IRAQ, BEFORE AND AFTER

Published in Two Parts - Part One

"LIBERATED" IRAQ IN THE SERVICE OF THE RULING ELITE

Vapour Trails Of Incompetence And Post-Invasion Corruption

In the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Centre, in New York, on 11th September, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, newspapers dedicated two, three and four pages to the progress of events. With the end of conventional military conflict in Iraq, coverage has drop-ped to a disjointed trickle, ceding precedence to such milestone events as the meeting between footballer David Beckham and Nelson Mandela. But the American rape and colonisation of Iraq and its "liberated" people proceeds in conditions of predictable chaos that have followed the deliber-ate destruction of the civilian infrastructure. "Concern" for stabilisation in the Middle East contrasts starkly with indifference to that of the on-going genocidal violence and oppression, and the urgent need for "regime change" in Africa, in the Congo and Zimbabwe. This must give the lie to the real motives for the invasion of Iraq. The blunt instrument of the United States "peacekeeping" administration proceeds apace with, for example, inflammatory "shoot-to-kill" orders against looters in the tradition of parallel activities in Afghanistan, where the latest friendly fire incident has involved the killing of four Afghan soldiers. We have already pointed out the axiomatic requirement for planning any such operation as that undertaken by the so-called "Coalition" Forces; of a careful study of all possible scenarios. Yet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has stated to The New York Times, with almost lunatic irresponsibility that "You couldn't know how it would end. When it did end, you take it as you found it and get at it, knowing the single most important thing is security." ("US postwar effort on the brink of fiasco", the Melbourne Financial Review, 20th May, 2003). Each area of government activity in Iraq is to be control-led, not by expatriate or otherwise selected Iraqis but by United States nominees, many former senior military officers, none with significant knowledge of Iraq and its complex culture; almost all with close connec-tions to the American defence and construction industries and the support-ing legal infrastructure(1). The lunatics have truly taken over the asylum!

Little of this is allowed to escape into the public domain by the controlled Media, especially in the United States. Both the United States and British Governments are politically, financially and morally corrupt. Neither makes any pretence of properly informing, or respecting the wishes of, their electorates. The people are simply pawns in the Global Power game of the Ruling International Elite. The Cabinet of President George W. Bush is the richest in American history. This involves a pattern of close involvement with the defence, oil and oil construction industries. It is repeated in depth through lower echelons of the Administration, and amongst former government appointees such as George Shultz, Frank Carlucci and Lawrence Eagleburger. The International Fabian Socialist British Governments of Prime Minister Tony Blair, since coming to office in 1997, have been characterised by continuing subservience to the United States and a betrayal of Labour tradition by an unequivocal commitment to the big business of the multinational conglomerates, the concomitant betrayal of British Agriculture, a conspicuous paucity of ability in the political ranks and a consequent mixture of incompetence and duplicity in the management of public services, such as Health and Transport, and of the Environment. Professing an image of squeaky-clean morality, Blair Governments have become involved in a series of corrupt dealings, such as political favouritism, the Hinduja brothers passport scandal, favours granted motor racing magnate Bernie Ecclestone, the Romanian deal over the Mittal steel plant acquisition and the financial affairs of Peter Mandel-son. Both the United States and British Governments are, if only by default, involved with the international drugs traffic. This involves leading banks on both sides of the Atlantic, and the use of drug money by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), to finance its operations. The United States and Israel have longstanding connections with the Latin American drug cartels. Drug links between the Administration of President George Bush Snr., and the invasion of Panama under General Noriega, are a matter of open record. The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, in Scotland, exposed the complicity of the British Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher(2)(3). In the case of the United States, high-level moral corruption was revealed by "Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska"(4). The Glasgow Sunday Herald has recently revealed much the same activities at the highest levels in the United Kingdom.

The Influence Of Political Zionism And The State Of Israel

The Conservative Party backed the war against Iraq despite internal divisions. This position appeared to be taken partly to preserve Party unity and partly because of an early and very significant commitment by Party Leader, Iain Duncan Smith, to the dominant Neoconservative faction in the United States. Duncan Smith is also on record as a personal friend of the Vice-President, leading "hawk" and former Halliburton Chief Executive, Dick Cheney. Like his predecessors Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Duncan Smith features regularly in the Jewish Chronicle, in which he has expressed his support for the State of Israel and condemned Palestinian "terrorism". We may see here an Anglo-Jewish influence as strong as, if not stronger than, that behind the Labour Party. Names include Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Julian Lewis, Oliver Letwin, Michael Gove and Sir Stanley Kalms. There can be no doubt that in the United States no move or policy that might impinge on Israeli-Jewish interests - including any perceived threat to Israel in the Middle East - is possible, whoever is President. Since the election of Harry S. Truman in 1948, the Power of Organised American Jewry over the House of Representatives and the Mass Communications Media has been undeniable(5). This is supported by massive financial resources that are brought to bear at election times. Opposition by uncommitted Jewry is mostly muted, probably due to powerful religious and cultural links to Israel, and also to the risk of finan-cial and professional blackmail. Political control is exercised by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (A.I.P.A.C.), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (J.I.N.S.A.). This American-Jewish-dominated Neoconservative network was exposed in detail in 1988 in the Kalmanovitch Report(6). Neoconservative Power has been consolidated through the academic and research institutions, such as the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The international network can be identified in Dr Joseph Churba's International Security Council. The names are all there; Michael Ledeen, Edward Luttwak, William Kristol, "Herb" Romerstein, Yossef Bodansky, Major General Shlomo Gazit (on the board of Hollinger-Telegraph Newspapers), and Dean Godson. Paul Wolfowitz is currently the Rasputin-like deputy to Power Hungry Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and influential defence adviser, "Prince of Darkness" Richard N. Perle was, until recently, Chairman of the Defence Policy Board. Like Gazit, Perle has also been a Hollinger-Telegraph director. Both Wolfowitz and Perle have close ties to the Israeli Government. We should not therefore be surprised to find suggestions of a Jewish "Conspiracy" behind recent events in the Middle East, particularly as Wolfowitz and Perle are advocates of further interventions in the Middle East that are now being systematically "talked up" by the Media; namely Syria and Iran.

Tentacles Of Power - The Outreach Of Domestic Dictatorship

We have many times pointed out the federal European objectives of the International Fabian Socialism of "New" Labour and the Demo-cratic Socialism that reigns over much of Europe. We have also referred to the natural conterminous, coalescent relationship between the monolithic Power of International Socialism with the monolithic Power of Interna-tional Finance-Capitalism. Achievement of this ultimate Power depends on the Orwellian suppression of potentially resistant intelligent, thinking and informed opposition; therefore also the harmonising of that opposition to the common Socialist "hymn sheet". We have already seen moves to outlaw nationalistic, authoritarian, hence "extreme" Right Wing political movements in the European Union, so legally stifling diversity of opinion and debate. The Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Bill was rushed through Parliament following the Omagh bombing in August, 1998. The Act embodies far wider Powers than necessary to contain terrorism in the context of Northern Ireland. Why?(7) The European Arrest Warrant further consolidates these constraints on public freedoms(8). The Cultural Communist strategy of Political Correctness has advanced Socialist dictatorship on both sides of the Atlantic. Natural freedoms, individual judgement and responsibility have been systematically eroded behind a civilised veneer of "democracy". For example, public libraries and school textbooks have been progressively laundered and censored. Christian worship in schools is under attack. Race issues and Affirmative Action have been exploited disruptively through legislation. Standards vital to the Police and the Armed Forces have been debased under the Politically Correct pressures of Feminism. Teaching staff work in fear of physical contact with pupils. The victim is becoming more liable to Police action than the criminal. None of this occurs by accident. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March this year, John le Carré wrote, under the heading "The madness of King George", to argue "that this time the U.S. has really lost the plot" (source and date not recorded):

The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in Mc-Carthy times, the domestic rights and freedoms that have made the U.S. the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The hounding of non-national U.S. residents continues apace. "Non-permanent" males of North Korean and Middle Eastern descent are disappearing into secret imprisonment on secret charges on the secret word of judges. . . . Is Britain playing the same game? I expect so. Another 30 years and we'll be allowed to know.

