The Rag Blog

There are, to be sure, significant differences between the torture scandal currently engulfing Ottawa and the one that rocked the Bush administration three years ago. There are no gruesome photos and, unlike the U.S. abuse of Iraqi detainees, the torture in Afghanistan is being done by Canada’s local allies.

But in many ways this scandal is equal to the outrage of Abu Ghraib. With the photographic evidence of the abuse in Iraq, even old Donald Rumsfeld could not have pulled the straight-faced performance of Stephen Harper and Gordon O’Connor in the House of Commons this week.

Faced with the shocking accounts from Afghan detainees featured in The Globe and Mail this week, Harper had the audacity on Tuesday to dismiss the reports as “allegations of the Taliban.”

Graeme Smith, The Globe and Mail correspondent in Afghanistan (and, by the Prime Minister’s appalling logic, a Taliban spokesperson), conducted weeks of research touring “medieval nightmare” prisons and interviewing 30 detainees. Smith recorded accounts of beatings, electric shock, whipping, freezing and starvation among the methods employed by the security forces to which Canadian soldiers turned over their detainees.

On Wednesday, The Globe and Mail delivered the knockout punch to Harper’s and the Conservatives’ evasions and denials. The headline summed it all up, “What Ottawa doesn’t want you to know: Government was told detainees often faced ‘extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial’.”

A 2006 report on Afghanistan compiled for Foreign Affairs Canada provides proof that the Conservative government knew about all of this, contrary to everything O’Connor and the PM have been saying for months – and what they, incredibly, continued to assert in the House this week. Key passages of the Afghanistan report were blacked out, but The Globe and Mail obtained an original copy. The censored content, what Ottawa didn’t want us to know, includes the following passages:

“Despite some positive developments, the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006…

Extra judicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common. Freedom of expression still faces serious obstacles, there are serious deficiencies in adherence to the rule of law and due process by police and judicial officials. Impunity remains a problem in the aftermath of three decades of war and much needed reforms of the judiciary systems remain to be implemented.” (The Globe and Mail, A1, April 25, 2007)

It is important to note that the torture scandal that has exploded in recent days is something that the anti-war movement and human rights activists have been trying to expose for years. Lawyers Against War, Amnesty International and academics like University of British Columbia professor Dr. Michael Byers have long been sounding the alarm that Canada was in violation of the Geneva Convention by handing over detainees to almost certain torture and abuse.

This includes, lest we forget, handing over prisoners to U.S. authorities, who have established their own facilities for “enemy combatants” at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and the infamous Guantanamo base on occupied Cuban territory.

Canada’s complicity in torture has also been a motivation for the many groups across the country advocating for troops out of Afghanistan. Those who have defended the current NATO mission as a “humanitarian intervention” have lost a lot of credibility this week.

For instance, in a recent feature essay in This Magazine, Vancouver journalist Jared Ferrie does not mention torture once and makes a bold assertion, “for all its flaws, the current Afghan government’s human rights record is light years ahead of any in the past three decades.”

Rather than “light years ahead,” Afghanistan’s current situation looks like more of the same that the country has endured for decades:

Counter-insurgency war, corrupt government, “medieval” prisons and widespread torture. This has accompanied the long tradition of foreign intervention, pursued in turn by the UK, the USSR and the U.S.

Canada is now deeply complicit in all of this, and neither the denials of Stephen Harper nor the rationalizations of liberal interventionists will be able to change that fact.

Four years ago the U.S. and Britain unleashed war on Iraq, a nearly defenseless Third World country barely half the size of Saskatchewan.

For twelve years prior to the invasion and occupation Iraq had endured almost weekly U.S. and British bombing raids and the toughest sanctions in history, the “primary victims” of which, according to the UN Secretary General, were “women and children, the poor and the infirm.” According to UNICEF, half a million children died from sanctions related starvation and disease.

Then, in March 2003, the U.S. and Britain –possessors of more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined –attacked Iraq on a host of fraudulent pretexts, with cruise missiles, napalm, white phosphorous, cluster and bunker buster bombs and depleted uranium (DU) munitions.

The British Medical Journal The Lancet published a study last year estimating Iraqi war deaths since 2003 at 655,000, a mind-boggling figure dismissed all-too readily by the British and American governments despite widespread scientific approval for its methodology (including the British government’s own chief scientific adviser).

