By RICHARD W. BEHAN
May 8, 2008
Courtesy Of CounterPunch
The "War on Terror" is a fraud and a façade, a mere label concocted and trumpeted by an Administration known for its signature dishonesty. The label conceals the Bush Administration's international crimes of unprovoked military aggression-the armed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, two sovereign nations the Administration meant to attack from its first days in office.[1]
With its pathological lying, secrecy, and brilliant propagandizing the Administration has prevented a compliant mainstream press from communicating fully the realities of the war. But now, as the country chooses a new president, the truth must prevail, to foreclose another catastrophic Administration-candidate McCain says "No surrender!"-and to make certain instead the fraudulent war is terminated with dispatch.
The "War on Terror" was launched in retaliation for 9/11, we were told, to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Then, justifying a quantum escalation in the war with 935 deliberate lies, the Bush Administration sought "regime change" in Iraq.[2]
These alleged objectives were elements of the façade. Osama bin Laden could have been brought to justice easily and without armed conflict. Regime change in Iraq could have been achieved with equal facility. George Bush rejected both opportunities.
Saddam Hussein, hoping to forestall warfare, yielded a series of increasingly attractive concessions to the Bush Administration, finally offering to leave his country for exile in Egypt. [3],[4] But the Bush Administration was unalterably committed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If "regime change" were to be achieved by Saddam's voluntary departure, there would be no excuse for proceeding with the attack: the Administration kept the offers from public view-and ignored them all.
Also kept secret was a standing offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden-an offer awaiting George Bush when he took office in January of 2001.[5],[6],[7] But capturing bin Laden was also a façade: the Administration was fully committed as well to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Three times before 9/11 and twice afterward the Bush Administration refused the turnover of Osama bin Laden.
The incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq-planned and in motion months before 9/11-were unprovoked wars of conquest and territorial occupation, to control Middle Eastern oil and gas resources. Suspected for years, this can no longer be seriously questioned.
Searching beyond the mainstream media you uncover a story strikingly at odds with the Bush Administration's narrative about a "War on Terror."
You discover the Administration, when it took office, brushing off explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.[8] You unearth instead the Administration, on behalf of the Unocal Corporation, angrily and unsuccessfully negotiating pipeline rights-of-way with the Taliban through the summer of 2001.[9],[10] Finally, after threatening the Taliban with "a carpet of bombs," the Bush Administration notified Pakistan and India-five weeks before 9/11-that Afghanistan would be attacked "before the end of October." [11],[12] On schedule, it was. A year later a former Unocal consultant is serving as the President of Afghanistan, and another as the United States Ambassador.[13] Then you read in an industry trade journal the Bush Administration is standing ready to finance a trans-Afghanistan pipeline and protect it with a permanent military presence.[14]
You discover repeated written proposals to invade Iraq, spanning the two Bush Administrations and made by four men who served in both: Zalmay Khalilzad, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby-and Richard Cheney.[15] You witness their triumph when the National Security Council formalizes the commitment to invade Iraq, on January 30, 2001-seven months before 9/11.[16] You read how the Security Council was ordered to "meld" its work with Cheney's Energy Task Force, which in March of 2001 was studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields.[17],[18] You come across a leaked top-secret memorandum dated February 3, 2001, discussing the "capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" in Iraq.[19] You discover the State Department designing, at least a year before the invasion, the deconstruction of Iraq's nationalized oil industry.[20] You find the State Department's plan was written into a draft "hydrocarbon law" for Iraq-by Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, aided by American and British oil companies.[21] You watch President Bush on television in January of 2007, demanding as a mandatory "benchmark" the enactment of the hydrocarbon law. And you come to understand why Exxon/Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, Royal Dutch/Shell, and BP/Amoco are now poised to profit immensely from 81% of Iraq's undeveloped crude.[22]
This is not a "War on Terror." [23] Afghanistan and Iraq today are occupied countries, administered by puppet governments and dotted with permanent military bases securing the energy assets. This is not a by-product of the Bush Administration's warmaking: this was its purpose.
The Congress is at least vaguely aware. The Defense Authorization Act of 2008 included a Section 1222, prohibiting expenditures for the "permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq," or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq." [24]
President Bush nullified Section 1222 with a signing statement.[25] And at his sufferance, the arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden remains free.
The "War on Terror" is a certifiable fraud.[26]
Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on the Internet over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration. He has summarized his research in an electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available for downloading at http://coldtype.net/ . He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com .
NOTES
[1] Jason Leopold, "The Road to Operation Iraqi Freedom," Atlantic Free Press website, March 22, 2008.
[2] "False Pretenses in Iraq," in Iraq: the War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, published by the Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C., January 2008. The 935 "false statements" are catalogued and available in a searchable database.
[3] George Monbiot, "Dreamers and Idiots: Britain and the US did everything to avoid a peaceful solution in Iraq and Afghanistan," The UK Guardian, November 11, 2003.
[4] Anon., "Llego el momento de deshacerse de Saddam," El Pais (Spain), September 26, 2007. This is a transcript of a conversation between George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Anzar in Crawford, Texas, February 22, 2003. The President acknowledges the prospective exile, but vigorously rejects it, declaring, "We will be in Baghdad at the end of March."
[5] Anon., "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand bin Laden Over," UK Guardian Unlimited, October 14, 2001.
[6] Andrew Buncombe, "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Surrender bin Laden, the UK Independent, October 15, 2001
[7] Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, "How Bush Was Offered bin Laden and Blew It," CounterPunch, November 1, 2004.
[8] Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. New York: the Free Press, 2004.
[9] Wayne Madsen, "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team," Centre for Research on Globalization website, January 23, 2003.
[10] Paul Sperry, Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism, Nashville, WND Books, 2003.
[11] Anon., "Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence," at http://www.ringnebula.com/
[12] Larry Chin, "Parts I and II: Players on a rigged chessboard: Bridas, Unocal, and the Afghanistan pipeline," Online Journal, March 2002.
[13] Hamid Karzai and Zalmay Khalilzad, respectively. Mr. Khalilzad's predecessor as Ambassador was Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal vice president.
[14] Alexander's' Gas and Oil Connections, February 23, 2003.
[15] This statement encapsulates the origin and development of the Project for the New American Century and its tragic fantasy of U.S. global hegemony. For details of the actions of these four men, see the author's electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available for downloading at http://coldtype.net// .
[16] Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.
[17] Jane Mayer, "Contract Sport," The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.
[18] The maps can be downloaded from the website of Judicial Watch, http://www.judicialwatch.org/. This organization obtained the maps with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which the Bush Administration appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
[19] Mayer, op. cit..
[20] Gregg Mutitt, Crude Designs: the Ripoff of Iraq's Oil Wealth, United Kingdom, The Platform Group.
[21] Gregg Mutitt and Erik Leaver, "Slick Connections: U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil," Foreign Policy in Focus, July 18, 2007.
[22] Joshua Holland, "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil," published on the AlterNet website, October 16, 2006.
[23] In fact, the war in Iraq has been counterproductive: it has exacerbated, not diminished the threat of terrorism. See Karen de Young, "Spy agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight," Washington Post, September 24, 2006.
[24] H.R. 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, Title XII, Section 1222.
[25] "President Bush Signs H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 into Law," The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, January 28, 2008. See at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080128-10.html
[26] Elizabeth de la Vega, United States v. George W. Bush et al., New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006. Ms. de la Vega, a former U.S. Attorney, has documented a compelling case against the Bush Administration for conspiracy to commit fraud.
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