Foreign Correspondents in Japan: Covering a Half-century of Upheavals - From 1945 to the Present

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Fine in very good dust jacket. A Living Tradition Geisha: A Living Tradition Author: Aihara, Kyoki Carlton Books, Very good or better in dust jacket. Siemes, Johannes Sophia Univ. Dust jacket very good, light sunfading to spine. Incident at Sakai and Other Stories. V1 of Historical Lit. Very good, p [i] dogeared. Dust jacket very good-, light wear.

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Japan Design Japan Design Author: Very good, covers are rubbed. Understanding Japanese Body Culture Author: Its Use and Theory Author: Kojima, Takashi Charles E. Yoshimura, Yuji Giovanna M. Japanese Art of Stone Appreciation: Suiseki and it's use.. Yuji Yoshimura Tuttle, Covers a bit worn. Stitt, Irene Crown Pub, Some chips and tears in dust jacket.

They, and also the Emperor himself, were against the idea of signing the Tripartite Pact. Japan, however, ended up signing it for at least three reasons: First, because Japan realized the fact that the Unites States and the United Kingdom were supporting China against Japan's policy; second, because Japan was so impressed with the successful initial military advance Germany quickly made in Europe that she now wanted to work with Germany; and third, because Japan was so frustrated with the United States' oil export sanction that she wanted to find a new way to acquire oil from Indonesia, which was a colony of Holland, which had become occupied by Germany in the same year.

There were many political and military leaders in Japan who were against any war with the United States because they were aware of the military, economic, and political might of America. But, in October , Army General Hideki Tojo, who represented the army's warlike position for its self-promotion, led the whole country to war. Fleet Admiral Yamamoto, who had to lead the Pearl Harbor attack, although he himself was against the war, expected to end the war quickly by arriving at a truce with the United States after the severe blow on Pearl Harbor.

Japan continued to carry out its imperialist policies and proceeded to occupy many parts of Southeast Asia and many Pacific islands, as well as Korea and Manchuria.

The United States put Japan under military governorship after its surrender. As for Emperor Hirohito, on September 27, , just six weeks after the war ended, he personally visited and met with General Douglas MacArthur , Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, telling the general that he himself was totally responsible for all the political and military decisions made during the war.

For this and other reasons, MacArthur decided to exempt the emperor and all members of the imperial family from criminal prosecution. MacArthur has often been criticized of this decision. However, he likely regarded using the intact institution of the Emperor as the most practical way of rebuilding a peaceful Japan. What he did for Japan during the seven-year period of American occupation is regarded by many as his greatest contribution to history.

In , under American occupation, Japan adopted a new pacifist constitution, emphasizing liberal democratic practices. After signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty with the Allied Powers in , Japan once again became an officially independent nation in , and was granted membership in the United Nations in Under a program of aggressive industrial development aided by the United States, Japan achieved spectacular economic growth, becoming the second largest economy in the world, with an annual growth rate averaging 10 percent for four decades.

Although this ended in the mids when Japan suffered a major recession, positive growth in the early twenty-first century has signaled a gradual recovery. Communist activities increased among workers, college students, and even intellectuals. However, most Japanese people always voted for anti-communist political leaders. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist countries, the power of communism rapidly decreased. When Japan surrendered in , Korea was liberated from Japanese annexation. Until then, Japan had used all resources available from Korea, mobilizing many Koreans for military and labor purposes.

Among 2,, Japanese soldiers who died during World War II, about , were Koreans; and among , citizens of Hiroshima exposed to the atomic bomb, about 30, were Koreans, and those who survived had to go through the pain of radioactive diseases. Furthermore, the Japanese economy quickly developed largely because of its assistance to the UN troops fighting in the Korean War Also, many Japanese history textbooks apparently did not tell the full truth about Japan's prewar policy of expansionism, thus angering Koreans and Chinese.

All this helped to worsen the already difficult relationship between Japan and Korea.

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Recently, however, both countries have begun growing closer in many ways, especially in the areas of culture and sports. For enhanced cultural exchanges, many Japanese now like to study the Korean language, and tourism between the two countries is booming. Despite the bursting of the Japanese asset price bubble in the early s and subsequent slow economic growth, Japan remains a major economic and cultural power. Japan has diplomatic relations with nearly all independent nations and has been an active member of the United Nations since Japanese foreign policy has aimed to promote peace and prosperity for the Japanese people by working closely with the West and supporting the United Nations.