On April 11, 2007, the Red Cross issued a report entitled “Civilians without Protection: the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Iraq.” Citing “immense suffering,” it calls “urgently” for ” respect for international humanitarian law.” Andrew White, Anglican Vicar of Baghdad added, “What we see on our television screens does not demonstrate even one per cent of the reality of the atrocity of Iraq”

The UN estimates two million Iraqis have been “internally displaced,” while another two million have fled –largely to neighbouring Syria and Jordan, overwhelming local infrastructure.

An attack such as that on Iraq, neither in self-defence nor authorized by the United Nations Security Council is, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal that condemned the Nazis, “the supreme international crime.” According to the Tribunal’s chief prosecutor, US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, such a war is simply mass murder.

Most Canadians are proud that Canada refused to invade Iraq. But when it comes to Afghanistan, we hear the same jingoistic bluster we heard about Iraq four years ago. As if Iraq and Afghanistan were two separate wars, and Afghanistan is the good war, the legal and just war.

In reality, Iraq and Afghanistan are the same war.

That’s how the Bush administration has seen Afghanistan from the start; not as a defensive response to 9/11, but the opening for regime change in Iraq (as documented in Richard A. Clarke’s Against all Enemies).That’s why the Security Council resolutions of September 2001 never mention Afghanistan, much less authorize an attack on it. That’s why the attack on Afghanistan was also a supreme international crime, which killed at least 20,000 innocent civilians in its first six months. The Bush administration used 9/11 as a pretext to launch an open-ended so-called “War on Terror” –in reality a war of terror because it kills hundreds of times more civilians than the other terrorists do.

That the Karzai regime was subsequently set up under UN auspices doesn’t absolve the participants in America’s war, and that includes Canada. Nor should the fact that Canada now operates under the UN authorized International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mislead anyone. From the start, ISAF put itself at the service of the American operation, declaring “the United States Central Command will have authority over the International Security Assistance Force” (UNSC Document S/2001/1217). When NATO took charge of ISAF that didn’t change anything. NATO forces are always ultimately under US command. The “Supreme Commander” is always an American general, who answers to the American president, not the Afghan one.

A new attack against health freedom, drug safety, and dietary supplements was launched last week by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) with major support from Michael Enzi (R-WY). It is called the Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act (S1082). This legislation was planned over the past few years working hand-in-glove with the FDA’s dysfunctional management and legal team – meaning this legislation was written for the profits of Big Pharma and Big Biotech AT THE EXPENSE OF SAFETY AND HUMAN HEALTH.

S1082 is a Trojan Horse bill that pretends to address safety issues. Unbelievably, the bill turns the FDA into a drug development company that will expose Americans to new and dangerous biological drugs that have little testing to prove safety or effectiveness. And to top it off, the bill gives broad new regulatory powers to the FDA that can be used to frivolously attack dietary supplements and forward the FDA management’s anti-American globalization agenda.

On April 18, 2007, S1082 was approved by the HELP committee (which Kennedy and Enzi control) and now moves to the floor of the Senate. In a slick move, Kennedy has attached his long-planned FDA/Big Pharma “reform” measures to the renewal of Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). Current PDUFA law expires later this year and must be reviewed by Congress. PDUFA allows Big Pharma to pay the FDA fees to speed the approval of its drugs. The new Kennedy bill will increase these FDA bribes to 380 million dollars in 2008, well over 50% of the FDA budget for new drug approvals. This is like paying the mob for protection. Kennedy, by replacing the existing PDUFA law with this new bill (S1082), is ensuring that his twisted legislation is the one that will be put before the Senate for a vote.

The FDA Drug Company, an Agency with New Regulatory Power

It is hard for anyone to comprehend that the agency that is supposed to be in charge of drug safety is about to become a drug company. It is astonishing that the FDA will now manage a full scale business activity that uses a “non profit” foundation as a shield to avoid international patent problems, protect proprietary rights of its commercial drug-development enterprise, and massively expands FDA regulatory powers to quickly remove anything from the market that is competition to its own products and licensing agreements.

