in re WMD as self-laid trap.

mine beow refers to the Stratfor analysis-further below- and was written
before reading the SocReg posting of the Counterpuch one on the same
theme. But I fear mine applies equally to that.

gunder frank



    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 10:12:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andre Gunder Frank <franka@fiu.edu>
To: Paul Frank <paulfrank@post.harvard.edu>,
     Fiona Godfrey <fgodfrey@t-online.de>,
     Alison Candela <marmanet@candelacentral.com>, manni@snafu.de,
     annewilliamson <annewilliamson@email.msn.com>,
     Jeffrey Sommers <JSommers@ngcsu.edu>,
     Albert J Bergesen <albert@U.Arizona.EDU>,
     Jeffrey Sommers <JSommers@ngcsu.edu>, David Jacobs <david@ShellJacobs.com>,
     franka@fiu.edu
Subject: Stratfor Weekly: WMD (fwd)

Stratfor must know things that I do not. they surely do,  but even so,  i
cannot follow them on this count.
Blair was in trouble in the UK anyway, and maybe the no -WMD can bve used
against him [and prvious ''lefty"Jack Straw? ] but otherwise, and
especially in the US, I dont see the PNAC cabal and larger cicle of
Bushies being in any trouble, much less the entire Congress that supported
 this policy.

The US public simply does not care, and though  this  time the revelation
of hoax may be bigger - and not all that much or ven as much as some
previous ones - such post hoc revelation of pre-hoc sham and lies has
never made any post-hoc difference before. Witness for instance

- remember the Maine as pretext for 1898 Cuba War
- Pearl Harbor having been both deliberately provoked and known of
pre-hoc by FDR administration in 1941 as pretext of war, especially
vs. Germany.
-  threat of invasion troop loss without atomic bomb in 1945
[atomic bombs were  dropped as strategic cold war weapons vs. the Soviet
Union]
- Tonkin Gulf in Vietnam War
- a couple of ships as reason to drop more bombs on Cambodia than in all
if WW 2
- medical students and airport in Grenada by Reagan
- drugs in Panama to remove Noriega, who had been US [and CIA Bush!]
asset, and where drug running increased immediatel;y after the US killed
7,000 people in one night's bombing]
- incubator theft in Kuwait by Iraquis in 1991, later exposed as hoax
invented by daughter of Kuwaiti embassador to US, for 1st gulf war
- ten to a hundred thousand human rights violation massacre in Kosovo
[all post hoc forensic teams put together found no more than 2 thousand
corpses, some of which were of KLA combattants and others probably even of
Serbs]
- no Afghani participation in Sept 11 before War against Afghanistan,
and no finding of Ben Laden, search for whom has been put on back burner
[plus CIA agent talked with him less than 2 months before the invasion].
- and others, not to mention even the countless ones in US wars against
American Indians.

None of these exposes of deliberate hoaxes of trumped up base-less
charges as pretexts for STRATEGIC military action individually, nor the
clear historical PATTERN of the same, have ever made any post-hoc 
political difference whatseoever

agf

for stratfor analysis, see below
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 19:03:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: Strategic Forecasting Alert <alert@mail2.stratfor.com>
Reply-To: freeintel@mail2.stratfor.com
To: intelbrief@mail2.stratfor.com
Subject: Stratfor Weekly: WMD

Please feel free to send the Stratfor Weekly to a friend 
or colleague.

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
5 June 2003
 
by Dr. George Friedman
 
WMD

Summary

The inability to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has 
created a political crisis in the United States and Britain. 
Within the two governments, there are recriminations and brutal 
political infighting over responsibility. Stratfor warned in 
February that the unwillingness of the U.S. government to 
articulate its real, strategic reasons for the war -- choosing 
instead to lean on WMD as the justification -- would lead to a 
deep crisis at some point. That moment seems to be here.