During the Cold War , Japanese foreign policy was one-dimensional, focusing mainly on the economic realm. In recent years, however, both Japan's political elites and the public have shown a greater willingness to deal with security issues and support the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Japan's renewed focus on national security rests on an increasing sense of insecurity in the international environment, and its proximity to China and a belligerent North Korea.

Nonetheless, there are still significant internal political and psychological constraints on, as well as intense Chinese and South and North Korean opposition to, strengthening Japan's defense and military capabilities. While maintaining its primary relationship with the United States , Japan has diversified and expanded its ties with other nations. Good relations with its neighbors continue to be of vital interest and most nations, except China and South Korea, view Japanese influence as mainly positive. The Japanese extend significant economic assistance to the China in various modernization projects.

At the same time, Japan has maintained economic, but not diplomatic, relations with the Republic of China Taiwan , where a strong bilateral trade relationship thrives. The number of alumni who have participated in this program totals over 40, Japan maintains close economic and military relations with its key ally the United States , with the U.

Japan contributed non-combatant troops to the Iraq War. Japan is engaged in several territorial disputes with its neighbors: Japan also faces an ongoing dispute with North Korea over its abduction of Japanese citizens and its nuclear weapons and missile program. Japan's military is restricted by Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, which renounces the right to declare war or use military force as a means of settling international disputes, although the current government is seeking to amend the Constitution via a referendum.

The forces have been recently used in peacekeeping operations and the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq marked the first overseas use of its military since World War II. Close cooperation between government and industry, a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation have helped Japan achieve one of the largest economies in the world.

Banking , insurance, real estate, retailing, transportation, and telecommunications are all major industries. Japan has a large industrial capacity and is home to some of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles, electronic equipment , machine tools, steel , and nonferrous metals , ships, chemicals, textiles , and processed foods. It is home to leading multinational corporations and commercial brands in technology and machinery.

Construction has long been one of Japan's largest industries, with the help of multi-billion dollar government contracts in the civil sector. It is home to the world's second largest stock exchange, the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of over U. It is also home to some of the largest financial services companies, business groups, and banks.

From the s to the s, overall real economic growth has been called a "miracle: Government efforts to revive economic growth met with little success and were further hampered in to by the deceleration of the global economy. GDP growth for that year was 2. Because only about 15 percent of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation, [30] a system of terrace farming is used to cultivate in small areas, resulting in one of the world's highest levels of crop yields per unit area. However, Japan's small agricultural sector is also highly subsidized and protected.

Japan must import about 50 percent of its requirements of grain and fodder crops other than rice, and it relies on imports for most of its supply of meat. In fishing, Japan is ranked second in the world, behind China, in tonnage of fish caught. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15 percent of the global catch.

Foreign Correspondents of Japan: Covering a Half-century of Upheavals - From 1945 to the Present

Japan relies on foreign countries for almost all of its oil. Transportation in Japan is highly developed. As of , there were 1,, km , miles of paved roadways, airports, and 23, km 14, miles of railways. Japan Railways is the largest rail operator. Extensive international flights link Japan to many cities and countries.

Japan's main export partners are the United States Japan's main exports are transport equipment, motor vehicles, electronics , electrical machinery, and chemicals. With very limited natural resources to sustain economic development, Japan depends on other nations for most of its raw materials; thus it imports a wide variety of goods. Its main import partners are China 21 percent , U. Japan's main imports are machinery and equipment, fossil fuels, foodstuffs in particular beef , chemicals, textiles , and raw materials for its industries.

Overall, Japan's largest trading partner is China. Japan is a leading nation in the fields of scientific research, technology , machinery, and medical research.

Charles A. Pomeroy (Translator of Chinese Eunuchs)

Some of Japan's more important technological contributions are found in the fields of electronics , machinery, industrial robotics, optics, chemicals, semiconductors and metals. Japan is also home to six of the world's fifteen largest automobile manufacturers and seven of the world's twenty largest semiconductor sales leaders. Japan has significant plans for space exploration , including the construction of a moonbase by Primary, secondary schools, and universities were introduced into Japan in as a result of the Meiji Restoration.

