Pilger: Get Out NOW : Melbourne Indymedia

By John Pilger,
The New Statesman

I have seldom felt as safe in any country. Once, in the Edwardian colonnade of Baghdad's book market, a young man shouted something at me about the hardship his family had been forced to endure under the embargo imposed by America and Britain. What happened next was typical of Iraqis; a passer-by calmed the man, putting his arm around his shoulder, while another was quickly at my side. "Forgive him," he said reassuringly. "We do not connect the people of the west with the actions of their governments. You are welcome."

At one of the melancholy evening auctions where Iraqis come to sell their most intimate possessions out of urgent need, a woman with two infants watched as their pushchairs went for pennies, and a man who had collected doves since he was 15 came with his last bird and its cage; and yet people said to me: "You are welcome." Such grace and dignity were often expressed by those Iraqi exiles who loathed Saddam Hussein and opposed both the economic siege and the Anglo-American assault on their homeland; thousands of these anti-Saddamites marched against the war in London last year, to the chagrin of the warmongers, who never understood the dichotomy of their principled stand.

Were I to undertake the same journey in Iraq today, I might not return alive. Foreign terrorists have ensured that. With the most lethal weapons that billions of dollars can buy, and the threats of their cowboy generals and the panic-stricken brutality of their foot soldiers, more than 120,000 of these invaders have ripped up the fabric of a nation that survived the years of Saddam Hussein, just as they oversaw the destruction of its artefacts. They have brought to Iraq a daily, murderous violence which surpasses that of a tyrant who never promised a fake democracy.

Amnesty International reports that US-led forces have

"shot Iraqis dead during demonstrations, tortured and ill-treated prisoners, arrested people arbitrarily and held them indefinitely, demolished houses in acts of revenge and collective punishment".
In Fallujah, US marines, described as "tremendously precise" by their psychopathic spokesman, slaughtered up to 600 people, according to hospital directors. They did it with aircraft and heavy weapons deployed in urban areas, as revenge for the killing of four American mercenaries [like the civilian contractor, right]. Many of the dead of Fallujah were women and children and the elderly. Only the Arab television networks, notably al-Jazeera, have shown the true scale of this crime, while the Anglo-American media continue to channel and amplify the lies of the White House and Downing Street.

"Writing exclusively for the Observer before a make-or-break summit with President George Bush this week," sang Britain's former premier liberal newspaper on 11 April, "[Tony Blair] gave full backing to American tactics in Iraq . . . saying that the government would not flinch from its 'historic struggle' despite the efforts of 'insurgents and terrorists'."

The Bush/Blair Engine
That this "exclusive" was not presented as parody shows that the propaganda engine that drove the lies of Blair and Bush on weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda links for almost two years is still in service. On BBC news bulletins and Newsnight, Blair's "terrorists" are still currency, a term that is never applied to the principal source and cause of the terrorism, the foreign invaders, who have now killed at least 11,000 civilians, according to Amnesty and others. The overall figure, including conscripts, may be as high as 55,000.

That a nationalist uprising has been under way in Iraq for more than a year, uniting at least 15 major groups, most of them opposed to the old regime, has been suppressed in a mendacious lexicon invented in Washington and London and reported incessantly, CNN-style. "Remnants" and "tribalists" and "fundamentalists" dominate, while Iraq is denied the legacy of a history in which much of the modern world is rooted. The "first-anniversary story" about a laughable poll claiming that half of all Iraqis felt better off now under the occupation is a case in point. The BBC and the rest swallowed it whole. For the truth, I recommend the courageous daily reporting of Jo Wilding, a British human rights observer in Baghdad (http://www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com).

Even now, as the uprising spreads, there is only cryptic gesturing at the obvious: that this is a war of national liberation and that the enemy is "us". The pro-invasion Sydney Morning Herald is typical. Having expressed "surprise" at the uniting of Shias and Sunnis, the paper's Baghdad correspondent recently described "how GI bullies are making enemies of their Iraqi friends" and how he and his driver had been threatened by Americans. "I'll take you out quick as a flash, motherf-cker!" a soldier told the reporter. That this was merely a glimpse of the terror and humiliation that Iraqis have to suffer every day in their own country was not made clear; yet this newspaper has published image after unctuous image of mournful American soldiers, inviting sympathy for an invader who has "taken out" thousands of innocent men, women and children.

