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1998 - 2003© Copyright From The Wilderness Publications
The Die is Cast [Revised and updated from our Bulletin of January 24th, 2003. There is important new material at the beginning and the end.] by Mike Ruppert © Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only. "It may not have been an official declaration of war, but it was getting very close to it." - CNN's Wolf Blitzer after listening to George W. Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003 Jan. 30, 2003, 1900 PST (FTW) - "A merica will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, our friends, and our allies. The United States will ask the UN Security Council to convene on February 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraq's illegal weapons programs; its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors; and its links to terrorist groups. We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him." With these words George W. Bush made it clear that the United States had committed to a plan of action and that the best efforts of nations and individuals to prevent an imperialist invasion for oil have had little effect. It remains to be seen whether Senator Ted Kennedy's announced effort to have Congress compel the administration to return for another vote before invading will bear fruit. Of course, if the Administration refuses, it will be one more brick in the slowly building wall that will soon hit most Americans, the ones still in denial; the one with the word "Fascist" written all over it. I found it odd that in describing the evils of the twentieth century Bush was able to say "communism" and "militarism" but he could not say the word "fascism". Instead he called it "Hitlerism." Italian dictator Benito Mussolini once said, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." I think Bush's Freudian choice of words was a message that Hitler screwed it up but that he's going to get it right. And still history has a way of forcing tyrants into making self-defeating mistakes. The Associated Press reported on January 24th, in a story little noticed by mainstream American press, that the Japanese government had urged all Japanese citizens to leave Iraq as soon as possible. Japan has large numbers of its nationals working in Iraq in various trade and oil-related business ventures. According to a second report the same day on CNN Headline News the Japanese advisory was specific that all Japanese citizens should be out of the country by next Wednesday at the latest. The Japanese alert was followed by a simultaneous advisory from the U.S. State Department issuing a worldwide alert to all Americans traveling overseas. According to another AP story, State Department officials tried to downplay the significance of the warning, "but officials were unable to say when the last such advisory had been issued." A worldwide alert for U.S. citizens is extremely rare and suggests that the administration is concerned about a global backlash against Americans traveling overseas. Cautionary advisories are normally isolated to specific countries or geographic regions. We have been given a date: February 5th. And while the missiles may not launch on that day, the bombs may not drop, and the tanks may not roll; the Empire has made its position clear. This war is "Good to go". The invasion of Iraq will most likely commence with a massive aerial campaign in which the U.N. and many military analysts have predicted widespread collateral damage with heavy civilian casualties. One recent UN estimate suggested that the total Iraqi casualty count for the entire operation could exceed 500,000. This decision should not be taken as a surprise. In recent weeks support for the obvious U.S. intentions, both worldwide and at home, has been declining rapidly. At the time this story was written, a contemporaneous CNN poll showed that 62% of those responding believed that the United States should not attack Iraq without UN approval. Politically, the Bush administration has seen that this situation is not going to improve. Every delay in an attack to which the administration has already committed not only risks greater military, political and economic opposition but also increases the risk that U.S. ground forces will be engaged in desert fighting in hot summer weather. Recent moves by both the French and Russian governments to approve new trade and development agreements with the Hussein government might also weaken U.S. economic control in a post-Saddam regime. With crude oil prices at two-year highs and with U.S. oil reserves at 27-year lows the signs of a crumbling U.S. economy made themselves felt again this week with a more than 200 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial average. The Bush administration has apparently decided to roll the dice now in a go-for-broke imperial conquest that has as its primary objective the immediate control of 11 per cent of the world's oil reserves. In many previous stories FTW has documented how the Iraqi invasion is but the first in a series of sequential worldwide military campaigns to which the United States has committed. All of these are based upon globally dwindling oil supplies and the pending economic and human consequences of that reality. On January 21st, CNN Headline News acknowledged, for the first time, the reality of Peak Oil and accurately stated that "all the cheap oil there is has been found." The story also acknowledged that there was only enough oil left to sustain the planet for thirty to forty years and that what oil remained was going to become increasingly more expensive to produce and deliver. It is likely that the resiliency of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in his effort to resist U.S.-inspired strikes by wealthy Venezuelan industrialists, has had an impact on this decision by the Bush administration. Venezuela, which is the third largest foreign exporter of oil to the U.S., has seen its U.S. deliveries cut to a fraction of normal levels in recent weeks. Within the last week oil analysts have been predicting shortages and price spikes similar to those of 1973-4 if U.S. oil stocks were not replenished quickly. The administration's apparent decision to launch the attacks against Iraq appears to be at least a partial acknowledgement that Chavez is successfully resisting U.S. pressure to oust him. Chavez angered multinational investors and financiers recently by moving to increase the share of oil profits retained in Venezuela for the benefit of its people. Today's announcements signal that the world is entering a period of danger not seen for forty years. That the announcements from the Japanese government and the State Department came on the same day that the Department of Homeland Security became active and its Secretary Tom Ridge was sworn in seems an unlikely coincidence. Previous reporting from FTW had indicated that even massive protests and non-violent global resistance would prove ineffective in preventing an Iraqi invasion. And our predictions that the Bush junta had prepared for all the worst-case scenarios, including domestic unrest and worldwide opposition appear to be vindicated. The administration has clearly issued a statement to the world. "Screw you. We're going to play this game any way you want to play it. And we're ready for anything that comes." No one seemed to notice a story that came out on January 29th revealing that the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation was out of money. This is the institution, like the FDIC, which provides a safety blanket for tens of millions of Americans who have labored all of their lives and paid into pension funds that are now bankrupt as a result of looting and corporate fraud. Two years ago the fund had $22 billion. Thus the next round of mass layoffs from bankrupt corporations will see no safety net for the violated. They will hit the ground hard. Nonetheless President Bush found $6 billion for "Project Bioshield" to give handouts to pharmaceutical companies and to stockpile vaccines against the plague, ebola and botulism. These vaccines may kill or injure you and they won't even have to be tested for efficacy before you are forced to take them. And those who made them have already been shielded from lawsuits by the Homeland Security Act. An acquaintance of mine whose father had served in Hitler's Abwehr intelligence service once told me of a statement made by his father with whom he had long since broken relations. His father told him, "The Third Reich didn't lose the Second World War, it just changed venues." He was right.
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