Posted on 01/31/2003 by Juan Cole
*British authorities have been casting about for some way to deal with Abu Hamza Misri, the fiery engineer-cum-preacher at Finsbury Park mosque who has preached and written justifications of the September 11 attacks. They raided the mosque in connection with their discovery of an Algerian cell linked to al-Qaida that had ricin poison in its possession. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, also worshipped there. Misri as a British citizen has been hard to touch, despite his horrendous hate speech. Now it turns out that he may have come by his British citizenship fraudulently, via a 1980 marriage to a British woman. It seems that the woman was at the time still married to her first husband and had not secured a legal divorce. This may be grounds for stripping him of his citizenship and charging him with polygamy (a crime in Britain), and deporting him to Egypt. Presumably the Mubarak government is looking forward to debriefing him and hosting him. *On a list, the question came up of why Saddam seems so willing to risk everything for the sake of his weapons of mass destruction programs. I replied:1) Saddam is extremely ambitious. He does not want to be dictator of athird-rate country. He wants to be a major Power. Iraq alone cannotprovide the proper platform for a regional superpower. But if he had beenable to keep both Khuzistan and Kuwait, he might have had something.Failing such territorial aggrandizement, WMD is another route to Powerstatus.2) Saddam is paranoid about the intentions of his neighbors. He fearsthat not only will he fail to make Iraq a major Power, but nefariousinterests may harm Iraq itself and thus reduce him to weakness. He rantsagainst the Turks and their designs on damming the Tigris and Euphrates.He fears Kurdish separatism, often backed by outside powers like Iran orthe US. He fears Shiite irredentism and Iran. He fears the conservativeGulf monarchies are trying to undermine him. He fears Israel and Mossad(he has called the inspectors spies for the CIA and Mossad; to be fair,both agencies appear at one time or another to have seriously planned fortaking him out). He fears the US and the UK, even when they aren’tactively planning an invasion. Before the first Gulf War he interpreted aVOA report comparing him to Ceaucescu as a sign that the US planned toarrange his overthrow.My reading is that Saddam’s combination of overweening pride and ambition,and profound fear of everyone around him drives the obsession with WMD.Without the latter, he would just be a tinpot dictator of a small 3rdworld country. It doesn’t suit his self-image. It would be like Napoleonbeing satisfied with just having France. But also without it he wouldfeel weak and helpless before the designs of his nefarious enemies. Itisn’t a completely crazy conviction. After all, we’ve decided thatKhomeini was only repelled with the aid of WMD.The syndrome whereby authoritarian personalities represent themselves asvictims of the scheming of others and think of their bullying andaggression as merely self-defense, is common in history. Milosevic didthis to the Bosnians, e.g. Saddam is not even the only leader in the MEwho thinks this way, and has WMD.
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Posted on 01/31/2003 by Juan Cole
Fri Jan 31 02:36:10 2003
To: “[FS]”
From: Juan Cole
Subject: Re: FW: all sing
X-Eudora-Signature:
Dear [S]:
This is delicious!
cheers Juan
At 04:20 PM 1/31/03 +1000, you wrote:
Sing to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands”:
If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
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Posted on 01/30/2003 by Juan Cole
Thu Jan 30 13:44:34 2003
To: infoco@yahoogroups.com
From: Juan Cole
Subject: 30 Jan. 2003
X-Eudora-Signature:
*The question was raised on a list of what would happen if the US invaded Iraq and found there were not weapons of mass destruction there. I fear I replied somewhat cynically, but also called it as I see it. If Iraq turns out not to have much WMD, the administration will fall back on its other main argument, that Saddam is a monster who has killed and brutalized his own people and repeatedly invaded his neighbors. We already have had Halabja survivors among the Kurds protest the doubts some Westerners have expressed about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and willingness to use them. They say, basically, *we* know all about WMD. And, given the thousands of Shi`ites the Baath killed in the south, there are almost certainly mass graves that will provide a macabre justification ex post facto for the removal of that regime. Footage of the Iranian vets injured by mustard gas could also be put on television. How wars are justified before they are launched and how they are justified afterwards is frequently different. If there is a relatively quick victory, no one will inquire into the justifications too closely. If it becomes a quagmire, it won’t matter what the justification was: the public will turn against the war anyway if it goes badly.
