Meet the U.S.

Stormig · May 15, 2003

U.S. Contests Europe's Ban on Some Food

By ELIZABETH BECKER

ASHINGTON, May 13 — The Bush administration filed suit today at the World Trade Organization to force Europe to lift its ban on genetically modified food, a move that was postponed earlier this year by the debate on Iraq.

The suit will further heighten trans-Atlantic trade tensions after several recent rulings against the United States in cases brought by Europe at the W.T.O. over United States steel tariffs and tax shelters for overseas corporations.

The administration was backed by the speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, and other senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have been promoting the lawsuit for months. American farmers have led the complaints, saying they have invested in the technology needed to raise genetically modified crops only to see one of the biggest markets — Europe — closed to their products.

Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, said the administration had run out of patience waiting for the European Union to lift what he called a five-year-old moratorium that blocked several hundred million dollars of American exports into Europe. Worse, he said, European attitudes were spreading unfounded fears in the developing world, where the need is greatest for the increased yield of genetically modified crops.

"In developing countries, these crops can spell the difference between life and death," he said. "The human cost of rejecting this new technology is enormous."

Mr. Hastert estimated that American farmers lost $300 million in corn exports each year because of the European policy toward genetically modified food and animal feed.

"There's no question in my mind that the European Union's protectionist, discriminatory trade policies are costing American agriculture and our nation's economy hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year," Mr. Hastert said.

But European officials said today that they were dumbfounded by the suit. They said there was no moratorium on genetically modified food.

"The U.S. claims that there is a so-called moratorium, but the fact is that the E.U. has authorized G.M. varieties in the past and is currently processing applications," said Pascal Lamy, the top European trade official. "So what is the real U.S. motive in bringing a case?"

In practice, the Europeans did have an informal moratorium on new varieties of genetically modified food from 1998 until last year, when the E.U. instituted a new regulatory system that has approved two applications, with others pending.

At the center of the debate over genetically modified crops, if not the suit filed today, is a growing disagreement between the United States and Europe over what steps are necessary to protect public health and the environment.

European consumers are far more wary of genetically modified food than are Americans, and many object to what they consider aggressive American promotion of those foods, influenced by agribusiness.

The European Union is demanding that genetically modified food be labeled as such. They also want to be able to trace the origins of the food's ingredients and are near completion of new legislation to require both.

The United States opposes such labels and tracing mechanisms, saying they are too costly and impractical.

Margot Wallstrom, the European environmental commissioner, said the European legislature would complete its measure to require labeling and methods for tracing food and animal feed that is genetically modified.

"This U.S. move is unhelpful," she said. "It can only make an already difficult debate in Europe more difficult."

The United States agriculture secretary, Ann M. Veneman, said today that the case was aimed at protecting American farmers and ranchers.

"With this case," she said, "we are fighting for the interests of American agriculture. This case is about playing by the rules negotiated in good faith. The European Union has failed to comply with its W.T.O. obligations."

The United States was joined by Argentina, Canada and Egypt. Australia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Uruguay expressed support as third parties without direct commercial interest.

Many of these countries are in negotiations with the United States for a free trade agreement.

Chile is waiting for the administration to sign off on its accord after a delay driven in part by disappointment that it refused to side with the United States on the war with Iraq at the United Nations.

Mr. Zoellick promised European officials last week that trade would bring the allies together after the arguments over Iraq, not further separate them.

But trade is becoming a divisive issue, especially since the end of the war.

European officials lashed back at the administration today, refusing to be blamed for blocking genetically modified food aid and reminding the United States that it had refused to join 100 other countries and sign the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. That agreement sets out rules for exporters and importers of genetically modified crops to provide the proper information about the food and feed.

Nonprofit groups opposed to the W.T.O.'s influence said the case showed how globalization undermined local and national governments.

"The people eating the food or living in the environment that could be affected must decide domestic policy, not some secretive W.T.O. tribunal of three trade experts," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

But several African farmers and scientists at a news conference here joined Mr. Zoellick and Ms. Veneman in praising the American action.

"We believe it is better to give a person food to eat today than wait 10 years to be sure it is safe," said Darin Makinde, dean of the school of agriculture at the University of Venda in South Africa.

"Two elephants are fighting — the United States and Europe — and it is Africa that is suffering," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/business.../14TRAD.html?th

Stormig · May 15, 2003

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/latest/st...,189197,00.html?

Stop backing terrorism, US warns Iran, Syria

WASHINGTON -- Washington on Wednesday warned Iran and Syria against behaviour it considers detrimental to the interests of the United States, including support for terrorists and nuclear weapons programmes.

'Iran continues to engage in a behaviour that is deeply troubling and antithetical to American interests,' White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, citing its nuclear programme and suspected aid to terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda.

'Iran's weapons of mass destruction programme, its nuclear programme -- the US has raised alarm over these programms over a long period of time,' she said.

She said an International Atomic Energy Agency mission to Iran 'has seemed to raise a wide question about what the Iranians were doing under their so-called civil nuclear programme.

'The nuclear program...we believe is a disguise for a nuclear weapons programme,' said Dr Rice. 'We have a lot evidence of that.'

She also cautioned Iran against trying to secretly import its form over government into neighboring postwar Iraq, adding: 'We expect Iran to behave to the new Iraqi government as a good neighbour.'

As for Syria, said Dr Rice, Washington's relationship with Damascus has been 'problematic because of the policies and behaviour of Syria ...Syrian support for terrorisim.

'Frankly this a very difficult relationship, not one that is likely to improve without some major change...It's important that Syria be willing and ready to end its occupation of Lebanon,' she said. -- AFP

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Interests of the U.S., always!

Stormig · May 17, 2003

I wonder...

France to Monitor U.S. Media for Untruths

Thu May 15, 2003 09:31 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - France, which led opposition to the Iraq war, has instructed its diplomats to monitor U.S. media for signs of an orchestrated campaign of misinformation to discredit it, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Paris has angrily denied articles alleging collusion with the fallen regime of Saddam Hussein, including a recent report in the Washington Times that it issued passports to fleeing Iraqi officials wanted by the United States.

"As part of the campaign of explanation we are undertaking in the United States, we have decided to count the untrue accusations which have appeared in the U.S. press and which have deeply shocked the French," spokeswoman Marie Masdupuy said.

She told a regular briefing that France had denied all such accusations "with the utmost force."

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the French Embassy said French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte had written a letter to the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration complaining about alleged false news stories discrediting his country.

"The letter will be handed over sometime today," the spokeswoman said.

She said France was particularly upset about what she said were incorrect news reports of alleged French weapons sales to Iraq and the story saying French officials in Syria had issued French passports to Iraqis being sought by the U.S. military.

"All of these stories were incorrect," she said. France is trying to patch up transatlantic relations battered by its threat to use its U.N. Security Council veto against any U.S. resolution calling for war -- a stance which finally forced Washington to forgo U.N. backing.

U.S. officials have said France can expect punishment for its stance, for example by exclusion from decision-making in international bodies like NATO.

France has denied recent U.S. articles reporting that it possessed prohibited strains of the smallpox virus and that French companies sold Iraq spare aviation parts. Some of the articles cite U.S. intelligence sources.

More wrangling between Paris and Washington is likely over a U.S.-drafted resolution to end 12 years of sanctions against Iraq. France and others argue the text does not give the United Nations a strong enough role in reconstructing Iraq and wants tighter guarantees on how oil revenues will be used.

