Other Cuddy Articles:

The Indiana Connection

Global Ethics And World Government

Related Article:

The Door of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
April 26, 2003
www.NewsWithViews.com

Concerning all of the subjects mentioned in this book, one of the most important elements in considering any of them is to what extent can the government be believed. In that regard, Scott Peterson, staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, in the article, "In war, some facts less factual" (September 6, 2002), revealed that "shortly before U.S. strikes began in the [1991] Gulf War, the St. Petersburg Times asked two experts to examine the satellite images of the Kuwait and Saudi Arabia border area taken in mid-September 1990, a month and a half after the Iraqi invasion. 'That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist,' Ms. [Jean] Heller [St. Petersburg Times] says. Three times Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney [now vice president] for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis - offering to hold the story if proven wrong. The official response: 'Trust us.' To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified…. John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine and author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, says that considering the number of senior officials shared by both Bush administrations, the American public should bear in mind the lessons of Gulf War propaganda. 'These are all the same people who were running it more than 10 years ago,' Mr. MacArthur says. 'They'll make up just about anything… to get their way.' …In the fall of 1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah. In the girl's testimony before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book Second Front and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies 'on the cold floor to die.' Seven U.S. Senators later referred to this story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such 'ghastly atrocities' were like 'Hitler revisited.' …Later, it was learned that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwaiti hospital. She had been coached - along with a handful of others who would 'corroborate' the story - by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war."

Another question concerning the American government's credibility is its recent assertion that Saddam Hussein had not accounted for very large amounts of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The BBC News story, "Blix: 'U.S. undermined inspectors'," (April 22, 2003) begins with the words: "American officials tried to discredit the work of inspectors in Iraq to further their own case for war, the chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has charged…. He also reiterated his disquiet at how documents the International Atomic Energy Agency 'had no great difficulty finding out were fake' managed to get through U.S. and U.K. intelligence analysis. Also disturbing, he said, was the question of who was responsible for the falsification."

If WMD are eventually found, the question then is why didn't Saddam use them, since coalition forces were trying to kill him and he had nothing to lose by using WMD? And if he didn't have WMD, isn't the government's justification for attacking Iraq lost? On the NBC evening news for April 15, 2003, Jim Miklaszewski reported that "there's growing concern here [at the Pentagon] they won't find the massive quantities of [WMD] that were the major justification for the war."

It may be that some WMD are found, but it is important as to whether they are currently functional. Everyone knows that Saddam had WMD. The question is whether he had destroyed them, or whether they were in a currently useable form against our attacking soldiers or to give to terrorists in the future. Judith Miller in the April 21, 2003 New York Times reported what the American military was describing as a major discovery. She indicated they had information from an Iraqi scientist as to where chemical weapons precursors, documents, and research materials were buried. However, if they do not find currently useable WMD, so what? All they will have found is material that could have been made into WMD, but wasn't for whatever reason, or material that was destroyed and buried, which was the goal!

All of this raises the question of whether WMD were the real reason for attacking Iraq. On ABC's World News Tonight (April 12, 2003), Terry Moran asked Richard Clarke (National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism of the National Security Council under President Clinton, and Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security under President Bush) about the lack of discovery of WMD in Iraq, and Clarke replied that it didn't make any difference if we didn't discover any because we got rid of Saddam Hussein. However, there are a number of problems with this attitude that it's unimportant whether we find WMD. First, if the U.S. says in the future there's a problem requiring immediate action, will people believe us? Secondly, could a future president be tempted to say some action was taken because of a perceived threat, expecting the American public to forget about it if the threat later turns out not to have been real? Thirdly, if the principle upon which our attack was based is really that military action is justified to remove dictators, are we not now obligated to remove other dictators or be accused of hypocrisy or a selectivity that creates uncertainty among other nations? Lastly, should it be the policy of the U.S. to attack another nation if it is not posing a threat (WMD) to our country? On ABC's Nightline (April 16, 2003), Joseph Cirincione (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate and director of its Non-proliferation Project) commented: "The American public came to believe two things that the administration made as central points: (1) that there were large stockpiles of WMD, and (2) that Saddam Hussein had operational links to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and that he might transfer some of these weapons. If the President is unable to demonstrate that these are true, first the rest of the world and then eventually the American public are going to feel that this war was unjustified. We all can be glad that we've removed this repressive regime, helped liberate the Iraqi people. But that was not the main point of the war. It will seriously damage the President's credibility and United States credibility abroad if we can't prove that the reason we went to war was a valid and true reason."