*The fundamentalist parties in Pakistan have called for all US visitors to that country to be fingerprinted and registered, in retaliation for how Pakistani visitors to the US are being treated. I’ve got news for them. When I visited Pakistan in the 1980s, I always had to register with the authorities, and I had to get a no objection permit from the police before I could leave Pakistan again. Fingerprinting is a different matter, but the registration of foreigners has been insisted on by Pakistan for a long time. It is not therefore such a big slap in the face for Pakistani visitors in the US to have to register. My objection is that the law should be for everyone, and if Muslims have to register, so should Chinese, Indians, etc.
*On another list someone raised the question about whether Sharon will attempt to expel the Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, perhaps under cover of a second Gulf War. The American Friends Service Committee has spoken on this issue at:
[this site]
98 Israeli academics circulated a petition on this possibility recently. See:
[this site]
I think it is more likely that Sharon will simply continue to annex Palestinian lands to Israel and leave the Palestinians with weak Bantustans that cannot have a hope of coalescing into a real state –sort of like the US Indian Reservations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is not necessary to ethnically cleanse a people if you can corral and decisively cow them.
Expelling the Palestinians during a second Gulf War would be an even more extreme slap in the face to the US than any of Sharon’s provocations in the past 18 months, and I very much doubt he would risk it. Perhaps the extra $10 bn. the Israelis are asking the US for is in part a quid pro quo for avoidance of very bad behavior.
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Posted on 01/30/2003 by Juan Cole
*The question was raised on a list of what would happen if the US invaded Iraq and found there were not weapons of mass destruction there. I fear I replied somewhat cynically, but also called it as I see it. If Iraq turns out not to have much WMD, the administration will fall back on its other main argument, that Saddam is a monster who has killed and brutalized his own people and repeatedly invaded his neighbors. We already have had Halabja survivors among the Kurds protest the doubts some Westerners have expressed about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and willingness to use them. They say, basically, *we* know all about WMD. And, given the thousands of Shi`ites the Baath killed in the south, there are almost certainly mass graves that will provide a macabre justification ex post facto for the removal of that regime. Footage of the Iranian vets injured by mustard gas could also be put on television. How wars are justified before they are launched and how they are justified afterwards is frequently different. If there is a relatively quick victory, no one will inquire into the justifications too closely. If it becomes a quagmire, it won’t matter what the justification was: the public will turn against the war anyway if it goes badly.
*The fundamentalist parties in Pakistan have called for all US visitors to that country to be fingerprinted and registered, in retaliation for how Pakistani visitors to the US are being treated. I’ve got news for them. When I visited Pakistan in the 1980s, I always had to register with the authorities, and I had to get a no objection permit from the police before I could leave Pakistan again. Fingerprinting is a different matter, but the registration of foreigners has been insisted on by Pakistan for a long time. It is not therefore such a big slap in the face for Pakistani visitors in the US to have to register. My objection is that the law should be for everyone, and if Muslims have to register, so should Chinese, Indians, etc.
*On another list someone raised the question about whether Sharon will attempt to expel the Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, perhaps under cover of a second Gulf War.
The American Friends Service Committee has spoken on this issue at:
AFSC Urges
Public Statement by U.S. Government
98 Israeli academics circulated a petition on this possibility recently. See:
http://www.nimn.org/jewishper/IsraeliAcademe.html
I think it is more likely that Sharon will simply continue to annex Palestinian lands to Israel and leave the Palestinians with weak Bantustans that cannot have a hope of coalescing into a real state –sort of like the US Indian Reservations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is not necessary to ethnically cleanse a people if you can corral and decisively cow them.
