The XXI Century American Revolution- Part 1

Powell took over as Secretary of State in charge of "Foggy Bottom", a vital position within the framework of the political situation opened after 9/11, given that the Secretary of State advises the President on international policy, takes charge of the representation of the country before other countries and international organizations. From his position in "Foggy Bottom" Powell was in charge of raising, proposing and bringing to terms international treaties with third parties, representing the White House in any international event, having all the diplomatic representation of the Republic, and protecting citizens. , companies and institutions of the country abroad.

Powell had experience because he worked alongside Dick Cheney in the Bush Sr. Administration, and although Powell was not from the constellation of Neocon groups, he had experience in military operations, having been, for example, one of those who directed the military operation "Desert Storm. " " in Kuwait in 1991.

However, in his capacity as Secretary of State, Colin Powell went down in history for having uttered one of the biggest lies of the time in front of the largest number of people. Powell achieved the record of being the official who lied to millions of people at the same time, a sad achievement he achieved when giving his speech at the UN Security Council in February 2003, where before millions of people around the world, he stated that Iraq He had weapons of mass destruction.

The claim was revealed to be false, but it later served to justify the invasion of Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction never appeared, but Powell's lies remained forever. Donald Rumsfeld remained in history linked to the PNAC strategy, perhaps its most visible face and its emblem. Protagonist of the Bush cabinet from his position as Secretary of Defense and head of the Pentagon, he was the protagonist of a clear division of tasks among Bush Administration officials: While Cheney organized the great business of war and Powell repeated lies to justify it, Rumsfeld was its executor. . He specialized in torture, persecution and concentration camps. Guantanamo is Rumsfeld's great living monument.

This official, a member of the Neocon group , had participated in the Reagan Administration as an articulator of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) known as "Star Wars." In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton appointed him chairman of the Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat, and with the Bush Administration he reached the position of head of the Pentagon, under which the largest restructuring of this institution in its entirety was carried out. history, since it was created in the 40's during the Truman Administration, as we have already analyzed.

The Secretary of Defense managed to transfer important budget items to the Pentagon, which caused friction between the Pentagon and the Intelligence community. During Rumsfeld's mandate, the Pentagon invaded powers, both Intelligence and diplomatic, acquiring a leading role in areas that under normal conditions would correspond to the CIA or the State Department. Rumsfeld undertook a diplomatic offensive to convince his NATO allies of the virtues of the new Missile Shield program, but had little success in implementing it.

Another important piece in the assembly of the Bush cabinet was the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, in a position that over the decades took on more and more power and importance in the country's political structure. The National Security Adviser chairs the National Security Council (NSC) created by the National Security Act of June 26, 1947.

The NSC advises, coordinates and advocates on strategic, foreign policy and national security issues as an administrative organization reporting directly to the President. It is composed of the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor, and may also invite other members depending on the circumstances.

The National Security Advisor has progressively played an increasingly leading role in the National Security Council, especially in recent decades. For example, the role of Henry Kissinger is well remembered, particularly in the '70s, who as National Security Advisor played a key role in critical moments, carrying out international political initiatives and negotiations, some in secret. Condoleeza Rice was a businesswoman from the oil industry linked to Chevron, and she was a member of the steering committees of various Multinational Corporations, such as JP Morgan Chase, Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard and Carnegie Corporation, among others.

Also coming from the Neocon sector, she was always linked to conservative entities such as the Rand Corporation. Like his cabinet colleagues, he had served in the Bush Sr. administration, and since 1999 Rice had been working with the team of advisors called "The Vulcans" that included Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Dov Zakheim, Stephen Hadley, Robert Blackwill and Robert Zoellick, all officials who had great international experience having been part of the governments of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr.

In the second line of Bush's cabinet, the officials were also leaders linked to conservative entities and the Neocon group. This is the case of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a "Vulcan" Vietnam veteran, specialist in political negotiations and international security, or Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, leader of the Neocon group, and Rumsfeld's number 2. Wolfowitz was a signatory of the PNAC call and was permanently linked to the different cabinets that led to the Pentagon in recent decades.

John Ashcroft, the attorney general, had been attorney and governor of Missouri, linked to the right of the Republican Party. The only official who did not come from the Republican Party or the Neocon is George Tenet, Director of the CIA, who was from the Democratic Party and appointed to that position by the Clinton Administration in 1997. Tenet despite his political origin different from the rest of the cabinet, smoothly adopted the Neocon strategy.

Leading the economic area, railroad magnate John Snow was appointed as the new Secretary of the Treasury, who was president of the CSX railroad group, and was accompanied since 2002 by Stephen Friedman, former president of Goldman Sachs, as senior economic advisor to the White House. . It is not the objective to talk here about all the first and second line officials who were part of the Bush Administration, but rather to point out some touches of the most important of them to understand how the PNAC strategy was implemented, and who were the ones who they carried it forward.

The Founding Fathers and the Bush Cabinet

What would the core of leaders commonly known as the "Founding Fathers of the United States" think of the Constitutional reform made by the Bush Administration? What would Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison or Paine think of the institutional reform that followed 9/11? What would some of the most prominent political leaders who founded the United States, led the American Revolution, signed the Declaration of Independence, or participated in writing the United States Constitution have said?

Many of the Founding Fathers came from patrician families and oligarchic circles of their time. Many of them exploited slaves, possessed great wealth and were owners of large fortunes. However, even with all the limitations imposed on them by the political and social conditions of their time, they promoted and led a powerful revolutionary process that liquidated the tyranny of the British Empire, the most powerful existing in its time. For this reason, even when they belonged to the most wealthy classes, the Founding Fathers knew how to promote some of the most revolutionary and democratic laws, measures and ideas that were an example not only for the nascent nation, but for the entire world.

Which leads us to ask ourselves the following questions: What would Benjamin Franklin have thought about the persecution of racial minorities and immigrants that the Patriot Act caused? Would anyone who was President of the Society to Promote the Abolition of Slavery in 1780, when black people had no rights, have approved these acts? And what would the "Father of the Nation" George Washington think of the profound reform that the Constitution underwent ?

Would the promoter of the Constitution of the United States of America and the first president of the United States have approved the reform made by a simple law dictated by Bush? The answer was given by Washington himself in his "Farewell Address" of 1796: " The basis of our political system is the right of the people to form or modify the constitutions of their governments; but the voted Constitution, while it exists, is sacred and mandatory for everyone until it is changed by the explicit vote of the people" (26)

What would constitutional lawyer and Founding Father John Adams, who was the second President of the United States, think of the AUMF that concentrated powers in the Executive Branch? In 1776, Adams published the pamphlet called " Thoughts on Government", which inspired the formation of a political regime with strict separation of powers. Adams inspired the character of the US Constitution by featuring a bicameral legislature, an Executive, and an independent judiciary.

And he appointed John Marshall as the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who established the Judicial Branch, with equivalence of powers with the Executive and Legislative. And what would Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, Founding Fathers and declared sympathizers of the French Revolution, say about the categories of "domestic terrorist" or "enemy combatant" ? What would Jefferson say that having numerous friendships with the social elite and the nobility of France, when the French Revolution broke out, took the side of the revolutionaries?

And Thomas Paine, the Founding Father and drafter of the Constitution, who participated in the French Revolution and fought on the barricades? Paine and Jefferson did not hesitate for a second to put themselves at the service of the French Revolution, they stood on the barricades, faced the "terror" of tyranny, and wrote pamphlets. They could not have done it because of their wealthy social position, but they did it. What would the Bush Administration have done with Paine and Jefferson? Probably these leaders considered within the core of the "Founding Fathers" would have been declared "enemy combatants" by the Bush Administration.

What would Jefferson, who, being the third president of the United States of America in his two terms, never vetoed a single congressional resolution, think of the AUMF? They did not see popular uprisings and rebellions as something bad. In a letter to William Stephens Smith in 1787, Jefferson wrote: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and is as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical... It is a necessary medicine for the good conditions of the world." government" (27)

Did James Madison think about a law like the AUMF? Considered among the core of the so-called " Founding Fathers" , he was the only president of the United States who had to flee the White House and the capital city of Washington DC, in the face of the advance of enemy foreign troops who occupied the city and burned the presidential residence, during the Anglo-American War of 1812? It is easy to know what they would think, because when they had to defend the nascent homeland against the all-powerful British Empire, they legislated and founded institutions in the exact opposite direction to that of the Bush Administration.

The Founding Fathers governed and legislated to defend the country from an enemy infinitely superior to what Bush called the "Axis of Evil." They faced all the imperial powers of their time and founded a revolutionary nation to consolidate independence. On the other hand, the Neocon group that dominated the Bush administration carried out a profound constitutional and institutional reform of the United States, in the opposite direction to the political regime built by the Founding Fathers. The Neocon tried to erase with a stroke of the pen the legacy that the Founding Fathers left behind.

The republican regime of the United States was not a product of chance, nor was it made in a cold laboratory, it is a regime that was established in the country over centuries, through Revolutions and great mobilizations of the people that faced to dictators, tyrants, kings, and all kinds of oppressors. It had several milestones: The North American Revolution of the 18th century against the British Empire and the Civil War of the 19th century that unified the country and abolished slavery.

In the 20th century, new democratic freedoms were achieved through a process of civil and military mobilization that was marked by the intervention of troops against the Nazi regime in the Second World War, the refusal of those same troops to continue the war against the USSR, the mobilization in defense of Civil Rights in the 60's and 70's and the mobilizations against the Vietnam War in the same period.

This Republican regime could only be conquered at the cost of much blood and sacrifice of the people. But the Bush Administration sought to demolish this regime and many of the democratic freedoms achieved over the centuries, to establish a new political regime in the United States, the Patriot Act regime. The Patriot Act regime promoted by the Bush Administration and Neocon was based on three pillars: The President, the Pentagon and the Patriot Act. These pillars were the fundamental components of Neocon's strategy, called Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

But although those who developed and had the initiative to carry out the PNAC strategy was the Bush Administration, oriented and directed by the Neocon group, this strategy was supported, adopted, and carried forward by almost all governments, political and social organizations. , unions of the world, which left the people of the US, and the people of the entire world, in a situation of absolute helplessness in the face of the PNAC strategy, and the GWOT.

International organizations such as the UN, the G7, the IMF and the WB, almost without exception, adopted the slogan of the "Global Fight against Terrorism" and announced the danger of the "Axis of Evil." These slogans were sustained and repeated by all presidents, statesmen, media, journalists and leaders throughout the world.

The impact of 9/11 had facilitated the PNAC strategy and had allowed a systematic policy of destruction of freedoms and rights, the closest thing to a military dictatorship, like those that were imposed during the 20th century in countless countries around the world. A similar regime was now beginning to be installed in the US, at the dawn of the 21st century. However, this regime was "in the air", it was in gestation and needed the PNAC strategy to be developed and consolidated, to be definitively established.

The specter of the Patriot Act regime

We have seen then how the Neocon group that dominated the Bush administration began to build a political regime that constituted a virtual assault against the democratic rights and freedoms of the US population, but which also constituted an assault on the democratic freedoms of all peoples. of the world. The specter of the Patriot Act regime began to emerge globally as one of the objectives of the PNAC strategy, that of liquidating with a stroke of a pen the republican regime established in the United States, its Constitution, its laws, the rights and freedoms.

To the extent that the constituent elements of the republican regime were displaced, new institutions and laws, such as HS and the Patriot Act, gave shape to this new political regime. But as we have been analyzing, the Patriot Act regime, after being built by the Bush administration, was not yet consolidated; it needed the success of the PNAC strategy, which had to be imposed both in the United States and internationally, in order to be established. definitively.

As long as the PNAC strategy failed to prevail, the Patriot Act regime was a regime "in the air", that is, it was established, it began to function, but it was not yet established on solid bases that would guarantee its continuity. Therefore, the next step of the Bush Administration was to seek and achieve immediate political and military successes to consolidate and definitively establish the Patriot Act regime and the PNAC strategy.