On April 22, some Bush administration officials began to be more candid. On ABC's Nightline, reporter John Cochran said that when he asked administration officials what if they don't find WMD, they replied: "It would be unfortunate, but this was not the primary reason we went to war. We emphasized the dangers of Saddam's weapons in order to gain legal justification for war from the United Nations and to emphasize the danger here at home to our own people." Cochran then reported: "We were not lying," said one official, who added, "It was just a matter of emphasis."

Concerning the war with Iraq, Americans have received a very sanitized view of it. For example, how many have read about "the bridge of death"? Probably very few. Writing from Nasiriya, Mark Franchetti of The [London] Sunday Times wrote "U.S. Marines Turn Fire on Civilians at the Bridge of Death" (March 30, 2003), saying: "I counted 12 dead civilians, lying on the road or in nearby ditches…. Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American Marines with orders to shoot anything that moved. One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound…. Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father. Half his head was missing." Franchetti then relates that a Lieutenant Matt Martin was distressed by what he saw, but "Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of his fellow Marines as they surveyed the scene. 'The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy,' said Corporal Ryan Dupre. 'I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him.'" Did you see this reported by any of the major U.S. media?

At this point, you may be saying that while this killing of civilians at Nasiriya was tragic, it was an isolated incident. Guess again! According to Michel Guerrin in "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" (LeMonde, April 12, 2003), Laurent Van der Stockt was a photographer under contract for The New York Times Magazine, accompanying that magazine's editor Peter Maas with a Marines regiment on the outskirts of Baghdad on April 6. They were at a strategic bridge, and "American snipers got the order to kill anything coming in their direction. That night a teenager who was crossing the bridge was killed…. [Later] a small blue van was moving toward the convoy…. The Marines opened fire…. Two men and a woman had just been riddled with bullets…. A second vehicle drove up. The same scenario was repeated. Its passengers were killed on the spot. A grandfather was walking slowly with a cane on the sidewalk. They killed him too [see photo in LeMonde]. As with the old man, the Marines fired on a SUV driving along the river bank that was getting too close to them. Riddled with bullets, the vehicle rolled over. Two women and a child got out, miraculously still alive. They sought refuge in the wreckage. A few seconds later, it flew into bits as a tank lobbed a terse shot into it…. These hardened troops… were shooting on local inhabitants who understood absolutely nothing of what was going on. With my own eyes I [Van der Stockt] saw about fifteen civilians killed in two days. I've gone through enough wars to know that it's always dirty, that civilians are always the first victims. But the way it as happening here, it was insane…. I drove away a girl who had had her humerus pierced by a bullet…. In the rear, the girl's father was protecting his young son, wounded in the torso and losing consciousness. The man spoke in gestures to the doctor at the back of the lines, pleading: 'I don't understand, I was walking and holding my child's hands. Why didn't you shoot in the air? Or at least shoot me?'" What do you think the odds are that any of the soldiers responsible for this slaughter will ever be held accountable?

We also need to end our hypocrisy. Americans watching television were troubled at the sight of American prisoners being questioned by Iraqis, and the Bush administration found it objectionable as well. However, neither the Bush administration nor the American people have seemed overly concerned about Afghan prisoners being kept by the American military at Guantanamo Bay while the prisoners have had their hands and legs shackled, their eyes are blinded by opaque goggles, their ears are covered by earphones preventing them from hearing anything at all, and they have been shown forced to kneel. A second element of our hypocrisy is our concern for Iraqi civilian casualties. If an American pilot drops a bomb on an Iraqi military target and accidentally kills civilians who happened to have been there, that's one thing. However, several weeks into the war against Iraq, several large bombs were dropped on a bunker where coalition forces suspected Saddam Hussein to be. The bunker was attached to the rear of a restaurant where there was reason to believe Iraqi civilians might be. The restaurant was greatly damaged, and soon recovered were the bodies of a man, woman and child (a teddy bear was shown in the rubble). Saddam was not found there, but American leaders apparently using an "ends justify means" morality justified the attack. The problem is that this type of morality is not Biblical, as Romans 3:8 states: "…Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just." But it gets even worse than bombing a restaurant. You may recall that a few years ago, the Israeli military restrained themselves from attacking a Christian church when Palestinian terrorists were inside. Well, on the front page of The New York Times (April 11, 2003) was an article titled "Hunting Top Iraqis, U.S. Attacks Mosque." The article describes how even though officials in Washington said they had received no reports that Saddam Hussein was in the Imam al-Adham mosque in Baghdad, "American forces searching for Saddam Hussein attacked [this] mosque in Baghdad and later bombed it." How do you think Muslims not only in Baghdad, but around the world, will feel about that?