This new FDA business enterprise is called the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the Food and Drug Administration (see pages 105-125). In previous versions of the Kennedy bill it was going to be an independent drug company within the FDA (the Reagan-Udall Institute for Applied Biomedical Research). In the current bill it is a “non profit” collaboration of the FDA, private industry, government funding, and private funding. It is run directly by the FDA even though it pretends to not be part of the government. Under this scam taxpayers will foot the bill for drug development and then be charged outrageous prices for the drugs. Furthermore, the new bill seeks to allow a massive expanse of FDA regulatory power through this new foundation. For example, on pages 106-107 the bill states:

“The purpose of the Foundation is to advance the mission of the Food and Drug Administration to modernize medical, veterinary, food, food ingredient, and cosmetic product development, accelerate innovation, and enhance product safety….The Foundation shall [take] into consideration the Critical Path reports and priorities published by the Food and Drug Administration, identify unmet needs in the development, manufacture, and evaluation of the safety and effectiveness, including post approval, of devices, including diagnostics, biologics, and drugs, and the safety of food, food ingredients, and cosmetics.”

I recently sent you a heads up about the Bill Moyers special that aired last night on PBS. (Transcript and replay) For this I am deeply ashamed, and I apologize. I told you that this would be a good thing to watch, that it would shed some needed light on the media industrial governmental conspiracy to sell the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Well, I was wrong. Wrong squared. I suspended my disbelief for one minute, put my bullshit detector on pause, and bammo. The Moyers show was a gigantic crock. He committed precisely the same egregious errors he so piously attributed to the bad guys. He sold us a lie.

Only ONE sentence of anything approaching the real truth was allowed to stick its head outside the sheets of complicity that shrouded Moyers’ whitewash. Only Phil Donahue said it: “It’s good for business.” Moyers played the same game which got us into Iraq, and has gotten us into myriad wars of overthrow and regime change since the nineteenth century. (The concept of the “embedded” journalist was in fact created in the nefarious Mexican War of 1848.)

Moyers limited his sources to the same major media co conspirators (CBS, CNN, Wash Post, NY Times) who colluded last time, and have colluded every single time the Government and their big business bosses have decided it was “good for business” to have a war. He paraded Dan Rather and many similar pimp media Meas who Culpa’ed all over the screen, but Moyers never got to the true story. The war, as all others before it, was begun solely to further the venal and rapacious interests of American business and power. The war was justified on totally mendacious grounds, invented by the government, and spread like fungus by major media. The major media depends on the kindness and advertising of the very people who benefit the most from the war, and it participated with great vigor in the selling of the war and its justification, moral and otherwise.

The business interests that wanted the war, paid the government, and elected officials to create a scenario where the war could be justified and prosecuted. The business interests that wanted the war, paid the media and its journalists to not just go along but play a strong and active role in selling the lie. One so-called “progressive” voice was heard- that of Norman Solomon, ( of the so-called Progessive Democrats, if your stomach can take it) who got the job of explaining gosh how did this all happen ? Solomon appears to be angling to run for something pretty soon. He has turned to a Politicians’ Ptolemaic Progressiveness– perchance he will run on the Ostrich Party ticket. “Well”, Norman explained, “we were all bamboozled.”
Oh.

Never mentioned: the hundreds, the thousands of anti war blogs, organizations, newspapers, monthlies, writers, and just plain folks, who saw and loudly and demonstratively spoke the truth and who were purposefully ignored, derided– and often persecuted- for their actions. Never even whispered: the fact that millions of people marched and demonstrated and fought to stop the wars.

Moyers did exactly what he accused the bad guys of doing- he pursued a willful ignorance, refusing to recognize or reveal that many of us were right, and were loud and were ubiquitous, and were purposely ignored by ALL of those who benefited from the war. The facts were all out there. WE were not bamboozled. WE were ignored, vilified, and hounded by Homeland Security. The press did not snooze. The press was not fooled, nor bamboozled nor tricked.

It is not enough that these whores apologize.

Apology NOT accepted.

What are they gonna DO about it ? Thass what I wanna know. Selling us another pile of doggie poop and telling us its Mount Ararat is NOT gonna be OK. Moyers and PBS proved to be two more allies in selling us the big lie, and should be hounded outta town for it. Even better, they should be ignored. We have serious and brilliant sources for truth available to anyone and everyone. They are NOT on network or cable TV.

