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Bush Is Trying To Impose A Classic Colonial Status on Iraq

tim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:59:19 +0000

Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn’t about oil. Tony Blair called the idea a “conspiracy theory”. It was about democracy and dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction and human rights, anything but oil. Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, insisted the conflict had “literally nothing to do with oil”. When Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, wrote last autumn, “Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he was treated as if he were some senile old gent who’d embarrassingly lost the plot.

That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world’s largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq’s vast reserves. Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq’s largest oilfields. But not only did the four energy giants — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total — write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover. Big Oil is back with a vengeance.

It’s a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself. The last thing on anyone’s mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq. This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom. But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state.

In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this “strategic framework agreement”, intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian — including indefinite authorisation for the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security”. Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying “status of forces agreement” the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.

This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status. Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty.

But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country’s nominal independence. Just as in George Bush’s version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces — though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.

To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal. The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958.

The 50th anniversary of the 1958 revolution appropriately falls next month. But Bush and Cheney seem increasingly determined to force through both their security agreement and the stalled law for the privatisation of Iraq’s oil industry before the US election. The signs are that, despite intense Iraqi opposition, a combination of strong-arm tactics, bribery and some watering down of the most extreme US demands may yet secure the full imperial package.

When Bush contradicted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month on the occupation deal and predicted: “If I were a betting man, we’ll reach an agreement with the Iraqis,” he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about — rather as he did when he explained a couple of weeks ago that he was “confident” Gordon Brown would not after all be cutting British troop numbers in Basra according to any fixed timetable. Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is suddenly sounding similarly confident about “progress” on the oil law because “the Americans are very keen”.

Perhaps they are all coming to believe the Bush administration propaganda that the surge has succeeded and Iraq is starting to “fix itself” in time for the US election, as the Economist’s cover story put it last week. Much is still being made of the decline in US casualties and resistance attacks to 2004 levels, even though the factors behind that drop are widely acknowledged to be contingent and precarious. Given the carnage of the past few days alone — including seven US soldiers killed since the weekend and a Baghdad car bomb that butchered 65 people — as well as this week’s withering US Government Accountability Office report on the administration’s claims of “progress” in Iraq, any other view would seem perverse.

What is certain is that, if Bush’s blueprint for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, resistance and bloodshed will increase. Of course, it’s true that the US and Britain didn’t invade Iraq only for its oil. It was a projection of American power in the world’s most strategically sensitive region, with oil at its heart, which has brought catastrophe to Iraq and great danger to the Middle East and the wider world. That’s why the struggle to restore Iraq’s independence matters far beyond its borders — it is a global necessity.

Prisons of war, furnaces of radicalism

tim — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:20:22 +0000

A long-term consequence of the Iraq war is the production of a new generation of young paramilitaries with combat experience in urban environments against the world’s best equipped army (see “Afghanistan in an amorphous war”, 19 June 2008). Even if the conflict in Iraq does ease in the coming months, the experience of combat there will serve well an al-Qaida movement that measures its aims in decades rather than years.

The battalions of paramilitaries in Afghanistan that fought against Soviet conscripts in the 1980s war operated in a largely rural environment, in a conflict very different from its successor. Indeed, in one of the many “blowback [1]” effects of the “war on terror”, the methods and technologies that have been learned in Iraq have now been exported back to Afghanistan. The use of roadside-bombs, for example, has escalated alarmingly in the first half of 2008, demonstrating the skills of Taliban militias as they develop their guerrilla tactics.

The jail blowback

If the combat experience gained in Iraq has been one aid to the paramilitary movements, another has been the unexpected effect of the holding [2] by the United States and its allies of large numbers of people without trial, sometimes for years on end. The overall figures are difficult to assess, although there were indications in 2007 that at least 120,000 people have been detained since 9/11. The great majority of these have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the incarcerated [3] also include some thousands of people across the middle east and south Asia, and hundreds in Europe.

Some details surface [4] from time to time. It is known, for example, that the United States forces in Afghanistan are building a new prison at Bagram capable of housing 600 longterm and up to 1,100 short-term prisoners (see “A world beyond control” [4], 22 May 2008). This is in addition to, and outside the control of, the Afghan prison system. The numbers are far higher in Iraq, where the US forces are currently detaining 21,000 Iraqis – a number exceeded by thousands more held in Iraqi prisons. The American-held number represents a decrease of 4,000 from mid-2007, though US contractors are in the process of building new prisons in the country, such as one in Taji near Baghdad (see Walter Pincus, “U.S. Official Cites ‘Hardening’ Of Iraqi Detainees [5]”, Washington Post, 10 June 2008).

In addition, there is a constant throughput of detainees as new people are imprisoned and others are released. At present, thirty people are detained and imprisoned by US forces every day, while fifty are released. This explains the net drop in overall numbers but also means that, at current rates, about 10,000 more Iraqis experience detention in the US system each year.

US sources report that their own personnel are getting more efficient at determining which detainees are the most radical and will be kept in prison for long periods of time. They estimate that there are approximately 8,000 detainees who cannot be proved to have committed crimes under the Iraqi judicial system and cannot therefore be handed over to the Iraqi for trial. These are people, though, who are deemed to pose such serious security threats that they must be incarcerate even without judicial process.

What this means is that there are many thousands of “hard-core” detainees in the prisons who are interacting repeatedly with much greater numbers coming through the system. It has to be remembered that all of these people are being detained without trial [6] by what is seen as a foreign occupying force. The potential for radicalisation within prison, let alone the impact on their friends and families, is therefore considerable.

In a related issue, there has been recurrent concern within the British prison system that convicted Muslim prisoners will do their best to proselytise fellow Muslim convicts in prison for non-political offences (see Jamie Doward, “Extremists train young convicts for terror plots [7]”, Observer, 15 July 2007). The chief prisons inspector, Anne Owers, drew attention to this issue in supporting the work of Muslim chaplains while highlighting a lack of training for prison officers (see Dominic Casciani, “Warning over jail radicalisation [8]”, BBC News, 14 April 2008).

The enemy effect

The worries reflected in the British reports are shared elsewhere. The most striking example comes from the most closely guarded and controversial detention centre – Guantánamo in Cuba (see David Rose, “Guantá [8]namo: America’s war on human rights [8]”, 23 September 2004). A remarkable report by one of the best informed of US journalists, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers, gives some indication of the extent of the problem (see Tom Lasseter, “How Guantánamo became a terror training ground [9]”, Miami Herald, 17 June 2008).

He starts with an example that is worth quoting in full: “Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.” “US troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from the Guantánamo Bay detention camp the following year, however – after more than twelve months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers – he’d made connections to high-level militants.” “In fact, he had become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 ‘most wanted’ playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan – with Osama bin Laden at the top – Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.”

The detention

In a detailed survey by the McClatchy newspaper group [12], sixty-six former Guantánamo detainees were interviewed and gave a picture of abuse and mistreatment of prisoners that served to build up considerable anger, resentment and above all, a pervasive anti-American mood. What also became clear, both from former detainees and some informal contacts in the US defence department, was that convinced Islamists were adept at using the prison system and the feelings of ordinary detainees to build up a group of potential recruits to their cause.

Some of the techniques were sophisticated, even if they were exploiting the kinds of structures and lines of communication that exist in most prisons. After the original Camp X-ray at Guantánamo had been replaced by Camp Delta, the detention-centre [13] was organised into a series of units that varied in the severity of treatment depending on the perceived security threats from detainees. Those considered most dangerous and difficult were assigned to the most secure units whereas others, including many prisoners with no jihadist connections, were assigned to easier units.

However, even middle-ranking al-Qaida supporters were sufficiently experienced to avoid drawing attention to themselves, so that they could end up in an “easy” unit where they could concentrate on proselytising other inmates. As Lasseter puts it: “An angry cab driver from Kabul… may have been more likely to attack a guard and end up in Camp Three [high security] than an al Qaeda militant was.” Furthermore, senior al-Qaida leaders could order middle-level supporters to cause trouble so that they would end up in a high security unit, enabling them to deliver messages as part of an effective communications network.

