Statements on Foreign Conflicts - 25th May 2005

Statements on Foreign Conflicts - 25th May 2005.

Mr. Norris: I welcome the Minister of State at
the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy
Conor Lenihan, and thank him for his introductory
remarks. It is a pleasure to follow the civilised
and humane contribution of Senator Lydon,
who went straight to the heart of the matter of
the impact on the lives of ordinary decent Iraqis.
They are trying to live out their little lives, keep
their families together, educate their children and
feed themselves. The intervention of the US by
its invasion and war of terror has been a catastrophe
for them.
The Minister of State spoke of assisting the
Iraqi people to make a better life for themselves.
Electricity provision and water resources are
worse than under Saddam Hussein. The civilian
casualty rate is enormous. It has been estimated
by a reputable American academic study that as a
consequence of the war, there were over 100,000
direct and indirect military casualties. This figure
is unchallengeable. One of the most sinister
aspects of the American attitude to this is that it
makes no attempt to report the number of casualties,
especially civilian ones. We do not know
what went on in Falluja.
The war was supposed to make matters better.
Has it? The situation in Iraq is widely regarded
by the most reputable international commentators
as an economic catastrophe. Living standards
are declining with an increase in poverty,
child malnutrition and a 65% unemployment
rate. The World Food Programme suggests that
one in four Iraqis have to survive on food rations
distributed by the ministry of trade, while 2.6 million
Iraqis are estimated to be so poor that they
regularly sell a portion of their rations to meet
other needs. A newspaper reported last week that
some Iraqis have resorted to selling their organs,
such as kidneys, to survive. This is what we have
inflicted on them.
I was one of the few people who protested
against the Iran-Iraq war and objected to Ireland
selling beef to Iraq at the time. I protested at the
events at Halabja and when Mr. Rumsfeld was
happy to give another hug to Saddam Hussein.
Some companies close to the US Administration,
such as Halliburton, have produced new water
purification plants. However, they have handed
them over to untrained Iraqi workers with the
result that water purity standards have gone
adrift.
The Minister of State was correct on Saddam
Hussein’s regime. It was an evil and dreadful
regime which engaged in gas and chemical warfare,
indiscriminate ballistic missile bombardment
of cities and ecological destruction intended to
damage its perceived enemies. Does that not
sound a little like the American position? Is this
what they have done? Do Members recall the socalled
"shock and awe" campaign, involving the
obscene fireworks displays we were treated to
every night on television? Mention was made of
Vietnam. What about the defoliants possibly used
in Iraq?
The Minister of State says that we all hope the
political process will prevail over violence. Quite
so, but the Americans tried to make sure that
would not happen. There was an opportunity to
negotiate and there were arms inspectors in Iraq,
but the Americans planned the outcome. Vice
President Cheney and his cronies in Halliburton
were planning the attack on Iraq well before 11
September, 2001, which provided a sort of fig
leaf. Elections were also held, but the Minister of
State knows as well as I do that most people hold
that elections held in an occupied territory by an
invading army are always suspect.
Let us consider the man the Iraqi elections
threw up as President, Mr. Talabani, who has
revolved so often that he is the whirling dervish
of Iraqi politics. He has been in every conceivable
party. He was a Marxist-Leninist at one stage,
and a member of the PLO under George Habash.
He is a complete opportunist. He has certain
things in common with Mr. Rumsfeld. There is a
photograph in circulation of Mr. Talibani kissing
Saddam Hussein after an agreement in 1991, not
very long after the poison gas attack on Halabja.
There are quite widespread suspicions about
many of these people.
The Minister of State spoke of the international
conference. I welcome that but the
intention is to demonstrate support for the new
Iraqi Government. I do not want something like
that. Let us have a conference investigating the
situation, one which lets us see what is going on
in Iraq, and not a rubber stamp for American tyranny,
which is what it is.
What is this bleating about democracy? When
did America welcome democracy? It did not do
so in Chile, where it bumped off Allende. It did
not welcome democracy in Nicaragua, where
America subverted a democratic government.
America likes planting democracy where it will
cause trouble for Russia. In selected states
around the Russian borders, America promotes
what it describes as democracy, but that is done
as an aggressive tactic, rather than in the interests
of the people.
I will quote some remarks by Halliburton
executives and by people in the American
Administration. "Iraq is the new Klondyke" is a
very widely quoted phrase. "War is a growth
opportunity" is a phrase which reflects the mentality,
the psychology we are dealing with in the
present American Administration.
The word "insurgency" was also used in the
speech by the Minister of State. That word is
being used to discredit people who resist. Those
people are part of a resistance. I do not always
like their tactics, and I deplore the attacks on
markets and mosques, but only 4.5% of operations
conducted by this resistance hit civilian targets.
That fact has been concealed. More than
95% of the attacks are directed against military
targets, including the Americans, but the latter
control the information in this regard. I deplore
everything that negatively affects the civilian
population of Iraq.
Senator Bradford mentioned the Amnesty
International report, which is important. I have a
copy of the press release, though it was embargoed
until 11 a.m. One of the main points it
makes is that governments are betraying their
human rights promises. It states:
A new agenda is in the making, with the language
of freedom and justice being used to pursue
policies of fear and insecurity. This includes
cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise
torture.
This is exactly what is happening under the
American imperium.
