Paul Foot in yer face Good for Paul Foot. His …
Paul Foot in yer face
Good for Paul Foot. His snippets from the Guardian are worth 10 years of mealy-mouthed commentary from the BBC or ITN. In today�s issue he points out that the US�s enthusiasm for a regime change in Iraq is perhaps not due to Saddam�s human rights record:
�Why are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and the rest of the Reaganite rump that runs the US administration so desperate to topple the Saddam regime in Iraq? After all, the same Reaganites steadfastly defended the same tyranny during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The answer can be found in the shifting relationship with another even more foul and corrupt dictatorship that until now has enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the US government - Saudi Arabia. For half a century the brutal billionaires who rule that country have supplied cheap oil to the US, and then happily invested the proceeds there. Then came September 11, and the shock discovery that Saudi sheikhs are unreliable. One of them, indeed, is the prime suspect for the twin towers catastrophe. Fifteen of the 19 terrorist hijackers who caused it were born or brought up in Saudi Arabia. Suddenly the old alliance cooled. Suspect Arab bank accounts were frozen. The families of the September 11 dead issued writs demanding damages from the Saudi government. Some Saudi billionaires took their money out of the US. Suddenly, an old question returned to haunt the US administration: where would they get their oil? To be certain to control the supply of oil, the US needs client Arab states. Saudi Arabia is no longer a reliable client. The next best hope is Iraq. But the regime there is not friendly any more, so, for the sake of the oil supplies, it’s time for a regime change - and a war.�
And did you see Tony Blair�s defence of his support for Bush yesterday using his alarming, mock Estuary English glottal stop? He said Saddam was the only leader he knew of who had chemical weapons AND used them. As usual, nobody asked him why then Rumsfeld and his mates were keen to keep him in power at that time. Ignorance is strength anyone? And if that’s irrelevant ancient history, then so is the fucking appeasing 1930s!
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