March 12, 2003
Media Compilation #121: The Shadow Influence of Israel, the Blair Rout, the Oil Fields' Imminent Environmental Disaster and More!
Dear journalist
Here is a fresh batch of some of the latest - and most shocking! - developments. Each item in the "See also" section would really deserve full blown inclusion below. All worth a thorough look
... and coverage!
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com
This compilation is archived at http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/Archives2003/MediaCompilation121.htm
CONTENTS
1. WE The Israelis Must Stop Sharon - Avnery on Emergency Situation
2. Blair Races to War as Cabinet Crumbles
3. Iraq May Be Poised to Ignite Oil Fields
4. Who Armed Iraq?
5. Another U.S. Diplomat Quits Over Iraq Policy
See also:
West's failure to donate humanitarian aid threatens catastrophe for millions, UN given only quarter of requested funds as plans fall behind (March 10)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,910816,00.html
U.S. WILL BE PAYING FOR IRAQ FOR YEARS
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BCEA62644%2DDF10%2D435F%2D80E4%2DE0F9DCDB9D20%7D&siteid=mktw
(...) In the end we are going to be talking in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars. If we are lucky, it might peak out at a half trillion.
US Will Attack Even If UN Vetoes - Israeli General (March 9)
http://rense.com/general35/weill.htm
JERUSALEM (AFP) - The United States will launch its offensive against Iraq even if the UN Security Council vetoes the move, Israel's head of military intelligence, General Aharon Zeevi, said Sunday. Zeevi told the weekly cabinet meeting that Washington would launch its strikes "next week," Israeli broadcast media said.
30 Years Of U.S. UN Vetoes.
http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=43361&group=webcast
List of Resolutions Vetoed by the USA by years
Allied Bombs Threaten A New Generation Of Iraqi Children With Disease And Death (March 9)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=385533
The tension of the weeks of waiting is reaching fever pitch, and fear is now all-pervasive as Iraqis wait for the ferocious bombardment that the Americans have promised to unleash upon them. Pentagon plans which have appeared in the Western media are now the subject of anxious discussion among Iraqis - 3,000 Tomahawk missiles in 48 hours for Baghdad alone; Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace and power base, to be razed; six kilos of ordnance for every Iraqi... There will be very little by way of return fire.
Bill Moyers Talks with Chris Hedges (Must Read!)
http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_hedges_print.html
(...) MOYERS: When you hear the General describe an attack of 3,000 missiles on Iraq, what comes through your mind?
HEDGES: Well not images of shock and awe. Images of large numbers of civilian dead. Destroyed buildings. Panic in the corridors of hospitals. Families that can't reach parts of a city that have been devastated and are desperate for news of their loved ones. All of the images of war that I've seen for most of the past two decades come to mind.
The US war on Iraq (MOST EXCELLENT ANALYSIS! RIGHT ON!)
http://mondediplo.com/focus/iraq/
Nothing seems capable of halting the American juggernaut. Now in March 250,000 US soldiers, along with a few British units, are gathered in the Gulf ready for the assault on Baghdad. Soon after 11 September 2001 the Bush administration decided that one component of their strategy would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Men as high-placed as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz had long advocated such action, but George W Bush's questionable election made it difficult to realise that objective. With 11 September it became feasible. From then on Washington's ruling view of the world was stark: "Anyone who is not with us is with the terrorists" Bush proclaimed. The September 2002 document entitled The National Security Strategy of the United States, which for the first time included the notion of preventive war, confirmed the new orientation of the hyperpower, which was convinced that its own interests were henceforth synonymous with justice. This strategy was not a response to 11 September. It was formulated in a document dating from September 2000, signed by influential members of the current administration before they took office, which claimed that terrorism had replaced Nazism and communism as the new enemy of the United States. But terrorism is not an ideology, nor is it a strategic threat, since it does not originate from any state. It is a useful bogeyman, adaptable to many situations and used to discredit one's enemies. Especially when it can be associated, in a triangle of evil, with weapons of mass
destruction and so-called "rogue states". CLIP - The rest at http://mondediplo.com/focus/iraq/
The Secret Empire
http://www.msnbc.com/news/WARROOM_front.asp
The U.S. military in the 21st century
The Wall (March 9 - this story says it all!)