What we do routinely in the imperial west, wrote Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, is propagate

"through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen positive images of western values and innocence that are threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence".
Thus, western state terrorism is erased, and a tenet of western journalism is to excuse or minimise "our" culpability, however atrocious. Our dead are counted; theirs are not. Our victims are worthy; theirs are not.

This is an old story; there have been many Iraqs, or what Blair calls "historic struggles" waged against "insurgents and terrorists". Take Kenya in the 1950s. The approved version is still cherished in the west -- first popularised in the press, then in fiction and movies; and like Iraq, it is a lie. "The task to which we have set our minds," declared the governor of Kenya in 1955, "is to civilise a great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state." The slaughter of thousands of nationalists, who were never called nationalists, was British government policy. The myth of the Kenyan uprising was that the Mau Mau brought "demonic terror" to the heroic white settlers. In fact, the Mau Mau killed just 32 Europeans, compared with the estimated 10,000 Kenyans killed by the British, who ran concentration camps where the conditions were so harsh that 402 inmates died in just one month. Torture, flogging and abuse of women and children were commonplace. "The special prisons," wrote the imperial historian V G Kiernan, "were probably as bad as any similar Nazi or Japanese establishments." None of this was reported. The "demonic terror" was all one way: black against white. The racist message was unmistakable.

It was the same in Vietnam. In 1969, the discovery of the American massacre in the village of My Lai was described on the cover of Newsweek as "An American tragedy", not a Vietnamese one. In fact, there were many massacres like My Lai, and almost none of them was reported at the time.

The real tragedy of soldiers policing a colonial occupation is also suppressed. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed in Vietnam. The same number, according to a veterans' study, killed themselves on their return home. Dr Doug Rokke, director of the US army depleted uranium project following the 1991 Gulf invasion, estimates that more than 10,000 American troops have since died as a result, many from contamination illness. When I asked him how many Iraqis had died, he raised his eyes and shook his head. "Solid uranium was used on shells," he said. "Tens of thousands of Iraqis -- men, women and children -- were contaminated. Right through the 1990s, at international symposiums, I watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence and ask, plead, for help with decontamination. The Iraqis didn't use uranium; it was not their weapon. I watched them put their case, describing the deaths and horrific deformities, and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic."

During last year's invasion, both American and British forces again used uranium-tipped shells, leaving whole areas so "hot" with radiation that only military survey teams in full protective clothing can approach them. No warning or medical help is given to Iraqi civilians; thousands of children play in these zones. The "coalition" has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to send experts to assess what Rokke describes as "a catastrophe".

US Concentration Camps
When will this catastrophe be properly reported by those meant to keep the record straight? When will the BBC and others investigate the conditions of some 10,000 Iraqis held without charge, many of them tortured, in US concentration camps inside Iraq, and the corralling, with razor wire, of entire Iraqi villages?

When will the BBC and others stop referring to "the handover of Iraqi sovereignty" on 30 June, although there will be no such handover? The new regime will be stooges, with each ministry controlled by American officials and with its stooge army and stooge police force run by Americans. A Saddamite law prohibiting trade unions for public sector workers will stay in force. Leading members of Saddam's infamous secret police, the Mukhabarat, will run "state security", directed by the CIA. The US military will have the same "status of forces" agreement that they impose on the host nations of their 750 bases around the world, which in effect leaves them in charge. Iraq will be a US colony, like Haiti.

And when will journalists have the professional courage to report the pivotal role that Israel has played in this grand colonial design for the Middle East?
A few weeks ago, Rick Mercier, a young columnist for the Freelance Star, a small paper in Virginia, did what no other journalist has done this past year. He apologised to his readers for the travesty of the reporting of events leading to the attack on Iraq. "Sorry we let unsubstantiated claims drive our coverage," he wrote. "Sorry we let a band of self-serving Iraqi defectors make fools of us. Sorry we fell for Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations . . . Maybe we'll do a better job next war."

