Once Upon a Time in Iraq

Submitted by Steve Brown

“A Society of Sheep must in time beget a Government of Wolves” — Bertrand de Jouvenel

Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor to the George W Bush regime, is one of the top US Neoconservative activists. Hadley is a pro, a battle-wizened key promoter of US aggression in Iraq. Hadley applauds and expounds on the ‘universal western morality’ regarding the US assassination of Iran’s key military commander Suleimani via the major media. That’s no surprise. However, Hadley’s enthusiasm for Suleimani’s destruction reeks more of puffery on the part of Raytheon Systems (as a key military supplier to the US military) than it does as justification for an apparent US war crime, only one among many.

Trouble is, nowhere does the Raytheon gun-toting [1] Hadley reveal his inactionable puff piece links to Raytheon in his television appearances or articles. Now, in an Orwellian twist of doublethink only possible in a US war establishment run amok, Hadley is Board chair of Reagan’s United States Institute of Peace which would be laughable, if it were not so tragic. [2]  Former NSA head Hadley’s ‘peace institute’ promotes only flagrant US war propaganda and touts foreign adventurism and aggression that would have embarrassed even Vladimir Pozner back in the day. But rhetorically speaking, Raytheon’s ‘Kill Vehicle’ Hadley is no exception to the Raytheon revolving door with regard to the warmongers who infest Washington’s snake pit.

Washington’s revolving door for state-sponsored corporate terror revolves only too well. For example, US Defense Secretary Dr Mark Esper is another ex-Raytheon heavyweight, the former Raytheon VP advocate for “governmental relations”. Presumably those “government relations” were designed to milk the federal beast for all the  military contracts Esper’s salary as a Raytheon lobbyist could muster. Now Raytheon’s Esper has the ultimate job as US Secretary of Defense where the Raytheon/ governmental revolving door of war and aggression just goes around and around as profitably as the Federal Reserve will allow.

But warmonger Barak Obama’s reign of terror was no different; no different from that of his predecessor or of his successor with regard to bloodthirsty guile. Obama’s crew was just as morally culpable for the death and destruction that the US wrought in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza, and Yemen as Bush sports like Hadley were, the occupation that they still invoke in Iraq today.  Just one example of an Obama revolving door war boss apparently in favour of aggression and political assassination is Lockheed Martin’s, Jeh Johnson.  According to Johnson :

“If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani he was a lawful military target. And the president, under his Constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without an additional Congressional authorization.”

Key words are: “If you believe everything…”  Yes, who believes anything that the US government says? Whether it’s about chemical weapons, WMD’s, terror attacks, or anything else… the US government invariably lies. Here, Jeh Johnson is the former Barak Obama lackey speaking on Fox News, endorsing the Lockheed Martin Marietta Corporate line which implicitly assumes that the public “will believe” that which the US government declares.  It’s the Imperial fiat mantra, law by presidential decree, and long live the Emperor.

Johnson’s incorporated brief is that a foreign leader may be justifiably assassinated if the executive director of the United States orders it, of course handily employing Lockheed Martin or Raytheon’s tech — or that of any other military contractor.  Shoot first… ask questions later.  No moral consideration need apply. The moral and legal consideration with regard to political assassination is not only ignored but despised, just as it is in Israel.  There is no moral consideration about politically-motivated killing where US leaders are concerned, ‘life concentrated’ is in the form of US dollar primacy via Jeh Johnson’s Lockheed Martin and Raytheon’s technology being all that matters — and that is the media message, too.

In other words, Greed is Good. And if Lockheed Martin or Raytheon must supply the equipment to kill for hubris or profit when the president pronounces that necessary, then that’s good for the gander too.  The surprise is that the progenitors of US aggression and destabilization in the Middle East (and most of the rest of the world) should still infest US airwaves and the Washington Post. The Neocon/Statist presence is just a little staggering in light of their historic abject failures, whether they be:

Israel-Palestine. Cuba. Bay of Pigs. Korea 1950. Iran 1953. Vietnam. Laos. Cambodia. Chile 1973. Pinochet. Iran 1979. El Salvador. Nicaragua. Panama. Iran contra. Afghanistan. al qaeda. Iraq. Lebanon. Gaza. Libya. Egypt. Syria. Gaza. Afghanistan. ISIS. Sahel. Mena. Yemen. Sudan. Somalia. Eritrea. Ukraine…  etc etc etc.

The Rulers of the Planet lost most of the world and only the dominance of the $ US still remains. Those who perceive one Donald J Trump [3] as their Lord and saviour may now be supremely disappointed. With this political assassination we can expect nothing more from him than the same condolences over the blood of the fallen that all US administrations offer. And should a new war erupt, fake praise for the dead as required by any war-profiteer’s miserable existence.

Meanwhile the US moral fakery extant in western Corporate media, is where our rulers purvey the message that they may politically assassinate and still possess the moral high ground, while people who object to political assassination are traitors… and probably terrorists, too.  The foregoing is not to endorse any so-called US opposition movement as objecting, because there is none.

There is virtually no effective resistance to the satanic crowd who pound their major media wired podium every minute of every hour of every day with their wired digital jack boot. The political class’s thinly veiled hatred for peace and humanity provides them with just too much profit, and that guy with the haircut hijacked the populist movement long ago. According to Clinton influencer Carroll Quigley in his book ‘Tragedy and Hope’:

“The argument that two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy….Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

Beyond Quigley’s political theory — which is now US political doctrine as embraced by all US regimes and their sponsors for the past thirty years — we must now consider the momentous topic of what just happened in Iraq, and the relevance of the Raytheon connection as above.  We must ask what happened because no one is saying — not even the alt-Media.

What just happened in Iraq?

