Tariq Ali: Liars Can't Expect Flowers After Bombs And Occupation

["David Quarter" <davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To:                     r_rozoff@xxxxxxxxx
From:  Rick Rozoff         

---------------------------
1) Recolonization Of Iraq: Liars Can't Expect To Be
Greeted With Flowers After Bombs And Occupation
2) Imperialism And Irony: America, Iraq And The United
Nations
3) Financial Times: Callous, Incompetent US War
Profiteers Obstruct Iraq Reconstruction


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/25/1061663732767.html

Sydney Morning Herald
August 26, 2003

Liars couldn't expect flowers after bombs and
occupation
by Tariq Ali


America and its allies were warned that the situation
in Iraq would quickly develop into a guerilla war,
writes Tariq Ali.

The recolonisation of Iraq is not proceeding smoothly.
The resistance in the country (and in Palestine) is
not, as Israeli and Western propagandists like to
argue, a case of Islam gone mad. It is, in both cases,
a direct consequence of the occupation. Before the
recent war, some of us argued that the Iraqi people,
however much they despised Saddam Hussein, would not
take kindly to being occupied by the United States and
its British adjutant.

Contrary to the cocooned Iraqis who had been on the US
payroll for far too long and told George Bush that US
troops would be garlanded with flowers and given
sweets, we warned that the occupation would lead to
the harrying and killing of Western soldiers on a
daily basis and would soon develop into a
low-intensity guerilla war. 

The fact that events have vindicated this analysis is
no reason to celebrate. The entire country is now in a
mess and the situation is much worse than it was
before the conflict. The only explanation provided by
Western news managers to explain the resistance is
that these are dissatisfied remnants of the old
regime. This week Washington contradicted its
propaganda by deciding to recruit the real remnants of
the old state apparatus - the secret police - to try
to track down the resistance organisations, which
currently number more than 40 different groupings. The
demonstrations in Basra and the deaths of more British
soldiers are a clear indication that these former
bastions of anti-Saddam sentiment are now prepared to
join the struggle. 



The bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad shocked
the West, but as Jamie Tarabay of the Associated Press
reported in a dispatch from the Iraqi capital last
week, there is a deep ambivalence towards the UN among
ordinary Iraqis. This is an understatement.

In fact the UN is seen as one of Washington's more
ruthless enforcers. It supervised the sanctions that,
according to UNICEF figures, were directly responsible
for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children and a
horrific rise in the mortality rate. Two senior UN
officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck,
resigned in protest against these policies, explaining
that the UN had failed in its duties to the people of
Iraq.

Simultaneously the US and Britain, with UN approval,
rained hundreds of tonnes of bombs and thousands of
missiles on Iraq from 1992 onwards and, in 1999, US
officials calmly informed The Wall Street Journal that
they had run out of targets. By 2001, the bombardment
of Iraq had lasted longer than the US invasion of
Vietnam.

That's why the UN is not viewed sympathetically by
many Iraqis. The recent Security Council decision to
retrospectively sanction the occupation, a direct
breach of the UN Charter, has only added to the anger.
All this poses the question whether the UN today is
anything more than a cleaning-up operation for the
American Empire? 

The effects of the Iraqi resistance are now beginning
to be felt in both the occupying countries. The latest
Newsweek poll reveals that the great
thinker-President's approval ratings are down 18
points to 53 per cent and, for the first time since
September 11, more registered voters (49 per cent) say
they would not like to see him re-elected. This can
only get worse (or better, depending on one's point of
view) as US casualties in Iraq continue to rise. 

In Britain more than two-thirds of the population now
believe that Tony Blair lied to them on Iraq. This
view is shared by senior figures in the establishment.
There was open disquiet within the armed forces before
the war. Some generals were not too pleased by the
sight of their Prime Minister, snarling at the leash
like a petty mastiff, as he prepared to dispatch a
third of the British army to help occupy the country's
largest former colony in the Middle East.