Well done, Rick Mercier. But listen to the silence of your colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. No one expects Fox or Wapping or the Daily Telegraph to relent. But what about David Astor's beacon of liberalism, the Observer, which stood against the invasion of Egypt in 1956 and its attendant lies? The Observer not only backed last year's unprovoked, illegal assault on Iraq; it helped create the mendacious atmosphere in which Blair could get away with his crime. The reputation of the Observer, and the fact that it published occasional mitigating material, meant that lies and myths gained legitimacy. A front-page story gave credence to the bogus claim that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks in the US. And there were those unnamed western "intelligence sources", all those straw men, all those hints, in David Rose's two-page "investigation" headlined "The Iraqi connection", that left readers with the impression that Saddam Hussein might well have had a lot to do with the attacks of 11 September 2001. "There are occasions in history," wrote Rose, "when the use of force is both right and sensible". This is one of them." Tell that to 11,000 dead civilians, Mr Rose.

It is said that British officers in Iraq now describe the "tactics" of their American comrades as "appalling". No, the very nature of a colonial occupation is appalling, as the families of 13 Iraqis killed by British soldiers, who are taking the British government to court, will agree. If the British military brass understand an inkling of their own colonial past, not least the bloody British retreat from Iraq 83 years ago, they will whisper in the ear of the little Wellington-cum-Palmerston in 10 Downing Street: "Get out now, before we are thrown out."

"...I have seldom felt as safe in any country..."

I am not surprised. You worked for the former Iraqi government.

In fact, you STILL work for them;

GREEN LEFT WEEKLY: "Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq's anti-occupation resistance?

JOHN PILGER: Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance ..."

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/568/568p10b.htm

hows your CIA membership? Keeping it up? Nice picture, but i asked John and he said hes never had his picture taken with saddam or his painting.

"...Nice picture, but i asked John and he said hes never had his picture taken with saddam or his painting...."

It's on his website at ;
http://pilger.carlton.com/iraq

Without a doubt, brian, yopu are the most stupid individual on the face of the planet.

I beg to differ Chris. I know for a fact there is at least one bigger fool...

Chris Parsons / Crisco up your butthole / zvinger / spinifex / Rebecca Wolstonecroft / ed fusco / popcorn / lesbian and proud / zero point seven per cent / Robert Rabil / D. Thomas / (Groucho) Marx was right / the Silent Majority / Attention K-Mart Shoppers /

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/04/66894_comment.php#67132

You know him?

LOL.
Yeah brian, you must be a real close buddy of John Pilger
Anyway, not sure where Pilger was when he felt so safe in Saddam's Iraq - maybe in one of Saddam's palaces posing beside his portrait
But he sure cannot have been in Northern Iraq where this picture was taken.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/

Amd it's SO good to see 'baby killer media centre' (bkmc) doing his bit for his love object 'brian'

which reminds me;

bkmc himself acknowledges the scale of the crimes committed in Iraq in the following;

...."with victims believed to range between 250,000 and 290,000 over the past two decades, among them at least 100,000 people who are believed to have perished in the Anfal campaign against the Kurds" ..."

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/61170_comment.php

And that's just the Anfal campaign.

http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

brian more recently joined the chorus of malicious liars trying to blame the Halabja attack in the Anfal on Iran!!!Not sure if that's the line taken by his close buddy John Pilger.

bkmc tries to shift the responsibility for Halabja to the USA.

They'll say anything rather than admit their beloved Saddam had anything to do with it.

Hey brian, maybe John was laughing at you just like the rest of us.

brian, could you ask John to remove the picture of Saddam from his web site as quickly as possible.
Thanx

it is indeed there. Next time, have the courtesy to post a link with your stuff.
A picture with pilger next to a photo of saddam no more proves he is pro saddam, than a picture of him with the pope make him a catholic; or a pic of him with sharon makes him a zionist. Get it?

i asked John, but he said he wanted it there to illustrate his a page on iraq. as proof he had been i saddams palace. I asked him, why not post a pic with Chalabi, the current man in power? he replied, the US might not like the idea. Chalabi is still their man.

brian says;

"....it is indeed there...."

Yes, it is.

"....but i asked John and he said hes never had his picture taken with saddam or his painting....."

Next time, have the courtesy to not try and big note yourself with such a silly tale.

the implication of your posting of the pic is to show pilger is pro-saddam. Clearly that interpretation is wrong. I cant see anything pro-saddam i the pic. Can you schow me a picture of sadam shakig hands with pilger? meanwhile, here is one with Rumsfeld:

brian,

I was merely laughing at your ridiculous boast about your having "spoken" with John Pilger and your fanciful insistence that you and he had discussed the picture of him on his website, admiring Saddam's portrait in one of the Fascist dictator's pallaces.