Regarding the war with Iraq, it is important to look at who was pushing for it. In Ben Wattenberg's "More feck, less hoc" (Jewish World Review, April 16, 2001), he asked: "So what might be the basis of an American foreign policy?" He then described a 1992 Department of Defense "Defense Planning Guidance" classified document written by then department Undersecretary for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby advocating a policy "that at its core was to guard against the emergence of hostile regional superpowers, for example, Iraq or China. Such regional vigilance, they believed, would prevent the rise of a hostile global superpower." This article was written almost 5 months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Paul Wolfowitz is now Deputy Defense Secretary, and on February 1, 2003, The New York Times published "The Brains Behind Bush's War Policy" by Todd Purdum describing "a group that history may remember for the concept of the pre-emptive attack." The article begins with these words: "Any history of the Bush administration's march toward war with Iraq will have to take account of long years of determined advocacy by a circle of defense policy intellectuals whose view that Saddam Hussein can no longer be tolerated or contained is now ascendant…. At the center of this group are longtime Iraq hawks, Republicans like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; Richard Pearle, a former Reagan administration defense official who now heads the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon's advisory panel; and William Kristol, who was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and now edits the conservative Weekly Standard." The article later refers to "Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, [as] the co-author of a December 1, 1997 editorial with Mr. Kristol in The Weekly Standard, to which Mr. Wolfowitz contributed an article. The cover headline: 'Saddam Must Go.'" On pages 176-177 of my book, The Globalists: The Power Elite Exposed, I show how the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace set the stage for our military action in Kosovo. You may recall that in the 1950s (after Alger Hiss was head of the Carnegie Endowment), Congressional investigator Norman Dodd revealed that the Carnegie Endowment had also set the stage for American involvement in World War I.

Toward the end of Todd Purdum's article mentioned above, he indicated that Mr. Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan are the authors of a new book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission. Proponents of the war with Iraq have denied that it is an "imperialist" venture. However, according to Bruce Murphy in "Neoconservative clout seen in U.S. Iraq policy" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 6, 2003), Lawrence Kaplan revealed: "The real question is not whether the American military can topple Hussein's regime, but whether the American public has the stomach for imperial involvement of a kind we have not known since the United States occupied Germany and Japan."

Todd Purdum in his article also referred to Mr. Kristol's Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was begun in 1997. The next year, PNAC wrote a letter on January 26, 1998 to President Clinton urging him "to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts." The letter was signed by future Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, as well as others who would hold senior positions in the upcoming Bush administration. It was also signed by CFR members Richard Perle, James Woolsey (Rhodes Scholar and former CIA director) and Zalmay Khalilzad (former Taliban lobbyist, UNOCAL adviser, and current Bush administration envoy to Afghanistan and Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein), among many others. In addition to stating that President Clinton's strategy "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power," it also indicated that "if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction,… the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard."

The Project for the New American Century is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project, with William Kristol as chairman, and CFR members Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, Bruce P. Jackson, and John R. Bolton as directors, and Paul Wolfowitz among the Project participants. Robert Kagan is the author of the new book, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. In September 2000, the Project issued a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," co-chaired by Donald Kagan (CFR member) and Gary Schmitt. And in the report one reads that "the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein…. Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor…. We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself." Would not a war with Iraq afford the U.S. "a more permanent role in Gulf regional security" even after the "regime of Saddam Hussein" is gone? And wasn't the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 "a catastrophic and catalyzing event" compared by many to "Pearl Harbor"? And did not President George W. Bush begin calling North Korea, Iran and Iraq "the axis of evil" and saying that we need "homeland security"?

Shortly after September 11, 2001, the Project for the New American Century wrote a letter to President Bush dated September 20. The letter was signed by, among others, CFR member Jeane Kirkpatrick (former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.), Martin Peretz (Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic), and Midge Dector (a former vice-president of the League for Industrial Democracy, formerly called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society). It stated that "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." And in case anyone thought that action against Iraq would be all there was, the letter went on to say that "we believe the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism."