Masdupuy did not comment on a U.S. call for a vote on an amended text some time next week, merely reiterating France's wish for a stronger U.N. role and a detailed timeframe for the transition to an Iraqi leadership.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=...storyID=2749632

Accelerated · May 18, 2003

Had some family friends over last night, and I didnt go out coz Im still sick

. Anyhow, I dont know wether this is true or not (but I wouldnt be surprised), but one of the guests claimed that when NASA was designing the first Space Shuttle they spend US$2,000,000 developing a ball-point pen that could be used in space (ie. zero gravity). Meanwhile when the Soviets developed their version of the Space Shuttle (the Booran), they reasoned, why not just use pencil! - LOL :lol:

. Has anyone heard this before?

Azat · May 18, 2003

Had some family friends over last night, and I didnt go out coz Im still sick . Anyhow, I dont know wether this is true or not (but I wouldnt be surprised), but one of the guests claimed that when NASA was designing the first Space Shuttle they spend US$2,000,000 developing a ball-point pen that could be used in space (ie. zero gravity). Meanwhile when the Soviets developed their version of the Space Shuttle (the Booran), they reasoned, why not just use pencil! - LOL . Has anyone heard this before?

The story is an urban legend. The "space pen" is real, but was developed privately by the Fisher Pen company for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with space: They wanted to produce a universal ballpoint pen refill that could be used in almost any pen under almost any circumstances. Their design--- a pressurized cartridge filled with "thixotropic" semisolid ink--- took about 2 years and 2 million (private) dollars to develop. In 1967, NASA chose the already-existing pen for use in space; it was first launched in 1968 on the Apollo 7 mission. (See http://www.spacepen.com/usa/index2.htm )

Also Russians too use a similar pen in space. Pencils make lousy writing implements in zero-G because the "leads" break and shed small particles. Pencil "lead" is actually graphite, which is a good electrical conductor. Just imagine what could happen when small bits of conductive graphite drift inside electrical equipment....

Stormig · May 18, 2003

Had some family friends over last night, and I didnt go out coz Im still sick . Anyhow, I dont know wether this is true or not (but I wouldnt be surprised), but one of the guests claimed that when NASA was designing the first Space Shuttle they spend US$2,000,000 developing a ball-point pen that could be used in space (ie. zero gravity). Meanwhile when the Soviets developed their version of the Space Shuttle (the Booran), they reasoned, why not just use pencil! - LOL . Has anyone heard this before?

You forgot to hit the "new topic" button.

Stormig · May 18, 2003

I suppose Iraq would be this century's stupendous joke. Interesting read:

http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/twain/mt_front.html

An Empire Is Not a Frontier: Mark Twain's Opposition to United States Imperialism

By Jim Zwick

Over Here: Reviews in American Studies 15:1-2 (Summer-Winter 1995): 58-70.(*)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In U.S. national mythology, the creation of an overseas empire has been viewed as a logical extension of the westward expansion across the continent that preceded it. Pioneers and adventurers reached California and kept going, stepping across the Pacific to Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. But the actual course of events was much different. Throughout the period between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, U.S. presidents repeatedly tried to annex overseas territories, but Congress was far from unanimous in its support for expansion beyond the adjoining territories of the North American continent. Congress reluctantly approved the purchase of Alaska in 1867. After rejecting two treaties for control of part of Samoa in the early 1870's, it finally accepted a treaty for that purpose in 1878. Congress rejected treaties to annex the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands), Santo Domingo, and Hawaii. Hawaii would not be annexed until July of 1898 during the Spanish-American War which, the historians Charles and Mary Beard have written, "made Manifest Destiny a little more manifest to the American nation."(1)

Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris that concluded that war, the United States gained control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Only the Cubans, for whose freedom the war was ostensibly fought, were referred to as destined for independence. The United States paid Spain twenty million dollars for the Philippines. Like the Cubans, the Filipinos had been fighting for their independence from Spain since 1896. By the end of the Spanish-American War, the Filipinos controlled nearly the entire archipelago. U.S. troops were confined to Manila and its suburbs. To establish its control over the islands, the United States had to defeat the Filipino army and abolish the newly formed Philippine Republic. The war that accomplished this officially lasted from February 1899 to July 4, 1902, but skirmishes and local rebellions continued until 1914.

Even after the Spanish-American War, many Americans remained firmly opposed to imperialism, and once the new war began, the Philippines became their primary concern. The opposition was organized by an Anti-Imperialist League that was formed in Boston in November of 1898 and soon had branches throughout much of the country. After he returned to the United States from Europe in October of 1900, Mark Twain became one of the most outspoken opponents of imperialism and the war in the Philippines. Within months he was made a vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League and he held that post until he died in April 1910.

In many of his writings on the war, Mark Twain countered the appeals to Manifest Destiny that prominent imperialists used to justify imperialism. By looking at how Twain -- who himself had earlier traveled to California and Hawaii -- differentiated the empire from the earlier frontier, we can better understand why he opposed imperialism. This can, in turn, help us to understand the cynicism and despair often found in his later writings. Mark Twain and the anti-imperialists saw the war not only as a tragedy for the Filipinos but as a threat to their own country's democratic and anticolonial traditions.

When the Spanish-American War took place, Mark Twain was in Europe following his around-the-world lecturing tour and the writing of Following the Equator. Like most Americans, he believed the war was fought solely to free Cuba from Spanish oppression, and he supported it for that reason. It was not until he read the Treaty of Paris that concluded the war that Twain understood the course his country had taken. When he returned to the United States in October of 1900, he was asked by reporters about his opposition to imperialism. He had once supported putting "a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific," he told them. "But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free but to subjugate the people of the Philippines." "And so I am an anti-imperialist," he concluded. "I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."(2)

Twain would criticize the Treaty of Paris in many of his writings, speeches and interviews from that day until at least 1907. Before the Spanish-American War, expansion across the continent had largely been formalized by treaties for the purchase of territories.(3) The purchase of the Philippines from Spain was presented to the American public as an extension of this tradition, but Mark Twain saw it differently. In December of 1900, he wrote to his friend Laurence Hutton asking him to contact former-president Grover Cleveland for advice on how to bring the treaty before the Supreme Court.(4) One of his main concerns was the treaty's promise to protect what he described as "the abominable system" of the corrupt Spanish friars, the largest landowners in the Philippines.

He also objected to the purchase of the islands from the Spanish because it was the Filipinos, who he described as their "real owners," who controlled them. To Mark Twain, this aspect of the treaty was a farce. In "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," he summarized the events that led up to the defeat of the Spanish army in the Philippines. The U.S. navy had brought the Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo back from his exile in Hong Kong to lead the Filipino army against the Spanish. Working together, the U.S. Navy and the Filipino army surrounded Manila. Once Manila was captured, Twain continued, "Spain's ownership of the Archipelago and her sovereignty over it were at an end -- obliterated -- annihilated -- not a rag or shred of either remaining behind. It was then that we conceived the divinely humorous idea of buying both of these spectres from Spain!"(5) In "The Stupendous Procession," which he wrote a month or two later, he got down to the real motivation for the purchase. He described the Paris Commission that had negotiated the treaty as marching in the procession with a placard inscribed:

"We couldn't buy them of the real owners, who wouldn't sell; we had to buy them of somebody, to try to cover up the obtrusive fact that the Administration's seizure of them was theft. Let Europe sneer at the juvenility of the trick if she likes, it is nothing to us; it is not Europe that we are hired to deceive."

