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Why Bush Sr.'s 1991 Gulf War? To Protect Iranian Islamism.

Like father, like son: this is also the purpose of Bush Jr.'s war.

Historical and Investigative Research - 20 Dec 2005
by Francisco Gil-White

http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/gulfwar.htm
___________________________________________________________

This piece defends and supports with evidence one hypothesis of what the 1991 Gulf War was really about: protecting Islamist radicalism in Iran.

This piece is included in the present series to explain Bush Jr.'s current war on Iraq because HIR believes that in order to understand the present we must know the past. So, in order to understand current US policy towards Iraq, I will argue, one must understand what past US policy towards both Iraq and Iran has been. Consider: before the 1991 Gulf War there was the Iran-Iraq war, during which we had the Iran-Contra affair, the scandal of which revealed US policies to be strengthening Iran against Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, US policy was to contain Iraq, which also had the effect of strengthening Iran against Iraq. This makes it unsurprising that the 1991 Gulf War, too, had the effect of strengthening Iran against Iraq. Quite consistent. The first hypothesis for any policy ought to be that its actual effects are intended, particularly when policies producing identical effects are launched over and over again, with numbing consistency. This first hypothesis is the one that I will defend.
___________________________________________________________

Table of Contents
( hyperlinked
< )

<  Introduction

<  The hypothesis: the US has a pro-Islamist,
pro-terrorist policy.

<  The suspicious prelude to the 1991 Gulf War:
Khomeini, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Iran-Contra affair.

<  The mastermind: Zalmay Khalilzad.

<  Iraq was an obstacle to the US's pro-Islamist policy;
hence, the Gulf War.

<  The US ordered Kuwait to provoke Iraq.

<  The hypothesis that the US attacked Iraq 'for oil' is absurd.
___________________________________________________________

Introduction

I believe the US has a pro-Iranian policy, by which I mean not a policy to help ordinary Iranians, but a policy to support the Islamist terrorists who run the country. My view will be surprising if you have noticed at all the tradition of public invective between US and Iranian officials. This loud trading of insults goes back to 1979, when the Shiite Muslim fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini assumed power in Iran, after which large crowds of Khomeini-backed Iranian students, having seized the US embassy in Tehran and taken hostage its personnel, began chanting, fist over head, Khomeini’s new name for the United States: “Great Satan.” US government officials reciprocated with counter-denunciations of the Iranian mullahs, calling them “extremists” and “terrorists.” I was young but I remember watching some of this on my TV set, in real time. It was impressive. One really got the feeling of a great enmity between the US and Iranian governments, and this impression has been reinforced over the years by the mutual and repeated denunciations of US and Iranian officials. Just recently, Bush Jr. has included Iran in his ‘Axis of Evil.’ The only thing that can possibly top that is “Great Satan,” but Khomeini used it already.

Should we infer the structure of alliances from these mutual accusations?

No. The people who run countries routinely misrepresent what they are doing. And politics doesn’t just make strange bedfellows; it can also make bedfellows who merely pretend to be estranged. In consequence, a scientist cannot proceed directly and uncritically from official statements to a model of geopolitical alliances, lest he become a propagandist. Any claim about how the various forces are aligned requires a demonstration whose logic and documentation others can check, and which makes reference to the behaviors -- not the official statements -- of governments.

For this reason, the current threats to attack Iran over its nuclear program should be taken with a big grain of salt.


The hypothesis: the US has a pro-Islamist,
pro-terrorist policy
________________

Since the supposed enmity between the US and Iranian governments dates to 1979, it is significant that in 1979, as is relatively well known, the US created and then sponsored throughout the 1980s a ‘holy warrior’ movement in Afghanistan. The point of this was to attack the Soviet Union which had a border with Afghanistan. The man who invented this strategy, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, has recently explained to Le Nouvel Observateur, proudly, that the production of fanatical Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan -- the mujahedin (or mujahideen), who went on to become an international mercenary force -- was quite deliberate, and meant to generate a conflict on the Soviet border (my emphasis, below):

[Quote from Le Nouvel Observateur begins here]

LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR: Former CIA director Robert Gates states in his memoirs: The American secret services began, six months before the Soviet intervention, to support the Mujahideen [in Afghanistan]. At that time you were president Carter’s security advisor; thus you played a key role in this affair. Do you confirm this statement?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Yes. According to the official version, the CIA's support for the Mujahideen began in 1980, i.e. after the Soviet army's invasion of Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, which was kept secret until today, is completely different: Actually it was on 3 July 1979 that president Carter signed the first directive for the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets.[1]

[Quote ends here]

It appears that the interviewer was a bit shocked, for he asked:

[Back to Le Nouvel Observateur]

LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR: ...don't you regret having helped future terrorists, having given them weapons and advice?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: What is most important for world history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? Some Islamic hotheads or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR: "Some hotheads?" But it has been said time and time again: today Islamic fundamentalism represents a world-wide threat...

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Rubbish![1]

[Quote ends here]

It has been said that what Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Robert Gates were trying to do was give the Soviet Union its Viet Nam: a withering conflict it could not win. The comparison, however, has a few problems. The US wanted the war on Viet Nam; the Soviets, by contrast, didn't ask for an Islamist terrorist disaster on their border -- it came courtesy of the United States. The masses of Vietnamese supported the people whom the US fought; the Afghan movement, by contrast, was manufactured from the outside, by the US. Finally, Viet Nam is far away from the US whereas Afghanistan is smack against the former Soviet Union. What is undeniable is that the US ruling elite succeeded in producing a conflict on the Soviet border that the Soviets could not win. Moreover, this Islamist terrorist movement would grow and feed the growth of other such movements in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski also began at this time a secret buildup of Saudi Arabia's military, which Reagan also continued, and which made this country, according to Frontline (PBS), “ultimately...the largest beneficiary of U.S. weapons sales in the entire world” and “one of the most heavily armed countries in the world.”[2] Frontline says lots of interesting things. For example, that “years before Desert Storm [i.e. the 1991 Gulf War] billion-dollar state-of-the-art military bases were already in place [in Saudi Arabia], built to U.S. military specifications, ready and waiting for the arrival of American soldiers.” Now, Saudi Arabia is an Islamist theocracy, and in addition spends millions of its oil dollars every year sponsoring Islamist terrorism and antisemitic agitation all over the world. If the US both allies with and arms this country to the teeth, then it is allied with its antisemitic Islamist and terrorist policy. When did this begin? Frontline says: “The story of the Saudi military build-up begins...during the last days of the Shah of Iran.” In other words, Jimmy Carter began the extreme military buildup of Saudi Arabia right around the time that the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, because Khomeini is who replaced the shah.

