“TENS of thousands of marines and soldiers [will invade Iraq] from Kuwait. Hundreds of warplanes based in as many as eight countries, possibly including Turkey and Qatar, would unleash a huge air assault against thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and fiber-optics communications sites.”, says The New York Times.

It adds, in its July 5 issue, “special operations forces or covert CIA operatives would strike at depots or laboratories storing or manufacturing Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to launch them.”

This isn’t a fictional scenario from a Tom Clancy novel. It’s a real scenario from “CentCom Courses of Action”—the latest US plan for war on Iraq. Leaked to the New York Times, the plan calls for attacks on Iraq by US air, land, and sea-based forces from the north, south, and west, in coordination with covert operations inside Iraq by the CIA and various Iraqi groups.

As many as 250,000 US troops could be involved. The goal: to overthrow the Iraqi government and instal a pro-US regime. The Central Command plan reveals how advanced their planning is. Yet the establishment treated their disclosure as routine — as if the US has an undisputed right to openly plot wars on whomever, whenever.

No big outcry came from Congress — leading Democrats vocally support “regime change” in Iraq. One Republican backed congressional hearings “as a way of building public support for potential military action.” Mainstream editorials focused on tactics and timing — not justice.

The options reportedly being considered include a CIA-organized coup against the Saddam Hussein regime; a campaign—modelled after the US war in Afghanistan—involving a combination of air strikes, a limited number of US Special Forces, and anti-Hussein forces in Iraq; a full-scale US invasion; and various combinations of all three.

The New York Times notes that “courses of action” may indicate that war planners favour a large-scale invasion: “Most military and administration officials believe that a coup in Iraq would be unlikely to succeed, and that a proxy battle using local forces would not be enough to drive the Iraqi leader from power.”

Meanwhile, the US has been actively preparing for battle. The Washington Post (June 16) reports that earlier this year, Bush “signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert programme to topple Saddam Hussein, including authority to use lethal force to capture the Iraqi president.” One official told the Post that these plans were not a substitute for war but “should be viewed largely as ‘preparatory’ to a military strike.”

In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, the US built up an extensive network of military bases throughout the region. Today there are some 20,000 US troops in Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait and another 5,000 in Saudi Arabia. These bases are being beefed up, expanded, and readied.

The New York Times reports, “Thousands of marines from the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif., the marine unit designated for the Gulf, have stepped up their mock assault drills,” and the “Air Force is stockpiling weapons, ammunition and spare parts, like airplane engines, at depots in the United States and in the Middle East.” Troops are reportedly arriving in Turkey, and military aid to Jordan is being increased.

The US officials have been touring the pro-US regimes in the area to line up support—Defence Secretary Rumsfeld visited Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar in June. In April the CIA brought officials from Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq to the US for secret meetings. Some 70 former Iraqi military officers met in London during the week of July 8 to discuss their role in a US war. And US support for Israel’s brutal invasions of the West Bank and Gaza — as well as hypocritical and empty words about a Palestinian “state” — are aimed at extinguishing the fires of the Palestinian uprising in preparation for war against Iraq.

According to the New York Times (July 10), “Once a consensus is reached on the concept, the steps toward assembling a final war plan and the element of timing for ground deployments and launching an air war represent the final decisions for President Bush to make.” The Times also reports that “senior administration officials continue to say that any offensive would probably be delayed until early next year, allowing time to create the right military, economic and diplomatic conditions.” Of course, such timetables are speculative and subject to change by global events.

War preparations are also well underway on the propaganda front. At his July 8 press conference, Bush declared, “The world would be safer, more peaceful if there is a regime change” in Iraq. The US accuses Iraq of possessing or developing “weapons of mass destruction.” Yet a number of former UN arms inspectors say that Iraq has largely been disarmed, and even Pentagon officials admit that Iraq’s current military is only one-third its 1990 size.

Meanwhile, the US is boosting its already staggering military budget by another $50 billion, and now embraces preemptive wars and first use of nuclear weapons. The US has troops stationed in every corner of the globe and is at this moment bombing Afghanistan, organizing counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines and elsewhere, and backing Israel’s murderous assaults on Palestinians.

The Bush administration demands that Iraq accept intrusive, US-controlled arms inspections — in other words spies must be allowed to roam throughout Iraq as the US prepares its war. After talks between Iraq and the UN on return of arms inspectors recently broke off, the State Department called Iraq “a threat to regional security, to the nations in the region.”

Iraq argues that any agreement on arms inspection must be part of an overall agreement on exactly what constitutes compliance with all UN resolutions. Such terms have never been clearly spelled out — allowing the US to claim Iraq is “non-compliant” no matter what steps it takes.

This is the prime US excuse for maintaining sanctions, which were extended again in May. In 1999, UNICEF found that one Iraqi child in seven dies before the age of 5.