Lasseter’s report is primarily significant because it is describing circumstances in a particularly high-security detention centre that is very well resourced and has a substantial staff of guards and detention specialists. In Iraq, the US military are dealing with tens of thousands of detainees, the great majority of whom do not turn out to be dangerous insurgents or paramilitary radicals. If even Guantánamo, with all its security and organisation, can be a paramilitary recruiting-station, then much larger and more loosely organised prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan may well be far more potent.

What this suggests, yet once more, is that yet another part of America’s “war on terror” – the detention of over 120,000 people – stands to be deeply counterproductive. The end results may not become clear for years or even decades but, once again, the United States is inadvertently doing al-Qaida’s job for it.

Links:
[1] http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101facomment84601/peter-bergen-alec-r…
[2] http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_detentions
[3] http://www.gulfnews.com/world/U.S.A/10213354.html
[4] http://www.ghostplane.net/AboutTheBook
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR200806…
[6] http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/index.htm
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation
[8] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7347643.stm
[9] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/572714.html
[10] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[11] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[12] http://www.mcclatchy.com/102/story/354.html
[13] http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/27970res20070111.html

Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?

Ellie Keen — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The American occupation of Iraq follows the same course as that of British rule after the First World War. At first there was imperial over-confidence following military victory and a conviction that what Iraqis did was of no importance. Then there was the shock and surprise of an Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920 and the Americans after 2003. In both cases the occupiers responded by establishing an Iraqi national government but with limited powers. In 1930 under the Anglo-Iraqi treaty Iraq achieved nominal independence and joined the League of Nations but Britain retained two large bases and remained the predominant power in 1raq. Iraqi governments were tainted and lacked legitimacy because of Iraqis’ perception that their rulers were foreign pawns until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

America is now behaving in much the same way. It is negotiating a security agreement to replace the present UN mandate. It is to all intents and purposes a treaty that will determine future relations between Iraq and the US. It is not being called a treaty only because President Bush does not want to submit it to Senate approval. But in effect it continues the occupation under another name. The US will keep possession of over 50 bases though there will be a few Iraqi soldiers manning an outer perimeter so the US can say they will be in Iraqi hands. American soldiers and contractors will have legal immunity. The US will be free to carry out operations against ‘terrorists’ without informing the Iraqi government so it can arrest Iraqis or carry out military campaigns as and when it feels like it. Some of the Iraqi negotiators have been horrified by the extent of the American demands which would mean long term American control. But the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whatever his private misgivings, believes that at the end of the day he relies on American backing. His coalition of Shia religious parties, Sunni representatives and the Kurds feel the same way.

The Iraqi-American security agreement, which Bush wants signed by July 31, is a better barometer of where real power lies in Iraq than military developments on the ground. It comes just as the Iraqi government is trying to regain control of the largest cities in the country. It has launched three military offensives since the end of March against Shia militias and Sunni insurgents, sending its army into Basra, Sadr City in Baghdad and Mosul. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers have moved into Shia districts once dominated by the Mehdi Army which follows the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In the Sunni Arab city of Mosul the government claims it is crushing the last remnant of al-Qa’ida in Iraq and has arrested over 1,000 suspects. The aim of the prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is to show that the Iraqi state, feeble and dependant on the US since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is back in business. The operations in Basra and Mosul have bombastic names – ‘Charge of the Knights’ and ‘Roar of the Lion’ – in a bid to underline Maliki’s intention to show that the Iraqi army is the strongest non- American military power in Iraq.

At first sight the government seems to be succeeding after initial failures. The attack on the Mehdi Army in Basra on March 25 at first made no headway and Iraqi soldiers even ran out of food after a couple of days fighting. They had to be heavily reinforced by American advisers calling in US air strikes and British artillery fire. But, after a few weeks, government soldiers were taking over in districts long held by the Mehdi Army. In Sadr City—with a population of two million it is less of a district of Baghdad than a twin city—the Americans again bore the brunt of the fighting. Some 1,000 Iraqis, 60 per cent women and children according to the UN, were killed in seven weeks. In both Basra and Sadr City the clashes ended because Muqtada al-Sadr called his men off the streets under ceasefires brokered by the Iranians. The Iraqi army moved in though without the Americans. Maliki may not have won the decisive military victory he claimed, but his government looked stronger at the end of the fighting than at the beginning.

The crucial political and military question in Iraq is whether the Iraqi government’s success will be long lasting or temporary. Will it lose control once again if al-Sadr orders his militiamen back into the streets? Are al- Qa’ida and other Sunni insurgents simply lying low and waiting for American troops to leave? Again and again in the last five years, the US and its Iraqi allies have genuinely believed that they were winning on the ground only to see their supposed successes evaporate when their opponents launched a counter-attack. But for the moment at least Maliki’s grip on central government is stronger than ever. A year ago the Americans and the Kurds wanted him replaced, as did the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the biggest Shia party in his governing coalition. But Washington soon began to stress privately that it wanted Iraq to appear as politically stable as possible during an election year in the US, while the Kurds and ISCI came to believe that they could get most of what they wanted with Maliki in power. For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, many Iraqis think the present government might last.

This may be misleading. The government’s position looks stronger than it is because its opponents are waiting for the Americans to leave or draw down their forces. Al-Sadr does not want to fight now because he sensibly wishes to avoid a direct military confrontation with the US army, which his lightly armed militiamen are bound to lose. This has been his strategy ever since his militiamen fought ferocious battles with the US Marines in Najaf in 2004. The Iranians are playing a more and more overt role in Iraq this year and do not want to see an intra-Shia civil war between ISCI and the Sadrists. The Iraqi Minister of Defense says that the Iraqi army will not be strong enough to stand on its own against insurgents until 2012. A further weakness of the government is that it faces crucial provincial elections in October which its constituent parties may well lose. One US military intelligence estimate is that in a fair poll the Sadrists would win 60 per cent of the vote in overwhelmingly Shia southern Iraq. The surprise government offensive at the end of March may have been launched in order to make sure that the vote can be fixed in favor of the government parties. A more Machiavellian explanation is that ISCI expected the Iraqi army to fail and wanted to lure the American army into a military confrontation with the Sadrists.

The government parties supporting Maliki now make up what some Iraqis called ‘the Council of Five’. There are the two Kurdish parties—the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdkistan—the Dawa party to which Maliki himself belongs, ISCI and the Islamic Party of the Sunni. Their aim seems to be to be eliminate their domestic Iraqi opponents while they still have the backing of American firepower. It is a brutal plan but it might come off. Maliki could become the Iraqi version of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Like Putin, Maliki controls the state machine, a large if unreliable army and benefits from the high price of oil so he has control of over $40 billion in unspent reserves. Iraqis do not trust their own government but, like Russians when Putin first came to power in 1999, they are desperately war weary. Many people will support anybody who provides peace and security. But the analogy should not be carried too far. Putin’s enemies were fictional or in distant Chechnya, while Maliki’s opponents are real, dangerous and close by.

I was in Mosul, a city of 1.4 million people on the Tigris river in northern Iraq, on the day the government forces started their ‘Roar of the Lion’ offensive at 4 am on May 10. As had happened in Basra and Sadr City a few weeks earlier there were thousands of government troops and police guarding every street and alleyway. The entire civilian population had disappeared indoors or had fled the city. The operation, supposedly aimed at depriving al Qa’ida of its last bastion in Iraq, had been promised by Maliki some months earlier after a previous chief of police of Mosul was assassinated by a suicide bomber with explosives hidden under his police uniform. But its actual timing had caught people in Mosul by surprise so they had no time to stock up on food. Nobody was venturing onto the streets because of a curfew. In the first hours of the operation US troops shot dead men, a woman and a child in a car which failed to stop at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mosul because, according to a US military statement, the two men were armed and one man inside the car made ‘threatening movements.’