The PNAC and the Patriot Act regime needed each other. To the extent that the PNAC strategy did not achieve solid victories, the Bush Administration knew that the Patriot Act regime remained "in the air" , that is, advanced in its implementation, but without definitively settling and consolidating. Between the PNAC and the Patriot Act regime there was then a dialectical and complementary relationship, the Patriot Act regime was an objective of the PNAC strategy, but at the same time, the Patriot Act regime needed the strategy to be consolidated. of the PNAC. And to achieve this, the Patriot Act regime became a vital instrument for the triumph of the PNAC strategy.

We must then see how the specter of the Patriot Act regime that began to be projected over the United States and the world after the 9/11 attacks took concrete form. This specter began to be embodied in institutions and laws, but also in the actions of the institutions that occupied the center of the scene in the country, such as the Bush Administration and the Armed Forces. If anything expresses in all its magnitude the horror of the Patriot Act regime, it is the detention center called Joint Task Force Guantanamo at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, located in Cuba.

Initially the detention camp was called Camp X-Ray, when the first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002. But on April 29, 2002, the Camp to the so-called Delta Field. WikiLeaks leaked the Camp Delta Operational Procedures documents on November 7, 2007, reports that specify the different levels of access by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in relation to detainees and captives.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) operated the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, Camp X-Ray and their successors Camp Delta, Camp V, and Camp Echo, under the responsibility of the United States Southern Command (US- SOUTH COMMAND). The situation of the detainees is horrendous. Defined as "enemy combatants" , they are not prisoners of war as recognized under the Geneva Conventions, dozens of them live in prefabricated containers, without even the privacy of a cell. The prefabricated units have no internal partitions, and detainees are allowed to raise curtains to make temporary partitions, while sharing communal showers.

Only on June 29, 2006, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the prisoners had the minimum protection of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in which detainees must be housed and treated humanely, and that they had the right to an impartial tribunal to hear the charges against them. The images of Campo Delta with detainees tied hand and foot, on their knees blindfolded, located in the middle of prefabricated houses, without the right to know what they are accused of, confessing to aberrant acts resulting from torture, judged by improvised courts Military, they are the best painting of the horror of the Patriot Act regime.

Shafiq Rasul, detained at Camp Delta, described the horror after being released: "...The walls (of the interrogation room) were rusty, and seemed to be soundproof. There was no ventilation; it was scorching hot in there. An interrogator told me that anyone in Afghanistan was guilty of the 9/11 murders, even the women and children killed by the bombing...But they said my position was much worse...because at the meeting 9/11 planning on video, a lot of people had said that this guy with a beard standing behind Bin Laden was me..." (28)

Shafiq Rasul explained that it had nothing to do with 9/11, that he had not been to Afghanistan : "I told them that in 2000 I did not leave the country, that I was working at the Wednesbury Currys branch, who would have my records "I was told that I could have falsified records. That I could have had someone who works with me at Currys tamper with company details, and that I could have traveled on a false passport..." (29)

As the isolation and torture continued, Rasul broke down and confessed in a final session, in front of a high-level official who had come down from Washington : "My heart is beating, beating, I'm saying it's not me, it's not me." , but I'm thinking: "I'm going to be screwed, I'm on an island in the middle of nowhere, there's nothing I can do" (30)

The horrifying and moving testimony of Shafiq Rasul, graphically depicts the horror of hundreds of Shafiq Rasul, who constituted the reality of the detention centers showing the danger of the political regime built by the Bush Administration, and its Neocon officials. The impact of 9/11 had facilitated the PNAC strategy and had allowed a systematic policy of destruction of freedoms and rights. A similar regime began to be installed in the United States, at the dawn of the 21st century, a regime that was " in the air", which needed the PNAC strategy to be developed and definitively consolidated.

This was what prompted the Bush Administration and the Neocon group to launch at full speed the development of a long-range war that would allow the control and dominance of the North American state over the world capitalist economy and the people of the world to be consolidated.

In the next chapter we will see how the development of a crucial moment in the PNAC strategy took place, the invasion of Iraq and the Middle East region, in which the power of the Armed Forces and the military-industrial complex were at stake. , of the Pentagon and with them, the consolidation of the Patriot Act regime. The development of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, their impact on the world political situation, their international institutional order, the role of the UN, the G7 and the international reaction of the masses to the war, are the subject of analysis in the following chapter. .

Notes

(1) "The War on Civil Liberties," New York Times, Editorial. September 10,

(2) y (3) FindLaw. AUMF. Section 2. a.www.findlaw.com

(4) The Posse Comitatus was established to end the military occupation by US Army troops of the former Confederate States during the ten years of Reconstruction (1867-1877) that followed the Civil War. American (1861-1865). The original Posse Comitatus referred only to the United States Army, then the Air Force was added in 1956, and later the Armed Forces and Marine Corps were included, by a Department of Defense regulation. This law is frequently mentioned when it appears that the Department of Defense is interfering in domestic problems.

(6) The Washington Post. Barton Gellman y Susan Schmidt. "Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret After Attacks". March 1, 2002

(7) FindLaw

(8) , (9) and (10) "The end of guaranteeism? Constitutional news in the US in 2002 Constitutional theory and reality " Marcos Criado and Antonio de Cabo.

(11) "Man claiming to be NSA whistleblower comes forward". CBS News. 9 de junio de 2013.

(12) " Multinational corporations are companies that simultaneously dominate several branches of commerce, industry and finance on a global level. If the characteristic of modern post-war multinationals was the dominance of one branch of production on a global scale, corporations "Multinationals are a superior Form of Accumulation because they monopolize several branches simultaneously, which allows them to achieve a capital accumulation greater than that achieved by modern post-war multinationals." "The End of Multinationals. Chapter IV Globalization. Amazon 2012

(13) and (14) " Extraterritorial effects of the USA Patriot Act - Privacy Rights of Non-North American Citizens " Legal Chronicle . Alain P. Lecours. October 2007. Canada

(15) The Nation. "What you don't know about the Patriot Act " George Zornick, March 16, 2012.

(16) and (17) Robert Goldman. "Aside from the law. A Legal Analysis of Bush's Military Order." Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.1/12/01

(18) CNN.Al Goodman (April 23, 2009). "Spanish court sends Guantanamo case to new judge". Al Goodman April 23, 2009. Archived from the original on May 2, 2009.

(19) y (20) Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. keithcenter.wayne.edu

(21) Highbeam Business, September 10, 2002

(22) The Economist. "Stuck with Guantánamo" The implications of the court's ruling granting detainees habeas corpus rights" Jun 19 2008.

(23) TSA website. www.tsa.gov

(24) usainfo.state.gov., 9-18-05

(25) Amnesty International. www.amnesty.org

(26) Washington's Farewell Address. www.archives.gov.org

(27) Melton, The Quotable Founding Fathers, 277.

(28), (29) y (30) David Rose "The real truth about Camp Delta". The Observer 3 de Ocubre del 2004

Glossary

(a) Habeas corpus : It is a Legal Procedure, to avoid arbitrary arrests or detentions.

(b)Amicus Curiae: translated as "friend of the court" , the Latin expression "amicus curiae" refers to presentations by third parties unrelated to a litigation, who, not being part of the case, voluntarily offer to provide legal opinion or testimony to collaborate with the court in the resolution that is the subject of the process, the court may or may not admit it.

Chapter III Iraq

To save your world, you asked this man to die. Could this man, if he could see you now, ask you why?

Wystan H. Auden. Epitaph for an unknown soldier. 1955

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, the NATO armed forces began aerial bombardments over the territory of Iraq with Tomahawk missiles, launched from ships and submarines. At the same time, American and British ground troops advanced on Baghdad, the capital of Iraq from Kwait, while allied Kurdish troops did so from the north. Thus officially began the military operation called in the US "Operation Iraqi Freedom" , also called by the British army "Operation Telic" , but known and popularized worldwide as the Iraq War. To the extent that the entire political situation in the United States and the world began to revolve around the political events developed by the shock caused by the horrible attacks of 9/11, the PNAC strategy was materialized, which included the development of an undemocratic political regime in the US; and at the same time the objective of developing a long-term war with international scope, which would modify the entire world situation at the service of the objectives of the Bush Administration.

The Iraq war is the most important political-military event at the beginning of the 21st century. It is so for several reasons: Because of the meaning that its announced beginning had for millions of people in the world, because of the very development of the war that ended with a humiliating defeat for NATO, and because of the global political consequences that arose from its development. The consequences of NATO's defeat in Iraq caused profound changes in the world political situation, and in the Middle East region. These changes affected the global economy, the internal situation of the United States, and definitively sealed the fate of the PNAC and the Bush Administration.

The war had a first stage, in which everything was victory and smiles for the Bush Administration. The invasion is preceded by a string of political, economic and military triumphs unthinkable for the Neocon long ago, but concrete and categorical. However, as soon as we set foot in Iraq, everything turns into hell for the White House. The Bush Administration begins to suffer a sustained process of setbacks and defeats, which gradually deteriorate the PNAC strategy, and explode the crisis of the Armed Forces. The development of the Iraq war, the previous events, the impact that the war is having on the situation in the country, is what we will analyze below.

The advances of the PNAC offensive in 2002

As we saw, on September 13, 2001, two days after the 9/11 attacks, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney reported that the 9/11 attacks were the product of a conspiracy by Osama Bin Laden and his organization Al-Qaeda, who remained in Afghanistan. On October 7, 2001, sixteen days after 9/11, the Bush Administration ordered the invasion of this nation, whose operation was baptized as " Enduring Freedom", at the same time that the Britain's army called the invasion "Operation Herrick." These military maneuvers allowed the Bush Administration to pulverize the Taliban and completely control Afghanistan, something that the United States had not been able to achieve for 11 years.

But now, NATO established its own government and military force called the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which aimed to support the Afghan Interim Authority, a Washington puppet government headed by Hamid Karzai. To carry out the operation, the Bush government obtained the collaboration of the dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, which had to completely break ties with the Taliban, which placed Musharraf in a very delicate internal situation, due to the virulent rejection of these plans. They attracted Pakistan's Islamist political opposition.

In any case, on September 18, seven days after 9/11, the US Congress had enacted HR 198, Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which allowed the Executive Branch to act militarily within of the United States, and also allowed both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his Deputy Minister of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to establish the Northern Command (NorthCom) in early 2002. On October 26, 2001, one month and eight days after 9/11, the Patriot Act was approved, which had changed the definition of "terrorist activity" and created the figure of "enemy combatant."

On November 8, 2001, the State Department, headed by Colin Powell, indicated that, as soon as the operations in Afghanistan ended, the next objective of the war machine that was acting in Operation "Enduring Freedom" would be Iraq . To the extent that the victory in Afghanistan was achieved, the war proposals of the Bush Administration gained strength throughout 2002, which allowed the US military counteroffensive and the "Global War on Terrorism" , ( in English GWOT, Global War Over Terrorism), was achieving increasingly important victories.

The Bush Administration machinery acted with increasing speed. On January 29, 2002, four months after 9/11, President Bush, in his State of the Union address, used for the first time the expressions "Axis of Evil" and WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), alleging that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaed had been cooperating with terrorist actions, although they did not provide evidence of this accusation. Starting with the State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, the main argument for the development of the war began to take shape. The Bush Administration stated that Iraq possessed and was developing WMD, which represented an imminent, urgent and immediate threat to the United States.

But Iraq was not the only thing that worried the US in the Middle East. One of the issues that caused the greatest concern in the Bush Administration was the "Intifada" (in Arabic , "uprising") in Palestine, which extended to all the Palestinian territories and had cornered Israel, the US ally in the region, obtaining important victories. The Bush Administration took advantage of the situation generated by the 9/11 attacks and supported an offensive to support Israel, with the aim of changing the situation. Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield against the Palestinians on March 29, 2002 to stop the Intifada, an Israeli ground and air intervention against civilian areas of the West Bank that included massacres of Palestinians in the cities of Nablus and Jenin. .