This means that 5,000 more children in Iraq die each month today than before the US war and sanctions. UNICEF also reported that 22 per cent of Iraq’s young children are chronically malnourished.

After September 11, the US rulers aggressively pushed forward their pre-existing agenda of recasting global relations to extend and solidify US global dominance. And waging war on Iraq has been central to this whole vision. The Wall Street Journal (June 14) revealed that within days of the September attacks, top Bush advisers “argued over whether to launch a strike on Iraq”— even though there was “no real evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had anything to do with the terror attacks.”

In the view of those running the empire, Iraq’s defiance undermines US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East and tarnishes its standing as the world’s dominant superpower. By toppling the current Iraqi government and installing a pro-US regime, the US hopes to tighten its grip on Persian Gulf oil — and all who depend on it. These global predators view war on Iraq as key to redrawing the region’s political map and intimidating anti-US resistance. The US administration hopes that an Iraq under new governance could become a new Western ally, helping to reduce American dependence on bases in Saudi Arabia, to secure Israel’s eastern flank and act as a wedge between Iran and Syria.

Waging war on Iraq is also seen as a crucial test of the so-called “Bush doctrine” of pre-emptive wars against any the US considers a threat. Those running the empire are determined to show the world that the US is willing and able to crush any challenger, or sweep away any impediment to its power.

US plans for war against Iraq — and the whole “Bush doctrine” — have nothing to do with “protecting the world” or “saving the lives of American people.” They’re about naked imperialist power politics — gangsterism on a global scale.

In 1991, on the eve of “Operation Desert Storm,” George Bush Sr. declared, “We have no argument with the people of Iraq; indeed, we have only friendship for the people there.” Eleven years later, over one million Iraqis are dead thanks to US bombs and sanctions.

The writer is author of “Behind the Poison Cloud: Union Carbide’s Bhopal Massacre”. He travelled to Iraq in 1991 and shot the video “Iraq: War Against the People”.

INSIDE the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the Californian audience had been struck silent. Dennis Bernstein, the Jewish host of KPFA Radio’s Flashpoint current affairs programme, was reading some recent e-mails that he had received from Israel’s supporters in America. Each one left the people in the church — Muslims, Jews, Christians — in a state of shock.

“You ... self-hating Jewish piece of shit. Hitler killed the wrong Jews. He should have killed your parents, so a piece of Jewish shit like you would not have been born. God willing, Arab terrorists will cut you to pieces Daniel Pearl-style, AMEN!!!” Bernstein’s sin was to have covered the story of Israel’s invasion of Jenin in April and to have interviewed journalists who investigated the killings that took place there — including Phil Reeves and Justin Huggler of The Independent — for his Flashpoint programme.

Bernstein’s grandfather was a revered Orthodox Rabbi of international prominence but neither his family history nor his origins spared him. “Read this and weep, you ... self-hating Jew boy!!!” another e-mail told Bernstein. “God willing a Palestinian will murder you, rape your wife and slash your kids’ throats.” Yet another: “I hope that you, Barbara Lubin and all other Jewish Marxist Communist traitors anti-American cop haters will die a violent and cruel death just like the victims of suicide bombers in Israel.” Lubin is also Jewish, the executive director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a one-time committed Zionist but now one of Israel’s fiercest critics. Her e-mails are even worse.

Indeed, you have to come to America to realize just how brave this small but vocal Jewish community is. Bernstein is the first to acknowledge that a combination of Israeli lobbyists and conservative Christian fundamentalists have in effect censored all free discussion of Israel and the Middle East out of the public domain in the US. “Everyone else is terrified,” Bernstein says. “The only ones who begin to open their mouths are the Jews in this country. You know, as a kid, I sent money to plant trees in Israel. But now we are horrified by a government representing a country that we grew up loving and cherishing. Israel’s defenders have a special vengeance for Jews who don’t fall in line behind Sharon’s scorched-earth policy because they give the lie to the charge that Israel’s critics are simply anti-Semite.”

Adam Shapiro is among those who have paid a price for their beliefs. He is a Jew engaged to an American-born Palestinian, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement who was trapped in Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the spring while administering medical aid. After telling CNN that the Sharon government was acting like “terrorists” while receiving $3bn a year in US military aid, Shapiro and his family were savaged in the New York Post.

The paper slandered Shapiro as the “Jewish Taliban” and demeaned his family as “traitors”. Israeli supporters publicized his family’s address and his parents were forced to flee their Brooklyn home and seek police protection. Shapiro’s father, a New York public high-school teacher and a part-time Yeshiva (Jewish day school) teacher, was fired from his job. His brother receives regular death threats.

Israel’s supporters have no qualms about their alliance with the Christian right. Indeed, the fundamentalists can campaign on their own in Israel’s favour, as I discovered for myself at Stanford recently when I was about to give a lecture on the media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, part of a series of talks arranged largely by Jewish Americans.

