BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
U.S. F-15 fighter jets based in Turkey dropped more than
30 bombs on northern Iraq March 1. The day before, U.S.
warplanes demolished the power station of a communications
center that operates a pipeline near Mosul. The facility
controlled a major oil pipeline into Turkey.
Three people were killed in the attack on the oil station and other bombings that day, including a three-year-old child. While Washington claimed it was attacking military targets, the Iraqi oil ministry's director of planning, Faleh al-Khayat, said no antiaircraft facilities were anywhere near the control station for the pipeline.
Turkish officials, who allow the U.S. bombing runs to depart from their territory, called the disruption of the oil pipeline to Turkey's Mediterranean coast unacceptable March 3. But the Pentagon said Washington wouldn't back off.
"Absolutely this is an escalation," an unnamed White House official was quoted as saying in the March 2 Washington Post, referring to the bombardment. Of the 86 bombs dropped on the Iraqi people since Washington's four-day "Operation Desert Fox" onslaught last December, 66 bombs have been dropped since January 30.
Pentagon officials have claimed that U.S. and British pilots were responding to Iraqi attempts to shoot down the intruding planes. But the U.S. rulers have become more aggressive in their use of military firepower to impose the "no-fly zones" over Iraq, which cover more than 60 percent of the country.
Baghdad has repeatedly stated its opposition to the "no- fly zones" imposed by the imperialists. "We reaffirm once again that Iraq never will recognize the so-called no-fly zones imposed on it in an unjust and aggressive manner," said Uday al Tai, head of the official Iraqi news agency. Al Tai's remarks came after U.S. jets fired missiles at two Iraqi defense sites February 25.
On January 26 the Clinton administration announced its military can attack Iraq defense installations whenever its pilots deem necessary regardless of whether Iraqi planes travel into the "no-fly zones" or radar track imperialist intruders. "Our response need simply be against the particular source of the violation," declared Samuel Berger, the president's national security adviser. He said U.S. jets have the prerogative to attack "any [part] of the [Iraqi] air defense system that we think makes us vulnerable."
Now Washington has given its pilots the green light to bomb communication facilities not connected with the country's air defense system, which included four vans loaded with computers. "The pilots have been given greater flexibility to attack those systems which place them in jeopardy," U.S. war secretary William Cohen announced March 1.
Despite its relentless assault on Iraq, Washington remains further away from its aim of overthrowing the government of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. With few other military options short of a full-scale ground invasion, the Clinton administration has been waging a military operation to steadily destroy the country's infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-led sanctions remain in place, strangling the Iraqi people. Paris has proposed lifting the sanctions if Baghdad agrees to a new "international monitoring system" that disintegrated after Washington's December blitz of bombs and missiles. French oil companies had prominent trade positions in the Gulf region before the embargo was imposed.
In defiance of Washington's Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, Elf Aquitaine of France and Eni of Italy signed a deal worth nearly $1 billion with Tehran to refurbish a giant crude oil field of Iran's Kharg Island. The protectionist U.S. law threatens sanctions against any country that invests more than $20 million in Iran or Libya.