So we’ve got that the US began serious sponsorship of Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan in 1979. It was also in 1979 that the US began seriously arming the Saudi Arabian Islamist terrorists. And look: the Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamist terrorist, came to power in Iran in...1979.

A trifecta?

Yes, assuming that the Ayatollah Khomeini was a US asset. From the above context, this hypothesis should at least be put on the table.

Jared Israel from Emperor’s Clothes has argued for some time -- and has carefully documented -- that the US ruling elite actively promotes Islamist terrorism in Asia because it destabilizes the big Asian countries -- Russia, China, and India -- that compete with the US for geopolitical influence. This strategy works, he says, because these countries have Muslim populations on both sides of their borders.[3] According to Jared Israel, the promotion of Islamist terrorism is no mere side effect of US foreign policy, but its main goal.

Is he right?

As we have seen above, the US ruling elite has already confessed that Jared Israel is right in the case of Afghanistan. To see whether he is right in general, we can put his hypothesis to the test. There is no better test than to look at US foreign policy towards Iran and Iraq, for Jared Israel’s hypothesis here will either produce absurdities at every turn, or else it will tend to explain everything. Why? Because the contest between these two states was always perceived to be decisive for the success or failure of theocratic Islamism in the Middle East. As Milton Viorst puts it:

“At stake was whether the secular [but still ruthless] Baathism of Saddam or the radical [Muslim fundamentalist] Shiism of Khomeini would prevail in Iraq, and perhaps in the Middle East.”[4]

With stakes like these, Jared Israel’s hypothesis of a pro-Islamist US foreign policy requires, for example, that the outcome of the Iran-Iraq war was not good for the US ruling elite, because,

“in August 1988 Iran’s deteriorating economy and recent Iraqi gains on the battlefield compelled Iran to accept a United Nations-mediated cease-fire that it had previously resisted.”[5]

As Jared Israel himself has pointed out, his hypothesis here predicted that the United States would do something dramatic to re-strengthen Iran relative to Iraq, and look: just three years later, in 1991, the US launched the Gulf War against Iraq.[6] What I will show in this piece is that Jared Israel’s hypothesis can account for every little detail of the Gulf War of 1991, including its prelude and aftermath.

The point of this series of articles is to provide the historical background necessary to a proper understanding of Bush Jr.’s current war on Iraq. I have argued in the General Introduction that the point of Bush Jr.’s war is to chew up Iraq, making it soft for Iran to swallow.[6a] Certainly, the consequence of Bush Jr.'s attack plus withdrawal will be that Iran will swallow up Iraq, as I also argue in that piece. This will be portrayed by US officials as an ‘unfortunate’ and ‘unintended’ consequence. But it would be remarkable for the US to manage accidentally the result it has clearly been working very hard to produce since 1979. What I aim to show is that the result of the US invasion of Iraq -- strengthening Iran -- will be consistent with a long string of major US foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East.

Our present focus is the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq which, as I will show, was explicitly meant by US policy planners to weaken Iraq and make Iran in consequence relatively stronger. This is indeed what the war achieved. But since US foreign policy in the prelude to the Gulf War was also perfectly consistent with the view that the US favors the Iranian Islamists, I will begin by taking a look at this prelude, the better to understand the Gulf War itself.


The suspicious prelude to the 1991 Gulf War:
Khomeini, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Iran-Contra affair
______________________________________________

After taking power in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini immediately provoked a war with Iraq. The Washington Post wrote that “...after [Khomeini] returned to Iran in triumph in February 1979 he set about encouraging Iraqi Shiites -- who make up about half that country’s 13 million population -- to rise against their Sunni Moslem leaders.”[7] But that’s not all Khomeini did. Milton Viorst gives a more complete account:

“In January 1979, the ayatollah Khomeini had returned in triumph to Iran after fifteen years in exile. Iraq promptly recognized the new regime and extended friendly overtures, but Khomeini was not impressed. He blamed Saddam personally for his expulsion from An Najaf [in Iraq, where he had been living in exile] and left no doubt that he regarded Saddam’s state not just as anti-Shiite but as anti-Islamic, heretical and illegitimate. …As early as the summer of 1979, Khomeini repudiated the 1975 treaty between the shah and Iraq in which the two states pledged noninterference in each other’s internal affairs. He proceeded to supply arms to Kurdish guerrillas fighting Baathi rule in the north, and in An Najaf he financed the Shiite leader Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr, who provoked disorders to the end of replacing the Baathis with a fundamentalist theocracy.”[8]

Now, under the official hypothesis that he was the enemy of the US ruling elite, Khomeini’s immediate provocation of a war with Iraq is difficult to explain. You see, the previous autocratic and repressive dictator of Iran, the Shah (King) Reza Pahlavi, had been a total US puppet (installed in power in a 1953 CIA coup, about which more in a forthcoming piece), and in consequence most of the military equipment of the Iranian armed forces was American-made. As a result of the fact that the Iranian revolution had involved some fighting, “Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal.”[9] And yet Khomeini went out of his way to engage in dramatic anti-American provocations at the same time that he picked a fight with Iraq. For example, Khomeini seized the US embassy in Iran and took its personnel hostage.

An absurdity? On the face of it, certainly. If Khomeini needed US spare parts for its military, then how could he afford to attack Iraq and the US simultaneously?

But the absurdity can be resolved if you posit that in reality the US ruling elite and Khomeini were never enemies. In this view, like his predecessor the shah, Khomeini was a US asset, and his ‘provocations’ were part of a US-driven political theater for the unsuspecting global audience, there to generate certain appearances that the US ruling elite found useful for its geopolitical game.[9a] What this view requires is that Khomeini would get his money and spare parts from the US quite despite his apparent provocations.

And he did.

The Washington Post claimed in 1980 that “the seizure of the American hostages has deprived Iran’s military of much-needed U.S. and European spare parts for its almost entirely imported military equipment.”[10] But this was false. The ‘hostage crisis’ did not deprive Khomeini of anything. On the contrary. The United States government offered to pay billions of dollars in exchange for the release of the hostages, which Iran accepted (the final sum was close to $8 billion).[11] And throughout the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Iran received secret shipments of US weapons, which became a great embarrassment to the Reagan administration when this became known in 1986 (this was called, alternately, ‘Iran-gate’ and the ‘Iran-Contra scandal’). US officials claimed when caught that the arms shipments had the purpose of getting Iran to lean on the Hezbollah terrorists it has always patronized in Lebanon, who at the time had taken some other Americans hostage. The media was quick to make this explanation seem credible. For example, the Washington Post told its readers late in 1986 that, “according to informed sources” (in other words, according to alleged sources that nobody could check), “an Iranian government emissary told U.S. representatives he would arrange for the release of an American hostage held in Lebanon if the United States would sell Iran 500 TOW antitank missiles.[11a] But this explanation was absurd. History’s greatest power does not arm to the teeth a fifth-rate power so it can grovel for its influence on a tiny terrorist organization in third country, and maybe get some hostages released.

