NP "the world's first prison state"

[pynchonoid]

Jeffrey St. Clair, writing in Counterpunch:

"Iraq isn't a rogue state; it's a captive nation, the
world's first prison state, kept under a level of
microscopic control and surveillance that would have
made Jeremy Bentham tremble with envy.

All the recent chatter in the media about a
forthcoming war on Iraq conveniently ignores the fact
that the US and Britain have been waging war against
Saddam since 1990-although its been a decidedly
one-sided affair, too one-sided to mention apparently.
Since the accords that brought an end to the Gulf War
Round One, Iraq has been remorselessly bombed about
once every three days. Its feeble air defense system
is shattered and its radars jammed; its air force is
grounded, the runways cratered; its primitive Navy is
destroyed. The nation's northern and southern
territories are occupied by hostile forces, armed,
funded and overseen by the CIA. 

Every bit of new construction in the country is
scrutinized for any possible military function by
satellite cameras capable of zooming down to a square
meter. Truck and tank convoys are zealously monitored.
Troop locations are pinpointed with a lethal
certainty. Bunkers are mapped, the coordinates
programmed into the targeting software for
bunker-busting bombs.

This once wealthy and secular nation is bankrupt, its
financial reserves crippled by the sadistic sanctions
that have blocked not only the export of Iraqi oil but
also the import of medical and food supplies, leading
to the deaths of millions of Iraqi civilians.
Clinton's dreadful Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright boasted that this horrific toll was "worth
it" in order to keep Saddam penned in. 

Now along comes mini-Bush to proclaim to the world
that this emaciated nation, shackled in the political
equivalent of an isolation tank inside a maximum
security prison for these past 12 years, is the
greatest threat to world peace on the planet. There is
a freakish inevitability to the war cry, as if zeroing
in on Iraq was a natural sequel to the decimation of
Afghanistan.

Of course, the war on Afghanistan wasn't a war in any
strict historical sense-it was more like live-action
target practice, with the country and its people
serving as a high-altitude bombing range. From the
Pentagon's point-of-view, the campaign must have been
vaguely dissatisfying. There wasn't even anything
really big to blow up, like those skyscrapers in
Belgrade.

Still in the wake of 9/11, many were struck by the
oddity of Bush's vow to topple the "axis of evil,"
since none of the three bogey-states (Iran, Iraq and
North Korea) had much use for Osama bin Laden and his
gang of murderers.

But we now know that the war plans for Iraq were more
of a prequel than a sequel to Afghanistan. It was
germinating long before al-Qaeda hit the New York City
and the Pentagon. Hence, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's instruction to his coven of generals only
hours after the attack to try to pin part of the blame
on Saddam Hussein.

Over the next few months, Rumsfeld reiterated his
request, asking the CIA on at least 10 separate
occasions to escavate evidence of an Iraqi / al-Qaeda
link. The CIA couldn't find a thing. Still, when the
Pentagon exhausted its bombing targets in Afghanistan,
the administration's sites turned to Iraq. And the
mainstream press and the US Congress have played
along, giving Bush a free pass to go after Saddam with
few questions asked. [...] 

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair1015.html


St.Clair mentions a new book some of you will find
interesting:


_War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War with Iraq_

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1859845010/counterpunchmaga/102-1988735-4212156










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