IRAQ
BUSH, BLAIR & Co. CALL THEMSELVES 'CHRISTIAN'

Vanishing Goalposts Of Individual And Collective Morality

We have a constant flow of information to On Target; far too much to incorporate in any newsletter. The invasion and occupation of Iraq continue to be a scenario of global importance. We have now amassed over 2,000 A3 pages, mainly press cuttings covering Iraq, another 1,000 dealing with the so-called "War on Terror" and several more volumes of principally Internet material. We have noticed how press coverage of the continuing attrition in Iraq has lately become more muted; except for the most serious incidents, increasingly relegated to "news-in-brief" columns. We have been allowed few glimpses of casualty statistics that might give rise to public alarm, especially during the Bush-Kerry election campaign for the United States Presidency in the latter months of 2004 and, as the election scheduled for Iraq in late January, 2005, draws near. One can only assume that the Mass Communications Media are for the most part singing to the same orchestrated "hymn sheet". As far as we are aware coverage of wounded American servicemen being fitted for prosthetic eyes and limbs, for example, has appeared only in the American Free Press tabloid. The total for American servicemen killed in Iraq to date is some 1,400. Only from the Internet did we learn that by January, 2004, between 11,000 and 22,000 casualties - a range that alone demonstrates the lack of proper information - had been evacuated from Iraq (including 491 mostly pregnancy-related!), of which 9,433 had been processed by the United States air base at Ramstein in Germany. We could easily publish further accounts of continuing military action in Najaf, Samara, Fallujah, Mosul and elsewhere. However, it is important to approach the situation from another and more fundamental angle.

In 1998 we wrote of two committed Christians, Major Derek Cooper, O.B.E., M.C., and his wife Pamela, formerly Viscountess Ruthven of Canberra. Following a period of service at Windsor Castle after the 1939-45 War, they married and devoted the latter 40 years of their lives to humanitarian work; during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, with the Save the Children Fund in Austria and Jordan, again with the Save the Children Fund in the aftermath of the Iran earthquake, and in Occupied Palestine with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (U.N.R.W.A.)(2). When in their 70s, in West Beirut during the Israeli sponsored bombardment of 1982 - the Sabra Shatilla Massacre - they worked for six weeks organising food and medical aid. As a result of this they founded the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (M.A.P.). Eleven years later, now in their 80s, when most of us were safe at home enjoying our Christmas fare, the Coopers spent six weeks confronting the Israeli authorities, when the Security Forces were shooting, killing and maiming Palestinian children between the ages of 4 and 16. No Honours lists for the Coopers, now in their 90s and living quietly in retirement. They have not donated handsomely to party-political coffers. Left-Liberal ideologues would dismiss them as "Establishment" figures.

In 2003, two others who "professed" Christianity, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, riding roughshod over the United Nations Security Council, took the West into a genocidal conflict in Iraq; a conflict in any case pre-determined in the United States some years beforehand. The invasion, in March 2003, was driven by Israeli-linked Neoconservative civilian zealots within the United States Department of Defense(3). Bush and Blair justified their actions on the basis of blatantly falsified evidence and ever shifting pretexts - the removal of Saddam Hussein, unproven links to al Qa'eda, "liberation" of the Iraqi people, non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction and the nonsensical "45 minute" factor. As each was discredited and exposed, another was glibly substituted before sycophantic politicians in Westminster. The same cross-party political faithful on both sides of the Atlantic who for the most part had sat on their hands during 12 years of illegal, United States-driven draconian sanctions in the name only of the United Nations after the first Gulf War of 1991, now continued to back their personal and collective party-political self interest. Opposition to the invasion was conveniently and disingenuously allowed to be attributed to a handful of Left-Wing politicians and journalists, and activist remnants of the Cold War Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (C.N.D.). For those it has suited to advocate a military solution in Iraq and who "profess" the Christian faith this meant the deaths of some 500,000 innocent Iraqi children alone. According to an article in The Lancet this has meant 100,000 Iraqis "liberated" from life since March, 2003. It has meant the deliberate concealment; indeed suppression, of the lethal radiation effects of Depleted Uranium (D.U.) ammunition not only in Iraq, but in the Balkans and Afghanistan, both for civilian populations and our own servicemen. It has meant vast numbers of children killed and maimed by cluster bombs. So much for the "Thou shalt not kill" of the Ten Commandments of the Holy Bible.

Double Standards And Dirty Tricks

In November, 2004, in "Who is the real enemy? Do you support your country if what it does is evil?", Florida-based American writer John Kaminski stated that he was "acutely ashamed, in this rancid day and age, to be an American". Man's historic quest for exploration, acquisition and conquest may be explained away in the context of an inordinately simpler, uncharted and sparsely populated world. Over two thousand years the population of the United Kingdom has risen from roughly 3,000,000 to almost 60,000,000. The world today is closely integrated, and complex. Its resources are being overworked to provide desirable commodities that have become vital. That the needs of developed countries are identified with the national interest, but this in turn has been subsumed by the drive for supranational financial and economic Power; the process of progressive Centralisation. The national interest of the United Kingdom also presupposes, and is formally embodied in, loyalty to one's Queen and Country. Thus military chaplains were a part - a Christian prerequisite - of this fabric through the two world wars of the Twentieth Century. Bankers and industrialists profited. Millions died. In the current case of Iraq where has been the Christian Church? We can only ultimately acknowledge the existence of a single Supreme Power. No religious creed has an exclusive monopoly of this ultimate Truth, as we have explained by the challenge to define Infinity in terms of Time and Space, from which fractious earthly theological fragmentation is simply a Diversion; think on this. Following the Boxing Day, 2004, Tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean, in which at least 150,000 people died, the Archbishop of Canterbury was reported as questioning the "existence of God" (The Sunday Telegraph, 2nd January, 2005). We have quoted a figure of 500,000 Iraqi children alone who perished as a result of the Sanctions between 1991 and 1992, and a further 100,000 Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of the invasion and "liberation" in March, 2003. Where has been the thunder from the Christian pulpits? The moral outrage? The appeal for funds? These strangely malleable priorities of the Christian hierarchy were amply reflected in successive letters to The Daily Telegraph of the 6th and 8th January, 2005:

Not to belittle the terrible tragedy of the tsunami, but can any one explain why the Government hasn't also ordered a three-minute silence for the estimated 100,000 civilian deaths that have taken place in Iraq?

Why hasn't the Government called for a three-minute silence for the estimated 100,000 civilian deaths since the invasion? George W. Bush and Tony Blair have in fact offered nothing but a 659-day silence on this subject.