Edgar J. Steele wrote of the draconian legislation that followed the attack on the World Trade Centre, in September, 2001, "I honestly didn't believe that Bush, [Attorney General] Ashcroft, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company were evil or that ultimately they would do anything to endanger us - from either within or without this country." He continued:

Patriot Act I allows the designation of an American citizen as a domestic terrorist, a governmental designation not subject to review by any court or, for that matter, anybody. After that, the person can be held indefinitely, without trial or, even, being charged. . . . Now here comes Patriot Act II, which allows that "domestic terrorist" to be stripped of his American citizenship and deported to another country for "further processing".

On 12th May, 2003, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal wrote that "When considering the impacts of Patriot Acts I and II, nearly a third of respondents say the United States is in jeopardy of becoming a police state." On the 16th May, 2003, the Boston Globe wrote, under the heading "Literary Groups Decry Patriot Act as Invasion of Privacy":

A national coalition of publishers, authors, librarians, and booksellers yesterday called on Congress to modify the part of the anti-terrorist U.S.A. Patriot Act that allows the govern-ment to secretly inspect Americans' book-buying and borrowing habits. . . . Under Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in October, 2001, a secret court can authorise the F.B.I. [Federal Bureau of Investigation] to inspect or seize bookstore or library records without showing probable cause. Further, the law prov-ides that the bookstore or library is forbidden to disclose that the inspection happened.

The Information Clearing House writes under the heading "News you won't find on CNN". On the 19th May Sam Hamod and Elaine Cassel reported the detention of lawyer Lynne Stewart:

The lawyer client privilege is almost gone, note the case of the lawyer defending some of the defendants in the original Trade towers bombings, Lynne Stewart. She is now on trial for simply defending her clients and having answered a simple question at a press conference. She was asked how her client felt about violent resistance; she simply said that he felt it was legitimate. She only reported what he said in answer to an honest question from a reporter. She was then charged with aiding and abetting terrorism - and to this day, she is imprisoned. . . . What this [obstruction of a prisoner's rights by the Justice Department and the White House] is that the government is trying to break the will of persons, who have often not even been charged, indicted, or in any way had a prime facie case presented against them! Yes, it's astounding, but it's happening right under our noses every day of the week.

THE CHARACTER AND MORALITY OF OUR LEADERSHIP

Covering Up For The "Commander in Chief"

We may take the single, but central example of President George W. Bush in the case of the United States when we consider questions of political and moral integrity. From the Carlyle Group, to Enron, to Harken Oil, the Bush family have been closely involved with big business. George W. Bush came to office in 2000 following some highly questionable elect-oral gymnastics; in other words, fraud. Like his immediate predecessor, "Bill" Clinton, he was in effect a "draft-dodger". In Bush's case by a diversion from conscript service in Vietnam, to enlistment in the National Guard. President Bush, fronting for the warring factions of the State and Defence Departments, blatantly lied about the reasons for invading Iraq; the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction, to regime change, to the fabricated terrorist threat from Iraq, to the "liberation" of the Iraqi people. On the cessation of conventional military conflict, at the end of May, 2003, Bush chose to trade on his dubious National Guard record by landing in full flying kit on the deck of the United States aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf. Here is what Eric Zorn wrote in the Chicago Tribune of 6th May, 2003, under the heading "Media AWOL in Noting Irony of Bush's Flight":

* So much for that myth the cynical distortion that has become conven-tional wisdom in many circles. During the presidential campaign of 2000, it started going around that Texas Governor George W. Bush, then the leading Republican candidate, had significant gaps in his military record. Specifically, that Bush failed to report for duty for an entire year toward the end of his hitch with the Texas Air National Guard. The short version: In May 1968 the silver spoon son of a United States congressman jumped to the top of a long waiting list despite mediocre scores on his pilot aptitude test and was allowed to enlist in the [National] Guard, a common way to avoid being drafted into combat in Vietnam. In May 1972 he sought a transfer from Houston, where he flew F 102s on weekends, to a unit in Montgomery, Alabama. There, he worked on the United States Senate campaign of a friend of his father's and, records indicate, blew off his military obligations. Bush failed to take his annual flight physical in 1972 so Guard officials grounded him, the story went. He never flew again and received an early discharge to go to graduate school. His final officer efficiency report from May 1973 noted only that supervisors hadn't seen him or heard from him. Bush's campaign biography obscured or misrepresented these details. In the summer and fall of 2000, his spokesmen offered various and evolving explana-tions for what Democrats said represented a far bigger "character issue" than any of the windy exaggerations of their candidate, Vice President AI Gore. "if he is elected president, how will he be able to deal as commander in chief with someone who goes AWOL, when he did the same thing?" Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey said to the Boston Globe, where veteran investigative reporter Walter V. Robinson, a former Army intelligence officer, wrote several major stories on the subject. "This stinks." Yes, but like Bush at the end of his hitch, it didn't fly.

* A search of all news publications and programmes archived in the LexisNexis database for the last seven months of the 2000 campaign found 114 stories referencing Bush, the Texas Air National Guard and Alabama. Over that same span, nearly 10 times that many stories 1,076 to be exact referenced AI Gore and the expression "invented the Internet," an allusion to the bogus charge then haunting Gore that he had wildly inflated his role in the online revolution. The "Bush AWOL?" story appeared in this newspaper and was based on good reporting and still unanswered questions. It faded away a scant 14 mentions in the database for all of 2001 and 2002 due to the age of the allegations, the lack of any new developments and the urgency of current events. Last week, though, the President all but wore a "Kick Me!" sticker on the back of his flight suit when he decided to land on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in the co pilot's seat of an S 3B Viking jet. Imagine the derisive merriment in the columns and on the chat shows if former President Bill Clinton revived the skirt chasing issue by touring a sorority house or if Gore delivered a lecture to the engineers at Netscape Communications Corporation. Think of the snickering and the sardonic rehash of history. But for Bush in flyboy attire, a discreet silence. The only voi-ces I encountered raising this issue were David Corn in the Nation; Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin, who asked, "Tell me if you ever heard of anybody with as powerful a resistance to shame as Bush"; and talk station WLS AM's token progressives Nancy Skinner and Ski Anderson, who spent a full hour Sunday afternoon savouring the irony of it all. There was no relentless examination of the damning timeline on cable news outlets, no interviewing the commanders who swear Bush didn't show up where he was supposed to, no sit downs with the veterans who have offered still unclaimed cash rewards to anyone who can prove that Bush did anything at all in the Guard during his last months before dis-charge. So much for the cynical distortion that has become conventional wisdom in many circles. So much for the myth of the "liberal media."

The United Kingdom - Politics Of Moral Corruption And Collusion

In the United Kingdom the duplicity of Prime Minister Blair, in lying to both Parliament and the British people has echoed that of President Bush. Yet, in a craven political environment, he has not even been cen-sured, much less forced to resign. The unsavoury business associations of Blair's "New" Labour are on record. For the first time practising homo-sexuals have been overtly appointed to Government posts. Essentially a private matter in itself, homosexuals have infused both major political parties. This simply runs on from decades of clandestine involvement in, and cover-up of, perversion, paedophilia and child abuse, as has existed at the highest levels on both sides of the Atlantic(9)(10). Close to home this reveals the top echelons of Government, the Judiciary and the police in a very disturbing light. Investigation of abuses invariably seem to end conclusively, followed by an ominous silence. In Northern Ireland the Kincora Boys Home has been a notorious focus of sexual abuse involving high level names. The Home featured in the record of Colin Wallace, a Reserve Army officer. Wallace served as a civilian Information Officer in Headquarters Northern Ireland until he was peremptorily removed, later to be imprisoned after a very suspicious chain of events(11). Dianne Core, an expert on the sexual abuse of children, suddenly found that official co-operation "went cold" the moment she touched on Satanic practices(12). However, events that followed the shooting of 16 school-children and one schoolmistress, in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, have drawn the Government of Prime Minister Blair uncomfortably into focus. The potential for political and diplomatic pressure is obvious, especially in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. On the 28th January, 2003, Mike James wrote, under the heading "Alleged Paedophiles at Helm of Britain's War Machine, Massive Cover-Up:

* A child-sex scandal that threatened to destroy Tony Blair's government last week has been mysteriously squashed and wiped off the front pages of British Newspapers. Operation Ore, the United Kingdom's most thorough and comprehensive police investigation of crimes against children, seems to have uncovered more than is politically acceptable at the highest reaches of the British elite.

