"Beyond Iraq": Is there a master plan?

A short while ago, we looked at evidence that MI6 released the Downing Street Memo to undermine Blair and Bush. As if to confirm that idea, we now have another furtively-unfettered top secret memo. This one may prove far more damaging than the first -- if more people pay attention to it.

From UK's The Independent:

George Bush told the Prime Minister two months before the invasion of Iraq that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea may also be dealt with over weapons of mass destruction, a top secret Downing Street memo shows.

The US President told Tony Blair, in a secret telephone conversation in January 2003 that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq".

He implied that the military action against Saddam Hussein was only a first step in the battle against WMD proliferation in a series of countries.

First, the obvious point: Bush knew full well that Iraq had no WMDs. Such weapons were always nothing more than the pretext for invasion, as the first Downing Street Memo made clear, and as Blair himself must have understood.

Like it or not, Saudi Arabia is our chief oil supplier. What must the Saudis think now that Bush has voiced a desire to go marching into that country, using as a pretext an alleged WMD threat?

(There's more! To see it, just click Permalink...)


Do the Saudis actually have nuclear ambitions? From a recent piece in the Mail and Guardian:

In September 2003, The Guardian reported that Saudi Arabia had embarked on a strategic review that included acquiring nuclear weapons. Until then, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to remain under the US nuclear umbrella despite the worsening relationship between Riyadh and Washington.

This development requires some historical context. Saudi involvement with matters nuclear goes back to the 1970s -- although they have been content, until now, to play the game by proxy.

The Saudis helped Pakistan finance their bomb -- which means that if you filled up your gas tank in the 1980s, you helped fund the notorious A.Q. Khan network. From Greg Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:

I probed our CIA contact for specifics of investigations that
were hampered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that the Khan Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.

You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to pieces this year, it will likely be thanks to Khan Labs' creating nuclear warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on September 11.)

Dr. A. Q. Khan is the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan, the "father" of their bomb and, says a former associate, a crusader for its testing . . . on humans.

So here's the sitch:

Of the Middle East nations listed by W, only Pakistan actually has a nuclear weapon -- about which we can do nothing. Did Bush take steps to assure that Khan, father of the Islamic bomb, did not sire more offsprings elsewhere? No, he did not. In fact, this administration protected the Khan network.

Does anyone believe that Pakistan would have given A.Q. Khan the proverbial slap on the wrist without Washington's imprimatur?

In fact, as Joseph Trento's outstanding volume Prelude to Terror makes clear, a far-right (which is to say, pro-Bush) network within (and without) American intelligence promoted the development of Pakistan's bomb.

In a previous post, I discussed the history of this network and its links to Saudi Arabia. Prince Turki, the intelligence head for that nation, referred to this network when he spoke at Gerogetown. I've quoted this passage before, but it's worth repeating:

In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything... In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Iran.

Trento discusses this club and its funding of the mujahideen during the Afghan-Soviet war:

What many people do not know was that the Safari Club had made a deal with Pakistan at the expense of the Afghan people. The Safari Club was run by the Saudis... Pakistani Intelligence would handle all the money going to facilitate the proxy war against the Soviets. That meant that hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States and Saudi Arabia were being run through Pakistan with no accountability. "Unfortunately," said Robert Crowley, "the Pakistanis knew exactly where their cut of the money was to go." Where the money went was into an Islamic nuclear-weapons program supported by Saudi Arabia and accepted by the United States.

Trento even alleges that Khan ordered key components for his nuke directly from the United States.

However shocking the new Downing Street memo may seem at first blush, it seems even more astounding when placed within the proper historical context.

The neocon network (which overlaps, to a large degree, the "Safari Club" mentioned by Prince Turki) helped provide the Pakistan with the one genuine WMD system known to exist within the Islamic world. Now this same network wants American soldiers to storm any number of Muslim nations, on the pretext of stopping WMD proliferation.

Can any explanatory scheme make sense of this madness?

One idea occurs to me: Perhaps reactionary forces encouraged the spread of nukes within the region -- and they did so with the aim of providing the United States with a pretext to conquer an oil-rich part of the world. However unlikey that scenario may seem (and I'm hardly convinced of it myself), it does have the virtue of explaining the covert arming of Iraq during the Reagan era.

Of course, American combat boots will never touch the sands of Arabia unless prompted by a nuclear or CBW attack within the borders of the United States.