Wars R Us

WARS R US

Blueprint for War - From Korea to the Gulf

[CAPTION] Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee greets the crowd and answers questions after his April 20 talk on the U-M campus. 

On Wednesday, April 20, about 350 people showed up at the Modern Languages Building on the University of Michigan campus to hear author, lecturer and former CIA officer, Philip Agee speak.

Agee left the Central Intelligence Agency in 1969 after serving 12 years in the agency and participating in nearly every type of CIA operation -from recruitment of spies, to tapping telephones and bugging bedrooms, to propaganda, political warfare, and the provocation of military coups.

After he left the CIA, Agee became the first operations officer to reveal the agency's goals and methods with the publication of his first book in the early '70s, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary." As a result Agee was under constant attack from the U.S. government, the "mainstream media," and other allies of the administration for what they viewed as Agee's damage to the "national security." These attacks resulted in the expulsion of Agee from five NATO countries and the revocation of his U.S. passport.

When Agee returned to the U.S. in 1987 to promote his latest book, "On the Run," he was met with strong opposition as well as wide support. In addition to scathing paper editorials, then Vice-President George Bush called Agee "disgraceful and disgusting."

Agee now makes his home in Madrid, Spain and travels with a passport from the World Service Authority, issued under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter.

Agee's talk, titled "The CIA, Central America, the Gulf War and American Democracy," was sponsored by the Latin American Solidarity Committee. Due to space limitations, what follows is a transcript of those portions of Agee's talk which relate to the Gulf War.

We all know the reason why the U.S., led by President Bush,  intervened in the Persian Gulf, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 Iraqis; it was in order to restore to power the Emir of Kuwait. Bush has restored the legitimate ruling authority in Kuwait, no question about that. And he's re-stored, at the same time, the tried and true American political principle of "one man, one vote." In this case, one man - the Emir - and one vote - his.

But we did hear other reasons very early on. We did hear that our way of life was at stake here. I saw that on television in Madrid, and for days and weeks I kept watching for news of the millions of Americans who would take to the streets here in joy and celebration that their way of life was going to change - that their poverty, their ignorance, their homelessness, their uncared-for illnesses would soon be over. But what we saw instead, of course, was George Bush's way of life - golfing, boating, fishing on the coast of Maine, like any respectable member of the Eastern elite.

We also heard that we were intervening in the Persian Gulf in order to safeguard U.S. and other Western access to the energy resources in the Gulf - the petroleum. We also heard that we were in there to stop naked aggression and that naked aggression would not be rewarded. And at one point, just when all the polls were showing concern with the deepening recession and job security in the United States, Baker made the comment that yes indeed, in the Persian Gulf crisis, jobs here in the States were at stake. None of those seemed to work too well so Bush, as I recall, went back to the version in which we were there to stop naked aggression.

One of the things that we have not seen in the mainstream media in the U.S. is an alternative explanation of where this Gulf crisis carne from and where it is likely to lead. I offer this as a suggestion; in my opinion, the Bush administration needed a crisis, a world crisis, to replace the East/West crisis in Europe which had largely disappeared with the collapse of communism. That crisis in Europe - the standoff between the United States and the NATO countries, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw PACT countries - had served since about 1950 to justify the permanent war economy in the United States.

Do you know that the official figure for the proportion of the national budget that goes to defense purposes or military purposes is 26%? That was 26% for 1990. But that official figure does not factor in many enormous expenses that are directly related to the military such as interest on the national debt for past military expenditures, the retirement program for tens of thousands of former Department of Defense civilian employees, and on and on. Analysts who have taken into account all of these programs come up with a figure of well over 50% of the national budget going in one way or another for military purposes. Gore Vidal, among others, puts the figure at two-thirds or around 65% of the national budget. Clearly, military spending in this country dominates the economy. And it has been that way ever since 1950.

The gulf crisis, in my opinion, was simply a crisis that was needed; it was manufactured; it was made in the USA. And it was made so that we would have an international threat or international crisis to continue justifying this kind of war economy in the United States.

It's worth recalling, briefly, where this carne from. In 1950, there was extreme concern at the highest echelons of the Truman Administration that the U.S. was on its way back to the conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s. During those first five years between the end of WWII and 1950, the United States economy had declined by 20%. Unemployment, which was almost nothing at the end of the war (700,000), had risen to 4.7 million. In early 1950, the decision was taken to multiply, by several times, military spending by rearming in the United States and by having the U.S. finance the rearmament of Western Europe.

The problem then was a so-called "dollar gap." There were not sufficient dollars in Western Europe to generate the imports from the United States needed to sustain the U.S. economy. Everyone knows that we cannot consume what we produce in this country. And so the United States, for 100 years, has been dependent on its ability to export goods to sustain its economy.

