-Caveat Lector- http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030330-013308-4562r India FIle: Oh! What a lovely war
By Mani Shankar Aiyar >From the International Desk Published 3/30/2003 1:50 PM View printer-friendly version CHENNAI, India, March 30 (UPI) -- The Triple A war on Iraq -- Anglo- American-Aussie -- is going exactly as all wars since World War I have gone: on their own steam, of their own volition and without regard for the carefully drawn plans of mice and men. The Triple As, they've huffed and they've puffed but hardly blown the house down. The start was suitably farcical. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency -- which lacks for nothing but intelligence -- slipped a note to President George W. Bush telling him exactly where Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his cohorts were confabulating. So, without taking the essential necessary prerequisite of stationing CNN at the scene of action, Bush -- so much like King George III of Britain in so many ways -- ordered a missile attack to "decapitate" the entire Iraqi leadership. When neither mourning nor celebration overtook the streets of Baghdad, the propaganda machine of the world's sole superpower put it about that Saddam had fled -- where to was a bit unclear. He could not have fled to Iran where the ayatollahs have been waiting for years to avenge themselves for the 8- year-long war that the U.S. surrogate, one Saddam Hussein, launched on them after President Jimmy Carter's Keystone Kops botched their mission; -- nor to Ankara since he would have been caught in Kurdistan and delivered to Turkey carved and dressed well before Thanksgiving; -- nor to Syria since the 30-year war between the Iraqi and Syrian factions of the Baath Party has been among the least comprehensible and most vicious of intra-Arab disputes in the last half-century. My family and I arrived in Baghdad in October 1976 to TV pictures of the Saddam regime hanging Syrian "spies," Baghdad TV's conception of wholesome family entertainment; -- nor to Jordan where the usual suspects -- Arabia's tinpot monarchies -- are lying in wait to surrender Saddam to the Americans in exchange for a handsome ransom; -- nor, within Iraq, to the Euphrates where the Shia Muslim majority could serve him up as Sunni kebab; -- nor south to Kuwait because the only people in the world who hate Saddam more than Dad's favorite Son are the Kuwaitis. Then where? The desert is not the jungle; so Saddam could not transform himself into Jungle Jim or Tarzan; and the trackless wastes of the desert hardly have the foliage to cover an Iraqi version of the Ho Chi Minh trails. So, to where on Earth did the CIA and MI6 think the bird had flown? Unable to spot their target, the United States then launched on Iraq in a single night 1,200 cruise missiles at $660,000 a piece -- that is, some $800 million of fire power to assassinate one man. More expensive than tickets to "Chicago" but so much more fun. Especially as the fireworks over the Tigris were more spectacular than over the Thames on the Queen's birthday. To no avail. Up popped Saddam a few days later on every couch potato's TV screen, but wearing glasses and reading from a notebook. Not Saddam at all, said the spin doctors of the Bush-Blair school, obviously a double since: first. Saddam's never before been seen in public looking like an old maid with spectacles; and second, reading from a hand-written text in a note-book instead of from an immaculately typed script on the best quality A4 bond paper. So, Saddam next day obligingly took off his spectacles, had his uniform ironed, and gathered around him the top guns of Iraq's supreme authority, the Revolutionary Command Council; then let in the visual media. The CIA geniuses at Langley, Va., determined that this must be old footage, for how could every leader of the Iraqi Baath Party have escaped the pounding they gave everything standing in the narrow strip between Sa'adoun Street -- Baghdad's Fifth Avenue -- and the Dijla -- the Arabic name for the great river Tigris, Baghdad's Potomac? Nine days into Shock and Awe and Saddam is as alive as the CIA is brain- dead. Till last week, the Iraqi Information minister was certainly the world's least credible spokesman. but U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld now beaten him to second place. CNN/BBC having shown all the footage available of Iraqi POWs, their hands tied behind their backs twitching in fear, Rummy went ballistic about how showing U.S. POWs on TV violated the Geneva Conventions, then followed up his humanitarian concerns by bombing to smithereens a market-place in Baghdad city almost as crowded as the World Trade Center before Osama bin Laden. No one believed the Americans when they said it was an own goal by the Iraqis. As Abraham Lincoln famously noted, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. The biggest casualty of the