Does "Thou shalt not kill" discriminate between religious faiths? What has happened to those Anglican Bishops who campaigned so vigorously against the Apartheid regime in South Africa? The World Council of Churches provided funds for the campaign. Where are the funds to fight the oppression and genocide in Iraq? The violence in South Africa was largely Black-upon-Black. The highest figure we have is a mere 14,000 Zulu Inkatha killed by the militant Communist-controlled African National Congress (A.N.C.). 2,000,000 are said to have died during the 20-year war in the Islam-governed Sudan, but where has there been any United States-driven military Coalition to liberate the oppressed Sudanese? Clearly the Christian hierarchy is highly selective, according to financial, economic and material priorities. Has no one wondered how George W. Bush or Tony Blair can ever pass through the portals of any Christian Church?

Lord Rees-Mogg is an Establishment figure who has included the B.B.C. Board of Governors, the Broadcasting Standards Council, editorship of The Times and directorship of G.E.C. in his commitments. We found his record as a banker more elusive in Who's Who. This has included the M&G Group, Rothschild Asset Management and St James Place Capital (also Rothschild)(4). When he wrote in the Sunday Mail of 3rd October, 2004, under the heading "The world really needs Bush to win", he was arguably reflecting an Establishment, high Tory position on the global imperium. He referred to the United States Presidential Campaign debates as a "magnificent symbol of democracy", when the reality was that of a three-month stage managed, "show biz" pantomime from which all but the two major political parties - the same sides of the same coin - had been ritually eliminated. Rees-Mogg wrote of the importance of United States leadership, of the need for "democracy" in Iraq and the threat of failure in Iraq to the credibility of United States Power. "Democracy" in the United States, as in the United Kingdom, has long been a farce for ordinary people; the chance to vote for a system largely beholden to massive vested interests behind two principal political parties that function behind a "rubber wall" of obfuscation once the public vote has been secured. Under a puppet provisional Government dominated by C.I.A.-linked Kurds, any future move towards "democracy" with this provenance in Iraq is a total fraud. The Daily Mail headline of 29th June, 2004, "Iraqis, you have your nation back" on the occasion of the abrupt departure of United States Administrator L. Paul Bremer and his handover to the C.I.A.-linked Iyad Allawi, could only be seen as satire or a sick joke.

In "The Disenchanted American: are we growing world weary?", John Denny wrote resentfully, even petulantly on 8th January, 2005, of the constant vilification of the United States, as the dominant world power, in fulfilling what he sees as its altruistic global obligations. He alluded to the alternative prospect of potential nuclear proliferation, and militant dictatorships. Lord Rees-Mogg saw the United States in the context of the "equivalent of a lender of resort in banking" - the "power of last resort". Otherwise he saw the world "becoming an even more dangerous place, particularly in terms of nuclear proliferation, the relationship with Islam, oil and international terrorism". Where we once referred to "Communism" we now, of course, refer to "Terrorism"! Different perceptions depend upon the level at which they are formed; the successive layers of a conceptual "onion", but the foregoing arguments, however superficially plausible, are belied by the reality. The key to United States policies is control of essential natural resources as by far the greatest consumer. Ipso facto, control over those governments germane to this scenario. No economy can be allowed to function outside the dollar-dominated global economic model, which we will come to in later pages. The notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning, in Georgia, was set up to train terrorist agents for the purpose of destabilising governments in Latin America that threatened the United States politico-economic model. Assassination, torture, murder and insurrection were the techniques. In 2000 the name was adroitly changed to the Centre for Inter-American Security Cooperation(5). So much for the semantics. So much for the altruism. One-man-one-vote Western-style government, however unsuited to existing, indigenous cultures, is more malleable than independent-minded and more autocratic regimes. On the retrospective evidence, who now believes the invasion of Kosovo, in 1999, was really about Serbian genocide of Kosovar Albanians? Mark Littman, Q.C., has shown the invasion to have been illegal and contrived. But the controlled economy and State Socialism of Slobodan Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia did not fit the political mosaic of an expanding European Union, or the global economic model. Who can now recall the huge natural resources of the Trepca mines that were at stake in Kosovo, or moves to "privatise" former Yugoslavian assets? This was the point at which the International Crisis Group, sponsored by international financier George Soros, moved in(6). In the Balkans, as in Iraq, the Geneva Conventions and United Nations Human Rights legislation have been thrown to the winds by the United States. Civilian populations and the civilian infrastructure - hospitals, power, water and sewerage - have been deliberately targeted with the use of modern battlefield weapons, and the willing acquiescence of United Kingdom Governments. In the wake of this destruction, of course, in come American reconstruction corporations, such as Bechtel and Haliburton. Where would Lord Rees-Mogg and John Denny care to place United States global statesmanship and altruism now?

The global authority, and conscience, are theoretically vested in the United Nations, but this has never been allowed to function as such by the United States. In 1996 the more positive Boutros Boutros-Ghali was replaced as Secretary-General by the feeble, equivocating Kofi Annan. Mohammed AlBaradei, Head of the International Atomic Energy Authority (I.A.E.A.), is reported to be currently under threat to his reappointment; almost certainly because he has not fulfilled United States objectives in the case of Iran, arguably the next target after Iraq. In December, 2002, Iraq forwarded an 11,000-page dossier on its weapons capability to the United Nations Headquarters, in New York. This was removed by the United States from the office of the United Nations Weapons Inspectors, and later returned with no less that 7,000 pages removed. The Western Powers, first Great Britain and France, latterly the United States, have manipulated the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the 1914-18 War. Arab nations so formed under mandates and protectorates were never truly free, although some benefited enormously in the spin off from the growing oil industry. After the 1939-45 War Arab and Iranian heads of state were sponsored or deposed by Western intelligence and diplomatic agencies, and wars were instigated and sponsored as necessary to maintain the requisite Balance of Power. This took scant account of any United Nations obligations. In divided Cyprus a United Nations Force (U.N.F.I. CYP), has been in place since the early 1960s. In Israel-Palestine, where a United Nations Force should have been in place some four decades ago, the United Nations has been reduced to near impotence by the virtually unqualified support of the United States, behind which lies the Power of Organised International Jewry. Thus little control has been exercised over Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people, the continued settlement of Palestinian land, or Israel's role as a major nuclear power outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Once again, so much for American statesmanship and altruism.