http://www.rense.com/general35/wall.htm
(...) "We never learn, do we?" he asked. My quizzical look made him chuckle, and he continued as he turned back toward the Wall: "It never ceases to amaze me what we let ourselves be turned into cannon fodder for. We let ourselves get talked into all sorts of horror, and only after the body bags start piling up do we begin to wonder why." We both knew he had my attention now. "Know how many names are here?" he asked. "Something like 50,000," I replied. "You make it sound like a goddamn statistic" he said, "There's Fifty Eight Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty Nine names on this Wall." He said the words slowly, enunciating each one. "Fifty Eight Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty Nine. Every one of them a son; a brother, or a father, a husband, a cousin, a lover, a neighbor, a friend. Fifty Eight Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty Nine boys brought home in boxes. For what? For fuckin' nothing. And now the bastards are gonna do it again." CLIP
"Don't Go" (9 minute anti-war video)
html://www.zendik.org/dontgo.html
Industrial-scale mortuaries being sought for mass terror fatalities
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=385305
Ministers are secretly scouring the country for mortuaries to take thousands of civilian bodies from a terrorist attack after war breaks out with Iraq.
Military Seeks Exemptions on Harming Environment (THIS MUST NOT COME TO PASS!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/politics/06ENVI.html
The proposed legislation, introduced today by the White House, would give the military more discretion in activities that affect marine mammals and endangered species. In particular, the military is asking for exemptions from sections from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which officials said would give needed flexibility to sonar and underwater bombing exercises.
THE DAN RATHER-SADDAM INTERVIEW THAT NEVER HAPPENED
http://www.stratiawire.com/article.asp?id=970
MARCH 7. Here is the interview that never happened. These are NOT the questions Dan Rather wanted to ask but didn't. These are the questions he would NEVER ask Saddam, unless he wanted CBS to erase the tape, unless he wanted his plane back to the US to crash in the ocean.
MORE ON THE DEPLETED URANIUM MONSTRUOUS MESS
Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/
Depleted Uranium: FAQ
http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/background/du.html
The Gulf War's New Casualties
http://www.thenation.com/issue/970714/0714mesl.htm
Article from the Nation, in July 1997 on after effects of use of depleted uranium. Includes interview with Doug Rokke.
The Pentagon's Radioactive Bullet
http://www.thenation.com/issue/961021/1021mesl.htm
1996 article on depleted uranium and its use by US and other armed forces.
Pentagon Poison: The Great Radioactive Ammo Cover-Up
http://www.thenation.com/issue/970526/0526mesl.htm
1997 article from the Nation on depleted uranium, includes interview with Jerry Wheat.
Depleted Uranium: The Invisible Threat
http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/kosovo/reality_check/du.html
Article from Mother Jones about use of depleted uranium in the Kosovo War
PLENTY MORE Uranium Links!
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/links.html
1.
OMINOUS WARNINGS FROM ISRAEL - NOT TO BE IGNORED!!
From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <info@gush-shalom.org>
Date: 8 Mar 2003
Subject: WE The Israelis Must Stop Sharon - Avnery on Emergency Situation
Gush Shalom
Uri Avnery
8.3.03
Black Flags
When I visited Ramallah last, it wore a shining white frock. Even after days of sunshine, many areas where still covered with snow that hid the ravages of the occupation, destruction and neglect.
I was driving slowly and enjoying the landscape, when I tensed instinctively. Through the corner of my eye I saw a group of children. Something was hurled forcefully against my windshield and landed with a bang. In the split of a second I relaxed: it wasn't a rock but a snowball. I waved and they waved cheerfully back, in spite of my yellow Israeli license plates.
But that was the only light moment during this visit. I had come to ask Palestinian civic leaders about the dangers threatening the Palestinian population in case of an American attack on Iraq.
They had no illusions. The present Israeli political-military leadership includes groups that have been planning for a long time to exploit a war situation in order to do things which cannot be done in ordinary times. The moral brakes that still exist in parts of the Israeli public, as well as the expected international reaction, prevent the implementation of these plans for the time being.
All this can change in a war situation. The attention of the world will be riveted to the battle in Iraq. In the Arab countries, chaos may prevail, diverting attention from the Palestinian territories. The Israeli public, fearful of Saddam's capabilities, will be (even) less sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians.
What can happen?
The list is long, and every item is worse than the preceding one.