This September 20, 2001 letter was followed by one to President Bush dated April 3, 2002 and signed by, among others, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Robert Kagan and James Woolsey. Concerning Israel, it stated that "only the United States has the power and influence to provide meaningful assistance to our besieged ally…. No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you have correctly called an 'Axis of Evil.' …Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq…. It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran, is a funder and supporter of terrorism against Israel…. If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors…. Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight. Israel's victory is an important part of our victory. For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism." It is important to remember here that in my Cover-up: Government Spin or Truth? book, I explained that according to a Washington Post article by Glenn Kessler, it was at this time (April 2002) that President Bush "approached [Condoleezza] Rice," saying it was time to figure out "what we are doing about Iraq," and telling a British reporter at the time that "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go."

On January 23, 2003, the Project for the New American Century again wrote a letter to President Bush, signed by, among others, CFR member Frank Carlucci (former Secretary of Defense, now with the Carlyle Group, a private global investment firm with defense contracts, global communications, etc.), CFR member Max Boot (Editorial Features Editor of The Wall Street Journal), and Gary Bauer (former head of the Family Research Council). The letter professed that "American strength is key to building the new world you have envisioned." The phrase "the new world" sounds very close to the term "new world order" used by the previous President Bush, and it is useful here to remember that on September 14, 2001, at a CFR meeting in Washington, D.C., former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (co-chairman of the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century) announced: "There is a chance for the President of the United States to use this disaster to carry out… a phrase his father used,… and that is a new world order."

Finally, regarding the Project for the New American Century, on ABC's Nightline (March 5, 2003), Ted Koppel, referring to the Project, began the program: "Tonight. 'The Plan,' how one group and its blueprint have brought us to the brink of war…. They were pushing for the elimination of Saddam Hussein, and proposing the establishment of a strong U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, linked to a willingness to use force to protect vital American interests in the Gulf. All of that might be of purely academic interest were it not for the fact that among the men behind that campaign were such names as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz." Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania later on the program made the following startling statement: "Before 9/11, this group [Project for the New American Century] was in the position it is in but could not win over the President to the extravagant image of what foreign policy required. After 9/11, it was able to benefit from the gigantic eruption of political capital, combined with the supply of military preponderance in the hands of the President. And this small group, therefore, was able to gain direct contact and even control, now, of the White House."

A second group setting the stage for a war against Iraq has been the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century (including CFR president Leslie Gelb and co-chaired by CFR member and former U.S. Senator Warren Rudman), which on September 15, 1999 issued a report titled "New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century." In this report, one reads that "disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers…. Global forces, especially economic ones, will continue to batter the concept of national sovereignty. The state, as we know it, will also face challenges to its sovereignty under the mandate of evolving international law and by disaffected groups, including terrorists and criminals." Then on April 15, 2000, the same Commission issued another report, "Seeking a National Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom," in which one reads about terrorists and those possessing weapons of mass destruction that "the magnitude of the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction compels this nation to consider carefully the means and circumstances of preemption…. The United States must be willing to lead in assembling ad hoc coalitions outside of U.N. auspices if necessary…. The United States has a continuing critical interest in keeping the Persian Gulf secure, and… it must be a high priority to prevent either Iraq or Iran from deploying deliverable weapons of mass destruction." Didn't a large number of Americans die on American soil due to terrorist attacks? Hasn't the economic impact of the World Trade Organization battered the concept of national sovereignty? And didn't President George W. Bush talk about taking pre-emptive action against Iraq because of its weapons of mass destruction?

A third group setting the stage for a war against Iraq was an independent task force sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In addition to Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, the task force included many oil executives such as John Manzoni (British Petroleum), Steven Miller (Shell Oil), David O'Reilly (ChevronTexaco), and Jefferson Seabright (Texaco). Thomas McLarty of Kissinger McLarty Associates was also a member, and Stephen Oxman (Rhodes Scholar) who was an Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton administration was an observer. CFR president Leslie Gelb thanked the task force for 3 "complicated video conferences and teleconferences" (almost a year before the attacks of September 11, 2001), which resulted in the report, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century." Relevant to the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the report indicated that "the exports from some oil discoveries in the Caspian Basin could be hastened if a secure, economical export route could be identified swiftly…. The option exists to downplay diplomatic activities that dictate certain geopolitical goals for specific transportation routes for Caspian oil in favor of immediate commercial solutions that may be sought by individual oil companies for short-term exports of 'early' oil, including exports through Iran."