In any case, it couldn’t be true even in principle. Limited congressional investigations into the relationship between Reagan and Khomeini brought to light in 1991, as the New York Times reported later, that:

“Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy and allowed Israel to sell several billion dollars’ worth of American-made arms, spare parts and ammunition to the Iranian Government. . .

. . .The change in policy came before the Iranian-sponsored seizure of American hostages in Lebanon began in 1982. . .” [my emphasis] [12]

So the US had the Israelis sell “several billion dollars’ worth” in arms secretly to the nearby Iranians; meanwhile, explains the NYT, “The Reagan Administration continued to replenish Israel’s stockpile of American-made weapons.” But the key point is this: if the US policy to send US armament to Iran began before the hostages were taken in Lebanon, then arming Iran had nothing to do with buying the freedom of these hostages. The NYT pretends that, since it didn't, “No American rationale for permitting covert arms sales to Iran could be established.” But this is false. Such a rationale could be established, it’s just that the New York Times is not allowed to say it: the US had a policy to sponsor the growth of Islamist terrorism, which is precisely why the US program through Israel “was overtaken by the [direct US] arms shipments to Iran,” as the same NYT article states.

The NYT says that, in deciding to arm the Iranian Islamists, “the [incoming] Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy.” Is that so? I would argue that there was no abrupt change whatsoever. Consider what happened in the case of the hostages that were taken in the American embassy in Tehran, a crisis that began in the Carter presidency: “Carter, as President,” as the same article explains, “offer[ed] to accept an Iranian request and release embargoed Iranian military goods worth about $150 million -- if the hostages were freed.” Compare that to the $5.5. billion that Reagan offered and delivered to the Iranians in exchange for the same embassy hostages. And as I show in the previous piece in this series, it is hard to make sense of what happened in the embassy ‘hostage crisis’ unless we assume that Jimmy Carter was running that show in order to raise the prestige of both the Iranian Islamists and the PLO.[13] Reagan’s policies -- including his policies towards the PLO -- were Carter’s.[14] There was no abrupt change.

Now, since the arms shipments to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war at first went through Israel, and given that Iran's new Islamist government was loudly calling for the destruction of Israel, one may ask: What was the Israeli government thinking? The New York Times argues that Israel wanted Iraq and Iran mutually weakened, and tries to make it seem as if Israel had an independent foreign policy on this question. And yet the NYT also states all of the following about the supposedly ‘Israeli’ program:

1) that “Chartered aircraft from Argentina, Ireland and the United States were used to fly American-made arms to Israel and, in some cases, directly to Teheran”;

2) that these “chartered flights carrying American arms for Iran originated from a covert air base near Tucson, Ariz., known as Marana Air Park”;

3) that “For years, the Central Intelligence Agency has used Marana for secret arms shipments”;

4) that there was a continuous “flow of spare parts and other equipment for Iran’s F-14 fleet” and that these “sensitive items, whose exports are closely monitored by American officials, were transferred from United States stockpiles to Israel, which has no F-14’s”; and finally

5) that “Former Israeli officials said the 1981 agreement with [Secretary of State Alexander M.] Haig was coordinated by Robert C. McFarlane, who was then the State Department counselor.” [NOTE: By 1994, three years after the NYT article, Milton Viorst was writing like this: “Subsequently, it was revealed that...Alexander Haig, first authorized...arms to Iran in 1981.”[15]]

I think the most reasonable interpretation is that the US was deciding Israel’s foreign policy to Israel’s detriment, as it often has. This is certainly suggested by the fact that, as the NYT also states, it was “Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon [who] was selling [the] American-made military materiel” to the Iranians who were calling for the destruction of Israel. Ariel Sharon is the man now selling Israel out by allowing unrepentant antisemitic terrorists to take complete control over Gaza and the Gaza-Egypt border, according to the wishes of the United States foreign policy elite.

When did the secret arms shipments to Iran cease? Who knows if they ever did. But Milton Viorst states that “Subsequently, it was revealed that...the [arms] shipments went on without significant interruption until the end of the Iraq-Iran war.”[16] Depending on whether this means the cease-fire in 1988, or else the official ending of the war in 1990, the US shipped arms to the Iranians for at least two or four years after the Iran-gate scandal first began making headlines in late 1986! The public scandal, president Reagan’s public apology, the investigations, etc., were all supposed to have put an end to the arms sales. But according to Viorst they continued.

How can anybody argue that these arms sales had anything to do with freeing hostages in Lebanon?

The bulk of the evidence suggests, on the contrary, that the US ruling elite perceived a geopolitical benefit to itself in strengthening the Iranian Islamists, and that Khomeini was always a US asset. From this point of view the US pulled off a masterstroke, because, although the Soviets were obviously not happy with Khomeini’s Islamism, they preferred anything to a US puppet on their border. Thus, by replacing the shah with Khomeini, who gave a convincing theatrical performance as a savage enemy of the United States, the US switched to a policy of destabilizing its Soviet rival with Islamist terrorism while appearing to fight the very ideology it was sponsoring. Brilliant.

So what happened immediately before the Iran-Iraq war, and what happened during the Iran-Iraq war, is consistent with Jared Israel's hypothesis that the US ruling elite sponsors the Iranian Islamists. What happened after the Iran-Iraq war, and leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, which is our ultimate goal, is also consistent, as I now show.


The mastermind: Zalmay Khalilzad
______________________________

To follow the career of Zalmay Khalilzad is to see the US policy at work, because he has been one of its main architects. Consider the following chronology of events:


1988

Iran, badly beaten by the Iran-Iraq war, and considerably worse off than Iraq, agrees to a cease-fire. Zalmay Khalilzad, at the time “an official in the [US State Department’s] office of Policy Planning” writes a briefing paper for incoming president Bush Sr., in which he calls for “strengthening Iran and containing Iraq.”[17]


1989

Zalmay Khalilzad, in a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Iran Future As A Pawn Or A Gulf Power,” frets out loud that,

“The Iraqis devastated the Iranians toward the end of the war, capturing as much as half of the Iranian tanks, armor and artillery. Iraqi successes forced Iran to accept a cease-fire that Khomeini compared to drinking a ‘poisoned chalice.’ Iraq is now militarily dominant, with 45 battle-tested divisions against Iran’s 12, with even larger ratios of strength in tanks and aircraft. Tehran is looking for ways to overcome strategic inferiority and gain a degree of protection against Iraq.