The first - and almost certain - act will be a prolonged closure and curfew in all the occupied territories. The Palestinians have a long and painful experience with these. It means that for days and weeks on end it will be impossible to get food and medicines into towns and villages, especially to remote and isolated ones. This time, electricity may be completely cut off, cutting all connections with the outside world. Patients will not reach hospitals for ordinary treatment (dialysis and chemotherapy, for example) or emergency procedures (wounds, operations, births etc.). In many cases, this can literally be a matter of life and death.
Only some of these eventualities can be forestalled. For example, Villages can be helped to stock essential supplies in advance.
It is clear to the Palestinians that the war will give the occupation forces the opportunity to intensify even more the things which happen now every day: the execution of militants and others, wholesale demolition of homes, uprooting of plantations. It is difficult to know what new dimensions these can attain.
But there is one word that hovers over all the discussions: "transfer".
In simple terms, "transfer" means the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Palestine, as happened in 1948 and 1967. In the situation of 2003, that will be difficult. The question will be: where to? Jordan will close its border and the mass expulsion of Palestinians there would constitute an act of war against the Hashemite kingdom. It is hard to imagine the Americans allowing Sharon to do this while Jordan is serving as one of their bases in the war against neighboring Iraq. Expulsion to Lebanon is almost impossible without creating a war-like situation on the northern border.
But there is another form of transfer: deportation from one part of the occupied territories to another. For example: deportation of the population from towns and villages adjacent to the planned "separation wall" (Kalkilya, Tulkarm) to the central areas (Nablus).
That has already happened before. During the June 1967 war, Moshe Dayan emptied whole neighborhoods of Kalkilya and drove their inhabitants on foot to Nablus. The demolition of the neighborhoods had already begun, when we succeeded in stopping it. (I exploited the fact that I was a member of the Knesset at the time and alerted several senior personalities.) The refugees were allowed back and the neighborhoods rebuilt. (At the same time, many inhabitants of Tulkarm were put on buses and brought to the Jordan bridges.)
Another example: many settlements on the West Bank are planning to grab adjacent areas. If the armed settlers' militias will terrorize near-by villages under the cover of the closure, they may cause a Deir Yassin-style mass flight.
It is common knowledge that many people in the military leadership are waiting impatiently for the opportunity to remove Yasser Arafar. Removing means killing, as nobody believes that Arafat will surrender without resistance. If the Americans want "regime change" in Iraq and are not hiding their intention of killing Saddam, why should Sharon be prevented from doing the same?
The question is: will the Americans allow Sharon and his accomplices to do all this, or part of it?
There can be no clear answer to that. Logic says no. The Americans will not want Israel to disturb their war. Even after the war, Washington will not want the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to flare up. The American military occupation of Iraq might last for many years, and any inflammation of the Arab world will be detrimental.
But America and logic are two different things. The group that is now in control in Washington - a mixed bag of Evangelical fundamentalists and Jews connected with the extreme right in Israel - has a logic of its own. They may direct and even push Sharon to extremes.
It is, of course, clear that all the acts mentioned constitute war crimes under the Geneva Convention and other international laws. Some of them are crimes under Israeli law, too, being "manifestly illegal orders, over which a black flag is waving", to quote an Israeli legal precedent. Participants in such actions may find themselves, some day in the future, before an international or national court. There is no statute of limitations.
But that is not the only reason for sounding a warning. Every one of these actions will be a disaster for Israel. If one believes that the long-term security and well-being of Israel depend on Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation between the two peoples of this country, one has to do everything to prevent acts that will deepen the abyss of hatred between us. Things may happen that will destroy for generations any possibility of building a bridge over the abyss, and turn the whole Arab and Muslim worlds against us forever.
Therefore, we should not rely on the Americans to stop Sharon. We, the Israelis, must do everything - but everything! - to prevent such acts from taking place. I believe that this is a patriotic duty of the highest order.
Sign the biggest petition against Iraq War at http://www.moveon.org/emergency/
...as to make it big enough
---
Our site:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html (English)
2.
Blair Races to War as Cabinet Crumbles
by Ian Henshall <inkchair@pro-net.co.uk>
Publisher: http://www.dumpblair.co.uk - http://www.911dossier.co.uk
The Blair government was rocked last night as Clare Short, a popular Labour politician and key ally of Chancellor Gordon Browne, confirmed that she will resign if Bush and Blair attack Iraq without an express UN mandate.
