Meet the U.S.

[TMNT]

Greed is a desire to obtain more money or material possessions or bodily satisfaction than one is considered to need. A more religious term for greed is avarice, which is listed as one of the Catholic Seven Deadly Sins.

 

Greedy individuals are often believed to be harmful to society as their motives often appear to disregard the welfare of others: if one person is to increase in wealth, somebody else must be decreasing in wealth (assuming, of course, that a market economy is a zero sum game). However, greed has become more acceptable (and the word less frequent) in Western culture, where the desire to acquire wealth is an important part of capitalism.

 

When greed is applied to the subject of the excessive consumption of food or drink the term gluttony is often used, another of the Seven Deadly Sins.

 

Buddhists believe greed is based on incorrectly connecting material wealth with happiness. This is caused by a deluded view that exaggerates the positive aspects of an object.

Edited May 13, 2005 by TMNT

[armjan]

Greed is a desire to obtain more money or material possessions or bodily satisfaction than one is considered to need. A more religious term for greed is avarice, which is listed as one of the Catholic Seven Deadly Sins.

 

Greedy individuals are often believed to be harmful to society as their motives often appear to disregard the welfare of others: if one person is to increase in wealth, somebody else must be decreasing in wealth (assuming, of course, that a market economy is a zero sum game). However, greed has become more acceptable (and the word less frequent) in Western culture, where the desire to acquire wealth is an important part of capitalism.

 

When greed is applied to the subject of the excessive consumption of food or drink the term gluttony is often used, another of the Seven Deadly Sins.

 

Buddhists believe greed is based on incorrectly connecting material wealth with happiness. This is caused by a deluded view that exaggerates the positive aspects of an object.

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greed is a product of humans, whether in america, bangladish, java, mars.

this attribute is independent of position.

[Stormig]

Uhm, if people don't mind, I had initially intended to keep this thread international and political. 13 pages * 40 posts/page and this had been tolerated so far. Could outcries of solidarity and what-not be reserved for another thread, please?

Moreover, I apologise to anyone concerned for not being able to keep this thread abreast of the current. My work and lifestyle have been making it increasingly difficult.

[Nakharar]

greed is a product of humans, whether in america, bangladish, java, mars.

this attribute is independent of position.

 

Yes, what is solely a human condition shouldn't be ascribed to a larger segment of society. Though there is a thin line between motivation and greed in some instances, it should not be confused with entrepreneurship which is the main catalyst of capitalism and from which we especially in the United States have so greatly benefitted.

[Nakharar]

Greed is a desire to obtain more money or material possessions or bodily satisfaction than one is considered to need. A more religious term for greed is avarice, which is listed as one of the Catholic Seven Deadly Sins.

 

Greedy individuals are often believed to be harmful to society as their motives often appear to disregard the welfare of others: if one person is to increase in wealth, somebody else must be decreasing in wealth (assuming, of course, that a market economy is a zero sum game). However, greed has become more acceptable (and the word less frequent) in Western culture, where the desire to acquire wealth is an important part of capitalism.

 

When greed is applied to the subject of the excessive consumption of food or drink the term gluttony is often used, another of the Seven Deadly Sins.

 

Buddhists believe greed is based on incorrectly connecting material wealth with happiness. This is caused by a deluded view that exaggerates the positive aspects of an object.

 

You raised some excellent points especially the one indirectly alluding to the law of entropy. That's one of the main critiques of marxism and one which hasn't been solved for a long time. This is worth discussing further.

[armjan]

You raised some excellent points especially the one indirectly alluding to the law of entropy. That's one of the main critiques of marxism and one which hasn't been solved for a long time. This is worth discussing further.

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can u elaborate on how content above refrences "law of entropy".

Did u mean "law of conservation of ..."?

 

it's probably best to move some other thread, I have a feeling we have over stayed our welcome here.

Edited May 15, 2005 by armjan

[Nakharar]

Yes, I meant the second law. Someone's profit is another one's loss to put it crudely.

 

Who decides where we can post or not? These threads aren't anbody's private fiefdom. Moreover it's not as if they are totally unrelated to the topic.

[Stormig]

I asked nicely.

[Anonymouse]

I asked nicely.

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Shut up or I'll squish your head.

[Anonymouse]

So what's all this anti-U.S. business?

[Stormig]

Shut up or I'll squish your head.

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I had no idea male mice would PMS.

[Nakharar]

So what's all this anti-U.S. business?

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Some people can't help it. There are always two sides to a story.

[kumkap]

www.democracynow.org

 

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Marine Cleared In Killing Of Unarmed Iraqis

 

A marine who shot and killed two unarmed Iraqis at point blank range has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the military. Immediately following the decision, the soldier, Lieutenant Ilario Pantano, said he did not regret killing the men. Prosecutors alleged that Pantano intended to make an example of the men by shooting them 60 times and hanging a sign over their corpses that read "No better friend, no worse enemy." Pantano did not deny hanging the sign or shooting the men repeatedly after stopping their vehicle at a checkpoint. He admitted emptying one magazine of bullets into the Iraqis, then reloading and firing 30 more rounds. Pantano will continue his work training marines at Camp Lejune and his lawyer says he hopes to return to Iraq.

 

--

 

question: if i break into your house, kill members of your family, then start moving my own things into your house, can i claim self-defense after i've killed you if you try to hurt me? the men weren't even armed. does anyone wonder why there are 100,000 iraqis dead in this war (massacre)?

[ED]

"I think the fact of the matter is the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world,"

 

President of the United States Dick Cheney

[kumkap]

From the AP:

 

"President Bush on Tuesday dismissed a human rights report as "absurd" for its harsh criticism of U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the allegations were made by prisoners "who hate America."....."

 

The tail-behind-the-legs words of a war criminal, no doubt about it. Do they remind you of the kind of statements another country we know likes to make?