A right-wing Christian “Free Republic” outfit posted my name on its website, and described me as a “PLO butt-kisser” and asked its supporters to “freep” my lecture. A few demonstrators turned up outside the First United Methodist Church in Sacramento where I was to speak, waving American and Israeli flags. “Jew haters!” they screamed at the organizers, a dark irony since these were non-Jews shrieking their abuse at Jews.

They were also handing out crudely printed flyers. “Nothing to worry about, Bob,” one of my Jewish hosts remarked. “They can’t even spell your name right.” True. But also false. “Stop the Lies!” the leaflet read. “There was no massacre in Jenin. Fiske [sic] is paid big bucks to spin [lie] for the Arabs...” But the real lie was in that last sentence. I never take any payment for lectures — so that no one can ever claim that I’m paid to give the views of others. But the truth didn’t matter to these people. Nor did the content of my talk — which began, by chance, with the words “There was no massacre” — in which I described Arafat as a “corrupt, vain little despot” and suicide bombings as “a fearful, evil weapon”. None of this was relevant. The aim was to shut me up.

Dennis Bernstein sums it up quite simply: “Any US journalist, columnist, editor, college professor, student-activist, public official or clergy member who dares to speak critically of Israel or accurately report the brutalities of its illegal occupation will be vilified as an anti-Semite.” In fact, no sooner had Bernstein made these remarks than pro-Israeli groups initiated an extraordinary campaign against some of the most pro-Israeli newspapers in America, all claiming that The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle were biased in their coverage of the Middle-East conflict. Just how The New York Times — which boasts William Safire and Charles Krauthammer, those giants of pro-Israeli bias, among its writers - could be anti-Israeli is difficult to see, although it is just possible that, amid its reports on Israel’s destruction in the West Bank and Gaza, some mildly critical comments found their way into print.

The New York Times, for example, did report that Israeli soldiers used civilians as human shields — though only in the very last paragraph of a dispatch from Jenin. Nonetheless, the campaign of boycotts and e-mails got under way. More than 1,000 readers suspended their subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times, while a blizzard of e-mails told pro-Israeli readers to cancel their subscription to The New York Times for a day. On the East Coast, at least one local radio station has lost $1m from a Jewish philanthropist while other stations attempting to cover the Middle East with some degree of fairness are said to have lost even more. When the San Francisco Chronicle published a four-page guide to the conflict, its editors had to meet a 14-member delegation of local Jewish groups to discuss their grievances.

According to Michael Futterman, who chairs the Middle East strategy committee of 80 Bay Area synagogues, Jewish anger hit “boiling point” when the Chronicle failed to cover a pro-Israeli rally in San Francisco. Needless to say, the Chronicle’s “Readers’ Representative”, Dick Rogers, published a grovelling, self-flagellating apology. “The paper didn’t have a word on the pro-Israel rally,” he wrote. “This wasn’t fair and balanced coverage.”

Another objection came from a Jewish reader who objected to the word “terror” being placed within inverted commas in a Chronicle headline that read “Sharon says ‘terror’ justifies assault”. The reader’s point? The Chronicle’s reporting “harmonizes well with Palestinian propaganda, which tries to divert attention from the terrorist campaign against Israel (which enjoys almost unanimous support among Palestinians, all the way from Yasser Arafat to the 10-year-old who dreams of blowing himself up one day) and instead describes Israel’s military moves as groundless, evil bullying tactics.”

And so it goes on. On a radio show with me in Berkeley, the Chronicle’s foreign editor, Andrew Ross, tried to laugh off the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby — “the famous lobby”, he called it with that deference that is half way between acknowledgement and fear — but the Israeli consul-general, Yossi Amrani, had no hesitation in campaigning against the Chronicle, describing a paper largely docile in its reporting of the Middle East as “a professionally and politically biased, pro-Palestinian newspaper”.

The Chronicle’s four-page pull-out on the Middle East was, in fact, a soft sell. Its headline — “The Current Strife Between The Israelis And The Palestinians Is A Battle For Control Of Land” — missed the obvious point: that one of the two groups that were “battling for control of the land” — the Palestinians — had been occupied by Israel for 35 years.

The most astonishing — and least covered — story is in fact the alliance of Israeli lobbyists and Christian Zionist fundamentalists, a coalition that began in 1978 with the publication of a Likud plan to encourage fundamentalist churches to give their support to Israel. By 1980, there was an “International Christian Embassy” in Jerusalem; and in 1985, a Christian Zionist lobby emerged at a “National Prayer Breakfast for Israel” whose principal speaker was Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to become Israeli prime minister.

“A sense of history, poetry and morality imbued the Christian Zionists who, more than a century ago, began to write, plan and organise for Israel’s restoration,” Netanyahu told his audience. The so-called National Unity Coalition for Israel became a lobbying arm of Christian Zionism with contacts in Congress and neo-conservative think-tanks in Washington.— Courtesy: The Independent, London