…A further weakened Iran would not increase stability but would increase Iraqi preeminence in the Gulf and make Iran more vulnerable to Soviet influence.”[18]

Clearly, Khalilzad preferred that Iran become a Gulf power, not a pawn. And he obviously didn’t like Iraq being strong relative to Iran.


1990

“Zalmay Khalilzad [becomes] assistant under secretary of defense for policy planning...” a post that he will hold until 1992.[19] This captures 1991, the year that the US launched the Gulf War against Iraq.


1991 - The Gulf War

The US destroys Iraq’s military and civilian infrastructure, thereafter imposing such harsh sanctions that 500,000 children die (more than died in Hiroshima).[20] This was completely out of proportion to Iraq’s offense (attacking the despotic Kuwaiti monarchy), even if one accepts the official story of how that happened. But what did this all amount to, geopolitically? The US was “strengthening Iran and containing Iraq,” precisely as Khalilzad had advised.


1992

In a Washington Post editorial entitled "Arm the Bosnians," Zalmay Khalilzad argues (from his new perch at Rand Corp.) that the Bosnian Muslims should be armed, and that the Afghan strategy -- relying on Islamic states to arm and train terrorist 'holy warriors' -- should be followed.[21] The US did precisely this. As an investigation by the government of the Netherlands established, Pentagon military intelligence coordinated with Iran the importation of thousands of foreign mujahideen ('holy warrior') mercenaries into Bosnia.[22] These soldiers fought for the Bosnian Islamist and terrorist Alija Izetbegovic, whose policy was genocide.[22a]


2003

Iran cooperated closely with the US invasion of Iraq (while directing the usual public invective at the US to distract the issue); and the US took military action, while invading Iraq, to strengthen the Iranian regime.[23] The man in charge of US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is, guess who? That’s right: Zalmay Khalilzad.[24]


2005

Zalmay Khalilzad, now US ambassador to Iraq, calls for “a withdrawal of American forces next year”[25] even as he observes that Iran is “advancing its long-term goal of establishing [regional] domination.”[26]


Do you see above anything inconsistent with a pro-Iranian policy? Me neither.

I point out that “Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser...was Khalilzad’s mentor when they were both on the faculty at Columbia [University].”[27] Zbigniew Brzezinski, as we saw earlier, is who invented the US’s policy of supporting Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan in 1979, and also the policy of arming Saudi Arabia to the teeth. So the argument that the US does not have a general policy to sponsor Islamist terrorism in Asia is becoming...awkward. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that if sponsoring Islamist terrorism in Asia has indeed been the US’s policy, then Iraq has been an obstacle to it, because it has been a secular state, and an influential regional power. So perhaps the Gulf War -- like Bush Jr.’s current war against Iraq -- can be explained as the US removing a thorn on the side of its pro-Islamist strategy.

I turn to this next.


Iraq was an obstacle to the US's pro-Islamist policy;
hence, the Gulf War.
__________________

Let’s go back again to the year 1988. I remind you that, after 8 long years of devastating war between Iran and Iraq, this is what happened:

“in August 1988 Iran’s deteriorating economy and recent Iraqi gains on the battlefield compelled Iran to accept a United Nations-mediated cease-fire that it had previously resisted.”[28]

That same year, General Norman Schwarzkopf, who was to wage the Gulf War just three years later in 1991, was appointed to head the United States Central Command, or Centcom. What is Centcom?

“Centcom’s commander…is the overseer of all United States military activities in 19 countries of the Middle East, Africa and the Persian Gulf.”[29]

Milton Viorst writes that, upon assuming command, 

“Schwarzkopf transformed the Central Command, which had been established in 1983 to counter a Soviet threat, to confront the Iraqis, who he believed had become the real enemy in the region.”[30]

Does it strike you as strange that the US should have transformed Centcom in 1988 to target Iraq? After all, Centcom is a very big deal, as you can see above, and the Soviet Union still existed. Moreover, Centcom “had been established...to counter a Soviet threat.” Ah, yes, but a Soviet threat to whom? To answer this question is to dispel the mystery of why Iraq became Centcom’s new target.

As the New York Times explained, also in 1988,

“The origins of the Central Command go back to 1979 when the Shah of Iran was overthrown and his country was in turmoil as a result of the Islamic revolution…

To provide a military capability to back up President [Carter's] policy in the Gulf, [in 1980] a command designated the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, which was to be a precursor of Centcom, was formed.

Paul X. Kelley…[its] first commander…was told to draw up plans to defend Iran against a Soviet invasion…”[31]

It is perfectly clear from the above that the US created Centcom explicitly to defend Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamist Iran, immediately after Khomeini came to power, in 1979. Isn’t this consistent with the view that the Ayatollah Khomeini was always a US asset? And what else is consistent with this view? Why, that Iraq should have become Centcom’s new target in 1988, because in that year Iran lost the war with Iraq and was left vulnerable to its neighbor, as we saw.

What was at stake in the Iran-Iraq war? I remind you:

“At stake [in the Iran-Iraq war] was whether the secular [but still ruthless] Baathism of Saddam or the radical [Islamist] Shiism of Khomeini would prevail in Iraq, and perhaps in the Middle East.”[32]

If that’s what’s at stake, then support for Iran, since 1979, meant support for Islamism as the main force that would prevail in the Middle East. When the US re-oriented Centcom to protect Iran from Iraq, therefore, it was protecting the growth of Islamism. And when the US destroyed Iraq in the Gulf War, it was doing the same.

Some have claimed (including the general himself) that Norman Schwarzkopf came up with the idea of reorienting Centcom against Iraq, but he was just following orders.[33] Schwarzkopf was responsible, however, for implementing this policy, and he also directed the Gulf War against Iraq. He obviously has many uses, because it was also Norman Shwarzkopf who did the preparatory diplomacy for this war.

I turn to this next.


The US ordered Kuwait to provoke Iraq
__________________________________

According to the London Times,

“When Schwarzkopf moved to Central Command [Centcom] in 1988, he quickly immersed himself in Arab culture and customs. He wore Arab dress to a dinner with Kuwaiti officers. He embarked on a round of diplomacy in Arab capitals.”[34]

Diplomacy for what?