After the capture of Baghdad, Sir Rodric Braithwaite,
the former head of the joint intelligence committee
and a former national security adviser to Blair, wrote
an astonishing letter to the Financial Times in which
he accused Blair of having deliberately engineered a
war hysteria to frighten a deeply sceptical population
into backing a war. Fishmongers sell fish, warmongers
sell war, wrote Braithwaite, arguing that Blair had
oversold his wares. 

This anger within the establishment came to a head
with the alleged suicide of the Ministry of Defence's
leading scientist, Dr David Kelly, and forced a
judicial inquiry, a form of therapy much favoured by
the English ruling class. This week Blair will be
interrogated before Justice Hutton, but already the
inquiry has uncovered a mound of wriggling worms.

There is talk now that New Labour will offer the
Defence Secretary, a talentless mediocrity by the name
of Geoff Hoon, as a blood sacrifice to calm the
public. But what if Hoon refuses to go alone? After
all he knows where the bodies are buried. 

And Australia? Here the Prime Minister - a perennial
parrot on the imperial shoulder - managed to pull out
his troops before the resistance began. They were
badly needed in the Solomon Islands. Like Blair, John
Howard parroted untruths to justify the war and like
Blair, he's lucky that the official Opposition is led
by a weak-kneed and ineffective politician scared of
his own shadow.

And one day when the children of dead Iraqis and
Americans ask why their parents died? The answer will
come: because the politicians lied.

Meanwhile there will be no peace as long as Palestine
and Iraq continue to be occupied and no amount of
apologetics will conceal this fact.

Tariq Ali's new book, Bush in Babylon: The
Recolonisation of Iraq, will be published by Verso in
October.
-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_26-8-
2003_pg3_4

Daily Times (Pakistan)
August 26, 2003

Op-ed: Imperialism and irony
ABDUL BASIT HAQQANI*

Washington never tires of making clear that it is not
going to surrender paramountcy or any real authority
to the UN. After all, to do so would bring into
question the right of Halliburton, Bechtel and other
American corporations for whom the war was undertaken

The literary device of ?irony?, like all literary
methods, is meant to present an entertaining, and
explanatory view of reality. Its effectiveness in
Greek drama came from the fact that the audience was
already familiar with the details of the story being
presented. Only the protagonists were unaware of their
fate and as they went about making plans or assertions
which ran counter to what was in store for them, the
audience could appreciate the perils of ignorant
vanity. That is one kind of irony but there is
another, deeper one, much more poignant in its impact.
And that concerns not a contrast between fate and
words based on ignorance, but the contradiction
between statements on a situation or theme made by
someone at different times; or the words used to
describe a situation which draw attention to the
contradictory action or statements of someone about
the same or a similar situation at an earlier time. 

On May 1, this year President George Bush, all decked
up in the uniform of a fighter pilot made a dramatic
landing in a plane flown by someone else and addressed
the people from the deck of an aircraft carrier. This
was a high profile and bizarre case of impersonation,
because this same valiant flying knight had used his
familial connections to avoid combat in his youth.
Indeed, it was irony of the classical type. Once on
the not so heaving ship (his media manipulators had,
like Canute, ordered the waves to be still) Bush
declared the fighting over in Iraq.

That pronouncement, as later events have proved, was
yet another example of irony since it heralded not the
return of peace but the beginning of combat in the
occupied country. Then, in the vainglorious tones of a
Greek tragic hero, he challenged the Iraqi resistance.
If they wanted a fight, they would get it, ?Bring ?em
on?, he declared. The enemy picked up the gauntlet.
And this, as we know, has been most unfortunate for a
lot of people, not least for American soldiers dying
for the greater glory of the neo-conservative
servitors of the American corporate establishment and
UN personnel who had never been targeted in Iraq
before the Americans embarked on their ?civilizing
mission? in the land that created civilisation.