At On Target, we had been aware for some time that rumours about the Dunblane shooting abounded, but regarded these as unsubstantiated. It was only when the Home Affairs Editor of the Sunday Herald, Neil Mackay, and The Guardian newspaper, took the matter up, that claims assumed credibility. The following two articles were published respect-ively on the 19th January, 2003, with the title "Child porn arrests 'too slow'", and on 2nd March, 2003 with the title "Dunblane secret documents contain letters by Tory and Labour ministers":

19th January, 2003.

* Operation Ore, the police inquiry which plans to arrest a further 7000 men across the United Kingdom, in addition to "Who" guitarist Pete Townshend, for buying child pornography online is set to end in disaster with many suspects walking free. Detective Chief Inspector Bob McLachlan, former head of Scotland Yard's paedophile unit, told the Sunday Herald that the lack of urgency in making arrests will lead to suspects destroying evidence of downloading child pornography before they are arrested. The Sunday Herald has also had confirmed by a very senior source in British intelligence that at least one high profile former Labour Cabinet minister is among Operation Ore suspects. The Sunday Herald has been given the politician's name but, for legal reasons, can not identify the person. There are still unconfirmed rumours that another senior Labour politician is among the suspects. The intelligence officer said that a "rolling" Cabinet committee had been set up to work out how to deal with the potentially ruinous fall out for both Tony Blair and the Government if arrests occur. Since the September, 2002, Operation Ore arrest of Detective Constable Brian Stevens, a key officer in the inquiry into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the public have been aware that wanted suspects had downloaded child pornography from a United States Website called Landslide.

* McLachlan, who was one of the main officers on Operation Ore before his retirement last year, said: "Sufficient warnings have been given that if people haven't got rid of their computers then they are either stupid, don't believe they'll be arrested or are so obsessive about their collections that they can't destroy it. As time goes on, the chances of successful prosecutions will diminish with speed as the information out there must impact on the offenders." With only 1,200 men arrested so far, McLachlan says that claims by police chiefs and the government that they were prioritising paedophile crime were "smoke and mirrors". Paedophilia is still not a priority on the Home Office's National Policing Plan for 2003 06 . McLachlan claimed that before he left Scotland Yard his team were under staffed, over worked, under funded and reduced to using free software from computer magazines. There are around one million images of an estimated 20,000 individual children being abused online. Some police seizures involve hauls of more that 180,000 images. Last year, images of 13,000 new children were uncovered. Only 175 child victims have been identified worldwide. . . . Peter Robbins, the Chief Executive of the Internet Watch Foundation, which works with the police, government and Internet service providers, in tackling paedophilia online, says software is in development which could remove child pornography from the net forever. The software should be ready in two years. Police say that the list of rich and famous Operation Ore suspects would fill newspaper front pages for an entire year.

2nd Mar 2003.

* Letters between Labour and Tory ministers and correspondence relating to Thomas Hamilton's alleged involvement with Freemasonry are part of a batch of more than 100 documents about the Dunblane mass murder which have been sealed from public sight for 100 years. The documents include a letter connected to Hamilton, which was sent by [Lord] George Robertson, currently head of NATO, to Michael Forsyth, who was then Secretary of State for Scotland. Until now it was thought that a 100 year public secrecy order had only been placed on one police report into Hamilton which allegedly named high profile politicians and legal figures. However, a Sunday Herald investigation has uncovered that 106 documents, which were submitted to the Dunblane Inquiry in 1996, were also placed under the 100 year rule. The Scottish Executive has claimed the 100 year secrecy order was placed on the Central Police report, which was drafted in 1991 five years before the murders, to protect the identities of children named in the report. Hamilton had allegedly abused a number of children prior to his 1996 gun attack on Dunblane primary school in which 16 primary children and a teacher died before Hamilton turned his gun on himself. However, only a handful of the documents, which the Sunday Herald has discovered to be also subject to the 100 year rule, relate to children or name alleged abuse victims. The most intriguing document is listed as: "Copy of letter from Thomas Hamilton to Dunblane parents regarding boys' club, and flyer advertising Dunblane Boys' Sports Club. Both sent to Rt Hon Michael Forsyth, M.P., Secretary of State for Scotland, by George Robertson M.P." Also closed under the 100 year rule is a "submission to Lord James Douglas Hamilton, MP, Minister of State at the Scottish Office, concerning government evidence to the Inquiry". Another document relates to correspondence between the Clerk of the Dunblane Inquiry, which was presided over by Lord Cullen, and a member of the public regarding "possible affiliations of Thomas Hamilton with Freemasonry . . . and copy letters from Thomas Hamilton".

* Scottish National Party Deputy Justice Minister, Michael Matheson, said: "The explanation to date about the 100 year rule was that it was put in place to protect the interests of children named in the Central Police report. How can that explanation stand when children aren't named? The 100 year rule needs to be re examined with respect to all documents." Matheson has written to the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, asking why the 100 year rule applies and how it can be revoked. He has so far had no response. He also asked First Minister Jack McConnell to explain the reasons for the 100 year order but received "no substantial answer". Matheson is to write to Colin Boyd a second time, in the light of the discovery that more than 100 other documents are also sealed, asking him to account for the decision. A spokeswoman for the Crown Office said: "In consultation with the Crown Office and the Scottish Office, Lord Cullen agreed that in line with the age of some of the individuals involved and named in the inquiry, the closure period would be 100 years. The Lord Advocate is considering issuing a redacted copy of the productions, which would blank out identifying details of children and their families. A decision on this has yet to be made." Other sealed key reports on Dunblane include: a "comparative analysis of Thomas Hamilton" by Central Scotland Police Information about Hamilton's "use and possession of firearms"; pathology reports; Hamiltons autopsy report, and analysis by Glasgow University's forensic science laboratory on blood, urine and liver samples from Hamilton's body; details on firearms licensing policies; a review by Alfred Vannet, regional procurator fiscal of Grampian, Highland and Islands, of "reports and information in respect of Thomas Hamilton submitted to the procurator fiscals of Dumbarton and Stirling by Strathclyde Police and Central Police"; a psychological report on Hamilton; guidance from the British Medical Association on granting firearms licences; transcript of and corres-pondence relating to answering machine tape which accidentally recorded conversation between police officers at the scene of the Dunblane incident; correspondence and witness statements "relating to allegations of sexual abuse made against Hamilton".

Networks Of Power - Carlyle, Depleted Uranium And John Major

The Carlyle Group own the Depleted Uranium (D.U.) round making capability of the United States, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (B.N.F.L.) and B.N.F.L Inc., the North American subsidiary of the United Kingdom nuclear fuels company. B.N.F.L. Inc., is also associated with Carlyle and heavily associated with D.U. reclamation and disposal in the United States, as are the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Programme (J.V.A.P.) companies. They are the people currently being funded to develop and carry on the vaccine work that made many ill. Porton International (Por-ton Down's private company) is part of the J.V.A.P. Former British Prime Minister John Major is European Chairman of the Carlyle Group. Consid-ering the people and money involved, is it any wonder that the United States and United Kingdom governments are holding on to D.U. with all their might? (Edited from the original transmission). The following ext-racts are taken from an undated feature by Mark Fineman. This opened with the comment that "Even by Washington standards, the Caryle Group has some serious clout":

* President George W. Bush's father works for Carlyle; so does former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, whose close friend Donald H. Rumsfeld now runs the Pentagon; and so does a stellar cast of retired generals and Cabinet secretaries, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. And even by Wall Street standards, the Carlyle Group has some serious money: $12.500,000,000 in investments at last count. The Washington based private equity firm, which advises and invests for wealthy clients and institutions, has shown returns of more than 34 per cent through the last decade, particularly through timely defense and aerospace investments. So when President Bush dec- lared war on terrorism in September, few were better poised than Carlyle to know how and when to make money. On a single day last month, Carlyle earned $237,000,000 selling shares in United Defense Industries, the Army's fifth largest contractor. The stock offering was well timed: Carlyle officials say they decided to take the company public only after the September 11th attacks. The stock sale cashed in on increased congressional support for hefty defence spend-ing, including one of United Defense's cornerstone weapon programs. Carlyle's windfall is a result of astute business decisions, excellent connections, strategic lobbying, good timing and a bit of luck. It is also a prime example of how defen-ce contractors got well in a hurry after the September 11th attacks, in a year when the Bush administration already was planning steep hikes in defense spending.