The Kidnapping Of Margaret Hassan

Margaret Hassan was Irish. She held Irish and Iraqi passports. She was fluent in Arabic, she had lived in Iraq for some 30 years, and as a dedicated aid worker and the Head of CARE in Baghdad she was revered by ordinary Iraqi people. In mid-October, shortly before the Black Watch were despatched from Basra to support the vengeful, genocidal United States destruction of Fallujah, Margaret Hassan was kidnapped from her car on her way to work. She was also a close friend of leading journalist on Iraqi affairs, Felicity Arbuthnot, who is also Irish. Felicity Arbuthnot had been senior researcher in 1999, for John Pilger's television film: "Paying The Price: The Killing Of The Children Of Iraq", with which Margaret Hassan had also been associated as an adviser. In the dangerous, convoluted and complex inter-factional network in Iraq it was never clear who Margaret Hassan's captors were. That a loyal Iraqi group might have been responsible would have been seriously counter-productive as a bargaining counter against the impending assault on Fallujah. Shortly after her disappearance it was also revealed that a cousin of puppet Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, and two wives from his family, had also been "kidnapped". This was a far more logical tactic against the assault. But were these abductions a complicated double bluff on the part of the Coalition Forces and their agents? After Margaret Hassan was reported to have been executed, a badly mutilated body was said to have been flown to the United Kingdom for D.N.A. verification. But nothing of the result, or the subsequent funeral has as far as we are aware since been reported in the Media. The Allawi wives are believed to have been released, but of Allawi's cousin, potentially a serious embarrassment for the Coalition, equally little has subsequently been heard. Much of this we have already published, but more was to come.

Following Margaret Hassan's disappearance, Felicity Arbuthnot featured several times in the British Media speaking as one who knew her and the scenario in Iraq well. Indeed she was also consulted by the Media as far apart as the United States, France, Germany and Japan. Felicity had been insistent that Margaret Hassan had not held a United Kingdom passport, which could have been the kiss of death for her by linking her in the minds of her captors with the hated Coalition Forces and Administra-tion. This for some obscure reason at one stage precipitated an angry confrontation with the Foreign Office. Then, in late November, no less than the Foreign Office Press Secretary, John Williams, personally tele-phoned Felicity late one Sunday afternoon to threaten her against persisting with this line of reasoning. Soon afterwards it became impossible to telephone Felicity; each time one dialled the automated voice declared that the number was "not available". Her line had been cut off. Yet Felicity Arbuthnot had already settled her telephone account promptly, in cash. At about this time she had also paid a fine for a minor traffic offence in cash, in court, at the time of the penalty. A few days later she arrived at her flat in London to find a warning note from the Police that a warrant would be issued against the alleged "non-payment" of the fine. She then contacted a very senior and distinguished Member of Parliament, who promised to ask a question in the House. He later telephoned to say that he had received a request, unprecedented in his entire career in Parliament, to withdraw his question. If we don't believe in official "dirty tricks", do we believe in coincidence? Meanwhile the mystery of Margaret Hassan has yet to finally be resolved.

THE REAL AIM OF THE "LIBERATION"
THE ECONOMIC RAPE AND PILLAGE OF IRAQ

The global economy is geared to the debt-usury system of money "creation". Broadly speaking, corporate - and in the same way individual, private debt - cannot catch up on itself. Global institutions must therefore over-produce in an enforced free trade environment to satisfy this insatiable demand. When President Nixon removed the regulatory linkage between the dollar and gold in the 1960s freedom to create paper "money" took off. Three other factors loom large. A massive military-industrial complex that had evolved during the Twentieth Century could not simply be switched off with the end of the Cold War. Secondly, the supply of natural resources, particularly oil, is not inexhaustible in a climate of insatiable consumption. Thirdly, the balance of the global economy and demand for these resources are being increasingly threatened as India and China come on stream, with populations roughly 3 and 4 times that of the United States respectively. We usually depict the global economy in the form of an inverted cone expanding ever upwards and spinning in a state of precarious equilibrium. The United States economy, much the world's largest, is already in serious trouble. The following three reports suggest the true reasons for the occupation of Iraq. In the case of the Monsanto Corporation, attempts to force Genetically Modified (G.M.), produce on the United Kingdom in the late 1990s with the acquiescence of the New Labour Government are well known. The move of Monsanto into Iraq exemplifies the global strategy in which the Corporation is forcing its way into India, the sub-Saharan economies and Latin America.

United States To Take Bigger Bite Of Iraq's Economic Pie
"Helping" Government Cut Social Subsidies,
Give United States Corporations Full Access to Iraqi Oil

by Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service, 24th December, 2004

The United States is helping the interim Iraqi Government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for United States companies to the Nation's oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia. During a visit here this week, officials of the United States-backed Administration detailed some of the economic moves planned for Iraq, many of them appearing to give United States corporations greater reach into the occupied Nation's economy. For example, the current leadership is looking at privatising the Iraqi National Oil Company, said Finance Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi. The government, which is supposed to be replaced after elections scheduled for January, 2005, will also pass a new law that will further open Iraq's huge oil reserves to foreign companies. United States firms are expected to gain the lion's share of access in a process estimated to be worth billions of dollars. "So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprises, certainly to oil companies", Abdel Mahdi said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. Abdel Hadi, formerly a member of the exile Iraqi opposition, said the interim Government will also reconsider deals signed between French and Russians oil firms and the regime of former President Saddam Hussein. It is still not clear whether those contracts will be cancelled altogether or just reduced.