The events of 11 September 2001 have been
used as an excuse, an alibi, to erode human rights
all over the world, particularly in the United
States and Britain. I feel very ashamed that anyone
can use words like "democracy" in the same
context when introducing torture practices not
seen since the Gestapo. One such practice is
"waterboarding" where, with doctors present, a
person is tied to a board and drowned to the
point of the lungs being about to burst, and then
revived. This is what the Americans are doing.
One must consider the use of language. In the
run-up to the Nazi tyranny, the system of language
went on the slide. That was done to prepare
people for tyranny. The Amnesty International
report tells of the attempts by the United States
Administration to dilute the absolute ban on torture
through new policies and quasi-management
speak such as environmental manipulation, stress
positions and sensory manipulation.
The report left out the term "extraordinary
rendition", in which this country is implicated
through the use of Shannon Airport. This is a
policy under which the United States Government,
through its agencies such as the CIA, feels
perfectly entitled to snatch the citizens of other
countries, either in their own countries or elsewhere,
and refer them to third locations, notably,
Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Afghanistan where they
can be tortured, sometimes to death, in the presence
of the CIA. Amnesty International noted
one case of a man snatched in this way who disappeared
in Syria. Nothing has been heard of him.
I doubt very much if he is alive.
What kind of democracy is this? Does this
undermine democracy? Even from a practical
point of view, a large section of the CIA is
opposed to this practice because the information
it squeezes out of people using these brutal, Nazistyle
tactics, is so unreliable. It leads the CIA off
on wild goose chases. It is therefore counter-productive,
though only in terms of information,
because ultimately, this war is about money,
power and oil. There is little doubt about that.
The war is creating a huge cost, as several
members have said, and has now cost as much as
the Korean War.
While framed against a battleship, President
Bush told us the Iraqi war was over. That must
be almost a year ago. Fighting in Iraq has been
prolonged and intense, so the costs have continued
to rise. US Congressman John Spratt said
that fighting in Iraq is lasting longer and is more
intense than anyone expected, and the cost of
keeping troops in the theatre of operations is
greater than anyone anticipated. So far, $192
billion has been approved by Congress for the
war. Where is it going? It is going into the pockets
of Mr. Cheney’s friends in Halliburton and
Kellogg, Brown and Root. For five years, Mr.
Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton, the
world’s largest oil and gas company. He continues
to receive deferred payments of $150,000 annually
and holds shares in the company valued at
$18 million, but there is no question of a conflict
of interests. Under Mr. Cheney, in 2003 a secret
task force in the Bush Administration picked
Halliburton to receive a non-competitive contract
for up to $7 billion to rebuild Iraq’s oil operations.
Why did Halliburton get special treatment?
Could that have anything to do with Mr.
Cheney?
In the course of buying and transporting oil
from Kuwait, Halliburton overcharged the
American Government by $61 million. I am sure
that many people remember the celebrated
occasion when Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg,
Brown and Root, overcharged the American
Government $16 million for the feeding of the
troops. Halliburton has become a sort of unofficial,
unacknowledged arm of the American
military establishment. This is exactly what a
Republican American President, Eisenhower,
warned against, namely, the intrusion of the
military-industrial complex into the political
arena. However, this is what has happened and it
is very dangerous. Where does all of this come
from? It is notable that Haliburton was one of
the largest political contributors in the run-up to
the elections in the United States. Naturally, it
received a reward for this and views the opportunities
in Iraq as a new Klondyke.
A search committee was set up, under Mr.
Cheney, to find a new vice-president and it suggested
that the best new vice-president would be
Mr. Cheney himself. That is most extraordinary.
I cannot put on the record of the House the language
used by one of his former colleagues when
this fact was discovered.
I am concerned about corruption and the level
of inter-penetration between military and commercial
enterprises. For example, a company
called Free Market Global, an international company
that trades in gas, petroleum and other
resources, appointed General Tommy Franks, the
US army commander, to its board last year. That
should give cause for concern to anyone who
poses as a democrat.
There are many reasons to be worried. Mr.
Cheney formed an interesting group which, in
February 2001, prior to September 11, was
already planning a merger of interests, or a
"melding" as they described it. Those interests
planning to attack Iraq and create regime change
were to be melded with those interested in the
takeover of certain international oil fields.
Nobody should doubt that this was all in the pipeline
before September 11.
As far as September 11 is concerned, I agree it
was a tragedy but one that needs to be kept in
proportion. Approximately 3,000 people were
killed and for those people and their families, it
was dreadful. I will never forget the images of
people falling out of skyscrapers, but what did
they expect? The US cannot go around trampling
on other people’s rights, murdering half a million
people in Kampuchea, devastating Vietnam,
undermining every democratic regime that is
viewed to be inimical to their interests and then
expect people to do nothing.
I do not believe there is an Islamic threat. The
belief that civilisation will be wiped out by Islamic
fundamentalists is hysterical. Our civilisation is
most in danger from what is happening under the
so-called coalition forces.
We should look to George Galloway, who
faced down the Senate inquiry. US Senators were
using false documents and Mr. Galloway gave
them their answer, beautifully, in the Senate. I
was ashamed last Sunday to read an article by an
ignorant, stupid reporter, who attacked Galloway
and attempted to undermine him. She did not
attack anything he said but rather his clothes, eating
habits, sexual predilections and his sun tan.
She did not contradict a single word he said.