It was not the Europeans, but the Americans that the treaty was intended to deceive. The purchase "made the title perfect, even elegant," he observed in a 1905 fictionalized account of the "benevolent assimilation" of the islands by the "Republic of Getrichquick."(6) In an interview given two years later, Twain claimed that "It was the stupendous joke of the century when the United States, after conquering Spain and acquiring the islands by right of conquest, gave Spain $20,000,000." He explained that "Uncle Sam paid that $20,000,000 for his entrance fee into society -- the Society of Sceptred Thieves. We are now on a par with the rest of them."(7) The tone of this interview, given in May of 1907, more than eight years after the treaty was ratified, shows his continued anger about the betrayal of the Filipinos and the adoption by the U.S. government of what he described as the "un-American" policy of imperialism.

The war made the United States a world power, Twain acknowledged, but "only a toy one." He consistently downplayed the importance of the new colonies. Using imagery that was probably unique in the debate about imperialism, he wrote:

We realize, too late for escape, that we are the kind of World Power -- for style and assets -- that a prairie-dog village is, and that we cannot keep countenance when we try to look each other in the face; but no matter, we are in for it, and it is the duty of our Government to stand sentinel, with solemn mien, and lifted nose, and curved paws, on top of our little World-Power mound, and look out over the wide prairie; and if anything suspicious shows up on the horizon, bark.

This type of world power, where influence was based upon the number of "world-power mounds" a country controlled on the globe, was not the sort Twain thought his country should aspire towards. Using the prairie-dog imagery again in his 1905 story, "Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes," he argued that overseas expansion was "artificial" and that the world power status achieved by it was an illusion. "The new Great Power was really no greater than it was before," he wrote.

The addition of the mud-piles was about the equivalent of adding a prairie-dog village to a mountain range, but the artificial expansion produced by the addition was so vast that it may justly be likened to a case of "before and after": the great Captive Balloon of Paris lying flat and observed of no passer-by, before filling, and the same balloon high in the air, rotund, prodigious, its belly full of gas, the wonder and admiration of a gazing world.(8)

By labeling this overseas expansion as "artificial," Twain was drawing a distinction between the empire and the earlier "natural expansion" that was confined to the adjoining states of the North American continent.

To define the type of world power the country should be, Mark Twain looked backward. In "A Defence of General Funston," he wrote that we should "be what we were before, a real World Power, and the chiefest of them all, by right of the only clean hands in Christendom, the only hands guiltless of the sordid plunder of any helpless people's stolen liberties, hands recleansed in the patriotism of Washington, and once more fit to touch the hem of the revered Shade's garment and stand in its presence unashamed."(9)

Here, Twain was making an appeal to the sense of national mission that had preceded overseas expansion. Prior to the Spanish-American War, the country had confined itself to influencing the world by example. The United States took credit for inspiring the French Revolution, for example, but not for directly instigating or fighting in it. In fact, the country's isolation from such conflicts was one of the things that made it unique. Only with its acquisition of an empire did the United States begin to seek ways to force American institutions upon other countries. "The Government's game," Twain wrote, was to "grab a weak little people's country and give it our liberties for theirs, without their asking."(10)

The "un-American" nature of imperialism was highlighted in many of his writings about the war. "We imported our imperialism from monarchical Europe," he claimed in an autobiographical dictation of September 1906.(11) In his speeches, essays, and interviews he linked the partition of China by the European powers, the Boer War in South Africa, and the Philippine-American War in general condemnations of imperialism. When it set Cuba free, he argued in "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," the United States was playing the democratic "American Game." But when it launched a war of conquest in the Philippines, it was playing the imperialistic "European Game," with tactics borrowed from the Germans in China and the British in South Africa.

The civilization the United States introduced in the Philippines was also "un-American" because it did not follow American traditions. Previously, the country had only acquired territories that would be settled by Americans and eventually become states with full representation in the country's government. This was never intended for Puerto Rico, Guam or the Philippines. In a February 1899 speech, Whitelaw Reid, one of the commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Paris, argued that "it is a bugbear that the Filipinos would be citizens of the United States . . . The treaty did not make them citizens at all." He urged Americans to "resist the crazy extension of the doctrine that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed to an extreme never imagined by the men who framed it."(12) In "The Stupendous Procession," Mark Twain noted that the Filipinos were labeled "rebels" while the Puerto Ricans were labeled "subjects." The "Shade of Washington" questions the use of these terms, commenting that "subjects" is "a degrading term, and apes monarchy." Later in the essay, Twain rewrote passages from the Declaration of Independence to bring it into line with sentiments like those expressed by Commissioner Reid: "ALL WHITE MEN ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL" and "GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED WHITE MEN." Elsewhere he wrote that civilization was "a sham at home and only laid off its disguise when abroad."(13)

To make their own argument against granting either citizenship or self-government to the Filipinos, the imperialists compared them with the North American Indians, noting that there were at least 84 separate "tribes" inhabiting the islands. The dominant ethnic group, the Tagalogs, were portrayed as a "single tribe" trying to assert its control over the rest of the islands by force.(14) The comparison with the popular image of warring North American Indian tribes was clear.

Mark Twain completely ignored these arguments, writing instead of the Philippine Republic established by Emilio Aguinaldo shortly before the Philippine-American War began.(15) Using New York's notorious Tammany Hall boss Richard Croker as a foil, Twain argued that the Philippine Republic "was evidently a good and wise and capable government. We haven't a better one even in the city of New York (September 1, 1901), although we live under the latest and most effective form of dictatorship and have our tried and trained Mr. Croker upon its throne." He wrote that the Filipinos "were patriots; they were fighting for their country's independence, the highest and noblest of all causes." In contrast, the United States, now that it was militarily strong enough, "would wipe its feet upon the Declaration [of Independence] and look around for something to steal; . . . if it happened to be a republic, no matter, it would steal anything it could get."(16)

It was this conquest of a republic and the betrayal of the United States' own republican ideals that was most devastating to Mark Twain and other anti-imperialists. The United States was, after all, the first republic born from a revolution against an empire. Many anti-imperialists also accepted as an historical fact that an empire could not be a republic. If the United States kept its empire, they reasoned, the republic would fall. Such arguments were even made in the hallowed halls of Congress. In a December 1901 speech on "Philippine Tariff -- Imperial Policy," Representative John F. Shafroth observed:

Republics are formed only after revolution. The change to the empire is slow and gradual. One of the saddest lessons of history is that whenever these schools of politics have met in the republics of old, the imperial school, with its dazzling influence of wealth and power, has always won.

The subtitle of this section of Shafroth's speech was "Colonial Government Will Produce Empire at Home." Above this in his copy of the speech, Mark Twain wrote: "The Great Republic became The Great Despotism."(17)

In 1901 and 1902, Twain developed this theme himself in a series of historical fantasies about the creation of an empire that destroyed the republic and replaced it with either a despotic monarchy or a repressive military dictatorship. In the process, he wrote, books and libraries were confiscated and destroyed; the country's traditions were forgotten as history was rewritten to glorify monarchy and imperialism; "the military and naval schools . . . were the preserve of the money-changers; and the standing army -- the creation of the conquest-days -- was their property."(18)

A number of Twain's other writings also deal with this theme, and his derisive view of the course his country had taken undoubtedly contributed to the sense of pessimism scholars have found in his later works. Unaware of Twain's involvement with the Anti-Imperialist League when he wrote his 1964 study of cataclysmic thought in the United States, Frederic Cople Jaher differentiated Twain from the organized anti-imperialists by claiming that "Twain's estrangement . . . was personal. He had never joined abortive crusades or belonged to defeated movements -- his tragedy was death, illness in the family, and financial failure."(19) There is no doubt that Twain suffered personal tragedies, but he was also a vice president of an organization -- an "abortive crusade" and "defeated movement" -- that routinely presented the country's options in stark contrasts such as "republic or empire," "liberty or despotism," and "democracy or militarism." It is within this national debate that Twain's later anti-imperialist writings must be placed and understood. It is also significant in this regard that the "Damned Human Race Luncheon Club" he formed in his last years was composed exclusively of anti-imperialists: William Dean Howells, Finley Peter Dunne, George Harvey, and Mark Twain.(20)