During the Operation, a good part of the Palestinian militias defending the West Bank were eliminated and Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), was cornered in his offices in Mukata, the PNA headquarters. These victories strengthened the strategy of the PNAC and Israel, which launched the second phase of the offensive with the so-called "Operation Path of Determination", which took place during April and part of May 2002. In this phase of the offensive, Israel completely reoccupied the West Bank. and liquidated the power of the ANP. After the military triumphs, the Bush Administration promoted a political attack to consolidate, through diplomatic agreements, the military triumphs obtained, thus the so-called "Quartet" was established, a multilateral negotiation framework unprecedented since the inauguration of the Bush Administration.

On April 10, 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell met in Madrid with the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and two representatives of the EU, the Spanish Josep Piqué of the Council of Ministers of the EU. , and Javier Solana high representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the EU. Thus, the UN, the US, Russia and the EU formed the "Quartet", an agreement through which the Bush Administration managed to get the diplomatic leaders of Russia, the UN and the EU to work together defending the strategy of the PNAC.

The "Quartet" presented a surrender statement to the ANP demanding that it commit to the fight against terrorism. Arafat agreed to declare the fight against terrorism amidst the massacred corpses of Palestinians and surrounded by Israeli tanks. Between April 18 and 21, the Israeli Army declared its Operation "Defensive Shield" over, although until May 1 it maintained the siege of Arafat in Ramallah and continued with bombings, raids and sieges. In addition, Israel began erecting the so-called "Security Wall" on the border, which began to be built along the northern border of the West Bank and Israel. With victory in hand, the Bush Administration accelerated the pace of its plan to crush the Palestinians. On June 24, Bush announced the suspension of the UN-approved creation of the Palestinian state until Arafat left power. He also made another announcement: That NATO forces would take control of the PA security forces, and announced that all previous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians were annulled. In this way, with the Bush Administration's announcement they annulled the Gaza-Jericho agreement that had been negotiated in the secret talks in Oslo in August 1993.

Also with this announcement by the Bush government, the Washington Declaration of September 1993 and the agreements signed in Cairo in May 1994 were annulled. All of these agreements were revoked and replaced by a new peace plan prepared by the Quartet and presented on the 17th. September in New York that was called "Road Map" . This plan proposed that the problems inherent in the formation of a Palestinian State, the status of Jerusalem, the question of Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements and final borders, remained pending resolution until the end of 2005. That is, all the Palestinian conquests, Israeli advances were consolidated and the entire situation was put on hold for another 4 years.

During those four years, the US and NATO's interference in Palestinian sovereignty deepened, the Palestinian militias were disarmed, the Palestinian police and army were left in the hands of NATO, all institutions were reorganized, and a new Constitution was declared. and elections were being held in the Palestinian territories, under the aegis of NATO. With the "Road Map ", the Palestinians had to hand over their sovereignty completely to NATO, and wait until 2005, when the PNAC strategy was consolidated, to discuss the problem of their future again.

The "Positive Aggression Doctrine" or "Bush Doctrine"

After 9/11, the Bush Administration had promoted the Patriot Act regime in the US, had crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan and had caused a severe defeat to the Palestinian Intifada. The importance of these victories was very great, but the PNAC strategy was just beginning. The Neocon, strengthened by the victories, needed to deepen the political and military offensive, which was stipulated on September 20, 2002, when the National Security Council (NSC) approved a document titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States. " United" , also known as the "Doctrine of Positive Aggression" or "Bush Doctrine". The "Positive Aggression Doctrine " enshrined the right to treat countries that harbored or aid terrorist groups as terrorists, and formulated the definition of the " preventive war " policy to act with those countries, a new category of war, which argued that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represent a perceived threat to its security.

The NSC approved the "Doctrine of Positive Aggression" document , under the leadership of the Neocon group, with the aim of deepening the PNAC strategy. According to the "Bush Doctrine", the US could act in this way towards foreign governments, even if that threat was not immediate, and without the agreement of the other permanent members of the UN Security Council. That is, the " Positive Aggression Doctrine" gave the Bush Administration carte blanche to carry out coups d'état in any country in the world that the government considered a threat to the security of the United States, or of any nation, a political decision that They took over the US president and the Pentagon unilaterally. In this way, it transferred the categories that the Patriot Act used for citizens to the field of the international arena. If for the Patriot Act the president could declare any citizen an "enemy combatant " and repress him through Military Courts to take him to Guantánamo or imprison him, now the "Positive Aggression Doctrine" allowed the Bush Administration to declare any country a "threat to the security" and repress it, declaring war or overthrowing its government.

The "Positive Aggression Doctrine" raised the need to carry out military attacks called "Anticipation Actions" , which meant that wherever an imminent threat to their security was detected, without first attacking and without distinguishing between terrorists and protectors , the army could begin preventive war and launch attacks as "Anticipation Actions ." All this summarized the PNAC strategy: Declaration of countries considered a threat, overthrow of their governments, declaration of "Preventive War" and execution of "Anticipation Actions."

And this entire program was decided by a group of officials in the White House. This "Doctrine" was presented to the entire world on September 12, 2002, when Bush himself explained to the UN General Assembly his intention to attack Iraq, unless it complied with a long list of demands at the head of the which included immediate compliance with Security Council prohibitions on the development and possession of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and missiles with a range of more than 150 km. In his speech he also stated that there were suspicions that Saddam had dealings with Al Qaeda, among which there was a possible transit of weapons of mass destruction. With those statements by Bush at the UN, the countdown to the Iraq war began. On November 8, 2002, the UN Security Council (SC) unanimously approved resolution 1441 to establish a new period of weapons inspections, while giving Iraq a period of 30 days from the publication to present a complete statement of all aspects of programs for the development of chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile weapons. The resolution included the requirement that Iraq not carry out any act or threat against any state. Consistent with the "Positive Aggression Doctrine", the Bush Administration threatened that if there was material non-compliance with resolution 1441, or if the result of the inspection verified the possession of WMD, Iraq would be punished with war.

But resolution 1441 was not the first that proposed a complete requisition of the existence of weapons in Iraq. The inspections had a history dating back to the end of the 1991 Gulf War, when the United Nations Security Council with resolution 687 had ordered an end to Iraqi development programs for chemical, biological, nuclear, and weapons weapons. long-range missiles, as well as the destruction of the existing arsenal under the control of the UN Special Control Commission (CEC). Was Iraq really a threat to the US? What was the situation in Iraq?

Iraq in the eye of the storm

By the time Bush made these statements at the UN, Iraq was a small nation, governed at that time by a ferocious dictatorship. Saddam Hussein's regime was hated by a huge part of the population, especially the ethnic minorities, who had received horrible treatment from the man who had been the strongman of the Baath Party since 1974 and had been rewarded by the fascist Franco regime. Spanish with the Grand Cross of Isabel la Católica, for the oil that Saddam sent them despite the OPEC embargo. After being appointed president of the Republic in 1979, Saddam, supported by the US, defended the interests of the oil multinationals that coveted the fuel wells located in the strategic region. When the Iranian revolution occurred in 1979, which affected the interests of the capitalist powers and oil companies, Saddam Hussein carried out a war against Iran between 1980 and 1988, in which he had the support of the United States, France, and the USSR.

The war claimed hundreds of thousands of dead, most on the Iranian side, and left both countries in a catastrophic economic situation. But two years later, when Kwait and the United Arab Emirates exceeded their quota of oil extraction and refining in 1990, the price of crude oil fell worldwide and the interests of Saddam and the United States were at odds. Iraq demanded that the price of a barrel of oil be increased to $25 and threatened Kwait with force if he did not substantially reduce his production. The US responded by offering its support to Kwait. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kwait, but was defeated in the 1991 Gulf War by a US-led international coalition, forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

After Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, a series of insurrectional movements were unleashed in Iraq promoted by the Kurdish people in the north of the country and by the majority of the Shiite population in the south of the country, which took advantage of the weakness in which Saddam Hussein's dictatorship had been left after his defeat in the conflict, to rebel against him. Saddam brutally repressed the population in the towns where the centers of rebellion were registered, causing multiple civilian casualties and hundreds of refugees. The US and the capitalist powers took advantage of the popular discontent and growing hatred aroused by Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, to interfere in Iraqi sovereignty and gain a foothold in the region. On April 5, 1991, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 688, in which it condemned the acts of repression perpetrated against the Iraqi civilian population in many areas of Iraq, which was already a surrounded and devastated country.

But the UN resolution allowed the US, Great Britain, and France to affect its sovereignty by decreeing the imposition of a no-fly zone, both in the north and south of Iraq. The imposition of the air inclusion zone allowed the United States, Great Britain and France to prohibit military flights north of the 36th parallel in Iraqi territory, a ban that in August 1992 was extended to the south of the 32nd parallel, and in 1993 would be extended to the 33rd parallel. The powers tried to justify and legally support their decree based on the provisions of UN resolution 688, but the truth is that this decision lacked legality and deliberately violated the sovereignty of the Iraqi state. Despite not being backed by international law, the no-fly zone affecting the north of the country was maintained until 1996, while the one relating to the south lasted until 2003. The no-fly zones were guaranteed by US aircraft patrols. , British and French forces who exchanged fire regularly with Iraqi forces for six years. France withdrew in 1998, but the meddling of Britain and the US continued.

And although United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq were able to verify the destruction of a large amount of material, in 1998 a new military aggression by the US and the United Kingdom called "Operation Desert Fox" materialized. This operation consisted of four days of bombing between December 16 and 19, 1998, which affected Baghdad and other strategic points in the country, complemented by an economic embargo that severely hit the population, children, women and the elderly who suffered from hunger. and precarious living conditions. The severe sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN) greatly increased infant mortality and made Iraqi society, which was one of the most prosperous in the Middle East, very poor.

The majority of the population could only survive on food aid from the State, half a million children under five years old died because of the sanctions, and the economic blockade, far from weakening Saddam's dictatorship, by hitting the people Iraqi, strengthened it temporarily. In 1996, in order to alleviate the Iraqi crisis caused by the economic embargo, the program called "Oil for Food" was established , which meant that Iraq could produce oil in exchange for food and allowed a limited export of crude oil in order to subsidize important foods and medicines.

But the "Oil for Food" program did not solve the underlying problem; the embargo was having serious consequences on the Iraqi population, as recognized by UNICEF, the International Red Cross and Human Rights Watch. The United States began "Operation Focus" in southern Iraq , increasing the overall number of missions and objectives throughout the area in order to disrupt the military command structure in Iraq, bombing the region, thus reducing the weight of bombs dropped on Iraq increased, reaching a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons.

That is to say, at the time of being declared by the Bush Administration as part of the "Axis of Evil", Iraq was an extremely weakened country, with an unpopular dictatorship, a destroyed economy, enormous internal conflicts and millions of people suffering from famine. Was this nation in tatters a threat to US "national security" ? Not by chance. So in order to carry out its purposes and justify its invasion, the Bush Administration needed to invent one of the biggest political lies in history.

The Coalition of the Will (COW) and the Azores Summit

And in addition to inventing a big lie to attack Iraq, the Bush Administration had to achieve an Alliance of governments that would provide political, methodological and material support for its military operation. The Bush Administration began to build a network of political and diplomatic agreements to support its global GWOT strategy, which would support the Iraq War. The most important ally that the Bush Administration had was the government of Great Britain then headed by Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, better known as Tony Blair. This politician, who became prime minister in 1997, was at that time leader of the Labor Party. Today, after his departure in 2007 after 10 years in power, he is an advisor to various companies in the energy and financial sector, and acts as representative of the " Quartet " for the Middle East. Blair had come to power in the 1997 elections when he defeated the then Head of Government, the conservative John Major, defending a model that he set out in his work entitled " The Third Way."