And relevant to the war with Iraq, the task force report stated: "Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to U.S. allies in the Middle East, as well as to regional and global order, and to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a 'Pan Arab' leader supporting the Palestinians against Israel, and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia and with key countries in the Middle East to re-state the goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies. …Like it or not, Iraqi reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade…." For a look at oil as a factor in making war, see Michael Klare's Resource Wars (2003).

After the war with Iraq commenced, ABC News on March 22, 2003 related that "weeks before the first bombs dropped in Iraq, the Bush administration began rebuilding plans." Referring to "Secret Bids," ABC News indicated that it had "obtained a copy of a 99-page contract worth $600 million… Among the companies believed to be bidding are Bechtel… and Halliburton, Vice-President Cheney's old firm. All are experienced. But in addition, all are generous political donors - principally to Republicans." On the front page of The New York Times (April 18, 2003), Elizabeth Becker and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. reported that on April 17, "the Bush administration awarded the Bechtel Group the first major contract today in a vast reconstruction plan for Iraq…. The award will initially pay Bechtel $34.6 million and could go up to $680 million over 18 months…. The American taxpayer will pay the initial contract costs, but Iraqi oil revenue is supposed to eventually pay for much of the reconstruction." Former Secretary of State George Shultz is on the board of directors of Bechtel, and was a leader of the group known as the "Vulcans," who prepared George W. Bush for the presidential campaign of the year A.D. 2000.

On April 5, 2003 Reuters reported on the fourth meeting of the oil and energy working group of the U.S. State Department's Future of Iraq project run by Thomas Warrick, special adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. One finds in the story that "briefing papers to the meeting obtained by Reuters showed a clear consensus among expert opinion favoring production-sharing agreements to attract the major oil companies…. That is likely to thrill oil companies harboring hopes of lucrative contracts to develop Iraqi oil reserves…. Short-term rehabilitation of southern Iraqi oil fields already is under way, with oil well fires being extinguished by U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton…. Long-term contracts are expected to see U.S. companies ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips compete with Anglo-Dutch Shell, Britain's BP, TotalFinaElf of France, Russia's LUKOIL and Chinese state companies…. Phillip Carroll, the former head of Shell in the United States, is said to be a candidate to oversee oil policy with Iraqi economist Muhammed-Ali Zainy in line to become his second in command."

That President Bush is pursuing a New World Order just as his father was is verified by the PBS Frontline program "Blair's War" (April 3, 2003), in which the announcer remarked: "Nine months after September 11 the President went to West Point to reveal his vision for a New World Order." The policy would no longer be containment, but rather pre-emptive military strikes against perceived threats such as Saddam Hussein. The dialectic is the means by which the power elite is pursuing the New World Order. Relevant to Iraq, the thesis is that the U.N. should be the deciding authority. The antithesis is that the Anglo-American alliance (envisioned by Cecil Rhodes to "take the government of the whole world") should decide what action to take. And the dialectical synthesis is that the Anglo-American alliance plus other members of the "coalition of the willing" (about 50 members, but far less than a majority of members of the U.N.) should decide what action to take. This synthesis, of course, is what transpired.

In case there's any doubt that President Bush is pursuing the "New World Order" via the Anglo-American alliance with an ad hoc "coalition of the willing" mentioned above, note the words used by Michael Glennon in his article, "Why the Security Council Failed," in the May/June edition of the CFR's Foreign Affairs: "Architects of an authentic new world order must move beyond castles in the air - beyond imaginary truths that transcend politics - such as, for example, just war theory and the notion of the sovereign equality of states…. As the world moves into a new, transitional era, the old moralist vocabulary should be cleared away so that decision-makers can focus pragmatically on what is really at stake…. Getting to a consensus will be accelerated by dropping abstractions, moving beyond the polemical rhetoric of 'right' and 'wrong'." Writing before the end of the war with Iraq, Glennon asserts that "however the war turns out, the United States will likely confront pressures to curb its use of force. These it must resist." And he says that "if the war is swift and successful,… and if nation-building in Iraq goes well, there likely will be little impulse to revive the [U.N. Security] Council. In that event, the Council will have gone the way of the League of Nations…. Ad hoc coalitions of the willing will effectively succeed it."