I have been visiting Mosul ever since the Kurds and Americans captured it in 2003. Each time I go there the Kurdish authorities, who effectively run the city, allocate more armed guards to protect what ever official I am travelling with. We began the journey from Arbil in a convoy of white pick up trucks, each with a heavy machine gun in the back manned by alert- looking soldiers, some with black face masks, escorting Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, to his office in the old Baathist headquarters on the left bank of the Tigris. The official border between Kurdistan and Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, is the Zaab river, very low this year because of poor rainfall. But the real frontier is further down the road at a small village called Ghazik after which the road becomes increasingly dangerous. At a bridge near Ghazik police were stopping trucks and cars whose drivers had not heard of the curfew declared late the previous day. A few miles further on in a Chaldean Christian village called Bartilla we turned into a fort and exchanged our pick-ups for more heavily armoured vehicles with small windows like spy holes with thick bullet proof glass.

People in Nineveh province were taking the curfew very seriously. There are kilns processing gypsum along the road through the plain east of of Mosul city but none of them was working. Even the dreary tea houses serving food to truck drivers were closed. The Kurdish minority in east Mosul city live close to a small hill on top of which there is the mosque of Nebi Yunis, where the Prophet Jonah is supposedly buried. Usually the Kurdish districts of the city are filled with street traders but during the present operation the metal grill of every shop was down. The operation was being carried out by 15,000 troops, the three brigades of the 2nd and 3rd divisions that are normally stationed in Mosul and an extra brigade from Baghdad. I could see the black vehicles of Interior Ministry special commandos with a yellow tiger’s head insignia on their doors. American drones and helicopters passed over head but I did not see any American troops patrolling the city. There was the occasional burst of machine gunfire in the distance but no street fighting.

On the face of it the government had control of Mosul. This was not difficult to do because, unlike Baghdad and Basra, insurgents had never taken over entire districts. But everything in Nineveh province is a little different from what it looks. “The province is more like Lebanon,” said Saadi Pire, the former leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the city, “than anywhere else in Iraq.” It is divided between the Sunni Arabs, the Kurds and Christians, but many of the Kurds belong to the Yazidi sect which believes in a mixture of Zoroastrianism, Islam and Christianity. Their chief divinity is the peacock angel who rules the cosmos with six other angels. Last year a Yazidi girl who converted to orthodox Islam to marry her boyfriend was beaten to death by her relatives and in revenge Muslim Kurds dragged 23 Yazidi workers off a bus near Mosul and shot them dead. The government in Baghdad might claim that it was pursuing al Qa’ida in Mosul, but real power struggles in northern Iraq revolve around sectarian and ethnic differences. The Sunni majority in Mosul certainly see the ‘Roar of the Lion’ operation as being directed against them. Any al- Qa’ida in Mosul had long left the city for the country or had temporarily moved across the nearby Syrian border. Everybody I spoke to in Mosul expected they would be back.

In Baghdad there is also a sense that we are seeing a lull rather than end to violence. Places I used to know well still get destroyed. I used to eat in a restaurant in the al-Mansur district of west Baghdad called the Samad. It opened soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein, served good food and somehow survived the next five years of violence. But at 5pm on 8 May some policemen parked their vehicle outside the restaurant and went inside to eat. A few minutes later a large car bomb parked beside the police car blew up and destroyed the Samad, killing seven people and wounding a further 19. The explosion caused a massive traffic jam. Ambulances and the fire brigade could not get through and the building beside the Samad caught fire and burned to the ground. Though the Iraqi government is claiming that al Qa’ida has been driven from Baghdad and Anbar province to the east, this is not really true. In January I went to see Colonel Ismail Zubaie, the police chief of Fallujah, who was a former insurgent fighting al-Qa’ida who had cut his brother’s throat. He seemed to be in full control of Fallujah. But in May fighters from al Qa’ida confronted Colonel Ismail’s uncle, who was a teacher, and shot him dead. The next day they sent a suicide bomber to blow up the tent where his relatives were receiving mourners. The operation, clearly an elaborate attempt to kill Colonel Ismail, shows that al Qa’ida remains well organized and with agents everywhere in the Sunni community.

The Americans lost only 21 soldiers killed in Iraq in May which are the lowest monthly casualties since February 2004. But these do not mean that the chief Republican contender senator John McCain is correct in believing that with enough resolution the American army is on the road to victory. Paradoxically, the Americans are now benefiting from their failure to turn Iraq into a virtual American colony in 2003-4. Iran and Syria no longer fear, as they once did, that as soon as the US had gained complete control of Iraq it would try to overthrow their governments. There may be those in the White House who still privately dream of doing just that, but Iraq’s neighbors no longer feel they must destabilize Iraq in order to avert the American threat to themselves. American casualties are also down because the Sunni Arab and the Shia Arab communities in Iraq are not only divided but fighting low level civil wars. Part of the old anti- American Sunni resistance has turned on al Qa’ida and allied itself to the Americans. The Sunni were driven out of most of Baghdad by the Shia militias in the sectarian civil war of 2006-7 and are increasingly marginalized. Among the Shia, once known for their impressive unity after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, internecine battles between the Shia parties in government and the Sadrists have become bloodier and more frequent.

The main supporters of Nouri al-Maliki’s government are the US and Iran. This has never been admitted by Washington but from the Iranian point of view the present Shia-Kurdish government in Baghdad is as good as it is going to get. It does not want to overthrow Maliki, but it does want to reduce American influence on him. The fighting in Basra and Sadr City between the Mehdi Army and the Iraqi government backed by the American army between March and April was in each case brought to an end by Iranian mediation. This has become very public. To arrange the ceasefires in Basra and Baghdad President Jalal Talabani twice went to see Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on the Iraq-Iran border, though President Bush has denounced the Quds brigade as terrorists orchestrating attacks on US forces in Iraq. Iranian influence in Iraq is stronger than ever and the Iranians are increasingly willing to flaunt it. When the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad visited Baghdad this years his visit was announced in advance and he drove through the city by car. When President George W Bush comes to Baghdad it is a kept a secret until the last moment, he moves only by helicopter and he has never ventured outside the Green Zone.

Suppose Barack Obama wins the US presidential election America could withdraw its forces from Iraq over the next eighteen months without provoking an explosion of violence but only if it first had an agreement with Iran and Syria. An increase in Iranian influence in Iraq has been inevitable since 2003. Once the US had decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein the beneficiaries were always going to be the Shia religious parties, because they represented the majority of Iraqis, and they would be supported by Iran. Many of America’s problems in Iraq over the last five years have happened because Washington believed it could prevent or dilute the triumph of Iran and the Shia in Iraq.

Iranian strategy in Iraq is to keep the pot boiling but not over-boiling. They do not want the present government displaced. “The Iranians are very good at creating crises in Iraq and then solving them,” one Kurdish leader told me. Iran wants a weak Iraq, incapable of posing a threat to Tehran, and allied to itself. It wants a Shia government in power in Baghdad and the Americans out. “The three great powers of the Gulf historically are Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia,” the same Kurdish leader told me. “If Iran and Iraq act together then they will dominate the Gulf.” It may not be as easy as that. The Iraqis like the Iranians no more than they do the Americans. Muqtada al-Sadr, who is calling for an American withdrawal, has always been an Iraqi nationalist as suspicious of Iran as of the US. Paradoxically, the Shia governing parties in Baghdad, ISCI and Dawa, have traditionally had closer links with Iran than the Sadrists. ISCI was founded by the Iranians in Tehran in 1982 to be their puppet if they succeeded in defeating Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. It is still heavily influenced by them, but at the end of the day neither ISCI nor the Sadrists want the Americans nor the Iranians to treat Iraq as a client state.

Probably the most astute politician in Iraq is Muqtada al-Sadr, who has chosen not to tell his militiamen to fight for the enclaves they controlled in Basra and Baghdad. Instead in the last days of May he called tens of thousands of his followers into the streets to protest against the a new bilateral pact between the US and Iraq that is being secretly negotiated and would govern the future political, military and economic relationship between Washington and Baghdad. “Why do they want to break the backbone of Iraq?” asked Sheikh Mohammed al-Gharrawi addressing crowds in Sadr City. “The agreement wants to put an American in each house. This agreement is poison mixed in poison, not poison in honey because there is no honey at all.”

