POLITICS-U.S.: Imperial Dreams Sink in Iraqi Quagmire

POLITICS-U.S.: Imperial Dreams Sink in Iraqi Quagmire: "Analysis - By Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, May 18 (IPS) - The coalition of Bush administration hawks that was empowered by the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon agreed on three main strategic objectives.

The neo-conservatives and Christian Right wanted to decisively shift the balance of power in the Middle East in favour of Israel, so that it could effectively impose peace terms on the Palestinians and Syria and anyone else that resisted U.S. regional hegemony or Israel's legitimacy and territorial claims.

The more-globally-oriented strategists -- sometimes called ''assertive nationalists'' or Machtpolitikers -- wanted to show ''rogue states'', particularly those with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), like North Korea -- that the United States could and, more importantly, would take pre-emptive military action to either change their regimes or crush them.

They also wanted to demonstrate to any possible future rival powers that Washington could, and would, intervene militarily in the Persian Gulf region to deny them essential energy supplies as a way of reminding nations of the indispensability of friendly ties with the United States.

All three objectives, it was swiftly agreed by the ascendant hawks, could be achieved by invading and then ''transforming'' Iraq into a pro-western, if not democratic, Arab state.

Moreover, the likely acquisition of more or less permanent access to military bases in Iraq that would fit into a larger, global network of scores of military facilities stretching from East Asia through Central Asia, and from Arabia and the Caucasus through the Mediterranean and the Horn all the way to West Africa would make it even clearer to all that breaking ''Pax Americana'' would risk economic or military ruin.

But in order to achieve these objectives, the United States not only had to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, it also had to occupy the country, and occupy it in a way that would not require many U.S. soldiers, who would be deployed elsewhere along the globe-straddling ''arc of crisis'' to guard the peace.

''The global strategy -- all their assumptions -- rested on the ability of U.S. forces to move fast, win quickly with overwhelming force, and move out'', according to one official. ''Any prolonged conflict or occupation -- like what we see in Iraq -- threatened the whole structure because we don't have that many forces''.

For reasons that are likely to be debated by historians, political scientists, and possibly psychiatrists, for decades the hawks -- most of them based in the offices of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, but probably President George W Bush as well -- firmly believed that Iraqis would either be so grateful for their ''liberation'' from the depredations of Hussein or so awed by the show of U.S. military power that they would support, or at least not actively oppose, a post-war occupation. "

POLITICS-U.S.: Neo-Con Collapse in Washington and Baghdad

POLITICS-U.S.: Neo-Con Collapse in Washington and Baghdad: "Analysis - By Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, Jun 1 (IPS) - Fourteen months after reaching the zenith of their influence on U.S. foreign policy with the invasion of Iraq, neo-conservatives appear to have fallen entirely out of favour, both within the administration of President George W Bush and in Baghdad itself.

The signs of their defeat at the hands of both reality and the so-called ''realists'', who are headed within the administration by Secretary of State Colin Powell, are virtually everywhere but were probably best marked by the cover of 'Newsweek' magazine last week, which depicted the framed photograph of the neo-cons' favourite Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi, which had been shattered during a joint police-U.S. military raid on his headquarters in Baghdad. 'Bush's Mr. Wrong' was the title of the feature article.

The victory of the realists, who also include the uniformed military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), appeared complete Monday with the unveiling of the interim Iraqi government to which an as-yet undefined sovereignty is to be transferred from the U.S.-led occupation authorities Jun. 30.

Not only was Chalabi's arch-rival-in-exile, Iyad Allawi, approved by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) as prime minister, but neither Chalabi nor any of his closest IGC associates, especially Finance Minister Kamel al-Gailani -- who is accused of handing over much of Iraq's banking system to Chalabi during his tenure -- made it into the final line-up.

''It looks like Chalabi is the big loser'', said one congressional aide who follows Iraq closely. ''And neo-con has become a dirty word up here'', he added, referring to the Congress, where Republicans have become increasingly restive as a result of recent debacles in Iraq, including the scandal over the abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi detainees and leaks that Chalabi had been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran, and may have done so for years.

''We need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts -- a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy -- by force if necessary'', said Senator Pat Roberts, a conservative Kansas member of Bush's Republican Party and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a speech last week that was understood here as a direct shot at the neo-cons.

The neo-conservatives, a key part of the coalition of hawks that dominated Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy, were the first to publicly call for Saddam Hussein's ouster, which they saw as a way to transform the Arab world to make it more hospitable to western values, U.S. interests and Israel's territorial ambitions.

Since the latter part of the 1990s, when they led the charge in Congress for the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress (INC) was their chosen instrument to achieve that transformation.

While no neo-cons were appointed to cabinet-level positions under Bush, they obtained top posts in the offices of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- where Paul Wolfowitz was named deputy defence secretary and Douglas Feith under secretary for policy -- and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose chief of staff and national security adviser was I Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby.

On the White House National Security Council staff, they were able to place former Iran-contra figure Elliott Abrams and Robert Joseph in key positions dealing with the Middle East and arms proliferation, respectively.

Rumsfeld's Defence Policy Board (DPB) was dominated by neo-cons, notably its former chairman, Richard Perle, former CIA chief James Woolsey, former arms-control negotiator Kenneth Adelman and military historian Eliot Cohen.

Neo-cons, more than any other group, pushed hardest for war in Iraq after 9/11 and predicted, backed up by Chalabi's assurances, that the conflict would be, among other things, a ''cakewalk'' and that U.S. troops would be greeted with ''flowers and sweets''.

Within the administration, the neo-cons, again relying heavily on Chalabi's INC, developed their own intelligence analyses to bolster the notion of a link between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group, and exaggerated Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide a more credible pretext for war.

Their friends on the DPB and in the media then stoked the public's fears about these threats through frequent appearances on television and a barrage of newspaper columns and magazine articles.

While analysts and regional experts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department, which had dropped Chalabi as a fraud and a con-man in the mid-1990s, tried to resist the juggernaut, they were consistently outflanked by the neo-cons, whose influence and ability to circumvent the professionals was greatly enhanced by their access to Rumsfeld and Cheney, who served as their champions in the White House and with Bush personally.
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