In May of 1902, the New York Evening Post used Twain's essay, "A Defence of General Funston," to demonstrate that "anti-imperialism is only another word for old-fashioned Americanism."(21) In their arguments against imperialism, Twain and most other anti-imperialists did look backward to the anticolonial struggle of the country's founding fathers and to the abolitionist struggle of their own Civil War generation. The Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address were among the anti-imperialists' most frequently cited texts. To them, the United States had a national mission, but it was to be found in these documents, and they saw imperialism as a betrayal of the principles espoused in them. In Mark Twain's formulation, the country "wiped its feet" upon the Declaration of Independence when it embarked on the conquest of the Philippine Republic. Emilio Aguinaldo was a Filipino George Washington while General Funston, the man who captured him, was a menace to society whose every moral characteristic was the opposite of those which made Washington a symbol of liberty to the world. To explain the reversal that imperialism represented, Mark Twain described the "Trinity of our national gods," including "Washington, the Sword of the Liberator; Lincoln, the Slaves Broken Chains;" and McKinley, "the Chains Repaired."(22) By creating an overseas empire, the United States had, in Twain's words, joined the "Society of Sceptred Thieves." It could no longer present itself as an example to the world because it was "now on a par with the rest of them." The country was following the path of the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, and this, in particular, presented frightening prospects for the future of the nation. History was repeating itself in a cycle that by 1907 he believed could not be prevented.(23) Human nature could not be changed, and the "damned human race" would always hanker after titles, territory, wealth and power. It was this greed, his study of history led him to believe, that caused republics to fall.

Stormig · May 18, 2003

Imperial Ambition

by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

Monthly Review

May 16, 2003

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TERROR WAR

David Barsamian: What are the regional implications of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Noam Chomsky: I think not only the region but the world in general perceives it correctly as a kind of an easy test case to try to establish a norm for use of military force, which was declared in general terms last September. Last September, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America was issued. It presented a somewhat novel and unusually extreme doctrine on the use of force in the world. And it’s hard not to notice that the drumbeat for war in Iraq coincided with that. It also coincided with the onset of the congressional campaign. All these are tied together.

The new doctrine was not one of preemptive war, which arguably falls within some stretching of the U.N. Charter, but rather of something that doesn’t even begin to have any grounds in international law, namely, preventive war. The doctrine, you recall, was that the United States would rule the world by force, and that if there is any challenge perceived to its domination, a challenge perceived in the distance, invented, imagined, whatever, then the U.S. will have the right to destroy that challenge before it becomes a threat. That’s preventive war, not preemptive war.

And if you want to declare a doctrine, a powerful state has the capacity to create what is called a new norm. So if India invades Pakistan to put an end to monstrous atrocities, that’s not a norm. But if the United States bombs Serbia on dubious grounds, that’s a norm. That’s what power means.

So if you want to establish a new norm, you have to do something. And the easiest way to do it is to select a completely defenseless target, which can be completely overwhelmed by the most massive military force in human history. However, in order to do that credibly, at least to your own population, you have to frighten them. So the defenseless target has to be turned into an awesome threat to survival which was responsible for September 11 and is about to attack us again, and so on and so forth. And that was indeed done. Beginning last September there was a massive effort which substantially succeeded in convincing Americans, alone in the world, that Saddam Hussein is not only a monster but a threat to their existence. That was the content of the October congressional resolution and a lot of things since. And it shows in the polls. And by now about half the population even believes that he was responsible for September 11.

So all this falls together. You have the doctrine pronounced. You have a norm established in a very easy case. The population is driven into a panic and, alone in the world, believes fantasies of this kind and therefore is willing to support military force in self-defense. And if you believe this, then it really is self-defense. So it’s kind of like a textbook example of aggression, with the purpose of extending the scope of further aggression. Once the easy case is handled, you can move on to think of harder cases.

Those are the main reasons why so much of the world is overwhelmingly opposed to the war. It’s not just the attack on Iraq. Many people perceive it correctly as exactly the way it’s intended, as a firm statement that you had better watch out, we’re on the way. That’s why the United States is now regarded as the greatest threat to peace in the world by probably the vast majority of the population of the world. George Bush has succeeded within a year in converting the United States to a country that is greatly feared, disliked, and even hated.

DB: At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in late January, you described Bush and the people around him as “radical nationalists” engaging in “imperial violence.” Is this regime in Washington substantively different from previous ones?

NC: It is useful to have some historical perspective. So let’s go to the opposite end of the political spectrum, the Kennedy liberals, about as far as you can get. In 1963, they announced a doctrine which is not very different from Bush’s national security strategy report. This was in 1963. Dean Acheson, a respected elder statesman, a senior adviser to the Kennedy administration, delivered a lecture to the American Society for International Law in which he instructed them that, no legal challenge arises in the case of a U.S. response to a challenge to its position, prestige, or authority. The wording was pretty much like that. What was he referring to? He was referring to the U.S. terrorist war and economic warfare against Cuba. And the timing is quite significant. This was shortly after the missile crisis, which drove the world to the edge of nuclear war. And that was largely a result of a major campaign of international terrorism aimed at what’s now called regime change, a major factor that led to the missiles being sent. Right afterwards, Kennedy stepped up the international terrorist campaign, and Acheson informed the Society for International Law that we had the right of preventive war against a mere challenge to our position and prestige, not even a threat to our existence. His wording, in fact, was even more extreme than the Bush doctrine last September.

On the other hand, to put it in perspective, that was a proclamation by Dean Acheson. It wasn’t an official statement of policy. And it’s obviously not the first or last declaration of this kind. This one last September is unusual in its brazenness and in the fact that it is a formal statement of policy, not just a statement by a high official.

DB: A slogan we have all heard at peace rallies is “No Blood for Oil.” The whole issue of oil is often referred to as the driving force behind the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq. How central is oil to U.S. strategy?

NC: It’s undoubtedly central. I don’t think any sane person doubts that. The Gulf region is the main energy-producing region of the world. It has been since the Second World War. It’s expected to be at least for another generation. It’s a huge source of strategic power, of material wealth. And Iraq is absolutely central to it. It has the second largest oil reserves. It’s very easily accessible, cheap. To control Iraq is to be in a very strong position to determine the price and production levels, not too high, not too low, to probably undermine OPEC, and to swing your weight around throughout the world. That’s been true since the Second World War. It has nothing in particular to do with access to the oil; the U.S. doesn’t really intend to access it. But it does have to do with control. So that’s in the background. If Iraq was somewhere in Central Africa, it wouldn’t be chosen for this test case. So that’s certainly there in the background, just as it’s there in less crucial regions, like Central Asia. However, it doesn’t account for the specific timing of the operation, because that’s a constant concern.

DB: A 1945 State Department document on Middle East oil described it as “...a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” The U.S. imports 15 percent of its oil from Venezuela. It also imports oil from Colombia and Nigeria. All three of those states are perhaps, from Washington’s perspective, somewhat problematic right now, with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and serious internal conflicts, literally civil war, in Colombia and uprisings in Nigeria threatening oil supplies there. What do you think about all of those factors?

