April 24, 2003
LONDON - PM Tony Blair's popularity has risen with the end of the Iraq invasion. Britons, like Americans, enjoy jolly little wars in which large numbers of heathen savages are mowed down by western military technology at minimal cost to imperial troops. Add Britain's most recent invasion of Iraq to her list of 19th Century colonial `little wars,' like the Zulu, Ashanti, Afridi wars and, of course, the more famous campaign against Sudan's Dervishes, and their `fiendish' leader, the Khalifa, a 19th-century version of Osama bin Laden.
In spite of Blair's modestly resurgent popularity, a thunderstorm of questions is coming from parliament, media and public over Bush/Blair claims that Iraq had to be urgently invaded because it posed, in Bush' words, `an imminent threat to the US and the world,' and, as Blair claimed, `Iraq possesses huge quantities of weapons of mass destruction.' British Intelligence claimed it contained thousands of tons of biological weapons and poison gas, thousands more tons of pre-cursor materials, nuclear weapons fabrication equipment, medium-ranged missiles, 500km-ranged drones equipped with to spray germs, etc etc
Embarrassed by their failure to so far find a shred of evidence, never mind a `smoking gun,' to justify an entirely illegal invasion of a sovereign nation , violating international law and the UN Charter, London and Washington still insist evidence will be found. `We sold it to them; it's got to be there,' London wags are saying.
If it is, it had better be a mammoth underground trove worthy of a James Bond super-villain, not juts a few rusty old cans of chemicals left over from the 1980's Iran-Iraq War, when the US and Britain were Saddam's principal supplies of germ and gas weapons. And don't for a minute believe Pentagon leaks about an `unnamed Iraqi scientists' who says he knows where all the nasties are buried and, what's more, ties Saddam to Al-Qaida. American viewers of Rush Limbaugh will swallow this pap; most Brits are too cynical and worldly to accept such crude propaganda; many Brits and Europeans believe the US/UK will eventually plant fake evidence. What's one more fabrication in a war of lies?
Calls are growing for parliamentary investigations of Blair's war rationale and of British Intelligence. Critics ask if Her Majesty's spooks were simply lying and concocting fake evidence to please their political masters, or were they producing junk intelligence at the cost of one billion pounds sterling annually? Every single weapon of mass destruction site listed in MI6's notorious dossier presented at the UN, and cited by US Secretary Colin Powell as proof positive, turned out to be bogus. More trusting Americans have yet to raise similar questions about their US $40 billion per annum intelligence agencies, the same ones that failed to predicted 9/11.
This week, another uproar occurred in Britain after the New York Times leaked Pentagon plans to establish four permanent air bases in Iraq, adding to its existing 184 bases around the globe. The Pentagon denied the report, but my military and intelligence sources say it is largely accurate.
Imperial Britain ruled Iraq from the 1920's until 1958 by relying on the RAF to bomb and strafe rebellious tribesmen. Winston Churchill even authorized the RAF to use mustard gas and chlorine against `primitive tribesmen' in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US now appears set to follow the British Empire by keeping order in its new colony by use of air power rather than ground troops.
But the new US bases in Iraq, if established, have a far more important role than mere colonialism. They will form the last spans of a gigantic air bridge, linking the USA with Central Asia. America's new imperial lifeline goes from the US East Coast to bases in Britain or Spain, then to America's newest client states in East Europe: Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Their bases link directly to US Mideast bases in Turkey, the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and, soon, Iraq. The new Iraqi bases will give the US control of the region's second largest oil producer, and allow a lower American profile in Saudi Arabia. They will be stepping stones to US Central Asian bases - Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan - created in 1991-92 to dominate the Caspian Oil Basin under the pretext of the so-called `war on terrorism.'
These aforementioned are all permanent bases that will give the US Air Force ten league boots it will use to speed warplanes, men, and war materials across there-quarters of the width of the globe. Just as Suez was the key to Britain's imperial naval lifeline, so Iraq, and/or other Mideast bases, will be for America's Imperium. America's mighty Air Force, the Dreadnaught of our modern day, will rule over all of the world's richest reserves of oil and gas, extending from Morocco to China's western border.
Increasing numbers of unhappy Britain's are asking if they were not euchered into an imperial war as American auxiliaries rather than having saved civilization from `imminent danger' allegedly posed by Paper Camel Saddam Hussein. Other, more hardheaded Brits, are preparing to grab their share of the spoils of war to `liberate' Iraq's oil.
Foreign Correspondent