Posted on 28-1-2003

Iraq Invasion Tuesday?
by Michael C. Ruppert

January 24, 2003, 1930 PST (FTW) - Serious international developments are
indicating that the first stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq will begin
unilaterally no later than next Wednesday and most likely as the President
delivers his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

The Associated Press reported today, in a story little noticed by
mainstream American press, that the Japanese government had today urged all
Japanese citizens to leave Iraq as soon as possible. Japan has large
numbers of its nationals working in Iraq in various trade and oil-related
business ventures. According to a second report today on CNN Headline News
the Japanese advisory was specific that all Japanese citizens should be out
of the country by next Wednesday at the latest.

The Japanese alert was followed by a simultaneous advisory from the U.S.
State Department issuing a worldwide alert to all Americans traveling
overseas. According to another AP story, State Department officials tried
to downplay the significance of the warning, "but officials were unable to
say when the last such advisory had been issued." A worldwide alert for
U.S. citizens is extremely rare and suggests that the administration is
concerned about a global backlash against Americans traveling overseas.
Cautionary advisories are normally isolated to specific countries or
geographic regions.

The invasion of Iraq will most likely commence with a massive aerial
campaign in which the U.N. and many military analysts have predicted
widespread collateral damage with heavy civilian casualties. One recent UN
estimate suggested that the total Iraqi casualty count for the entire
operation could exceed 500,000.

This decision should not be taken as a surprise. In recent weeks support
for the obvious U.S. intentions, both worldwide and at home, has been
declining rapidly. At the time this story was written a contemporaneous CNN
poll showed that 62% of those responding believed that the United States
should not attack Iraq without UN approval. Politically, the Bush
administration has seen that this situation is not going to improve. Every
delay in an attack to which the administration has already committed not
only risks greater military, political and economic opposition but also
increases the risk that U.S. ground forces will be engaged in desert
fighting in hot summer weather. Recent moves by both the French and Russian
governments approve new trade and development agreements with the Hussein
government might also weaken U.S. economic control in a post-Saddam regime.

With crude oil prices at two-year highs and with U.S. oil reserves at
27-year lows, the signs of a crumbling U.S. economy made themselves felt
again today with a more than 200 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial
average. The Bush administration has apparently decided to roll the dice
now in a go-for-broke imperial conquest that has as its primary objective
the immediate control of 11 per cent of the world's oil reserves.

In many previous stories FTW has documented how the Iraqi invasion is but
the first in a series of sequential worldwide military campaigns to which
the United States has committed. All of these are based upon globally
dwindling oil supplies and the pending economic and human consequences of
that reality. On January 21st, CNN Headline News acknowledged, for the
first time, the reality of Peak Oil and accurately stated that "all the
cheap oil there is has been found." The story also acknowledged that there
was only enough oil left to sustain the planet for thirty to forty years
and that what oil remained was going to become increasingly more expensive
to produce and deliver.

It is likely that the resiliency of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in
his effort to resist U.S.-inspired strikes by wealthy Venezuelan
industrialists, has had an impact on this decision by the Bush
administration. Venezuela, which is the third largest foreign importer of
oil to the U.S., has seen its U.S. deliveries cut to a fraction of normal
levels in recent weeks. Within the last week oil analysts have been
predicting shortages and price spikes similar to those of 1973-4 if U.S.
oil stocks were not replenished quickly. The administration's apparent
decision to launch the attacks against Iraq appears to be at least a
partial acknowledgement that Chavez is successfully resisting U.S. pressure
to oust him.

Chavez angered multinational investors and financiers recently by moving to
increase the share of oil profits retained in Venezuela for the benefit of
its people.

Today's announcements signal that the world is entering a period of danger
not seen for forty years. That the announcements from the Japanese
government and the State Department came on the same day that the
Department of Homeland Security became active and its Secretary Tom Ridge
was sworn in seems an unlikely coincidence. Previous reporting from FTW had
indicated that even massive protests and non-violent global resistance
would prove ineffective in preventing an Iraqi invasion. And our
predictions that the Bush junta had prepared for all the worst-case
scenarios, including domestic unrest and worldwide opposition appear to be
vindicated.