A BACKDOOR TO SABOTAGING IRAQ

Kuwait.  Surely you didn’t think I’m buried under Washington’s Super Blizzard this week – especially since Jim DeMint (R-SC) has promised it won’t stop snowing until Algore cries uncle?

Nope, I’m in sunny Kuwait, where it’s 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.  One reason I’m here is to see how the Obama Justice Department – which we could appropriately term Zero Justice – is making a backdoor attempt here to sabotage America’s (so far) successful war in Iraq.

First, though, we need to answer the historical question – what has Kuwait got to do with Hanukkah?

The Jewish Festival of Lights celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC after its desecration by the forces of Seleucid Emperor Antiochis IV Epiphanes.  He had just been humiliated by one elderly Roman Consul, Gaius Popilius, who confronted him as he was about to attack Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt.

Informing Antiochis that he must withdraw his forces or there would be war with Rome, Popilius drew a circle in the sand around Antiochis with his cane.  "Decide – withdraw or war – before you step outside this circle," the Roman told the Emperor.  The Emperor withdrew and retreated into Judea to take his humiliation out on the Jews, while Popilius’ circle originated the phrase, "a line in the sand."

What has this to do with Kuwait?  When Alexander The Great died in 323 BC, his empire was divided up by his generals, with Ptolemy (367-283 BC) getting Egypt, and Seleucis (358-281 BC) getting all of conquered Asia from the Indus River in India to the Mediterranean – the Seleucid Empire. 

Antiochis IV (216-154 BC, Seleucis’ great-great-great-great grandson), decided it was time to build a port city at the head of the Persian Gulf to protect and facilitate transport to one of his twin capitals, Seleucia ( just south of what is now Baghdad; the other being Antioch, present-day Antakya in Turkey near Mediterranean Syria).  He placed a governor named  Hyspaosines in charge, who upon Antiochis’ death, expanded the territory and ran it as his kingdom of Characene, fort-near-the-sea.  The name survived through the centuries via its pronunciation in Arabic, Kuwait.

It was an important port for the Parthians (see Obamabashi for their history), then got lost in the sands of history, forgotten even by the Arab caliphs of Baghdad during their medieval heyday, and their successors, the Ottoman Turks whose capital of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) was far away.

Finally, in the early 1700s, some Arabs inhabiting the oasis towns of northern Arabia began filtering into the area, supplementing their livelihood off herds of goats and camels with fishing and pearling – for the waters off Kuwait, they discovered, contained one of the world’s great pearl beds.

One clan or "house" of the Arab settlers rose to prominence, that of al-Sabah.  In 1752, the ancient patriarch of the family, 90 year-old Sabah bin Jaber (1652-1758) was chosen as Sheikh – who quickly sent his sons scurrying off to Constantinople to pledge allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmud I, and gaining semi-autonomy for Kuwait in return.

Shortly thereafter, surprise guests arrived -a British warship.  British spies among the Ottomans had heard of Sabah’s deal.  After an impressive demonstration of naval firepower, the Brits offered a protective facilitation of Kuwaiti autonomy.  Sabah happily accepted the offer, established trading relations with England, and soon British merchants and engineers were teaching Kuwaitis how to build out their port and expand their trade.

As Kuwait became wealthier, tensions grew with the Ottoman governors in nearby Basra, which technically had authority over Kuwait.  The climax came in 1899 when Mubarak al-Sabah signed over Kuwaiti foreign policy to the Brits in exchange for a guarantee of Kuwait national security, and British gunboats chased the Basra Ottomans away.

With the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, Kuwait became a British Protectorate, fully sovereign from the League of Nations Mandate of British Mesopotamia (formed from the Ottoman vilayets or administrative regions of Baghdad and Basra), which became in 1926 with the additional vilayet of Mosul the Kingdom of Iraq.