After the US assassination of Iran’s military leader Suleimani, there was some idea that Iran would retaliate right away in a deadly strike on the US in Iraq, perhaps resulting in a broad war.  Others, including this author, believed that Iran’s leadership would bide its time, maintain the moral high ground, and retaliate later on in an unexpected way.

But the public call for retaliation in Iran was quite outspoken, and Iran’s people demanded a just response.  That public call for revenge was too strong for Khamenei to ignore, so a strike on two US bases in Iraq was arranged via a Swiss channel. Note the word arranged. There has been much speculation… but how to prove this arrangement? Later we will return to Raytheon’s equipment at US bases in Iraq, which provides an important clue.

But first, consider that an arranged armed response to mutually draw down tension between sides is rare, but not unheard of in conflict zones.  A recent face-saving arranged combat event occurred near the Lebanese/Israeli border as we examined in Israel v Hezbollah: Disputed Claims in a Disputed Territory .

In late August of 2019, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon vowed to retaliate for Israeli aggressive tactics in the Kfar Shuba Hills region and Beirut.  Neither side was prepared for war over two somewhat minor incidents — by the region’s standards — and Hezbollah carried out what Israel called a symbolic strike on an Israeli robotic target to quell outraged public opinion on both sides.

Hezbollah claimed a strike on a real Israeli target (which appeared true) while Israel claimed the military APC was operated remotely, and the Israeli wounded recorded at the scene were ‘crisis actors’. While truth is the first to die in war, the Avivim escapade did appear to avoid a broader conflict.  There is ample reason to assume that the same type of staged event just occurred by Iran’s strike on two US bases in Iraq.

That’s because neither side is desirous of a wider war in the region… at least for now — if Trump can be believed — and since this is an election year he probably can. Iran too, has clearly stated that it does not want war with the US, even subsequent to the US assassination of its military leader.  And so, via the Swiss diplomatic channel, Iran could exercise its Article 51 right to reprisal as agreed with a limited strike on two US bases. The Trump regime was informed about the two bases Iran would strike, when, where, and how.

We can further verify the save-face strike agreement by the standing-down of the Raytheon GEM-T missiles at both bases, conclusive proof that Iran’s strike was pre-arranged. Of all missiles fired, only four were duds. If the GEM-T systems had been readied and in use the failure rate of Iranian ballistic missile strikes on the bases would be far higher.  As a result, the bases would suffer minor damage, far less than may be seen in verifiably released satellite photographs of the two bases, independent and from non-US or Iran government sources.

Some analysts have argued that the Erbil base had no GEM-T defense, but information exists that Israel has three secret intelligence sites near that base so any idea that Erbil would be undefended by anti-missile systems borders on the preposterous.  Likewise that base was chosen as a target by Iran specifically due to its symbolic association with the Kurds and Israel, a tactical consideration not lost on the US military or on Israel; and Israel possesses plenty of its own GEM-T’s. At both bases, the GEM-T defenses were demonstrably not in operation.

While the US military is quite capable of mass killing and destruction, self-defense is of paramount importance. The notion that the US military would stand-down its anti-missile defenses at a time of imminent peril without a pre-arranged agreement with Iran via its leaders, is beyond preposterous — it is absurd. Furthermore, the fact that there were no casualties of any sort at either US base, with a long lead time for evacuation and US bunkering, proves that Iran provided plenty of warning to the United States via the Swiss diplomats, prior to the strikes.

Ironically we must now return to the Raytheon corporate shills, likely highly amused and enthused at what just occurred in Iraq. The Washington Post, cheerleader for Raytheon’s people and weaponry, is running a Dan Lamothe article again about poor little Raytheon and the need for bigger, better, newer and yet more expensive US anti-missile systems.  Lamothe even claims that the US bases attacked did not possess anti-missile systems, a revelation which on its own must surely be vetted by US intelligence services before being released and cannot be a publicly verifiable factual statement.

So why say it?  With conclusive proof that the two US base strikes in Iraq were pre-arranged between Iran and the United States, media disinformation is required to maintain the balance of illusion, and a major diversion of public attention is needed to assail the truth.  The fact of the pre-arranged strikes based on the US political assassination of Iran’s senior military leader raises major moral, ethical, legal, due process, political and international law questions about the role of the United States as occupier and invader — not just about its role as global hegemon through weaponization of the dollar and military force.

For example, that the US would agree to a planned Iranian counter-strike versus two US bases in Iraq proves that the US understands its assassination of Iran’s military leader was not only illegal according to international law, but also a war crime.  The agreement further focuses on that fact that according to the United State government only might makes a right, a militarist argument frequently written about in the US and Israeli press.  But to have its citizens focus on the US proposition that only might makes right, where US influence is only enforced by the barrel of a gun, is not a discussion the political class wants its citizens to have internally.  And finally, that the United States may now be a force for evil in the world by political assassination and by force of arms, and not for good, is another subject our masters wish for us to avoid.  We must not avoid it.

Notes:

1. Rhetorically speaking!
2. Note the Hadley institute’s name: “of” peace and not “for” peace, an important Orwellian distinction.
3. who might deliver them from Obama’s implicit evil?

Steve Brown is the author of “Iraq: the Road to War” (Sourcewatch) editor of “Bush Administration War Crimes in Iraq” (Sourcewatch) “Trump’s Limited Hangout” and “Federal Reserve: Out-sourcing the Monetary System to the Money Trust Oligarchs Since 1913”; Steve is an antiwar activist, a published scholar on the US monetary system, and has appeared as guest contributor to The Duran, Fort Russ News, Herland Report, Lew Rockwell Report, The  Ron Paul Institute, and Strategika51. Twitter: @newsypaperz