BY MEGAN ARNEY
After a month of almost daily air strikes against Iraq,
the U.S. military force in the Arab-Persian Gulf stepped up
its attacks in the last week of January, including a bombing
near the southern city of Basra in which 11 people were
reported killed and 59 injured.
At the same time, Washington escalated its "antiterrorist" propaganda campaign against Iraq and announced it would widen the range of its targets of attack.
Since its four-day bombing assault on Iraq in mid- December, U.S. forces have carried out virtually daily attacks on Iraqi defense facilities. Washington has claimed "self-defense" as U.S. and British warplanes fly freely over northern and southern Iraq, in the "no-fly" zones decreed by Washington and its imperialist allies after the Gulf War in 1991.
Following a several-day lull, U.S. warplanes resumed their attacks January 23 by firing laser-guided bombs against Iraqi defense sites in the southern part of the country, near Basra. The next day, U.S. planes from a NATO base in Incirlik, Turkey, entered Iraqi airspace in northern Iraq and launched two separate bombings. U.S. offi residential neighborhoods, wreaking destruction. The neighborhood of al- Jumhuriya north of Basra and the nearby town of Abu Falous were devastated.
The government of Iran reported that one missile landed within its territory, outside the city of Abadan, which is 30 miles east of Basra.
U.S. officials tried to dismiss criticism of the bombing of residential areas, asserting that it was due to an "errant" missile. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the bombing "created some damage, we realize that and we regret any civilian casualties," but then blamed the deaths on the government of Iraq. "This was done in response to a provocative attack against our planes by Saddam Hussein," he asserted.
U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, in the Middle East to try to drum up support for the U.S. war drive, voiced passing regret for the death of civilians and declared, "It is essential for the no-fly zones to be protected and for our pilots to be able to defend themselves when attacked."
Washington widens range of attack
The Clinton administration signaled an escalation of its
war campaign in late January by announcing a widening of the
range of what it deems legitimate targets of attack.
On January 26, U.S. national security advisor Samuel Berger declared, "Our response need not simply be against the particular source of the violation or source of the threat, but our response as appropriate will be against any of the [Iraqi] air defense system that we think makes us vulnerable."
In other words, Washington now proclaims it will bomb Iraq wherever and whenever it sees fit. Washington's maintains 15,300 troops stationed in the Arab-Persian Gulf area, with some of them on maximum alert. The Pentagon has increased its arsenal of F-16 fighter jets in the region to 190.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials and the big-business media have cranked up their antiterrorist propaganda to justify the U.S. assaults on Iraq. The New York Times editors ran a front-page article January 27 accusing Baghdad of harboring "one of the world's most infamous terrorists."
The newspaper cited "intelligence reports" asserting that Abu Nidal, a Palestinian political figure who broke with the Palestine Liberation Organization years ago to set up a separate group that opposes the Israeli regime, "moved to Baghdad last year and obtained the protection of President Saddam Hussein." Reporter James Risen added, "Officials caution that there is no evidence that Abu Nidal is planning to conduct terrorism on Iraq's behalf," but "that could change."
Unable to muster the imperialist-led anti-Iraq "alliance" that fell apart after the Gulf War, Washington has increasingly resorted to unilateral action. On December 16, U.S. military forces, with British support, unleashed a four- day massive bombing campaign against Iraq. The pretext for the assault was the charge that Baghdad had reneged on a promise to allow United Nations "weapons inspectors" access to any area of Iraqi territory.
This assault left the U.S. rulers no closer to their goal of undermining and ultimately overthrowing the Iraqi government. Since then, Iraq has refused to allow the return of the UN "inspectors," whose role was further discredited after reports in the U.S. big-business media acknowledging their spying for Washington.
Meanwhile, frictions over Iraq continue between Washington and the governments of France and Russia. These tensions rose when chief UN "inspector" Richard Butler issued a report January 25 to the United Nations Security Council. Butler accused Baghdad of continuing to conceal information about its alleged weapons arsenals.
The report was dismissed by Moscow, a Security Council member, which now refuses to recognize the team of spies known as the United Nations Special Commission, or "UNSCOM," and is demanding the dismissal of Butler.
Paris and Moscow are pressing for an end to the eight-year U.S.-initiated economic embargo on Iraq. The French government has called for a "new system of continuous monitoring" as an alternative to the U.S.-led UNSCOM. Paris is pushing to lift the oil embargo in hopes of French oil companies regaining prominent trade deals with Iraq, which sits on top of 10 percent of the world's oil reserves.
French premier Lionel Jospin stated, "There is a need for France to assert itself more on the international scene," assuring this was "not because of its power or wanting to teach anybody lessons, but because it has a different way of seeing a certain number international realities."
Moscow is wary that U.S. imperialist aggression against Iraq will eventually be turned against the Russian workers state. Nonetheless, the grinding campaign of military strikes against Iraq has, so far, met with relatively little opposition from other governments, either imperialist rivals such as Paris or the pro-capitalist regimes in the workers states of Russia and China.
The Russian foreign ministry limited itself to admonishing Washington for the most recent U.S. bombings, declaring, "Nothing can justify new deaths among the civilian population of Iraq, which has already been bled dry by the hardships of many years of the blockade."
At a January 24 meeting in Cairo of the Arab League, foreign ministers issued a weakly worded call for "dialogue" with Iraq instead of force. They expressed "deep concern at the use of the military option against Iraq." At the same time, while far from expressing the kind of support sought by Washington, the Arab League called on Baghdad to submit to UN Security Council demands.
Representatives of Baghdad insisted Iraq has met the UN disarmament demands and called on the Arab League to denounce the December 16-19 bombings by London and Washington. When the other government representatives declined to do so, Iraqi foreign minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf walked out in protest.