True, I was suggesting, this perhaps accounts for why John had "never felt so safe" while he was in Iraq - as opposed to the hundreds of thousands people that Saddam murdered. They didn't feel so safe.

I don't doubt John - and others like him - would have been MOST welcome guests in Iraq before the dictator was overthrown.

Indeed John even now regularly mouths the slogans of the former regime supporters in their struggle to defeat the Coalition of the Willing.

For god's sake - the man is on record saying it is okay to kill women and kids in support of the so-called "resistance" forces in Iraq, presumably including those Sunni Ba'athist elements which lead the resistance.

For example;

Green Left Weekly:
"Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq's anti-occupation resistance?

John Pilger:
"Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang. ..."

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/568/568p10b.htm

But that's not what I was laughing at.

I was laughing at how your good friend John was either mocking you with his tale about the picture.

Or that you are just a foolish braggart trying to big note yourself by claiming a relationship with him.

Of course, if a knuckle-dragging race hate criminal like you - forever quoting National Vanguard and other neo-Nazi sources - is a friend of Pilgers, that would be interesting.

Though perhaps not surprising.

Anyway, here's another holiday snap from time of John's "so safe" trip to Saddam's Iraq.

And here's the web link for it;

http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

April 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday.
The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over.

The world body claims it transferred all information it had - including 3,059 contracts worth about $6.2 billion for delivery of food and other civilian goods to the post-Saddam governing body, the Coalition Provisional Authority.

- CIA officer testifying to US Senate hearing, after bloody CIA aided Ba'th Party coup overthrew Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Kassem, 1963

"It was an operation where all the "t"s were really crossed. It was a great victory."

- James Critchfield, former head of the CIA's Middle East Desk, describing their involvement in the Ba'athist coup, 1963

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?

Saddam Hussein - As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.

Saddam Hussein - If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.

On August 2, 1990 four days later, Saddam's massed troops invade and occupy Kuwait.

1. Selected indicators before the sanctions

Selected indicators for Iraq in 1988-1989, before the Gulf Crisis of 1990 reveal a country that enjoyed a fairly good standard of living.

The data in Table 1 reflect a modern urban society, in which the wealth it obtained from exporting its oil, was channelled, for the most part, into improving the quality of life of the Iraqi people, which at that period of time (1988-1989) was at a relatively "satisfactory" level, with indications of further improvement. At that time, Iraq reportedly had a good health surveillance and reporting system, hence, official data reported during this period are considered to be fairly reliable.

However, since 1991 the quality of data collected have greatly deteriorated owing to disruption in the communication and transportation networks in the country, which even now have not been fully restored to their original state, because of financial constraints. The data collected since 1991, through presumably this defective or damaged system, in all probability, are underestimates, and this specifically applies to mortality and morbidity data.

The gradual erosion in the credibility of the public health care system for its inability to provide medicines and other vital supplies to the general public, forcing them to go to the private sector for better health care, is another reason why morbidity and mortality data have become unreliable. Moreover, the private sector, in most cases, does not report morbidity data to the official reporting system.

Birth rate - 43 per l 000 population
Crude death rate - 8.0 per l 000 population

2. Impact on the gross national product

The per capita gross national product (GNP) is an indication of the economic status of a country. In 1989, before the 1991 Gulf war, Iraq had a GNP of about US$ 2 800. The effect of the six-week 1991 Gulf war and conditions surrounding the sanctions that were imposed on the country in 1990, is reflected by the GNP rapidly declining from US$ 2 800 in 1989 to US$ l 500 in l99l. More recent official figures are not available. The situation has deteriorated during the past four years, as reflected by the exchange rate of U.S. dollar to the Iraqi dinar, which in December l995 was US$ 1 = 3 000 Iraqi dinars. The monthly salary of a mid-level civil servant during this same period was 5 000 Iraqi dinars (FAO, 1995).

3. Impact on the food situation

In pre-war years, food marketing was strictly controlled by the Government and prices of most food items were largely subsidized. Private trade on the free market was mostly for red meat, fresh milk and cheese, vegetables and fruits. Every citizen was assured an adequate supply of food at affordable prices. The results of a l988 survey of a sample of l l00 primary school children in two selected areas of Baghdad, conducted by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in collaboration with the Nutrition Research Institute of Iraq, revealed that under nutrition was no longer a public health problem in Iraq at that time, and that at least 7% of children had childhood obesity.