On a global scale, the synthesis will be western capitalism synthesized with eastern communism to form a world socialist government. Percy Corbett (a follower of Cecil Rhodes) in Post-War Worlds (1942) explained how the world government would be achieved by bringing together regional arrangements (Zbigniew Brzezinski at Mikhail Gorbachev's 1995 State of the World Forum at the Presidio in San Francisco would similarly explain the movement toward world government). Relevant to Iraq today, the U.S. has repeatedly said that it wants to bring "democracy" to that nation, and the hope is that it will spread to other nations in the region. It is not coincidental that a Rhodes Scholar, Clarence Streit, over 60 years ago formed Association to Unite the Democracies (to which Henry Kissinger has contributed). According to the plan, once the nations of the Mideast region have become "democracies," then this region can be united with other regions to form the ultimate goal, a synthesized world socialist government. For this all to happen, any criticism of Bush administration policies will have to be kept to a minimum (criticism of the war against Iraq has been branded as unpatriotic and harming our troops). This same tactic regarding President Franklin Roosevelt and the Second World War was described in Harry Elmer Barnes' Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (1953). Interestingly, Bush administration officials have indicated the war on terrorism could be for an indefinitely long period (perpetual), with the goal of eventually accomplishing perpetual world peace. In Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795), he described a process to achieve a federated "world republic" with "world citizenship." And the Bush administration goal in Iraq is to have a federated republican form of government, which will then spread to other nations in the Mideast region.

In my book, Cover-up: Government Spin or Truth?, I mentioned that if certain logical things didn't happen in a war with Iraq, then the reader should seriously consider whether the war was "staged." It was logical that Saddam would flood southeastern Iraq with oil and set the desert ablaze, but he didn't (only about 9 of 500 oil fields were torched). It was logical that Saddam would have destroyed the critically important H-2 and H-3 large air bases in western Iraq so U.S. forces couldn't use them, but he didn't. It was logical that Saddam would destroy the Safwan Highway leading from Kuwait to Baghdad, but he didn't. It was logical that Saddam would clog the Euphrates River to hamper the advance of coalition forces, but he didn't. It was logical that Saddam would destroy the many critical bridges over waterways from Kuwait to Baghdad, but he didn't. It was logical that Saddam would try to hit Israel with scud or Al-Samoud missiles, but he didn't. Since the coalition's Patriot missile system cannot detect low-flying silkworm missiles, it is logical that Saddam would use a lot of them, but he only used one late at night against an empty mall in Kuwait. And it is logical that some Iraqi agent or sympathetic terrorist in the U.S. would have committed some belligerent act, but they haven't. There are many more examples of things one would logically expect Saddam to have done, but that haven't occurred. Even Rush Limbaugh on his April 1, 2003 national radio talk-show referred to Saddam's call for terrorists to join him in Iraq to fight coalition forces by saying: "He's now, or whoever is doing this, inadvertently arranging it so that as many terrorists as he can arrange are going to get into Iraq and be in our crosshairs. What a way this is playing out. You have to love this. Somebody's going to eventually begin to wonder if we haven't infiltrated the Iraqi government and are, in effect, in charge of their so-called military operations." Though Rush was joking, he did nevertheless say what he said.

Could it be that Shakespeare was right in As You Like It when he said "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"? And could it be that President Franklin Roosevelt was right when he said, "Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens, you can be sure it was planned that way"? Remember, if Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are found in Iraq, Saddam Hussein could have used them against coalition forces - but he deliberately did not! Interestingly, UPI Intelligence Correspondent Richard Sale on April 10, 2003 wrote "Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot," in which it was learned that Saddam Hussein's first contacts with U.S. officials "date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim…. [Later] while Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said." The article went on to reveal that the CIA later provided Saddam's Baath Party with a list of communists in Iraq, who were killed outright in large numbers, and that Saddam presided over the mass killings. Then Sale wrote that "the CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980."

In the aftermath of the 2003 war with Iraq, the expectation has been that Iraqis would welcome American soldiers as liberators. While that may be true for many Iraqis, one should not mistake their hatred for Saddam as translating into a love for us. For example, even after Saddam had been toppled, John Kifner and Craig S. Smith in "Sunnis and Shiites Unite to Protest U.S. and Hussein" (The New York Times, April 19, 2003) wrote that "at overflow Friday prayer services in Baghdad, the huge Sunni mosque of Abu Hanafi opened its doors to members of the rival Shiite sect in a rare demonstration of solidarity. Hostility toward the Americans and the desire for an Islamic Iraq were on open display." The article went on to say that the prayer leader said of the Americans: "I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we kick you out." And, according to Kifner and Smith, "the prayer service ended with a demonstration filled with banners denouncing the United States and Israel."