Paul Nitze is the man who drew up the analysis and the conclusions to create a permanent war economy in the United States. You may remember the name because he was one of the chief arms negotiators during the Reagan period. But in January 1950, he was chief of the policy planning staff of the Department of State. And he wrote a document known as NSC-68 -- NSC standing for National Security Council. This document, in the version that I have, is about 50 pages. It was from the Naval War College Review of 1975 . For 25 years the document was top-secret. And in 1975, only by mistake, by error, was it released and then published.

That document gave a very detailed and lengthy analysis of the world situation and of the domestic situation in the United States. It provided the rationale for the decision to rearm in the United States, and to finance the rearming of Western Europe. Despite the subsidy program known as the Marshall Plan, which in a sense had failed, there were not enough dollars. In the NSC-68 scenario, billions of dollars would be sent to Europe in the form of Defense Support Grants. These were not loans, they were grants introduced into Europe for the purpose of rearmament which, it was hoped, would generate sufficient imports from the United States that would in turn sustain the U.S. economy.

As NSC-68 describes the situation in early 1950, (this is the operative quote from the document), The United States and other free nations will, within a period of a few years at most, experience a decline in economic activity of serious proportions unless more positive governmental programs are adopted." The solution adopted - the more positive governmental program - was expansion of the military.

The problem for Truman though, and his administration, was that the Congress opposed this doubling, tripling, quadrupling of the military budget. And it wasn't popular with the public at large either, because of the additional taxes that would be required - Truman could not get that money from Congress. Then what happened? In June 1950, the Korean War broke out.

Korea had been divided between North and South at the 38th parallel by the Soviet Union and the United States. The U.S. had set up a regime in the South (in effect a dictatorship), and the Soviets had established a government in the North. During the five years from 1945 to the time of partition in 1950, there had been continuing clashes between North Korean and South Korean forces along the border and fighting was common.

In June 1950, the South Koreans made incursions into the North and the North struck back, going into South Korea en masse. For several weeks the South Korean forces retreated, in effect inviting the North Koreans to follow them south.

Meanwhile the United States immediately got resolutions through the United Nations Security Council very similar to those put through in the recent Persian Gulf crisis, setting up an international military force to send to Korea and an alliance of nations similar to the one established for the Gulf crisis. But the United States provided about 95% of the military forces (the South Koreans had been badly defeated).

By September, the United States and its allied forces had pushed the North Koreans back to the 38th parallel, the boundary. That would have ended the matter, at least the military side, at that point, had the United States accepted a Soviet proposal in the United Nations for a cease-fire and for nationwide elections to reunify the country.

But Truman was opposed; he had other plans. He needed to prolong this crisis in Korea in order to overcome congressional and public opposition to his plans for rearmament under NSC68. So he invaded North Korea, exceeding the UN resolutions which had only called for authorized expulsion of the North Koreans from the South. The United States forces advanced rapidly toward the North in the direction of the Yalu river, which forms the boundary between North Korea and China, and which had been taken over by the communists the year before. China threatened to intervene in this war unless the United States forces stopped. But they didn't stop. China then intervened as predicted by everyone. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops began crossing the Yalu river where they confronted the United States forces, forcing them to retreat.

By November, the U.S. media was filled with pictures and stories of U.S. troops retreating through ice and snow before hordes of advancing Chinese communist troops. This was what Truman needed. In early December he went on national radio, declared a state of national emergency, and spoke the words I was immediately reminded of by Bush's remarks about our way of life being at stake. Truman mustered all the hype and emotion he could and he said: "Our homes, our nation, all the things that we believe in, are in great danger. This danger has been created by the rulers of the Soviet Union." He also called again for massive increases in military spending for U.S. and European forces quite apart from the needs in Korea.

While of course there was no threat from the Soviet Union at all. They were still rebuilding from the rubble of WWII, in which their country lost 20 million people. Truman attributed the Korean situation to the Russians in order to create emotional hysteria, a false threat, and to get the leverage over Congress needed to gain approval for the huge arms expenditures that Congress had refused. As we know, Truman's deceit worked. The U.S. military budget more than tripled - from $13 billion in 1950 to $44 billion - in 1952. In just two years the military budget more than tripled. And U.S . military forces for those same two years doubled to 3.6 million people under arms.

The Korean War went on for three more years after it could have ended resulting in about 34,000 U.S. troops dead, more than 100,000 wounded, and an overall casualty figure in the millions. The permanent war economy became a reality and we've lived with it now for a little more than 40 years. All through these 40 odd years the Cold War justified the huge military expenditures - the so-called "Soviet threat," which if you go back and study the history of the period, was a manufactured threat. It had to be sold to the people of the United States in order to justify these enormous military expenditures. This process is known in some circles as military Keynesianism.

Getting back to Iraq. The Persian Gulf, with 65% of the world's petroleum reserves, is a perfect place for the substitute crisis and Saddam Hussein and Iraq the perfect foils. The Bush administration, of course, knew the historical claims Iraq held over Kuwait. And these were significant Kuwait had belonged for hundreds of years to the southern province of Iraq, the Basra province, under the occupation of the Turks, the Ottoman Empire.