As it turns out, to convince the countries of the Gulf that they should now view Iraq as their enemy. This took some work, because these Gulf states had just financed Iraq’s war effort against Iran precisely because, to them, it was the Iranian Shia fundamentalists who posed the real threat, not the Iraqis. Kuwait, especially, was worried about the Iranians because it has a large Shiite minority.[35]

The Houston Chronicle explained:

“[Schwarzkopf] believed that Iraq's victory over Iran had altered the balance of power in the Persian Gulf… [But] King Hussein of Jordan counseled Schwarzkopf: ‘Don't worry about the Iraqis. They are war-weary and have no aggressive intentions against their Arab brothers.’ Even King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and Sultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman, who disdained Saddam as a thug, were not alarmed by him.”[36]

But according to Milton Viorst, Schwarzkopf was relentless:

“Schwarzkopf was here on visits before the war, maybe a few times a year,” an American diplomat in Kuwait told me after the liberation. “He was a political general, which was in itself unusual. He kept a personally high profile, and was on a first-name basis with all the key ministers. He had good political instincts, and though there were no agreements or commitments, when the invasion occurred he already had the ties that he thought he needed. The Kuwaitis feared that when they called, we wouldn’t come. Schwarzkopf insisted -- explicitly or not -- that we would…”

Schwarzkopf acknowledges that he toured the Gulf giving out warnings on Iraq… [He] does not challenge the legitimacy of Saddam’s concerns over money and the islands, but defines his own mission as one of persuading the Gulf Arabs that Iraq had superseded Iran as their chief threat.[37]

How interesting… Schwarzkopf himself recognizes that Iraq had legitimate concerns “over money and the islands.” We shall get to those.

But notice that the general “defines his own mission as one of persuading the Gulf Arabs that Iraq had superseded Iran as their chief threat.” His mission was therefore not to warn the Gulf Arabs of a real danger, but to persuade them to believe in a particular, supposed danger. If the danger had been real, there would have been absolutely no need for Schwarzkopf to convince anybody in the Gulf, because Gulf states would have been much more aware of this danger than Schwarzkopf. What Schwarzkopf’s repeated cajoling and arm-twisting in the Gulf suggests, therefore, is that he was making clear to the client states of the US in the Gulf how seriously the United States wanted them to assume this position: that Iraq was now The Enemy.

What followed is consistent with this analysis. After Norman Schwarzkopf went around the Gulf whispering that Iraq was a big threat, Kuwait, the state that got the most ‘warnings’ from Schwarzkopf about how dangerous Iraq supposedly was, went quite -- quite -- out of its way to pick a fight with Iraq. But Kuwait was small and utterly defenseless relative to Iraq (as the Iraqi attack proved). Hadn't Schwarzkopf just told the Kuwaitis to be careful because Iraq was now the Big Threat?

Put yourself back in high school, and imagine that you sit right behind the class wimp. Someone comes over to him and whispers in his ear that the class bully hates his guts and is out to get him. Other things are said but you don’t manage to hear it all. What do you predict? That the wimp will run and hide, perhaps. That would be a reasonable prediction. If the class wimp instead gets up and calls the bully names, spitting in his face for good measure, you would likely be shocked. But suppose there was some evidence to suggest that the wimp’s disrespect was deliberately timed so that the minute the class bully gets going with him the teacher walks in on them, and the bully is thrown out of school. What would your hypothesis be now? You didn’t hear everything that was whispered in the prelude to the fight, but you would be foolish not to suspect that what you saw was a piece of theater to ‘get’ the class bully, especially if the class wimp was unable to wipe a devilish grin from his face. The wimp was bait. You might infer all this even if you had missed the whispering part, but if you saw the whispers before the action took place the case would be all but closed.

I will now give you a close up of Norman Schwarzkopf’s whispers to the Kuwaitis, and of the puzzlement they caused in the region. Then I will show you the Kuwaitis having trouble wiping off a devilish grin.

The following excerpt, from Milton Viorst, summarizes what happened, and also makes an interesting reference to those Iraqi concerns “over money and the islands” that even Schwarzkopf, the man who bombed and overran Iraq, recognized were legitimate: 

[Excerpt from Milton Viorst begins here]

“Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan first brought...to my attention...[that]… the evidence suggested collusion -- deliberate or inadvertent -- between the United States and Kuwait during the previous spring and summer [leading up to the Gulf War]...

The Prince noted that the entire Arab world had been bewildered by Kuwait’s defiant behavior toward Iraq over the course of their disputes in early 1990. The squabbling began with Kuwait’s overproduction of oil, which coincided with a fall in the world price far below the target set by OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). Oil economists pointed out that, as a country of a half-million citizens, with foreign investments that generated a huge income, Kuwait could afford a major price drop... Iraq, a country of seventeen million, was, by contrast, deeply in debt from eight years of war and desperately short of cash for reconstruction. Though Kuwait’s policy might make economic sense, the prince said, governments do not normally make decisions without considering their political consequences, and certainly no responsible regime could fail to take into account the disparity in military power that existed between Iraq and Kuwait.

What was the explanation...? Kuwait’s oil policy severely weakened Iraq.

...The Iraqis were transforming Um-Qasr, a fishing village on its narrow Gulf coastline, into a major naval facility. ...Um-Qasr needed only Bubiyan and Warba, uninhabited Kuwaiti islands at the mouth of the port, for its security. The Iraqis asked Kuwait either to cede the islands or to lease them, but Kuwait refused any agreement at all. Meanwhile, with Soviet power slipping rapidly, Washington could, for the first time since Britain’s departure, contemplate keeping a permanent fleet in the Gulf. Many Arabs wondered whether Kuwait’s hard line on the islands was meant to assure American naval supremacy in the Gulf.

During the negotiations in early 1990, in fact, Kuwait offered concessions on nothing, including division of the Rumaila oil fields on its boundary with Iraq, a dispute dating back to colonial times. What is more, Kuwait raised the ante by demanding repayment with interest of loans it had made to Iraq during the war, loans which Iraq had assumed would be forgiven [because Iraq had been fighting a war with Shia Islamist Iran and one of the main beneficiaries of the Iraqi victory was the Kuwaiti ruling class, which was very worried about its own large Shia minority, as discussed above]. Iraq’s answer was to demand compensation for some $2.5 billion in oil that it accused Kuwait of stealing by slant drilling into its Rumaila wells. To make matters worse, the Kuwaitis were said to have twice offended Iraq by sending home emissaries who had come for prearranged meetings with the emir. Even disregarding the snub, most Arabs agreed that Kuwait was being imprudent.