This opposition to the occupation can only grow if Senator McCain wins the US presidential election and tries to win an outright military victory in Iraq. The US can only stay in Iraq so long as it is allied to a large part of the Sunni or Shia communities. The occupation has always depended on ‘divide and rule’. If the US is ever faced with a united opposition by both Shia and Sunni in Iraq then it will have to leave. Everybody in Iraq overplays their hand at one time or other. The US position in Iraq has slightly improved over the last year but the improvement is limited. But by trying to impose a security pact on Iraq that would turn Iraq into a client state the Washington is fueling a fresh insurgency. It is discrediting the Iraqi government and the ruling parties who will be seen as foreign pawns. If McCain wins the presidential election and tries to put the security agreement into operation then neither the occupation nor the resistance to it will end.

A Classic Colonial Status

Ellie Keen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:42:52 +0000

That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world’s largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq’s vast reserves. Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq’s largest oilfields. But not only did the four energy giants – BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total – write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover. Big Oil is back with a vengeance.

In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this “strategic framework agreement”, intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian – including indefinite authorisation for the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security”. Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying “status of forces agreement” the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.

But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country’s nominal independence. Just as in George Bush’s version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces – though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.

When Bush contradicted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month on the occupation deal and predicted: “If I were a betting man, we’ll reach an agreement with the Iraqis,” he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about – rather as he did when he explained a couple of weeks ago that he was “confident” Gordon Brown would not after all be cutting British troop numbers in Basra according to any fixed timetable. Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is suddenly sounding similarly confident about “progress” on the oil law because “the Americans are very keen”.

Perhaps they are all coming to believe the Bush administration propaganda that the surge has succeeded and Iraq is starting to “fix itself” in time for the US election, as the Economist’s cover story put it last week. Much is still being made of the decline in US casualties and resistance attacks to 2004 levels, even though the factors behind that drop are widely acknowledged to be contingent and precarious. Given the carnage of the past few days alone – including seven US soldiers killed since the weekend and a Baghdad car bomb that butchered 65 people – as well as this week’s withering US Government Accountability Office report on the administration’s claims of “progress” in Iraq, any other view would seem perverse.

Big Oil Cashes in on Iraq Slaughter

Tim Holmes — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:40:11 +0000

Four major US, British and French oil companies are getting their hands on the petroleum reserves of Iraq for the first time in 36 years, based on no-bid contracts, the New York Times reported Thursday.

These deals reached with the US-backed regime in Baghdad have placed the five-year-old US war of aggression in the clearest possible perspective.

For the thousands of American families who have seen their sons and daughters killed in the Iraq war or return maimed or psychologically damaged, the knowledge that their sacrifices have opened up potentially huge new profit streams for Exxon-Mobil, Shell, British Petroleum and Total will provide cold comfort.

For the over one million Iraqis killed and the millions more turned into refugees or made homeless in their own land, an overriding justification for their suffering has now been laid bare. It was to further enrich the already obscenely wealthy corporate executives and major shareholders of Big Oil.

As the New York Times reported Thursday: “The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.”

The Times acknowledged that “The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India.”

No-bid deals in the oil sector are not only “unusual,” under conditions in which oil demand is at an all-time high crude is selling for nearly $140 a barrel and energy-producing countries around the world—Russia, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Bolivia and others—are exerting a tighter national grip over their reserves. Such contracts cannot be explained outside of their being negotiated at the point of a gun.

The deals have been structured as “service agreements” in order to circumvent restrictions that would have ensued under Iraq’s draft oil law, which the Iraqi parliament has proven unable to pass because of both nationalist opposition to foreign exploitation of the country’s reserves and disputes between the federal government and Iraqi regional entities over control of the oil fields.

In reality, however, the two-year deals provide for payment to foreign companies in oil, opening up the possibility of substantial profits. Moreover, as one oil expert commented, they provide the “foothold” for the four major Western companies, paving the way to far more intensive exploitation.

A total of 46 companies, including Lukoil of Russia, China National, India’s major oil company and others had memorandums of understanding with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, according to the Times.

Yet none of them were allowed to bid for contracts. Instead, the deals are being handed over without any competition to Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total and British Petroleum.

The Times comments, “While the current contracts are unrelated to the companies’ previous work in Iraq, in a twist of corporate history for some of the world’s largest companies, all four oil majors that had lost their concessions in Iraq are now back.”

In a similar vein, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News: “The United States government has stayed out of the matter of awarding the Iraqi oil contracts. It’s a private sector matter.” However Rice, a former director of Chevron, which is participating in one of the contracts in a consortium with Total, acknowledged that with the new deals “it’s starting to get interesting in Iraq.”

This is all nonsense and lies. The new contracts have everything to do with the role played by these companies decades ago and their determination to wrest back the control they exercised before Iraq nationalized its oil industry and ejected the US and British oil giants in 1972, a move that ushered in a wave of nationalizations throughout the oil-producing countries.

Before then, the Iraq Petroleum Company was dominated by the US and British companies, which controlled three-quarters of the country’s oil production.

Moreover, the US government has worked over decades to re-impose American domination over Iraq, which has the second largest proven oil reserves—115 billion barrels—and the largest unexplored reserves of any country in the world.

The disingenuous explanation given by the US-dominated Iraqi regime—and echoed by the Times—for the supposedly serendipitous return to dominance of the very companies that controlled the country’s oil production 36 years ago is that “they had been advising the ministry without charge.”

Yet, as the Times article notes, Russia’s Lukoil, which had been training Iraqi oil engineers free of charge, is being thrown out of an oilfield where it held a previously signed contract, in order to make way for Chevron and Total.

The reality is that these contracts are the direct product of armed aggression. In the wake of the invasion, US troops seized control of the oilfields and secured the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, even as it left every other governmental and cultural institution to the mercy of the looters. It then selected Phillip Carroll, the former president of Shell Oil, to head up an “advisory board” to assume control over the ministry.

As the Times delicately notes: “It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.”

The drive by the US government and the oil monopolies to regain their control over Iraq’s oil wealth began well before the Bush administration launched its unprovoked war in March 2003 and constitutes a bipartisan policy that has been pursued by Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the conditions emerged for US imperialism to pursue this strategic aim with continuously escalating violence and aggression.

After Iraq’s infrastructure was shattered in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the Clinton administration campaigned for punishing United Nations sanctions that choked off essential food and medical supplies and resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional lives.

The critical strategic aim of these sanctions was to block the resumption of oil production and prevent the realization of contracts signed between the government of Saddam Hussein and foreign rivals of the big US and British companies, particularly Russian and Chinese producers as well as France’s Total.

This was combined with stepped-up military attacks, as the Clinton administration hammered Iraq with cruise missiles in a series of strikes dubbed Operation Phoenix Scorpion, Operation Desert Thunder and Operation Desert Fox, all preludes to the ultimate invasion.

At the same time, Clinton signed into law the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998,” leveling the charges of “weapons of mass destruction” that would be used to justify war less than three years later and declaring that US policy was “to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”

With the installation of the Bush administration, preparations for the armed takeover of Iraq began in earnest. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act from a national energy task force chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney in early 2001 included a map of Iraq’s oilfields and a list of “foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts.”

The imposition of the contracts for the four big oil firms has confirmed what the Iraq war was about from its conception—well before the September 11, 2001 attacks. The false claims about “weapons of mass destruction” and the invention of ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda were pretexts for a war aimed at re-establishing semi-colonial control over Iraq and its oil wealth, thereby furthering the US drive for global hegemony.

What is involved is a conspiracy by the government and powerful corporations to foist a war of aggression onto the American people.

Far from provoking outrage or the calls for investigations, however, news of the oil contracts has been met with a deafening silence from the mass media and the political establishment alike. The same television news outlets that trumpeted the Bush administration’s lies about WMD and terrorism passed over the oil deals without a mention.

There is ample evidence that furthering the interests of the oil conglomerates and American imperialism as a whole by continuing the war and occupation in Iraq remains a consensus policy supported by Democrats and Republicans alike.

On the same day that news of the oil contracts broke, the Democratic leadership of the House moved to approve another $165 billion Iraq war funding package, bringing the total amount legislated by Congress to continue a war that is opposed by the overwhelming majority of the American people to over $600 billion.

The 2008 presidential election contest has been presented by the media and the two presidential candidates—Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain—as a choice between a US withdrawal from Iraq or continuing the war until victory.

