British Troops Mobilizing on the Iranian Border
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
August 30, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
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In fact the plan to invade and occupy Iraq predates the Bush-Blair decision(s) and appears to go further back into the 1990s; in other words it could not have been a decision taken by the American President and British Prime Minister, but a decisive and long-term objective executed on behalf of broader economic and strategic interests. These two leaders served the interests that control the economies, mainstream media, and national policies of the United States and Britain.
Previous administrations or governments, regardless of so-called political orientation4, in the United States and Britain paved the way or the road to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The grounds for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was years in the making and cemented gradually through strategic brinkmanship. The defensive capabilities and conventional means of any resistance in Iraq—at one time the most powerful Arab nation—were eroded through time by the British and American governments and military forces. These concurring governments, successively weakened Iraq, despite of any supposed political differences. It seems that they were all executing different steps/stages in the same programme. Iraq was weakened through such mean as United Nations Security Council Sanctions. This also includes the ‘internationally unlawful’5 no-fly zones mandated over Iraq under humanitarian pretext, which were not authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and the erosion of the Iraqi military’s defensive capabilities during more than a decade of bombing.
It similarly seems that Iraq was manipulated after the bloody Iraq-Iran War into invading Kuwait by the United States. The Iraqi government had consistently complained after the Iraq-Iran War that the United States along with Iraq’s fellow OPEC members such as Kuwait and the U.A.E. were deliberately lowering the market prices of world oil supplies to subjugate Iraq and manoeuvre it into intense debt and economic breakdown. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq even felt grossly betrayed after he was egged onto attacking Iran by the United States and the Arab sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. Subsequently after the large-scale damage of Iraq, including the military and economy, because of the war with Iran, President Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait to make up for his losses—that was of course under the impression that ‘the United States had given Iraq the green light to invade neighbouring Kuwait.’6
In retrospect, one should also note that the preparations for an invasion of Iraq took years and after the liberation of Kuwait when the United States had the chance to support the relatively bloodless overthrow of President Saddam Hussein by military officers, Arab groups, democratic forces, and the Kurds they deliberately did not. This is a question in itself that has an ominous answer. In reality the war against Iraq was carried on after liberation of Kuwait by the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations till the ground was fertile enough for an invasion force.