And the irony continues. Take His Excellency
Ambassador John Negroponte?s remarks after the
Security Council had decided to ?welcome? the
formation of the ?Governing Council? of Iraq. He was
gloating, a form of behaviour that has always been the
distinguishing feature of the American establishment,
but which comes ever more readily to them since their
?success? in Iraq. Speaking to journalists after the
Security Council vote, he said that those who were
opposed to American designs in Iraq would now know
that they were isolated, they were an insignificant
minority, and that the vast majority of the world
approved what Washington was fashioning in that
unfortunate country. The Ambassador did not realise
that what he said would remind people of the
Anglo-American position when they were pressing to be
allowed to go to war. It was they who were isolated
and were in a minority, miniscule in comparison to the
level of opposition today. To boast that the Americans
now enjoy world support, whatever that might mean, is
yet another instance of irony from a people who were
so contemptuous of world opinion or support.

Finally, there is the irony regarding ?involvement? of
the United Nations. The American ultra-rightists never
wanted to go to the UN to consult it on what needed to
be done in Iraq before the war. They wanted a war
whether or not it was legitimised by the international
community. If, as has been said, Secretary Powell
insisted on trying to get a Security Council
resolution favouring the American plans, it was in the
teeth of violent disagreement from the likes of Perle,
Wolfowitz, Cheney et al. When the trumped up case in
favour of invasion did not convince the world, it was
declared that the UN was ?irrelevant?. And those in
the Security Council that disagreed, principally
France and Germany, were ostracised. These same
members were, it should be remembered, necessary to
obtain the overwhelming majority that the American
Permanent Representative is now boasting about. 

Ironic though this is, the greater irony resides in
the fact that the same ?irrelevant? United Nations has
now become relevant again because the standard bearers
of democracy need their urgent help in a situation
that they cannot control on their own. The mendacious
leaders of the two principal aggressors knew that Iraq
was no military match for them. Now that their
soldiers are being killed in what seems a war of
attrition, regardless of whether it is called
?guerrilla war? or ?terrorism? or is given any other
name, they need others to come in and help ?restore?
peace and stability. They need some kind of UN cover
because they want soldiers from France and Germany and
India and Pakistan. But these dispensable men and
women are needed for promoting the objectives for
which the aggression was committed.

Washington never tires of making clear that it is not
going to surrender paramountcy or any real authority
to the UN. After all, to do so would bring into
question the right of Halliburton, Bechtel and other
American corporations for whom the war was undertaken
? to exploit Iraqi wealth at will. This was revealed
by no less a minion of corporate America than the New
York Times, when it said that the demands being made
by France and Germany for the UN to have greater
authority in Iraq was only because they wanted
benefits for their companies. The United States will
not tolerate anyone else nuzzling at the trough.

As our ?democratic General? and his ?intelligent?
foreign policy advisers from Aabpara and Chaklala
contemplate the UN cover for dispatching their
dispensable soldiers to Iraq, they should ensure that
it is not a mere fig-leaf. It is the international
community that should be in complete control to bring
peace and security to a land which has been despoiled
by the aggressors. Our people do not have to become
targets so that their billionaires can make more
billions.

*Basit Haqqani is a former ambassador
-------------------------------------------------------
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryF
T/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059479313188&p=1012571727172

Financial Times
August 25, 2003

Iraqis say they are in the dark over rebuilding plans 
By John Dizard 

-Until the war broke out, I used to be able to order
my own high-priority spare parts through Jordan. We
are depending now on KBR [Kellogg, Brown and Root, a
Halliburton subsidiary] to order our spare parts, but
so far we haven't received any."
-[O]ne US engineer says: "We need between $5bn and
$6bn to rebuild the electricity system. Bechtel has
been allocated about $200m to do the job. Even that is
not being used effectively yet."
Mr Bremer himself has suggested that the total capital
requirements for the electricity system might be as
much as $15bn.
-"We have to go to Bechtel for all our imported parts
but Bechtel is moving in slow motion. We have received
no parts yet, just some chemicals."


At the Doura power station, a large oil-fired plant
that supplies much of Baghdad's electricity, a single
engineer is working with an acetylene torch to repair
a much patched heat exchanger.