The "Blair model" was presented as an alternative path to capitalism and socialism, a "progressive" and "leftist" political alternative, which was based on the period of relative economic prosperity in the '90s of the world capitalist economy, and the from England in particular. This allowed Blair to establish an administration that gave some economic and political concessions to the people of Great Britain, he pushed through a human rights law in 1998, he removed most of the hereditarily titled Lords from the House of Lords, Lords in 1999, and established a policy of agreements, deterrence and negotiation with Britain's national minorities.

For example, he had established the Scottish Parliament as a concession to Scottish independence claims, did the same to Welsh claims by promoting the constitution of the National Assembly of Wales, and helped end thirty years of armed conflict in Ireland. of the North, with the signing of the "Good Friday Agreement" at Stormont Castle, after 2 years of negotiations with the IRA guerrillas. These measures, which gave small political concessions to the people of Great Britain, caused sympathy among the population and allowed Blair to appear as a "friendly politician" who, supporting the imperialist character of Great Britain, worked in partnership with the United States in regarding the dominance of the capitalist world economy.

Blair formed a duet with Bill Clinton, which made them appear with a "progressive" face, as cordial negotiators that would allow the businesses of Multinational Corporations, Wall Street and the City of London to be maintained, but with a "human face." Blair and Clinton appeared as "cordial commissioners", signing the agreement with the IRA together at Stormont Castle, or allowed Blair to appear promoting historic " Peace Agreements" with the Irish, Scots and Welsh, while Clinton signed agreements in Oslo between Palestinians and Israelis. Without giving up their desire to manage global capitalism in society, they appeared as the standard-bearers of the strategy of "deterrence, consensus and negotiation" and promoters of "Peace" in the world. This strategy and the relative "economic bonanza" that occurred in the '90s, earned Blair high popularity ratings in Great Britain, which allowed him a second absolute majority in Parliament and then a historic third consecutive term, as British Labor premier. .

But the 9/11 attacks and the arrival of the Neocon group to power meant a global change in the strategy of the capitalist powers. The era of "deterrence, peace agreements and negotiations" had come to an end, and the era of "Fighting Terror", the GWOT and the "Bush Doctrine" had arrived. The political cycle of the "doves" had ended and that of the "hawks" had arrived. Blair had no problem changing out of her dove suit and dressing in the clothes of the hawks. The Labor government became the right hand of the Neocon group, and adopted the entire GWOT discourse and global campaign. Not only that, he also adopted the PNAC strategy, including the attempt to crush civil liberties within Great Britain, following the style of the Patriot Act Regime in the United States. Blair together with David Blunkett, or John Reid, who were Successively, his Interior Ministers granted extraordinary powers to the police to carry out unlimited detention, and without prior trial, of terrorism suspects.

This is denounced by countless documents presented by human rights organizations, such as the report "The rules of the game", carried out by Andrew Blick of Democratic Audit, or Tufyal Choudhury, professor of human rights at the University of Durham and Stuart Weir, head from the Center for Human Rights at the University of Essex. They reported that since the 9/11 attacks, Blair, along with Blunkett and Reid, caused 14% of Muslims to be victims of physical, verbal or psychological abuse. In England after 9/11, 3% of people were savagely attacked for being Islamic; 5% detained, patted down and groped by armed British police officers solely for looking Muslim and 32% subject to terrorist suspicion, solely for prejudice and their physical appearance and for that reason being discriminated against in the workplace. Civil rights organizations also denounced a regime of espionage against the population in Great Britain, in which the police intercepted without authorization 1,788 telephone calls in 2001, 1,885 in 2002; 2525 in 2003, and 3101 in 2004,

Along with arrests of alleged "terrorism suspects", which amounted to thousands, the Blair government, according to the report "The Rules of the Game", reached a rate of arrests of people only for their physical appearance, race or Islamic religious beliefs, which increased by 302%, between the period from 2002-2005. John Reid even said that the war against terrorism was "similar to the British war against Nazi Germany" and that at least two hundred "terrorist cells" were operating in the country, made up of some 1,600 individuals who were preparing attacks. This is how Blair became a fundamental supporter of the PNAC strategy whose support point allowed progress in the so-called "Coalition of the Will" (COW, Coalition of the Willing) to which Spain, Portugal, and Italy joined. , Poland, Denmark and Australia. The COW included a total of 48 states, although some such as the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, and the Solomon Islands have no armies or international political weight. Bush also received the support of the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Colombia in America, the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus; the state of Israel and that of Kwait.

In reality, the COW was a force predominantly made up of weak states, except England, in need of money. In general, the efforts to convince more countries to invade Iraq gave poor results, and at the same time, as the countdown to war began, the United States, instead of adding governments and important countries to its cause, I lost them. The reason why Bush was losing support was that the war was absolutely unpopular throughout the world, there was no poll, no demonstration, no public statement to show that the masses of the world were interested in the idea of ​​invading Iraq. And secondly, there was no evidence that Iraq was a threat to the US, nor that it had WMD, nor that it was developing them.

In other words, there was no reason to invade Iraq. The war practically had no popular support in any country, except in some pockets of fanatics, who had made the GWOT cause their own. In turn, the governments that were associated with Bush's plan suffered the consequences of criticism and popular discontent with that decision, hence the Bush Administration had to mount one of the biggest lies in history to justify the invasion. The White House had the need to demonstrate that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and it had to do so publicly, before millions of eyes around the world, to convince a good part of the world's population that it was going to start a " War Fair."

This montage took place on February 5, 2003 when Colin Powell presented to the United Nations Security Council, in a public session, the alleged evidence that Iraq had WMD. According to Powell, this evidence had been compiled by the intelligence services of several countries, and he presented it accompanied by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), George Tenet. The CIA director provided recordings, maps, abundant audiovisual material, photographs taken by spy satellite, and segments of telephone conversations scanned by the intelligence services.

Tenet also spoke and presented the alleged evidence incriminating Saddam. But the alleged weapons were never in sight, they wandered from one place to another, with the international inspectors hot on their heels, but they were not seen. The presentation to the members of the Council was followed closely by millions of television viewers around the world, but the persuasion effort was in vain, since the countries with permanent seats on the Council - France, Russia and China - and the non-permanent ones - Germany, Syria, Chile, Mexico, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea and Pakistan - expressed that inspections had to continue. The exhibits were inconclusive that WMD had been found in Iraq. The 3 countries with veto power in the SC stated that Powell's presentation had not been conclusive, and on March 7, an informative appearance took place before the Security Council of the inspectors, who admitted "progress" in the search for the ADM, requested more time, and with their reports actually refuted the veracity of several assertions made by the Bush administration.

The specialists said they were not aware of the existence of the mobile laboratories that Secretary of State Colin Powell was talking about, who insisted that Saddam Hussein already possessed 2 of the 3 elements necessary to build the nuclear bomb, he had the scientists, the design bomb, and apparently already had a contract with Nigeria, the African country, to obtain enriched uranium. That is to say, for the Bush Administration, all the elements were amply proven to begin the attack and invasion of Iraq, and Colin Powell together with the head of the CIA George Tenet went down in history as those who maintained a lie before the greatest number of people in the world.

The global mobilization against war

The decision of the Bush Administration provoked a global process of mobilization against the War, which reached the maximum peaks of global mobilization known up to that moment, even surpassing the peaks and quantities produced in the Vietnam War. In Great Britain the majority of the population was against the war, so Blair's decision to support Bush began to hit his popularity, and caused the British Labor Party to split. The global demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 were called by a global platform simultaneously around the world.

And they were especially relevant in countries committed to the invasion such as Australia, the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Poland, Italy, and Denmark. These were the first demonstrations called by internet and SMS, and the effectiveness of new media and social networks for this type of calls was shown, since the global protest began to be organized only a month before it took place. The universally adopted slogan that unified the mobilization was "No to war", along with others such as : "No more blood for oil", "Blair, Bush, Aznar: murderers".

On February 15, 2003, the largest demonstration took place, achieving the largest global mobilization in history. Until then, millions of people took to the streets in many cities, led by Rome with 2 million protesters, also 2 million. in Madrid. There were many subsequent demonstrations and rallies in front of the US embassies, with large numbers of protesters, also in the US, in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Spain was one of the countries where the demonstrations achieved greater significance given the fact that Spain was part of the UN Security Council and that the United States government gave it special prominence.

The Spanish government of José María Aznar had one of the lowest popularity ratings in all of Europe, and it is estimated that around more than 8 million people demonstrated against the war in Spain. On March 17, in the Canadian parliament, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced Canada's official position of not supporting the United States in the invasion of Iraq. France, Germany, China, Syria, Mexico, Chile and Russia expressed their opposition to forceful measures against Iraq and were in favor of a negotiated solution to the crisis.

In any case, the War was already decided, and on March 16, 2003, the Azores Summit was called to give "institutional cover" to the invasion, in which Presidents Bush, Blair, José María Aznar for Spain, and José Manuel Durao Barroso for Portugal, who served as host. At this Summit, a 24-hour ultimatum was issued to the Iraqi regime led by Saddam Hussein to disarm. However, the war did not have the express mandate of the UN Security Council, which made it an illegal invasion from the point of view of international law. This did not prevent NATO troops from, once the 24-hour period had expired. launching through the Summit of the Azores, they will begin the attacks.

The beginning of the War and the triumphs of NATO

The Iraq War began on Thursday, March 20, 2003 with aerial bombardments on Iraqi targets with Tomahawk missiles and the mobilization of 225,000 North American and British soldiers. The coalition had 800 M1 Abrams tanks, 600 M2/M3 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, as well as hundreds of combat and transport helicopters. Donald Rumsfeld had arranged bomber planes that departed from the aircraft carriers Constellation, Harry S. Truman, A. Lincoln and T. Roosevelt. Saddam Hussein organized the defense and responded to the attacks in an artillery duel with elements of the United States 1st Armored Division, launching Al-Samud missiles that could not prevent an American column consisting of numerous Abrams tanks, Humvee armored vehicles and helicopter gunships. Apache and Blackhawk will enter Iraq. The Iraqi Air Force did not carry out a single sortie to defend the country, due to the poor condition of its aircraft.

The invading forces encountered little resistance, which was mainly concentrated in Um Qasr, a key port to secure the entry of troops and supplies, which NATO immediately defeated. The Americans advanced rapidly without encountering notable opposition until reaching the Nasiriyah bridge, a point where the Iraqi Army hoped to stop the invading forces. The casualties for NATO were much greater there, and the first images of downed Americans arrived. On March 27, about 1,000 American paratroopers arrived in northern Iraq to join Kurdish forces. After defeating the Iraqi resistance in Nasiriya, the invasion convoy continued its journey through the desert, and at the same time as the main fighting was taking place in the south and center of Iraq, about a thousand Turkish soldiers penetrated a few kilometers into the north to monitor the actions of the Kurds fighting against the Iraqi forces. Supported by NATO planes and troops, the Kurdish guerrillas attacked the main cities and towns in the north of the country, but the Iraqi army responded by launching 37 surface-to-surface missiles.

The Iraqi High Command made the decision to form two defensive rings around Baghdad, using the Republican Guard, the elite division of the Iraqi Army. However, the enormous superiority of NATO made it possible for the first tanks and NATO troops to enter Baghdad on Wednesday, April 9. By that time, NATO had 173 soldiers dead and 542 wounded, while casualties among the Iraqi armed forces were between 4,000 and 6,000 dead.

Saddam Hussein fled and NATO launched "Operation Red Dawn" seeking to apprehend and detain him. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush proclaimed the end of major military operations, and celebrated a new triumph for the PNAC from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln with the phrase: "Mission Acomplished! " (Mission accomplished!). Bush stressed that the invasion was not occupation, but "liberation" and promised a rapid transfer of power to a democratic government, beginning with the drafting of an Iraqi constitution. This new triumph of the Bush Administration marked a series of political and military successes that followed one another after 9/11. The Bush Administration had promoted the Patriot Act regime in the United States, had crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan, had caused a severe defeat to the Palestinian Intifada, had aligned the UN and NATO behind the PNAC strategy, had established the COW and the Quartet, and now had achieved a resounding victory in Iraq. The importance of these triumphs was very great, and the Neocon, strengthened by the victories, was at the zenith of its political and military offensive.