Yet, the ongoing negotiations over a “Status of Force Agreement,” or SOFA, providing for the long-term presence of US occupation troops in the country has pointed to an underlying agreement on Washington’s future course.

Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, in Washington for the talks on the SOFA, held discussions this week with both McCain and Obama on future US policy in the country.

The Washington Post quoted Zebari Wednesday as saying that Obama had assured him that a Democratic administration would “not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or actions.” Obama explained, he said, that he “wants redeployment,” but that he “is not interested to pull all troops out. He wants a residual force” in Iraq to carry out anti-terrorist operations, protect US facilities and train Iraqi security forces.

According to the Post the Iraqi foreign minister concluded that “there was ‘not too much difference’ between Obama’s position and that of the presumptive Republican nominee…”

In other words, both candidates are determined to continue shedding blood—Iraqi and US alike—to advance the cause of securing Iraq’s oil reserves for Exxon-Mobil and the other energy corporations and to create a base of operations for new and even bloodier wars of aggression in the region, including against Iran.

Afghanistan in an Amorphous War

Ellie Keen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:53:14 +0000

An incident causing major loss of life in Iraq, and an enduring pattern of low-level violence in north Africa, have created concern that the cautious sense of progress in the campaign against al-Qaida in recent months may prove more apparent than real. Even these serious events, however, are overshadowed by evidence of a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. At the same time, all these theatres of the global "war on terror" share underlying affinities that United States strategy in this war is tending to reinforce.

The Iraqi incident was a car-bomb attack on a crowded Baghdad market on 17 June 2008 which killed sixty-three people and wounded seventy-eight. This, the most destructive explosion in the city since 6 March, was all the more painful for coming at a time when a certain optimism about Iraq's security and wider prospects was achieving traction (see "Iraq starts to fix itself", Economist, 12 June 2008). A further aspect of this was the declining number of victims, both American (in May 2008, nineteen soldiers died, the lowest monthly total than in any month since the war began in March 2003) and Iraqi (civilian casualties were also at a relatively low level in May – although still in the hundreds).

These signs of improvements had done much to support the view – expressed most vocally on the American right, but shared by others too – that the war in Iraq was, or was becoming, winnable. Those sympathetic to John McCain in the presidential campaign suggest that he should make this theme (and his broader support for the war and the US's military "surge" strategy) a centrepiece of his contest with Barack Obama (see Charles Krauthammer, "McCain must make case for Iraq", Newsday, 19 Jun 2008). The implication here is that Iraq is and will remain what it has been – the pivot of the entire "war on terror", where the now-expected destruction of what is termed "al-Qaida in Iraq" is a sign of decisive progress in the war as a whole.

The Afghan landscape

The progress that has been made in increasing security for many Iraqi citizens – partly through the social division of much of the population by repeated bouts of fighting and expulsion, partly through the deals made with elements of the Sunni community against al-Qaida forces, partly though the exhaustions of war – is given as justification of this optimistic view. This approach, however, tends to ignore other, more uncomfortable pointers to the al-Qaida movement's condition – including the attack on 2 June on the Danish embassy in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad; and a series of bombings on 4-8 June in Algeria that killed a number of people (the precise total is in dispute). The most important of these trends is the upsurge in violence in Afghanistan. In May 2008, the deaths among coalition troops in that country exceeded those in Iraq for the first time; June has also been marked by numerous hits against British troops, which took the total killed in the war to 106.

There had earlier been a widespread anticipation that the summer months would see a renewed Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan, although there was also some caution about the prospect of major attacks (see "Al-Qaida's afterlife", 29 May 2008). The fact that overwhelming firepower is available to Nato forces has made it all the more likely that Taliban and other militias would opt to diversify and "miniaturise" its tactics, including the use of roadside- and suicide-bombs.

The war in Afghanistan has been attracting less media attention in the United States than that in Iraq, and the evolving reportage of the presidential campaign may accentuate the contrast (see Jim Malone, "Iraq: The Defining Difference Between McCain, Obama", VOA, 13 June 2008). But inside the Pentagon it was becoming clear that the security problem there was rapidly developing, in part because many districts in western Pakistan had become safe havens for Taliban, al-Qaida and other militias.

The US response to this increased threat has been threefold:

increase troop levels in Afghanistan and seek to take overall responsibility for the counterinsurgency war, at least in the southern and southeastern parts of the country
pressurise Pakistan to limit militia operations in its own western districts

make a determined effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

An announcement by Britain's ministry of defence series of incidents in which British troops were killed led the country's Britain's ministry of defence to announce a further increase of 230 in troop numbers, taking the total to around 8,030 by spring 2009 – though this was linked to a claim that the Taliban were in retreat rather than making gains. This bullish assessment contrasted with a more cautious measure of the condition of security in Afghanistan from the senior US army commander in the country, General Dan K McNeill, at the end of his sixteen-month posting on 3 June (see Ann Scott Tyson, "A Sober Assessment of Afghanistan", Washington Post, 15 June 2008).

McNeill emphasised that the last three years had seen a gradual resurgence of Taliban activity. At the same time, the number of troops operating under Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) had risen over a three-year period to 53,000 from forty countries. But this was not enough, McNeill contended: a much larger troop deployment would be required if the Taliban militias were to be defeated.

The Taliban vision

Three major developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan that took place within days of McNeill's departure from the country both underpinned his judgment and gave an indication of the likely course of events in summer 2008.

The first was the killing on 10 June of eleven members of Pakistan's official Frontier Corps as a result of a US air-strike. Some reports say that the Pakistani troops were actually aiding a Taliban group under attack by US and Afghan troops close to the border. This has not been confirmed, but it would not be entirely surprising, given local sympathies for fellow-Pushtun Pakistani paramilitaries in some parts of the Pakistani army (see Anna Mulrine, "Pakistan's Border Badlands Are a Challenge for the Next President", US News & World Report, 13 June 2008.

More important, though, is the reaction within Pakistan to this event. The loss of life has intensified a deep-seated public antipathy to the United States and its conduct of its "war on terror". The killing of the Frontier Corps soldiers will make it difficult for a Pakistani government of any persuasion to work with Washington. Moreover, the incident comes at a time when the Pentagon's closest ally in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf – still the country's president, though weakened after the elections of February 2008 – is facing severe political challenges to his authority, and may even be obliged to resign in the next few weeks (see Syed Saleem Shahzad, "US strike hits Pakistan's raw nerve", Asia Times, 12 June 2008).

The second development was the extraordinary break-out from Sarpoza prison in Kandahar, in an operation planned and executed by Taliban elements. In a coordinated assault where the explosion of a bomb hidden in a road-tanker was followed by a direct paramilitary invasion of the city's main prison, several hundred Taliban prisoners were released. The incident is all the more serious because (as is perhaps not fully appreciated in the western media) Kandahar is one of the main centres of coalition military resources in Afghanistan, host (for example) to its second-largest air base.

The third development compounded the Taliban attack on the jail. This was the deployment of at least 500 paramilitaries to overrun a number of villages close to Kandahar. At the same time, the combination of the jail attack and the subsequent offensive is unlikely to mark the start of a Taliban operation to take control of Kandahar, since Nato with all its firepower will not allow that to happen. What is more probable is that this operation is a show of strength, and the prelude to a Nato counter-offensive which the Taliban forces will respond to by melting away until the next opportunity is chosen.

The two actions show is that the Taliban militias do not have to limit their operations to small-scale guerrilla attacks; the level of their support means that they are well beyond that and can engage in large-scale offensives too, at a time of their own choosing.

More generally, the Taliban strategists will see this as one part of the early stage of a decades-long war; they do not have to win in the conventional military sense, they merely have to outlast those foreign forces seen as the occupiers, especially in the face of divisions within Nato (see Anna Mulrine, "A Struggling Coalition of the Willing and the Not-So-Willing", US News & World Report, 16 June 2008).