* The ties that bind the President's family and close advisors to Carlyle have helped draw the confidence of its investors and the criticism of outsiders. "It's the first time the President of the United States' father is on the payroll of one of the largest United States defence contractors," said Charles Lewis, director of the Centre for Public Policy and one of Carlyle's most ardent critics. "Between Baker and Carlucci, not to mention dear old dad, the relationship of the President with this particular company is as tight and close as, well, anyone can imagine." Carlyle officials bristle at such talk. They described their recent stock sale as just plain good business that benefited a wide array of investors, including pension funds like those of California's state employees. Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman said that neither the company nor its managers, directors and advisors have ever personally lobbied for the Crusader or other government contracts now in the hands of United Defense and other Carlyle subsidiaries and investments. Of Carlucci, Carlyle's board chairman, and his friendship with the current Defense secretary, Ullman said: "I assure you he doesn't lobby. That's the last thing he'd do. You'd have to know Carlucci to know he'd never do that, and you'd have to know Rumsfeld to know it wouldn't matter." But even if Carlyle and Carlucci don't lobby, their subsidiaries and majority owned companies do. And documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission, the Defence Department and Congress show that they do so heavily, strategically and persistently.

* By any standard, the Carlyle Group has the right address. Its suite of offices are on Pennsylvania Avenue midway between the White House and Congress a 15 minute walk to each. It was founded as a small private equity firm in 1987 by David M. Rubenstein, a young lawyer who had worked as an aide in Jimmy Carter's White House, and two investment specialists. They named the company after their favourite hotel in New York and started out with a modest portfolio of $100,000,000. In 1989, Carlucci retired as Ronald Reagan's Defence secretary and joined Carlyle. Soon after, the company aggressively went after defense and aerospace investments, a specialty for Carlucci and the other former government officials who followed him into Carlyle. Their investment strategies paid off, not only in defence acquisitions and sales but also in a wide array of corporations. Carlyle's portfolio quickly grew into the billions of dollars as pension funds and wealthy businessmen and families, including Royal Sheiks in the Persian Gulf, invested with the firm. As its reputation grew, so did the group's star studded management roster. It added former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John M. Shalikashvili; Arthur Levitt, the long serving former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; former British Prime Minister John Major; former Secretary of State Baker; and former President Bush (Carlyle officers say the elder Bush's principal role is as "a draw": delivering speeches at Carlyle sponsored events).

* Last February, the California Public Employees' Retirement System announced it was investing $425,000,000 in "a strategic partnership" with Carlyle. Even the company owned by Osama bin Laden's estranged billionaire family in Saudi Arabia was among Carlyle's clients a mere $2,000,000 investment that Carlyle said it bought out after Sept. 11th "for image reasons," Ullman said. He declined to say whether the Bin Ladens made a profit. Ullman downplayed Carlyle's defense connections, saying that today less than 10 per cent of its $12,500,000,000 portfolio is in defence, an additional 15 per cent in commercial aerospace, and the rest in real estate, health care, telecommunications and consumer industries. Only 15 of Carlyle's 500 employees are former government officials, Ullman said. Most of the rest are investment professionals working in 24 offices scattered across the globe. Carlyle bought Arlington, Virginia based United Defense LP in October of 1997 for $850,000,000. At the time, the company had contracts for the Army's main fleet of armored infantry vehicles, an automated naval gun system and a Navy missile launching system. Among its potentially most lucrative contracts was the one for the next generation of high tech Army battlefield artillery. Still, the company was losing money. The year after Carlyle bought it, United Defense lost $122,000,000 on $1,200,000,000 in revenue. But under Carlyle's ownership, United Defense turned around; last year, it reported a net profit of $18,800,000.

* About the time the Carlyle Group bought United Defense, the United Defense LP Employees Political Action Committee registered with the Federal Election Commission. Since then, that committee has contributed more than $300,000 to several dozen legislators who have been key supporters of the Crusader and other Pentagon weapon systems that United Defense supplies. In many cases, the legislators who received the money have other interests in pushing United Defense's agenda: jobs and commerce in their home states or districts. Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts Jr., for example, has been one of the Crusader's staunchest supporters. Watts' district includes the Crusader's Comanche County assembly and testing facility. Watts also has received $7,000 in contributions from the United Defense PAC. Senator Rick Santorum (Republican Pennsyvania.) has received $10,000 from the same PAC. Pennsylvania is home to a United Defense plant in York. In October, he praised the Senate's passage of an early version of the Defense Authorization Bill because it included $487,000,000 for Crusader in 2002. And Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, a G.O.P. (Grand Old [Republican] Party) member of the House Appropriations Committee, was among the Crusader's pioneering proponents, dating back to the system's early development at the Picatinny Arsenal in Frelinghuysen's New Jersey district. The company's PAC has contributed $4,500 to his campaigns.

* Carlyle officials say their strategy is to keep companies for three to five years and then sell them. Defence industry sources said Carlyle was trying to market United Defense as early as a year ago but had no takers. Carlyle officials confirm they were looking for an "exit strategy" from their ownership of United Defense. "They basically didn't have options," said Stuart McCutchan, who edits the Virginia based Defense Mergers & Acquisitions newsletter. " What has happened in the last two or three months has given them an option. The public becomes the buyer." And Carlyle's timing was impeccable. First came the Bush Administration's proposed 2002 Defense Budget. The document landed in Congress in June 2001, and it included an 11 per cent hike in defense spending, including full funding for the Crusader. Bolstered by the good news and the prospects for the company, Carlyle took its first dividends from United Defense on August 13: $289,700,000. Twenty nine days later, the two hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Centre towers, while another hit the Pentagon. President Bush declared war on terrorism, defense industry stocks were suddenly hot and, just five weeks later, Carlyle was ready to take United Defense Industries public. On October 22nd, United Defense filed its stock offering prospectus with the SEC.

* "The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, have generated strong Congressional support for increased defense spending," the prospectus declared. "We believe that domestic and international defense spending will grow over the next several years as a result of an increased focus on national security by the U.S. government and its allies." A month later, Carlyle took $92,000,000 more in dividends out of United Defense. Then, on December 13th, the Defense Authorization Bill passed both the House and Senate, with full funding for the Crusader, just one day before United Defense went public. United Defense's President and Chief Executive, Thomas Rabaut, even got invited to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange that day. Carlyle Managing Director Allan Holt explained: "The decision to take United Defense public was a function of the performance of the company, the outlook for its programs in the defense budget and the receptiveness of the market to defense equity offerings. "We have an obligation to try to achieve the best returns for our investors." And they did. By the closing bell, Carlyle, which still controls 54 per cent of United Defense, had sold more than 11,000,000 of its shares in the company for a total of $237,000,000. United Defense raised an additional $163,000,000 from the sale of about 9,000,000 new shares. On Wednesday, the company's stock, which Carlyle and United Defense opened at $19 a share December 14th, was trading for nearly $21.

