the Iraqi govern-ment to place certain sites off limits were dismissed out of hand by US officials and the American media, who had a lot of fun with the issue. What does Saddam have to hide? was the prevailing attitude.

Then, in May 1997, the US Senate passed an act to implement the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction [ Chemical Convention ], an international treaty which had been ratified by more than 100 nations in its four-year life. But the Senate insisted on adding an amendment before it would ratify the Convention.

The Senate amendment, Section 307, stipulates that the President may deny a request to inspect any facility in the United States in cases where the President determines that the inspection may pose a threat to the national security interests of the United States.

Saddam Hussein had asked for no more than this for Iraq.

It can be surmised that under the Senate amendment the White House, Pentagon, etc. would be off limits, as Saddam had insisted his presidential palaces should be, as well as the military unit responsible for his personal security, which an American colonel had demanded to inspect.

Moreover, we now know that in closing off certain places to the inspectors, Saddam was not being entirely paranoid or arbitrary, inasmuch as it was later revealed that for some time the United States had been supplying certain inspectors with the means of planting recording devices wherever they could gain access.

It may be further relevant that a detailed study of the first one-and-a-half years of the Chemical Conventions life has shown that Washingtons record in complying with the Convention has been remarkably dismal, setting a rather bad example for other nations.5

PART III : A Rogue State versus the World

CHAPTER 17 : A Concise History of United States Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present

Presented here is the most extensive compilation ever of serious post-World War II American interventions into the life of other nations, covering many more cases than found in the authors book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since

World War 11 (Please see this book for further details of some of the interventions and for sources not indicated below.)

The Roman Empire

There was no comer of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Romes allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest-why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors...The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, it was manifestly Romes duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs...Even less than in the cases that have already been discussed, can an attempt be made here to comprehend these wars of conquest from the point of view of concrete objectives. Here there was neither a warrior nation in our sense, nor, in the beginning, a military despotism or an aristocracy of specifically military orientation. Thus there is but one way to an understanding: scrutiny of domestic class interests, the question of who stood to gain.

Joseph Schumpeter, 1919 1

America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in the defense of vested interests. She now stands for what Rome stood for. Rome consistently supported the rich against the poor in all foreign communities that fell under her sway; and, since the poor, so far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than the rich, Romes policy made for inequality, for injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number.

Arnold Toynbee, 1961 2

The American Empire:

COMING SOON TO A COUNTRY NEAR YOU

China, 1945-51

At the close of World War II, the US intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalists against Mao Tse-tungs Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the war. To compound the irony, the US used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. After their defeat in 1949, many Nationalist soldiers took refuge in northern Burma, where the CIA regrouped them, brought in other recruits from elsewhere in Asia, and provided a large supply of heavy arms and planes. During the early 1950s, this army proceeded to carry out a number of

incursions into China, involving at times thousands of troops, accompanied by CIA advisers (some of whom were killed), and supplied by air drops from American planes.

France, 1947

Communist Party members had fought in the wartime resistance, unlike many other French who had collaborated with the Germans. After the war the Communists followed the legal path to form strong labor unions and vie for political office. But the United States was determined to deny them their place at the table, particularly since some unions were taking steps to impede the flow of arms to French forces seeking to reconquer their former colony of Vietnam with US aid. The US funneled very large amounts of money to the Socialist Party, the Communists chief rival; sent in American Federation of Labor (AFL) experts to subvert the CPs union dominance and import scabs from Italy; supplied arms and money to Corsican gangs to break up Communist strikes, burn down party offices and beat up and murder party members and strikers; sent in a psychological warfare team to complement all of these actions and used the threat of a cutoff of food aid and other aid...all to seriously undermine Communist Party support and prestige. It worked.

A portion of the financing for these covert operations came from the funds of the Marshall Plan, which also helped finance the corruption of the Italian elections of 1948 (see below), and set up a special covert operations agency which later melded into the CIA.3 These are a few of the hidden sides of the Marshall Plan, which has long been held up to the world as a shining example of Americas unselfish benevolence.

At the same time, Washington was forcing the French government to dismiss its Communist ministers in order to receive American economic aid. Said Premier Paul Ramadier: A little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain. 4

Marshall Islands, 1946-58

Driven by perceived Cold War exigencies, the United States con-ducted dozens of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), nuclear bomb and other nuclear tests on this trust territory in the Pacific, after forcing the residents of certain islands, notably Bikini Atoll, to relocate to other, uninhabited islands. In 1968, the former residents of Bikini were told by the Johnson administration that their island had been cleaned and was safe for habitation. Many went back, only to be told later that they had been subjected to massive doses of radiation and would have to leave again. In 1983, the US Interior Department declared that the islanders could return to their homes immediately- provided they ate no home-grown food until the late 21st century.5 They have never returned.

Italy, 1947-1970s