[PEN-L:36249] Guardian: more on Perle's fall

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm all for being cynical but it is important to be able to recognize a 
fall. Yes Perle could still get the same salary on the board, but will he 
get the same commission fees? Will he get the same television exposure? Why 
within a week of what the FT called a victory celebration addressed by him 
hosted by the American Enterprise Institute is he driven from the Chair of 
the Defense Advisory Board  in anger and frustration? If he gets 
invitations to appear on television it will now be as fall guy, to see how 
well he stands up to baiting.

This item from the Guardian gives more financial details and shows how the 
paper stepped in to make it clear that Perle would not only have to fight 
the New Yorker under UK libel laws, but would have to fight the Guardian, 
and it has a proud record of winning even under our adverse libel system. 
ITs action may have contributed to Perle's fall.

But what I find even more remarkable in this piece, is the open opposition 
of the head of the British military in Iraq to a neo-liberal economic 
dispensation for Iraq, and an explicit preference for what would at least 
be the Arab equivalent of Christian Democratic or Social Democratic one.

What we are seeing is a battle between two models of imperialist domination 
of the world, catalysed by the resistance of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi 
people to the spread of the global Empire.

Chris Burford
London

_________________


Richard Perle's resignation highlights questions over US economic 
involvement in postwar Iraq, writes Brian Whitaker

Friday March 28, 2003

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,12965,924728,00.html

Amid admissions that Iraq has surprised the invasion forces with the 
strength of its resistance, and official predictions that the conflict will 
last longer than originally expected, there is news from Washington that 
Richard Perle, chief architect of the war, has resigned as chairman of the 
Pentagon's influential Defence Policy Board.

Mr Perle says he resigned to stop allegations about his business interests 
becoming a distraction from the "urgent challenge" of invading Iraq, but he 
apparently intends to stay on in a more minor role.

In 1996 Mr Perle, nicknamed the Prince of Darkness, was the main author of 
a report entitled "Clean Break" whose contents were revealed by the 
Guardian last September (Playing skittles with Saddam, September 3 2002)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4493638,00.html.

This set out a plan to protect Israel's strategic interests by reshaping 
the Middle East, starting with regime change in Iraq.

Last week, the Guardian disclosed Mr Perle's links to an 
intelligence-related computer firm that stands to profit from war with Iraq 
(Pentagon hawk linked to UK intelligence company, March 21 2003).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,918742,00.html

Mr Perle has denied separate allegations published earlier this month in 
the New Yorker, and threatened to sue the magazine in Britain, where libel 
cases are much harder to defend than in the US.

According to a report to be published today by the US watchdog Center for 
Public Integrity, at least 10 out of 30 members of the Pentagon committee 
are executives or lobbyists with companies that have tens of billions of 
dollars' worth of contracts with the US defence department and other 
government agencies.

Britain's chief military officer in the Gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, 
yesterday attacked American moves to hand over the running of Iraq's 
largest port to a company which has a history of bad industrial relations 
and has faced accusations of union-busting.

The firm, Stevedoring Services of American, has been awarded a £3m contract 
to manage Umm Qasr by the Bush administration. Britain argues that the port 
should be run by Iraqis once it has been made secure.

Another contract in Umm Qasr - for construction work - has gone to a 
subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice-President Dick Cheney's old firm.