4 - Wednesday, January 16, 1991 - North Shore News

Gulf war could spark two larger problems

AS THE moment nears (if it hasn’t already) when Ca- nadians will be deployed in a full-scale war for the first time since the Korean con- flict, two images come to mind.

The first passed before my eyes a few months ago in North Carolina. It was the spectacle of half a dozen massive motorized yachts cruising down a river near a medium-sized American town.

Two of them had two people each on board. The other four had just one person aboard. What an ego-trip that must have been, being the sole sailor on a craft as mighty as those!

These were vessels in the vicini- ty of 40 to 50 feet each. | shud- dered to think how much fuel they were burning.

The reason this image of scan- dalous waste struck so vividly in my mind was because I had wat- ched George Bush on a television screen in my hotel room the night before, talking about defending the American way of life.

Obviously, these diesel-powered yachts were not typical of the American way of life. But they certainly were typical of the lifestyle of the likes of millionaires like Bush, who owns just such a boat.

Months later, reading reports chat confirm my worst fears, namely that 1990 was the hottest year since global weather records were kept, meaning that the greenhouse effect has kicked in for sure, the image of those obscene gas-gobbling power boats and their either utterly selfish or utterly blind American owners, stands out in even starker relief than it did at the time.

The other image that crowds my mind as trigger fingers tighten in the sands of Arabia is the picture that eventually came back from the waters around the Falkiand Islands cf the first of several Brit- ish ships sunk by Exocet missiles.

At the rime, there was asionishment that the ineffectual Argentine air force could have succeeded in blowing up the pride of Maggie Thatcher’s armada so easily.

And the reason that image of a sinking, smouldering navy ship looms now is because there hap- pen to be no fewer than 17 nu- clear-capable American ships within range of Iraqi missiles and warplanes in or near the Persian Gulf,

Anybody who thinks these ships won't get targetted, or that abso- lutely no [raqi missiles will get through, has to be living ina dreamland.

Among the American ships are four aircraft carriers, carrying 100 nuclear bombs each, as well as two battleships carrying 10 nuclear missiles between them, six cruisers bearing 20 nuclear missiles, and five destroyers armed with a total of 34 nuclear missiles, plus two to four nuclear depth bombs.

In addition, the British have two destroyers and two frigates with at least four and possibly eight nuclear depth bombs aboard.

The U.S. cruisers Mississippi and South Carolina are powered by two nuclear reactors each. By now, another cruiser, the Virginia, and another carrier. the Theodore

Bob Hunter

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Roosevelt, both also powered by twin nuclear reactors, should be either in or approaching the war zone.

In addition, there are believed to be at least six unidentified nu- clear attack submarines in the region, carrying between them some 82 nuclear Tomahawk sea- launched Cruise missiles.

According to a report prepared by Greenpeace, by mid- to late- January, the Americans will be operating an estimated 20 nuclear reactors on 16 vessels in the area.

Never in history has such a fleet of nuclear-powered and armed ships been deployed in such a concentrated area on the eve of open warfare.

What the effect of even a few Iraqi hits on these vessels will be is anybody's guess, but to describe the situation as being much like parking a score of nuclear reactors in the middle of a shooting range is surely no exaggeration,

The use of the phrase ‘*en- vironmental catastrophe’' to describe the impact of battle damage on any one of the nukes in the zone is no exaggeration ci- ther.

Yet this is just one of the en- vironmental catastrophes being courted in the Persian Gulf.

Fears have been expressed by climatologists that if Saddam Hussein makes good on his vow to bomb Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, or even to torch Kuwe it’s refineries as his forces retreat, the resulting year-long conflagration before the fires could be brought under contro! would have the ef- fect on weather patterns around the world of several EF} Ninos or hundreds of Mount St. Helens.

fn countries across Africa and southern Asia, where millions and millions of people find themselves on the edge of famine, this might be enough to tip the scales aguin it them, plunging possibly as many as a billion of the world’s hungry into starvation due to failed crops.

[tis difficult to believe that the American administration isn’t geared for war because of some hidden political agenda having to do with keeping powerful domestic allies in the oil industry — which is reaping enormous profits — happy.

Why Canada is there is another question entirely. We are hardly arresting the spread of global tyr- anny, as we were when opposing communism in Korea, or checking a despot with the capacity (o threaten the entire free world, as in the case of Hitler.

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