The site is strewn with rusted pipes, broken gauges
and refuse. Only two of its four turbines are in
working order. An aged Fiat gas turbine wheezes along
on low-pressure natural gas. Doura's two broken
turbines are supposed to provide 320MW, equivalent to
a 10th of Iraq's entire current production. But the
Siemens engineers whose company built the plant have
made a survey and gone home; their future work
schedule is not clear. The US army unit is an Airborne
artillery company, not Corps of Engineers specialists.

"You don't see the civilians out here," an army
officer grimaces, referring to the Coalition
Provisional Authority. "The Iraqis just agree with
everything you ask, and then nothing happens."

The fitful effort to restore electricity supplies
epitomises the so far ineffectual reconstruction
effort in Iraq. Shortages--not just of energy but of
goods and services of all kinds--remain acute. The
lack of security and the country's dilapidated
condition remain the two biggest problems. But
increasingly contractors and CPA dissidents openly
allege that the US's direction of Iraq's recovery is
beset by bureaucratic inertia and mismanagement. "The
Americans have a lot of problems," says Dattar Kassam,
director-general of Baghdad's refinery. "They are
overwhelmed and understaffed. Just when I get to know
one of them, he gets himself sent back.

"Until the war broke out, I used to be able to order
my own high-priority spare parts through Jordan. We
are depending now on KBR [Kellogg, Brown and Root, a
Halliburton subsidiary] to order our spare parts, but
so far we haven't received any."

In telecommunications, it is taking some time to fix
the landline telephone service. But in July regional
operators were asked to switch off the rough and ready
services they had started to provide inside Iraq, as
the US invited tenders for a new cellular telephone
system.

Yet one member of a bidding consortium describes the
tendering process--which initially offered companies
only two weeks to submit their bids for a two year
concession--as opaque, unrealistic and technically
incompetent.

Similar discontent has been stirred in the Iraqi
banking sector by the CPA's decision to seek
international operators for a new Trade Bank of Iraq.

Local bankers strongly dispute the assertion by Peter
McPherson, the Michigan state university president
seconded to be head of the US Treasury's Iraq team,
that the Iraqi financial sector is "not in a position
to undertake (trade finance) at this time. They do not
have much capital, and most of them are undergoing
restructuring. What you see are just empty shells."
According to Ayad Al Atia, the head of the Iraqi
Bankers' Association and an officer of the Warka
Investment bank: "Comments such as that just show the
ignorance of the Coalition Provisional Authority."

In practice, private banks such as Warka not only
preserved their records during the war and its
aftermath but have established ties with Iraqi private
companies and long experience in executing trade
finance. As set up under an administrative order dated
July 17, however, the TBI's initial capital will come
from coalition-administered funds, and its
CPA-appointed president authorised to enter a
short-term contract with an operating consortium of
international banks.

Contractors are also beginning to question the CPA's
internal financial operation. They complain that
payments for services are made late--and in cash, even
when the amounts are in the millions of dollars. "They
don't want to use US government accounts because they
don't want the appearance of commingling Iraqi and US
funds," says one contractor. "They told me two months
ago they would have the system fixed, but I am still
getting payments in currency." In the meantime, the
funds allocated to infrastructure rehabilitation
barely scratch the surface of accumulated needs.

For example, one US engineer says: "We need between
$5bn and $6bn to rebuild the electricity system.
Bechtel has been allocated about $200m to do the job.
Even that is not being used effectively yet."

Mr Bremer himself has suggested that the total capital
requirements for the electricity system might be as
much as $15bn.

Mohsen Hassan, the director-general of technical
services for the Electricity Commission, says: "Before
the war we used about 4,500MW throughout the country.
The total demand is about 6,200MW. Right now we are
producing about 3,200MW. While there is supposed to be
a budget of $200m for repairs for the year, we have
only been given $2m for all the materials and labour
we will use from July through the middle of September.
"We have to go to Bechtel for all our imported parts
but Bechtel is moving in slow motion. We have received
no parts yet, just some chemicals."

"What they will tell you privately," says a dissident
CPA adviser, "is that they expect the international
community to eventually come in and provide the
billions necessary for the electrical system.

"Assuming their diplomacy now works, that puts any
start to a solution off for months, and the
implementation for years. The country can't stand the
delay."
--------------