NC: That’s very pertinent, and those are the regions where the U.S. actually intends to have access. The Middle East it wants to control. But, at least according to intelligence projections, the U.S. intends to rely on what they regard as more stable Atlantic Basin resources—Atlantic Basin means West Africa and the Western Hemisphere—which are more totally under U.S. control than the Middle East, which is a difficult region. So the projections are: control the Middle East, but maintain access to the Atlantic Basin, including the countries you mentioned. It does, therefore, follow that lack of conformity, disruption of one kind or another, in those areas is a significant threat, and there is very likely to be another episode like Iraq, if this one works the way the civilian planners at the Pentagon hope. If it’s an easy victory, no fighting, establish a new regime which you will call democratic, and not too much catastrophe, if it works like that, they are going to be emboldened on to the next step.

And the next step, you can think of several possibilities. One of them, indeed, is the Andean region. The U.S. has military bases all around it now. There are military forces right in there. Colombia and Venezuela are both, especially Venezuela, substantial oil producers, and there is more elsewhere, like Ecuador, and even Brazil. Yes, that’s a possibility, that the next step in the campaign of preventive wars, once the so-called norm is established and accepted, would be to go on there. Another possibility is Iran.

DB: Indeed, Iran. The U.S. was advised by none other than that, as Bush called him, “man of peace,” Sharon, to go after Iran “the day after” they finish with Iraq. What about Iran? A designated axis-of-evil state and also a country that has a lot of oil.

NC: As far as Israel is concerned, Iraq has never been much of an issue. They consider it a kind of pushover. But Iran is a different story. Iran is a much more serious military and economic force. And for years Israel has been pressing the United States to take on Iran. Iran is too big for Israel to attack, so they want the big boys to do it.

And it’s quite likely that the war may already be under way. A year ago, over 10 percent of the Israeli air force was reported to be permanently based in eastern Turkey, that is, in these huge U.S. military bases in eastern Turkey. And they are reported to be flying reconnaissance over the Iranian border. In addition, there are credible reports, that there are efforts, that the U.S. and Turkey and Israel are attempting to stir up Azeri nationalist forces in northern Iran to move towards a kind of a linkage of parts of Iran with Azerbaijan. There is a kind of an axis of U.S.-Turkish-Israeli power in the region opposed to Iran that may ultimately, perhaps, lead to the split-up of Iran and maybe military attack. Although there will be a military attack only if it’s taken for granted that Iran would be basically defenseless. They’re not going to invade anyone who can fight back.

DB: With U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as well as bases in Turkey and Central Asia, Iran is literally surrounded now. Might not that objective reality on the ground push forces inside Iran to develop nuclear weapons, if they don’t already have them, in self-defense?

NC: Very likely. The little evidence we have—serious evidence—indicates that the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor probably stimulated and may have initiated the Iraqi nuclear weapons development program. They were engaged in building a nuclear plant, but what it was nobody knew. It was investigated on the ground after the bombing by a well-known nuclear physicist from Harvard—I believe he was head of the Harvard physics department at the time. He published his analysis in the leading scientific journal, Nature. According to him, it was a power plant. He’s an expert on this topic. Other Iraqi sources, exiled, have indicated—we can’t prove it—that nothing much was going on. They may have been toying with the idea of nuclear weapons, but that the bombing of it did stimulate the nuclear weapons program. You can’t prove this, but that’s what the evidence looks like. And it’s very plausible. That doesn’t have to be true. What you described is highly likely. If you come out and say, “Look, we’re going to attack you,” and countries know that they have no means of conventional defense, you’re virtually ordering them to develop weapons of mass destruction and networks of terror. It’s transparent. That’s exactly why the CIA and everyone else predicted it.

DB: What does the Iraq war and occupation mean for the Palestinians?

NC: Disaster.

DB: No roadmaps to peace?

NC: It’s interesting to read it. One of the rules of journalism—I don’t know exactly how it got established, but it’s held with absolute consistency—is that when you mention George Bush’s name in an article, the headline has to speak of his vision and the article has to talk about his dreams. Maybe there will be a photograph of him right next to it peering into the distance. And one of George Bush’s dreams and visions is to have a Palestinian state somewhere, sometime, in some unspecified place, maybe in the desert. And we are supposed to worship and praise that as a magnificent vision. It has become a convention of journalists. There was a lead story in the Wall Street Journal on March 21 which I think had the words “vision” and “dream” about ten times.

The vision and the dream is that maybe the United States will stop undermining totally the long-term efforts of the rest of the world, virtually without exception, to create some kind of a viable political settlement. Up until now, the U.S. has been blocking it, for the last twenty-five to thirty years. The Bush administration went even further in blocking it, sometimes in pretty extreme ways, so extreme that they weren’t even reported.

For example, last December at the U.N., for the first time the Bush administration reversed U.S. policy on Jerusalem. Up until now, the U.S. had, at least in principle, gone along with the 1968 Security Council resolution ordering Israel to revoke its annexation and occupation and settlement policies in East Jerusalem. And for the first time, last December, the Bush administration reversed that. That’s one of many cases intended to undermine the possibility of any meaningful political settlement. To disguise this, it’s called a vision, and the effort to pursue it is called a U.S. initiative, although in fact what it really is, as anyone who pays the slightest attention to the history knows, is a U.S. effort to catch up to long-standing European and Arab efforts and to try to cut them down so they don’t mean very much. The great praise for Sharon in the United States, who is now considered a great statesman—he is after, after all, one of the leading terrorist commanders in the world for the last fifty years—that’s an interesting phenomenon, and it reveals another substantial achievement of propaganda, the whole story, and a dangerous one.

In mid-March, Bush made what was called his first significant pronouncement on the Middle East, on the Arab/Israeli problem. He gave a speech. Big headlines. First significant statement in years. If you read it, it was boilerplate, except for one sentence. That one sentence, if you take a look at it closely, gives his roadmap: as the peace process advances, Israel should terminate new settlement programs. What does that mean? That means until the peace process reaches a point that Bush endorses, which could be indefinitely far in the future, until then Israel should continue to build settlements. That’s a change in policy. Up until now, officially at least, the U.S. has been opposed to expansion of the illegal settlement programs that make a political settlement impossible. But now Bush is saying the opposite: Go on and settle. We’ll keep paying for it, until we decide that somehow the peace process has reached an adequate point. So, yes, it was a significant change towards more aggression, undermining of international law, and undermining of the possibilities of peace. That’s not the way it was portrayed. But take a look at the wording.

DB: You’ve described the level of public protest and resistance to the Iraq war as “unprecedented”; never before has there been so much opposition before a war began. Where is that resistance going?

NC: I don’t know any way to predict human affairs. It will go the way people decide it will go. There are many possibilities. It should intensify. The tasks are now much greater and more serious than they were before. On the other hand, it’s harder. It’s just psychologically easier to organize to oppose a military attack than it is to oppose a long-standing program of imperial ambition, of which this attack is one phase, and of which others are going to come next. That takes more thought, more dedication, more long-term engagement. It’s the difference between deciding, okay, I’m in this for the long haul and saying, okay, I’m going out to a demonstration tomorrow and then back home. Those are choices, all of them. The same in the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, anything.

DB: Talk about threats to and intimidation of dissidents here inside the United States, including roundups of immigrants, and citizens, for that matter.