It should also be remembered that during the Gulf War in 1991, there were at least 100,000 casualties among Iraqi soldiers and 35,000 casualties among Iraqi civilians. Each of these 135,000 Iraqis may have had a living mother, father, wife or husband, son, daughter, brother, and sister. That would amount to about 1 million Iraqis who wouldn't like us. And if each of those 135,000 Iraqi casualties had about 15 friends, that could amount to another 2 million who wouldn't like us. In total, that could amount to about one-eighth of the population of Iraq who would probably greatly dislike us, and that feeling will not soon go away.

Furthermore, on ABC's Nightline (April 7, 2003), John Donvan reported on widespread looting in Basra, as coalition (British) forces were not initially interested in "policing" the city. And on April 9, CBS's John Roberts reported widespread looting in southeastern Iraq as American forces likewise were not interested in "policing" the area. This raises the question of how some Iraqis will feel about their liberators if their liberation means their possessions are stolen. This is especially the case regarding the Iraqi National Museum, as ABC News on April 12 reported that American forces had not prevented its ancient and extremely valuable treasures from being looted (obviously they were more concerned about protecting the Iraqi oil fields). The looters obviously didn't take the rare artifacts to display in their homes, but rather to sell, probably mostly to rich westerners. The result is that the West not only gets Iraqi oil, but also many treasured artifacts it would not have gotten if American soldiers had guarded the museum. The insensitivity of many Americans concerning the looting of the Iraqi National Museum is reflected in the following statement by the extremely egotistical Rush Limbaugh on his April 14, 2003 national radio program, in which he sarcastically referred to this incident by saying: "Priceless Iraqi treasures of art! Priceless examples of the centuries old Iraqi culture! What Iraqi culture? I mean, exactly what culture is there? What automobile is produced there? What Nobel Prize winners are there?... The fact of the matter is - what great culture?" In contrast to this, ABC News reported on April 17 that a third member of the President's advisory board on cultural property had resigned in protest over the U.S. failure to prevent the pillage of the Iraqi National Museum. And on ABC's Nightline the same day, former U.S. Ambassador (now at the National War College) Peter Galbraith commented: "Talking to the Iraqis, they remember President Bush talking about their rich heritage, how much he admired it. So they were really left wondering how could he have talked that way and yet allowed this to happen. This is an event that's going to shape the psyche of the Iraqis for a long time to come."

On April 15, 2003, the American government brought together leaders from various parts of Iraqi society to begin the formation of an interim government. But NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reporting on the meeting that day said "a man many think the U.S. wants to see step in as new leader of Iraq [is] Ahmad Chalabi, head of Iraqi National Congress. The U.S. airlifted him with 600 of his aides during the war." What kind of message does this send, when it is widely known that Chalabi is a fugitive from Jordanian justice since he was convicted there of fraud and embezzlement? Think about it. The U.S. invaded Panama and seized its ruler, Manuel Noriega, because he had violated American domestic law. But now, we provide a military escort for Ahmad Chalabi to contest for a leadership position in Iraq, when he is a fugitive from Jordanian domestic law!

We should pray for the safety of our American and other coalition soldiers and representatives in Iraq for some time to come. And we should also pray that God will comfort the families of those who have lost their lives during this conflict.

It is somewhat risky to predict what will transpire in Iraq, but it is important nevertheless to do so. Currently, there are two opposing forces at work. On the one hand, there are strong religious and secular factions vying for control and not prone to compromise. American policy analysts also indicate that it will take some time to educate the Iraqi people regarding the many aspects and requirements of self-government. On the other hand, however, Bush administration officials are emphasizing that they want an interim government, followed by a Constitution, followed by a final government in place as soon as possible, so that military forces can be withdrawn as soon as possible. The result of these two opposing forces will probably be that a much publicized withdrawal of a large portion of coalition military personnel will occur rather quickly. A sizeable number of soldiers and "political advisers," though, will remain. There will then be pressure from the Iraqis for even these people to leave, but the coalition response will be that they will be glad to leave as soon as the various Iraqi factions all agree on the provisions of a Constitution and form of government. This will create pressure upon the factions to compromise in a manner and with leaders that the U.S. and Britain believe will coincide with their strategic interests (e.g., treaties allowing American military bases in Iraq, along with oil production rights, etc.). These factional compromises will be brought about via sophisticated methods of manipulation with which most Iraqis are unfamiliar. The Anglo-American alliance will utilize British T-Group (perhaps Tavistock) methods along with American Delphi techniques using Socratic questions by trained facilitators (perhaps from the National Training Laboratories) to bring about a pre-determined consensus to our liking without most Iraqis even knowing what has happened to them.

