September 15, 2003	Monday	Rajab 17, 1424

BEIRUT: Geoff Simons, writer and analyst of Middle East politics, addresses in his new book, “Targeting Iraq: Sanctions & Bombing in US policy”. Simons argues that the current incessant military activity of the United States (and Britain) with production increased in preparation for the new war on Iraq, “keeps arms factories humming, corporate shareholders content and the national arms budgets intact”. He also says that “the symbiotic relationship between the US armaments corporations and the communications conglomerates thrives and the prospect of a second ‘Bush II’ term is enhanced”.

This link between the military and the monetary is just one point Simons uses to illustrate that when it comes to US foreign policy on Iraq or any other state, “it is obvious that the United States does not act as an accountable international policeman but as a global gangster outside the law”.

Without facts at hand, such arguments could be easily dismissed, but Simons eloquently and clearly provides minutely researched evidence, original sources and basic proof to back up his argument.

Targeting Iraq describes the conflict in the context of regional politics and US objectives. Simons details the long US war on Iraq with a specific focus on the UN sanctions regime, the bombing campaign, US manipulation of the UN. The Palestinian- Israeli conflict, the pro-Iraq consensus, and how Washington planned to overthrow Saddam’s regime.

‘Targeting Iraq’ is not an attempt to exculpate Saddam’s regime for any of the many human rights abuses it has committed over the years. Simons points out that these abuses have not only been documented by the United States and other hostile states, but also by other independent bodies.

For example on April 24, 2002, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning “the serious repeated violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws by the Iraqi government”. What Simons illustrates, however, is that it does not help the cause of human rights when the United States “is seen to be acting from realpolitik calculation with little genuine concern for human welfare”.

In the chapters dealing with sanctions, their effects and US bombing policy, Simons is particularly persuasive. In his analysis of the use and misuse of the economic sanctions, he highlights the ways they have been employed ultimately as weapons of mass destruction directed primarily against the Iraqi civilian population.

Throughout the book the chronological buildup to any coming war with Iraq is discussed. In another chapter titled “The Sept 11”, statements by the Bush administration are analyzed and numerous examples are given by America’s flouting of international law when applied to itself, as well as of its unstoppable momentum for “regime change” at any cost.

Simons says that Saddam” in his persecution of ethnic groups and his invasion of Kuwait, violated international humanitarian law and the UN Charter. The US in its response... violated the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the 1977 Protocol-I Addition to the Geneva Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN social and political conventions and other instruments of international law.

Recasting the celebrated Juvenal tag “Who will guard the guardians?” Targeting Iraq asks the question: “Quis iudicabit ipsos indicas? — Who will judge the judges?”