‘We couldn’t put together the pieces of the mosaic,’ said an advisor to Prince Hassan, ‘but we were suspicious. The Kuwaitis were very cocky. They told us officially that the United States would intervene. We don’t know where they got that impression, from the United States itself or from another party, like the British or the Saudis. But they said they knew what they were doing. They seemed to think they were safe.’”[38]

[Excerpt from Milton Viorst ends here]

Now, if “[General Norman] Schwarzkopf was [in Kuwait] on visits before the war, maybe a few times a year,” as an American diplomat told Milton Viorst, then it is naturally from Schwarzkopf that the Kuwaitis got the impression that America would protect them.

Naturally, Kuwaiti officials will not say in public, “Yes, we are an American puppet, and we were told to provoke Iraq with a promise of American military support, so we did as we were told.” But precisely because they can’t, it is interesting that what they have said in public comes as close as possible to being such an admission without actually saying it outright.

Sheikh Ali al Khalifa, former Kuwaiti minister of oil, at first “denied that Kuwait, in negotiating with Iraq, was influenced by the prospect of American military support…” He gave Milton Viorst the Kuwaiti party line, accusing Saddam Hussein of everything under the sun. But then he concluded with this stunning admission, which Viorst himself puts in italics:

“But the American policy was clear... We understood it but Saddam didn’t. We knew the United States would not let us be overrun.”[39]

Sheikh Salem, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, explained to Viorst that, although the US did not put it down explicitly on paper, the understanding between the US and Kuwait was perfectly clear, and Viorst himself puts his words in italics:

“By the time the crisis began in early 1990, we knew we could rely on the Americans. There was an exchange of talks on the ambassadorial level just before the invasion. No explicit commitments were ever made, but it was like a marriage. Sometimes you don’t say to your wife ‘I love you,’ but you know the relationship will lead to certain things.”[40]

The US could not quite put it down on paper that it would defend Kuwait because that might deter the Iraqis from attacking. So Schwarzkopf informally schmoozed the Kuwaitis for a couple of years and made sure that they believed the US’s assurances.

Now, under which hypothesis is it necessary for the US ruling elite to get Kuwait to provoke a war with Iraq? Under the hypothesis where the US means to defend Iranian Islamism but must appear to be fighting for some other reason. By getting Kuwait to provoke Iraq, the US could claim in public that it was just defending an innocent country, while critics of US foreign policy complained bitterly that the US was just defending its Kuwaiti oil. The entire debate was effectively a diversion, because ‘protecting Iran as part of a pro-Islamist policy’ was not even one of the hypotheses that anybody in the media put on the table to explain the Gulf War.

Under the hypothesis that the US meant to protect its access to Gulf oil, by contrast, it is not necessary to get Kuwait to provoke Iraq. On the contrary, it is absurd. I turn to this next.


The hypothesis that the US attacked Iraq 'for oil' is absurd
__________________________________________________

I understand that many people think the US does everything 'for oil.' It is a popular view partly because of the numbing repetition of it, and repetition has an effect. But a scientist should care only whether there is any evidence to support it, and whether it makes logical sense.

According to the New York Times, when Jimmy Carter established Centcom in 1979 he did so because he was “Fearful that the Soviet Union would take advantage of Iranian instability and try to gain control of the Persian Gulf oilfields.”[41] Now, an ability to protect oil may be a plausible side-benefit of Centcom, but it really is hard to argue that this was its main purpose.

We have seen above that US policy has gone quite out of its way to sponsor Islamist movements even when there is no oil involved, and Brzezinski himself explained that the promotion of Afghan Islamism was meant to bring down the Soviet Union. At the very same time that Brzezinski inaugurated the Islamist policy, Centcom was created explicitly to protect the new Islamist Republic: Iran, also on the Soviet border. This is consistent with a general pro-Islamist policy. By contrast, even assuming that the original goal of Centcom really was to protect US oil interests in the Gulf from the Soviets, nothing at all suggests that Iraq had replaced the Soviet Union as a threat to these interests when Centcom was reoriented in 1988 to counter Iraq. Consider:

1) As a potential threat to the US’s oil interests, in 1988 Iraq was diminutive relative to the Soviet Union -- a virtual nonentity.

2) By 1988 Iraq was brutally weakened and tired by 8 years of war with Iran, even it if was a little better off than Iran.

3) It had plenty of its own oil, so the economic motivation to attack neighboring countries for oil was weak.

4) The geostrategic motivation was even weaker, because Saddam Hussein knew perfectly well that anybody who attacked US puppets in the Gulf would invite America's wrath (the US had already made this perfectly clear during the Iran-Iraq war by putting the American flag on Kuwaiti tankers).[42]

5) As we saw, getting Iraq to attack Kuwait required so much effort by the United States that this point alone makes it quite obvious that Iraq was not a threat to US oil interests in the Gulf.

If the US wanted to protect its access to Gulf oil, all it had to do was warn the Iraqis very loudly that any messing with the US's client states in the Gulf would be punished. Then, if Iraq did anything, the US could punish Iraq. But what the US did instead was provoke a war with Iraq, when Iraq was obviously not a threat.

This is precisely what just happened, too, with Bush Jr.'s war on Iraq.

The most reasonable conclusion for the 1991 Gulf War is that the US attacked Iraq in order to protect Iranian Islamism. It was "strengthening Iran and containing Iraq," precisely as Zalmay Khalilzad had recommended. The bulk of the evidence suggests this is also what Bush Jr.'s war is all about.

The next piece in this series is:

"THE BIG PICTURE: US policy towards Iran in the broadest historical perspective"; Historical and Investigative Research; 4 January 2006; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/big_picture.htm

_____________________________________________________

Footnotes and Further Reading
_____________________________________________________

[1] “Ex-Security Chief Brzezinski’s Interview makes clear: The Muslim Terrorist Apparatus was Created by US Intelligence as a Geopolitical Weapon. The US & European States are still using Brzezinski’s Muslim terrorist strategy!”; Emperor’s Clothes; 6 September 2004; by Jared Israel.
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm

[2] The Arming of Saudi Arabia; Transcript of FRONTLINE Show #1112; Public Broadcasting System; Air Date: February 16, 1993.
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/arming-i.htm

[4] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.41) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker.]

[5] Iran-Iraq War. Encyclopędia Britannica. Retrieved May 8, 2003, from Encyclopędia Britannica Online.
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=43700

[6] “Strengthen Iran, Contain Iraq: Iraq envoy Khalilzad reveals Iran strategy behind the first Gulf War”; Emperor’s Clothes; 26 April 2003; by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/gulfwar.htm

[6a] Bush Jr.'s War on Iraq: A general introduction; Historical and Investigative Research; 1 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/iraq-general-intro.htm

[7] SOURCE: The Washington Post, September 24, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A22, 1258 words, Centuries of Enmity Fuel New Iranian-Iraqi War, By William Branigin, Washington Post Foreign Service.

