HANDS OFF IRAQ!
(Where is the Great Peace Movement?)
Joint Statement of the Cuban-American National Alliance
                February 12, 1998

The United States government is in the final stages of the
buildup for a new war in the Persian Gulf. The
Pentagon has deployed a large portion of its military
machinery, including 300 advanced warplanes, ready to launch
bombing raids on Iraq on a few hours' notice.

This attack will go far beyond previous confrontations. This
time the Pentagon, with the full backing of Congress and the
media, is preparing to launch a sustained air attack on
densely populated areas.

There is also open talk to "bring down Saddam Hussein" and
suggestions that US aims can be realized only through the
occupation of Iraq by American troops.

In advance of the war, the media is seeking to inure
American public opinion to a massive loss of life. One
network news declared that Americans should expect "hundreds
of thousands" of Iraqi casualties. Columnists  warn that
"casualties [are] to be expected" and have suggested that
Iraqi resistance to a US attack would "invite a nuclear
response."

Washington's policy in the Persian Gulf is to accuse its
prospective victim of precisely the crime which the Pentagon
is itself organizing: the use of weapons of mass destruction
against a virtually defenseless population. It should not be
forgotten that for all the media hysteria about Saddam
Hussein, the United States remains the only nation to have
ever used nuclear weapons in war.

The government is counting on a politically disoriented and
misinformed population to passively accept a new war. It
relies upon a corrupt, corporate-controlled media to serve
as a cheer leaders for the American military. Nowhere in the
press or on the airwaves has there been an attempt to
critically examine US allegations against Iraq or probe the
real interests underlying the US war buildup.

Within official political circles there is even less
critical thought. Not a single significant figure from
either party has so much as questioned US policy, much less
demanded a Congressional debate and the constitutionally-
mandated vote on a declaration of war. While engaged in in
incessant bickering over Clinton's personal morality, the
Democrats and Republicans are united.on the question of war
against Iraq

"Weapons of Mass Destruction"

The killings are to be carried out in the name of the
American people and justified by the need to protect
Americans from "weapons of mass destruction." This phrase,
endlessly repeated, is being used to preempt any serious
debate and numb public opinion.

Since 1990 the US has employed the alleged threat of Iraqi
weapons to maintain an embargo which has crippled Iraq
economically and plunged the vast majority of its population
into conditions of hunger, disease and misery. Under a
resolution which Washington pushed through the United
Nations, these sanctions cannot be lifted until it is proven
that Iraq no longer possesses either weapons of mass
destruction or the means to produce them.

UNSCOM, the UN agency charged with implementing this
resolution, has been roaming the country for seven and a
half years without producing a shred of evidence that Iraq
is producing or concealing such weapons. UNSCOM functions
without any timetable, free to extend its inspections, as
well as the embargo, indefinitely. No matter what Iraq does
to comply, there are new demands, provocations and threats
of military intervention.

The essence of the UNSCOM mission is to demand that Iraq
prove something which can never be proven. The production of
biological and chemical weapons requires neither substantial
resources nor advanced technology. According to one arms
expert, substantial biological weapons materials can be
produced in a 10-by-15 foot room with little more than a
beer fermenter. How can one prove that such a facility does
not exist in a country of 22 million people with a territory
larger than the state of California?

One of the principal charges floated by US officials is
that Iraq has developed the capacity to manufacture "deadly
VX gas." Yet the components and technology used in making
this gas are employed in the manufacture of common
pesticides used in agriculture the world over.

The American people should be aware of how easily "weapons
of mass destruction" can be secretly manufactured. Using
little more than fuel and fertilizer, Timothy McVeigh was
able to manufacture such a device, killing 168 people at the
Oklahoma City federal building. Similarly, a Japanese
Buddhist cult was able to manufacture and deploy a deadly
gas in the Tokyo subway system.

If Washington is setting out to destroy the capacity to
develop such weapons everywhere in the world (except of
course, for the US), no country is safe from American bombs.

Washington claims that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
pose a clear and present danger. If this is true, why
doesn't the rest of the world feel threatened as well? Those
countries closest to Iraq's borders should presumably feel
the greatest danger of all. Yet all of them, including
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which supported the last Gulf war,
oppose US intervention. Even Iran, which did suffer Iraqi
chemical weapons attacks in the Iran-Iraq war, is against an
American attack.

Can all of these governments be indifferent to an imminent
threat of annihilation by Iraqi chemical and biological
arms? Or do they perhaps understand that the American
charges are fabricated and aimed at masking Washington's
real objectives?

How the US Started the Last war.

The regime of Saddam Hussein functioned throughout the 1980s
as a firm US ally. Washington worked to build up the regime
militarily as a counterweight to the Iranian revolution. UN
inspectors have exhaustive documentation on Iraq's previous
chemical and biological weapons programs precisely because
the equipment and materials for the production of these
weapons were supplied largely by US firms acting under
licenses supplied by the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Washington encouraged the production of these weapons for
use against both Iran and Iraq's own Kurdish population.