The global horizon

These recent developments in Afghanistan confirm that the focus of the US "war on terror" may really be shifting eastwards. At the very moment when neo-conservative elements in Washington speak of winning the Iraq war, that very war is becoming less relevant in the context of the larger picture. The US insistence on maintaining a very large military presence there indicates that the Iraq war is far from reaching its endgame, but in one sense it has already served its purpose (see Tom Englehardt, "The Greatest Story Never Told: Finally, the US Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News", TomDispatch.com, 15 June 2008).

More than five years of fighting in Iraq have given the wider al-Qaida / jihadist movement a new generation of paramilitaries trained against well-armed and equipped US soldiers and marines. Many of the tactics honed in Iraq are now being applied in Afghanistan, not least in the form of roadside bombs and the tactical nous employed to avoid Nato's air power (see Caroline Gammell & Tom Coghlan, "The increasing sophistication of Afghanistan's roadside bombs", Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2008). All this, combined with the persistent uncertainties in Iraq, and the significant and under-reported currents in north Africa, means that the "war on terror" has moved on.

Whether they are right or wrong, those who claim that Iraq is or is becoming a success fail to realise that the country's importance in the global arena of conflict is diminishing. This has been the recurrent story of the George W Bush administration's "war on terror". It is a further reason to argue that, in the absence of fundamental changes of approach, the world is still in the early stages of a decades-long confrontation.

Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War

eddie — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:53:18 +0000

Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office’s Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a “world shortage” of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as “the tide of Easternisation” – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes “two thirds of the Middle East’s oil.”

After the 2004 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi civilian administration, Brigadier Ellery set up and ran the 700-strong security framework operation in support of the US-funded Reconstruction of Iraq. His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April.

World Oil Shortage

“The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week”, he said, “was less to do with security of supply… than World shortage.” He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world. “Russia’s production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq,” he said. Whether Iraq began “favouring East or West” could therefore be “de-stabilizing” not only “within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest.”

Last month geological surveys and seismic data compiled by several international oil companies exploring Iraqi oil reserves showed that Iraq has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels, significantly exceeding Saudi Arabia’s 264 billion barrels, according to a report in the London Times. Former Bush administration energy adviser Matthew Simmons, author of the book Twilight in the Desert, says that Saudi oil production has probably already peaked, with production rates declining consecutively each year. This month the UK Treasury Department warned of the danger of an oil supply crunch by 2015, due to rocketing demand from China and India.

The Threat of Easternisation

Brigadier Ellery’s career in the British Army has involved stints in the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. “Iraq holds the key to stability in the region,” he said, “unless that is you believe the tide of ‘Easternisation’ is such that the USA and the West are in such decline, relative to the emerging China and India, that it is the East – not the West – which is more likely to guarantee stability. Incidentally, I do not.” Iraq’s pivotal importance in the Middle East, he explained, is because of its “relatively large, consuming population” at 24 million, its being home to “the second largest reserve of oil – under exploited”, and finally its geostrategic location “on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa – hence the Silk Road.”

Oil production peaks when a given petroleum reserve is depleted by half, after which oil is geophysically increasingly difficult to extract, causing production to plateau, and then steadily decline. US oil production peaked by 1970, while British production in the North Sea peaked by 2000, converting both countries from exporters into net importers of oil and gas.

Oil industry experts and petroleum geologists increasingly believe that world oil production is precariously close to peaking. According to an October 2007 report by the German-based Energy Watch Group, run by an international network of European politicians and scientists, world oil production peaked in 2006. According to BP’s annual statistical review of world energy supply and demand for 2008, released on 11th June, world oil production fell last year for the first time since 2002, by 130,000 barrels per day last year to 81.53 million. Yet world consumption continued to rise by 1.1 per cent to 85.22 million barrels per day, outweighing production by nearly 5 per cent.

Iraqi Reconstruction Corruption Whitewash

Brigadier-General James Ellery is currently Director of Operations at AEGIS Defence Services Ltd., a private British security firm and US defence contractor since June 2004. In April this year, the same month as Ellery’s SOAS lecture, AEGIS won the renewal of its US defence department (DoD) contract for two more years, which at $475 million is the single largest security contract brokered by the DoD. The contract is to provide security services for reconstruction projects in Iraq conducted by mostly American companies.

A US government audit by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, released exactly two years before Brigadier Ellery’s SOAS presentation, concluded that AEGIS could not prove it had properly trained or vetted several armed Iraqi employees. For a random sample of 20 armed guards, no training documentation was found for 14 of them. For 125 other employees, AEGIS reportedly failed to document background checks. The auditors concluded that “there is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best possible safety and security for government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities.”

During his April presentation at SOAS, AEGIS director Ellery declared, “Iraq promises a degree of prosperity in the region as it embarks on massive Iraqi-funded reconstruction, a part of which will raise Iraqi’s oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day.” He added, “With a budget of $187 billion over 4 years, Iraq is poised to have a considerable impact on the economies of countries whose technologies can fill the skills gap left by the latter years of Saddam Hussein’s regime.”

During the UN sanctions regime imposed primarily by the US and Britain, Iraq was banned from importing thousands of household goods, including food, medicines, clothes and books, from 1991 to 2003, purportedly to prevent Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. It is now widely recognized that the sanctions led to massive socio-economic deprivation, the break-down of civilian infrastructure, large-scale unemployment, and de-industrialisation, resulting in the deaths of up to 1.8 million Iraqis, half of whom were children. The humanitarian crisis led United Nations officials such as Dennis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, and Hans von Sponeck, former Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, to resign in protest.

Today, those profiting most from reconstruction projects in Iraq are not Iraqis, but private contractors based primarily in the United States and Britain, according to a new report out last month by Stuart Bowen Jr, incumbent Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The Bowen Report found that at least 855 contracts valued at billions of dollars were cancelled before completion. Another 112 agreements were cancelled because of poor performance, while still more projects recorded as completed never happened. In one case, a $50 million children’s hospital in Basra is listed as completed although the contract was stopped when only 35 percent of the work was finished.

During Brigadier Ellery’s tenure at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, under Paul Bremer’s leadership $8.8 billion of reconstruction funds were unaccounted for, and a further $3.4 billion was re-directed for “security” purposes. A UN body to audit the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), by which the CPA Programme Review Board managed Iraqi oil revenues until June 2004, found “gross irregularities by CPA officials in their management of the DFI,” and condemned the United States for “lack of transparency” and providing the opportunity for “fraudulent acts.”

Under American- and British-administered Iraqi reconstruction programmes, Iraqi agriculture has been devastated. In 2004, the Coalition Provision Authority imposed a hundred economic orders designed to open Iraq’s economy to foreign investment, including Order 12 for tax- and tariff-free imports of foreign products. The Order allowed the giant American agribusiness conglomerate Cargill to flood Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cheap wheat, undercutting local food prices, and wiping out the livelihoods of Iraqi farmers.

As an executive director of AEGIS, one of the most prominent US defence contractors in Iraq, Brigadier Ellery is a personal beneficiary of the privatisation of the Iraqi economy. In the conclusions of his April address, he said, “Iraq has resources aplenty: not just oil, of which there is a prodigious quantity”, but especially “the capacity to rebuild a balanced economy including agriculture – for which Iraq was a legend.”
Labels: corruption, energy crisis, iraq war, peak oil, reconstruction, supply crunch

Between False Refuge and the Peril of Return

Ellie Keen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Peace, or something like it, breaks out in Iraq. US-led foreign forces declare violence has tapered off to the lowest levels in years, thanks to additional troops, security cooperation with Sunni tribal leaders and erstwhile insurgents, and a tentative halt to the activities of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. An Iraqi government derided as sectarian and dysfunctional steps up to promote political accommodation and begins taking more responsibility for security and providing services. Stability takes hold, paving the way for about two million Iraqis who have fled the country to make their way home.
An uncertain future
The scenario outlined above can be, and is, disputed. Whether or how long a period of relative calm will last remains to be seen; Iraq's political future – including a long-term US military presence being negotiated in Baghdad and Washington – is itself an open question. But on the subject of refugees, a dangerous certainty now unites Iraq's government, the United States, and some Western countries, notably Britain, where Iraqis have sought a haven from the bloodshed that the US invasion ushered in. They are encouraging – and in the case of Britain, forcing – the return of Iraqi refugees on the grounds that the country is now stable enough to receive them. Politically attractive though this may be, it also contradicts international law prohibiting the forced return of anyone to territory where his or her life or freedom is threatened.