Since , compulsory education in Japan consists of elementary school and middle school , which lasts for nine years from age 6 to age Almost all children continue their education at a three-year senior high school , and about 75 percent of high school graduates attend a university , junior college , trade school, or other post-secondary institution. Entrance to institutes of higher education is very competitive. Healthcare services in Japan are provided by national and local governments. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a universal health care insurance system that provides relative equality of access, with fees set by a government committee.

People without insurance through employers can participate in a national health insurance program administered by local governments. Since , all elderly persons have been covered by government-sponsored insurance. The Emperor has very limited powers and serves mostly as a ceremonial figurehead, defined by the constitution as "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people. The Emperor effectively acts as the head of state on diplomatic occasions. The Liberal Democratic Party was back in power by The relatively conservative LDP has supported the alliance with the United States and mutual security pacts between the two countries.

The Prime Minister of Japan is the head of government. The position is appointed by the Emperor of Japan after being designated by the Diet from among its members, and must retain the confidence of the House of Representatives to remain in office. Since the late nineteenth century, the judicial system has been largely based on the civil law of Europe, notably France and Germany. In , the Japanese government established a civil code based on the German model which, with post- World War II modifications, remains in effect in present-day Japan.

Statutory law originates in Japan's legislature, the National Diet of Japan, with the rubber-stamp approval of the Emperor. The current constitution requires that the Emperor promulgates legislation passed by the Diet, without specifically giving him the power to oppose the passing of the legislation. Japan's court system is divided into four basic tiers: The six codes are: While there exist eight commonly defined regions of Japan, administratively Japan consists of forty-seven prefectures, each overseen by an elected governor, legislature, and administrative bureaucracy. The former city of Tokyo is further divided into twenty-three special wards, each with the same powers as cities.

The nation is currently undergoing administrative reorganization by merging many of the cities, towns and villages with each other. This process will reduce the number of sub-prefecture administrative regions and is expected to cut administrative costs. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.

Japan has dozens of major cities, which play an important role in Japan's culture, heritage, and economy. Those in the list below of the ten most populous are all prefectural capitals and Government Ordinance Cities, except where indicated:.

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Also capital of Japan. For the most part, Japanese society is linguistically and culturally homogeneous with only small populations of foreign workers, Zainichi Koreans, Japanese Chinese, Japanese Brazilians, and others. While Korea was colonized by Japan before and during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Koreans were brought to Japan to work as laborers; those who remained in Japan after the war, and their descendants, do not have Japanese citizenship and face considerable discrimination.

Although the indigenous Ainu were largely assimilated centuries ago, a few scattered groups around Hokkaido have maintained their identity. Before World War II, Okinawans were perceived as having a different culture and language from the rest of Japan; today they are recognized as sharing cultural traditions similar to the rest of the nation. One thing is certain: After Midway Japan was essentially defeated though it would take time, and hundreds of thousands of American lives, to dislodge Japanese forces from their Pacific island redoubts.

Once Oahu was bombed an all-out alert was transmitted so it was certain that U. Their commander was General Douglas MacArthur, who had for years been preparing the islands' defenses. His orders, never carried out, were to bomb Japanese bases in Formosa, Indochina, and China.

When the Japanese attacked only hours after Pearl Harbor his subordinates begged him to get U. For reasons never explained, MacArthur refused to give these orders and the American air forces in the Philippines were destroyed on the ground where they were concentrated, wingtip to wingtip. These forces may not have been able to stop the Japanese takeover of the Philippines but no attempt was made.

As a result of the Japanese victory in the Philippines, tens of thousands of American and Filipino troops were taken prisoner, many of them to die horrible deaths owing to beatings and starvation, in what became the worst single defeat in American military history in terms of loss of life, worse even than Pearl Harbor. Yet, not only was MacArthur, not punished, as both Kimmell and Short were, he was promoted and given the Congressional Medal of Honor, though lieutenants at the scene said that MacArthur had never emerged from his fortified command center into the line of fire, the ostensible requirement for the honor.

