Cheney’s trip to Japan and Australia: the preparation for new war crimes

Just three months ago, in the November congressional elections, the American people overwhelmingly repudiated the Iraq war. Four years of bloodshed have virtually destroyed Iraq and killed or displaced more than four million of its people. Over 3,100 American soldiers are dead and another 50,000 injured. In Japan and Australia, large majorities oppose their government’s support for the US-led occupation. A recent BBC poll, for example, found that 78 percent of Australians disapprove of the war.

Cheney has played a central role in the lead-up to, and prosecution of, the Iraq war. More than any other figure within the White House, he scripted the false claims that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” in order to fabricate the justification for war. Defining the theme that shaped every public utterance by US government officials up to the March 2003 invasion, Cheney declared on August 26, 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

Since the early 1990s, Cheney’s political life has been bound up with plotting the neo-colonial takeover of the Middle East. He represents that faction of the American ruling elite that aspires to establish a stranglehold over much of the world’s supply of oil and to use it to block other powers, such as the European Union, Russia and China, from challenging the global hegemony of American imperialism. Iran, with the third largest reserves of oil and second largest reserves of natural gas, is the next target after Iraq. Cheney’s national security advisor John Hannah reportedly told a recent meeting that the Bush administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran”

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