BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
A U.S. warplane patrolling southern Iraq fired a missile at an Iraqi antiaircraft installation June 30. On patrol in the area were four U.S. F-16 fighter jets flying out of Saudi Arabia, two U.S. EA-6B electronic jamming aircraft, and four British Tornadoes. Iraqi government officials called the attack "an aggressive and unjustifiable action" and said the missile hit a drinking water reservoir near Basra.

Nearly 200 imperialist warplanes regularly patrol the region, flying 80-120 missions a day. Washington, which has been enforcing a "no-fly zone" in southern Iraq since 1992, claimed that Baghdad aimed radar at one of the four British jets. "If our aircraft or those of our allies are threatened, it will be met with a very big response," declared U.S. defense secretary William Cohen. He called the shooting "an act of self-defense."

The last U.S. military assault on Iraq was in 1996 when warplanes fired missiles at antiaircraft batteries in the country.

The U.S. government has maintained two "no-fly zones" over nearly two-thirds of Iraqi territory, in which the movement of any Iraqi aircraft or heavy weaponry on the ground is barred. Baghdad also faces U.S.-led sanctions imposed since 1990, which have resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million people. Lifting the sanctions is supposedly conditional upon verification by UN arms "inspectors" that Baghdad no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Washington's latest military action against Iraq heightens tensions in the region and came one week after the chief United Nations "weapons inspector," Richard Butler, claimed U.S. Army laboratory tests proved that Baghdad had loaded poisonous VX nerve gas into missile warheads before the Gulf War. UN inspectors said they dug up missile fragments from a weapons dump in Nibai, Iraq, last March and shipped them to a U.S. Army laboratory, which claimed it found significant traces of VX.

"It's a nail in the coffin for Iraq's efforts to lift sanctions," declared U.S. ambassador to the United Nations William Richardson.

Butler played a central role in preparing propaganda for U.S. war moves earlier this year. Without presenting any evidence, he claimed January 26 that the Iraqi government had biological weapons loaded onto missiles that could be put on mobile missile launchers and driven away to avoid being hit by bombs. He had also claimed that Baghdad was conducting "possible biological testing on human beings" at a prison facility, though other UN officials said his supposed evidence proved nothing.

The Clinton administration escalated its war threats in the name of destroying Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." Washington amassed an armada of 30 warships, 450 warplanes, and 44,000 troops in the Persian Gulf region as the U.S. rulers prepared to launch massive bombing raids on the Iraqi people under the pretext that Baghdad was supposedly hiding evidence that it had biological and chemical weapons. While Washington retreated from the immediate prospect of war, 22 U.S. warships, 162 warplanes, and 20,200 U.S. troops remain in the region today.

During the 1990-91 Gulf War, 1,203 U.S. war planes were joined by 800 others that dropped 88,500 tons of bombs over 43 days. This assault was followed by a four-day "ground war" that some U.S. military officials described as a "turkey shoot." More than 150,000 Iraqis were killed in that slaughter.

The U.S. military also used banned weapons and ammunition enriched with depleted uranium during the Gulf War, exposing vast tracts of Iraqi territory to the highly toxic chemical.  
 
 
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