A striking example of this is the ratio of American combat deaths at Iwo Jima, 7,, to Japanese deaths, , The British war historian, John Keegan, estimated that it took the U. Indeed, at war's end the U. Even before the war ended, however, the specter of mass unemployment surfaced again. In , Charles Wilson, former chief of General Electric, and FDR"s wartime production czar, had worried about the 16 million GIs who would shortly return to civilian life.

Would breadlines await them? War production was manifestly the only real factor that had ended the Great Depression but even so it had absorbed only a fraction of those formerly unemployed. The bulk of young would-be workers were now wearing military uniforms. Wilson's answer was a "permanent war economy. Though the Soviet Union had undergone the most extensive devastation in the history of warfare — between million dead, 70, cities and towns utterly destroyed, transportation and agriculture crippled- Americans were bombarded with propaganda to the effect that Stalin had illegitimately annexed Eastern Europe and was now poised to take over the world.

While communist propaganda did call for worldwide revolution, the revolt of the so-called "third world" that would begin in Greece, Palestine, India, Indonesia, Korea and Vietnam was not directed from Moscow. Incipient anti-colonial struggles across the planet, were a response to centuries of European and Japanese misrule, as well as the newly appreciated fact among the colonized that the Europeans were finished as empire builders.

Stalin sought to take advantage of western imperial decline to foster traditional Russian foreign policy aims, especially national security, rather than to spread the true faith of communism. The Red Army's occupation of Eastern and Central Europe was a result of having waged successful war against the Nazi juggernaut. The Soviets occupied these nations because many had allied themselves with Hitler and sent troops into Soviet territory. The Yalta Accords had effectively assented to a division of Europe between the U. Washington, employing Churchill's hypocritical phrase, began to assert that Stalin had drawn an "Iron Curtain" across Europe and that he had to be "contained.

And Stalin's presumed intransigence is called into question by the facts that he withdrew Soviet troops from Iran, Manchuria, North Korea, and Austria in line with wartime agreements, hardly the actions of someone bent on global domination. Rather Stalin's power, while great, was still limited by the vastly superior power of the U. Clearly the Soviets attempted to exploit popular revolutions wherever they could but Washington was also intervening across the planet and on a much greater scale. The wars in Korea and Vietnam were the brainchildren not of Moscow or Beijing but stemmed from indigenous political movements that had arisen in response to the depredations of Europeans or Japanese, and the aid given to U.

The deeper crisis facing American geo-political supremacy was the devastation of the global capitalist economy engendered by the war. That the European colonies and Korea were in revolt and threatening to take themselves in independent directions, thereby potentially removing themselves as sources of cheap labor and resources and markets for American goods. Finally, that American federal tax revenues, which had been increased ostensibly for the emergency of war, would have to be maintained.

In the face of widespread opposition to the new taxes, some way would have to be found to persuade the public that taxes would continue to rise. As the State Department's Petroleum Division put matters even before the war ended, oil was "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.

No documentary evidence exists to delineate what was agreed but the facts of history indicate a clear alliance between the two nations based on oil. In a State Department position paper declared: Our petroleum policy is predicated on a mutual recognition of a very extensive joint interest and upon control? US-UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern of the development and utilization of petroleum resources under the control of nationals of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial importance.

Indeed, American oil policy was aimed at controlling wartime allies as well as erstwhile enemies. As James Forrestal, shortly to be named the first Secretary of Defense, put matters in , "whoever sits on the valve of Middle East oil may control the destiny of Europe. An early draft of Truman's message read as follows: Two great wars and an intervening world depression have weakened the [capitalist] system almost everywhere except in the United States???

Whether that took the form of Stalinism, state socialism, state capitalism, economic nationalism, or Arab nationalism made little difference. What official Washington meant by "free enterprise" was freedom for American corporations and financial institutions to penetrate the markets of the world on American terms. Obviously that would limit, at the very least, the freedom of others. Fearing that such language would make the policy appear "like an investment prospectus" the final draft of the Truman Doctrine, the one that became public, was retro-fitted to emphasize the global threat of communism.