The third summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for America (ALBA) is set to begin April 28 and end the next day in Barquisimetro, Venezuela. ALBA is a socioeconomic and political organization of Latin American and Caribbean states that fosters development and integration of its members through fair trade and wide-ranging cooperation, rather than by imperialist exploitation and the so-called “free trade” touted by the US imperialists.

The idea of the international organization was formulated in 2004 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and it quickly won the support of Cuban President Fidel Castro. The two leaders formally launched the organization in April 2005 at a summit between them in Havana. At the 2005 summit, the two leaders signed about 50 deals that have in only two years more than quadrupled trade between the two countries.

The 2005 ALBA deal between Cuba and Venezuela was bilateral in genesis but multilateral in effect. The two countries started a program under ALBA which they called Mission Miracle which aims to restore the sight of over 2,000,000 blind people in Latin America and Caribbean. In the beginning, Cuba provided the medical services and Venezuela provided the money for the program. Today, ALBA’s Mission Miracle has restored the eyesight of almost 500,000 Latin Americans and Caribbeans from 28 different countries, who, for the most part, have been flown to Havana or to Caracas for eye surgery. Transportation, surgery, dinners, and housing in Havana and Caracas are free of charge. Another ALBA program intends to graduate 200,000 physicians in 10 years in Latin America and the Carribean. Already two Schools of Medicine functioning, one in Cuba and one in Venezuela, and more are planned in other countries.

Mission Miracle is a glorious display of revolutionary humanism which bourgeois society, utterly decadent, cannot comprehend or otherwise appreciate.

The astonishing success of the ALBA relationship between Venezuela and Cuba stimulated the interest of other Latin American and Caribbean countries in the organization. At the 2006 summit in Havana, Bolivia joined ALBA under the leadership of newly elected President Evo Morales. Both Venezuela and Cuba have since poured billions of dollars of aid into Bolivia, the poorest country in South America.

Among other things, Cuba has already dispatched well over a 1000 doctors to Bolivia. They are treating the Bolivian population without charge. They have built over a dozen hospitals and clinics of various kinds and equipped these facilities with the latest medical equipment and supplies, most of which were manufactured in Cuba. Cuba has also launched the world famous “Yes, I can” program that aims to wipe out illiteracy in Bolivia in 30 months. In the sphere of fair trade, Cuba and Venezuela have agreed to purchase all of Bolivian soy exports, if necessary, after the US imperialists, led by Mr. George W. Bush, indicated that US market access will be denied to Bolivia soy in favor of soy exported from Colombia. Soy is Bolivia’s main agricultural export.

Venezuelan trade and cooperation with Bolivia under the auspices of ALBA is so massive and wide-ranging that the people and leadership of other Latin America and the Caribbean countries are amazed. Venezuela has helped Bolivia with its current energy needs and with the development of Bolivia’s immense reserves of natural gas. Venezuela has also helped Bolivia escape from its bondage to predatory international financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter American Development Bank, all three institutions are totally dominated by the US imperialists.

When Bolivia joined ALBA at the 2006 summit in Havana, Daniel Ortega was present as an observer. At the time Ortega was a presidential candidate in Nicaragua. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez walked up to Mr. Ortega and said “Daniel, you should come back to this meeting next year [April 2007] as the president of Nicaragua.” Since then the people have elected Ortega as their president in another sweeping democratic victory for the left in Latin America. On Saturday, April 28, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is expected to be in Barquisimetro, Venezuela at the third summit of ALBA. But Ortega didn’t wait for the 2007 summit; Nicaragua joined ALBA on the same day that Ortega took the oath of office in January 2007.

Nicaragua, which was a close ally of US imperialists until the November 2006 presidential election, is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti. Bolivia is the poorest in South America and the third poorest in the hemisphere.

Expecting the same kind of aid that Bolivia has received, not even the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, which ordinarily grovels before US imperialists, has seriously criticized Nicaragua’s decision to join ALBA. The Cubans are now doing their thing in Nicaragua in the fields of health care, education, engineering, security, etc. The Venezuelans are doing their thing, again on a truly massive scale, with special emphasis in the fields of energy cooperation, financial assistance, health care, education, agriculture, and housing.

