Operation Desert Badger; Bush's Failed Plan to Instigate  an Early Iraq War

Operation Desert Badger;

Bush's Failed Plan to Instigate  an Early Iraq War

by Rob Kall

OpEdNews.Com

That's what CNN reports the White house called it's plan to go nuts on Iraq with massive counter-attacks if a US plane was shot down. This was put into effect after 911. At the time of this writing, the search term "desert badger" does not show up in google news. Desert Badger was the name for the contingency plan the White house laid out in its baiting game, back when the US and the UK were daily flying dozen to 100+ flights over Iraq, attacking various targets, daily. It is obvious that Bush and Rumsfeld and the neocon nincompoops must have been highly disappointed that Saddam never gave them the response they were seeking... so they could unleash the massive retaliatory attack these chickenhawks were fantasizing. (There is a brief mention on the web, in a general google search,  of Desert Badger, cited  at http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a801.htm  which reverts to a mention in a no longer active link in the washington post on Jan. 13, 2004.)

AL KAMEN, WASHINGTON POST -  Asked Monday about former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill's allegation that the administration was preparing to attack Iraq from its first days in office, President Bush told reporters that "we were dealing with Desert Badger or flyovers and fly-betweens and looks, and we were fashioning policy along those lines."

Of course this planned mega-response would have been put into action without congressional approval, but the Bush/Republican/ right wing echo chamber would have pounded the drums of war with the bones of the dead US flyers who were shot down. That's right. No congressional approval, no UN cooperation-- just a huge military response that would have flung the US alone into a foolish war, without ground forces in place, without any planning for how to proceed further. This is just more evidence that the Bush administration was obsessed with Iraq, and ready to commit huge amounts of resources to Iraq, even while talking a very different story of cooperation with the UN. They were plotting and trying to get Saddam to respond to what amounted to thousands of US flights and sorties over Iraq.

Put in that context, it is enlightening to recognize that Saddam never once gave them their wish, never shot down a single plane. He did not want war. Saddam was making billions off the oil for food program and enjoying the pleasures of the average sadistic, tyrannical billionaire dictator.

How did the Bush war maniacs respond? They sent bigger groups of planes, presumably to make easier targets for Saddam. After all, if the war had begun in 2002, it would have probably been a superb political tool for Karl Rove and the Republican campaign to steal the congress with un-recountable voting machines and illegal purging of voter rolls, as Katherine Harris did in Florida.  The attacks like those perpetrated on true patriots like Max Cleeland could have been much more widespread.

Now, we face the November presidential elections and the question is, what nefarious plans have these creatures who have no respect for democracy, no respect for the congress or the constitution, concocted-- an attack on Syria or Iran, secret funding of revolution in Venezuela, where they have been attempting to sabotage the democratically elected president? They've failed miserably at protecting the US's railroads, ports, nuclear and chemical facilities. Will they allow an incredibly stupid failure in security so a homeland terrorist plot succeeds, and then use the suffering to try to nail down the election... or worse, suspend the election and declare martial law, as Tommy Thompson ominously predicted?

With this group of criminal thugs, from Bush and Cheney in the White House, Frist and DeLay in the congress, to the ultimately slimy Scalia in the supreme court, anything  awful is possible. Sinclair Lewis's classic book It Can't Happen Here should be required reading. It can happen here. It has already begun.