Expelling the Palestinians during a second Gulf War would be an even more extreme slap in the face to the US than any of Sharon’s provocations in the past 18 months, and I very much doubt he would risk it. Perhaps the extra $10 bn. the Israelis are asking the US for is in part a quid pro quo for avoidance of very bad behavior.
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Posted on 01/30/2003 by Juan Cole
Republished from Cole’s private email archives, 7/1/2012
Thu Jan 30 12:21:18 2003
To: [JP]
From: Juan Cole
Subject: Re: Iraq WMD – Potential or Actual?
X-Eudora-Signature:
Dear [J]:
Yes, I saw that. I am fairly cynical about all this. Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz and Condi have wanted a war on Iraq for a long time, and the WMD stuff makes a nice pretext. I have concluded it is mainly about power politics; these “American Nationalists” just won’t put up with sass.
cheers Juan
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Posted on 01/29/2003 by Juan Cole
Published from Cole’s private email archives 7/1/2012
Wed Jan 29 11:43:49 2003
To: xxx
From: Juan Cole
Subject: Re: Fwd: Iraqi defectors?
X-Eudora-Signature:
Dear xxx:
Bush specifically mentioned information from Iraqi defectors as the basis for some of his WMD charges.
Since some of the defectors were scientists working for Saddam, they should know what they are talking about. On the other hand, they have a vested interest in overthrowing Saddam, and so may be tempted to exaggerate. As an example, Khidir Hamza insists that Saddam is very close to having a nuclear capability, but al-Baradei says the inspectors cannot find evidence that this is so. Since a nuclear program would require hundreds of scientists and lots of equipment and facilities, and would be awfully hard to hide from al-Baradei.
It seems to me that it would be easy enough to pass the defectors’ specific allegations over to the inspectors for verification, and that way we would know for sure.
Of course, one problem is that there hasn’t to my knowledge been much defection since 1998, and many of the defectors came before then, so that their information is old. There would have been time to move stockpiles and some may genuinely have been destroyed (or not created in the first place, since Bush kept talking about the *potential* for producing them).
This is what I said today:
Bush’s State of the Union address gave specifics about what weapons of mass destruction the US thinks Saddam has and what he would have to prove he has destroyed to satisfy the Bush administration: 25,000 liters of anthrax; 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent; 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents; mobile biological weapons labs designed to produce germ warfare agents. But the wording was a little unclear, since the president kept saying Iraq had had materials sufficient to produce these quantities of these weapons, but seemed to sidestep the question as to whether it actually had done so.
cheers Juan
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Posted on 01/29/2003 by Juan Cole
* Iraqi Vice President Tariq Aziz has warned Kuwait that Iraq would not rule out hitting it if it allows US troops to launch an invasion of Iraq from its soil. Such complicity, he said, would make this action legitimate. (It is not clear exactly what Aziz is threatening to do. However, if it involved the deliberate targetting of civilian populations, it would not be legitimate; it would be a war crime. Aziz should be careful; he may find himself in the docket.)
*Jabir al-Mubarak al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Minister of Defense, said he was not surprised by this threat, and that it revealed the sort of intentions Iraq had toward its neighbors. He pledged that the Kuwait armed forces stood ready to repel any threat. (Kuwait is a nice little country, but I’m afraid its armed forces aren’t exactly up to this, and that it is the American umbrella that emboldens the minister).
*Saddam Hussein asked his generals to be vigilant against traitors in their midst who might sell out to the Americans. He saw the same reports the rest of us did, that the Saudis and other neighbors have been trying to convince someone to make a coup and depose Saddam so as to avert the looming war. (I wouldn’t hold my breath. Saddam is not the resigning kind; he is a genocidal megalomaniac. And all the generals who even thought about a coup are pushing up daisies. Of course, if he and his circle of Tikritis actually cared about the country and the people they have looted and brutalized, they would go into exile. But they aren’t that sort of person to begin with, which is one of the reasons we stand on the brink of war).