France and Russia both opposed the March, 2003, United States-led invasion of the Arab country and companies from those nations were initially banned by the United States occupation administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority (C.P.A.), from helping to "rebuild" Iraq. Washington later said non-United States firms could work there, after the world's rich nations agreed to forgive part of Iraq's debt, a decision that opened the door to Baghdad signing on to a loan programme designed by the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.). But to date all contracts let for "reconstruction" by the United States Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.) have gone to United States firms, which have then subcontracted some work to foreign companies. Iraq's oil sector is essential both to world energy markets and to the Nation's economy. Iraq sits on the planet's second largest oil reserves, after Saudi Arabia, and oil revenues account for more than 95 per cent of the country's current budget. (The rest comes mainly from taxes and profits of certain state-owned enterprises). Iraq is now producing a maximum 2,500,000 barrels of oil a day (b.p.d.), which drops to around two million b.p.d. during attacks from the armed opposition. But Baghdad says it expects to produce 3,500,000 b.p.d. when more United States companies move in and security improves. "We found it very useful and interesting to hear the representatives of the government describe some of the preliminary thinking about structuring of the state-owned oil sector in Iraq", said Alan Larson, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agriculture, during the press club conference with Iraqi officials. Washington is also expanding its influence in Iraq's oil sector via training programmes. During meetings this week of the Iraq-United States Joint Economic Commission (J.E.C.), the body that coordinates United States plans for Iraq's economy, Larson said the United States will provide training for oil-sector personnel, at United States universities.
Since it invaded Iraq, the United States has worked to reshape the Arab Nation in its - United States - image. All the economic programmes., including the most liberal tax scheme in the Middle East and nearly non-existent trade tariffs, instituted by the C.P.A. are being continued by the interim government. Washington has installed hundreds of United States economic advisors in all Iraqi government ministries, who have a decisive say on most economic decisions. It has also sponsored the bulk of the Nation's economic changes, based on a neo-liberal model that emphasises privatisation of government entities and cuts to social spending. One major move the country is inching towards under United States guardianship, which was discussed this week, is a rollback of Iraq's huge subsidies system, which may have kept millions of Iraqis from starvation under United States and United Kingdom-backed sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War. The sanctions lasted for 12 years. A study by the United Nations Children's Fund (U.N.I.C.E.F.) and Iraq's Ministry of Health found that 500,000 more Iraqi children died under sanctions, from 1991 to 1998, than would have otherwise perished, but they stressed that not all the deaths could be directly blamed on the provisions. It is believed that many more Iraqis would have died if not for a strong subsidies system that gave food rations to Iraqi families. Under its October agreement with the I.M.F., Baghdad's interim leaders agreed to cut the support, among many other conditions. Officials defended the move during their Washington visit. "I think this is a necessity for the Iraqi economy", Abdel Mahdi said. "We really need to work on our subsidy side. Subsidies are taking almost 60 per cent of our budget. So this is something we have to work on . . . Other measures really were a real necessity for the Iraqi economy before (becoming) conditions asked by the I.M.F.". Iraqi officials say the country's unemployment rate is now 27 per cent, but some groups have estimated it to be as high as 50 per cent.

The I.M.F. has been notorious for imposing conditions that its economists say are necessary to slash nations' budget deficits. Development groups and anti-poverty campaigners argue those measures favour corporations in the most industrialised nations while harming the poor and middle class in borrowing"countries. The programme with Iraq appears to be no different. Called the "enhanced post-conflict facility", I.M.F. programme bestows U.S.$420,000,000 in loans to the Iraqi Government as a first step, promising more in 2005 if the Nation meets more demanding conditions The I.M.F., which is dominated by the United States and other rich nations, has said it is willing to loan Iraq 2.5 - 4.3 billion dollars over three years now that an internationally recognised Government is in place in the Nation. Washington also brokered talks that began two weeks ago to make Iraq a member of the World Trade Organization (W.T.O.). During this week's meeting of the J.E.C., the United States Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.) said it will focus on lending for Iraq's agricultural sector, which will include over 100 demonstration projects throughout the country to reinvigorate crops and to boost the industry, with the help of United States companies. The United States Treasury and U.S.A.I.D. also said they will back a housing fund in Iraq, which will start lending in January 2005 and is designed to add 30,000 new residential units in and around Baghdad during the year. Many United States companies will be involved. Washington is also pushing lending programmes to Iraq through the United States Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the United States Trade and Development Agency, all of which would produce more opportunities for United States firms in the occupied Nation.

The Economic Situation In Iraq

Still Crushed Under The "Bremer Orders"

by Dahr Jamail, Baghdad, 7th December, 2004

Abu Ahmed AI-Hadithi, 40, sells vegetables in Al-Adhamiyah market. "The economic situation is so bad now", he said while standing near bins of vegetables. "The costs of gas and food are going up so high; so even if we make more now, everything is costing more". His situation is common amongst Iraqis who are struggling to survive under the occupation. Looking expectantly for customers, Mr. Al-Hadithi added, "In Saddam's days we grew all our own vegetables to sell . . . but now so many are coming from outside of Iraq and it is causing us to sell them for less. So I make less profit now, and I have nine people to take care of, and it has made my life very difficult. Many of the vegetables in Iraq now have been poisoned by Depleted Uranium (D.U.). "We can't take any vegetables from the south now; the D.U. makes them all lose their ripeness and become poisonous for us. The struggles facing Abu Ahmed Al- Hadithi are a direct result of Paul Bremer's Order number 12 - former United States Civil Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer authored the "100 Orders", which control the Iraqi economy. Order Number 12 effectively suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for good entering or leaving Iraq", which caused an overnight influx of cheap foreign consumer goods into the country. This led to conditions which Antonia Juhasz - a project director at the International Forum on Globalisation and a Foreign Policy in Focus scholar - describes as affecting Iraqis by "devastating local producers and sellers who were thoroughly unprepared to meet the challenge of their mammoth global competitors".

The authority of the 100 Orders was conveniently signed over to the United States-installed interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Bremer's last day in Iraq. Allawi, an Iraqi exile of twenty five years, has close ties to the C.I.A. and the British Intelligence. Juhasz writes in a Los Angeles Times commentary dated 5th August, 2004, that the Bremer Orders "lock in sweeping advantages to American firms, ensuring long-term United States economic advantage while guaranteeing few, if any, benefits to the Iraqi people". One of the Bremer Orders in particular - Number 39 - effectively allows, Juhasz writes, for:

1. Privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises.

2. 100 per cent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses.

3. "National treatment" - which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses.

4. Unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds.

5. 40-year ownership licenses..

In summary, those measures do not provide preference for Iraqis in doing business in their own country, while they allow foreign companies to buy Iraqi businesses and perform all of the reconstruction and rehabilitation work without being required to spend any of their money in the Iraqi economy. Examples of Iraqis suffering as a result of the Bremer Orders are abundant. Abu Gouda, 50, used to work in a factory of the Ministry of Military Industry. He earned one of the largest monthly salaries at the factory. Now he too is selling vegetables in the Al-Adhamiya market. "I make between 8 and 10,000 Iraqi Dinars per day, and this is just enough to feed my family of seven". Sabah Ahmed used to serve on the Council of his neighbourhood in Baghdad. He is currently out of a job and doesn't know what he will do. "The economic situation is very bad", he said with dismay. "The people are in a critical situation because of the increase in prices. Gasoline, transportation, everything is going up so much. "We have no security, which means that our economy cannot function".