Short clearly believes that Bush/Blair are resigned to rejection by the UN and have decided to start illegal attacks on Iraq as soon as possible, before opposition has time to build further. There is no longer a rush to war, there is a race to war. The BBC reports that US/UK raids on Iraq are up to 500 sorties per night.
This resignation threat in itself could be shrugged off by Blair's dwindling band of allies, but the tone of Short's criticism makes a move to depose Blair inevitable. The British political world has not seen such a scathing attack on a Prime Minister by a cabinet colleague since Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe condemned Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Within weeks Thatcher was out of power.
Short was scathing of Blair's `recklessness` which she described as `very surprising`. In case there could be any doubt as to her planned resignation, Short made it a condition of her support that there should be not only UN approval for the planned attack, but also that there should be a UN refugee plan in place, an issue which so far pro-Blair UK media whores have barely mentioned.
In contrast to ex-cabinet minister Chris Smith, who led the massive rebellion against Blair in the House of Commons two weeks ago, Short is adopting a tone of contempt for Blair, making it clear that she sees him as an emotionally immature liar.
Unable to breach Cabinet secrecy openly, Short gave a clue to the Bush/Blair war strategy by stating that Blair was telling the cabinet one thing while his spin doctors (Bilderberg plotter Peter Mandelson and reformed alcoholic Alaistair Campbell) are telling the world something quite different.
Short's intention to resign is not the only indication that Blair's days are numbered. The New Statesman, the house magazine for Labour intellectuals, recently carried a readers poll splitting 80 to 20 against Blair. The current issue has devastating articles by moderate opinion-former David Marquand, saying that Blair has played Rumsfeld's game to destroy Europe "in a remarkably juvenile and clumsy way" and intellectual John Gray explaining that US power is overstated and the rest of the world is likely to keep on saying no to Bush/Blair's plans.
Even in the staunchly pro-war Observer influential columnist Andrew Rawnsley drew a shocking picture of Blair personally, portraying him as isolated, plagued by flu, desperately short of sleep, and unable to stop obsessive meddling in irrelevant government business. The implication was that Blair is headed for a breakdown.
Meanwhile in the US opinion is similarly settled against war in defiance of the UN, but with the tv networks still loyal to the Bush Junta and corrupt Senators controlled by pro-war slush funds, attention is shifting to the financial markets where it is feared that the US cannot finance the war on its own. Even looted Iraqi oil will not be on a scale to staunch the flood of dollars needed to pay for the US trade deficit, conquer Iraq and as Tony Blair puts it "deal with" North Korea and Iran.
Financial markets are more concerned with the truth than politicians and the media whores, and they have noticed that the world may refuse to accept trillions of freshly printed dollars at face value, especially with Euros underpinned by real wealth and oil producers starting to accept them.
The last time the world was confronted by a bankrupt country armed to the teeth? Yes, it was nazi Germany. And the country which helped them to invade Czechoslovakia for its wealth? Britain, of course. Plus ca change...
3.
From the Environment News Service (ENS)
Iraq May Be Poised to Ignite Oil Fields
WASHINGTON, DC, March 10, 2003 (ENS) - Iraq has moved explosives to its oilfields at Kirkuk with the intention of firing the oil facilities as a deterrent to U.S. military action, U.S. officials told Reuters today, without revealing the sources of their intelligence. This report comes on the heels of an unconfirmed story from the Islamic Republic News Agency agency on Thursday which reported that Iraq dropped bombs which resulted in the explosion of an oil refinery near Kirkuk.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today said he could not confirm those reports. "I'm not in a position to have evaluated them," he told a press briefing.
Iraq's Oil Undersecretary Hussein Suleiman Al-Hadithi denied the country has placed explosives in the oilfields in northern Iraq. Still, these reports are among a "variety of sources" that have convinced the U.S. Defense Department that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein has "both the capability and the intent to damage or destroy Iraq's oil fields," the department said in a statement Thursday.
That assessment, together with the fact that Hussein's regime set fire to more than 700 of Kuwait's oil wells in 1991, has prompted the United States to plan for the possibility of oil well fires in Iraq in the event of military action to disarm the regime.
"Reliable reports indicate that these activities have been planned, and in some cases, may already have begun," the Department of Defense (DoD) said Thursday. "Recent information revealed that Iraq has received 24 railroad boxcars full of pentolite explosives. While destruction of the fields would not be a militarily significant act, it will produce economic and environmental impacts with lasting effects on the people of Iraq, as well as Iraq's neighbors."