THE ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION OF ABSOLUTE POWER

Intelligence - A Chapter Of Incompetence

Intelligence is primarily a military responsibility. By its very nat-ure it is Secret. It involves the professional, painstaking, meticulous and methodical analysis of information from a wide network of properly qualified and properly placed sources. However, the collapse of Soviet Communism and the end of the "Cold War" saw a reorientation of Intelligence activities in the United States from military to commercial objectives. In June, 1993, the company Open Source Solutions, Inc., invited a number of organisations in the United Kingdom to a meeting to discuss "unclassified 'encyclopaedic intelligence'". Open Source Intelli-gence is clearly a contradiction in terms, but the operation was being reorganised on a money-making basis. Vice President Al Gore proposed to inject $1,000,000,000 annually for the purpose. Apart from Al Gore, speakers at an International Symposium planned for November, 1993, significantly included the late Ron Brown, as Secretary of Commerce. This must go a long way to explain the ineptitude of the United States Intelligence Community at the time of the attack on the World Trade Centre, on 11th September, 2003. Essentially, Defence cannot "lead". In the manner of Clausewitz, military operations take place, not unilaterally, but in continuance of the political process. That is, except in the United States when a relentless struggle for Power prevails between the State Department and the Department of Defense, given the manic ambition of Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the support of Israeli-oriented neoconservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. This group was in any case determined on war with Iraq as early as 1996, long before the events of 11th September, 2001. Rumsfeld and his supporters were even prepared to fabricate the evidence as the "threat" from Iraq was talked up. In the May, 2003 issue of The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh wrote a damning exposure of this wholesale lack of professionalism with the title "Selective Intelligence". We have taken the following extracts:

* They call themselves, self mockingly, the Cabal a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11th, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush's main source of intelligence regarding Iraq's possible possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction and connection with Al Qa'eda. .

* The Director of the Special Plans operation is Abram Shulsky, a schol-arly expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. Shulsky has been quietly working on intelligence and foreign policy issues for three decades; he was on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early 1980s and served in the Pentagon under Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle during the Reagan Administration, after which he joined the Rand Corporation. . . . . W. Patrick Lang, the former Chief of Middle East Intelligence at the D.I.A., said, "The Pentagon has banded together to dominate the Government's foreign policy, and they've pulled it off. They're running Chalabi. The D.I.A. has been intimidated and beaten to a pulp. And there's no guts at all in the C.I.A." . . . They persuaded the President to make a new security policy. According to the Pentagon adviser, Special Plans was created in order to find evidence of what his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qa'eda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States, although no definitive evidence of such a connection has been presented. Rumsfeld and his colleagues believed that the C.I.A. was unable to perceive the reality of the situation in Iraq. "The Agency was out to disprove linkage between Iraq and terrorism," the Adviser told me.

* Even before September 11th, Richard Perle, who was then the Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, was making a similar argument about the intelligence community's knowledge of Iraq's weapons. At a Senate Foreign Relations sub-Committee hearing in March, 2001, he said, "Does Saddam now have Weapons of Mass Destruction? Sure he does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has biological weapons . . . . How far he's gone on the nuclear weapons side I don't think we really know. My guess is it's further than we think. It's always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we're able to prove and demonstrate. . . . And, unless you believe that we have uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we're able to report."

The United States - The Megalomanic Spiral Of Power

Raw ambition of the neoconservative faction to establish the United States as a single pre-emptive Global Authority, even if duly aborted by more responsible voices, reveals a highly dangerous trend. In other contexts - of the fashionable Liberal Elite for example - it would be condemned as Global "Fascism". On 2nd March, 2003, Michael Gaddy wrote of "The Death Certificate For Our Republic" in the Sierra Times. Here is the text:

I, like many other supporters of the Constitution, have been asking since the 2000 election; exactly what drives the foreign policy of the Bush Administration? The answer is revealed in the doctrines of the Policy for the New American Century, (P.N.A.C.). Neil Mackay, in the Scotland Sunday Herald, reveals the master plan now driving this administration:

* A Secret blueprint for United States global domination reveals that President Bush and his Cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure "regime change" even before he took power in January, 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a "global Pax Americana" was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now Vice Presi-dent), Donald Rumsfeld (Defense Secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's Chief of Staff). The document, entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century", was written in September, 2000, by the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century (P.N.A.C.).

The plan put forth by P.N.A.C. reveals, regardless of whether Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq, an attack there was preordained. Maybe this can explain why they continue the war beat no matter how many times this administration is caught prevaricating about Iraq. Inside the document prepared by P.N.A.C. is the following: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The document also outlines a "blueprint for maintaining global United States preemin-ence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. This American grand strategy must be advanced as far into the future as possible" To facilitate their plans, our military cannot be constrained by the constitution. The plan calls our military, "the cavalry on the new American frontier." In other words, the "new American frontier is wherever our government says it is." If this is not a game plan of empire, I have never seen one. The thoughts brought forth in this document should scare the beejeezus out of anyone who calls him or herself an American.

The P.N.A.C. plan supports a "blueprint for maintaining global United States preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." This "American grand strategy" must be advanced for "as far into the future as possible," the report says. It also calls for the United States to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as a "core mission." It:

* Refers to key allies such as the United Kingdom as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership."

* Describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations."

* Reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the United States ofAmerica.

* Says "even should Saddam pass from the scene" bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of United States troops as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to United States interests as Iraq has."

* Spotlights China for "regime change" saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in Southeast Asia". This, it says, may lead to "American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratization in China"

* Calls for the creation of "United States Space Forces", to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the Internet against the United States. (How long will it be before those of us who oppose this quest for empire, become the "enemy"?)

*. Hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the United States may consider developing biological weapons which the nation has banned in decades to come. It says: "New methods of attack electronic, 'non lethal', biological will be more widely available . . . combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes . . . advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific geno-types may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

* Pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system."

Our European allies know of this plan. Perhaps that is why the Administration's plan for "Regime Change" is meeting such opposition there. Tam Dalyell, father of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, and one of the leading British voices against war with Iraq, said. "This is garbage from right wing think tanks stuffed with chicken hawks men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft dodgers in the Vietnam War. This is a blueprint for United States World Domination a New World Order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing."

Ironically, the policies of P.N.A.C. were first brought forth in Papa George's administration [President George H.W. Bush; 1989 - 1993], but it was not well received and the would be world controllers backed off for the time being. Scott McConnell of the American Conservative magazine says; "In the final year of the first Bush administration, Paul Wolfowitz penned a memo under the aegis of then Secretary of Defense Cheney, calling for the United States to ramp up its defence spending in order to deter any other country from "even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." China, Russia, Germany, and Japan were to be intimidated from seeking more power in their own regions. After the Wolfowitz draft was leaked to the press, it received widespread ridicule, and the Bush Snr. diplomats rushed to reassure allies that Wolfowitz's views did not truly reflect American foreign policy.

But during the 1990s these did become the views of the neoconservatives, packaged under the slogan "benevolent global hege-mony" touted by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The positions of the neoconservative foreign policy team in exile were fleshed out in a P.N.A.C. book, Present Dangers(13), which called for the United States to "shape the international environment to its own advantage" by being "at once a European power, an Asian power, a Middle Eastern power, and of course a Western Hemisphere power" and to "act as if instability in important regions of the world . . . affect[s] us with almost the same immediacy as if [it] was occurring on our own doorstep." In practice this meant assertive risk taking virtually everywhere. Jonathan Clarke, reviewing the volume in the National Interest, wrote, "If the book's recommendations were implemented all at once, the United States would risk unilaterally fighting a five front war, while simultaneously urging Israel to abandon the peace process in favour of a new no holds barred confrontation with the Palestinians." This book has become the blueprint for the foreign policy of George W. Bush. The most alarming part of this document is the proposals for our military. Those of us who believe that we maintain a military for defense are in for a real shock. When this plan is implemented there will have to be a name change in our government. We will no longer have a Department of Defense; it will have to be changed to the "Department of Offence". Does anyone really believe we can accomplish the outlined military goals with an "all volunteer" force? Or will we once again be required to subject our young people to a draft so they can be made indentured servants to a government so as to "fight for freedom?" Don't forget Secretary of "Offence", Donald Rumsfeld, rec-ently praised our "all volunteer" military as being one where everyone is there by choice, yet days later froze all lengths of service for the United States Marines and all forces in Korea until further notice.