IRAQ WATER TREATMMENT VULNERABILITIES (U)

- George Bush, in response to press enquiry if US enforcement of sanctions would include food and essentials, August 14th 1990

‘I am filled with shame and anger at myself, at my cowardice, my silence, my complicity with those, who, despite their claims to the contrary, have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, without incurring the wrath of the [war crimes] tribunal of The Hague, implacably going about their dirty, evil work.’

- Yves Bonnet, Deputy French Prime Minister, describing a recent visit to Iraq, 25th August 1995

"[Bombing missions were a] turkey shoot…it’s almost like you flipped on the light in the kitchen at night and the cockroaches start scurrying, and we’re killing them."

"You asked me to travel, as a matter of urgency, to Iraq. It should be said at once that nothing we had seen or read had quite prepared us for this particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. [...] Most means of modern life have been destroyed. [...] The authorities are as yet scarcely able to measure the dimensions of the calamity, much less respond to its' consequences. The recent conflict has wrought near apocalyptic results; Iraq has been relegated to a pre-industrial age.

All electrically operated installations have ceased to function. Food can not be preserved, water can not be purified, sewage can not be pumped away. Nine thousand homes are destroyed or damaged beyond repair. The flow of food through the private sector has been reduced to a trickle; many food prices are already beyond the purchasing power of most Iraqi families. The mission recommends that sanctions in respect of food supplies should be immediately removed.

Drastic international measures are most urgent. The Iraqi people face further catastrophe, epidemic and famine, if massive life supporting needs are not met. The long summer is only weeks away. Time is short."

- Martti Ahtisaari, UN Under Secretary for Administration and Management, March 20th 1991. Ahtisaari was the first UN official to visit post-war Iraq.

- General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties, April 1991

"In every city we visited, we documented severe damage to homes, electrical plants, fuel storage facilities, civilian factories, hospitals, churches, civilian airports, vehicles, transportation facilities, food storage and food testing laboratories, grain silos, animal vaccination centres, schools, communication towers, civilian government office buildings, and stores. Almost all facilities we saw had been bombed two or three times, ensuring that they could not be repaired. Most of the bridges we saw had been bombed from both ends."

- Adeeb Abed and Gavrielle Gemma, Independent Commission of Inquiry staff members, fact find finding trip to Iraq, April 3rd-14th 1991

"Iraqis will be made to pay the price while Saddam Hussein is in power. Any easing of sanctions will be considered only when there is a new government."

- Robert Gates, US National Security Advisor, Los Angeles Times’, 9th May 1991

"[Britain will veto any UN attempt to weaken sanctions] for so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power."

"Many of the targets were chosen only secondarily to contribute to the military defeat of Iraq. [...] Military planners hoped the bombing would amplify the economic and psychological impact of international sanctions on Iraqi society. [....] Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as 'collateral' and unintended, were sometimes neither. [....] They deliberately did great harm to Iraq's ability to support itself as an industrial society."

"What were we trying to do with the sanctions? Help out the Iraqi people? No, what we were doing with the attacks on the infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions."

- Unidentified Pentagon planner, as quoted in Gellman's article, The Washington Post, 23rd June 1991

"Unless sanctions are eased quickly, Iraq will face malnutrition, disease and a food emergency unprecedented in modern times."

"In the most lackadaisical and morally laid back way, we are killing people…..small, brown children beyond the reach of our shrivelled imaginations."

- Edward Pearce, Journalist, article in ‘The Guardian’ entitled ‘Death and Indecency in a time of Cholera,’ 25th October 1991

"What has been destroyed is through the peaceful means of inspection. It is that way to destroy weapons, and not through bombing and attacks."

" [There is]…nothing to prevent the Iraqi government using its' own resources to pay for humanitarian supplies."

- Douglas Hogg, Minister of State at the British Foreign Office, February 1993. Hogg does not mention that all Iraqi exports are still prohibited and all assets still frozen.

"[Iraq is]…18.8 million people in a refugee camp, one third of which are children – of whom at least 100,000 are now dead, not from war but from hunger."