The provisional government of Iraq (CPA) and business

On April 21, 2003, the Organization for the Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance of Iraq or Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) was created. This organization became the government in Iraq vested with executive, legislative and judicial authority under former military man Jay Garner linked to SY Coleman, a high-tech company specialized in missile control systems closely linked to the Pentagon. ORHA was later replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and on May 11, the CPA was placed in charge of Paul Bremer, appointed to the title of Iraq Administrator by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The colonial character of the Bremer government was evident in the fact that the CPA was created as a division of the United States Department of Defense, so Iraq became a nation that became administered by an official who reported directly to the head of the Pentagon.

The UN Security Council, which had been reluctant to support the invasion, after NATO's victory legalized the occupation and the CPA government through resolution 1483 adopted on May 22, 2003. In it it " recorded and note" the creation of the CPA and a Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which replaced the former United Nations "Oil for Food" program. On July 22, 2003, three months and thirteen days after the occupation began, the CPA formed the Iraqi Governing Council and appointed its members, which included approximately 1,500 officials, including members of the conservative Heritage Foundation. , as well as officials from several of the offices of Republican congressmen, and other Neoconservative institutions that made up the CPA staff.

The CPA appointed representatives to the UN, and drafted a temporary constitution known as the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). The Iraq Reconstruction Fund was kept in the Central Bank of Iraq, but administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to UN Resolution 1483, this fund was to be controlled by an International Consultative and Monitoring Board (IAMB) composed of the UN Secretary General, the Director General of the International Monetary Fund, the Director of the Arab Fund for Economic Development and Social and the president of the World Bank. However, the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) acted in darkness and in absolute secrecy in flagrant violation of its obligations, without any type of published document.

The CPA was installed in the so-called Green Zone, an area 5 kilometers from the shore of the Tigris River that included the ancient monuments built by Saddam and housed numerous administrative offices, residences for officials of the new government and accommodation hotels. for journalists arriving from abroad. The Zone had its own radio station, sports fields, swimming pools, bars and restaurants, a permanent supply of electricity and drinking water, despite the fact that the inhabitants of Baghdad had to suffer constant cuts to these essential services.

The CPA in turn established 3 headquarters in 3 geographical regions: The CPA North had its headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, the CPA Central in Baghdad, and the CPA South was established in Basra. UN Resolution 1483 transferred the management of revenues from Iraqi oil to these 3 headquarters. Shortly after being established, the CPA began to issue government orders. CPA Order 17 guaranteed legal immunity to all foreign contractors operating in Iraq from any suit, civil or criminal, and Order 49 stipulated a reduction in taxes for those Corporations operating in Iraq with the objective of financing large reconstruction projects. Thus began the great businesses that the Multinational Corporations planned to obtain and expand their profits in Iraq.

Prior to the occupation, most large companies in Iraq were state organizations and foreign trade imposed huge tariffs to prevent the entry of foreign goods. But, after the occupation, the CPA began an accelerated process of privatizing the Iraqi economy, opening it to foreign investment. The CPA awarded the contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq to American companies, such as Trireme, which had Richard Perle, the Neocon leader of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and the PNAC as one of its main investors.

At the time his company was hired, Perle was a member of the Defense Policy Board in the Bush Administration, but he had to resign from the Board that year, because it was a scandal that he was at the same time a member of the government and owner of one of the companies contracted for the reconstruction of Iraq. But cases like that of Perle and several government officials linked to neoconservative think tanks and, in turn, to companies that won juicy contracts in Iraq, were repeated over and over again with an endless list of companies.

The head of the CPA, Paul Bremer, hired the Blackwater corporation, a private security company, that trains soldiers and mercenaries as his government's bodyguard. To repair the Iraqi treatment plants and water treatment plants, Bechtel was hired, one of the most important construction corporations that had among its administrators George Schultz, former Secretary of State under Reagan, and president of the Advisory Council of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. This council was a pro-war lobby financed by Lockheed Martin, one of the largest arms manufacturing corporations in the world, which introduced a curious paradox into the Iraqi reality: The CPA introduced the Lockheed Martin-Bechtel alliance, the curious association between a construction company and another destruction company. Once American aviation was responsible for destroying its drinking water systems with horrible bombing raids on Baghdad, Bechtel was awarded a fabulous million-dollar contract to rebuild the drinking water systems.

Another case was that of the Halliburton company, a world leader in oil equipment, a company that knows the country well because it had been there in the 1991 Gulf War, and had been contracted to rebuild oil drilling and refining facilities. Halliburton Company was closely linked to Dick Cheney, the Vice-President of the United States. Another scandalous case was that of the Carlyle Group company, a company that had James Baker III, former Secretary of State in the Bush administration, as Senior Advisor. between 1993 and 2005, which had Bush Sr. as Senior Advisor to Carlyle's Asia division, between 1998 and 2003.

That is to say, a company with clear existing links with officials of the Bush Administration, which was part of this entire complex based on a model of outsourcing and semi-privatization of war, had its antecedents in the first Gulf War and the Balkan conflict, in which the Pentagon promoted contracts with companies that provided a large percentage of services for the Armed Forces: security, construction, engineering, drivers and food and energy supplies, etc.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld defended privatization, pointing out that these contracts allowed members of the Army to concentrate on combat tasks. But criticism of corruption, diversion of funds, favoring certain business groups, and enrichment of corporations closely linked to the business of the Iraq War, grew day by day, in increasingly resonant complaints. The CPA acted as a colonial government of Iraq and, at the same time, as an unscrupulous administrator of the war business in the hands of Multinational Corporations from the COW member countries.

After the occupation of NATO forces, a treasure of goods and relics that are heritage of humanity disappeared from the museums and cultural and educational entities that housed them. The first editions of "The Arabian Nights" disappeared from the National Library of Iraq, the mathematical treatises of Omar Khayyam, the philosophical treatises of Averroes and Avicenna; and 236 manuscripts and porcelain stolen from the heritage room disappeared from the National Museum of Archeology. Among the seized pieces were some of humanity's first books: the 5,300-year-old clay tablets of the Sumerians, texts from Babylon, Assyria, Chaldea, Persia, and among these public goods the tablets of the Code of Hammurabi, where the first record of laws in the world appears. The looting of Iraq was not only of oil, but also of goods of incalculable value, being pieces of enormous scientific and historical importance, which the Bush Administration allowed and encouraged to loot, being as they are, part of the heritage not only of Iraq but of the entire The humanity.

The Iraqi resistance at the center of the scene

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush had proclaimed the end of the war from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln with the phrase: Mission Accomplished! But contrary to the wishes of the Bush Administration, six months after that announcement, the war was far from over. Shortly after the invasion took place, enormous resistance flourished in all corners of Iraq, which by November 2003 led to the fighting to such a magnitude that it had already meant the loss of the lives of more than 298 American soldiers.

While official figures spoke of 1,300 wounded soldiers, confidential sources spoke of a reality of more than 7,000 wounded NATO soldiers who populated the care centers at bases in Germany and Turkey. From that moment on, the Bush Administration and the Pentagon stopped providing official figures on deaths and injuries in the Iraq War. The emergence of a powerful anti-invasion insurgency occurred almost simultaneously with the military occupation of the country, the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the decomposition of the Baath Party (in Spanish, the "Renaissance Party") that had ruled Iraq since the 1970s. from '60.

The Iraqi guerrilla insurgency or resistance emerged from the old Iraqi armed forces, which were mutating to fight an enemy a thousand times superior. The Iraqi resistance was transformed into a huge armed insurrection with broad popular support from the masses both in Iraq and in the other countries of the Middle East, which, as we saw, had been preceded by an enormous process of global mobilization against the war. Millions around the world had demonstrated their opposition to the invasion, but the Bush Administration and its NATO allies had turned a deaf ear to the global process of mobilization and the protests that were developing in the US and around the world. However, as soon as NATO set foot in Iraq, it collided head-on with that process of mobilization and repudiation of the war that was spreading deeply among the Arab masses and the entire world, which is why the Bush Administration's problem was not It was their military power, unsurpassed and unquestionable, but the political issue that the Iraqi people and the masses of the world did not see them as "liberators", but as occupiers and violators of their sovereignty. This was the breeding ground for the rapid emergence of the guerrilla insurgency willing to reject the invasion, a conglomerate of guerrilla armies began to form around the generals, officers, and non-commissioned officers of the Iraqi army.

Saddam's Fedayeen was a guerrilla group part of the old Iraqi army and made up of almost 40,000 men that began to operate throughout the territory. Along with this force, another militia began to act, called Al-Awda ("The Return"), which was made up of former members of the Baath Party government, the Armed Forces and the Iraqi Republican Guardian, under the leadership of the Sheikh Abdel Sattar Abu Risha. "The Return" began to operate mainly in Baghdad, northern and central Iraq and reached almost 40,000 members.

Another group of former members of the Baath party and the army was Al-Abud ("The Network"), which performed in Fallujah and Baghdad. As part of this conglomerate of Sunni guerrillas, the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade emerged , headed by Hatim al-Zawba'i, which acted in the areas of Ambar, Nineveh and Daiala Governorate. The most important of all the Sunni organizations was the Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance, headed by Izzat Ibrahim al Douri General Secretary of the Baath Party, which began to act as fighters in 2004.

Among the Kurds, the Peshmerga emerged, a coalition of armed groups that acted in Iraqi Kurdistan, led by old officers of the Kurdish army security forces, although sympathizers of other groups such as the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) also acted. Among the forces that brought together the Shiite sectors, the majority racial fraction of the population, was the army of Al-Mahdi (in Spanish, "The Promised One"), a militia created by the Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who began to act in the south of Baghdad, at first with 5,000 militiamen, but it grew until it reached 60,000. The Shiite forces were made up of other militias such as the Soldiers of Heaven and the Sheibani network, among other organizations.

Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and other groups of diverse racial and political representations also began to act, both outside and inside Iraq. The entire policy of the Middle East governments began to revolve around the development of the Iraqi resistance, which had the massive support of the absolute and overwhelming majority of the entire population of the region. Billions of people who repudiated the invasion mobilized in all countries, organized collections and pressured their governments to support the resistance in Iraq.

The resistance inside Iraq had such heterogeneity among the groups that composed it, such a diversity of religious, racial and political factions, that at first it began to act in a disjointed manner, and the various sectors that composed it acted on their own, without no coordination or mutual support among themselves, and even, on more than one occasion, confronting each other for control of sectors of the population, territories and weapons. Even so, the actions of the Iraqi resistance were increasingly daring and destructive for the NATO armies.

On October 26, 2003, 10 Katyusha rockets were fired by the insurgency and hit the Al-Rashid Hotel, an 18-story building located in the Green Zone in the middle of the visit of Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. Between June and July 2003, actions that brought down helicopters began to grow, and every time a device fell, celebrations broke out in the neighborhoods, while men, women, and children booed, stoned, and set traps for the police officers every day. NATO. NATO forces soon lost control of the Baghdad airport, and soon almost all of Iraq was ungovernable.

The triumph of "Red Dawn" and the defeat of the ADM

As we saw, the argument for invading Iraq was that the country had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that the US and Great Britain tried hard to prove existed, without success. Now, with Iraq in its possession, the Bush Administration launched the Iraq Study Group (ISG), a 1,400-member international team organized by the Pentagon and the CIA, to find WMD stockpiles. The ISG was headed by David Kay, who had been a weapons inspector after the first Gulf War, and staff from the Pentagon and the CIA, the Australian government, and the United Kingdom, although all reported directly to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

After six months searching for weapons of mass destruction, surveying and exploring hundreds of potential WMD sites across Iraq, the ISG issued an interim report on October 3. 2003. There he reported that he had not found the WMD, although he had found evidence of registration of previous activities related to the production of WMD, but not their existence. The news was a political bomb. The main reason why the COW had given a deadline to begin the invasion was the WMD, and now, just months after the invasion, it was made public that the WMD did not exist and that its existence had been a lie. That is to say, it was close to becoming public that there had never been any reason to invade Iraq.