With the collapse of the Turkish Empire in the wake of WWI, however, the British decided to lop off Kuwait from that southern province. In 1922 Sir Percy Cox, the British high commissioner in Baghdad drew the lines in the sand - for the first time in history - delineating borders between what are now Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. In so doing, he deliberately deprived the Iraqis of a viable seaport. The British wanted no competition from Baghdad (which at that time was the commercial and cultural capital of the region) for dominance over the Persian Gulf where they converted no less than 10 Sheikdoms, including Kuwait, into colonies. Iraq, as a result, never formally recognized the independence of Kuwait and they from time to time claimed that the territory should be given back.

When the British did give independence to Kuwait in 1961, the Iraqis massed troops on the Kuwaiti border, threatening to take the territory back by force. But the British sent an emergency military force to Kuwait and the Iraqis backed down. The Iraqis did the very same thing in 1972 and again in 1976. So there were these historical claims.

There were more immediate claims as well. For some years now the Iraqis have been insisting that the Kuwaitis release to them two uninhabited islands in the North, just at the top of Persian Gulf, so that Iraq could use these two islands to develop a proper seaport. Currently, their only seaport is Basra, 60 miles up the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is not a proper seaport. The Kuwaitis refused these demands.

The Kuwaitis had also been, in recent years, overproducing oil. In 1986, the OPEC countries established a price of $18 per barrel and agreed upon quotas to maintain that price around the world. The Kuwaitis chose to far exceed their quota, however, as did the United Arab Emirates. As a direct result of this overproduction, by July of last year when the OPEC oil ministers met in Geneva, the price had fallen to something like $13 or $14 a barrel.

There were two results. One was that industrial importing countries like the United States were getting their best price on oil in constant dollars in more than 40 years. But it was killing the Iraqi economy. It was especially squeezed having been saddled with a $70-$80 billion debt from their eight-year war with Iran during the 1980s.

Secondly, the Iraqis, at the time of the OPEC meeting in Geneva had massed 30,000 or so troops on the Kuwaiti border to pressure that country into accepting a new price, and into accepting quotas and sticking with them. The Kuwaitis then accepted, in Geneva, a new price of $21/barrel and the new quotas to maintain that new price.

What was the United States doing during this time? The signs are that the United States - the Bush administration - wanted Hussein to think that he could take over Kuwait with impunity. In April of last year, Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs, John Kelly, testified before Congress that "the United States had no commitment to defend Kuwait."

On July 25th, one week before the invasion, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis apparently recorded this meeting secretly, and later made public a transcript of the meeting. At this meeting - and I should point out that the Department of State has not disputed the accuracy of this transcript - the U.S . ambassador said to Hussein, "Mr. President, I have a direct instruction from Secretary of State Baker to emphasize to you that the United States has no opinion in your border dispute with Kuwait." She also said "President Bush has instructed me to seek better relations with Iraq."  Saddam Hussein replied to her at various points throughout the transcript that Kuwait was waging economic warfare against Iraq by overproducing and that he was going to take drastic action.

On the very same day that the Ambassador's meeting with Saddam Hussein, the same Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs, John Kelly, cancelled a Voice of America broadcast that would have warned that the U.S. would come to the aid of its friends in the Gulf, including Kuwait. At the same time, there was a prohibition issued on any warning to any of the thousands of people who might become hostages in the event that war broke out.

Hussein, following the OPEC meeting, did not withdraw his 30,000 troops from the border. On the contrary, he more than tripled the troops on the border to 100,000. This was quite well known from the satellite photography - no secret at all. Two days before the invasion, this same Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs, again testifies to Congress that the U.S. has no commitment to defend Kuwait. The CIA, according to Senator Boren, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and according to press reports as well, had been predicting the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait five or six days before it actually happened, and had reported its information to the Bush Administration. So Bush had one week, really, between the time of Ambassador Glaspie's meeting with Saddam Hussein and the invasion to take some action knowing the invasion was coming.

What happened? Nothing. In the transcript of the meeting between Glaspie and Hussein not one word of warning was given by the ambassador to Hussein not to invade. There were 100,000 Iraqi troops poised on the Kuwaiti border. There was plenty of time, for example, for Bush to call for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council as he did after the invasion. But he could have done it before to prevent the invasion. He could also have organized and rushed a multinational military force to Kuwait to show that the world was going to defend that country, that it would not tolerate an invasion. But he did nothing, absolutely nothing at all.

With all these indications, it seems to me not unreasonable to conclude that the Bush administration, while it could have prevented the Gulf Crisis from ever happening, needed a crisis, wanted a crisis, and in fact encouraged Saddam Hussein to believe that he could get away with it. I mention all of this because it fits a pattern. It fits a pattern based on this country's need for a continuing international crisis, a continuing new threat to justify the war economy.