With over 10 billion barrels of remaining proven oil reserves, Kirkuk is the center of Iraq's oil industry and is connected by pipelines to ports on the Mediterranean Sea. After some 70 years of operation, Kirkuk still produces up to one million barrels a day, almost half of all Iraqi oil exports. Kirkuk is located in northern Iraq, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital of Baghdad near the foot of the Zagros Mountains and just south of the no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. and British aircraft.
U.S. plans are first to prevent the destruction of Iraq's oil fields and second, if unable to prevent the destruction, to control and mitigate the damage quickly, said the Defense Department.
"The department has crafted strategies that will allow U.S. forces to secure and protect the oil fields as rapidly as possible in order to preserve them prior to destruction. U.S. military forces would be responsible for securing and protecting the oil sites, and under appropriate contractual arrangements, private sector companies would extinguish any fires and assess damage to oil facilities." the Defense Department said.
Brown & Root Services, a division of Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc., Houston, developed the oil facilities control plan for the U.S. government, a plan which includes assessing damages.
Halliburton Company, led by Dick Cheney before he assumed his current position of vice president, is the parent of construction giant Kellogg Brown & Root Inc.
"Environmentally, the U.S. estimates that the regime's likely actions have the potential to double the disastrous effects experienced in Kuwait in 1991," said the DoD, which says the destruction of those oil wells had "an impact 20 times larger than that of the Exxon Valdez disaster" of 1989. In 1991, Iraq released about five million barrels of oil into the Arabian Gulf, the DoD says. "Even today, there are still environmental clean-up actions being taken."
The many water desalination plants around the Gulf were affected by the Iraqi release of oil. The long term effects on the water tables in Gulf countries are still being analyzed, the DoD said, but it has been determined that about 30 percent of Kuwait's water is unusable as a result of the 1991 oil contamination.
The Defense Department estimates that "up to 15 desalination plants would be affected were Iraq to undertake such actions today, critically affecting many of Iraq's neighbors."
4.
From: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15322
Who Armed Iraq?
By Paul Rockwell, AlterNet
March 6, 2003
Before World War I, arms manufacturers were commonly called "merchants of death." As clouds of war gathered over Europe, the peace movement worked in vain to stop armament companies from producing explosives, torpedoes, mustard gas, machine guns, dreadnoughts, subs, destroyers, U-boats, howitzers, bombers and zeppelins.
Two world wars and countless regional conflicts have since ravaged the globe. The merchants of death are still in business. Iraq's Weapons Declaration underscores a tragic irony: The United States, the world's leading arms supplier, is taking the world to war to stop arms proliferation in the very country to which it shipped chemicals, biological seed stock and weapons for more than 10 years.
According to the December declaration, treated with much derision from the Bush administration, U.S. and Western companies played a key role in building Hussein's war machine. The 1,200-page document contains a list of Western corporations and countries – as well as individuals – that exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq in the past two decades.
Embarrassed, no doubt, by revelations of their own complicity in Mideast arms proliferation, the U.S.-led Security Council censored the entire dossier, deleting more than 100 names of companies and groups that profited from Iraq's crimes and aggression. The censorship came too late, however. The long list – including names of large U.S. corporations – Dupont, Hewlett-Packard, and Honeywell – was leaked to a German daily, Die Tageszeitung. Despite the Security Council coverup, the truth came out. A German company, for example, exported 1,000 ignition systems for Styx and Scud missiles capable of carrying biological and nuclear warheads.
Alcolac International, a Maryland company, transported thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, to Iraq. A Tennessee manufacturer contributed large amounts of a chemical used to make sarin, a nerve gas implicated in Gulf War diseases.
Phyllis Bennis, author of "Before and After," notes that "the highest quality seed-stock for anthrax germs (along with those of botulism, E. coli, and a host of other deadly diseases) were shipped to Iraq by U.S. companies, legally, under an official U.S. Department of Commerce license throughout the 1980s." A Senate Banking subcommittee report in 1994 confirmed that shipments of biological germ stock continued well into 1989.
According to Judith Miller in "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," Iraq purchased its seed stock – its "starter germs" – from "The American Type Culture Collection," a supply company in a Washington, D.C., suburb.
