nations as a “series of lies.” Sabri said, “Iraq looks for a report that would present facts as they are, that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction. And we hope that the Security Council will lift the criminal sanctions on the Iraqi people.”

In the 12 years since the US-led sanctions were imposed, a million Iraqi civilians, including 700,000 children, have died of malnutrition and disease as a result of food and medicine shortages created by the sanctions.

The Bush administration, for its part is now said to be thinking the unthinkable and preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq. A nuclear strike would likely kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, more even, perhaps, than the 200,000 civilians killed in the US nuclear strikes against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

According to a report in the January 26 edition of the Los Angeles Times, at the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in Omaha, Nebraska (the same base to which Bush fled after the 9/11 attacks on the US), target lists are being scrutinised, options are being pondered and procedures are being tested to give nuclear armaments a role in the new US doctrine of “preemption.”

The LA Times quoted multiple sources close to the process as saying that the current planning focuses on two possible roles for nuclear weapons: attacking Iraqi facilities located so deep underground that they might be impervious to conventional explosives; and “thwarting” Iraq’s use of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Under this strategy, nuclear strikes may be carried out against Iraq even if it does not possess any weapons of mass destruction (UN inspectors have found no evidence of such weapons so far), with the US claiming that it was launching “preemptive” nuclear strikes against Iraq in order to “thwart” the use by Baghdad of weapons of mass destruction.

Under this diabolical plan, it would make no difference whether Iraq actually had any weapons of mass destruction or not. Washington would simply claim that Baghdad did indeed have such weapons and was “about to use them,” but that the American nuclear strikes had “prevented” this from happening.

I am reminded, in this context, of an anecdote about a man who was travelling on a train in England and reading a copy of the Daily Telegraph. Each time he finished a page, he would tear it off, crumple it up into a ball and throw it out of the window. After watching this performance for a while, one of the other passengers could no longer contain his curiosity. Turning to the newspaper reader, he said, “Excuse me, but why are you doing that?” “Doing what?” asked the newspaper reader. “That,” said the other passenger. “Crumpling each page into a ball and throwing it out of the window.” “Oh, that,” said the reader. “That’s to keep down the elephants.” “Elephants? “ said the other man, understandably bewildered. “Elephants? What elephants? There are no elephants!” “Yes, I know,” replied the reader, with a smug smile. “Effective, isn’t it?”

Nuclear weapons have, since they were first created by the US in 1945, been part of the arsenal discussed by war planners. But, as the LA Times noted, the Bush administration’s decision to actively plan for possible preemptive use of such weapons, especially as so-called bunker busters, against Iraq, represents a significant lowering of the nuclear threshold. It rewrites the ground rules of nuclear combat in the name of fighting terrorism.

In May 2002, Bush signed National Security Directive 17, officially confirming the doctrine of “preemptive thwarting” of any potential use of weapons of mass destruction. “US military and appropriate civilian agencies must possess the full range of operational capabilities to counter the threat and use of weapons of mass destruction,” Bush reiterated last December in his “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction”.

The current nuclear planning, revealed in interview with US military officers and described in documents reviewed by the LA Times, is being carried at STRATCOM’s Omaha headquarters, among small teams in Washington and at Vie-President Dick Cheney’s “undisclosed location in Pennsylvania.

On December 11, 2002, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld sent Bush a memorandum (a copy of which was obtained by the LA Times) recommending assigning all responsibilities for dealing with foreign weapons of mass destruction, including “global strike; integrated missile defence; (and) information operations” to STRATCOM.

That innocuous-seeming description of responsibilities covers enormous ground, bringing everything from the use of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear strikes to covert and special operations to cyber warfare and “strategic deception” under the purview of nuclear warriors. Earlier this month, Bush approved Rumsfeld’s proposal. Welcome to a possible nuclear nightmare, everybody.

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