NC: Vulnerable people like immigrants, definitely have to be concerned. The current government has claimed rights which go beyond any precedents. There are some in wartime, but those are pretty ugly ones, like the 1942 round up of Japanese, or, say, Wilson during the First World War, which was pretty awful. But they’re now claiming rights that are quite without precedent, including even the right to arrest citizens, hold them in detention without access to family or lawyers, and do so indefinitely, without charges. Immigrants and other vulnerable people should certainly be cautious. On the other hand, for people like us, citizens with any privileges, though there are threats, as compared with what people face in most of the world, they are so slight that it’s hard to get very upset about them. I’ve just been back from Turkey a couple of times and Colombia, and compared with the threats that people face there, we’re living in heaven. And they don’t worry about it. They do, obviously, but they don’t let it stop them.

DB: Do you see Europe and East Asia emerging as counterforces to U.S. power at some point?

NC: They’re emerging all right. There is no doubt that Europe and Asia are economic forces roughly on a par with North America, and have their own interests. Their interests are not simply to follow U.S. orders. They’re tightly linked. So, for example, the corporate sector in Europe, the U.S., and most of Asia are linked in all kinds of ways and have common interests. On the other hand, there are separate interests, and these are problems that go way back, especially with Europe.

The U.S. has always had an ambivalent attitude towards Europe. It wanted Europe to be unified, as a more efficient market for U.S. corporations, great advantages of scale. On the other hand, it was always concerned about the threat that Europe might move off in another direction. A lot of the issues about the accession of the East European countries to the European Union have a lot to do with that. The U.S. is strongly in favor of it, because it’s hoping that these countries will be more susceptible to U.S. influence and will be able to undermine the core of Europe, which is France and Germany, the big industrial countries, which might move in a somewhat more independent direction.

Also in the background is a long-standing U.S. hatred of the European social market system, which provides decent wages and working conditions and benefits. It’s very different from the U.S. system. And they don’t want that model to exist, because it’s a dangerous one. People get funny ideas. And it’s very explicitly stated that with the accession of Eastern European countries, with low wages and repression of labor and so on, it may help undermine the social and worker standards in Western Europe, and that would be a big benefit for the U.S.

DB: With the U.S. economy deteriorating and with more layoffs, how is the Bush administration going to maintain what some are calling a garrison state with permanent war and occupation of numerous countries? How are they going to pull it off?

NC: They have to pull it off for about another six years. By that time they hope they will have institutionalized highly reactionary programs within the United States. They will have left the economy in a very serious state, with huge deficits, pretty much the way they did in the 1980s. And then it will be somebody else’s problem to patch it together. Meanwhile, they will have, they hope, undermined social programs, diminished democracy, which of course they hate, by transferring decisions out of the public arena into private hands. and they will have done it in a way that will be very hard to disentangle. So they will have left a legacy internally that will be painful and hard. But only for the majority of the population. The people they’re concerned about are going to be making out like bandits. Very much like the Reagan years. It’s the same people, after all.

And internationally, they hope that they will have institutionalized the doctrines of imperial domination through force and preventive war as a choice. The U.S. now in military spending probably exceeds the rest of the world combined, and it’s much more advanced and moving out into extremely dangerous directions, like space. They assume, I suppose, that no matter what happens to the American economy, that will give such overwhelming force that people will just have to do what they say.

DB: What do you say to the peace activists who labored for so long trying to prevent the invasion of Iraq and who are now feeling a sense of anger and sadness?

NC: That they should be realistic. Abolitionism. How long did the struggle go on before they made any progress? If you give up every time you don’t achieve the immediate gain you want, you’re just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen. These are long, hard struggles. And, in fact, what happened in the last couple of months should be seen quite positively. The basis was created for expansion and development of a peace and justice movement that will move on to much harder tasks. And that’s the way these things go. It isn’t easy.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cf...=40&ItemID=3627

Edited May 18, 2003 by Stormy

Accelerated · May 19, 2003

Thanks for the clarification Azat. :thumbup:

You forgot to hit the "new topic" button.

No, I didnt. I thought it was relevant to the topic "paying out America".

Stormig · May 19, 2003

No, I didnt. I thought it was relevant to the topic "paying out America".

Wow. Take me to school in relevance, will you?

Sasun · May 30, 2003

Comments Revive Doubts Over Iraq Weapons

News from yahoo

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European critics of the Iraq (news - web sites) war expressed shock Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official seen as playing down the importance of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as a reason for going to war.

In an interview in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited bureaucratic reasons for focusing on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s alleged arsenal.

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon (news - web sites) transcript of the interview.

Vanity Fair provided a slightly different version in the article: "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

In the interview, Wolfowitz cited one outcome of the war that was "almost unnoticed — but it's huge": it removed the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power. Vanity Fair interpreted Wolfowitz to say that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia was one major reason for going to war, rather than just an outcome.

Those troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the desert kingdom against Saddam, whose forces invaded Kuwait in 1991, but their presence in the country that houses Islam's holiest sites enraged Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).

Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States announced it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up its main regional command center in Qatar.

"Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government," he said. "It's been a huge recruiting device for al-Qaida. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."

As the United States sought to build international support for the war, it did not publicly spell out as a goal the withdrawal of its troops from Saudi Arabia. Instead, the Bush administration focused on Saddam's failure to dismantle chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Wolfowitz was asked about the Vanity Fair interview during a news conference in Singapore on Friday and referred reporters to the Pentagon transcript.

He said the United States had three concerns about Iraq before the war: weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and the abuse of Iraqi citizens by Saddam's regime.

"All three of those have been there, they've always been part of the rationale, and I think it's been very clear," he said.

Nevertheless, the focus of the debate over the need for war centered on Saddam's weapons, and the failure of U.S. forces to locate extensive stocks has raised doubts in a skeptical Europe whether Iraq represented a global security threat.

Wolfowitz's comments followed a statement by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who suggested this week that Saddam might have destroyed his banned weapons before the war began.

On Friday, the commander of U.S. Marines in Iraq said he was surprised that extensive searches have failed to discover any of the chemical weapons that U.S. intelligence had indicated were supplied to front line Iraqi forces at the outset of the war.

"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," Lt. Gen. James Conway told reporters. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

The remarks by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld revived the controversy over the war as President Bush (news - web sites) left for a European tour in which he hopes to put aside the bitterness over the war, which threatened the trans-Atlantic partnership.

In Denmark, whose government supported the war, opposition parties demanded to know whether Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen misled the public about the extent of Saddam's weapons threat.

"It was not what the Danish prime minister said when he advocated support for the war," Jeppe Kofod, the Social Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said in response to Wolfowitz's comments. "Those who went to war now have a big problem explaining it."

Former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's claim. "It leaves the world with one question: What should we believe?" he told The Associated Press.

In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments about Iraqi weapons showed that America is losing the battle for credibility.

"The charge of deception is inescapable," the newspaper said Friday.

In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, said he doubted Iraq had any such weapons.

"The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive strike, 'Hit Saddam before he hits us,' " Cook told British Broadcasting Corp. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which to hit us in the first place."

During a visit to Poland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) said Friday he has "absolutely no doubt" that concrete evidence will be found of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

"Have a little patience," Blair told reporters.

Edited May 30, 2003 by Sasun

Stormig · June 28, 2003

Been nearly a month and still nothing - other than bits and pieces of stuff necessary to build nuclear weapons - or so it is said.

Meanwhile - what a meaningful anniversary.

1986: US guilty of backing Contras

The United States has been found guilty of violating international law by

supporting armed Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

The International Court of Justice ruled that the US should compensate

the country, although it has not yet fixed an amount.

But the Reagan administration has boycotted the case and says it will

ignore the verdict of the United Nations court.

In the US there have been demonstrations against a vote by Congress in

favour of aid to the Contras.