Positive results from ALBA in Nicaragua are already discernible after only four months of membership.

In February 2007, Hugo Chavez visited three English-speaking Caribbean countries –Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda. The heads of government of the three countries are respectively Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister Ralph E. Gonsalves, and Prime Minister Winston Baldwin Spencer.

The three Caribbean heads of government signed a memorandum of understanding that says their countries support the “principles” on which ALBA is based.

It is still unclear what, if anything, this means. We know that trade and cooperation agreements between the three English-speaking Caribbean countries and Venezuela and Cuba have existed for years, even before the ALBA relationships that involve Bolivia and Nicaragua. So, this signed memorandum of understanding contemplates something more than mere “principles,” because Venezuelans and Cubans are already working in the three countries in a variety of fields. The three Caribbean countries are already members of Petrocaribe through which Venezuela supplies oil and gas to them on preferential terms.

The three Caribbean gentlemen named above don’t come off as card-carrying revolutionaries like Chavez, Castro, Morales, and Ortega. Rather Skerrit, Gonsalves, and Spencer resemble middle class liberals; so one has to be cautious about the legal effect of ALBA memorandum of understanding that they signed. Whatever their political and ideological identity, they are political winners in their respective countries and they have a voice in Caricom, OAS, UN and number of other important international bodies.

Indeed, the three countries seem to support ALBA more in practice than in principle.

What appears to be the case is that the three English-speaking Caribbean countries have some kind of relationship with ALBA that lies between membership and non-membership. Perhaps, their relationship will be more clearly defined this week at the third ALBA summit in Barquisimetro, Venezuela, if they show.

There is a possibility that Ecuador may join ALBA. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is now engaged in a bitter political fight to rewrite the constitution of Ecuador. So, now may not be the most opportune moment to enter ALBA formally although Correa may show at the summit in Barquisimetro this week as an observer.

In May 2007, ALBA will launch its international TV network for member countries and others to promote among other things, socialism, democracy, proletarian internationalism and anti-imperialism

Now, finally, to the big and burning question.

Who will represent Cuba at Barquisimetro?

The idea of a summit implies a meeting of either heads of state or of government. The president of Cuba is both the head of state and of government. However, Fidel Castro, 80, is recovering from a serious illness and his brother Raul serves as acting head of state and government. With Fidel in the hospital, it is unlikely that Raul will leave the country. The third ranking official in the Cuban government seems to be Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida, a vice president of the council of state like Raul, but Almeida doesn’t go abroad often.

This leaves, among a few others, Carlos Lage, yet another vice president of the council of state or Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Rogue to head the Cuban delegation to Barquisimetro. The requirements of protocol imply that it will be Lage because he, as a Cuban vice president, seems closer in status to a head of state than the foreign minister.

In the unlikely event, that Fidel has sufficiently recovered, it’s possible that he will pop up at Barquisimetro and shock the world. This is the kind of thing he likes to do. Again, this is … lamentably … unlikely.

Given the pathological attempts by the US imperialists to isolate Venezuela and Cuba, ALBA is an extraordinary achievement for all of the seven or so countries involved and especially for the Venezuelans and their exceptionally talented president.

WASHINGTON – A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

The annual report’s release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year’s edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.

Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.

“We’re proceeding in normal fashion with the final review of this and expect it to be released early next week,” State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

A half-dozen U.S. officials with knowledge of the report’s contents or the debate surrounding it agreed to discuss those topics on the condition they not be identified because of the extreme political sensitivities surrounding the war and the report.

Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community’s National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.

Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.

Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.

The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don’t include strikes against U.S. troops.

Even after this year’s report was largely completed and approved, Rice and her aides this week called for a further round of review, in part to avoid repeating embarrassing missteps of recent years in the report’s release, officials said. The review process is being led by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, formerly the nation’s intelligence czar.

The U.S. intelligence community is said to be preparing a separate, classified report on terrorist “safe havens” worldwide, and officials have debated whether Iraq meets that definition.

The report can be expected to be used as ammunition for both sides in the domestic battle over the Iraq war.

President Bush and his aides routinely call Iraq the “central front” in Bush’s war on terrorism and likely will say that the preponderance of attacks there and in Afghanistan prove their point.

But critics say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have worsened the terrorist threat.