[8] SOURCE: Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.41) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[9] The New York Times, December 8, 1991, The Iran Pipeline: A Hidden Chapter/A special report.; U.S. Said to Have Allowed Israel to Sell Arms to Iran, By Seymour Hersh

[9a] "GRAND THEATER: THE US, THE PLO, AND THE AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI: Why did the US government, in 1979, delegate to the PLO the task of negotiating the safety of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran?"; Historical and Investigative Research; 10 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/plo-iran.htm

[10] The Washington Post, September 24, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A22, 1258 words, Centuries of Enmity Fuel New Iranian-Iraqi War, By William Branigin, Washington Post Foreign Service.

[11] U.S. PROMISES IRAN $5.5 BILLION ON DAY HOSTAGES ARE FREED; ASSETS ARE PUT AT $9.5 BILLION In All, 70 Percent Would Be Made Available Within a few Days of Americans' Release; By BERNARD GWERTZMAN Special to The New York Times. New York Times (1857. Jan 11, 1981. p. 1 (2 pages)

"Largest Private Financial Transfer in History"; New York Times; Jan 25, 1981; by STEVEN RATTNER; pg. E3

[11a] Iranian Offered Release Of American Hostage For 500 TOW Missiles, The Washington Post, December 31, 1986, Wednesday, Final Edition, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1, 1087 words, Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer, NATIONAL NEWS, FOREIGN NEWS

[12] The Iran Pipeline: A Hidden Chapter/A special report.; U.S. Said to Have Allowed Israel to Sell Arms to Iran, The New York Times, December 8, 1991, Sunday, Late Edition - Final, Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk, 2897 words, By SEYMOUR M. HERSH,  Special to The New York Times, WASHINGTON, Dec. 7

[13] “GRAND THEATER: THE US, THE PLO, AND THE AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI: Why did the US government, in 1979, delegate to the PLO the task of negotiating the safety of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 10 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/plo-iran.htm

[14] To see what Jimmy Carter's policies toward the PLO were, consult the piece in footnote 13, and also the years 1977 and 1978 in:

“Is the US an Ally of Israel?: A Chronological Look at the Evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm

To see what Ronald Reagan's policy towards the PLO was, consult the years 1981, 1982-83, and 1985 in the same book.

[15] SOURCE: Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.47) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[16] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.47) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[17] “Mr. Bush and his aides were urged to rethink Persian Gulf policy from the moment they took office. Shortly after Mr. Bush won the Presidency in November 1988, a State Department strategist drafted a paper for the President-elect urging that the United States take a fresh approach to the region.

Mr. Khalilzad advised in the paper that America's new policy should concentrate on strengthening Iran and containing Iraq. The paper was included in the State Department Policy Planning Staff's official 'transition book,' which reviewed all the foreign policy issues the new President would soon have to confront.”

SOURCE: THE 1992 CAMPAIGN; Bush's Greatest Glory Fades As Questions on Iraq Persist, The New York Times, June 27, 1992, Saturday, Late Edition - Final, George Bush, Section 1; Page 1; Column 5; Foreign Desk, 2554 words, By ELAINE SCIOLINO with MICHAEL WINES, Special to The New York Times, WASHINGTON, June 26

[18] “Iran Future As A Pawn Or A Gulf Power”; Byline: Zalmay Khalilzad; Los Angeles Times July 16, 1989, Sunday, Home Edition Section: Opinion; Part 5; Page 2; Column 4; Opinion Desk

[19] The New York Times, January 7, 1993, Thursday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 23; Column 1; Editorial Desk, 636 words, Stop Negotiating With Serbia, By Zalmay Khalilzad;  Zalmay Khalilzad, Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning from 1990 to 1992, is director of strategy and doctrine for the Rand Corporation., VIENNA

[20] Madeline Albright's exchange with Leslie Stahl on CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ (60 MINUTES, May 12, 1996), regarding deaths of Iraqi children:

LESLEY STAHL: We have heard that a half a million children have died [due to sanctions on Iraq, imposed because of US pressure]. I mean, that's more children than died when--wh--in--in Hiroshima. And--and, you know, is the price worth it?

AMBASSADOR ALBRIGHT: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

To read about how the US poisoned Iraq's water, see:
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/water.htm

[21] Zalmay Khalilzad argued that,

“The lesson of Afghanistan is that arming the victim of aggression is a prudent and workable alternative to the dispatch of U.S. troops or to appeasement. That's because it reinforces economic and political pressures, which by themselves seldom succeed against a determined aggressor.

…As in the case of Afghanistan, the enterprise could be funded in large part by moderate Islamic states.”

SOURCE: "Arm the Bosnians"; The Washington Post; December 28, 1992, Monday, Final Edition; BYLINE: Zalmay Khalilzad; SECTION: EDITORIAL; PAGE A15; 894 words.

But of course, in Afghanistan the US had not armed “the victim of aggression.” As Zbigniev Brzezinski, the author of the Afghan strategy, explained to Le Nouvel Observateur, what the US told the public was a lot of lies. In Afghanistan the US knowingly armed Islamist terrorists from the beginning, with the aim to provoke the Soviets and suck them into a quagmire. Zalmay Khalilzad of course knows this perfectly well -- Brzezinski is Khalilzad’s mentor.

[22] “How the U.S. & Iran have Cooperated to Sponsor Muslim Terror (And this while loudly denouncing one another in public...)”; Emperor’s Clothes; 13 April 2003; by Jared Israel, with Francisco Gil-White, Petar Makara, and Nico Varkevisser
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/deja.htm

[22a] "What really happened in Bosnia?: Were the Serbs the criminal aggressors, as the official story claims, or were they the victims?"; Historical and Investigative Research; 19 August 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija1.htm

[23] On 24 March 2003, the Financial Times wrote as follows:

“It may be part of George W. Bush's axis of evil; some predict it will be next on the list for US pre-emptive action; but Iran is the only one of Iraq's neighbours that wholeheartedly supports regime change in Baghdad, even if via a US-led invasion.

Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his government is one of the few objectives on which the various factions of the Tehran regime agree. Since becoming convinced that the Bush administration is indeed determined to effect forcible change in Iraq, Tehran has been egging on Washington, albeit in private. Whenever the US has needed Tehran's help, the Iranians have been more than happy to oblige.”