This plan for world domination, written in 2000, called for raising our outlay on military spending to 3.8 per cent of our G.N.P. (Gross National Product) from the then level of 3.5 per cent. With the last increase in military spending by this Administration, we reached the exact figure of 3.8 per cent! The steps of this plan, which are being followed to the letter by George W. Bush, will lead to the end of what little is left of our Republic and a disaster for us as a nation on the world stage. History is resplendent with the tragedies of nations that sought empire and failed. We will be no different. All allies will be repulsed at our desire to dominate the world. It is happening already. Our European allies have gone from those with headlines on 9-11 that proclaimed "We are all Americans now," to disgust with our leaders, our foreign policy and its intended goal of world domination. Sure, we will be able to buy some allies, just as we have Turkey, but we must be aware we have only purchased the support of the government. The people of the world will never support a foreign power that seeks to make them all victims of its democratization and moral superiority.

When we subdue Iraq, will the oil resources be given to the citizens? I think not. A puppet government will be installed and the oil resources will be channeled to United States interests, just as is being done in Afghanistan. Why else would a supposed "leader" of a country require 24/7 protection by United States Special Forces soldiers from his own citizens? We call what we seek to impose on the world, democracy. What majority of citizens in Afghanistan elected Hamid Karzai to be head of the country? Could it be coincidence Karzai was a former Unocal employee? Is it also coincidence the plan for the oil line across Afghanistan is now being implemented? Could the Taliban have become military opponents of the United States simply because they refused this same pipeline deal with Unocal after being wined and dined in Texas back when Dubya [President George W. Bush] was Governor in 1997?

What will it take for the majority of citizens in this country to realize we are becoming that which we fought so hard against fifty-plus years ago? By continuing to implement this policy set forth by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle and Bush, do we not become the same as the Soviet Union whom we fought so hard to defeat, costing us tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars? One need only compare the proposed ideologies of our new neoconservative leaders with those of Leon Trotsky! Another thing this plan for world domination will bring us here at home is terrorism too intense as to be imagined. When we have separated ourselves from the other people of this planet by our quest for domination, by what other means will they be able to retaliate? Does the thought of Rome being invaded by the Barbarians bring forth any visions? If they invade across our Southern Border, they will be assisted rather than opposed. What will become of those here in this country who seek to remain loyal to the Constitution? We become just as much an opposing force to those who seek world domination as those in other countries who do not wish to become American subjects? How much more of our personal resources will be required to accomplish world domination? How much more of our freedoms?

Near the end of my career, I was afforded the opportunity of training with several of the Soviet Unions Special Forces troops(14). (Spetsnaz). I had an occasion to trade an American tee shirt with one of the Soviet soldiers for one from his personal collection. I recognized the word "Spetsnaz" written in Russian, but was later told by one of the linguists in our unit what the remainder of words on the shirt translated to in English. The complete translation was as follows: "Spesnatz, Vanguard Of World Domination"!

ABSOLUTE POWER - CORRUPTION OF RECONSTRUCTION

Robbery With Violence - Stealing The Waters Of Iraq

In Part 1 of our last 2-part issue we read of the deliberate bombing out of the vital civilian infrastructure of Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. We read how apparently senselessly draconian Sanctions not only prevented restoration of the infrastructure, but equally deliberately destroyed a first class health service. This strategy has clearly been a version of the Morg-enthau Plan. This was intended, but never implemented, to reduce post-1945 Germany permanently to an agrarian backwater. We shall also read how plans are evolving, at the hands of giant United States Corporations, to wrest control of water resources in the Middle East. Equally ominous for a once-rich agricultural economy, is the interest of leading Agrochemi-cal Corporations, such as Syngenta. This will inevitably involve the use of Gen-etically Modified seed and the associated pesticides. Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Fou-ndation She has visited Iraq three times with Nobel Peace Prize nominated organization Voices in the Wilderness In Iraq. What follows is what she has written under the heading "Water and Oil Do Mix":

Conspicuously missing from the ubiquitous Iraq war critique was the subtle agenda of water rights in the parched Middle East region. Of all the reasons for invading Iraq, securing water rights was never mentioned because it implicates too many countries with volatile connections to Iraq, like Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. Protest signs read, "No Blood For Oil", as American corporations salivated in line for the opportunity to win contracts to rebuild the ravaged infrastructure. Why did no anti-war prot-esters carry signs saying, "No War for Water"? They should have. The current litany of reasons for invading or threatening to invade countries pertains to terrorism, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and undemocratic, fundamentalist regimes. These reasons are particularized and specific, and keep the world guessing where the United States will launch its next attack. With an explicit agenda for controlling water in the Middle East, however, the roadmap for regime change and regional control would become transparent and predictable. A land of displaced people and destroyed ecosystems, the once thriving marshland area of southern Iraq was home to hundreds of thousands of marsh Arabs [known as "Madan"] who had sustained a 5,000 year old culture until the ancient life giving waters were drained and dammed by the recently toppled Saddam Hussein Government as well as by other riparian states [of, or on a river bank]. Truly Saddam created a catastrophic situation by redirecting the water and razing marsh Arab villages. Yet aside from the apparent ecological and humanitarian crisis pertaining to the area, why is the project of rehydrating the marshlands so urgently important for American interests? A World Bank webcast in May, 2001, quotes Jean Louis Sarbib, Vice President of the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa Region, as saying that the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), had identified water as one of the key issues of the 21st Century. Water is a pressing issue in the Middle East which, like the sparse underground aquifers [layer of rock or soil able to hold or transmit much water], stays beneath the surface. With 45,000,000 people in the Middle East not having access to drinking water and 80,000,000 not having access to sanitation, Sarbib's commentary is an understatement. Jeffrey Rothfeder, explained in an article to the Boston Globe in January, 2002, that "a freshwater crisis has already begun that threatens to leave much of the world dry in the next twenty years. One third of the world's population is starved for water. In Israel, extrac-tion has surpassed replacement by 2,500,000,000 metres in the last 25 years. There are 250,000,000 new cases of water related diseases annually, chiefly cholera and dysentery, and 10,000,000 deaths. What's more, vital regions are destabilized as contending countries dispute who controls limited water resources." Rothfeder, quoting another World Bank official, former Vice President Ismail Serageldin, reminded readers that "the next world war will be over water."

The dialogue about access to clean water is commonplace in peace talks throughout the Middle East, but Western diplomats rarely broach the topic. An anonymous United States State Department official quoted in the National Geographic Magazine said, "people outside the region tend not to hear about the issue (of water). It just doesn't make the news." By design, not by accident, this issue is obscured from Western eyes because the propaganda machinery from Washington, DC has not allowed it. Although water is at the top of the list in negotiations between Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Iraq. Only the region's countries, the riparian states of Syria, Turkey and Iraq themselves have directly conferred on the issue of sharing the water of the Tigris and Euphrates. The United States cannot dictate water usage as a formal part of its foreign policy, or even legitimate the crisis surrounding clean water, in part because of its wholly unsustainable practices, and in part because a straightforward concession on the issue of dwindling water supplies would mean a com-plete overhaul of global diplomatic relations with a new emphasis on aquatic vulnerability. Published after the 9 11 terrorist attacks [on the New York World Trade Centre] but prior to the recent war on Iraq, "Peaceful Uses of International Rivers: The Euphrates and Tigris Dispute", written by water rights expert Hilal Elver outlines the hydrohistory of the Fertile Crescent as well as the present challenges to settling the disputes between countries vying for water access in the 21st Century. She notes that the "last trilateral meeting of the Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi Technical Committee was concluded in Damascus in 1996" with Iraq still under the United Nations imposed sanctions regime which severely hindered international diplomatic relations. With the United States effectively in control of Iraqi politics and lobbying for the removal of the sanctions, presumably negotiations between the three nations will resume with respect to shared water issues. According to Thomas Naff, a Professor of Middle East History at Pennsylvania State University, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which provide Iraq with nearly 100 per cent of its water "depend essentially on agreements with Turkey" where both rivers originate. Turkey disagrees over quotas to meet Syria and Iraq's minimum requirements for what would be the natural flow of the water and what would provide their people with adequate access to those resources, claiming that Syria and Iraq take more than their allotted amount of water from the rivers as compared to how much each country contributes to the rivers' flows. Thus Turkey began constructing a major series of dams to control the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates and flex their regional muscle. The Southeast Anatolia Project consists of 15 dams, 14 hydro-electric stations and 19 irrigation projects. Maybe to prove its capacity for controlling Syria's and Iraq's access to the life sustaining waters of the two rivers or maybe just to fill the largest of the Project's dams, Turkey cut off the water flow for 29 days in 1990. The point of potable prowess was well taken, and Iraq and Syria effectively tabled their mutual disagreements and colluded in 1998 to resist the construction of the Southeast Anatolia Proj-ect in Turkey. In the close quarters of Middle East politics, shared water resources often make for temperamental bedfellows.