We tend to forget that the Reagan-Bush administration maintained cordial relations with Hussein in the '80s, promoting Iraq's eight-year war against Iran. Twenty-four U.S. firms exported arms and materials to Baghdad. France also sent Hussein 200 AMX medium tanks, Mirage bombers and Gazelle helicopter gunships. As Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage testified in 1987: "We cannot stand to see Iraq defeated." The CIA, State Department, the central military command directing Middle East operations, were well aware of Iraq's biological-weapons efforts. Nevertheless, Iraq's applications were seldom denied.
The infamous massacre at Halabja – the gassing of the Kurds – took place in March 1988. Six months later, on Sept. 19, a Maryland company sent 11 strains of germs – four types of anthrax – to Iraq, including a microbe strain called 11966, developed for germ warfare at Fort Detrick in the 1950s. The vast, lucrative arms trade in the Middle East created the groundwork for Hussein's aggression in Kuwait. Without high-tech weapons from the West, Iraq's wars against Iran and Kuwait would never have taken place.
The inspection process is spawning a host of questions about U.S. policy. Why aren't U.S. and European scientists, who invented and produced lethal materials for Saddam Hussein, subject to interrogations like their counterparts in Iraq? Are U.S. companies sending their deadly material to other dictators? Why are there no congressional hearings on the U.S. role in arms proliferation? And how many senators (like the voice of Connecticut's arms industry, Sen. Joe Lieberman) are taking contributions from the world's arms dealers?
The United States exports more weapons than all other countries combined, and Hussein is only one of many human rights abusers who purchased the means of terror from the West. No despot, no monarchy, no medieval insurgency that can be exploited, no regime of terror seems to be off-limits to the sale of arms for profit.
From 1983-88, Siad Barre, the mad dictator of Somalia, received from the United States 155 howitzers, 20mm Vulcan air defense guns, light artillery pieces, mortars, anti-tank rocket launchers, a mass of firearms and ammunition.
By 1989, its precious desert water holes demolished, the impoverished country was in open revolt. When Siad Barre fled, he left the country in ruins, and he left all his U.S. weapons behind – the very weapons that enabled warrior clans to bring down U.S. Black Hawks and kill 70 U.S. and U.N. humanitarian troops. On the edge of famine, Somalia today is still awash in U.S. weaponry, as 14- year-old children carry hand-me-down rifles through the streets of Mogadishu.
Notwithstanding pious talk about curbing arms proliferation, arms traffic is expanding under the administration of George W. Bush. The administration recently lifted the embargo on arms sales to contending nuclear powers – India and Pakistan – where riots, massacres, religious uprisings and border showdowns take place routinely.
The arms traffic may be very profitable for General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, but the arms traffic is deadly for developing nations.
Arms militarize the Third World, deplete local resources and – despite low interest rates – generate large debts and inflation. Loans for genuine capital investment generate increased productivity, enabling a nation to progress and repay the loan. Military loans and purchases have no such value. They divert resources from civilian production, from the growth economy, and they increase poverty. Even before Sept. 11, historian Chalmers Johnson warned in "Blowback: Costs and Consequences of American Empire": "Arms sales are a major cause of a developing blowback whose price we have yet to begin to pay."
"Blowback," a term first used by the CIA, refers to the unintended consequences of covert policies. "In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows," Johnson wrote. "But so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret. Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price – individually and collectively – for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene." Is it moral to view social conflicts, hatred, fear, aggression, war and violence as a mere marketplace for high-tech business? And can we continue to treat the mechanisms of terror in terms of supply and demand?
George Orwell's brilliant essay on empire and nationalism applies directly to the mendacity of the Bush administration: "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage – torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
It is time to measure human rights by one yardstick – to hold the suppliers, not just the purchasers, of death accountable for their handiwork.
Paul Rockwell is a writer based in Oakland, Calif.
5.
From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8089-2003Mar10?language=printer
Another U.S. Diplomat Quits Over Iraq Policy
March 11, 2003
A U.S. diplomat resigned yesterday in protest against President Bush's preparations to attack Iraq, the second to do so in less than a month. John H. Brown, who joined the U.S. diplomatic corps in 1981 and served in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow, said in a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that was made available to the media: "I cannot in good conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq. "Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president's disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century," the diplomat added. Brown has recently been attached to the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. Immediately before that, he was cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Last month, a senior U.S. diplomat based in Athens, political counselor John Brady Kiesling, also resigned over the Bush administration's policy on Iraq.