"The claim by the Western governments that food and drugs flow freely into Iraq is not true. I have seen telexes and documents that showed clearly that the British and the American government interfered with the flow of crucial drugs into Iraq. That is unquestionable. […..The sanctions] would not be lifted even if Iraq satisfies the UN Security Council on every single sanction report….the Americans are making it clear that the sanctions are not going to be lifted under any circumstances."

- Tim Llewellyn, BBC Middle East correspondent speaking at a meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, 16th February 1994

"The Iraqi government complies with UN resolutions not because they have seen the error of their ways, but because they are in such desperate straits."

- Unidentified Western diplomat, March 1994, quoted in ‘The Scourging of Iraq’ by Geoff Simons

The stakes are too high to give Mr. Hussein the benefit of the doubt, or to let our policy be dictated by commercial interests or simple fatigue. [Compliance with UN resolutions is] a cynical tactic."

The difficulty with cut-off points is that all the Iraqis have to do is sit back and be good boys.’

- Unidentified British official, September 13th, quoted in ‘The Scourging of Iraq’ by Geoff Simons after Rolf Ekeus of UNSCOM announces his intention to commence a six month weapons monitoring period, after a which a recommendation for lifting sanctions could be made.

"Before any individual or company can talk to an Iraqi buyer, they must apply for a licence to negotiate. Licences to negotiate can take three to four weeks to issue. Only when the licence is issued can you start talking without breaking the law. Once the buyer and seller agree [a price] the seller must then apply for a supply licence, which can take up to twenty weeks to issue. In the meantime the Iraqi Dinar is suffering daily devaluation and inflation beyond control. Twenty weeks later the seller receives the supply licence by which time the buyer’s situation has changed. This forces the buyer to cancel the order, or, at best, reduce the quality or quantity of the goods in order to raise the hard currency needed to finance the purchase. But [the Sanctions Committee insist that] any change to the application means that the entire process must start again."

- Unidentified British businessman describes the tortuous process of attempting to send medical supplies to Iraq, October 1994, quoted in ‘The Scourging of Iraq’ by Geoff Simons

"They [the Iraqis] have done an excellent job. Our commission is convinced it’s all over. It is watertight. We have faith in the work we have done."

"[There is no point in adopting a resolution merely as]…..a public relations tool enabling the US and Britain to continue blaming Iraq for hardships caused by sanctions."

- Unidentified French and Russian diplomats describe Resolution 986 (The Oil-For-Food Programme), quoted in The Independent, 14th April 1995

"The Iraqi leadership declared to me that its’ policy from now on is 100% implementation of the cease-fire arrangements. [SCR 687] So, with that, the Security Council, all members without exception, should have no choice about lifting the embargo."

" It is generally agreed that Iraq has already destroyed all of its’ weapons of mass destruction, either under UN supervision, or in anticipation of allied bombing raids."

"[Deliberate destruction of public service infrastructure, notably electrical-power generation and distribution facilities, so as to] .........degrade the will of the civilian population."

- 'Cruise Missiles: Proven Capability Should Affect Aircraft and Force Structure Requirements' - Document 95-116. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1995

Stahl:
"The question is, are they [sanctions] missing the mark? ….We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, this is more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?’

"This is a very hard choice, but the price….we think the price is worth it."

- Interviewer Leslie Stahl questions Madeleine Albright,
CBS Television ’60 Minutes’, 12th May 1996

Perhaps Brian's intercourse with John Pilger is sporadic, not that of a close or deep relationship, but occasional.
And perhaps he is an admirer rather than a friend - a passive relationship of submission rather than dominat or equal.

Mr Leon is mixed up I think.

"...The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday...."

http://www.greatestjeneration.com/archives/001842.php

This quotation is from an article drawing attention to the systematic corruption of the Food for Oil Programme by elements of the Ba'athist Regime of Saddam Hussein, perhaps in cahoots with the governments of Russia, France & Germany.

"The GAO findings, which were aired at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, raise new questions about corruption and mismanagement in the biggest-ever U.N. aid program - and what has been called the biggest financial scandal in history. An earlier GAO report said Saddam ripped off over $10 billion."

This was formerly the beloved belief of enemies of the West, but has now become favoured story of the West.

Are you mixed up?

Not sure about 'Mr Leon', but i'm really enjoying this thread, and yes I am feeling a bit mixed up