Meanwhile, the American public was slow to take seriously the threat of Soviet communism, and was balking at continued taxation at wartime levels. Then, in , the near simultaneous shocks of the Chinese Communist Revolution, and the earlier than predicted Soviet atomic bomb success altered Washington's initial plans. Though genuine China experts emphasized that tensions between the Chinese communists and Stalin portended a future rift, and insisted that China posed no threat to the U. Militarization, unprecedented in American history, became the order of the day. The Soviet A-Bomb was predictable.

Considerable evidence exists to conclude that one of the major factors in the decision to use the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had as much to do with sending a clear message to Stalin as to the Japanese intransigents. Stalin was shocked by the atomic bombings, not because he was squeamish obviously, but because he now had at hand prima facie evidence that the Americans could be as ruthless as himself.

Certainly the Soviets drew a clear conclusion from the vaporization of the two cities and they then pulled out all the stops in their own scientific establishment to meet the U. Ironically, in the name of meeting what it claimed was a deadly threat, Washington's policies toward the Soviets hastened them to create the far graver threat of the capability to wreak nuclear annihilation upon the U. Liberals and conservatives blamed China's march to communism on Moscow but the reality was that the corrupt rule of Washington's client, Jiang Jieshi, provided the vacuum which Mao Zedong readily filled.

The communists had resisted the Japanese fiercely while Jiang's troops confined their military activities to plundering their fellow Chinese. Communists rode to power in China on the crest of popular support, and as a result of Chinese conditions, not because puppet-masters in the U. The National Security Council was established in , ostensibly to rectify intelligence weaknesses that had led to Pearl Harbor but in reality to coordinate the new Cold War. In it issued one of the most pivotal documents in the annals of U. Arguing that a quantum leap in military spending might distort the Soviet-bloc and Chinese economies to the point where they would develop military hardware over consumer goods, "guns over butter," and thereby foster internal upheaval, NSC 68 called for a tripling of the U.

The fiscally conservative Congress balked at the enormity of the appropriations requested. Two months later relief arrived. Korea came along and saved us. As was the case in China, matters were complicated by the fact that indigenous Korean opposition to Japanese rule had been led by the communists.

Thus communists believed they had a right to establish the post war government, or at the very least to play a major role in any postwar regime that would encompass the entire peninsula. Korean anti-communists hoped to purge their rivals entirely. Led by the American client Syngman Rhee, they were determined to reunify Korea on their terms, and until the war began had to be restrained by Washington from attacking the north. Only weeks before North Korean communist forces crossed the 38th Parallel into the south, Secretary Acheson had written Korea out of the U.

Washington declared that it organized the U. This had the inexorable effect of drawing China into the war. When the Chinese forced American troops into retreat MacArthur's erstwhile victory stood at the brink of disaster, since the Chinese appeared capable of driving American forces off the Korean peninsula entirely.

MacArthur therefore openly advocated the use of nuclear weapons, joined by numerous members of Congress, and the world stood at the brink of another global conflagration. The Chinese, however, stopped their advance at the 38th Parallel, restoring the status quo ante bellum, and forced the North Korean communists into peace negotiations. When in an armistice was signed, over 3 million Koreans were dead, more than 50, U. Though Washington claimed that it had achieved a victory for democracy, the new southern regime proved as dictatorial and brutal as many other American clients, killing or imprisoning all communists remaining in the south, and later brutally suppressing dissent form any quarter.

But South Korea was now safe to become a haven for massive American foreign investment. North Korea actually developed economically as well under communist rule, though political freedoms were totally absent. Yet, another salient fact, but one which has been missing from the discussion, is that when American pilots returned to their carriers in they reported that there were virtually no targets remaining to be bombed. Most of the north's population was living in underground shelters. Massive dams along the Yalu River had been destroyed from the air causing massive flooding and loss of life, while simultaneously destroying crops over a vast area, therefore leading to mass famine.

Nazis were executed after World War II for similar violations of the Geneva Convention that the international tribunal ruled were war crimes. What might the American mindset be had we ever undergone such devastation? Ho Chi Minh turned toward communism as a direct result of having lived under French capitalism, as predatory and parasitic a system in their colonies as has ever existed under the rubric of any "ism," and because when he looked to American aid at the Versailles peace conference in he was shown the door, as he would be in when he appealed to President Truman for recognition of Vietnamese independence.