*Newsday reports that US Vice President Dick Cheney and special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad have been working to expand the expatriate committee of Iraqi politicians primed to succeed Saddam Hussein from 65 to 100, so as to dilute the influence of the pro-Iran bloc of 15 members from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Khalilzad is said to envisage a situation where policy makers will be drawn from the committee, but technocrats from inside Iraq will also be given power if they are untainted by association with Saddam Hussein. Khalilzad is said to recognize that since some 60 percent of Iraqis are Shi`ite, a similar proportion of high government officials will be. But apparently he has come to realize that SCIRI’s support inside Iraq may actually be shallow. Many Iraqi Shi`ites are secularists. Apparently he will be looking for such secular Shi`ite technocrats as a counter-ballast to the clerical SCIRI.
One problem: If SCIRI’s troops, the 15,000-man al-Badr Brigade, plays a “northern-alliance” type role in this new Iraq war, it may well be positioned to garner enormous political power in the aftermath despite the planning on paper going on now. A SCIRI dominated Iraq would be a huge gift to the clerical hardliners in Tehran, and it has long puzzled me why the Bush administration was putting so many eggs in that basket. Now they are backing off, causing a furore.
*Some 18 out of about 100 radical troops of a joint Hizb-i Islami /Taliban/ al-Qaida force have been killed near Spin Baldak in Afghanistan. This was the biggest battle between US forces and remnants of the radical Islamists since Anaconda, 10 months ago. Hizb-i Islam is the guerrilla group of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, who has made an alliance with Taliban remnants in Waziristan, tribal Pakistan. Hikmatyar was the darling of the US and of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence during the 1980s when the Reagan administration used him to batter the Soviets. He was all along a frightening extremist. In his youth he had thrown acid on unveiled women in Afghanistan. Having created this Frankenstein’s monster, the US now has to deal with the mess the Reaganauts made. Our brave military men wouldn’t be risking their lives in a battle against this guy if the Reaganauts hadn’t gone overboard in backing extremely unsavory elements in the 1980s.
*Bush’s State of the Union address gave specifics about what weapons of mass destruction the US thinks Saddam has and what he would have to prove he has destroyed to satisfy the Bush administration: 25,000 liters of anthrax; 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent; 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents; mobile biological weapons labs designed to produce germ warfare agents. But the wording was a little unclear, since the president kept saying Iraq had had materials sufficient to produce these quantities of these weapons, but seemed to sidestep the question as to whether it actually had done so. Apparently the anthrax and some of the chemicals were provided to Iraq in the 1980s by the Reagan administration to ensure that Iran did not win the Iran-Iraq war. I suppose that is how this administration is so sure Iraq has this stuff; it has people serving in it who provided the material to Saddam. Anyway, it seems clear to me that Bush is set on war. They are saying now it might not be until mid-March.
*Stanley Kurtz has written a lame reply to my History News Network response to his attacks on the Middle East Studies Association. He admits he knows nothing serious about Middle East studies (but trumpets his Hindi. Kiya hal hai, bhai? Zera aram karo!) He admits that MESA gets no money from the US government. He basically backs down on all the particulars of his irresponsible libel of the association. He retains vague and unstated reservations. And then he insists he has the right to judge the field even though he knows nothing about it. Well, of course. That is what punditry is. It is persons paid by sugar daddies to push agendas even though they know nothing about the subject. Sometimes they even push agendas they know to be false. Gasp. A survey showed recently that most people who are incompetent at their jobs can’t even recognize the fact, not having enough competency to judge themselves. Kurtz cannot see how cartoonish his ill-informed rants about MESA are. Has he even ever attended a MESA conference? Apparently not. Another survey showed that having to work with or be around incompetent people can give you a heart attack. It is a hell of a thing.
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