 

"...Bush said he expressed concerns with Russian President    Vladimir Putin about legal proceedings against former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Once the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky was convicted Tuesday of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison following a trail widely denounced as politically motivated."

 

"Here, you're innocent until proven guilty and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial," Bush said. "We're watching the ongoing case."..."

 

And just how many of the people sitting in abu ghraib, guantanamo, and bagram - the people you stripped down naked, put leashes around, sexually abused, sicced dogs on, murdered for sport, and performed other forms of torture on ad nauseum - were even given trials (fair or not) at all?

 

"...On the Amnesty International report, Bush said, "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of the allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America."..."

 

Nope, we just looked at the pictures that your own army of trailer trash took (you know, the same people that were lynching blacks until forty years ago and wiped out Native Americans for no reason. Or are the pictures forgeries like the wmd reports you got from american "intelligence". We also read the dod's own reports (e.g. taguba).

 

"...Turning to the controversial issue of embryonic stem cell research, Bush said that the extra embryos created during fertility treatments — estimated to now number around 400,000 — should be adopted.

 

"There's an alternative to the destruction of life," he said. "But the stem cell issue is really one of federal funding, that's the issue before us, and that is whether or not we use taxpayers' money to destroy life. ... I don't believe we should."..."

 

Really? Then why did you start a war for no reason and murder tens of thousands of people, with my tax money? Give it back, I will gladly contribute it to your war criminal trial at the Hague.

[kumkap]

someone refresh my memory, what was it that iraqis did to americans?

 

--

 

Extreme Cinema Verite

 

Published on Monday, March 14, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

 

GIs Shoot Iraq battle Footage and Edit it Into Music Videos Filled with Death and Destruction. And they Display their Work as Entertainment.

 

by Louise Roug

 

BAQUBAH, IRAQ -- When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first night back at his parents' house in Texas, he showed the video to his fiancee, family and friends.

 

This is what they saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.

 

"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

 

"It's like a trophy, something to keep," McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. "I was there. I did this."

 

Film cameras arrived at the front during World War II, but soldiers didn't really document their own combat experience until the Vietnam War. (The technology didn't lend itself to amateur moviemaking until the arrival of the smaller Super 8 cameras.)

 

Today, video cameras are lightweight and digital technology has cut out the need for processing. Having captured a firefight on video, a soldier can create a movie and distribute it via e-mail, uncensored by the military. With editing software such as Avid and access to Internet connections on military bases here, U.S. soldiers are creating fast-paced, MTV-style music videos using images from actual firefights and killings.

 

Troops often carry personal cameras and video equipment in battle. On occasion, official military camera crews, known as "Combat Camera" units, follow the troops on raids and patrol. Although the military uses that footage for training and public affairs, it also finds its way to personal computers and commercial websites.

 

The result: an abundance of photographs and video footage depicting mutilation, death and destruction that soldiers collect and trade like baseball cards.

 

"I have a lot of pictures of dead Iraqis — everybody does," said Spc. Jack Benson, 22, also stationed near Baqubah. He has collected five videos by other soldiers and is working on his own.

 

By adding music, soldiers create their own cinema verite of the conflict. Although many are humorous or patriotic, others are gory, like McCollough's favorite.

 

"It gets the point across," he said. "This isn't some jolly freakin' peacekeeping mission."

 

Commanders have discretion to establish regulations concerning photography on base, but common-sense rules apply, an Army spokesman said. Images that threaten operational security — such as pictures of military installations or equipment — are not allowed.

 

Before being deployed to Iraq, some Marines were told they could not take pictures of detainees, dead or wounded Iraqis or American casualties. But photographs and videos of dead and maimed Iraqis proliferate.

 

"It doesn't bother you so much taking pictures of the guy who was just shooting at you," McCullough said. He added that he hadn't seen any pictures of dead U.S. soldiers. "It's just a little too morbid, a little too close to home."

 

On the bases where Benson and McCullough live, the Army regularly searches soldiers' quarters for drugs, alcohol and pornography as part of what it calls health and safety inspections. But searching personal laptops would infringe on soldiers' privacy, said Capt. Douglas Moore, a judge advocate general officer with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team at Warhorse. Besides, if this brand of filmmaking breaks rules, they're of a different kind.

 

"It's in poor taste," Moore said, "kind of sick."

 

McCullough was surprised that his favorite video was disturbing to his loved ones back in Texas.

 

"You find out just how weird it is when you take it home," said McCullough, whose screensaver is far more benign, showing him on his wedding day.

 

Brandi McCullough, then his fiancee and now his wife, said she had walked in as he was showing the videos to friends who were "whooping and hollering."

 

The 18-year-old was shocked by images of "body parts missing, bombs going off and people getting shot."

 

"They're terrifying," she said by phone from Texas. "Chase never talked about anything over there, and I watch the news, but not all the time. I didn't realize there was that much" violence.

 

She also wondered why anyone would record it.

 

"I thought it was odd — a home video," she said. "People getting shot and someone sitting there with a camera."

 

McCullough said his father, a naval reserve captain, had told him, " 'You know, this isn't normal.'

 

"They were pretty shocked," he said. "They didn't realize this is what we see."

 

Daniel Nelson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, said he understood the disconnect.

 

"I'm not surprised about this — it's a new consciousness that we're beginning to see," he said, comparing the videos to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photographs. "What happens in this situation, the culture is endorsing something that would be prohibited in another context stateside."

 

What seems disrespectful or a trivialization is also a way for soldiers to distance themselves from the trauma, he said, which says: "I don't want to see what I've done or experienced as real."

 

The creation of videos resembles what Nelson has seen in his work with traumatized children and Vietnam veterans, he said.

 

"How do we create the story about our lives?" he asked. "Part of the healing process is for them to create a narrative, to organize an emotional story that allows them to get a handle on it."

 

Thomas Doherty, chairman of the film studies program at Brandeis University and author of "Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture and World War II," called the videos an authentic diary of the war.

 

"There's always the disconnect between the front-line soldier and the sheltered home front," he said. "It's a World War II ethos: You don't bring it home."

 

After watching the video, Doherty said, "Of course you're struck by the gruesomeness of the carnage, but it's a wide range of images."

 

He went on to praise "the contra-punctual editing — the beat of the tune and the flash of the images," calling it "a very slick piece of work."

 

"The MTV generation goes to war," he said. "They should enter it at Sundance."

 

In another video, made by members of the Florida National Guard, soldiers are shown kicking a wounded prisoner in the face and making the arm of a corpse appear to wave. The DVD, which is called "Ramadi Madness," includes sections with titles such as "Those Crafty Little Bastards" and "Another Day, Another Mission, Another Scumbag," came to light in early March after the American Civil Liberties Union obtained Army documents using the Freedom of Information Act.

 

James Ross, senior legal advisor for Human Rights Watch, called it "disturbing that soldiers are making videos like that." But he added, "It doesn't mean that it's necessarily a violation of the Geneva Convention."

 

The Geneva Convention instructs that remains of deceased shall be respected and not "exposed to public curiosity," Ross said. "It's not putting heads on spikes and things like that. To argue you can't photograph [a body] would be a bit of a stretch."

 

Several websites sell footage from the war.

 

"Militants fight in the streets of Baghdad, looting, lawlessness," is how clips are advertised on efootage.com. A Las Vegas-based company, Gotfootage.com, offers $50 and $100 clips that include older footage of Saddam Hussein, Jessica Lynch, aerial bombardment and "sooooo many bombs." The site also advertises video showing an Iraqi fuel truck being destroyed by U.S. bombs during the invasion in March 2003.

 

Another website advertises, "GrouchyMedia.com is the place to find those pump-you-up-to-kill-the-bad-guys videos everyone has been talking about."

 

Spc. Scott Schroder, a gunner with Task Force 2-63, wouldn't show what he described as the "evil, nasty kill-videos," to his family.

 

"That's cool with the guys," he said. "I don't think my mom would care to see any of these videos."

 

Another specialist, who wouldn't give his name, said the bloody videos disgusted him.

 

"I wouldn't watch them, and the people I work with wouldn't watch them," said the specialist, stationed at a base near Mosul in northern Iraq. "I don't think it's proper."

 

We compared the violent videos to those made by insurgents showing beheadings.

 

"You bring yourself down to their level," he said. "Why would you do that?"

 

A poster for the video game "Grand Theft Auto" is pinned to the door of McCullough's room at Camp Warhorse.

 

Watching the home videos gives him a different perspective on combat, he said. Details are missed in the heat of battle, and the military "could use it as a tool, kind of like how they do it with high school football."

 

His roommate, 30-year-old Sgt. Benjamin Bronkema from Lafayette, Ind., said he was surprised no one had tried to sell the movies yet.

 

"If I had a copy of it, and MTV called, I'd sell it," he said. The videos are no different than what's on screen at the cinema, showing glorified violence, he added.

 

"It's no more graphic than 'Saving Private Ryan,' " he said. "To us, it's no different than watching a movie."

 

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

[armjan]

someone refresh my memory, what was it that iraqis did to americans?

 

--

 

Extreme Cinema Verite

 

...

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when two elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers.

whether the grass did something or not is not relevant for all pratical purposes.

that's why it's a fight, b/c there is disagreement.

[kumkap]

when two elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers.

whether the grass did something or not is not relevant for all pratical purposes.

that's why it's a fight, b/c there is disagreement.

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quite possibly the worst analogy i've ever heard. notice the turks making the same type of analogies.

[kumkap]

From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'

 

By BOB HERBERT

 

05/02/05 "New York Times" - - I spent some time recently with Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota.

 

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life. He was trained as a mechanic and assigned to the 320th Military Police Company in St. Petersburg. By the spring of 2003, he was in Iraq. Eventually he would be stationed at the prison compound in Abu Ghraib.

 

Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

 

"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

 

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

 

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "

 

"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.

 

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

 

He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.

 

Mr. Delgado, an extremely thoughtful and serious young man, balked at the entire scene. "It drove me into a moral quagmire," he said. "I walked up to my commander and gave him my weapon. I said: 'I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to kill anyone. This war is wrong. I'll stay. I'll finish my job as a mechanic. But I'm not going to hurt anyone. And I want to be processed as a conscientious objector.' "

 

He stayed with his unit and endured a fair amount of ostracism. "People would say I was a traitor or a coward," he said. "The stuff you would expect."

 

In November 2003, after several months in Nasiriya in southern Iraq, the 320th was redeployed to Abu Ghraib. The violence there was sickening, Mr. Delgado said. Some inmates were beaten nearly to death. The G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib lived in cells while most of the detainees were housed in large overcrowded tents set up in outdoor compounds that were vulnerable to mortars fired by insurgents. The Army acknowledges that at least 32 Abu Ghraib detainees were killed by mortar fire.

 

Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.

 

Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "

 

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

 

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[armjan]

quite possibly the worst analogy i've ever heard.  notice the turks making the same type of analogies.

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u've conveniently misunderstood elephants & the inference that comes from this african proverb.

 

interesting how 2 ppl hear the same thing yet have completely diff outcomes.

Edited June 16, 2005 by armjan

[kumkap]

exaggerations i'm sure. america is there to bring civilization to iraq!:

 

--

 

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/38/8861

 

Stories from Fallujah

By Dahr Jamail

Iraq Dispatches

 

Tuesday 08 February 2005

 

These are the stories that will continue to emerge from the rubble of Fallujah for years. No, for generations...

 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the doctor sits with me in a hotel room in Amman, where he is now a refugee. He'd spoken about what he saw in Fallujah in the UK, and now is under threat by the US military if he returns to Iraq.

 

"I started speaking about what happened in Fallujah during both sieges in order to raise awareness, and the Americans raided my house three times," he says, talking so fast I can barely keep up. He is driven to tell what he's witnessed, and as a doctor working inside Fallujah, he has video and photographic proof of all that he tells me.

 

"I entered Fallujah with a British medical and humanitarian convoy at the end of December, and stayed until the end of January," he explains, "But I was in Fallujah before that to work with people and see what their needs were, so I was in there since the beginning of December."

 

When I ask him to explain what he saw when he first entered Fallujah in December he says it was like a tsunami struck the city.

 

"Fallujah is surrounded by refugee camps where people are living in tents and old cars," he explains, "It reminded me of Palestinian refugees. I saw children coughing because of the cold, and there are no medicines. Most everyone left their houses with nothing, and no money, so how can they live depending only on humanitarian aid?"

 

The doctors says that in one refugee camp in the northern area of Fallujah there were 1,200 students living in seven tents.

 

"The disaster caused by this siege is so much worse than the first one, which I witnessed first hand," he says, and then tells me he'll use one story as an example.

 

"One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old," he says of one of the testimonies he video taped recently, "She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything."

 

The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and witnessed the war crimes first-hand.

 

"They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head," he said. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead.

 

"She continued hiding after the soldiers left and stayed with her sisters because they were bleeding, but still alive. She was too afraid to call for help because she feared the soldiers would come back and kill her as well. She stayed for three days, with no water and no food. Eventually one of the American snipers saw her and took her to the hospital," he added before reminding me again that he had all of her testimony documented on film.

 

He briefly told me of another story he documented of a mother who was in her home during the siege. "On the fifth day of the siege her home was bombed, and the roof fell on her son, cutting his legs off," he says while using his hands to make cutting motions on his legs, "For hours she couldn't go outside because they announced that anyone going in the street would be shot. So all she could do was wrap his legs and watch him die before her eyes."

 

He pauses for a few deep breaths, then continues, "All I can say is that Fallujah is like it was struck by a tsunami. There weren't many families in there after the siege, but they had absolutely nothing. The suffering was beyond what you can imagine. When the Americans finally let us in people were fighting just for a blanket."

 

"One of my colleagues, Dr. Saleh Alsawi, he was speaking so angrily about them. He was in the main hospital when they raided it at the beginning of the seige. They entered the theater room when they were working on a patient...he was there because he's an anesthesiologist. They entered with their boots on, beat the doctors and took them out, leaving the patient on the table to die."

 

This story has already been reported in the Arab media.

 

The doctor tells me of the bombing of the Hay Nazal clinic during the first week of the siege.

 

"This contained all the foreign aid and medical instruments we had. All the US military commanders knew this, because we told them about it so they wouldn't bomb it. But this was one of the clinics bombed, and in the first week of the siege they bombed it two times."

 

He then adds, "Of course they targeted all our ambulances and doctors. Everyone knows this."

 

The doctor tells me he and some other doctors are trying to sue the US military for the following incident, for which he has the testimonial evidence on tape.

 

It is a story I was told by several refugees in Baghdad as well...at the end of last November while the siege was still in progress.

 

"During the second week of the siege they entered and announced that all the families have to leave their homes and meet at an intersection in the street while carrying a white flag. They gave them 72 hours to leave and after that they would be considered an enemy," he says.

 

"We documented this story with video-a family of 12, including a relative and his oldest child who was 7 years old. They heard this instruction, so they left with all their food and money they could carry, and white flags. When they reached the intersection where the families were accumulating, they heard someone shouting 'Now!' in English, and shooting started everywhere."

 

The family was all carrying white flags, as instructed, according to the young man who gave his testimony. Yet he watched his mother and father shot by snipers-his mother in the head and his father shot in the heart. His two aunts were shot, then his brother was shot in the neck. The man stated that when he raised himself from the ground to shout for help, he was shot in the side.

 

"After some hours he raised his arm for help and they shot his arm," continues the doctor, "So after awhile he raised his hand and they shot his hand."

 

A six year-old boy of the family was standing over the bodies of his parents, crying, and he too was then shot.

 

"Anyone who raised up was shot," adds the doctor, then added again that he had photographs of the dead as well as photos of the gunshot wounds of the survivors.

 

"Once it grew dark some of them along with this man who spoke with me, with his child and sister-in-law and sister managed to crawl away after it got dark. They crawled to a building and stayed for 8 days. They had one cup of water and gave it to the child. They used cooking oil to put on their wounds which were of course infected, and found some roots and dates to eat."

 

He stops here. His eyes look around the room as cars pass by outside on wet streets...water hissing under their tires.

 

He left Fallujah at the end of January, so I ask him what it was like when he left recently.

 

"Now maybe 25% of the people have returned, but there are still no doctors. The hatred now of Fallujans against every American is incredible, and you cannot blame them. The humiliation at the checkpoints is only making people even angrier," he tells me.

 

"I've been there, and I saw that anyone who even turns their head is threatened and hit by both American and Iraqi soldiers alike...one man did this, and when the Iraqi soldier tried to humiliate him, the man took a gun of a nearby soldier and killed two ING, so then of course he was shot."

 

The doctor tells me they are keeping people in the line for several hours at a time, in addition to the US military making propaganda films of the situation.

 

"And I've seen them use the media-and on January 2nd at the north checkpoint in the north part of Fallujah, they were giving people $200 per family to return to Fallujah so they can film them in the line...when actually, at that time, nobody was returning to Fallujah," he says. It reminds me of the story my colleague told me of what he saw in January. At that time a CNN crew was escorted in by the military to film street cleaners that were brought in as props, and soldiers handing out candy to children.

 

"You must understand the hatred that has been caused...it has gotten more difficult for Iraqis, including myself, to make the distinction between the American government and the American people," he tells me.

 

His story is like countless others.

 

"My cousin was a poor man in Fallujah," he explains, "He walked from his house to work and back, while living with his wife and five daughters. In July of 2003, American soldiers entered his house and woke them all up. They drug them into the main room of the house, and executed my cousin in front of his family. Then they simply left."

 

He pauses then holds up his hands and asks, "Now, how are these people going to feel about Americans?"

Edited June 20, 2005 by kumkap

[kumkap]

seems as though richard perle has his hands in everything. being the good hrya that he is, when he's not working to defeat armenian genocide resolutions in congress he is killing off every effort to avert a merciless war that will unleash white lynch mobs on (see previous post in this thread) and end up killing tens of thousands of people in a country that is already on its knees from twelve years of genocidal sanctions:

 

--

 

Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war

 

Washington dismissed Iraq's peace feelers, including elections and weapons pledge, put forward via diplomatic channels and US hawk Perle

 

Julian Borger in Washington, Brian Whitaker and Vikram Dodd

 

Friday November 7, 2003: (The Guardian) In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks.

 

As US and British troops massed in the Gulf, Iraqi intelligence sent out a range of compromise feelers through a number of channels in the apparent hope of forestalling the invasion or at least buying time.

 

The messages were sent through Syrian intelligence, and French, German and Russian diplomatic channels, and as the countdown to invasion ticked away, through retired CIA officials and a Lebanese-American businessman who met the Washington hawk, Richard Perle, in a London hotel.

 

The first approach appears to have been made last December through the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro.

 

"I was approached by someone representing Tahir al-Tikriti - the Iraqi intelligence chief also known as [General] Tahir Habbush - who said Saddam knew there was a campaign to link him to September 11 and prove he had weapons of mass destruction," said Mr Cannistraro. "The Iraqis were prepared to satisfy those concerns. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it," he said. He later heard the Iraqi offer had been "killed" by the Bush administration.

 

In the next three months, several more approaches from Iraq were made through third countries, US intelligence sources said. At one point, a meeting between CIA officials and Iraqi agents was arranged in Morocco but, according to the US sources, the Iraqi side did not show up.

 

Iraqi intelligence was also offering privately to allow several thousand US troops into the country to take part in the search for banned weapons.

 

Baghdad even proposed staging internationally-monitored elections within two years.

 

"All these offers had at bottom the same thing - that Saddam would stay in power, and that was unacceptable to the administration," Mr Cannistraro said. "There were serious attempts to cut a deal but they were all turned down by the president and vice president."

 

According to the Knight-Ridder news agency, the Iraqis sought a direct route to the Washington hawks in February. They found a Lebanese-American businessman, Imad el-Hage, who boasted he had a direct line to the Pentagon.

 

Mr Hage told yesterday's New York Times that he was initially approached by General Habbush's chief of foreign intelligence operations, who turned up in Mr Hage's Beirut office and promptly collapsed, apparently from stress.

 

When Mr Obeidi recovered, he urged Mr Hage to tell his Washington contacts Iraq was ready to talk about anything, including oil concessions, the Middle East peace process, and banned weapons. The Iraqi official said the "Americans could send 2,000 FBI agents to look wherever they wanted", according to Mr Hage.

 

A week later Mr Hage travelled to Baghdad and talked to Gen Habbush himself. The general repeated the invitation to allow Americans to search for weapons and added an offer to hand over a suspected terrorist, Abdul Rahman Yasin, who had been convicted in the US for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre. The regime would hold elections within two years, and the intelligence chief even offered to fly to London to discuss the issue in person.

 

Mr Hage relayed these offers via an intermediary to the Pentagon, but there was no official response. The Lebanese-American businessman persisted, and arranged a meeting with Mr Perle, a member of the Pentagon's advisory board.

 

It is understood that Mr Hage and Mr Perle met on March 7 in the lobby of the Marlborough hotel in Bloomsbury. They then went to an office nearby where over two hours Mr Hage outlined the Iraqi offer to Mr Perle.

 

Mr Perle was travelling in Europe yesterday and unavailable for comment. However, he told the New York Times he had been told by the CIA not to pursue contacts with the Iraqis.

 

A US intelligence source insisted that the decision not to negotiate came from the White House, which was demanding complete surrender.

 

According to an Arab source, Mr Perle sent a Saudi official a set of requirements he believed Iraq would have to fulfil. Those demands included Saddam's abdication and departure, first to a US military base for interrogation and then into supervised exile, a surrender of Iraqi troops, and the admission that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

 

According to Mr Hage, Gen Habbush rejected any proposal involving Saddam's abdication, offering future elections instead.

 

But even after the war got under way, the Iraqi intelligence chief appears to have sought new compromises.

 

This time the conduit was Robert Baer, another former CIA official. There was talk of a meeting between Mr Baer and GenHabbush in Ramadi, outside Baghdad, in early April. "It was a promise to hold free elections supervised by France and the US," Mr Baer said. But the proposed meeting never happened. Two daysearlier, on April 9, the house it was supposed to take place in was bombed by US planes with six precision-guided bombs.

 

Copyright: The Guardian.

[kumkap]

u've conveniently misunderstood elephants & the inference that comes from this african proverb.

 

interesting how 2 ppl hear the same thing yet have completely diff outcomes.

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

i didn't misunderstand your african proverb, you on the other hand obviously didn't even read the article i posted. it wasn't about simple collateral damage of civilians being killed in a warzone ("grass being trampled" on as you put it) it was about soldiers taking footage and images of dead, mutilated iraqi bodies like this, putting music to it, and turning them into videos to be distributed for the enjoyment of the other racist, porn-addicted human scum treated as heroes by the media and political establishment of the united states. these are the same type of people who photographed themselves standing next to lynched black bodies dangling from trees in the american south 60 years ago or who participated in the masscres at wounded knee, little big horn, my lai, and others.

 

here are some excerpts if reading is too time consuming:

 

"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

 

"It's like a trophy, something to keep," McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. "I was there. I did this."

 

The result: an abundance of photographs and video footage depicting mutilation, death and destruction that soldiers collect and trade like baseball cards.

 

"I have a lot of pictures of dead Iraqis — everybody does," said Spc. Jack Benson, 22, also stationed near Baqubah. He has collected five videos by other soldiers and is working on his own.

 

By adding music, soldiers create their own cinema verite of the conflict. Although many are humorous or patriotic, others are gory, like McCollough's favorite.

 

"It's in poor taste," Moore said, "kind of sick."

 

McCullough was surprised that his favorite video was disturbing to his loved ones back in Texas.

 

"You find out just how weird it is when you take it home," said McCullough, whose screensaver is far more benign, showing him on his wedding day.

 

Brandi McCullough, then his fiancee and now his wife, said she had walked in as he was showing the videos to friends who were "whooping and hollering."

 

The 18-year-old was shocked by images of "body parts missing, bombs going off and people getting shot."

 

"They're terrifying," she said by phone from Texas. "Chase never talked about anything over there, and I watch the news, but not all the time. I didn't realize there was that much" violence.

 

She also wondered why anyone would record it.

 

what is there in this to hoop and holler about?

[kumkap]

source: ZNet

 

Covering up Napalm in Iraq

by Mike Whitney

 

June 28, 2005

 

“You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Robert Duvall, “Apocalypse Now” (1979)

 

Two weeks ago the UK Independent ran an article which confirmed that the US had “lied to Britain over the use of napalm in Iraq”. (6-17-05) Since then, not one American newspaper or TV station has picked up the story even though the Pentagon has verified the claims. This is the extent to which the American “free press” is yoked to the center of power in Washington. As we’ve seen with the Downing Street memo, (which was reluctantly reported 5 weeks after it appeared in the British press) the air-tight American media ignores any story that doesn’t embrace their collective support for the war. The prospect that the US military is using “universally reviled” weapons runs counter to the media-generated narrative that the war was motivated by humanitarian concerns (to topple a brutal dictator) as well as to eliminate the elusive WMDs. We can now say with certainty that the only WMDs in Iraq were those that were introduced by foreign invaders from the US who have used them to subjugate the indigenous people.

 

“Despite persistent rumors of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm” the Pentagon insisted that “US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.” (UK Independent)

 

The Pentagon lied.

 

Defense Minister, Adam Ingram, admitted that the US had misled the British high-command about the use of napalm, but he would not comment on the extent of the cover up. The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons (CCW) and is a violation the Geneva Protocol against the use of white phosphorous, “since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an urban area.”

 

Regrettably, “indiscriminate and extreme injuries” are a vital part of the American terror-campaign in Iraq; a well-coordinated strategy designed to spawn panic through random acts of violence.

 

It’s clear that the military never needed to use napalm in Iraq. Their conventional weaponry and laser-guided technology were already enough to run roughshod over the Iraqi army and seize Baghdad almost unobstructed. Napalm was introduced simply to terrorize the Iraqi people; to pacify through intimidation. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Negroponte are old-hands at terrorism, dating back to their counterinsurgency projects in Nicaragua and El Salvador under the Reagan Administration. They know that the threat of immolation serves as a powerful deterrent and fits seamlessly into their overarching scheme of rule through fear. Terror and deception are the rotating parts of the same axis; the two imperatives of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy strategy. Napalm in Falluja

 

The US also used napalm in the siege of Falluja as was reported in the UK Mirror (“Falluja Napalmed”, 11-28-04) The Mirror said, “President George Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet-fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun the world…. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh…Since the American assault on Falluja there have been reports of ‘melted’ corpse, which appeared to have napalm injuries.”

 

“Human fireballs” and “melted corpses”; these are the real expressions of Operation Iraqi Freedom not the bland platitudes issuing from the presidential podium.

 

Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, who was the head of the Iraqi Ministry of Health in Falluja, reported to Al Jazeera (and to the Washington Post, although it was never reported) that “research, prepared by his medical team, prove that the US forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks on the war-torn city.”

 

Dr Shaykhli’s claims have been corroborated by numerous eyewitness accounts as well as reports that “all forms of nature were wiped out in Falluja”…as well as “hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses.” An unidentified chemical was used in the bombing raids that killed every living creature in certain areas of the city.

 

As journalist Dahr Jamail reported later in his article “What is the US trying to Hide?”, “At least two kilometers of soil were removed……exactly as they did at Baghdad Airport after the heavy battles there during the invasion and the Americans used their special weapons.”

 

A cover up?

 

So far, none of this has appeared in any American media, nor has the media reported that the United Nations has been rebuffed twice by the Defense Dept. in calling for an independent investigation into what really took place in Falluja. The US simply waves away the international body as a minor nuisance while the media scrupulously omits any mention of the allegations from their coverage.

 

We can assume that the order to use napalm (as well as the other, unidentified substances) came straight from the office of Donald Rumsfeld. No one else could have issued that order, nor would they have risked their career by unilaterally using banned weapons when their use was entirely gratuitous. Rumsfeld’s directive is consistent with other decisions attributed to the Defense Secretary; like the authorizing of torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the targeting of members of the press, and the rehiring of members of Saddam’s Secret Police ( the Mukhabarat) to carry out their brutal activities under new leadership. Rumsfeld’s office has been the headwaters for most of the administration’s treachery. Napalm simply adds depth to an already prodigious list of war crimes on Rumsfeld’s resume’. Co-opting the Media

 

On June 10, 2005 numerous sources reported that the “U.S. Special Operations Command hired three firms to produce newspaper stories, television broadcasts and Internet web sites to spread American propaganda overseas. The Tampa-based military headquarters, which oversees commandos and psychological warfare, may spend up to $100 million for the media campaign over the next five years.” (James Crawley, Media General News Service) It’s clear that there’s no need for the Defense Dept. to shore up its “strategic information” (propaganda) operations in the US where reliable apparatchiks can be counted on to obfuscate, omit or exaggerate the coverage of the war according to the requirements of the Pentagon. The American press has been as skillful at embellishing the imaginary heroics of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman as they have been in concealing the damning details of the Downing Street Memo or the lack of evidence concerning the alleged WMDs. Should we be surprised that the media has remained silent about the immolation of Iraqis by American firebombs?

 

The US “free press” is a completely integrated part of the state-information system. Its meticulously managed message has been the most successful part of the entire Iraqi debacle. By providing the requisite cheerleading, diversions and omissions, the media has shown itself to be an invaluable asset to the men in power; perpetuating the deceptions that keep the public acquiescent during a savage colonial war. Given the scope of the media’s culpability for the violence in Iraq, it’s unlikely that the use of napalm will cause any great crisis of conscience. Their deft coverage has already facilitated the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people; a few more charred Iraqis shouldn’t matter.

[kumkap]

this simply boggles the mind. this iraq war is one big cash cow for the bush administration. not only do they attack another country and slaughter and brutalize its population, they pocket its wealth as if it is just theirs to take. notice that any revenue from iraqi oil sales went not to iraqi government coffers but was transferred to a u.s. federal reserve bank account. 10 billion dollars that belongs to iraqis sits in a bank account in new york. this is colonialism with all its plunderous and racist overtones in full force. are we in 2005 or 1492?

 

we better hope and pray they never discover any "black gold" in armenia, otherwise we will very quickly become ragheads and hajis, have "free-market reforms" rammed down our throats, and become next in line to be brought anglo-saxon "democracy".

 

--

 

So, Mr Bremer, where did all the money go?

 

At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. Ed Harriman on the extraordinary scandal of Iraq's missing billions

 

Thursday July 7, 2005

The Guardian

 

When Paul Bremer, the American pro consul in Baghdad until June last year, arrived in Iraq soon after the official end of hostilities, there was $6bn left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and at least $10bn from resumed Iraqi oil exports. Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on May 22 2003, all these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), and intended to be spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) "in a transparent manner ... for the benefit of the Iraqi people".

 

The US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of US taxpayers' money on the redevelopment of Iraq. By June 28 last year, however, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds. The "reconstruction" of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan - but the US government funded the Marshall Plan. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the "liberated" country, by the Iraqis themselves.

 

The CPA maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces. The US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.

 

The "financial irregularities" described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated. Truckloads of dollars were handed out for which neither they nor the recipients felt they had to be accountable.

 

The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8bn that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4bn appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance "security".

 

Although Bremer was expected to manage Iraqi funds in a transparent manner, it was only in October 2003, six months after the fall of Saddam, that an International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) was established to provide independent, international financial oversight of CPA spending. (This board includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.)

 

The IAMB first spent months trying to find auditors acceptable to the US. The Bahrain office of KPMG was finally appointed in April 2004. It was stonewalled.

 

"KPMG has encountered resistance from CPA staff regarding the submission of information required to complete our procedures," they wrote in an interim report. "Staff have indicated ... that cooperation with KPMG's undertakings is given a low priority." KPMG had one meeting at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance; meetings at all the other ministries were repeatedly postponed. The auditors even had trouble getting passes to enter the Green Zone.

 

There appears to have been good reason for the Americans to stall. At the end of June 2004, the CPA would be disbanded and Bremer would leave Iraq. There was no way the Bush administration would want independent auditors to publish a report into the financial propriety of its Iraqi administration while the CPA was still in existence and Bremer at its head still answerable to the press. So the report was published in July.

 

The auditors found that the CPA didn't keep accounts of the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government ministries.

 

This lack of transparency has led to allegations of corruption. An Iraqi hospital administrator told me that when he came to sign a contract, the American army officer representing the CPA had crossed out the original price and doubled it. The Iraqi protested that the original price was enough. The American officer explained that the increase (more than $1m) was his retirement package.

 

When the Iraqi Governing Council asked Bremer why a contract to repair the Samarah cement factory was costing $60m rather than the agreed $20m, the American representative reportedly told them that they should be grateful the coalition had saved them from Saddam. Iraqis who were close to the Americans, had access to the Green Zone or held prominent posts in the new government ministries were also in a position personally to benefit enormously. Iraqi businessmen complain endlessly that they had to offer substantial bribes to Iraqi middlemen just to be able to bid for CPA contracts. Iraqi ministers' relatives got top jobs and fat contracts.

 

Further evidence of lack of transparency comes from a series of audits and reports carried out by the CPA's own inspector general's office (CPAIG). Set up in January 2004, it reports to Congress. Its auditors, accountants and criminal investigators often found themselves sitting alone at cafe tables in the Green Zone, shunned by their CPA compatriots. Their audit, published in July 2004, found that the American contracts officers in the CPA and Iraqi ministries "did not ensure that ... contract files contained all the required documents, a fair and reasonable price was paid for the services received, contractors were capable of meeting delivery schedules, or that contractors were paid in accordance with contract requirements".

 

Pilfering was rife. Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11m and $26m worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the CPA was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work. Some $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for "personnel not in the field performing work" and "other improper charges" on just one oil pipeline repair contract.

 

Most of the 69 criminal investigations the CPAIG instigated related to alleged theft, fraud, waste, assault and extortion. It also investigated "a number of other cases that, because of their sensitivity, cannot be included in this report". One such case may have arisen when 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the American-appointed Iraqi interior minister.

 

At the same time, the IAMB discovered that Iraqi oil exports were unmetered. Neither the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation nor the American authorities could give a satisfactory explanation for this. "The only reason you wouldn't monitor them is if you don't want anyone else to know how much is going through," one petroleum executive told me.

 

Officially, Iraq exported $10bn worth of oil in the first year of the American occupation. Christian Aid has estimated that up to $4bn more may have been exported and is unaccounted for. If so, this would have created an off-the-books fund that both the Americans and their Iraqi allies could use with impunity to cover expenditures they would rather keep secret - among them the occupation costs, which were rising far beyond what the Bush administration could comfortably admit to Congress and the international community.

 

In the few weeks before Bremer left Iraq, the CPA handed out more than $3bn in new contracts to be paid for with Iraqi funds and managed by the US embassy in Baghdad. The CPA inspector general, now called the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), has just released an audit report on the way the embassy has dealt with that responsibility. The auditors reviewed the files of 225 contracts totalling $327m to see if the embassy "could identify the current value of paid and unpaid contract obligations".

 

It couldn't. "Our review showed that financial records ... understated payments made by $108,255,875" and "overstated unpaid obligations by $119,361,286". The auditors also reviewed the paperwork of a further 300 contracts worth $332.9m: "Of 198 contract files reviewed, 154 did not contain evidence that goods and services were received, 169 did not contain invoices, and 14 did not contain evidence of payment."

 

Clearly, the Americans see no need to account for spending Iraqis' national income now any more than they did when Bremer was in charge. Neither the embassy chief of mission nor the US military commander replied to the auditors' invitation to comment. Instead, the US army contracting commander lamely pointed out that "the peaceful conditions envisioned in the early planning continue to elude the reconstruction efforts". This is a remarkable understatement. It's also an admission that Americans can't be expected to do their sums when they are spending other people's money to finance a war.

 

Lack of accountability does not stop with the Americans. In January this year, the Sigir issued a report detailing evidence of fraud, corruption and waste by the Iraqi Interim Government when Bremer was in charge. They found that $8.8bn - the entire Iraqi Interim Government spending from October 2003 through June 2004 - was not properly accounted for. The Iraqi Office of Budget and Management at one point had only six staff, all of them inexperienced, and most of the ministries had no budget departments. Iraq's newly appointed ministers and their senior officials were free to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as they pleased, while American "advisers" looked on.

 

"CPA personnel did not review and compare financial, budgetary and operational performance to planned or expected results," the auditors explained. One ministry gave out $430m in contracts without its CPA advisers seeing any of the paperwork. Another claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found. There is simply no way of knowing how much of the $8.8bn has gone to pay for private militias and into private pockets.

 

"It's remarkable that the inspector general's office could have produced even a draft report with so many misconceptions and inaccuracies," Bremer said in his reply to the Sigir report. "At liberation, the Iraqi economy was dead in the water. So CPA's top priority was to get the economy going."

 

The Sigir has responded by releasing another audit this April, an investigation into the way Bremer's CPA managed cash payments from Iraqi funds in just one part of Iraq, the region around Hillah: "During the course of the audit, we identified deficiencies in the control of cash ... of such magnitude as to require prompt attention. Those deficiencies were so significant that we were precluded from accomplishing our stated objectives." They found that CPA headquarters in Baghdad "did not maintain full control and accountability for approximately $119.9m", and that agents in the field "cannot properly account for or support over $96.6m in cash and receipts". The agents were mostly Americans in Iraq on short-term contracts. One agent's account balance was "overstated by $2,825,755, and the error went undetected". Another agent was given $25m cash for which Bremer's office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation". Of more than $23m given to another agent, there are only records for $6,306,836 paid to contractors.

 

Many of the American agents submitted their paperwork only hours before they headed to the airport. Two left Iraq without accounting for $750,000 each, which has never been found. CPA head office cleared several agents' balances of between $250,000 and $12m without any receipts. One agent who did submit receipts, on being told that he still owed $1,878,870, turned up three days later with exactly that amount. The auditors thought that "this suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash", pointing out that if his original figures had been correct, he would have accounted to the CPA for approximately $3.8m more than he had been given in the first place, which "suggests that the receipt documents provided to the DFI account manager were unreliable".

 

So where did the money go? You can't see it in Hillah. The schools, hospitals, water supply and electricity, all of which were supposed to benefit from these funds, are in ruins. The inescapable conclusion is that many of the American paying agents grabbed large bundles of cash for themselves and made sweet deals with their Iraqi contacts.

 

And so it continues. The IAMB's most recent audit of Iraqi government spending talks of "incomplete accounting", "lack of documented justification for limited competition for contracts at the Iraqi ministries", "possible misappropriation of oil revenues", "significant difficulties in ensuring completeness and accuracy of Iraqi budgets and controls over expenditures" and "non-deposit of proceeds of export sales of petroleum products into the appropriate accounts in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1483".

 

In the absence of any meaningful accountability, Iraqis have no way of knowing how much of the nation's wealth is being used for reconstruction and how much is being handed out to ministers' and civil servants' friends and families or funnelled into secret overseas bank accounts. Given that many Ba'athists are now back in government, some of that money may even be financing the insurgents.

 

Both Saddam and the US profited handsomely during his reign. He controlled Iraq's wealth while most of Iraq's oil went to Californian refineries to provide cheap petrol for American voters. US corporations, like those who enjoyed Saddam's favour, grew rich. Today, the system is much the same: the oil goes to California, and the new Iraqi government spends the national wealth with impunity.

 

· Bremer maintained one slush fund of nearly $600m in cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces

 

· 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the new Iraqi interior minister

 

· One ministry claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found

 

· One American agent was given $23m to spend on restructuring; only $6m is accounted for

 

This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current issue of the London Review of Books (lrb).