Moreover, the Vietnamese revolution was impelled primarily by nationalism not communism. Ho was never Stalin's or Mao's stooge. Had Washington followed the advice of its agents who lived with the Viet Minh during World War II, and recognized Vietnamese independence, that nation would have been a loyal ally in southeast Asia, communist or not, and the terrible tragedy of the Vietnam War could have been avoided. Vietnam could have been a much safer locus of American trade than it is even now.

Throughout the former European empires the real problem for Washington was de-colonization. Sometimes the movements were communist but often not. Nationalism and the movement toward "non-alignment" were equal threats, though anti-communism provided the ideological cover for Washington's global military response to any and all emerging movements that might frustrate the overall goal of a unitary, integrated American-managed world-system. Thus in the name of anti-communism the newly minted Central Intelligence Agency, violating the congressional mandate that had created it, and domestic and international law as well, overthrew the parliamentary government in Iran in and Guatemala in In that year Vietnam was divided, supposedly temporarily, in order to allow nationwide elections but, since the CIA knew that Ho Chi Minh would easily win, the division was really to buy time to prevent Ho from achieving his movement's goal of independence and national unity.

In fact Washington moved to prevent national elections agreed to by all great powers, except the U. Throughout the s the U. The strategy of attempting to overthrow governments that stood in the way of American corporate dominance of key national industries in the Muslim world backfired by creating a vacuum into which Islamic fundamentalism flowed, in what the CIA today calls "blowback. Despite efforts in the mids by Congress to rein in such activities on the part of American intelligence agencies this pattern continued in Africa, and in Central America during the s, and on up to the present day, a full decade after the fall of communism.

New enemies appeared as soon as the old ones departed. Forgotten today is the fact that the very first profits American oil companies derived from the Middle East came from Iraq. In the Eisenhower Administration agreed to anchor the Baghdad Pact, an informal alliance of the U. In , the Eisenhower Doctrine formalized the agreement by declaring Washington's intent to arm these nations and defend the region against "outside aggression.

In the British-installed Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in a military coup comprised of nationalist and pan-Arabist officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim, who announced his intent to nationalize Iraqi oil, established relations with the Soviets, and set up an informal coalition of oil-producing states that would ultimately evolve into the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. At that time, Allen Dulles, chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, cited the situation in Iraq as "the most dangerous in the world today.

Saddam Hussein, at that time a youthful Ba'athist, attempted to assassinate Qassim with the assistance of the CIA, thereby initiating the agency's decades long on-again-off-again romance with Hussein in his rise to power through the ranks of the Ba'ath until he became president of Iraq in , when his first act was to murder all of his presumed opponents. Islamic fundamentalism in its present form came into existence as a protest against European meddling and westernization among the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and it received a mighty boost when the U. The Shah's regime brutally suppressed traditional Shiite Muslims with a secret police force trained by the CIA, and promoted western style modernization.

It even went so far in the mids as to allow the army to fire on Shiite women demonstrating to wear the banned chador, or Islamic headdress, killing dozens and thereby setting off the firestorm that ultimately led to the Islamic Revolution of To contain the spread of Shiite fundamentalism Washington found it expedient to curry favor with Saddam Hussein of neighboring Iraq whom it had assisted to power in the first place , encouraging him to go to war with Iran, and providing him with much military hardware and other forms of support. Donald Rumsfeld, then President Reagan's special envoy, even met with the dictator in and gave him a warm handshake and the go-ahead.

When Saddam used chemicals provided him by American, and European companies to make poison gas and then used this banned product on Iranians and Kurds within Iraq itself, the international community condemned this savage crime and attempted to impose sanctions against him, but the first Bush Administration refused to join in and worked to protect his regime right up until he crossed his erstwhile patron by invading Kuwait in Cynical propaganda was employed to win the American public's support for war with Iraq in , most especially the unproven assertion that Saddam intended to invade Saudi Arabia and by annexing the world's largest source of oil make Iraq the master of Mideast petroleum.

Such ploys also included the impersonation of a Kuwaiti nurse by the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter who claimed before television cameras to have seen Iraqi troops slaughtering infants in their cribs when she hadn't even been in Kuwait during the invasion. This grotesque and mendacious publicity stunt was orchestrated by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, a firm with deep connections to the current administration.