SOURCE: “War Sirens Herald Iran's Hour of Revenge”; Financial Times; March 24, 2003, Monday Usa Edition 1; Section: Comment & Analysis; Pg. 17; Headline: War Sirens Herald Iran's Hour Of Revenge; By Khairallah Khairallah

You may read the entire Financial Times piece, and an Emperor’s Clothes analysis of it, here:

“If the US Has Hostile Relations Towards Iran, Shouldn't Someone Tell the Iranians?: Article from the Financial Times with comments by Jared Israel; Emperor’s Clothes; 27 March 2003.
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/helping.htm

On the question of US assistance to Iran during the invasion, please consult:

U.S. Bombed Bases of Iranian Rebels in Iraq; International Herald Tribune | New York Times; Thursday 17 April 2003; by Douglas Jehl

To read the above piece International Herald Tribune/New York Times piece, and an Emperor’s Clothes analysis, visit:

“U.S. ‘Quietly’ Bombs Anti-Regime Iranian Rebels” -- Article by Douglas Jehl, International Herald Tribune, Comments by Jared Israel; Emperor’s Clothes; 19 April 2003; by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/bombed.htm

The following analysis is also useful:

“Reader Says: ‘EC is Wrong; Iran is not Helping the US in Iraq’ -- Jared Israel Replies”; Emperor’s Clothes; 6 April 2003; by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/seale.htm

[24] To read about Khalilzad’s role, visit:

"Who is this U.S. Official in Charge of Afghanistan and the Iraqi Opposition? Zalmay Khalilzad - Envoy for Islamic Terror"; Emperor’s Clothes; 1 March 2003; by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/archive/khalilzad-facts.htm#1985

[25] White House sets stage for pullback of troops, The Toronto Star, November 24, 2005 Thursday, NEWS; Pg. A12, 729 words, Tim Harper, Toronto Star, WASHINGTON

[26] “Iran Won’t Need an Exit Strategy: Top Iraqi Officials Hammer Out a Memorandum of Understanding in Tehran – and take America’s Ambassador in Baghdad by Surprise”; Intel; Newsweek; 28 November 2005; pp.30-31; by Scott Johnson and Michael Hirsh.

[27] This is from The New Yorker’s summary of its own article on Zalmay Khalilzad titled “American Viceroy” [19 December 2005, p.54]
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/press/051219pr_press_releases

[28] Iran-Iraq War. Encyclopędia Britannica. Retrieved May 8, 2003, from Encyclopędia Britannica Online.
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=43700

[29] The New York Times,  July 22, 1988, Friday, Late City Final Edition,  Section A; Page 9, Column 1; National Desk,  1220 words,  WASHINGTON TALK: THE MILITARY; Now Chiefs Fight for Command Nobody Wanted,  By BERNARD E. TRAINOR, Special to the New York Times,  WASHINGTON, July 21

[30] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.278) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[31] The New York Times,  July 22, 1988, Friday, Late City Final Edition,  Section A; Page 9, Column 1; National Desk,  1220 words,  WASHINGTON TALK: THE MILITARY; Now Chiefs Fight for Command Nobody Wanted,  By BERNARD E. TRAINOR, Special to the New York Times,  WASHINGTON, July 21

[32] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.41) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker.]

[33] Viorst puts Schwarzkopf in the driver’s seat, as if the targeting of Iraq had been his own maverick idea.

“…Schwarzkopf, unlike [other s]…recognized that with Iran out of action, at least temporarily, Saddam would be tempted to become the Gulf’s master, and only the United States stood in his way.” (p.278)

This portrayal is identical to Shwarzkopf’s own account of himself in his autobiography [“It Doesn't Take A Hero: The Autobiography.” By General H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre. New York: Bantam Books, 1992]. But that’s nonsense. Zalmay Khalilzad’s report, in which he argued for “strengthening Iran and containing Iraq” was written in 1988 for president Bush senior before he even assumed office, and was read by the whole transition team:

“Mr. Bush and his aides were urged to rethink Persian Gulf policy from the moment they took office. Shortly after Mr. Bush won the Presidency in November 1988, a State Department strategist drafted a paper for the President-elect urging that the United States take a fresh approach to the region.

Mr. Khalilzad advised in the paper that America’s new policy should concentrate on strengthening Iran and containing Iraq. The paper was included in the State Department Policy Planning Staff's official ‘transition book,’ which reviewed all the foreign policy issues the new President would soon have to confront.”

SOURCE: The New York Times; “The 1992 CAMPAIGN - Bush’s Greatest Glory Fades As Questions on Iraq Persist”; June 27, 1992, Saturday, Late Edition - Final George Bush Section 1; Page 1; Column 5; Foreign Desk

The targeting of Iraq was almost certainly not Schwarzkopf’s original idea, and there is simply no evidence that this policy was resisted rather than eagerly embraced by the Bush administration. Neither is there any evidence that this policy was anything other than perfectly consistent with previous policy. It had been Carter’s policy, then Reagan’s, and had now also become Bush Sr.’s policy. Later it would be Clinton’s policy too, and as I am arguing in this series, it has been Bush Jr.’s policy too.

[34] Sunday Times, October 25, 1992, Sunday, Features, 1216 words, The soldier's tale, Paddy Ashdown

[35] “…Iran’s attacks on Kuwait [during the Iran-Iraq War] were not limited to Gulf waters [i.e. not limited to attacks on Kuwaiti shipping]. In 1983, partisans of Iran bombed the American and French embassies, killing six people and wounding eighty. In 1985, an attempt was made on the life of the emir [of Kuwait]. Repeated sabotage was committed on installations in the Kuwaiti oil fields. Kuwait did not like to acknowledge that more than a few of those arrested for these acts were Kuwaiti nationals - Shiite Muslims sympathetic to the message of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. But it had no doubt that Iran was behind them.”

SOURCE: Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.234)  [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[36] The Houston Chronicle, October 11, 1992, Sunday, 2 STAR Edition, ZEST; Pg. 24, 815 words, Schwarzkopf in war zones; General recounts battles of his life, LYNWOOD ABRAM

[37] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.278) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[38] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.250-251)  [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[39] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.279-280)  [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[40] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.280-283)  [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]

[41] WASHINGTON TALK: THE MILITARY; Now Chiefs Fight for Command Nobody Wanted, The New York Times, July 22, 1988, Friday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 9, Column 1; National Desk, 1220 words, By BERNARD E. TRAINOR, Special to the New York Times, WASHINGTON, July 21

[42] Viorst M. 1994. Sandcastles: The Arabs in search of the modern world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (p.233) [Much of this book first appeared in The New Yorker]
 


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HiR series to
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<  General Intro

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and the Ayatollah
Khomeini. (1979)

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