About 40 people were arrested during a protest in Minneapolis, and in

Cleveland a group of demonstrators lay on the pavement to block the

entrance to the federal building.

The UN court found the US guilty of contravening law by training, arming

and financing paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua.

These activities included the laying of mines in Nicaraguan waters in

early 1984, as well as attacking a naval base and patrol boats.

The court held, by 12 votes to three, that the US was "in breach of its

obligations under customary international law not to use force against

another State, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its

sovereignty and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce".

It ruled the US was under an obligation "to make reparation to the

Republic of Nicaragua for all injury caused" by the breaches.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/s...000/2520169.stm

Stormig · August 20, 2003

America silences Niger leaders in Iraq nuclear row

By David Harrison in Niamey, Niger

(Filed: 03/08/2003)

America has warned the Niger government to keep out of the row over claims that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme from the impoverished West African state.

Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa and one of America's most experienced Africa hands, called on Mamadou Tandja, Niger's president, in the capital Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington, according to senior Niger government officials.

One said: "Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government'. Basically he was telling Niger to shut up."

The dramatic American intervention reflects growing concern about the continuing row over claims that America and Britain distorted evidence to justify the war against Iraq.

It follows The Telegraph's exclusive interview with Hama Hamadou, Niger's prime minister, last week. Mr Hamadou said that the Niger government had never had discussions with Iraq about uranium and called on Tony Blair to produce the "evidence" he claims to have to confirm that Iraq sought uranium from Niger in the 1990s.

American officials denied that there had been any attempt to "gag" the Niger government. The Niamey official, however, said that there was "a clear attempt to stop any more embarrassing stories coming out of Niger".

He said that Washington's warning was likely to be heeded. "Mr Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. We are the world's second-poorest country and we depend on international aid to survive."

Mr Cohen's intervention suggests that Washington is keen to draw a line under the "uranium from Africa" affair, although The Telegraph has also learned that senior American soldiers were in Iraq last week to investigate the movement of Niger's uranium.

27 July 2003: 'Saddam never shopped for uranium in my country'

27 July 2003: 'Why, Mr Blair, would Saddam ever have thought he could get hold of our uranium?'

21 July 2003: Bush under pressure over 'dodgy' Iraq weapons claim

20 July 2003: Envoy pours scorn on Niger intelligence

9 July 2003: White House disowns British claim that Saddam tried to buy uranium

7 July 2003: CIA man denies Niger-Iraq uranium link

Previous story: Bootleg Jamie Oliver emailed free to millions worldwide

Next story: Only one brave soul at the graveside rejoiced at the death of the 'evil' Uday

External links

The Whitehouse

Niger - CIA World Factbook

Niger - allAfrica.com

International Atomic Energy Agency

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...requestid=86197

bellthecat · August 28, 2003

The shit will really hit the fan when the Iraqis realise that it is their natural resources that will be paying for much of this. Must be rather like being raped and then being expected to pay the rapist for his "services".

Steve

Halliburton scores big off Iraq

Size, scope of work greater than previously disclosed

By Michael Dobbs

THE WASHINGTON POST

Aug. 28 — Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion out of Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.

THE SIZE and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military’s increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.

Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary, include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.

Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1 billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon’s name for the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about $705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said.

Specific work orders assigned to the Halliburton subsidiary under Operation Iraqi Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170 million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28 million for the construction of enemy prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon never publicly acknowledged.

GROWING PRIVATIZATION

Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that originally made its name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out many of its support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel, a California-based engineering firm that has won hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction contracts, and Virginia-based DynCorp, which is training the new Iraqi police force.

The government said the practice has been spurred by cutbacks in the military budget and a string of wars since the end of the Cold War that have placed a enormous demand on the armed forces.

But according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money-making opportunities. “The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe,” Waxman said. “This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less.”

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to discuss the details of the company’s operations in Iraq, or confirm or deny estimates of the amounts the company has earned from its contracting work on behalf of the military. In an e-mail message, however, she said that suggestions of war profiteering were “an affront to all hard-working, honorable Halliburton employees.”

Hall added that military contracts were awarded “not by politicians but by government civil servants, under strict guidelines.”

Daniel Carlson, a spokesman for the Army’s Joint Munitions Command, said Brown and Root had won a competitive bidding process in 2001 to provide a wide range of “contingency” services to the military in the event of the deployment of U.S. troops overseas. He said the contract, known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, was designed to free up uniformed personnel for combat duties and did not preclude deals with other contractors.

Carlson said the money earmarked for Brown and Root was an estimate, and could go “up or down” depending on the work performed.

The Joint Munitions Command provided The Washington Post with an updated version of a spreadsheet the Army released to Waxman earlier this month, giving detailed estimates of money obligated to Brown and Root under Operation Iraqi Freedom. Estimates of the company’s revenue from Iraq have been increasing steadily since February, when the Corps of Engineers announced it had won a $37.5 million contract for pre-positioning fire equipment in the region.

CLASSIFIED WAR PLAN

In addition to its Iraq contracts, Brown and Root has also earned $183 million from Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war on terrorism and combat operations in Afghanistan, according to the Army’s numbers.

Waxman’s interest in Halliburton was ignited by a routine Army Corps of Engineers announcement in March reporting that the company had been awarded a no-bid contract, with a $7 billion limit, for putting out fires at Iraqi oil wells. Corps spokesmen justified the lack of competition on the grounds that the operation was part of a classified war plan and the Army did not have time to secure competitive bids for the work.

The corps said the oil rehabilitation deal was an offshoot of the LOGCAP contract, a one-year agreement renewable for 10 years. Individual work orders assigned under LOGCAP do not have to be competitively bid. But Waxman and other critics maintain that the oil work has nothing to do with the logistic operation.

The practice of delegating a vast array of logistics operations to a single contractor dates to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study commissioned by Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The Pentagon chose Brown and Root to carry out the study, and subsequently selected the company to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief executive officer of Brown and Root’s parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency.

At the time, said P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of “Corporate Warriors,” it was impossible to predict how lucrative the military contracting business would become. He estimates the number of contractors in Iraq at 20,000, or about one contractor for every 10 soldiers. During the Gulf War, the proportion of contractors to servicemen was about one in 100.

Brown and Root’s revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from the Balkans, and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year.

OILFIELD REHABILITATION

Waxman aides said they have been told by the General Accounting Office that Brown and Root is likely to earn “several hundred million more dollars” from the no-bid Army Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields. Waxman, the ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, had asked the GAO to investigate the corps’ decision not to bid out the contract.

After a round of unfavorable publicity, the corps explained that the sole award to Brown and Root would be replaced by a competitively bid contract. But the deadline for announcing the results of the competition has slipped from August to October, causing rival companies to complain that little work will be left over for anybody else. Bechtel, one of Halliburton’s main competitors, announced this month that it would not be bidding for the corps contract and would instead focus on securing work from the Iraqi oil ministry.

In addition to the Army contracts, Halliburton has also profited from other government-related work in Iraq and the war on terrorism, and has a $300 million jumbo contract with the Navy structured along similar lines to LOGCAP.

RUMSFELD’S BACKING

Pentagon officials said the increasing reliance on contractors is inevitable, given the multiple demands on the military, particularly since Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a champion of “outsourcing,” writing in The Post in May that “more than 300,000 uniformed personnel” were doing jobs that civilians could do.

Independent experts said the trend toward outsourcing logistic operations has resulted in new problems, such as a lack of accountability and transparency on the part of private military firms and sometimes questionable billing practices.