When Iraqi troops committed genuine atrocities in Iran and against Iraqi Kurds these received virtually no notice in the American media, at least not until later after Saddam had been demonized. Iraq was driven from Kuwait easily. Rather than overthrow Saddam at that time the first Bush Administration realized that the untimely removal of Saddam would quickly lead to the disintegration of Iraq and quite likely to a Shiite takeover of much of the nation, while the Kurds would opt for independence, thereby inflaming Turkey's, Iran's and Syria's Kurds.

The entire Middle East would have been destabilized. The Bush Administration would have preferred Saddamism without Saddam but in the absence of a strongman they could trust they settled for the devil they knew, one whose brutality could be counted upon to keep Iraq intact. The result was twelve more years of Saddam's brutality for Iraq.

When a United Nations team visited Iraq immediately following the Gulf War it found its infrastructure, including water systems, sewage systems, electricity grids, and hospitals in an "apocalyptic condition," devastation induced by the American bombing. Once one of the more developed of Third World nations Iraq collapsed suddenly into one of the poorest. Defense Intelligence Agency documents show that U.

The conclusion is inescapable. Washington wanted mass civilian deaths and casualties. Undoubtedly to send a clear message and savage example to others in the region who might contest Washington's interests. In short order Washington imposed a comprehensive sanctions regime that led over the next few years to the deaths of over , Iraqi children under the age of five. The Clinton Administration, in a bid to undermine criticism, appeared to soften the sanctions through the "oil for food" program.

However, it was utterly predictable that Saddam would sabotage it by keeping oil revenues to reward his closest allies and corrupt UN officials and allowing ordinary Iraqis quite literally to starve. The UN itself, which pretended that it was the initiator of the sanctions, released reports indicating that the effects on the Iraqi people contravened the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention. The toll being taken on ordinary Iraqis was so terrible, the UN estimated 1. The policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society.

It is as simple and as terrifying as that. In , 70 members of Congress appealed to President Clinton to lift the sanctions and end what they termed "infanticide masquerading as policy. Even before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in President Carter declared that the Soviets were threatening the entire region, and he therefore enunciated his own version of American foreign policy doctrine by asserting: These Islamists committed acts of terror against civilians, including blowing up buildings and aircraft in Afghanistan and in neighboring Soviet republics.

No American officials called them terrorists then. Instead they applied the Orwellian appellation "freedom fighters. His answer was stark: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War? Stirred up Muslims indeed! The Taliban soon after gave safe haven to bin Laden and he then used Afghanistan as a base to launch a wave of terrorist attacks against U. The evidence is clear that plans to attack Iraq had been formulated in the Bush White House prior to the events of Just nine days following the attacks key members of the Defense Policy Board, many of whom had served in the Bush I and Reagan administrations, wrote an open letter to George W.

Even if evidence does not directly link Iraq to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.

Well before Bush was even "elected" a radical plan to exert global hegemony had been put forth by a group calling itself the Project for a New American Century PNAC , the main elements of which have been put into motion, and which constitute the most comprehensive revision of American foreign policy since NSC, and resembles nothing so much as the aggressive posture undertaken by Washington at the turn of the last century.

Indeed, the Bush Administration's current objectives far surpass the Cold War blueprint in scope and the national resources that will be necessary to secure them. That includes the economic and military potential of the European Union as well as the former communist giants. PNAC's military goals stress the ability of the U. These are the essential tenets of the so-called "Bush Doctrine. Wolfowitz drafted a Defense Policy Guidance document calling for continued intervention throughout the region to "access vital raw materials, especially Persian Gulf oil.

Again this proposal was rejected. But upon George W.

Bush's ascension to the presidency via judicial fiat most among this neo-conservative coterie became prominent members of his administration or otherwise advised it. The proposal called for entirely new missions for U. As national Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice put matters: An earthquake of the magnitude of can shift the tectonic plates of international politics? PNAC released a letter arguing that "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.

He also asserted that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger for its proscribed nuclear weapons program. The very next day, in a dramatic speech to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a total of 29 claims about Iraq's ties to terrorists, its weapons programs, various violations of UN requirements, and the claim that Saddam had "the wherewithal to develop smallpox.

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