The people of the US, Britain, Australia and some other countries were rushed into the invasion and occupation of Iraq on a litany of lies — lies about weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was preparing nuclear weapons, that it had relations with al Qaida, lies that it had an arsenal of chemical weapons.
Four years on, these false claims are never mentioned. They have been replaced with claims that defeat would have incalculable consequences for the standing of the US in the Middle East and the world. We are told that the military forces are bringing democracy and the rule of law to Iraq, that the Iraqis cannot administer their own country and that their police and army need to be trained by foreign occupiers.
These assertions are just another web of lies to neutralise the opposition to the war by the people of the occupying countries.
The war has to be kept going by any and every means. Huge profits are being racked in by the contractors and armament makers and those whose objective is to get control of the very large Iraqi oil resources that are still publicly owned. There are moves going on now in the Iraqi parliament to privatise Iraq’s oil resources and let the big oil companies of the west take over.
But these objectives do not exhaust the aims of the imperialist powers.
Iraq and Afghanistan are strategic countries in the Middle East and in the Caucasian region of the former Soviet Union. These countries contain huge oil and natural gas resources. If the American empire is to dominate the whole world it must gain unchallenged control of these resources to feed its own industries while starving all competitors.
It is with these objectives in mind that the US government is building the largest US embassy in the world in the former palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Permanent US military and air bases in Iraq have been constructed. This is also behind the decision of the giant US company Halliburton to move its headquarters from Texas to Dubai in the Persian Gulf. This move would put Halliburton in a better position to control the whole of the Middle East and Caucasian oil resources.
The US Vice-President Dick Cheney is a former director of Halliburton and it is Halliburton that receives billion dollar contracts related to the war in Iraq. This is the same Dick Cheney who recently visited Australia and discussed Middle Eastern and Asian matters with Prime Minister Howard.
Writing in The Australian on the recent Japan-Australia agreement, Dennis Shanahan said that 'Mr Cheney gave the Japanese proposal new life on his recent visit to Japan and Australia'. This is yet another important brick in building alliances with compliant governments that will sign up to the US plans.
The plan includes enlisting India in a four-way pact of the US, Japan, Australia and India to contain and encircle China and the Russian Federation which are not prepared to go along with the prospect of US domination.
The Australian article says that 'Australia has been approached to dramatically upgrade its three-way security arrangements with Japan and the US to include India in a four-way security agreement that would encircle China…'
It is for all these reasons that George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard keep on declaring that they will never get out of Iraq 'until the job is done'. They do not have an 'exit strategy' as others are demanding because they have no intention of getting out now or in the future. The job will not be done until the US has achieved world domination.
This is a reason why John Howard will fight the coming Federal election tooth and nail even to the extent of staging some terrorist provocation to stampede the Australian people once again to re-elect his government. He believes that only he can keep Australia in 'safe hands', meaning in hands willing to put into effect Australia’s part in US plans.
What these conspirators forget is that empires inevitably crumble and the last aspirant to world domination, who aimed to create a '1000 year Reich', lasted for only about 10 years.
From The Guardian