The contention by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq and allied with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the invasion has been disproved on numerous fronts.

In September, a Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Saddam rejected pleas for assistance from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and tried to capture another terrorist whose presence in Iraq is often cited by Cheney, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support,” the Senate report said.

Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked in counterterrorism at the State Department, said that while the new report would show major increases in attacks last year in Iraq and Afghanistan, it could chart reductions in mass casualty attacks in the rest of the world.

“The good news is … we’re seeing verifiable and drastic reductions,” he said.

Among the major strikes were bombings in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Dahab on April 24, which killed 23 people and injured more than 60, and aboard trains in Mumbai, India, that left more than 200 dead and in excess of 700 wounded on July 11.

In 2004, the State Department was forced to correct a first version of the report that the administration had used to tout progress in Bush’s war on terror. The original version had undercounted the number of people killed in terrorist attacks in 2003, putting it at less than half of the actual number.

In 2005, the department was again accused of playing politics with the report when it decided not to publish the document after U.S. officials concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985.

The plundering of Iraq’s wealth, first by the UN and now by Iraq’s new Green Zone czars, is the biggest, most shameful financial-political scandal of our times, writes Ramzy Baroud*

Locating Dartmouth House, where Hans von Sponeck, former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq was scheduled to speak in London 18 April, was a challenge. Yet having been lost for an hour in the ever-confusing and expanding city of London was the least of my concerns the moment I slipped quietly into the lecture hall. His statements were shocking, as were his many statistics: Iraq was simply and shamelessly robbed blind during the period of US-championed UN sanctions. Sadly, the robbery and mismanagement continue to this day, but now the figures are much more staggering.

As Mr von Sponeck spoke, I reflected on my lengthy interview with Iraq’s former Ambassador to the United Nations Mohamed Al-Duri. Al-Duri, being interviewed for the first time by English-language media since taking up his post at the UN, revealed to me in early 2001, in equally shocking detail, what sanctions had done to his country and people. He claimed that the UN was a key part of the problem. Led by two countries, the US and Britain, the UN Oil for Food Programme and the “humanitarian” mission it established in Iraq was reducing Iraqis to beggary, robbing the country blind and mis-managing funds, whereas the large bulk fuelled UN-related missions and operations, with needy Iraqi families receiving next to nothing. He spoke of the manipulation of Iraq’s wealth for political purposes and alleged that the UN was a tool in the hands of the US government, aimed at encouraging widespread popular dissatisfaction with Saddam’s government, before the country was dragged into war.

In hindsight, Al-Duri’s assessment was very accurate. Promoting his new book, A Different Kind of War, von Sponeck reiterated in essence and substance Al-Duri’s claims; the only difference is that von Sponeck was an insider; his numbers and stories impeccable and hardly contestable. It’s no wonder that one and a half years after taking up his post in Baghdad, in 1998, he resigned. Even within such an uncongenial bureaucracy like the UN, some people still possess a living conscience; von Sponeck was and remains a man of great qualities.

By March 2003, when American forces invaded Iraq, the UN was generating $64 billion in sales of Iraqi oil, according to von Sponeck. But scandalously, only $28 billion reached the Iraqi people. If distributed evenly, each Iraqi received half a US dollar per day. According to UN figures, an individual living under one dollar per day is classified as living in “abject poverty”. Even during the most destructive phases of the war with Iran, Iraq managed to provide relatively high living standards. Its hospitals were neither dilapidated nor did its oil industry lie in ruins. Only after the advent of UN sanctions in 1991 did Iraqis suffer with such appalling magnitude. Alas, the tyranny of Saddam Hussein expanded to become the tyranny of the international community as well.

“Neither the welfare nor sovereignty of the Iraqi people were respected,” by the UN and its two main benefactors, asserted von Sponeck. The UN Security Council’s “elected 10 or veto-wielding five” had nothing for Iraq but “empty words,” and there were “deliberate efforts to make life uncomfortable (for the Iraqis) through the Oil for Food Programme”. All efforts to modernise Iraq’s oil industry were blocked, said von Sponeck, at the behest of “two governments that blocked all sorts of items,” necessary for even basic living — again, the US and Britain, the same two that invaded and currently occupy Iraq. The logic in all of this is clear; the “pre- emptive” war on Iraq was but an extension of the sanctions regime.

