http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/07/1046826528748.htmlA think tank war: Why old Europe says no
By Margo Kingston
March 7 2003
Reader Alun Breward writes: "I found this article on the website of German news magazine Der Spiegel this week. I thought it was one of the best pieces of journalism on the Iraq conflict I have read and so I translated it." Thanks Alun! Here we go.
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This war came from a think tank
by Jochen Boelsche, spiegel
It was in no way a conspiracy. As far back as 1998, ultra right US think tanks had developed and published plans for an era of US world domination, sidelining the UN and attacking Iraq. These people were not taken seriously. But now they are calling the tune.
German commentators and correspondents have been confused. Washington has tossed around so many types of reasons for war on Baghdad "that it could make the rest of the world dizzy", said the South German Times.
And the Nuremburg News reported on public statements last week by Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer to an inner circle in the US that war can only be avoided if Saddam not only disarms, but also leaves office.
Regime change is a condition that is in none of the barely remembered 18 UN resolutions. The Nuremburg News asked in astonishment whether Fleischer had made the biggest Freudian slip of his career or whether he spoke with the President's authority.
It's not about Saddam's weapons
So it goes. Across the world critics of President Bush are convinced that a second Gulf War is actually about replacing Saddam, whether the dictator is involved with WMD or not. "It's not about his WMD," writes the German born Israeli peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, "its purely a war about world domination, in business, politics, defence and culture".
There are real models for this. They were already under development by far right Think Tanks in the 1990s, organisations in which cold-war warriors from the inner circle of the secret services, from evangelical churches, from weapons corporations and oil companies forged shocking plans for a new world order.
In the plans of these hawks a doctrine of "might is right" would operate, and the mightiest of course would be the last superpower, America.
more......lots more.......
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quote
"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which
their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the
war, but that they started it. And we must not allow
ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war,
for our position is that no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced
and condemned as an instrument of policy."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals
August 12, 1945
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm