BY NORM DIXON
The February 16 bombing of Baghdad by US and British warplanes was a calculated signal by US President George W. Bush's regime that it will continue - and escalate - the genocidal war against the Iraqi people begun by the US administration of George Bush senior. "We will continue to enforce the no-fly zone until the world is told otherwise", President Bush arrogantly declared after the attack.
The immediate aim of Washington's terrorist attack was to try to torpedo any chance of an agreement being reached between Iraq and the United Nations on the lifting of sanctions at talks scheduled for February 26-27.
In the four-hour attack, two dozen US and British warplanes - with two dozen more support aircraft - fired sophisticated long-range missiles at five Iraqi radar and "command and control" sites around Baghdad. US military spokespeople claimed the attack was designed to prevent the installation of equipment that would boost the ability of Iraq to defend its territory beneath the "no-fly zones" enforced by the US and British military.
In what was a notable escalation, four of the five targets were outside the southern no-fly zone. Baghdad is about 50km north of the 33rd parallel, the line that Washington has designated as the edge of the southern no-fly zone. Attacks above the 33rd parallel require the explicit authorisation of the president, and Bush and the British defence secretary Geoff Hoon are reported to have given the order on February 15.
The joint US-British attack was the first - and most intense - on Baghdad since US President Bill Clinton ordered a four-day bombardment of the Iraqi capital in December 1998.
The air strikes were condemned by the French, Russian and Chinese governments. Even close US allies Egypt, Jordan and Turkey condemned the raids. Iran denounced the "carnage" caused by the attack. "This raid, which has killed a number of innocent civilians, has no justification, violates international law and has provoked anger and resentment in the Arab world", said Esmat Abdel-Meguid, secretary-general of the 22-member Arab League.
French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine's criticism was forthright. He said there was "no legal basis for this kind of bombardment ... all other countries have expressed their disapproval, criticism, doubt and disquiet, as we have done, because we do not see the point of this action".
In contrast, Germany's foreign minister and Greens leader Joschka Fischer refused to condemn the US-British attack, expressing his government's "understanding" of the raid.
Carefully timed
The carefully timed message that was delivered by the 50-strong air armada, killing two civilians and wounding 20, was not only meant for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It was also an unambiguous signal to the leaders of other Middle Eastern countries that the US will not entertain moves to ease the pressure on Iraq.
The region's pro-Western regimes are under immense pressure by its peoples' growing outrage at the genocidal impact of the UN sanctions - UNICEF estimates that more than a million Iraqi civilians, mostly children have died since 1991 - and the mounting daily death toll of the US air war against Iraq. The latest attack came just days before US Secretary of State Colin Powell left on February 23 for a tour of Middle East capitals.
The governments of France, Russia and China, whose representatives form the majority of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, were also the intended recipient of the blunt message that Washington will continue its war against Iraq in defiance of world opinion. France, Russia and China oppose the continuation of the decade-long sanctions and reject the legality of the US-British enforced no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.
Despite being a minority in the Security Council, Washington and London continue to cynically invoke Security Council resolutions passed in 1991 following the Hussein regime's invasion of Kuwait as the thin justification for their unilateral aggression against Iraq. The US and Britain's right to veto Security Council resolutions - which comes with permanent member status - means that the majority of the council cannot lift the sanctions.
The US escalation was also timed to sabotage talks between the Iraqi foreign minister Mohammed Saeed al Sahhaf and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan aimed at coming to an agreement that would allow UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq in return for the suspension of sanctions. The talks were proposed by Iraq.
Annan said on February 20 that the US/British air strikes made the planned talks "awkward". However, Washington's hope that the attack would cause Iraq to abandon the talks did not eventuate. Sahhaf indicated on February 20 that Iraq would still participate.
Isolated
The Bush administration came to power promising to "reinvigorate" the sanctions against Iraq and convince governments to again support them. Washington has become increasingly lonely in its insistence that sanctions not be lifted.
Middle Eastern and European governments have recently been renewing many significant diplomatic and commercial links with Iraq. Bans on commercial flights into Baghdad are being regularly flouted by diplomats and businesspeople from many countries. While the moves are mainly motivated by commercial considerations, they are also driven by the growing revulsion at the impact the sanctions are having on children, the sick and the elderly in Iraq.