In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war and with new
opportunities opening up as a result of the dissolution of
the Soviet bloc, Washington no longer needed Saddam
Hussein's services. It prepared its intervention in the Gulf
by luring Saddam Hussein into a trap.

In July 1990 Hussein told the US ambassador to Iraq, April
Glaspie, of his intentions to seek a military solution to
increasing tensions with neighboring Kuwait. Glaspie
deliberately led Hussein to believe that an Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait would not be opposed by the US.

Washington then proceeded to implement its longstanding
strategic goal of establishing a permanent military grip
over the strategic and oil-rich Persian Gulf region. It
squelched every attempt at reaching a peaceful, negotiated
solution to the crisis. In a one-sided and brief war it
destroyed Iraq's industrial infrastructure and military
capacity while leaving Saddam Hussein's regime intact. In
the aftermath of the war it provided this regime with tacit
support for its suppression of rebellions by the Shiite
population in the south and the Kurds in the north.

The US achieved its beachhead in the Gulf, maintaining a
permanent military presence and large military stockpiles.
But the regimes of the region as well as America's economic
rivals in Europe have increasingly chafed at the domination
which Washington achieved through the first Gulf war. With
the Iraqi military no longer posing a credible threat, the
justification for the US presence in the region is becoming
increasingly tenuous. Thus, the need for a new war.
What are the aims of the war?

US policy in the Persian Gulf, as throughout the world, is
determined by its own strategic and economic interests. With
military control over the Gulf, the US maintains a chokehold
over the oil supplies upon which its principal economic
rivals in Europe and Japan depend.

Moreover, from a geopolitical standpoint, the Gulf region
provides the US with a base of operations from which it can
project its power into the whole of the Caucasus and South
Central Asia. Iraq lies just a few hundred miles from the
oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea basin, where US
conglomerates have been staking their claim.

There are other motivating factors. Seven years is a long
time for the United States not to be involved in a war
somewhere on the planet. A defining feature of US
imperialism is its incessant drive to settle matters by
military intervention. Not a decade has gone by since the
Second World War in which America has not launched one or
more wars. In the 1950s, it was Korea; in the 1960s and 70s,
Vietnam. In the 1980s, US forces intervened in Lebanon,
Panama, Libya and Grenada, while Washington sponsored covert
wars in Central America and Africa. In the beginning of the
1990s there was the war in the Persian Gulf.

The needs of the military-industrial complex enter into the
equation. New weapons systems must be tested and officers
and enlisted men trained in combat. The type of massive
military apparatus which exists in the US cannot be
maintained indefinitely without fighting a war somewhere.
Perhaps most decisive in US calculations is the fear of a
new economic slump and the social instability that rising
unemployment and falling incomes will produce at home. War
provides a useful diversion. The army can absorb some of the
jobless as cannon fodder and the spectacle of carnage abroad
serves to distract the population from deprivation at home.

The Crime of the Century

Although it is said that Saddam Hussein heads a ruthless
government which has crushed the aspirations of the Iraqi
people, it must be pointed out, he was supported in this
endeavor by Washington.

Despite its repeated invocation of "human rights,"
Washington has never evaluated regimes according to how they
treat their own people. It formulates its international
relations on the basis of the profit interests of US big
business.

The policy which the US has pursued toward Iraq over the
past seven and a half years constitutes one of the great
crimes of this century. A country which had attained a
relatively high level of economic development has been
reduced in the space of a few short years to barbaric
conditions. It is estimated that as many as a million and a
half people_at least half of them children_have died as a
result of hunger and disease caused by the war's destruction
and the subsequent embargo. Infant mortality rates have
increased ten-fold.

A report issued by the World Health Organization on January
26 warned of the catastrophic impact of the embargo on the
health conditions in Iraq: "The level of care has fallen
seriously and many illnesses have reappeared because of the
continuous lack of medicines since the implementation of the
embargo_ Illnesses such as tuberculosis, malaria and cholera
have become commonplace in the past few years because of
malnutrition, dirty water and a lack of medicine."

The drive to war in the Persian Gulf demonstrates once again
how decisions are orchestrated behind the backs of the
American people. The great masses of working people are
reduced to spectators as the Democratic and Republican
politicians carry out policies which have the most dire
consequences. Denied access to information, lied to and
manipulated by the media, the American working people are
disenfranchised by the existing political system.

Cubano-Americana National Aliance(ANCA/CANA)
PO Box 15753
Rio Rancho, NM 87174
t/f (505) 994-0863
* * * * * * * * * * *
THE GLOBALIZATION OF SOLIDARITY
PASTORS FOR PEACE 
ANCA Internacional 
NSCUBA, Canada 
INFOMED, USA 

RECEIVED WAY:
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SODEPAZ
Madrid
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Versión en castellano