When David Kay, head of the ISG, prepared his resignation, Bush Administration officials asked him to delay it, because they were preparing another news story to counteract it. And they had it. The Bush Administration accelerated the steps of "Operation Red Dawn" that sought to capture and detain Saddam Hussein. Already on July 21, 2003, Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, had died in a shootout with soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, with which the siege on the fugitive Saddam was closing day by day. On December 13, 2003, they captured Saddam near Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, where they found him hiding in a basement, and their capture of Saddam was announced with great fanfare the next day, December 14, at a press conference. before a crowd of journalists, with the presence of officials from the Bush Administration, senior military officers and Paul Bremmer, where the announcement was made to the entire world.

The Bush Administration wanted to show the capture of Saddam as what it undoubtedly was: a great triumph, crowning the political and military successes that the Bush Administration achieved in the years 2002-2003. The White House also sought to hide the growing difficulties that the NATO troops suffered on the battlefield. But undoubtedly, at that point in time, Cheney and Rumsfeld had achieved great objectives that were unthinkable a few days before 9/11. To the triumphs with the sanction of the Patriot Act in the US, over the Taliban in Afghanistan, over the Palestinian Intifada, over the Baath in Iraq, now it was added to have Saddam Hussein, one of the "great villains ", " from the "Axis of Evil."

The novelty of Saddam Hussein's capture sought to neutralize news that was undoubtedly a political and propaganda setback that was going to be made public, almost simultaneously. On January 23, 2004, ISG chief David Kay finally made public his resignation from the ISG, and in a presentation on the existence of ADM before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said: "Let me say that from the beginning We were almost totally wrong." And he stated to the Reuters news agency that the Iraqi government "got rid" of such weapons after the 1991 Gulf War. That is, Iraq did not have WMD, and the invasion did not have the reasons announced by the Bush Administration.

On February 6, 2004, George W. Bush convened the Iraq Intelligence Commission over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, while a similar inquiry in the United Kingdom was led by Lord Butler of Brockwell along with parliamentarians and senior officials. military officials. In Britain, Kay's resignation and certification that WMD did not exist hit Tony Blair hard, and his credibility declined. Blair had assured that WMD existed and had even confronted the BBC communications company for screening a documentary in which he demonstrated that WMD did not exist.

With Kay's resignation and the ISG statement it was clear that the BBC had been right and both Blair and Powell were liars. In short, WMD did not exist in Iraq and the ISG did not find any biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. He found no arsenal. No complex to produce them. No SCUD missile, no laboratory to build prototypes. No mobile laboratory. Not a single barrel, projectile, kilogram of uranium, not a single compromising document, not a single statement from an intimidated Iraqi scientist. Absolutely nothing.

If WMD did not exist in Iraq, then could a nation that does not produce weapons of mass destruction be considered part of the "Axis of Evil"? Had Iraq had any connection with the 9/11 attacks? And if Iraq was not part of the "Axis of Evil", why had the invasion occurred then? The absence of WMD in Iraq left the Bush Administration without arguments, even so investigations continued and CIA Director George Tenet appointed former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer as Kay's successor, who stated that the possibilities of finding WMD stockpiles in Iraq were "almost zero", in official recognition that Iraq had nothing to do with WMD.

The same day Saddam Hussein was captured, President Bush signed the Intelligence Authorization Act for 2004, which expanded the Patriot Act by allowing the government to request personal information on a wide range of of individual citizens ranging from stockbrokers, automobile dealers, credit card company employees and any other business where cash transactions occur.

With this expansion, the FBI was allowed not to have to first go to a judge, nor demonstrate "probable cause" for companies to inform their clients that their files have been handed over to the FBI, thus, thanks to this law, Now local, state, federal and even private agencies could now have unrestricted access to the records of the average citizen. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the launch of a National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (NCISP) initiative designed to unite federal, state, and local law enforcement efforts to share intelligence information.

Changes within the PNAC strategy: Negotiations and ballot boxes to confront resistance

The non-existence of ADM in Iraq proved right to the millions of people who mobilized in the US and around the world opposing the war, exposing the lies of the Bush Administration and leaving the GWOT without political and propaganda support. Although the feeling for the effect of 9/11 was still felt in the United States, the nonexistence of ADM delegitimized the invasion of Iraq, which had become a quagmire every day, from which the Bush Administration began to realize that it was very difficult to get out.

The rebellion of the Iraqi people increased throughout 2004 and a strong insurgency developed. The feeling of Iraqi nationalism and rejection of the invasion was growing in the population and along with it, guerrilla fighting was growing in the urban areas of southern and central Iraq. Assaults and ambushes increased; bomb attacks, kidnappings of mercenaries, contractors and journalists, selective assassinations of personalities; attacks on churches and public buildings.

The resistance began to carry out executions by beheading, filmed and later released to the media, to instill fear and horror in the invading troops. The sabotage of oil pipelines caused continuous stoppages in the oil industry, which prevented the control and exploitation of the oil industry. The invasion was beginning to bog down, the political and military situation was increasingly complicated, and the awakening of the Iraqi resistance and its gradual strengthening raised the possibility of defeat. This increasingly unfavorable situation forced the tactics to be modified in order to preserve the PNAC strategy. Until then, the Bush Administration's privileged tactic was the "club", that is, the priority use of plain and simple military aggression, put before to political negotiation and consensus. But the "club" tactic had detonated a huge insurrectionary struggle among the Iraqi people, and as a result of the increasingly larger and more widespread resistance, the PNAC began to suffer its first defeats.

This forced the Bush Administration to change tactics and combine the "stick" with negotiations and the co-option of various politicians and personalities of Iraqi nationality, that is, a "carrot" that appeared as a concession and gave support to the strategy. That is to say, the Bush Administration began to combine the "stick" with the "carrot." He needed to change things to keep his strategy the same, and relaunch it, for which the Bush Administration began to focus on establishing a long process of negotiations with the different actors in the Iraq War.

Negotiations began simultaneously with France and Germany, as well as with European countries that had been reluctant to support the invasion. On the other hand, a long negotiation began with the different Iraqi factions that were fighting to take control of the country after the fall of Saddam, a plan that included ending the CPA seen as an occupation government, which meant ending the mandate. of Paul Bremmer who was already suffering from strong political wear.

At the same time, to give a touch of legitimacy to the negotiation process, the Plan included promoting another government with a strong presence of members of Iraqi nationality, which would be elected by the population, in elections controlled by the Bush Administration. In this way, they tried to demonstrate that Iraq had been "liberated" and that they could establish their own authorities. The Plan sought to form a provisional Iraqi government that would schedule the calling of elections for the constitution of a definitive government and the drafting of a constitution in Iraq, for the beginning of 2005.

This relaunch and the "carrot" line also had another objective: That of weakening the Iraqi resistance, seeking to sharpen the existing differences between the different sectors of the Iraqi nationality, giving them positions and favors, while displacing others. The Bush Administration began to co-opt politicians and resistance sectors seeking to divide the insurgents, creating and deepening differences between them, knowing that to maintain the chances of winning the war, it had to fuel divisions between the Iraqi factions of the resistance.

In the formation of the provisional government, it prioritized agreements with the Kurdish community and some Shiite sectors, marginalizing the Sunnis, leaving out the factions of the old Baath party that were still loyal to Saddam Hussein or were suspected of being so. On the other hand, they began to design an electoral calendar, controlled by the Bush Administration, that would serve to divert the people's struggle from the trenches to the polls, relying on Iraqi political leaders and religious leaders who called on sectors of the population to vote. Taking into account that Iraq had had a dictatorship in power for decades, even though Hussein had had support from the US for an entire period, now the Bush Administration sought to show that thanks to the invasion the Iraqi people would achieve "democracy. 

At the same time, the Bush Administration needed to direct away any possible discontent that existed in the United States towards the war, because the 55th presidential elections agreed for November 2004 were already in sight. For these elections the Bush Administration had a large base of popularity, and its objective was to consolidate it. The victory that would allow him to obtain a second term was possible given that the events of 9/11 were still fresh in 2004, which allowed issues related to security and the fight against terrorism to be established as priority issues in the electoral campaign.

The "carrot" policy in Iraq had the support of sectors of the Iraqi and Middle Eastern bourgeoisie, which for decades had had alliances and businesses with the United States, and now did not want to give up that privileged location. Dissidents from the Baath party, displaced business sectors, Iraqis in exile, leaders of various factions and religious sectors, were willing to support and be functional to the "carrot" tactic, among them the Arab League, composed of important sectors of entrepreneurs linked to big business. This League played a regrettable role throughout the entire process of occupation of Iraq's troops. While millions of Muslims in the region mobilized, showed solidarity with the resistance of the Iraqi people, and sought to establish a support network for the resistance by collaborating for its supply and sustenance, the League, except for declarations of form, never lifted a finger to confront the ocupation. Their opposition to the presence of NATO troops was reduced to statements, and as soon as the "Iraqization" plan was established , the League showed interest in participating in it.

The governments of the Arab countries also played a regrettable role. While millions of Iraqis were massacred by NATO, the governments of Syria, Libya, Jordan, Egypt or the billionaire Sheikhs who dominate oil states like Saudi Arabia or Qatar did not lift a finger to prevent it. They did not put their fortunes, their armed forces or their state apparatus at the service of helping the millions of Arabs who were being murdered, and except for formal declarations, not even the heads of the countries accused by the Bush Administration of being part of the "Axis of the Evil".

These governments left millions of Iraqis to their fate, and not only turned their backs on the Iraqis, but also abandoned their own people in the countries they governed who watched with horror and indignation as their Arab brothers were massacred, and They cried out for solidarity with Iraq. The governments of Arab countries prioritized their interests and associations with big capital and business, which led them to turn a blind eye to the enormous genocide perpetrated by NATO.

The Bush Administration ordered the formation of armed forces made up of Iraqis, and in this way, an Iraqi Police Corps was formed, and a fraction of the army, made up of Iraqi officers who had deserted. Events accelerated, and on March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a United States convoy in which 4 private military contractors were killed with grenades and small arms fire.

On April 4, the Marines began their assault on Fallujah, involving more than 2,000 soldiers, in what was known as the First Battle of Fallujah, which after a brutal and violent repression ended with a new victory for NATO. However, in March 2004, attacks occurred at the Atocha train station in Spain that caused a great commotion. The pressure of the situation led the newly elected president of the government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to order the immediate withdrawal of Spanish troops in Iraq on April 19. Spain was no longer part of the coalition and its troops were replaced by elements of the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Armored Division of NATO Task Forces. In May, a tough confrontation began between NATO troops and Al-Madhi's army in Najaf, around the Wadi' As-Salam cemetery, which ended 3 weeks later when Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani achieved negotiations for a cessation. of hostilities. But that same month of April 2004, another important event shocked the world: The revelation of the abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison.

This prison had been built in the 1980s by Saddam Hussein to hold and torture political prisoners. After the invasion, Abu Ghraib came under the control of the Pentagon, which called it "Camp Redention." The entire world was shocked when the media in the United States exposed the torture, abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners through photographs, which triggered a major political scandal in the country and the other nations and governments that were members of the coalition.

The scandal was of such magnitude that it forced the Bush Administration to establish a commission of inquiry into the abuses at Abu Ghraib in May 2004, which established that torture was carried out by the armed forces, and that indirect responsibility for the events affected to the entire chain of command, especially General Ricardo S. Sánchez, then head of US troops in Iraq. The torture in the Abu Ghraib concentration camps was carried out with methods designed and approved by psychiatrists and doctors, which were denounced by countless human rights associations before different courts and media outlets around the world.

