The war that George Bush wishes to wage against Saddam Hussein's Iraq has been called by some, "a war in search of a justification." Undoubtedly, many of the justifications against Saddam are difficult only when it comes to selection: whether to punish him for his crimes, to liberate the Iraqis from a corrupt and bloody dictator, or to eliminate the potential menace of "weapons of mass destruction" that may lie hidden. Yet, after the Gulf War of 1991, the USA was limited to "hold Saddam shut in his cage," according to Madeleine Albright. The war became hot this past year, when the "hawks" of the Bush Administration asserted that Saddam was involved in the terrorist attack of September 11th. The connection between Saddam and Osama-a very unlikely one politically-has not been demonstrated, and not nearly enough has been said concerning such a theory. Yet the war remains in line with the order of the day. And that order demands payback, an important and urgent thing for the USA. After the "no" of Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries of the Gulf, a war to eliminate Saddam became problematic (the air force is not strong enough to carry out the desired land campaign). It is safe to invade Iraq from the west, namely from Jordan, which contains a long and accessible highway in the desert that opens directly to Baghdad. Such an option implies, nevertheless, that the war in Iraq would end before it became one of vast scope. Yet such a war seems inevitable: with that strategy, a war threatens to trigger a crisis of instability in all of the Middle East and meld with the halting war between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a war that in its own right could precipitate a "local" war between the Israelis and Syria, and later with Jordan. Such a war could "opportunely" blow up to provide the first fuel to the war against Iraq by allowing Sharon to give Bush a precious "justification" for intervening in the Gulf as well as a land "corridor" for an attack on Iraq from the west. Another key factor that holds value is Saudi Arabia, whose internal stability is threatened not only by a possible fracture within the Saud dynasty brought upon by the impending succession of King Fahd (an eighty year old who has been in a grave state of health for some time), but also by Islamic fundamentalists and their hostility towards the nobles, their debased lifestyle, and their close connection to the USA. For a decade, Saudi Arabia has had strategic protection from the USA, but such an alliance seems to be in a grave crisis. After September 11th, in addition to an "Iraqi connection," Washington suddenly spoke of a "Saudi connection" based upon the generous finances that Riyadh has always donated to Islamic groups of the mezzo mondo. Ever since, the threat of war with Iraq has increased at a steady rate in the USA, with a media campaign that has been more hostile to Saudi Arabia. The anti-Iraqi lobby and the anti-Saudi lobby are now two faces of the same coin. And the proposition to go to war with Iraq is one element of a vast strategy against Saudi Arabia, and to name the magic word that perhaps holds the key to everything: oil. Saudi Arabia by itself has 25% of the reserve oil in the world. Iraq has less than 10%, but it is said that, in reality, its reserves could possibly equal that of the Saudis. Therefore, together, the two countries could have a good 50% of the world's oil. It's control could create a grand crisis in the Middle East, with the prospect of eliminating "Arab power" for the next twenty years.
-------------------------------------------------- Translator's Note:
1. The source of the Madeleine Albright comment is uncertain, since it is not cited by the author. The source could very well be an article she wrote on August 17, 1998, entitled "The U.S. will stand firm on Iraq, No Matter What." http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1998/msg00239.html
I suspect that her statement, "Through his latest actions he has thrown away the key and only helped us to keep his cage in place," was translated into Italian as "tenere Saddam chiuso nella sua gabbia." (literally: to hold Saddam shut in his cage)I have rendered her statement back into English using Frankel's Italian text.
2. "mezzo mondo" translates literally as "middle world."
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