picturesque 24-hour coverage of this war in glorious Cecil B. DeMille technicolor is undoubtedly the credibility of the world's most powerful democracy -- and its hapless poodle, Blairite Britain. We now know that Cuba's Fidel Castro is not far wrong when he calls his immediate neighbors the Billy Liars of the Wild West. For even if the Triple A turn up something on weapons of mass destruction -- now an irrelevancy in a war whose only goal is regime change through assassination -- it is the Russians whom most of the world believes when they say the invading forces are likely to plant the evidence, much in the manner in which drug- busting raids are conducted in B-grade Hollywood movies. It has already become clear that nothing is going to plan whatever the Five O'clock Follies at Central Command in Qatar or the Pentagon might say. In the Vietnam war, we had to wait for the print media to expose the deceit of official briefings. Now, with live TV coverage, we can discover the deceit for ourselves. Meanwhile, back at the ranch as it were, it did not much matter that the Iraqis were not around to inflict casualties on the invading forces. The coalition forces were doing that very well on their own, thank you. "Friendly fire" is Anglo-Saxon doublespeak for nutty commanders getting so hot under the desert sun that in the mirage they mix up friend and foe. The desert sun also appears to have addled the perceptions of the commanders in the field. -- We were told that Umm Qasr had been taken -- and I really believed the Iraqi Info minister was talking rubbish when next morning he denied it, how wrong I was!; -- that Basra was brimming with school children throwing confetti at their "liberators" and pretty Iraqi girls lining up to kiss their benefactors; -- that An Nasiriyah had fallen without a shot being fired and the bridge- head over the Euphrates secured; -- that the Shias of An Najaf and Karbala were beside themselves with joy as in the last reel of the old WWII movies: "The Marines are here! The Marines are here!" A week into Shock and Awe, the tiny flea-bitten overgrown village of Umm Qasr is still forbidden fruit; downtown Basra awaits its first Brit; An Nasiriyah continues mowing down the foreign devils; An Najaf holds out; at Karbala, the second-most holy Islamic site after the Ka'aba at Makkah, known to Americans as Mecca, where in the seventh century A.D. the vicious Caliph of Damascus, Yazd, slaughtered the Prophet's favorite grandson, every member of his family and most of his entourage in a massacre which 1,400 years later reverberates in every Muslim mind as the most sacrilegious of injustices, a second Battle of Karbala is being fought against U.S. forces. The Anglo-American-Aussies have reached the Gates of Baghdad. A tremendous military achievement, say Rummy and his acolytes at the Qatar headquarters of the invading forces. I am intrigued. One of my jobs as deputy chief of mission in Baghdad all those years ago was to drive out from Baghdad to meet the large number of Shias of Indian origin who thronged Karbala and Najaf. We would set out in the morning after a leisurely breakfast, reach Karbala in time for elevenses, eat an enormous lunch at an Indian divine's home in Najaf a stone's throw from Ayatollah Ruhoollah Khomeini's home-in-exile at the time and drive back via the bridgehead over the Euphrates which the Americans have, they claim, "secured" at An Nasiriyah, to be in Baghdad by dinner time. The Americans drive twice that distance every weekend. Driving unopposed over scrubland along Western-built motorways which bypass all habitations, and slowed only by traffic jams caused by your own convoys, is, frankly, no great shakes. It is the angry towns and anguished villages left to the rear which contain the Iraqi irregulars raring to hit the enemy when his back is turned and his attention distracted. It is Stalingrad in the making. Once the enemy is past the gates, that will be the day of reckoning. The arrogance of techno-power will reach the end of its usefulness. Goliath will meet the sling-shot of David. Gen. William Wallace, or whomever else Gen. Tommy Franks details to the task brings to mind Gen. Friedrich von Paulus of the Thousand-Year Reich poised with supreme techno-confidence on the banks of the River Volga fringing the besieged city of Stalingrad. The skirmishes are over. The war is about to begin. I ready myself for it by switching between TV channels and glancing at William Craig's 1973 masterpiece on the Battle of Stalingrad 1942-43: "Enemy at the Gates". My edition was published many years ago by Penguin Classical History -- gift it to President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article have to stand on their own merits. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many genera- tions. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutra <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