The assessments of Al-Duri and von Sponeck converge, revealing the shameful intents of the US government and its followers many years before the horror of 9/11 polarised public opinion and allowed Washington’s political elites, the neoconservatives and contractors, to make their “case for war”. But where did the money go, during the sanctions and now, four years after the invasion?

Von Sponeck reports that a large chunk — 55 per cent of the money generated from Iraq’s oil — went to fund the UN’s own inadequate “humanitarian” programmes. Much of the rest was usurped by the UN Compensation Commission, entrusted with handling damages claims made by those allegedly harmed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. According to von Sponeck, the Iraqi oil “pie” was so large there was plenty for everyone: Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, and all the rest. But most ironically, the commission awarded a large sum of money to two Israeli kibbutzim in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, for allegedly losing some of their income due to the fact that the war damaged the tourism industry in Israel.

The robbery in Iraq hardly discontinued after the “liberation”. On the contrary, it intensified beyond belief. The US Government Accountability Office uncovered appalling discrepancies in the US military administration’s handling of money: uncountable billions went missing; hundreds of contractors fully paid but the work never done; layer upon layer of shady companies, mercenaries and sub-contractors (Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root but mere illustrations). In partnership with the new rulers of Iraq, these corporations are stealing the wealth of the once prosperous nation, leaving it in shambles.

Paul Wolfowitz must bear a large part of the responsibility that is usually laid at the door of his superior alone

Among those relishing the exposure of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz’s manoeuvres on behalf of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, in recent weeks was almost certainly the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was driven from public life thanks to the catastrophe of Iraq, and for the moment at least lurks in obscurity. Wolfowitz, his deputy until 2005, contributed in almost equal measure to the debacle, yet managed to slide from the Pentagon into the presidency of a leading international institution with every chance to redeem himself. Blame for torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, bungling over troop levels, chaos in Iraq’s reconstruction, and the general meltdown in Pentagon management has all too often been laid at Rumsfeld’s door alone. However, Wolfowitz was an energetic enabler of these outrages and many other notorious initiatives.

To cite just one example: among the most infamous documentary testaments to Rumsfeld’s place in the hierarchy of torture is the First Special Interrogation Plan for use at Guantánamo that received his approval in December 2002. It cleared the way for prolonged sleep deprivation, 20-hour interrogations, and sexual and religious humiliation, along with other favoured techniques. But as the document signed by Rumsfeld notes, the plan had earlier been reviewed and approved by “the deputy”, ie Wolfowitz.

There are indications that Wolfowitz was even more hands on when it came to Abu Ghraib. At the May 2006 court martial of Sergeant Santos Cardona, who was one of the low-ranking personnel called to atone for the collective sins of the military establishment, testimony from one of the interrogators alleged that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were in direct contact with the prison and received “nightly briefings” on the intelligence being extracted under torture.

Just as Rumsfeld will forever be uniquely associated with the torture policy, the hapless former US viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, is credited with the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army. Yet numerous sources in Baghdad and the Pentagon at the time were insistent the disbandment decree had been drafted with Wolfowitz’s assent, probably as a means of removing a potential pool of support for a rival to the neoconservatives’ favourite Iraqi, Ahmed Chalabi.

Earlier Wolfowitz had manoeuvred to have himself appointed as viceroy in Iraq. That effort failed. But a newly revealed inquiry by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that, in a foretaste of things to come, he did his best to secure a high-level position in the administration of the conquered country for Riza. Seemingly, he was in awe of her expertise on Iraqi matters. Participants in high level meetings to discuss intelligence on Iraq told me they were startled to hear the deputy secretary of defence invoke his girlfriend: “Shaha says …” Other Pentagon officials were less impressed by her knowledge of the country, not to mention the enormous salary she demanded for her services, and successfully blocked the appointment. Instead, a huge Pentagon contractor, Saic, was directed to hire Riza for a temporary Iraq mission.

…Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It’s a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest ‘Sunni’ area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will ‘protect’ A’adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn’t empty of Sunnis.

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, “Oh look- we’re just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!” And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn’t enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It’s time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of “Shia areas” and Shia out of “Sunni areas”.

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq’s history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven’t been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn’t know what our neighbors were- we didn’t care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.