posted April 07, 2003 at 1:47 p.m. MDTOther items from Asia Times' Middle East section:
In the pipeline: More regime change - "An Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, has reported that Israel is seriously considering restarting a strategically important oil pipeline that once transferred oil from the Iraqi city of Mosul to Israel's northern port of Haifa. Given the Israeli claim of a positive US approach to the plan, the Israeli project provides grounds for a theory that the ongoing war against Iraq is in part a joint US, British and Israeli design for reshaping the Middle East to serve their particular interests"
Watch Woolsey - "If you want to figure out whether the administration of President George W Bush intends a crusade to remake the Middle East in the wake of Washington's presumed military victory in Iraq, watch what happens with R James Woolsey. A former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Woolsey is being pushed hard by his fellow neoconservatives in the Pentagon to play a key role in the post-Saddam Hussein US occupation.
Less well-known than his long-time associates and close friends, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the former head of the Defense Policy Board (DPB) Richard Perle, Woolsey has long believed that Washington has a mission to use its overwhelming military power and its democratic ideals to transform the Arab world. And he has pushed for war with Iraq as hard as anyone, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."
The war that may end the age of superpower - "The United States, like ancient Rome, is beginning to be plagued by the limits of power. This fact is tactically acknowledged by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard B Myers that the war plan should not be criticized by the press because it has been framed in a diplomatic and political context, not merely pure military considerations in a vacuum. They say that it is the best possible war plan politically, though it may be far from full utilization of US military potential. America's top soldier has criticized the uniformed officer corps for expressing dissent that seriously undermines the war effort. Such criticism is characterized by Myers as "bearing no resemblance to the truth", counterproductive and harmful to US troops in the field."
Spoils of war: The case of the Iraqi campaign - "To the victor belong the spoils," goes the old adage. But the United States is a different type of victor. Its spoils do not include permanent occupation of a vanquished nation; it is content with having a long-term, if not a permanent, influence in determining the form of government and the nature of economic policies of the vanquished, a la Japan and Germany. Those types of "spoils" are likely to come out of the US invasion of Iraq. Even though there are expectations that the US will end up occupying Iraq for many years, observers outside the US government - including this writer - don't believe in that possibility. So, what are some of the economic arguments related to the George W Bush administration's present Iraq campaign?"
