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by Christian/Base21 Media Activist
dvs-b@t-online.de

Under eight weeks of heavy pressure from the Bush administration, the United Nations Security Council signed a resolution for disarming Iraq last Friday. The United States government forced the new resolution in order to prepare for a heavy and perhaps long war against the Middle Eastern country.

Last week the U.S. sent the aircraft carrier "USS Constellation" with 5,500 crew members, Marines and pilots to the Persian Gulf region. The ship is carrying 75 warplanes. Soon another aircraft carrier will be on its way from Japan to the Gulf. Next month there will be at least five more aircraft carriers and many more battleships. This will be the largest collection of firepower sent to the coast of Iraq since the last Gulf War in 1991.

The heavy presence in the sea translates to a complete and systematic base to launch a large land invasion. Nearly every day, new U.S. army units arrived in the region, and last week, 2,200 U.S. Marines of the "24th Marine Expeditionary Unit" were shipped to the Suez Channel. Two squadrons of "Apache" helicopters of the 5th U.S. Army Corp, based in Germany, arrived last month in Kuwait. Thousands of Marines, usually based in Camp Pendleton, California, are on their way to the Gulf region. Already, experts estimates the number of U.S. soldiers in and around the Gulf region to be at least 70,000.

Meanwhile, the British government announced last week that they intend to call up at least 10,000 reservists for the planned war. Minister of Defense G. Hoon will announce the conscription according to the "Order of the Queen" Elizabeth II. The last time Great Britain announced an order of that kind was during Korean War.

Kuwaiti authorities, surely (but perhaps not only) under pressure from the U.S. government, closed the branch office of Al-Jazeera TV. Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar, is the only (partly) independent voice in the Middle East region. And, of course, the potential aggressors do not like independent reports.