Analysis

"Weapons of mass destruction" is promising to live up to its 
name: The issue may well result in the mass destruction of senior 
British and American officials who used concerns about WMD in 
Iraq as the primary, public justification for going to war. The 
simple fact is that no one has found any weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq and -- except for some vans which may have 
been used for biological weapons -- no evidence that Iraq was 
working to develop such weapons. Since finding WMD is a priority 
for U.S. military forces, which have occupied Iraq for more than 
a month, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction not only 
has become an embarrassment, it also has the potential to 
mushroom into a major political crisis in the United States and 
Britain. Not only is the political opposition exploiting the 
paucity of Iraqi WMD, but the various bureaucracies are using the 
issue to try to discredit each other. It's a mess.

On Jan. 21, 2003, Stratfor published an analysis titled Smoke and 
Mirrors: The United States, Iraq and Deception, which made the 
following points:

1. The primary reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was strategic 
and not about weapons of mass destruction.

2. The United States was using the WMD argument primarily to 
justify the attack to its coalition partners.

3. The use of WMD rather than strategy as the justification for 
the war would ultimately create massive confusion as to the 
nature of the war the United States was fighting.

As we put it:

"To have allowed the WMD issue to supplant U.S. strategic 
interests as the justification for war has created a crisis in 
U.S. strategy. Deception campaigns are designed to protect 
strategies, not to trap them. Ultimately, the foundation of U.S. 
grand strategy, coalitions and the need for clarity in military 
strategy have collided. The discovery of weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq will not solve the problem, nor will a coup 
in Baghdad. In a war [against Islamic extremists] that will last 
for years, maintaining one's conceptual footing is critical. If 
that footing cannot be maintained -- if the requirements of the 
war and the requirements of strategic clarity are incompatible -- 
there are more serious issues involved than the future of Iraq."

The failure to enunciate the strategic reasons for the invasion 
of Iraq--of cloaking it in an extraneous justification--has now 
come home to roost. Having used WMD as the justification, the 
inability to locate WMD in Iraq has undermined the credibility of 
the United States and is tearing the government apart in an orgy 
of finger-pointing. 

To make sense of this impending chaos, it is important to start 
at the beginning -- with al Qaeda. After the Sept. 11 attacks, al 
Qaeda was regarded as an extraordinarily competent global 
organization. Sheer logic argued that the network would want to 
top the Sept. 11 strikes with something even more impressive. 
This led to a very reasonable fear that al Qaeda possessed or was 
in the process of obtaining WMD.

U.S. intelligence, shifting from its sub-sensitive to hyper-
sensitive mode, began putting together bits of intelligence that 
tended to show that what appeared to be logical actually was 
happening. The U.S. intelligence apparatus now was operating in a 
worst-case scenario mode, as is reasonable when dealing with WMD. 
Lower-grade intelligence was regarded as significant. Two things 
resulted: The map of who was developing weapons of mass 
destruction expanded, as did the probabilities assigned to al 
Qaeda's ability to obtain WMD. The very public outcome -- along 
with a range of less public events -- was the "axis of evil" 
State of the Union speech, which identified three countries as 
having WMD and likely to give it to al Qaeda. Iraq was one of 
these countries.

If we regard chemical weapons as WMD, as has been U.S. policy, 
then it is well known that Iraq had WMD, since it used them in 
the past. It was a core assumption, therefore, that Iraq 
continued to possess WMD. Moreover, U.S. intelligence officials 
believed there was a parallel program in biological weapons, and 
also that Iraqi leaders had the ability and the intent to restart 
their nuclear program, if they had not already done so. Running 
on the worst-case basis that was now hard-wired by al Qaeda into 
U.S. intelligence, Iraq was identified as a country with WMD and 
likely to pass them on to al Qaeda.

Iraq, of course, was not the only country in this class. There 
are other sources of WMD in the world, even beyond the "axis of 
evil" countries. Simply invading Iraq would not solve the 
fundamental problem of the threat from al Qaeda. As Stratfor has 
always argued, the invasion of Iraq served a psychological and 
strategic purpose: Psychologically, it was designed to 
demonstrate to the Islamic world the enormous power and ferocity 
of the United States; strategically, it was designed to position 
the United States to coerce countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria 
and Iran into changing their policies toward suppressing al Qaeda 
operations in their countries. Both of these missions were 
achieved. 