Closely tied to the disputes surrounding Iraq and Syria's water supply is the proximity to Israel. Syria faces water difficulties on its South Western border as well in the water rich area of the Golan Heights, occup-ied by Israel since 1967. The Golan Heights has important water resources that, according to Professor Emeritus Dan Zaslavsky at Bar Ilan Univer-sity, if handed back over to Syria would mean that Israel loses nearly one third of its fresh water. On May 7th, 2003, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Bouthaina Shabaan of Syria to reaffirm the United States' commitment to returning the Golan Heights as a key step in the peace process between Syria and Israel. Should the United States bro-ker a peace plan that guaranteed the Golan to Syria, Israel would have to find a replacement source for its lost resources. Stephen Pelletiere, a former C.I.A. analyst, wrote in the New York Times that Turkey had envi-sioned building a Peace Pipeline carrying water that would extend to the southern Gulf States and, as he sees it, "by extension to Israel." He continued by saying that "no progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change." The assumptions about pan Arab unity seem to diss-olve when talking about the scarce commodity of water, especially when the two of the countries commanding control over the resources are also recipients of large amounts of financial and military aid from the United States: Turkey and Israel. This cosmetic overture to feign regional fairness and non partiality toward Israel in returning the Golan Heights to Syria does not mask the fact that the United States has strategic goals to control water and oil supplies in the Middle East. The continued destruction of Palestinian homes and agribusiness by Israeli settlers is second only to continued United States aggression toward Iraqi via sanctions and wars, inciting and exacerbating global disgust at perceived American imperial-ism and anti Arab, anti Islamic policies. These sentiments contribute to the on-going worldwide terrorist threats, which in turn propels the United States foreign policy to search and destroy any would be terrorists and lending encouragement for further invasions in "unco-operative" countries like those listed as the Axis of Evil.

While the regional water issues have been obscured, to some extent the poor condition of water in Iraq is not news. Professor Thomas Nagy of George Washington University unloaded a massive compilation of United States Government documents from 1990 1991 that showed in no uncertain terms the malevolent intent to target sites of vital civilian importance in the first Gulf War. In an expose entitled "The Secret Behind the Sanctions", Nagy cites macabre foreknowledge of the effects of bombing water purification and sewage treatment facilities which provide clean water to the Iraqi people. Moreover, these documents detail how the economic sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, would crescendo the effects of the bombings by banning items like water chlorinators and spare parts to rebuild the obliterated infrastructure, claiming that they could serve "dual use" purposes in making Weapons of Mass Destruction. The result has been pandemic waterborne illnesses that have targeted the most vulnerable people in Iraqi society the children. The United Nations estimates that 5,000 children under age 5 have died every month as a result of preventable illnesses such as cholera and dysen-tery. Because electrical facilities were also targeted in the first Gulf War, vaccinations needing refrigeration (which requires electricity or function-ing generators) spoiled, and several generations of children in Iraq have not been inoculated for illnesses which had been completely controlled under the socialist, secular Iraqi government which once provided its citizens with comprehensive, free medical care. It is safe to address topics like waterways contaminated by sewage in Iraq because most of the dialogue on impure water centres on the immorality of targeting civilian infrastruc-ture. It is dangerous to talk about the scarcity of water in the region bec-ause less dialogue covers the most pressing issue: regional instability intensifying as a result of growing population rates and diminishing water supplies. The United States is testing the waters of hydropolitics by start-ing to acknowledge the shortage of water in the marshlands of Iraq. Missing from the critique of United States foreign policy in the region is a dialogue on regional and global sustainability, to the advantage of Ameri-can interests. In justifying the recent invasion, we heard history about Saddam gassing his own people, the Kurds, developing and hiding Weap-ons of Mass Destruction, displacing the marsh Arabs and ruining their land, and leading a torturous repressive regime that deprived Iraqi people from democracy and self governance and led them to the deplorable conditions they now live in.

The United States Department of State lists an interview with Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi born engineer and environmental activist, who explained that the Iraqi Government diverted water by building canals and dams for many reasons. One was to catch soldiers fleeing the Iran Iraq war in the late 1980s, and another was to punish the Shi'a people who, doing as the United States had told them to do at the end of the first Gulf War, led an uprising against the central Iraqi Government and were abandoned by the United States military and forcefully put down by Saddam's military. Alwash describes three different systems that Saddam's regime used for redirecting the water away from the marshlands, claiming that even in the early 1990s when dams in Turkey and Syria were built to harness hydroelectric energy and retain water for their countries' usage, the marshlands of Iraq were vibrant and thriving. He maintains that it was exclusively the malicious dehydration campaign led by Saddam which ruined the marshlands and displaced or killed between 100,000 and 500,000 marsh Arabs, draining 60 per cent of the marshes between 1990 and 1994. Interestingly enough, draining the marshlands between the Tig-ris and Euphrates rivers what the United Nations Environmental Prog-ramme (U.N.E.P.) calls "one of the world's greatest environmental disas-ters" was done under the auspices of the sanctions and the watchful eye of the southern No Fly Zone, patrolled by Great Britain, the United States and, for some time, France. The No Fly Zones were established in 1992 to protect the Kurdish people in the north and the Shi'a people in the South from Saddam's regime. These minority groups have received targeted rep-ression and mistreatment, and the No Fly Zones were supposed to inhibit Saddam's power to further oppress them. "We watched it happen," said Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne at a forum on the marshlands at the Brookings Institution on May 7th. "We had the power, the knowledge and the responsibility and we did nothing." Undoubtedly, the long arms of Baghdad were able to reach to the southern marshlands despite the sanctions and the No Fly Zones, and wreak havoc on the indigenous people as well as the landscape. For the past twelve years while Iraqis were unable to import pencils because they contained graphite, blood bags because they contained anti coagulants and cleaning supplies, because the Sanctions Committee 661 asserted that some parts could be used in making Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Government of Iraq was able to bring in materials and massive equipment which re-routed the marshland waters and wrought misery on the Madan.