With prodding from Washington, the Iraqi government has renewed calls for refugees to return. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced at a recent summit on Iraqi reconstruction that his government would work to create conditions that facilitate return and provide financial incentives to Iraqis who return from abroad; the Ministry of Migration and Displacement subsequently announced that $195 million would be allocated to cover returnees' expenses.

Since 2005, Britain has returned failed asylum seekers to areas controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which administers the three northern governorates that are the most stable part of Iraq, on the grounds that the region is safe. On 11 June 2008, the Guardian reported that the UK Border Agency planned to expand its deportation scheme to include other parts of Iraq, recently detaining dozens of failed Iraqi asylum seekers for possible deportation, including some from areas not controlled by the KRG. If confirmed, this would harden a policy toward Iraqi asylum seekers that was unforgiving from the start.

A contradictory policy

Home Office correspondence leaked in March stated that failed asylum seekers will lose financial support unless they agree to a voluntary repatriation program under the auspices of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The repatriation procedure as described in this correspondence included a waiver absolving the deporting authority of any responsibility for what may happen following repatriation. The basis for deportation to the whole of Iraq has drawn strength from a ruling in the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) earlier this year, narrowing the scope for protection against deportation under European Council directive 15©. The AIT's ruling found "neither civilians in Iraq generally nor civilians even in provinces and cities worst-affected by the armed conflict can show they face a ‘serious and individual threat' to their ‘life or person'...merely by virtue of being civilians."

Contradictions abound in the justifications for repatriating Iraqis to the north and elsewhere. The Home Office December 2007 immigration policy statement on Iraq explicitly rejects the opinion of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that relocation to central and southern Iraq is unsafe; yet failed asylum seekers who agree to voluntary repatriation are asked to absolve those who send them back from any responsibility for what may happen after they arrive. UK authorities express a strong preference that returns be voluntary; yet surveys of Iraqi refugees, including Human Rights Watch interviews with those who have returned, indicate that economic and administrative pressure nearly always figure prominently in even voluntary returns to Iraq.

To justify sending asylum seekers back, the asylum tribunal invokes and works to argue around a European Council directive aimed at preventing deportations back into armed conflict. That reading runs up against the UK's broad commitment, as a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, to the principle of non-refoulement: the agreement not to return refugees to countries where their lives or freedom are at risk.
Political expediency

There is, however, one depressing note of consistency that emerges from Britain's treatment of Iraqi asylum seekers. Like the United States, its senior partner in the invasion of Iraq, Britain appears willing to use the lives of refugees to bolster political arguments for success in Iraq – the US by admitting only symbolic numbers of refugees, the UK by returning asylum seekers to danger. Perhaps the desire to claim victory or at least validation in Iraq by citing diminished violence – though by any standard other than the carnage of recent years, Iraq remains an incredibly dangerous place – as evidence of stability that could support the return of refugees, has trumped other considerations.

These considerations should include the dire conditions facing approximately 2.7 million people who are internally displaced within Iraq; UNHCR estimates that more than a million of the internally displaced lack adequate shelter and food. The head of Iraq's parliamentary committee on displacement last month suggested that the committee should simply resign over what he called the government's inability to address the needs of the displaced and refugees.

The narrative of emerging security and stability in Iraq, should it develop into durable fact, would be welcome. Meanwhile, Britain, like the United States, bears particular responsibility toward the refugees whose flight originated in the chaos and violence that the invasion of Iraq has wrought. It can begin meeting that responsibility by acknowledging that those Iraqis who seek safety in Britain have legitimate fears about what awaits them at home.

More troops for Afghanistan, no Iraq withdrawal

Ellie Keen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

At a joint press conference with US President George Bush yesterday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan, taking the UK’s contingent in the country to its “highest level.”

After speculation in the media of a rift between London and Washington over troop deployments in Iraq, he added that there was no “timetable” for a withdrawal from the country. Britain has 4,200 troops remaining in Iraq on the outskirts of Basra and took part in the US-Iraqi offensive in late March against Shiite militiamen in the city. He also supported Bush in pledging that tougher sanctions will be imposed on Iran for failing to stop its nuclear energy programme.

Defence Secretary Des Browne later told parliament that a further 230 soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan, taking the total to around 8,030 by early 2009.

Sunday’s Observer newspaper had claimed that Bush had delivered a “stern message” to Brown last week, warning about further reductions of British forces in Iraq. The White House moved to defuse the issue by saying, “What the president said is what the president has been saying and Prime Minister Brown has been saying from the very beginning.” Downing Street declared that it was not British policy to set “arbitrary timetables” on troop withdrawal.

At their press conference Bush said, “I have no problem with how Gordon Brown is dealing with Iraq. He’s been a good partner.”

He continued, “I just want to remind you that [Brown] has left more troops in Iraq than he initially anticipated. Like me, he will be making his decisions based on the conditions on the ground without an artificial timetable based on politics.”

He warmly welcomed Brown’s pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan and to step up sanctions against Iran, praising him for being “tough on terror.”

In relation to Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown said, “There is still work to be done and Britain plays, and will continue to play, its part.” He praised Bush as a “true friend of Britain” and for the “steadfast resolution that he has shown in rooting out terrorism in all parts of the world.”

On Iran, Brown stated, “I will repeat that we will take any necessary action so that Iran is aware of the choice it has to make—to start to play its part as a full and respected member of the international community, or face further isolation.”

Britain would urge Europe to impose “further sanctions” on Iran, he said, by freezing the assets of the country’s biggest bank and imposing new sanctions on oil and gas.

Bush thanked Brown for his “strong statement,” and added, “The Iranians must understand that when we come together and speak with one voice we are serious.” Pressure was necessary to “solve this problem diplomatically,” but “Iranians must understand, however, that all options are on the table,” he threatened.

Brown’s pronouncements gave Bush everything he wanted. They were a kick in the teeth to those in the ruling elite and sections of the press who hoped that Brown’s elevation to prime minister would signal an end to Tony Blair’s “mistake” of aligning Britain too closely with the US.

Brown’s craven support for Bush reveals that far more was involved than a policy error on Blair’s part. Both men represent the dominant financial elite, whose central aim is utilise relations with Washington to project a global military and economic presence for British imperialism, while strengthening its hand against its major European rivals, Germany and France. And even though things have gone badly, there is little sign that anyone has an alternative perspective to offer within ruling circles, least of all Brown himself.

Brown’s pronouncements only highlighted the impotence of the perspective promulgated by the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), which helped organise an anti-Bush demonstration on Sunday in tandem with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British Muslim Initiative. Originally banned from assembling in Parliament at midday, the police finally allowed it to take place in the early evening but continued to refuse it permission to march the few hundred yards to Downing Street where Brown was entertaining Bush.

The StWC was the main beneficiary of the mass movement against the Iraq war and the widespread sentiment it provoked amongst working people for a political alternative to Labour. A key role was played by the Socialist Workers Party, which insisted that there was no possibility of the struggle against war being conducted on the basis of socialism. It had to formulate demands that could be supported by everyone, including a handful of Labour rebels and trade union functionaries, Liberal Democrats, nationalist parties, dissident Conservatives and the coalition’s other major affiliates, CND and the Muslim Association of Britain—a small group of Arab Islamists that portrayed the Iraq war in religious terms.

As Blair’s hold on power became increasingly untenable the StWC sold the idea that Brown, then his chancellor, would break from policies that he had fully supported. A letter was drafted by Communist Party of Britain leader Andrew Murray and StWC convenor and SWP leader Lindsey German that whilst acknowledging that “Brown has been at the Prime Minister’s right hand throughout the decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan” claimed, “Nevertheless, it is our conviction that mass pressure, combined with electoral self-interest, can force the British government to break from George Bush’s wars.”

The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were described as “Bush’s wars” in order to provide a retroactive amnesty for all those Labourites who had voted in favour of war alongside Blair and Brown.