Another man, who asked to be referred to as "Haider", works in a small gold store in the Khadimiyah gold market. "There is a big problem with gold coming from the United Arab Emirates into Iraq, because it is driving all the prices down here, so I am struggling to make a living". Ali also works in the market in the Kadhamiya district of Baghdad. He is responsible for supporting his eight daughters, wife, father, and mother after his older brother was killed by occupation forces. "This is not my real job, but I have to do this. I make 4,000 Iraqi Dinars ($2.70) daily . . . but my family needs 10,000 Iraqi Dinars daily ($7), and I pay 3,000 Iraqi Dinars ($2) for transportation". Many Iraqis have become desperate to make a living under the untenable circumstances caused by the illegal United States occupation of their country. A man who asked to remain anonymous used to work as a warrant officer. "Now I am jobless, so I am selling sweets". He complained that he is struggling to get by because most people are no longer able to afford sweets. This is compounded by the security situation, which causes fewer people to leave their homes and obliges merchants to work shorter hours. Others have resorted to working in the black market in order to maintain their families. "I used to drive my car as a taxi, but now I make more money filling my tank with fuel at the pumps, then selling it here in the black market", an Iraqi said on condition of anonymity. After pausing to watch cars pass by, he added sombrely, "Only in this way am I making enough money". Inflation constitutes another aspect of the crippling situation. "The currency is worth less than before; although the pay rates are higher, the balance is negative because of the increase in prices", Abu Omar, an unemployed lawyer, explained.

While Iraqis struggle to survive, and unemployment is up to 70 per cent amidst the bloody occupation, foreign companies operating in Iraq are posting record profits. Halliburton saw an increase of 80 per cent in revenues in the first financial quarter of 2004 compared to the same quarter last year. This is primarily due to their operations in Iraq, where the company received the lion's share of reconstruction dollars from the United States Government. Bechtel, recipient of the second largest amount of contract funding in Iraq, has seen a 158 per cent increase in revenues generated outside of the United States since last year, which pulled the company out of a slump in this sector. It must be noted that the Bremer Orders are illegal under international law, because they violate the Hague regulations of 1907, which illegalise the transformation of an occupied country's laws. While the orders continue to hurt, rather than assist, Iraqis, there seems to be little hope for an improvement in the quality of life in the war-torn country.

Note: Dahr Jamail is an American journalist of Lebanese descent. Currently based in Iraq, his articles focus on Iraqis and how the occupation of their country affects their daily life.

Iraq Agriculture Forced To Pay For Genetically Modified Seeds
Iraq's New Patent law: A Declaration Of War Against Farmers

by Focus on the Global South and Grain

When Paul Bremer left Baghdad, he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as chief of the occupation authority in Iraq. Among them is Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits, and Plant Variety". This order now has the status and force of a binding law. Seed Farmers will only be allowed to plant "protected" crop varieties. Multinational Seed Companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical will benefit, small farmers in Iraq will lose.

For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and the free innovation with and exchange of planting materials among farming communities has long been the basis of agricultural practice. This has been made illegal under the new law. The seeds farmers are now allowed to plant - "protected" crop, varieties brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of agricultural reconstruction - will be the property of the corporations. While historically the Iraqi Constitution prohibited private ownership of biological resources, the new United States-imposed patent law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds. Inserted into Iraq's previous patent law is a whole new chapter on Plant Variety Protection (P.V.P.), that provides for the "protection of new varieties of plants". P.V.P. is an intellectual property right (I.P.R.), or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered or developed a new variety. So the "protection" in P.V.P. has nothing to do with conservation, but refers to the safeguarding of the commercial interests of private breeders (usually large corporations) claiming to have created the new plants.

To qualify for P.V.P., plant varieties must comply with the standards of the U.P.O.V. Convention, which requires them to be new, distinct, uniform and stable. Farmers' seeds cannot meet these criteria, making P.V.P. protected seeds the exclusive domain of corporations. The rights granted to plant breeders in this scheme include the exclusive right to produce, reproduce, sell, export, import and store the protected varieties. These rights extend to harvested material, including whole plants and parts of plants obtained from the use of a protected variety. This kind of P.V.P. system is often the first step towards allowing the full-fledged patenting of life forms. Indeed, in this case the rest of the law does not rule out the patenting of plants and animals. The term of the monopoly is 20 years for crop varieties and 25 for trees and vines. During this time the protected variety de facto becomes the property of the breeder, and nobody can plant or otherwise use this variety without compensating the breeder. This new law means that Iraqi farmers can neither freely legally plant nor save for re-planting seeds of any plant variety registered under the plant variety provisions of the new patent law. This deprives farmers what they and many others worldwide claim as their inherent right to save and replant seeds.

Corporate Control
The new law is presented as being necessary to ensure the supply of good quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq's accession to the World Trade Organisation (W.T.O.). What it will actually do is facilitate the penetration of Iraqi agriculture by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical - the corporate giants that control seed trade across the globe. Eliminating competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies to open up operations in Iraq, which the new law has achieved. Taking over the first step in the food chain is their next move. The new patent law also explicitly promotes the commercialisation of Genetically Modified (G.M.) seeds in Iraq. Despite serious resistance from farmers and consumers around the world, these same companies are pushing G.M. crops on farmers around the world for their own profit. Contrary to what the industry is asserting, G.M. seeds do not reduce the use of pesticides, but they pose a threat to the environment and to people's health while they increase farmers' dependency on agribusiness. In some countries like India, the "accidental" release of G.M. crops is deliberately manipulated, since physical segregation of G.M. and G.M. free crops is not feasible. Once introduced into the agro-ecological cycle there is no possible recall or clean-up from genetic pollution. As to the W.T.O. argument, Iraq legally has a number of options for complying with the Organisation's rules on intellectual property, but the United States simply decided that Iraq should not enjoy or explore them.

The Reconstruction Facade
Iraq is one more arena in a global drive for the adoption of seed patent laws protecting the monopoly rights of multinational corporations at the expense of local farmers. Over the past decade, many countries of the South have been compelled to adopt seed patent laws through bilateral treaties. The United States has pushed for the U.P.O.V. styled plant protection laws beyond the I.P.R. standards of the W.T.O. in bilateral trade through agreements for example, with Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Likewise, post-conflict countries have been especially targeted. For instance, as part of the reconstruction package the United States recently signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with Afghanistan, which would also include I.P.R. related issues. Iraq is a special case in that the adoption of the patent law was not part of negotiations between sovereign countries. Nor did a sovereign law-making body enact it as reflecting the will of the Iraqi people. In Iraq, the patent law is just one more component in the comprehensive and radical transformation of the occupied country's economy along neo-liberal lines by the occupying powers. This transformation would entail not just the adoption of favoured laws but also the establishment of institutions that are most conducive to a free market regime.