One of the many claims of barbarism on the part of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist regime is displacing hundreds of thousands of Madan, or Marsh Arabs, and draining the legendary swamps where millennia old culture had been practised and preserved. In post war Iraq, the United States has assumed the responsibility of restoring these marshlands. The United States Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.) has been a vocal proponent of bringing water to the arid landscape, addressing the humanitarian needs of the remaining Marsh Arabs, and fixing the ecological crisis which, according to the U.N.E.P., has vanished from about 90 per cent of the 20,000 square kilometres of Iraq's marshlands. While addressing the marshland concerns attempts to smooth over twelve year old political rifts between the American adminis-trators now governing Iraq and the displaced Madan people, it seems somewhat odd that such a relatively isolated minority of the Iraqi popula-tion would receive such attention and consideration so immediately after the war, especially since the Madan are Shi'a, a population that has largely rejected the occupying American forces and has rejoiced at the return of Islamic leaders from exile to Iraq. And yet American interests are moving forward swiftly. Bechtel, an American firm with a controversial history of water privatization, who won the largest contract from U.S.A.I.D. to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, is set to be a major player in the process with a contract worth $680,000,000. Bechtel's history speaks for itself. Blue Gold(15), a book exposing global control of water by private corporations, listed Bechtel in the second tier of ten powerful companies who profit from water privatization. According to Corpwatch, two years ago current U.S.A.I.D. Administrator Andrew Natsios was working for Bechtel as the Chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, a massive transporta-tion project in Boston whose cost has inflated exponentially in the billions of dollars. While providing political disclaimers on its website as a result of investigative reporting centring on the close relationship between government and private business, Bechtel certainly will benefit from its positioning as the sole contractor for municipal water and sanitation services as well as irrigation systems in Iraq. Vandana Shiva also implic-ates Bechtel in attempting to control not only the process of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, but also control over the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers themselves. Bechtel has been embroiled in a lawsuit with Bolivia for their plan to privatize the water there, which would drastically raise the cost of clear water for the poorest people in the country. To control the water in the Middle East, Bechtel and its fiscal sponsors, the United States Govern-ment, would have to pursue both Syria and Turkey, either militarily or diplomatically. Syria has already felt pressure from the United States over issues of harbouring Iraqi exiles on the United States' "most wanted" list, as well as over issues of terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It is not a stretch of the imagination that a company like Bechtel, with a history of privatization, would have its sights set on water in the Middle East, starting with their lucrative deal in Iraq. However, the United States is not positioned to enter a new phase of global geopolitics where water, a limited vital resource that every human needs, is the hottest commodity and where American corporations like Bechtel have not already capitalized on the opportunity to obtain exclusive vending rights. Devoting attention to restoring the marshes clearly serves United States businesses and corporations who have control over which areas of the marshes get restored, and which ones get tapped for their rich oil resources. Control of the marshlands by the United States led interim Government and by the American corporations who have won reconstruction contracts is crucial in deciding where new oil speculation will take place. If only a percentage 25 per cent according to experts on a Brookings Institution panel on marshland reconstruction can be restored, then it would behove those working on issues of oil and water not to rehydrate areas where such oil speculation will likely take place. Water is vital to the production of oil as well; one barrel of water is required to produce one barrel of oil. Bechtel and Halliburton, who received a United States Army contract to rebuild the damaged oil industry which will likely reach $600,000,000, are the two most strategically positioned corporations to control both the water and oil industries in Iraq. Yet this ruse of generous reconstruction and concern seems both an unlikely and peculiar response after a less than philanthropic United States led invasion of the Sovereign Nation of Iraq. Supporters and opponents of the war alike could hardly miss its trans-parency. Whether the reasoning was because of oil, liberating the Iraqi people, ferreting out Weapons of Mass Destruction or exerting regional influence, few pretences were made to distance the war profiteers from the battlefield in the war's wake. The actions of agencies like U.S.A.I.D., which has pledged more than $1,000,000,000 to facilitate rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq which the United States military and policymakers had a large hand in destroying, are far from altruistic. The problem of the Marsh Arabs was not invented overnight at the end of the recent war, but rather has developed in plain view of the whole world via satellite images and documented in country reports of displacement and abuse. Moreover, the marshlands are not Iraq's sole antiquity. Museums, regions and sites of archaeological importance were destroyed, bombed and looted not only during this last war, but also continuously since the first Gulf War. Will we be paying to rebuild those as well?

According to Peter Galbraith, a Professor at the Naval War College, three weeks of ransacking post war Baghdad left nearly every ministry in shambles, including the Irrigation Ministry, except for the Oil Ministry that was guarded by United States troops. The people of Iraq are becoming rapidly disenchanted with a prolonged United States presence in their country as their former disempowerment under Saddam is translated into present disempowerment under the Americans. According to those work-ing closely with the project to rehydrate the marshlands, in the newly "liberated" Iraq the silenced voices of the oppressed peoples can now be heard and addressed, the stories of destruction can be told and the much needed healing of humans and terrain can take place. Whether this will actually happen is another story. At the Brookings Institution Forum on the Marshlands, no native Iraqis were represented, and the larger ques-tion arising in the post war reconstruction of Iraq is what tangible legiti-macy is given to voicing the will of the people by putting representative Iraqis in power. Perhaps the issue of water is left unspoken on the global level because the Trans-National Corporations supported by powerful Western governments contribute largely to water pollution and privatiza-tion and do not want to draw attention to this fact lest they be forced to clean up their acts and sacrifice profits. Certainly higher standards and levels of accountability would be imposed on industries relying on expend-able water resources if the true shortage of water were openly acknow-ledged. Perhaps it is because the leaders, politicians and diplomats who negotiate issues like this do not want to cause mass hysteria in the region, or in the United States or Western world, by directly addressing the problem of diminishing water supplies. Instead they prefer to keep it, their little secret, hidden from public view and accountability, prolonging the inevitable panic and hoarding that will ensue when people's needs will outweigh the Planet's capacity for providing potable water. Perhaps water issues in Iraq and in the Middle East in general do not make the news so as not to legitimize the environmental movement's claims that water is a precious and ever diminishing resource that requires drastic re-prioritizing on a personal, national and global level.

Sustainable practices of water conservation are given cursory att-ention worldwide and are not yet being implemented on a credible, mean-ingful scale. Population growth expectations for the Middle East provide a staggering predicament. According to Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars(16), the regional population was near 500,000,000 in 1998, and that figure is expected to double by the year 2050. There will be no peace in the Middle East without addressing issues of sustainability and access to water. The microcosm of war in the Middle East is a staggering prediction of a potential widespread global crisis if countries do not learn to conserve and cooperate. Or perhaps it is because resources are not allocated fairly in the region, and acknowledging massive humanitarian crises means that the whistle blowers are accountable to fixing the problem. Israelis and Palestinians already compete for limited water resources, with Palestine getting short shrift and less water. As noted in Resource Wars, Jewish sett-lers five to eight times more water per capita than Palestinians. Addressing problems of war, famine, the environment, human rights, democracy and sustainability has traditionally been compartmentalized work with little overlap and interdependent relevance. The situation of the Marsh Arabs integrates the urgency of ending wars, providing for humanitarian crises and looking ahead into the future at the necessity of sharing natural resour-ces equitably. In the near future, wars may be fought not over intangible ideologies like Communism, Terrorism or Religion, but rather fought overtly about access to clean water. It will soon be much more difficult for governments to euphemize about their intent to wage war. The policy of rehydrating the marshlands of Iraq is significant in that it marks American interests' recognition of water scarcity in the Middle East. It also means that following the blue lines on the map charts a precarious course toward war or peace, depending on the management of water resources.

(Continued in Part 2)

REFERENCES

Note: Prices are shown where available from Bloomfield Books, and represent only a selection relevant to the theme of this edition of On Target. 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) Oberg, Jan. Do you Want To Know Who The Americans Running Iraq Really Are? Information Clearing House - News You Won't Find On CNN. 19th May, 2003. (<http://207.44.245.159/article3426.htm>).
(2) The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Dope, Inc. - The Book That Drove Henry Kissinger Crazy. Executive Intelligence Review, 1992.
(3) Goddard, Donald, with Lester K. Colemen. Trail of the Octopus - From Beirut to Lockerbie - Inside the D.I.A. Bloomsbury Publishing Limited, 1993.
(4) DeCamp, John. The Franklin Cover-Up - Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska. AWT, Inc., 1992.
(5) Goldberg, J.J. Jewish Power - Inside the American Jewish Establishment. Perseus Books Group, 1996.

(6) The Kalmanovitch Report: Moscow's moles in the Reagan-Bush adminstration. E.I.R. Special Report. Executive Intelligence Review, 1988.
(7) Conspiracy Before Omagh, And After. On Target, Vol. 28, No. 16, 30th January, 1999.
(8) Dangers Of The European Arrest Warrant. On Target, Vol. 32, Nos. 12 & 13, 14th & 28th December, 2002.
(9) DeCamp, John. Op. cit.
(10) Costello, John. Mask of Treachery. Collins, 1988.
(11) Foot, Paul. Who Framed Colin Wallace? Macmillan London Limited, 1989; Pan Books Ltd., 1990.
(12) Core, Dianne, with Fred Harrison. Chasing Satan - An Investigation into Satanic crimes against children. Gunter Books, 1991.
(13) Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American and Defense Policy. Edited by Robert Kagan & William Kristol. Encounter Books, 2000.
(14) The designation "Special Forces" is incorrect. The correct term is "Forces of Special Designation"; often very loosely compared, for example, to the British Special Air Service Regiment, S.A.S. "Special Forces" in Soviet parlance are such specialisations as Engineers, Signallers, Pioneers and so on.
(15) Barlow, Maude & Tony Clarke. Blue Gold - The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water. New Press, 2002.
(16) Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

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