On May 28, 2004, Iyad Hashim al-Allawi took over as interim Prime Minister, replacing Bremmer's CPA. And on June 1, 2004, a government was formed with 3 institutions: Prime Minister Allawi, the Council of Ministers with 31 ministers with State portfolios and the Presidency of Iraq headed by the Sunni Yawar, supported by 2 vice presidents, the Shiite Jaafari. and the Kurdish Rowsch Nuri Shaways. The composition of the new government sought the integration of sectors of the different nationalities and Iraqi factions into the transitional government.

Prime Minister Allawi appointed Barham Saleh of Kurdish nationality as Head of National Security Affairs. On June 8, the UN Security Council, through resolution 1,546, approved the legal framework for a transition calendar negotiated with NATO and the US, which included a call for elections to the transitional National Assembly to January 2005 that would elect a Transitional Government of Iraq and approve a permanent Constitution. The objective of this entire plan was that on December 31, 2005, the National Assembly and the definitive Government of Iraq would have to be formed.

One month after Allawi's inauguration, on June 28, 2004, Paul Bremer, representing the US government, dissolved the CPA and handed power to the new Iraqi government. Bremer was the one who represented US interests in Iraq, and replacing him, John Negroponte was appointed US ambassador to Iraq, who in reality was the one who acted as the real power in the shadows. In turn, the UN Security Council declared NATO troops as a Multinational Force "under unified command" with a presence in Iraq without a time limit, that is, the UN extended the stay of NATO armies. in Iraq, due to the questioning that the interim government suffered from the Iraqi resistance.

Allawi requested the automatic extension of NATO troops and also the reinforcement with contingents from other countries, because he needed immediate results in the field of security to prove himself to the population by showing that it was a government that offered security and control of the country. Allawi also needed to show some control of the insurgency to be able to unlock the disbursement of the $33 billion for reconstruction that had not arrived until then while the resistance actions increased.

The Pentagon's military operations began to become increasingly brutal and focused on viciously bombing Fallujah to hunt down the Jordanian fundamentalist Abu Musabaz-Zarqawi, head of the group Tahidwa al-Jihad ("Monotheism and Holy War") . Allawi's government considered "Holy War" as the mastermind of the wave of kidnappings and terrorist attacks in the cities, while resistance groups accused the Iraqi members of the Interim Government of being " collaborators and traitors."

The new prime minister on June 7 adopted an agreement with 9 parties and groups to dissolve their militias and integrate them into the Armed Forces, the National Guard and the Police of the new government of Iraq. Sheikh Al-Sadr ordered his men to put an end to the revolt in Najaf and announced his willingness to join the transition process, offering an amnesty to all resistance unrelated to the terrorist acts. However, in a few months, the most dramatic events would occur that shook the world and marked a before and after for the invasion.

Tensions in Iraq were increasing. In March 2004, the Syrian Kurdish uprising occurred in the northeastern city of Qamishli, which included the burning of Baath Party offices, and the rapid response of the Syrian army, which deployed thousands of soldiers supported by tanks and helicopters, as a result of which at least 30 Kurds were killed, and thousands of Syrian Kurds fled to Iraqi Kurdistan where local authorities there, UNHCR and other UN agencies established the Moqebleh refugee camp on a former army base near Dohuk.

November 2004: Bush Triumph and Holocaust in Fallujah

Meanwhile in the US, the first presidential election campaign was taking place after the 9/11 attacks. The elections a priori seemed close, head to head, and the big issue was undoubtedly the war in Iraq, which dominated the debates. between candidates. During the campaign, political denunciations abounded from one side and the other, for example the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore gave up the possibility of being nominated for an Oscar, to broadcast the film "Fahrenheit 9/11" before the elections, a film denouncing the Bush Administration.

The government presented a video of Bin Laden where he appeared promising new attacks in the United States, which helped Bush's campaign. All the polls gave a technical tie, but finally the 2004 presidential elections yielded a total of 62,040,610 votes for Bush and 59,028,444 votes for Kerry, with voter turnout around 59%, among those with the highest participation in voters in absolute terms. This election left Bush as the candidate with the most votes up to that point in the history of presidential elections in the country.

The Bush Administration achieved a great political victory in those elections. He achieved re-election and a 2nd term, and also control of the 2 chambers of Parliament, and greater dominance in them. In this way, and as a result of 9/11, the Bush Administration went from the slim majority of the controversial elections of 2000, to a political situation of great strengthening and political support that it did not have before the attacks: It now had an absolute parliamentary majority and the, until then, the largest vote in history. In the 2004 presidential elections, a new element played an important role, the so-called 527 groups, which had been approved by decisions of the Supreme Court, the Federal Electoral Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.

The so-called 527 organizations are dedicated to raising money to finance electoral campaigns without restrictions in terms of the amount to be raised, nor in donors, nor in the limit of expenses, such as PACs (in English, Political Action Committees), which are committees Politicians not directly related to a political party, but affiliated with companies, worker unions or other organizations, have been in charge of carrying out these financing campaigns for decades. In the 2004 campaign, PACs and even "Super PACs" developed strongly , very powerful fundraising committees, which significantly increased their influence and number in relation to recent years: In 1976, there were 608 PACs; But by the 2004 elections there were more than 3,000, which showed how the "business" of political financing and electoral campaigns had developed strongly .

The strengthening achieved by the electoral victory allowed the Bush Administration to get Great Britain, France, Kuwait and Italy to head a long list of governments that recognized the new Iraqi Government headed by Allawi. But things in Iraq were getting worse for the Bush Administration. The Iraqi guerrillas fighting the invasion were made up of members of all factions and even foreign fighters who volunteered to fight, coming from almost all Arab countries.

The resistance perfected its methods and by mid-2004 it was already carrying out an average of 50 attacks per day, against which, while negotiating at full speed with the different armed groups, Allawi deployed, in collaboration with NATO, the entire capacity of the Task Force 121. This task unit was part of the Special Forces made up of mercenaries, and elite forces specially trained as combatants, which intervened alongside the regular army, as well as members of the Delta Force, the Navy Seals, and paramilitary elements. All of this push by Allawi occurred under the direction of the head of the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, who promoted the doctrine of "manhunt", a concept of clandestine assassination operations, to confront an armed rebellion that was hiding in neighborhoods, small houses, neighbors and civilian population.

Rumsfeld defended both in public speeches and in internal Pentagon communications the need to implement the "manhunt" to dismantle the Iraqi insurgency and resistance. The head of the Pentagon considered it regrettable that the regular army is not trained and equipped to carry out such "manhunts" and the deployment of mercenaries. These military hunting tasks were a necessity for NATO troops to the extent that it was increasingly difficult for them to confront a resistance in which the Iraqi guerrillas acted hidden and protected by housewives, children, young people, the elderly, workers and peasants, humble people, who no longer had anything to lose, or had lost everything,

Moved by hatred of invading troops who had destroyed their homes, their families, seized their property and taken over their country, millions of people provided shelter and assistance to the guerrilla insurgents. This heroic and brave resistance, which every day evaluated different variants to destroy an infinitely superior invading army, had become the main obstacle that the Bush Administration faced when defining the situation in Iraq, and it was what infuriated Rumsfeld who called for "manhunts."

The resistance had settled and strengthened in Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi and Mosul, and the Bush Administration made the decision to use whatever military measures were necessary to eliminate it at any cost. Between October and November 2004, the new Iraqi government launched, together with NATO, a vast operation to reconquer Samarra, Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, thus beginning on November 7, the Second Battle of Fallujah. In this confrontation, NATO advanced with 6 battalions from the North, made up of between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers, with 2,000 Iraqi allies under the command of General Richard Natonski.

Those 6 battalions took the northwest of the city and three days later they occupied the center, with the objective of pushing the rebels to the south to destroy them with artillery. While the assault on Fallujah was taking place, the provisional government of Iraq led by Allawi decreed a state of emergency for 2 months throughout the country, except for the 3 Kurdish provinces. The attack on Fallujah undertaken by NATO and the Iraqi government was explained by Allawi as reported by the author Naomi Klein in her work "Democracy with blood enters" : "In a letter to the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, the Prime Minister Iraqi appointee by the United States, Iyad Allawi, explained that a general attack was required "in order to safeguard lives, elections and democracy in Iraq."..." The enemy has a face. He is called Satan. "He lives in Fallujah," Lieutenant Colonel Gareth Brandl told the BBC, according to the Canadian writer in the same work.

Fallujah was surrounded and civilians were instructed to leave, but almost 75,000 inhabitants decided to remain. In the attack , escape routes were sealed, houses demolished, NATO troops razed schools, civic centers and the emergency health clinic. The battle was a true urban war, house to house, in which the Pentagon mercenaries were at the forefront against a population in inferior conditions. At the same time that the hand-to-hand fighting was developing, the action of the elite troops and NATO soldiers was supported by an incessant bombardment that destroyed houses with planes and tanks, causing thousands and thousands of deaths of civilian men, Women and children. By November 19, when the southern part of the city was taken, Fallujah had been completely destroyed, and the bombing had caused a true holocaust.

Around 150,000 people lost their homes and, according to the Red Cross, 12,000 civilians were killed and injured. Among the NATO troops, 95 American soldiers, 8 Iraqis and 3 British were killed, while 560 Americans, 43 Iraqis and 8 British were wounded. The 2nd Battle of Fallujah was the bloodiest of the war, described by many US military personnel as "the heaviest urban combat since the Battle of Hue City in Vietnam" . Fallujah was devastated during the fighting, besieged and razed, it was a horrific genocide planned by the Bush Administration, committed by the US army, its mercenaries and NATO troops. The massacre was ordered by the new Iraqi government headed by Allawi, and had the complicity of all the world's political organizations, the UN, and the governments of the G-7 countries.

In Fallujah, NATO and the Bush Administration took victory, but after the massacre, there was no turning back. Fallujah was a before and after in the Iraq War. The horror of the genocide and the magnitude of the massacre proved right to the millions who had mobilized against the war around the world, and who had denounced that there were going to be massacres and genocides. How to explain, after the horror of Fallujah, that the US army was there to "liberate" Iraq?

How to explain after the horror of Fallujah, that the US army was there to sow "Peace and Democracy"? The occupation was left without support, and lost any possibility of achieving any popular support. After Fallujah, there were practically no sectors left among the Iraqi workers and people willing to support the occupation. And the images of what happened in April 1937 returned to collective memory, when Nazi pilots dropped their bombs on Guernica, the former Basque capital, under the orders of General Francisco Franco, supported by the fascist governments of Italy and Germany.

Franco bombed the city without distinguishing between civilians and combatants and murdered almost 1,700 people, leaving 900 injured. The massacre was immortalized by the painter Pablo Picasso in the moving work "Guernica". " Where is the current Picasso who painted the picture of Fallujah?" asked the American journalist and writer Saul Landau (1) With Fallujah, NATO cut all bridges with the Iraqi people forever and the Bush Administration won the battle, but lost the war. After the massacre of the Second Battle of Fallujah, several Iraqi groups that had approached Allawi's government moved away; while throughout the world, a wave of horror and indignation multiplied the denunciations against the Bush Administration's policy, while the attacks and resistance to NATO continued and deepened.

Transitional Government and agreements with the Shiite bloc

Throughout 2005, the Bush Administration went to great lengths to implement the "carrot" tactic and asked the Iraqi people to go to the polls on 3 separate occasions within a year. On January 30, 2005, elections were held to the transitional National Assembly with functions of Constituent Assembly with 3 lists: That of the Transitional Prime Minister Iyad Allawi called the Iraqi List, secondly the United Iraqi Alliance, a block of confessional Shiite parties. promoted by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and in third place, the Patriotic Democratic Alliance of Kurdistan (PUK and KDP) was presented, made up of sectors of Kurdish nationality.

