Everybody is second-guessing why George W. Bush wants to blow Iraq off the map. Some, like William Safire, say he wants a regime change because Saddam is a proven maniac who previously used weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against Kurds and Iranians. Even adding the comment that Saddam also tried to assassinate Bush's father hardly provides a viable rationale for wiping out another million or so Iraqis.
Others say that wiping out Iraq must happen because Saddam
can develop a nuclear weapons capability within a few years. The
US revised the nuclear threat rationale for pre-emptive strikes
when the news got out that North Korea has at least three atomic
bombs. The new version has Iraq giving the technology to terrorists.
The fact that Israel has been developing nuclear weapons for years
goes un-remarked by most of the media and all of the US government.
For the moment, forget about those who say there is not enough
evidence to prove that Saddam has WMD capability. It is too easy
to dismiss sceptics like Scott Ritter, who was deputy chief UN
weapons inspector, or the CIA , which has lots of satellite photo
coverage they are not offering as WMD revelations. Those that
they have offered do not reveal anything like real evidence.
Momentarily ignore, also, the fact that the Iraqis have even yielded
to demands that inspectors be allowed unfettered access to Saddam's
palaces, in violation, it should be added, of all that America
holds dear about rights to privacy. Along with this, overlook
the fact that previous weapons inspectors fed intelligence information
unrelated to WMDs to the CIA, which was later used to target presumed
WMD sites.
A number of pundits around the world have used their crystal balls
to envision oil as the reason for the US wish to rain death on
Baghdad and take over Iraq. The speculation that America could
get away with a stunt like that assumes that the rest of the world
would look the other way as General Tommy Franks reigns over the
Iraqi oil fields.
What then is the real, though undisclosed, rationale for decimating
Iraq? Quite simply, Israel wants to rid Palestine of Palestinians.
Before that can be accomplished, any potential for the use of
weapons of mass destruction by Iraq must be eliminated.
There has been much pressure for establishing a Palestinian state.
Israel does not want a Palestinian state to exist inside Palestine
at all. It wants the Palestinians removed to Jordan or Saudi Arabia
or Lebanon or Syria - anywhere but in Palestine. That line has
been part of the Israeli national agenda since Israel was conceived.
It was certainly in evidence when Menachem Begin and the Stern
gang mass murdered Palestinians to provoke the rest to flee in
fear.
It has been even more in evidence since Ariel Sharon, following
up on his sponsorship of Palestinian extermination in Lebanon,
unleashed his genocidal troops, with the latest military armaments,
against rock throwers and suicide bombers, wiping out freedom
fighting members of the Palestinian resistance with Hitlerian
ferocity. The line has also been endorsed by US congressmen, like
Representative Dick Armey.
Chris Matthews interviewed Armey (Republican, Texas), leader of
the Republicans in the US House of Representatives (source: MSNBC,
1 May 2002). In the most blatant admission of this line, Armey
said: "I am content to have Israel occupy that land that
it now occupies and to have those people who have been aggressors
against Israel retired to some other area, and I would be happy
to have them make a home. I would be happy to have all of these
Arab nations that have been so hell bent to drive Israel out of
the Middle East to get together, find some land and make a home
for the Palestinians. I think it can be done."
Could not this be done now? Why could not Sharon and Co. force
the Palestinians out of Palestine now? As long as Israel perceives
that Iraq may be developing weapons of mass destruction along
with the capacity to deliver them, they would not dare remove
the remaining Palestinians from their midst. They know that if
Saddam lobbed a WMD to Israel that it would kill more Palestinians
than Israelis.
But if/when the Palestinians have been expelled from their lands,
that restraint could be removed from Saddam's mind set; and, assuming
he has the weapons, all WMD hell could break loose over the land
of Zion before the Israelis could prevent it or retaliate.
So what happens if Sharon and his American supporters - Perle,
Wolfowitz, Cohen, Ruben, Rumsfeld, Fleisher, Armey and all of
the rest of the US-Israel support troops prodding Bush and Cheney
- get their way and finish Iraq?
The Palestinians will be forced again to flee their homeland and
become refugees in another Arab country. If/when this happens,
resulting in a Diaspora of Palestinians outside of the occupied
lands called Israel, there will no longer be a radical like Saddam
Hussein, with weapons of mass destruction, to threaten Israel's
very existence.
The purpose of the whole Bush & Co. exercise in an Iraq wipe-out
is thus clear: it opens the floodgates for Israel to rid Palestine
of the Palestinians.
The reporters who accept the Bush administration's public line
about regime change and (unproven) weapons of mass destruction
have simply been repeating political nonsense. Those commentators
who speculate that the Bush-Cheney oil connections have motivated
them to seek control of Iraqi oil have merely been grasping at
straws for a rationale for the war mongering by Washington hawks.
In short, the pundits have it all wrong.
*Paul Balles is a retired American
university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the
Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see
http://www.writerfreelance.com
and http://www.pballes.com.