Order 81 is just one of 100 Orders left behind by Bremer and among the more notable of these laws is the controversial Order 39 which effectively lays down the over-all legal framework for Iraq's economy by giving foreign investors rights equal to Iraqis in exploiting Iraq's domestic market. Taken together, all these laws, which cover virtually all aspects of the economy - including Iraq's trade regime, the mandate of the Central Bank, regulations on trade union activities, etc., lay the bases for the United States' bigger objective of building a neo-liberal regime in Iraq. Order 81 explicitly states that its provisions are consistent with Iraq's "transition from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free market economy characterised by sustainable economic growth through the establishment of a dynamic private sector, and the need to enact institutional and legal reforms to give it effect." Pushing for these "reforms" in Iraq has been the United States Agency for International Development, which has been implementing an Agricultural Reconstruction and Development Programme for Iraq (A.R.D.I.), since October, 2003. To carry it out, a one-year US$5,000,000 contract was granted to the United States consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc., with the Texas A&M University as an implementing partner. Part of the work has been sub-contracted to Sagric International of Australia. The goal of A.R.D.I. in the name of rebuilding the farming sector is to develop the agribusiness opportunities and thus provide markets for agricultural products and services from overseas.

THE REALITY BEHIND THE POLITICAL POSTURING

We should first refer to "Food For Thought" on the cover page. Then we should contrast the illusions of Prime Minister Tony Blair, a "marzipan man" with no intellectual rapport with the Middle East and its cultures, no previous ministerial experience before he became Prime Minister in 1997, and no diplomatic experience; a soft-skinned barrister suffused by fifth form ideologies who has never dirtied his hands in battle, with the commentary of a respected journalist and expert on the Middle East, Robert Fisk. Moreover, Blair is a proven liar who, when faced with domestic problems such as the liaisons of former Home Secretary David Blunkett, a collapsing Health Service or the 45 minute farce, flies off to the Sudan, South Africa or Eritrea on some superficial "initiative" or other. An election is scheduled to take place in Iraq at the end of January, 2005. The violence of a people who simply demand their country back - not terrorists - is escalating. Quisling C.I.A. placemen like Iyad Allawi are vulnerable. On 4th January, 2005, the Governor of Baghdad was shot dead. Six days later the Deputy Police Chief was assassinated. According to an Energy Security report prepared for the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, attacks on oil pipelines and other installations numbered 37 between 11th June and 22nd December, 2003, and 87 between 7th January and 12th September, 2004. The obeisance of Tony Blair to the objectives of President Bush and the ruthless Neoconservative cabal behind him defy belief; unless perhaps one remembers Exxon Mobil, B.P. Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell; 3rd, 9th and 13th respectively in the Financial Times list of the world's 500 largest companies for 2004. Nevertheless the marzipan man assures the country that Iraq is now "A better and safer place". Read on:

Can't Bush and Blair See Iraq Is About to Explode?

by Robert Fisk, Arab News, 2nd August, 2004

The war is a fraud. I'm not talking about the Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn't exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qa'eda which didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I'm talking about the new lies. For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against United States troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. Last month's [July's] death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told. The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's "trial". Not only did the United States military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked "disorientated" - C.N.N.'s helpful description - because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi: "Are you a lawyer? . . . Is this a trial?" And swiftly, as he realized that this really was an initial court hearing - not a preliminary to his own hanging - he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence. But don't think we're going to learn much more about Saddam's future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milo-sevic, he'll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were primarily with the United States.

Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching British Prime Minister Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report. Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realize this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "prime minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now. When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African - believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so. But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the "Coalition", that they support their new United States-manufactured government, that the "War on Terror" is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an Internet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife.

Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins. I keep re-reading Tony Blair's statement. "I remain convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life." And I cannot understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even Chamberlain thought that; but he didn't find it a difficult decision - because, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, it was the right thing to do. And driving the streets of Baghdad now, watching the terrified American patrols, hearing yet another thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors after dawn, I realize what all this means. Going to war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the most difficult decision Blair had to take because he thought - correctly - that it might be the wrong decision. I will always remember his remark to British troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British soldiers was not Hollywood but "real flesh and blood". Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was shed. "Deadly force is authorised," it says on checkpoints all over Baghdad. Authorized by whom? There is no accountability. Repeatedly, on the great highways out of the city United States soldiers shriek at motorists and open fire at the least suspicion. "We had some Navy Seals down at our checkpoint the other day," a 1st Cavalry sergeant says to me. "They asked if we were having any trouble. I said, yes, they've been shooting at us from a house over there. One of them asked: 'That house?' We said yes. So they have these three S.U.Vs. and a lot of weapons made of titanium and they drive off towards the house. And later they come back and say 'We've taken care of that'. And we didn't get shot at any more."

What does this mean? The Americans are now bragging about their siege of Najaf. Lieutenant Colonel Garry Bishop of the 37th Armoured Division's 1st Battalion believes it was an "ideal" battle (even though he failed to kill or capture Moqtada Sadr whose "Mehdi army" were fighting the United States forces). It was "ideal", Bishop explained, because the Americans avoided damaging the holy shrines of the lmams Ali and Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a Muslim army occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury and then bragged that they hadn't damaged Canterbury Cathedral? Would we be grateful? What, indeed, are we to make of a war which is turned into a fantasy by those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their lives, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage-taking is having an "effect" on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only four hours of electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for them. This is the "safer" Iraq which Blair was boasting of the other day. "What world does the British Government exist in?"

PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES OF 'LIBERATION'

Robber Barons, Hoodlums And Cowboys In An Ancient Culture

Is this sub-heading unduly harsh? We think not. Hatred for the Americans has been embedded since the first Gulf War of 1991. War crimes were committed on a large scale; crimes for which the United States was never brought to book. These crimes involved deliberate targeting of the civilian population during 11,000 aerial sorties in which 88,000 tons of explosives were dropped, mainly on a defenceless country. The Pentagon subsequently admitted that this was "both to demoralise the populace and exacerbate the effects of sanctions" [trade sanctions already in place against Iraq; not the later United Nations sanctions]. We also had the infamous "Turkey Shoot" in which thousands of defeated, fleeing Iraqis were slaughtered from the air in cold blood. Others were buried alive and a number attempting to surrender were shot down, also in cold blood(7). Under the auspices of Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his Neoconservative accomplices in the Pentagon, the United States invaded Iraq again without any formal post invasion studies or preparation of the Armed Forces, many of whom had never travelled abroad, for operations in an ancient and unfamiliar cultural environment. The ensuing atrocities have been amply covered in previous editions of On Target(8). The distinguished American-Jewish investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, has been an outspoken critic of the invasion in March, 2003, and the conduct of the occupation. This extract from an interview with Seymour Hersh on 11th October, 2004, says all that need be said at this stage:

In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared". Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them. "He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts", Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat manoeuvre and 15 insurgents were killed?'"