Allawi's list came last with 13.8% of the votes, obtaining 40 seats of the 275 at stake, a product of the fact that Interim Prime Minister Allawi was already a deeply unpopular leader, identified with the occupation and even linked to elements of the Saddam's dictatorship summoned, as indicated by numerous complaints, to organize death squads and clandestine torture centers against the resistance. The Kurdish list, made up of the 2 main parties of the Iraqi Kurds, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) came second with 26% of the votes and won 75 seats.

The winner was the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list, which with 48.2% of the votes obtained 140 of the 275 seats, the absolute majority. This list was a bloc of confessional Shia parties such as SCIRI, Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Islamic Dawa Party, the Badr Organization, the Islamic Party of Virtue and the Sadrist Movement, in addition to important leaders such as Chalabi and Shahristani.

The highest religious authority of the Shiites of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was the main protagonist of the negotiations to form this alliance. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani became the great political actor in Iraq, as the political crisis worsened both among the political leaders who directly represented the Bush Administration, NATO, and the Arab leaders who collaborated with the occupation. Sistani was the only person whose decisions were followed by all Shia political leaders, whose political role was increasingly important in post-invasion Iraq given that the Shia population is more than 60% of Iraq's population.

Sistani, through a network of junior clerics, had been demanding the formation of a constituent convention, and demanded a direct vote for the formation of a transitional government. Sistani's speculation was to dominate the government of Iraq, if there were direct elections, because he would impose his majority on the population of Iraq, for which he launched a critical preaching against the Bush Administration's plans for the implementation of the Iraqi government, which which gained him growing popularity in the population. And so, Sistani and the Shiite network made a call and organized a mobilization from mosques, networks and religious circles, to guarantee the attendance of the Shiite population at the polls to guarantee victory.

Sistani's call helped guarantee an electoral participation of 59% of the voter roll, although the majority of Sunni groups called for a boycott of the elections that took place under impressive security measures and endless suicide attacks against schools throughout the country. with a balance of more than 45 deaths. The electoral results forced Sistani to seek the support of other parties to gather the necessary majority in the National Assembly and thus be able to appoint the Government and approve the new Constitution. For that reason, he reached an agreement with the United Kurdish List, as a result of which a Shiite leader of the United Iraqi Alliance was elected Prime Minister, the leader of Dawa, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, anointed on April 7, 2005. On May 3 The transfer of powers in the Executive took place and Allawi considered himself in opposition to the new Government.

Other controversial figures made up the cabinet of the new Iraqi government. Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi, who was appointed as interim Oil Minister, was among those who provided false information that weapons of mass destruction existed and that Saddam Hussein had alleged links to Al-Qaeda. Much of this information had been fabricated by Chalabi, who enjoyed close relationships with some members of the Bush Administration such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, and was an important manager of the Corporations' business in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration increasingly pursued a business policy that allowed corporations to establish a virtual reign over the Iraqi economy, with enormous profits made possible by the lack of regulatory controls, very low taxes, and extremely low labor. cheap employment of refugees and residents of Iraq who worked in terrible conditions in order to earn some salary, since they had lost everything. The CPA committed billions of dollars in contracts before it dissolved with the intention of keeping them in force with any government that took over in Iraq, and the Allawi government aspired to have control of the funds that the CPA used and deposited in the Fund Development created by the UN Security Council. But the CPA left a budget legacy of hundreds of American experts and advisers in all 29 ministries and other government departments, who exerted decisive influence over all areas.

On the other hand, there was the fact that NATO maintained 140,000 soldiers in Iraq, which made it the holder of "true power" in the country. Under the leadership of John Negroponte who had under his control the 18.3 billion dollars in assistance to the Arab country, and Donald Rumsfeld managing the army, Iraq was reduced to a colony for the exploitation of its oil resources, looting and all kinds of speculation. financial. A new external debt was created, creating new debt plans and credits for reconstruction digitalized by North American financial consortia, and with institutions dependent on the North American Treasury such as the IMF.

Through an agreement reached between the Paris Club, the World Bank and Iraq, on November 21, Washington obtained the forgiveness of 80% of the Iraqi debt, estimated at about 120 billion dollars, but not destined for the people of Iraq. Iraq, but to the administration that avoided allocating oil resources to the payment of interest and capital, and had a free hand to generate new debts with its financial entities from the "reconstruction business."

This business sought to benefit investment groups and banks based on Wall Street, but with tentacles and communicating vessels spread throughout the planet. The new government, made up of Iraqis, Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, remained like a puppet in the hands of the true owners of the country. On June 21 and 22, 2005, the United States and the European Union organized an international conference on Iraq in Brussels, attended by more than 80 states and government organizations that ratified their support for the invasion and the policy of agreements that gave rise to the new Iraqi government.

In her closing speech, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice congratulated the Iraqi transitional government and expressed " total and wholehearted support." Also from Fort Bragg, President George Bush congratulated the new Al-Jaafari government, and at the same time the 31st G-8 summit held between July 6 and 8 in Scotland provided explicit support for the government process that was being carried out. in Iraq. But while the Summit was taking place, on July 7, 2005, four explosions paralyzed London's public transport system in the middle of the morning. The policy of "negotiations" put into play in Iraq had the support of governments such as that of Chiriac in France or that of Schroeder in Germany that had previously withdrawn their support for the invasion. But, despite the support of the G-8 and the UN, things in Iraq complicated day by day for the Bush Administration. The popularity of the "war on terror" was in sharp decline, and by August 2005 only 39% of Americans supported armed intervention in Iraq.

The crisis in the Army and the Pentagon (DoD)

During the year 2005, an event broke out that was placed at the center of the Iraq war and hit the Bush Administration and the PNAC hard: The crisis in the Armed Forces exploded. During that year the daily average of dead soldiers reached almost 4 per day (3.7), an average slightly lower than that recorded in the months of heavy fighting during the Fallujah massacre. Already since the first months of 2005, there was an increase in resistance attacks against the occupiers, which increased the number of dead and wounded in combat in a wide range of 6 provinces in the west and north of the country, in addition to everything the metropolitan belt of the capital and in Babil, south of Baghdad.

The attacks were most frequent in the western province of Anbar and its capital Ramadi, where Iraqi fighters were responding to the Pentagon's attempts to reoccupy the capital. The Pentagon stated that the contingent of around 160,000 soldiers could not be reduced, 141,000 in Iraq and 21,000 in Afghanistan. But military specialists began to warn about the risk of a military disaster. "...We are in the early stages of a kind of crisis that if not controlled will result in the bankruptcy of the force," retired Army colonel and military expert Andrew Bacevich said at Boston University. The years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 left signs of wear and tear in the armed forces, highlighted the crisis in their ability to maintain operational levels, as well as growing warnings from senior military leaders about the lack of operational capacity of some units, the lack of equipment, or the equipment crushed by excessive use on the battlefield. Many soldiers faced a 2nd and 3rd major combat tour with less time interval between one deployment and another.

The casualties for that year were more than 2,730 soldiers who died in Iraq, and more than 280 in Afghanistan, and in turn, the Army's statements were supported by statistics that indicated the growth of casualties, and the average number of soldiers. dead and wounded. The average daily number of resistance attacks went from 52 in 2004 to 70 in 2005. figures that showed an alarming picture for the Bush Administration.

From a military point of view, the only way to sustain both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was to increase the troops that had to be taken from 150,000 to 500,000 soldiers. However, the troops could not be increased because conscription ended in the country in 1973 as a result of the defeat in Southeast Asia and the "Vietnam Syndrome." But furthermore, it was not Rumsfeld's or the Bush Administration's strategy to increase troops. This is why Rumsfeld refused to return to the conscription system and continued to use the contract soldier system. The prospect of withdrawal from Iraq was humiliating for the Bush Administration, of which it did not even want to hear, given that the entire PNAC strategy, the entire domestic and foreign policy of the country was mounted around the GWOT, which led the Administration Bush to exert strong pressure on the majority of the Army and Marines deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld imposed on soldiers and reservists the continuous provision of service after the end of their voluntary period. The Army Reserve is a force of about 200,000 part-time men and women who choose not to sign up for active duty but who can be mobilized in times of need. They made up about 40% of the troops in Iraq, but on June 1, 2005, Army Reserve Commander Lieutenant General James Helmly stated that the Army Reserve was rapidly degenerating into a "broken" force .

Symptoms of exhaustion in the troops at this time included an increase in the rate of divorce and suicide, and the abandonment of the army by mid-ranking officers, in addition to the fact that contract recruitment began to decline and the army lost its objective in the fiscal year 2005 to deploy 80,000 recruits by 2006. This occurred despite measures taken to convince new volunteers, offering more attractive contracts with greater financial incentives, having a greater number of recruiters, and modifying contract requirements to increase the number of recruits: The campaign included modifying the age limit for enlistment to 42 years and accepting recruits with criminal records. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve failed recruiting plans again in 2006 and both fell slightly short of their goals after also missing them in 2005. The critical element was that while the U.S. The US found it difficult day by day to recruit new soldiers, the Iraqi resistance grew in number of combatants, in the level of attacks, and their lethal level. This entire situation led to the outbreak of the crisis in the armed forces, and the political crisis within the Pentagon.

Army officers and senior commanders decided to "break ranks" with the Bush Administration and expressed their own concerns regarding various aspects of military operations, but they were confronted by the attitude of the White House that refused to recognize the reality of what was happening in Iraq. The difference in visions produced enormous tension between the leadership of the US Army and the Bush Administration, especially with Donald Rumsfeld, the head of the Pentagon, to the extent that the army crisis had a strong political basis. The soldiers were hired to combat terrorist organizations and liberate the people from these oppressive terrorists, but the reality was very different when they arrived in Iraq.

There they received orders to commit day after day atrocities of all kinds against the defenseless civilian population, against men, women and children, who in turn expressed rejection and repudiation against the soldiers. An expression of this situation that moved the army soldiers was that conscientious objector soldiers began to emerge. Conscientious objector soldiers had the courage to confront Pentagon orders, such as the case of Florida National Guard Sergeant Camilo Mejía Castillo, assigned to Iraq in April 2003, who began to doubt the morality and legality of the war, and in October 2003 he returned to the United States on a 2-week leave, after which he did not rejoin his unit in Iraq. On March 16, 2004, he applied to be discharged as a conscientious objector, stating that he believed the war and occupation of Iraq were "illegal and immoral."

In his request to be granted conscientious objector status, Camilo Mejía described the conditions of detention of the prisoners, and how the soldiers were ordered to " break the will of the detainee." He recounted the use of methods such as hitting metal walls with sledgehammers to prevent them from sleeping, or holding guns to prisoners' ears, and the killing of civilians, including children. He was detained in a military prison at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and on May 21, 2004, a military court sentenced him to the maximum sentence of one year in prison for desertion.

Amnesty International considered him a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned for refusing to participate in the war for reasons of conscience. The sentence was handed down even though the army had not yet responded to his request to be considered a conscientious objector, and during the trial, his lawyers were unable to present arguments that had to do with his conscientious objection, and therefore could not Describe the abuses you witnessed. A member of his legal team, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, referred to "the incredible irony of the fact that we are trying soldiers in Iraq for violating international law and a soldier in the United States for refusing to do it".

The specter of a defeat in Iraq began to hover over the Bush Administration, and over the world political situation. A political and military disaster for the Bush Administration in Iraq was an unthinkable event in 2005. But that fact was beginning to hover like a ghost, a dangerous possibility for the Bush Administration and for the Project for a New American Century, a certain possibility of defeat could cause a total change in the political and world situation, the reasons why that circumstances changed in Iraq, and how this affected the situation of state institutions, fundamentally the Armed Forces, are the subject of analysis in the next chapter.

Notes

(1) Saul Landau ."Fallujah: The Guernica of the 21st Century" . Rebellion 11/28/2004

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