BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
Washington's war drive against Iraq slowed down after the Clinton administration suffered a setback in its attempt to launch devastating bombing raids of urban centers throughout that country in mid-November. Capitalist politicians and the big-business press in the United States, however, are not letting up on their propaganda campaign to justify maintaining a draconian embargo on Iraq and ready possible future assaults to topple the regime of President Saddam Hussein and extend U.S. domination of Iraq and control of its vast oil resources.

"If diplomacy failed, Congress was clamoring for an attack punishing enough to topple Mr. Hussein's regime," said an article in the November 30 New York Times. It was referring to the deal engineered by Paris and Moscow that led Baghdad to allow U.S. representatives in the United Nations arms inspection teams, who had been expelled from Iraq, to return to the country. The article was featured in the Sunday "Week in Review" section of the Times under the headline "Americans decide war may not be quite so scary." It quoted Republican Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, saying about the Iraqi president, "I'd like to see him taken out."

"Even liberal pundits are sounding bloodthirsty these days," the Times article continued. "Last week George Stephanopoulos, President Clinton's former senior adviser, called on his old boss to ignore a Ford-era Presidential order barring American-sanctioned assassinations and put out a contract on Mr. Hussein. `If we can kill Saddam, we should,' Mr. Stephanopoulos wrote in the current issue of Newsweek."

The liberal daily laid out once again how Washington is trying to justify its war moves and turn public opinion in its favor. "The United States and its allies have had seven years to demonize Mr. Hussein," it said. "President Clinton can pick and choose from Iraq's terrifying array of poison gases and killer germs as a rationale to bomb away.

"Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, playing show-and-tell on national television a couple of weeks ago, plunked down a five-pound bag of sugar and proclaimed that if the sugar were anthrax, a deadly bacteria, it could kill half the population of Washington. In case anyone missed the point, he said last week that the United Nations believes Iraq may have produced up to 200 tons of VX nerve gas, `theoretically enough to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth.'"

Meanwhile, the U.S. armada that Clinton amassed in the Persian Gulf over the last month remains there. It includes two aircraft carriers with over 50 warplanes each and a dozen warships, which are capable of delivering Tomahawk cruise missiles deep into Iraq. Some 20,000 U.S. troops are also stationed in the region.

Washington is using the UN inspectors to keep up its pressure on Baghdad. These investigators are supposed to certify whether Iraq has gotten rid of "weapons of mass destruction," as stipulated by the cease-fire agreement the Iraqi regime was forced to sign after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. This is a precondition for lifting the UN sanctions. The White House is threatening to use the "inspectors" for a new provocation over the demand that they be allowed entry to more than 60 presidential compounds that Baghdad has declared off limits.

On November 30 thousands of Iraqis gathered in downtown Baghdad, the country's capital, to protest the U.S.-engineered sanctions. The demonstrators paraded 100 small wooden coffins carrying children whose deaths they attributed to malnutrition and lack of medicines caused by the embargo. More than half a million people have died in the last seven years as a result of these sanctions.

The procession was held the day after the Iraqi government said it would accept in principle the renewal of a deal with the United Nations that allows it to sell a limited amount of oil, its main export, to import much-needed food and medicines. The announcement reversed Baghdad's earlier stance that it would accept nothing short of lifting of the embargo altogether. "Iraq has accepted the oil-for-food deal as a temporary measure, not as an alternative to the complete lifting of sanctions," said a statement from the Iraqi Information Ministry.

Under the deal, Baghdad can sell up to $2 billion worth of oil every six months. But the revenue is put into a UN- controlled account and a big percentage of it is taken for "war reparations" Iraq is supposed to pay for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. During the negotiations that led to the easing of the confrontation with Washington, Moscow promised it would press for raising the ceiling of oil sales to $3 billion. The UN Security Council was scheduled to vote on whether to renew or alter this deal on December 4.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations William Richardson said Washington may consider the expansion of the "oil-for- food" program. But in the same breath he indicated that the door is still open for U.S. military strikes if the Iraqi government continues to limit the reach of the weapons inspectors.

"The new-found bellicosity toward Saddam Hussein seems to spring from a belief that the military can thwart him with unmanned Tomahawk cruise missiles or a few bombing runs, and suffer a few if any casualties," said the November 30 Times article. "But this view doesn't take into account how many bombs were dropped on Iraq in 1991 without forcing a withdrawal from Kuwait. For that, it took tanks and infantry."

Pointing to the essential role of the UN inspectors for Washington's strategy, the article said, "Without inspectors on the ground, the only reliable option would be to send in ground forces."

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Another article on the front page of the December 2 New York Times complemented Washington's war propaganda against regimes not under its boot in that part of the world. Prominent liberal reporter Raymond Bonner alleged that a major pipeline the Libyan government is building for irrigation has some mysterious military purpose instead. "A tunnel of pipes 4 meters, or 13 feet, in diameter is large enough to accommodate military vehicles, even a rail line," Bonner wrote, referring to the tunnels being dug through the desert that the Libyan government says will allow it to expand cultivation. Citing interviews with unnamed engineers supposedly working on the project, the article said that underground storage facilities are being constructed about every 50 miles along the pipeline. "These sites, made out of reinforced concrete, would be suitable for bivouacking troops or storing military supplies, including poison gas, the engineers said."

Washington has kept an embargo on Libya since 1982. For the last five years, the United Nations has also renewed a ban on flights to and from Libya at the U.S. government's urging. The Reagan administration ordered a bombing of the country in 1986, killing 37 people and wounding 100, after accusing Tripoli of terrorist activities.  
 
 
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