The invention of artificially-grown pearls in the 1930s brought poverty to the pearl fishing-dependent protectorate, which the discovery of oil in 1937 did not alleviate because WWII got in the way.  But by the early 1950s, the Kuwaiti oil boom took off.  In 1961, the Brits granted Kuwait full independence – which Iraq, now controlled by a Soviet-sponsored dictator Karim Qassim, refused to recognize.  After Qassim was killed in a 1963 coup, Iraq’s new rulers formally signed off on Kuwait’s independence.

In 1979, Saddam Hussein seized power in Iraq while Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, and they quickly got into a war with each other.  Kuwait, believing the Ayatollah’s threats to conquer Sunni Islam for the glory of Shia Islam, supported Saddam with $5 billion in cash.  After the Iran-Iraq war ended in stalemate in 1988, Saddam repaid this debt with a military invasion and annexation of Kuwait as a province of Iraq in August 1990.

The First Gulf War began with an American invasion of Kuwait on February 23, 1991, and four days later, all Iraqi forces in Kuwait were either dead or fled.  Tragically, of course, Bush I did not order Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf to chase the fleeing Iraqis back to Baghdad and remove Saddam from power.

The fleeing Iraqis vengefully destroyed as much of Kuwait as they could, and set on fire hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells, which cost Kuwait over $5 billion to put out (by Red Adair and Boots & Coots American companies) and put back in operation.

Thus Kuwait was only too happy to comply with it being the staging area for America’s invasion of Saddam’s Iraq in 2003 ordered by Bush II.  It is only too happy to remain so for the now-winding down – and successful – War in Iraq today.

Which makes folks in Zero Justice unhappy.

One of the most necessary conditions for conducting a successful war is logistics – getting all the stuff the boots on the ground need to them in order to fight.  In a modern war effort the size of America’s in Iraq, this is unimaginably complicated.  And just as critical as getting weapons and ammo to the troops is getting them fed. 

Last year, 110 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables alone were delivered to our troops in Iraq.  Our soldiers there are fed four times a day, as much as they can eat – including up to nine different flavors of ice cream.  All of it – one million meals a day – must be delivered by truck from Kuwait, across Iraq to often remote bases in territories infested with terrorists, with temperatures that can reach 130°F.

Yet no soldier goes hungry.  The food and the ice cream and the bottled water is always there, without fail.  The competence and skill and dedication it takes to do this is almost super-human – especially when you see the operation up close as I have for the past few days.

All of this, and enormously more, is done by one small team of Americans in one company here in Kuwait:  the Defense & Government Services (DGS) Division of Agility Logistics. 

Last November, Zero Justice decided to do its part in ruining America’s victory in Iraq – by ruining Agility’s ability to feed the soldiers winning and maintaining the victory.  Screwing up the supply of food would hasten – indeed necessitate – that rapid retreat from Iraq that Zero promised. 

(There are still some 120,000 US military and 110,000 US contractors today in Iraq, and their drawdown has barely begun.)

Thus Zero Justice indicted Agility for allegedly $60 million of overcharges (out of an $8.5 billion contract since 2003) based solely on accusations from a crooked Kuwaiti businessman in revenge for Agility refusing to do business with him.

The Kuwaiti crook, Kamal Mustafa al-Sultan, stole over $500,000 of fuel from the US military in 2003, yet was still awarded supply contracts.  He bribed a US Army Major, John Cockerham, $40,000 to keep the contracts.  Cockerham is now in jail – and not only is Sultan still being awarded contracts, the criminal indictment of Agility is based on his testimony.

Zero Justice.

I can’t mention any names, but you won’t meet finer, more patriotic Americans running the Agility operation here in Kuwait.  The president is an Army 3-star with two tours in ‘Nam who retired after 34 years, became commandant of the US Army War College, then president of the National Defense University.  When offered the job of feeding our soldiers in Iraq, he couldn’t turn it down.

It is below despicable for the anti-war anti-American fanatics in Zero Justice to smear the heroic job these men are doing and jeopardize our troops getting fed while fighting a war.  Yet that’s what’s happening – as Zero Justice attempts a backdoor strategy for ruining our victory in Iraq.