WMD was always a side issue in terms of strategic planning. It 
became, however, the publicly stated moral, legal and political 
justification for the war. It was understood that countries like 
France and Russia had no interest in collaborating with 
Washington in a policy that would make the United States the 
arbiter of the Middle East. Washington had to find a 
justification for the war that these allies would find 
irresistible.

That justification was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. 
From the standpoint of U.S. intelligence, this belief became a 
given. Everyone knew that Iraq once had chemical weapons, and no 
reasonable person believed that Saddam Hussein had unilaterally 
destroyed them. So it appeared to planners within the Bush 
administration that they were on safe ground. Moreover, it was 
assumed that other major powers would regard WMD in Hussein's 
hands as unacceptable and that therefore, everyone would accept 
the idea of a war in which the stated goal -- and the real 
outcome -- would be the destruction of Iraq's weapons.

This was the point on which Washington miscalculated. The public 
justification for the war did not compel France, Germany or 
Russia to endorse military action. They continued to resist 
because they fully understood the outcome -- intended or not -- 
would be U.S. domination of the Middle East, and they did not 
want to see that come about. Paris, Berlin and Moscow turned the 
WMD issue on its head, arguing that if that was the real issue, 
then inspections by the United Nations would be the way to solve 
the problem. Interestingly, they never denied that Iraq had WMD; 
what they did deny was that proof of WMD had been found. They 
also argued that over time, as proof accumulated, the inspection 
process would either force the Iraqis to destroy their WMD or 
justify an invasion at that point. What is important here is that 
French and Russian leaders shared with the United States the 
conviction that Iraq had WMD. Like the Americans, they thought 
weapons of mass destruction -- particularly if they were 
primarily chemical -- was a side issue; the core issue was U.S. 
power in the Middle East. 

In short, all sides were working from the same set of 
assumptions. There was not much dispute that the Baathist regime 
probably had WMD. The issue between the United States and its 
allies was strategic. After the war, the United States would 
become the dominant power in the region, and it would use this 
power to force regional governments to strike at al Qaeda. 
Germany, France and Russia, fearing the growth of U.S. power, 
opposed the war. Rather than clarifying the chasm in the 
alliance, the Bush administration permitted the arguments over 
WMD to supplant a discussion of strategy and left the American 
public believing the administration's public statements -- smoke 
and mirrors -- rather than its private view.

The Bush administration -- and France, for that matter -- all 
assumed that this problem would disappear when the U.S. military 
got into Iraq. WMD would be discovered, the public justification 
would be vindicated, the secret goal would be achieved and no one 
would be the wiser. What they did not count on -- what is 
difficult to believe even now -- is that Hussein actually might 
not have WMD or, weirder still, that he hid them or destroyed 
them so efficiently that no one could find them. That was the 
kicker the Bush administration never counted on.

The matter of whether Hussein had WMD is still open. Answers 
could range to the extremes: He had no WMD or he still has WMD, 
being held in reserve for his guerrilla war. But the point here 
is that the WMD question was not the reason the United States 
went to war. The war was waged in order to obtain a strategic 
base from which to coerce countries such as Syria, Iran and Saudi 
Arabia into using their resources to destroy al Qaeda within 
their borders. From that standpoint, the strategy seems to be 
working.

However, by using WMD as the justification for war, the United 
States walked into a trap. The question of the location of WMD is 
important. The question of whether it was the CIA or Defense 
Department that skewed its reports about the location of Iraq's 
WMD is also important. But these questions are ultimately trivial 
compared to the use of smoke and mirrors to justify a war in 
which Iraq was simply a single campaign. Ultimately, the problem 
is that it created a situation in which the American public had 
one perception of the reason for the war while the war's planners 
had another. In a democratic society engaged in a war that will 
last for many years, this is a dangerous situation to have 
created.
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