Historically a tough township, even under Saddam Hussein, Fallujah already had a legacy of indiscriminate bombing from 1991 when 200 civilians were killed and a further 500 injured(9). Within two months of the invasion in March, 2003, a maternity hospital had been bombed and some 20 civilians killed by trigger-happy American forces lamentably ignorant of the local culture. Frustrated by the retribution of months of predictable and sterile confrontation, on 8th November the United States launched a campaign of sheer butchery, using state of the art battlefield weapons, to terrorise and crush the population.

How America Wages War in Iraq - Fallujah, November, 2004
by Freelance Columnist Firas Al?Atraqchi, 18th November, 2004

Millions of viewers around the world were horrified when their local news media broadcast footage of a United States soldier killing at point blank range a wounded Iraqi man lying in a mosque. Pool journalist Kevin Sites, an "embed" travelling with United States Marines, shot the footage and later said the man appeared unarmed and unthreatening. This is what the footage showed:

* "He's (expletive) faking he's dead!" "Yeah, he's breathing", another Marine is heard saying. "He's faking he's (expletive) dead!" the first Marine says. A Marine raises his rifle toward the wounded prisoner lying on the floor and pumps a bullet into his head. United States networks blurred the image or blacked it out. The B.B.C. showed it. So did Aljazeera. As the wounded man is shot, his legs rise in the air in reaction to the impact of the bullet to his skull. Blood is spattered on the mosque wall behind him. "He's dead now", a Marine is heard saying.

There is no escaping this was a war crime. Now the world can see for itself that the torture and murder of Iraqis while in detention at Abu Ghraib was not an isolated matter. How many more Iraqis were killed in this way that video cameras were not able to capture? Hello America. This is your United States Army, valiant and proud. Today we will review the finer merits of military strategy when taking and maintaining a hold on a vibrant city of some 300,000 men, women and children.

Step 1: The Media.

This has to comply fully with our strategic goals by ensuring that key words are repeated thoroughly when referring to a certain subject matter. In Fallujah's case, we will allow the media to repeat words like "bastion", "stronghold", "insurgent base", "insurgent centre of Iraq", "terrorist heart of the Sunni triangle" and so on, until all semblance that this was once a city bustling with civilian life is erased from the psyche and the reader is fully engrossed in the mandated logic that the United States military is fighting insurgents in their terrorist base. Furthermore, ensure that the local and world media toe the line when it comes to reporting about Fallujah and any other military campaigns. Iraq's media regulator has warned news organisations to stick to the government line on the United States-led attack in Fallujah or face legal action - "We hope you comply . . . otherwise we regret we will be forced to take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national interests", the statement said, without elaborating.

Count on a media blackout and our ordinary citizens' ignorance to ensure they do not realise that our tactics are as terrorist and inhumane as those of countries we previously condemned on the world stage: The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood seized Hama as the first step towards its goal of a national uprising against the secular Baathist regime. The Syrian President demanded their surrender. His army shelled the city, and special forces went in to kill or capture the militants. The Syrians employed the same strategy that the United States is using now. Its tanks and artillery waited outside the city; they fired on militants and civilians alike. Its elite units, like the American Marines surrounding Fallujah today, braced themselves for a bloody battle. The United States condemned Syria for the assault that is believed to have cost 10,000 civilian lives. The Syrian army destroyed the historic centre of Hama, and it rounded up Muslim rebels for imprisonment or execution. Syria's actions against Hama came to form part of the American case that Syria was a terrorist state. Partly because of Hama, Syria is on a list of countries in the Middle East whose regimes the United States wants to change. (Charles Glass in Sulaymaniyah, The Independent, 9th November, 2004).

Step 2: Public Relations.

Tell the world the city we are about to storm has been emptied of civilians:

Mohammed Abboud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Fallujah home yesterday, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down. "My son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn, but we couldn't take him for treatment", said Mr Abboud, a teacher. "We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out". (Fadel al-Badrani for the B.B.C. in Fallujah, 10th November, 2004).

Make sure our soldiers know that they aren't fighting for the people of Iraq but for cold revenge:

"I'm not sure it will be better when we're gone, but it's gotten to the point of retribution for all the things that have happened. The beheading, the bombings and everything" (Tom Lasseter Knight Ridder-Tribune News, 13th November, 2004).

"Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible result when madmen take on America (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 4th November, 2004).

"This is for the Americans of Blackwater that were murdered here in 2004 Semper Fidelis (always faithful)", is scrawled in black print on a section of the bridge across the Euphrates where the remains of two out of four Americans, killed by a mob in Fallujah at the end of March, were hung. The graffiti is signed "3-5", an abbreviation of the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, one of the units that is taking part in a massive United States-Iraqi assault on the rebel stronghold to regain control of the city. It finished with: "P.S., F-ck You" (Agence France-Presse, 14th November, 2004).

"I see the little kids in the cars and I feel sorry for them, but when they turn 16 they're evil".(Lindsey Hilum, with the lst Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah, 14th November, 2004).

Tell enough lies to our troops until even our own spokesman starts to believe them:

The goals are simple: To win the gratitude of Fallujah civilians who will no longer have to cope with Iraqi and foreign fighters in their midst; and to demonstrate to other insurgent-dominated towns and cities what can happen if they refuse to participate peacefully in the Iraqi political process (John Diamond, Steve Komarow and Tom Squitieri, U.S.A. TODAY, 12th November, 2004).

"Let our troops know that God wants them to kill Iraqis in Fallujah, that United States President George Bush received direct orders from the Divine that war was sanctioned in Fallujah: The Marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy", said Colonel Gareth Brandi. "But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Fallujah. And we're going to destroy him" (Paul Wood, B.B.C. News, embedded with United States Marines near Fallujah, 7th November, 2004).