In order to win renewed support for the maintenance of the inhumane sanctions and continuing military action - especially another inevitable blitzkrieg when Washington decides it is politically necessary - the US rulers have been steadily ratcheting up their propaganda against Iraq.
The January 21 New York Times claimed that "new intelligence estimates" indicate that "Iraq has rebuilt a series of factories that the United States has long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons, according to senior government officials... The factories - ... west of Baghdad - include two that were bombed and badly damaged by American and British air raids in December 1998". The article also claimed that Iraqi "front companies" had been created to "purchase and smuggle into Iraq" equipment, weaponry and spare parts prohibited under sanctions, including "illicit items used in nuclear, chemical and biological programs".
The Times article did coyly note that "without on-the-spot inspections, the United States did not yet have firm evidence that the factories are now producing chemical or biological agents".
It also hinted that a raid on the scale of Clinton's four-day attack in 1998 may be due: "After the air raids in 1998, Pentagon officials estimated that they had set back Iraq's weapons programs by a year or two - a period that has now elapsed. President Clinton vowed that the United States would resort to military forces if Iraq resumed work on its nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, but until the end officials in the administration and the intelligence agencies had conflicting views on whether the Iraqis had done so."
In his January 20 inauguration speech, Bush promised to "confront weapons of mass destruction". Since then, without a shred of evidence, both Bush and Powell have regularly implied that Hussein retains weapons of mass destruction.
Bush and his band of Reagan-era Cold Warriors need to maintain the myth of a world menaced by nefarious "rogue states" armed to the teeth with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to justify their mega-billion-dollar ballistic missile defence system - in reality a drive to give the US the ability to launch a nuclear first-strike against either Russia or China without fear of retaliation.
Hidden war
The northern no-fly zone was first declared by Bush senior in April 1991 to "protect" the Kurdish population from attacks by Hussein's warplanes. The southern no-fly zone was established in August 1992 to "protect" the Shiite Muslim population.
Since the establishment of the no-fly zones, US and British warplanes have continuously bombed Iraqi military installations on an almost daily basis. France withdrew from the northern patrols in 1996 and from the southern zone in 1998.
The attacks are justified as "self-defence" against "threats" from Iraqi radar installations that "illuminate" or "lock on" to US and British aircraft as they invade Iraqi airspace. Iraqi anti-aircraft weapons are yet to damage, let alone bring down, a US or British warplane.
Until the latest attack, the decade-long US-British air war against Iraqi was all but hidden from public attention by the international capitalist media.
Since 1991, more than 250,000 sorties have been flown by US and British warplanes in the northern and southern zones, raining 20,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq on "military" targets that have included a water reservoir, homes, hospitals and schools. In 2000, 69 civilian buildings were bombed.
This steady bombardment has been twice interrupted by massive escalations. In 1996, the US fired 44 cruise missiles at southern Iraq. In 1998, in a four-day blitzkrieg, more than 400 cruise missiles struck more 100 targets.
Between December 1998 and the latest attack, around 325 civilians have been killed and almost 1000 wounded in US-British attacks. On January 20, just hours after Bush junior's inauguration, six people were killed by US-British bombs in southern Iraq.
Just how much protection the US no-fly zones offer the Kurds was revealed in an article in the October 25 Washington Post. The article reported: "On more than one occasion, [US pilots] have received a radio message that 'there is a TSM inbound' - that is, a 'Turkish Special Mission' heading into Iraq. Following standard orders, the Americans turned their planes around and flew back to Turkey. 'You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills with munitions', [pilot Mike Horn] said. 'Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended.' When the Americans flew back into Iraqi air space, he recalled, they would see 'burning villages, lots of smoke and fire'.
"The Turkish and US militaries last year established separate air lanes so that US aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone would not cross paths with Turkish planes bombing alleged Kurdish terrorist bases. Turkey has been fighting for years against the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party], a Kurdish group seeking an independent homeland in the border region between Iraq, Iran and Turkey."
In December, more than 10,000 Turkish troops invaded Iraqi Kurdistan to attack PKK guerillas. Needless to say, US warplanes "protecting" the Kurds did nothing to prevent the invasion.