BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
Washington engineered a new provocation against Iraq, which it is now using to lay the ground for a military assault. On January 13, the Iraqi government blocked a United Nations "arms inspection" team, dominated by U.S. officials, from snooping into the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright immediately raised the specter of military strikes. "We have a very robust force that is on hand," stated Pentagon spokesman Michael Doubleday, referring to the nearly 30,000 U.S. troops, dozens of navy ships, and hundreds of warplanes in the region.

The Clinton administration pushed for UN Security Council action. The Council approved unanimously a "presidential statement," a step short of a full resolution, January 14, deploring the barring of the UN inspectors and demanding unconditional access to all sites. The statement, however, did not threaten the use of force, which the governments of France, China, and Russia, three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, have opposed.

Baghdad blocked one of the groups of inspectors after accusing the team's head, Scott Ritter, of being a spy and protesting the presence of too many U.S. and British officers on the team - 14 out of the 16 in the group barred January 13. Washington and London are the two powers that have persistently pushed for military action to overthrow Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and replace him with a regime subservient to U.S. imperialism. Doing so would result in greater U.S. government control of oil reserves in the Middle East that would give the U.S. rulers an even greater economic and strategic advantage vis-a-vis their capitalist rivals such as Tokyo.

U.S. officials immediately denied that Ritter is a spy. The January 14 Washington Post, however, reported that Ritter was an "intelligence officer" with several commendations on his record while a captain in the Marine Corps, where he served for seven years. Ritter was assigned at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command in the Arab-Persian Gulf during the U.S.- led slaughter against the Iraqi people in 1991. Since leaving the Marines later that year, Ritter has been part of the UN weapons inspection operation in Iraq, which the U.S. government has used to justify maintaining a draconian embargo on the country for more than seven years.

The sanctions have had a devastating impact on the Iraqi people. A United Nations Children's Fund report issued last November stated that as a result of lack of food and medicines due to the UN embargo, 32 percent of Iraqi children under five, some 960,000, are chronically malnourished - a 72 percent rise since 1991. In rural areas only 50 percent of people have access to water, and only 34 percent have sanitation. Since the sanctions were imposed, infant mortality has increased sixfold.

Under the terms of the cease-fire Baghdad was forced to sign at the end of the Arab-Persian Gulf War, the lifting of the embargo is conditional on certification by the inspection teams that the Iraqi government no longer possesses "weapons of mass destruction." As part of these teams, Ritter has been personally responsible for orchestrating previous provocations.

Leading up to the latest flare-up, U.S. officials had floated allegations that the Iraqi government used prisoners as guinea pigs to test biological agents, which Baghdad denied. "That is one of the lies being used as a pretext for intruding," said Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz. Ritter's aborted intrusion into Baghdad's intelligence headquarters, which Aziz said was a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, was planned under the guise of uncovering evidence of weapons testing on inmates.

In October and November the Clinton administration orchestrated a similar string of provocations with its inspectors, leading Baghdad to expel the U.S. officers. Washington then amassed a giant armada in the region and unleashed a propaganda campaign to justify devastating carpet bombing of Iraq. As the New York Times stated in November, "The White House decided to prepare the country for war." The media hoopla included the performance of U.S. defense secretary William Cohen waving a five-pound bag of sugar in front of television cameras and declaring that if the sugar were anthrax it would kill half the population of Washington, D.C. The U.S. government is accusing Baghdad of illegally manufacturing biological and chemical weapons.

The December 1 Newsweek magazine featured an article by liberal politician George Stephanopoulos titled "Why we should kill Saddam." The former senior advisor to U.S. president William Clinton wrote, "The gulf-war coalition is teetering and we have not eliminated Saddam's capacity to inflict mass destruction. That's why killing him may be the more sensible - and moral - course over the long run."

Stephanopoulos was referring to the setback the Clinton administration suffered by mid-November, when some of Washington's imperialist allies, with Paris leading the pack, refused to support military strikes, along with the governments of Russia and China. The White House was forced to accept a diplomatic solution brokered by Paris and Moscow.

Ever since, the Clinton administration, weakened by its faltering war drive, has been on the prod for the next time a pretext could be mustered for renewed war preparations. "The crisis may have disappeared in your minds," White House press secretary told reporters January 13. "It has not changed one whit since October."

According to the Pentagon, there are currently 28,800 U.S. troops in the region. Among them are the crew of 2 aircraft carrier groups - 14 ships - sailing in the Gulf as well as another 7 warships. These include 4 guided missile frigates, 4 cruisers, and 4 destroyers capable of launching cruise missiles deep into Iraq. About 375 U.S. warplanes are in the region, including in Turkey. Additional aircraft can be moved in the area within 48 hours.

Since the setback the Clinton administration suffered in November over Iraq, rightists in the United States have assumed more of the leadership of the capitalist war preparations. In a November 19 column, ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan said the failure of Washington's allies to support the Clinton administration's military plans against Iraq meant that "multilateralism has been discredited: a new era of American unilateralism is upon us."

In a January 14 column, Buchanan further proposed that Washington take steps to thaw relations with Iran, taking advantage of overtures by new Iranian president Mohammed Khatami. The Iranian government has had adversarial relations with Baghdad since the latter launched a U.S.-backed war against Iran soon after the overthrow of the shah - Washington's favored client regime in that region - through a massive popular upsurge in 1979. "Since the Arab and Western nations we protect are cutting their own deals with Baghdad and Tehran, perhaps it is time we gave up a costly imperial policy," Buchanan said, "and began looking out for America first."

Similar views on U.S. relations with Iran are pushed by an array of capitalist politicians and pundits. "Saddam may not be afraid of America anymore. But he's afraid of Teheran," wrote columnist Thomas Friedman in the January 6 New York Times. "If Washington isn't going to play military hardball with Saddam, it should at least play diplomatic hardball. It's time for President Clinton to stop exchanging pleasantries with the moderate new Iranian President.. and open a real dialogue."  
 
 
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