"We must not be afraid to make an example of Fallujah. While we always seek to fight humanely, the most humane thing we can do in that tormented city is just to win, to burn out the plague of fanaticism and prove to Iraq's people that the forces of terror will not be allowed to enslave them". (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 4th November, 2004).

Tell the Iraqi people that their own representatives in the interim government are negotiating a peaceful settlement, while in reality, we are preparing for a major assault:

"Although the Fallujah operation has lasted less than a week, it was several weeks in the planning and the forces involved may be tied down establishing stability for some time to come". (John Diamond, Steve Komarow and Tom Squitieri, U.S.A. TODAY, 12th November, 2004).

Make the fighting seem like a video game our young soldiers may have played a few years ago, or even better, a Hollywood production:

"A psychological operations Humvee drove by, blaring Richard Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries', the music used in a famous helicopter attack scene in the movie 'Apocalypse Now'" (James Janega, Chicago Tribune staff reporter, 10th November, 2004).

Step 3: Kill everything in sight.

Fire at everything that moves. This will guarantee that we save our own skins. Fire before you even know what you are firing at: "Jump out. Kick in door. Spray machine-gun fire. Run to rooftop. Kill enemy. Jump back into armoured vehicle. Move to new location". (Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder-Tribune news, 13th November, 2004).

"To disarm possible booby traps, mines, and other explosives, the advancing forces fired rockets charged with plastic explosives down the empty streets and alleys, which detonated a number of jury-rigged bombs". (Anne Barnard, Boston Globe Staff, 9th November, 2004).
"I'm supposed to shoot into the houses before our troops go in", a weary Porter told an Agence France-Presse correspondent in this dusty, devastated city that was once home to around 300,000 Sunni Muslims.

Shoot unarmed Iraqi soldiers. It's okay; we'll probably get a few Purple Hearts for it:

"Jeff was about five feet away from two unarmed Iraqi soldier-prisoners - each about his own age - when he was ordered to shoot them. He said he looked them in their eyes before closing his own, then pulled the trigger. He took off two dog tags around his neck, threw them at me and said, 'Don't you understand? Your brother is a murderer', Debbie said" (Adam Gorlick, Associated Press, 13th Novem-ber, 2004).

"A United States Marine has sparked world-wide revulsion after being seen shooting an injured and helpless Iraqi. The sickening scene was broadcast by Channel 4 Television News after a fire-fight in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah. The trigger-happy soldier had been asked to get nearer to the injured man. But instead of trying to capture him, the Marine is seen leaning over a wall and cold-bloodedly shooting him". (Paul Gilfeather, Political Editor, Sunday Mirror, 14th November, 2004).

"I decided to swim . . . but I changed my mind after seeing United States helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river". He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands". "I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some United States snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards". (Associated Press, ABC News.com; from accounts by Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, 14th November, 2004).

The morbid gallery of quotes, facts, and figures above printed and published in Western media by verifiable and veritable sources can stream on endlessly. But these testimonials are enough to conjure the reality of the United States onslaught in Iraq. It is not humanitarian, nor is it compassionate. It bears the mark of skull 'n' bones - the more killed the better. It is the taste of hatred and brutality, one that has been equalled by the razing armies of history - the Nazis, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Mongols - but rarely exceeded. This article is not endowing the reader with fuel for hatred. It is not about wanton violence or revenge. It is about truth, the truth that has been kept from a majority of readers and viewers. Insulated and protected from the way war is waged, they refuse to believe that a Western army can execute people in cold blood and fire on unarmed civilians, that a free press is actually less free than many presume.

Note: Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecommunications industry.

FOOTNOTE

In the Summer of 2004 we received a reflective letter from an old and trusted friend for whose views we have profound respect. The letter questioned very fairly the balance of our reporting on Iraq in that we were discounting the brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime that has now been displaced. Much of the answer lies in these pages. These are rulers the West has manipulated into office over many years, as in Indonesia and Latin America; tyrants we have armed and sponsored for our own ends. Our correspondent, whose family had good reason to be grateful to the United States where they lived between the wars, censured Felicity Arbuthnot, who also lived in the United States for several years, for her uncompromising views on Iraq and for now spurning the land that had once given her a home. Sadly, we are back with perceptions drawn from peeling away the layers of our conceptual "onion". For some 14 years, Felicity Arbuthnot, often at risk to herself, witnessed the situation on the ground in hospitals and on the streets. The history speaks for itself. In the end it is we, all of us, who vote politicians into power on both sides of the Atlantic. Until we, the electorate, are prepared to mobilise and force those elected to represent our views, and not those of massive vested interests on both national and international questions, the situation is not going to change.

REFERENCES

Note:. A wide range of reading may be found in the Stock Price List (S.P.L.), which may be obtained post free on request from the address on the last page. Out of print, or older works, may be obtained through the Book Search Service, or the Second-Hand Book Service, both of which are operated by Mr. T.G. Turner, for which details are available as for the S.P.L.

(1) "Revealed: the meeting that could have changed the history of Iraq - When six of the country's leading experts on Iraq went to Downing Street in November, 2002, they sought to warn Tony Blair about the dangerous consequences of his actions. In this extraordinary account of that meeting, they reveal for the first time their shock at his response, offering a unique insight into the mind of a Prime Minister determined upon war". The Independent on Sunday, 17th October, 2004.
(2) On Target, Vol. 27, No. 14, 3rd January, 1998. Unselfish Gallantry - Two People From Another Age.
(3) MacDonald, Professor Kevin. "Thinking About Neoconservatism". 2003. Professor MacDonald is Professor of Psychology at California State University-Long Beach. He gives a full, reasoned argument to show how the Zionist element works behind leading Gentile figures, such as Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
(4) Directory of Directors 1991. Volume 1 - Key Data On The 60,000 Directors Who Control Britain's Major Companies. Reed Information Services Ltd., 1991.
(5) Blum, William. Rogue State - A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. Zed Books, 2002.
(6) On Target, Vol. 29, Nos. 21 & 22, 8th & 22nd April, 2000. The Shifting Geo-Political Sands - The Middle East, The Balkans, The Caucasus And Patterns Of Power. What Is This Power, Where Is It, And Who Controls It?
(7) Clark, Ramsey. The Fire This Time - U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf. Thunder's Mouth Press, 1994.
(8) On Target, passim.
(9) Clark, Ramsey. Op. cit.

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Editor and Publisher: Donald A. Martin Copyright © D.A. Martin
Deputy Editor and Research Department: Barry S. Turner