There is also important symbolism regarding Biblical "End Times" prophecy regarding the system of "compromise" we're trying to insert into Iraq, which could be characterized as "a return to Babylon." While it's a stretch to say Amerians "worship" the Statue of Liberty, it is held in very high regard. But "liberty" in the U.S. today has come to mean "don't impose morality," which is exactly what the term "liberté" meant as a slogan of the French Revolution. Why is this important? It's because the Statue of Liberty (sculpted by Frederic Bartholdi and engineered by Gustave Eiffel, both of France) was a gift from the French people for "the ideal of liberty shared by both peoples." And the Statue of Liberty looks exactly like Semiramis (see pictures of both), even including the 7 rays coming from their heads.

"Seven rays" is an occultic concept, as the leading occultist of the first half of the 20th century, Alice Bailey, authored books such as The Seven Rays of Life and The Seventh Ray: Revealer of the New Age. Bailey's works were first published by Lucifer Publishing, and she often wrote of the need for a "New World Order" and "points of light" connected to "service." Semiramis was reportedly the founder of Babylon (Iraq) and known for her sexual excesses ("don't impose morality"). Voltaire, a guiding light of the French Revolution and proponent of "don't impose morality," even wrote a play called Semiramis. The "liberté" of the French Revolution is actually "license" to fornicate, look at pornography, have abortions, etc. The Illuminati were an important force behind the French Revolution and its "license," using symbols that go back at least to Atlantis. And Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis referred to America. "Fundamentalist" is a term increasingly used derisively by more and more Americans as referring to someone who wants "to impose morality." And "fundamentalist" refers not only to Christians but also to Muslims like the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq (Babylon) who have strict moral codes. The U.S. today wants to bring its values to Iraq, including the compromise of "religious (moral) tolerance," which would disallow the imposition of a particular morality (e.g., Shiite) via a theocratic state. Thus, we could be witnessing the "return to Babylon," in which Semiramis ruled!

Why is this important for the New World Order? Sir Francis Bacon was a leading Rosicrucian (as were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson), and in the June 1941 Rosicrucian Digest, the goals for the future world government were stated. In the article titled, "The Thought of the Month: Make Your Own Prophecies," the Rosicrucian Imperator proclaimed: "We predict a mystical-pantheism as the religion of tomorrow…. There will not be churches, but a church. There will not be sects, but degrees and grades of comprehension…. The multiplicity of social states, countries, or nations will cease to be…. The world population will be permitted to freely migrate…. Politically, wherever they reside, they will be taken and accepted as equal citizens of the United World State…. The World State will provide and maintain community hospitals, sanitariums, and clinics for the care of the sick and injured…. Taxation will be adequate to meet the expense. Physicians… will be paid by the state and their entire professional services will be absorbed by the state…. Every citizen will enjoy these health benefits and guarantees…. No individual will be permitted to study for a profession, who is not intellectually or temperamentally suited to it" (School-to-Work today)…. Quotas will be placed upon all professions, in each of the zones, of the World State…. Men will not be huddled behind nationalistic barriers or frontiers as now" (portable skill credentials today). Are these goals coming to fruition today?

On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," but that the war on terrorism still goes on. We will now have to wait and see what the next stage in the movement toward the New World Order will be, but it will be managed by the power elite. As Planetary Citizens co-founder and World Federalist Association board of directors member Donald Keys (speechwriter for foreign ministers, ambassadors and U.N. Secretary-General U Thant) stated in a speech titled, "Toward a Global Society," at a symposium: "We're at a stage now of pulling it all together. It's a new religion called 'networking.' …When it comes to running a world or taking people into a New Age,… don't anyone think for a moment that you can run a planet without a head…. This planet has to be managed…."

Most pages of history have turned slowly, but in recent years plans and actions leading us toward a world socialist government have speeded up. Thus, for freedom's sake, people everywhere need to be constantly informed and vigilant as to where we are being led, so that hopefully the power elite's efforts in this regard might be effectively resisted. And remember the advice given in the final paragraph of the "Conclusion" to Cover-up: Government Spin or Truth? that "we should pray daily and with sincere hearts to God, our only real and Eternal Hope."

© 2003 Dennis L. Cuddy - All Rights Reserved

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