A major problem in Iraq, Singer said, has been the phenomenon of “no-shows” caused by the inhospitable security environment, and the killing of contract workers, including a Halliburton mail delivery employee earlier this month. “At the end of the day, neither these companies nor their employees are bound by military justice, and it is up to them whether to show up or not,” Singer said. “The result is that there have been delays in setting up showers for soldiers, getting them cooked meals and so on.”

A related concern is the rising cost of hiring contract workers because of skyrocketing insurance premiums. Singer estimates that premiums have increased by 300 percent to 400 percent this year, costs that are passed on to the taxpayer under the cost-plus-award fee system that is the basis for most contracts.

The LOGCAP contract awarded to Brown and Root in 2001 was the third, and potentially most lucrative, super-contract awarded by the Army. Brown and Root won the first five-year contract in 1992, but lost the second to rival DynCorp in 1997 after the GAO criticized the Army for not adequately controlling contracting costs in Bosnia.

vava · August 29, 2003

Oh, that article is just beautiful Steve. Inspires confidence in the American leadership - really....

bellthecat · August 30, 2003

Oh, that article is just beautiful Steve. Inspires confidence in the American leadership - really....

Actually, it inspires a bit of real confidence in the US media that they wrote about it, and in such a detailed way - or maybe the American leadership can only fool all the media some of the time.

War used to be about gaining territory, or correcting perceived wrongs, or defending allies, or stopping invaders, and so on. These days it is mostly about profit - war is a previously untapped consumer market, and you don't even need built in obsolescence - you just blow up last years model car/city/country.

Stormig · September 29, 2003

Was the war about oil? No and yes. Now what MJ said about the state of the Iraqi infrastructure comes to mind. I think I realize the U.S. as a state couldn't profit from it. However, contractors with their hands in the pockets of the administration could. Mafia. Except for the "workers of the universe, unite!" type of stuff, article below talks.

***********************************************************

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/.../bush-s24.shtml

MJ · September 29, 2003

Give it a little more time, Stormy. I am sure you may realise a few more things then, and you may change your mind on this last garbage from the World Socialist Association, too.

Stormig · September 29, 2003

MJ, I do not think it is that bad. It sums up very nicely the change of mouth they keep putting on - reminding those of us who can't always count on memory for chronology. The authors of the article have little to applaud to - I just liked seeing a bunch of stuff in it, ranging from Kofi Annan's message to mention of the oil lords. Maybe it really wasn't for the oil lords' drive, I can't really know - but looky who is profiting.

Fifty years from now, when Gulf War II is in history books, it is going to look more like old women's gossip, recounting the things that went on - he said this, she thought that, they found that, they figured that, all based on unsubstantiated material - hardly "history" at first sight.

MJ · September 29, 2003

MJ, I do not think it is that bad. It sums up very nicely the change of mouth they keep putting on - reminding those of us who can't always count on memory for chronology. The authors of the article have little to applaud to - I just liked seeing a bunch of stuff in it, ranging from Kofi Annan's message to mention of the oil lords. Maybe it really wasn't for the oil lords' drive, I can't really know - but looky who is profiting.
Fifty years from now, when Gulf War II is in history books, it is going to look more like old women's gossip, recounting the things that went on - he said this, she thought that, they found that, they figured that, all based on unsubstantiated material - hardly "history" at first sight.

Stormy,

I actually think it is a quite bad material. There is not a single fact in its body, and as you rightly described in your last material, it is an ideological crap based on “he said, she said.”

I don’t think that anything that is going in and around Iraq can be accurately described by the “profit” factor. The thing is that when people have preconceived theories, they try to tailor the facts in such a manner that would support their theories. They also chose "facts" in such a selective manner so that to support their ill-construed theories and the large body of relevant information always remains outside their radar screen. To them, the most natural and logical things always look like “conspiracy” and so on.

bellthecat · September 29, 2003

The British ambassador in Baghdad has just admitted that it is costing Britain 65 million dollars a week to keep British troops in Iraq. But since only the world's most expensive dog-house is good enough for poodle Blair, probably he thinks it is cheap at that price.

Stormig · September 29, 2003

The thing is that when people have preconceived theories, they try to tailor the facts in such a manner that would support their theories. They also chose "facts" in such a selective manner so that to support their ill-construed theories and the large body of relevant information always remains outside their radar screen. To them, the most natural and logical things always look like “conspiracy” and so on.

MJ, that sounds like the whole "Iraq is a threat to the U.S. and has WMD" hoax.

MJ · September 29, 2003

Stormy,

On the basis of what are you claiming it?

Stormig · September 30, 2003

Based on what comes to my ear from the news when I have the TV on... And compiled tidbits like these, which are what I mean by "old women's gossip" - not the articles of socialists or what have you - just imagine something like this going down in a history book:

The Daily Mislead for September 19, 2003

Bush Administration Spends Week Retracting Assertions about Saddam's Threat

to the U.S.

The Bush administration this week backed away from three major rationales

for going to war in Iraq last March, undermining its assertions that

Hussein's Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States and its allies.

September 11th

As recently as Sunday, Vice President Cheney, claimed that on the question

of Saddam Hussein's involvement in September 11th, "We just don't know."[1]

But within days, both President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld each

admitted there was no evidence that Hussein had any connection. On

Wednesday, Bush maintained there was "no evidence" that Hussein was

involved.[2] Two days later, Rumsfeld, said, "I've not seen any indication

that would lead me to believe that I could say that."[3]

Yet in March, Hussein's possible involvement in the terrorist attacks

garnered support for the war from many Americans. At the time, the widely

reported meeting between 9/11 planner Mohammed Atta and Iraq's security

chief in Prague a few months before the attack was found by the CIA not to

be credible.[4]

'Reconstituted Nuclear Weapons Program'

Recently, Cheney backed away from the assertion he made three days before

the war began, that the strongest reason for going to war was that "we

believe [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."[5] But the

International Atomic Energy Agency reported two weeks before that , "There

was no indication of resumed nuclear activities."[6] And six months later on

Meet the Press, Cheney said simply, "I misspoke."[7]

Weapons of Mass Destruction

This week, Rumsfeld reversed earlier statements claiming that the U.S. knew

where Iraq's weapons of destruction were located. When asked why the

weapons hadn't been found, this past Tuesday Rumsfeld said, "What do you

mean? You're talking about a country the size of California."[8] Yet months

ago, just two weeks into the war, Rumsfeld said, "We know where they are.

They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and

north somewhat."[9]

Sources:

1. Meet the Press, NBC, 9/14/03.

2. Remarks by the President After Meeting with Members of the Congressional

Conference Committee on Energy Legislation, 9/17/03,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1319253&l=5426

3. Defense Department News Briefing, Secretary Rumsfeld and General Pace,

9/16/03,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1319253&l=5427

4. "Bush Team Stands Firm on Iraq," Washington Post, 9/15/03, p. A1.

5. Meet the Press, NBC, 3/16/03.

6. The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update, 3/7/03,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1319253&l=5428

7. Meet the Press, NBC, 9/14/03.

8. Defense Department News Briefing, Secretary Rumsfeld and General Pace,

9/16/03,

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1319253&l=5427

9. This Week with George Stephanopolous, ABC, 3/30/03.

MJ · September 30, 2003

Stormy,

Your response is too long for me to go line-by-line at this time. I can only afford saying that there is some misrepresentation in what you write (I know you are not the author), there are some irrelevant points.

In general, whatever this administration has said before the war, it says the same thing now. And I have not seen a shred of evidence suggesting that they have lied - no such evidence in the media nor in your latest post.

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