The Sunday demonstration also saw the antiwar MP George Galloway using his opportunity to sow dangerous illusions in Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. He repeated statements he made earlier in the month on Arab TV when he said, “I pray for the safety of Barack Obama, and I pray that he can shift the United States’ attitude. So as we come towards the November elections, and the real prospect of a significant victory for Obama, everyone will have to re-find their footing, and these puppet presidents and corrupt kings [in the Middle East] may discover that the ground has moved under their feet, Allah willing.”

Earlier this year Galloway declared, “My guess is America is looking for real change, and only Barack Obama represents that.”

Obama seeks to portray himself as an opponent of the Iraq war, but has repeatedly rejected what he describes as a “precipitous withdrawal” of troops—Bush’s “artificial timetable”—stating that he “has always believed that our troops need to be withdrawn responsibly” and that troops involved in “counterterrorism” operations would stay. In practice this means maintaining the occupation indefinitely.

In his June 4 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while repeating his support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, he said, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”

Obama represents a section of the American ruling elite that has concluded that a significant change in stance and personnel is required to salvage the interests of US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally. These layers do not oppose military action as such, but regard the Bush administration’s single-minded focus on winning a military victory in Iraq as unwise and ultimately disastrous. An Obama presidency would not represent a fundamental break with the politics of American imperialism, but rather its continuation in a new form.

The attempt to prevent and curtail a peaceful antiwar protest is made necessary by the absence of any democratic mandate for the policies pursued by Brown and Blair before him. It led to open conflict between a massive number of police and some protesters, resulting in 25 arrests and some serious injuries. Two rows of barriers were erected to prevent access to Whitehall, together with rows of police officers and riot vans.

"Complicit Enablers"

Tim Holmes — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:35:16 +0000

UK Media Ignore US Whistleblowers

In April 2006, George Bush bade farewell to his outgoing White House press secretary, Scott McClellan:

“One day he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas talking about the good old days and his time as press secretary.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bushs-fury-as-exspokesman-twists-the-knife-837678.html)

The rocking chair plans will have been shelved for good after the publication of McClellan’s new memoir, ‘What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.’

McClellan describes how Bush relied on a “political propaganda campaign” rather than the truth to sell the Iraq war to the American public. The invasion was “unnecessary”, he suggests, a “strategic blunder”, with Bush having made up his mind early on to attack Saddam Hussein. (Ibid) The way Bush managed the issue “almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.” (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5guUtnrUWgvNv66lQY1EVplm1xBqwD90UNQ2O1)

McClellan adds:

“In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage.” (Ibid))

The claim that Bush decided early in his presidency to attack Iraq is supported by earlier exposés. The leaked minutes of a highly confidential Downing Street memo dated July 23, 2002 records the words of Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6. Dearlove commented on a recent visit to Washington where he had held talks with George Tenet, director of the CIA:

“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” (Michael Smith, ‘Blair planned Iraq war from start,’ Sunday Times, May 1, 2005)

This was eight months before the invasion, but the decision to attack had been taken much earlier. In January 2004, former US Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill revealed that the Bush administration had come to office determined to topple Saddam Hussein:

“It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this’... From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.” (Julian Borger, ‘Bush decided to remove Saddam “on day one“’, The Guardian, January 12, 2004)

O’Neill reported seeing one memorandum preparing for war dating from the first days of the administration. Another, marked “secret” was titled, “Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.” (Ibid)

According to McClellan, Bush has little time for policy detail. He prefers to follow his gut feelings on foreign affairs, about which he knew next to nothing when he took office. Since then, he has lived in a kind of “bubble” that isolates him from the real world. As McClellan put it in a recent interview, “only as you leave the White House bubble, can you take off your partisan hat and take a clear-eyed view of things”. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/28/ST2008052803135.html)

Squashing Dissent

McClellan has also rounded on the media, calling them “complicit enablers” in Bush’s campaign to manipulate public opinion. (Jennifer Loven, ‘White House calls McClellan’s book sour grapes,’ Associated Press, May 28, 2008; http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080528/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_mcclellan_book)

Several journalists have backed his criticisms. CBS news anchor, Katie Couric, said last month that the lack of media scepticism ahead of the war was “one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism.” Couric disclosed that, while working as a host of ‘Today’ on NBC, she had felt pressure from “the corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it.” (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0805/28/sitroom.01.html)

Howard Kurtz, the host of CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ commented:

“Couric has told me that while she was at NBC... she got what she described as complaints from network executives when she challenged the Bush administration.” (Ibid)

Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in 2003 and now reports for CNN, said last month that journalists had been “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation.” (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/29/yellin/)

Yellin added: “And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives… the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.” (Ibid)

She explained that media bosses “would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.” (Ibid)

As we reported in March, pieces critical of Bush-Blair claims on Iraq were also rejected in the British media. (See http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080305_flat_earth_news.php)

Phil Donahue was host of ‘Donohue’ on MSNBC from 2002-2003. Despite having the highest ratings of any show on MSNBC, the programme was cancelled on February 25, 2003. A leaked NBC memo described how the show presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war… He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/29/yellin/)

Bill Moyers interviewed Donahue in 2007:

Moyers: “You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.”

Donahue: “You didn’t have him alone. He had to be there with someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn’t have Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.”

Moyers: “You could have the conservative.”

Donahue: “You could have the supporters of the President alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn’t have a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal.”

Moyers: “You’re kidding.”

Donahue: “No this is absolutely true.”

Moyers: “Instructed from above?”

Donahue: “Yes. I was counted as two liberals.” (Ibid)

Senior journalists very rarely admit that their employers pressure them to follow a political line; it is a pressure that is supposed not to exist. And yet there has been only one mention of Yellin’s comment (in the Independent), and none of Couric’s, in the entire UK press.

Smearing the Whistleblower – It’s All Cisterns Go!

As was the case with Paul O’Neill before him, references to McClellan’s whistleblowing have tended to focus on abuse directed at him by critics, mostly former colleagues. Tom Baldwin of The Times, for example, published a classic smear:

“Scott McClellan sought yesterday to justify writing a excoriating tell-tale account of his time as one of President Bush’s closest aides, saying that he had been guided by a ‘higher loyalty‘.

“Critics, including close colleagues and friends, have accused the former White House press secretary of betraying Mr Bush. Others have described his book as ‘pathetic’ or a desperate effort to make some money having become virtually unemployable since leaving his post.” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4029640.ece)

Trent Duffy, who worked as McClellan’s deputy, was quoted:

“Here’s a man who owes his whole career to George W. Bush, and here he’s stabbing him in the back. He appears to be dancing on his political grave for cash.”

Baldwin could have quoted any number of anti-war commentators who would have been happy to praise McClellan for his honesty. Media Channel’s Danny Schechter, for example, wrote:

“It’s easy to put McClellan down… but, at least, he had the courage, these many years later, to confirm what I and others have been saying for years.” (http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/06/02/mcclellan-missile-media-crimes-as-war-crimes/)

Not one comment of this kind has been cited anywhere in the UK press praising McClellan. The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph, for example, also focused solely on critics heaping opprobrium on McClellan. Christopher Hitchens wrote in the Sunday Express:

“When President Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill defected from the Cabinet in 2002… Michael Kinsley observed that the President deserved all he got from the book. Anyone dumb enough to hire a fool like O’Neill in the first place ought to have known what to expect.

“So it goes with the ludicrous figure of Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary. I used to watch this mooncalf blunder his way through press conferences and think: ‘Exactly where do we find such men?

“’For the job of swabbing out the White House stables, yes. But for any task involving the weighing of words? Hah!’” (Hitchens, ‘Bush is brought to book,’ Sunday Express, June 8, 2008)

In discussing the story, the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Mirror, the Evening Standard and the Sunday Express all failed to mention McClellan’s key reference to the media as “complicit enablers”.

This silence links to one of the great pillars of modern thought control: namely, that the media’s claim to impartiality must not be subject to serious discussion. The public is to understand that the media offer neutral windows on the world. The idea that these windows might all be framed, structured and oriented to present essentially the same view of the world favouring the same powerful interests is a thought too far.

The fact of totalitarian levels of thought control in our society is clear – the precise mechanism by which that control is achieved in an ostensibly free society, is complex and interesting, but of secondary importance.

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