Speaking to the press at the end of July, U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed proposals to rely on a tightening of the economic blockade or a bombing assault as ways of overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein; only a massive invasion by Washington, he said, could achieve the U.S. rulers’ aims.

"They have chemical weapons, they have biological weapons. They have an enormous appetite for nuclear weapons," he stated.

"The idea that it’s easy to simply go do what you suggested ought to be done from the air...is a misunderstanding of the situation," Rumsfeld told a reporter. "The Iraqis have a great deal of what they do deeply buried."

When a reporter asked, "Where is the Pentagon and the U.S. military today in terms of planning for any possible military operation in Iraq?" the defense secretary sidestepped the question, citing "a host of different contingencies and possibilities... [that] have always been on-the-shelf plans--sometimes they’re called war plans."

Others who testified at the Senate hearings included former senior military officers and "experts" on Iraq. They said that tens of thousands of troops and an armada of warplanes, ships, and armored vehicles would be needed for an invasion.

Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, head of the committee, co-authored an opinion column that appeared in the July 31 New York Times with Sen. Richard Lugar, the committee’s ranking Republican member. "President Bush has made clear his determination to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power--a goal many of us in Congress share," they wrote.

Before the hearings began Biden said that he wanted "to begin a dialogue" on how to overthrow the Iraqi government and have "a serious and open discussion about what is at stake."  
 
‘Great sacrifices from American people’
"This is not an action that can be sprung on the American people," said Lugar in his opening statement at the hearings. "We must estimate soberly the human and economic cost of war plans and postwar plans."

He added that public debate is essential to win "strong public support" for military "actions that will require great sacrifices from the American people."

Laying out what those "sacrifices" might be--and preparing the American people for a future of guns without butter--Congressman James Spratt, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee and a member of the Armed Services Committee, remarked two days before the hearings that "since there is no surplus in the budget from which the cost [of war] could be paid, there will be trade-offs, making initiatives like Medicare drug coverage harder to do, and almost certainly there will be deeper deficits and more debt."

While waging war is not "beyond our means," he said, "We can’t have it all."  
 
Region in turmoil
King Abdullah of Jordan traveled to the United States for a brief visit with Bush that coincided with the Senate hearings. His comments echoed those of other Arab government officials who have expressed some public queasiness about the political instability a new imperialist war would provoke in the region.

The prospect of war is "moving to the horizon much closer than we believed," Abdullah told the press upon his arrival in Washington. "Our concern," he said, is "that a miscalculation in Iraq would throw the whole area into turmoil."

European imperialist powers have so far gone along with Washington’s war plans, while trying to assert some influence by encouraging the U.S. government to seek United Nations authorization for renewed military action.

"Any attack would only be justified if a mandate was approved by the UN Security Council," said President Jacques Chirac of France July 30 after meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "That is the position of Germany and France."

According to the International Herald Tribune, U.S. government officials have stated that UN decisions are unnecessary, owing to Baghdad’s alleged "defiance of past UN mandates"--including the expulsion of so-called weapons monitors.

The administration of William Clinton used Baghdad’s restriction of the snooping activities of UN "weapon inspectors" as a pretext for launching a bombing campaign in December 1998 that destroyed schools, hospitals, grain depots, residential buildings, and military sites.

In January the following year U.S. government officials were forced to admit that the inspection teams were U.S. spies who carried surveillance equipment that allowed them to snoop on radio, cell phone, and walkie-talkie communications by Iraq’s security force.

Meanwhile, Washington has been laying the groundwork on several fronts for a military assault. In addition to building up its forces and striking power in the region, the U.S. government has built up its Strategic Petroleum Reserve by more than 100 million barrels.

The purchases of oil account for more than half the growth in demand for oil this year.

The reserve could be used to sell 4.2 million barrels of oil a day to compensate for the 1 million barrels of Iraqi oil that would reportedly stop flowing because of U.S. military attacks.  
 
 
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