Marching Against Imperialism

The whole world is marching

Saturday's protest on all seven continents is just the beginning of a war against empire-building

Friday, U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix delivered an unusually detailed, pointed, and stinging refutation of Colin Powell's error-filled diatribe the previous week. That was immediately followed by a stunning diplomatic rebuke of the Bush Administration's war plans, led by France and Germany and echoed by 12 of the 15 U.N. Security Council members.

That highly unusual public diplomatic spanking would never have happened without the overwhelming opposition to war by ordinary citizens in France, Germany, and across Europe. And as if to underscore the point, on the following day, Saturday, city streets and town squares overflowed on six continents. (Seven, if you count the small protest lodged at a scientific research station in Antarctica.)

American activists love to abuse the rhetorical device of the "International Day of Protest." On Saturday, February 15, 2003, for the first time in history, there actually was one.

Like New Years' Eve celebrations, time zone by time zone, protest circled the globe. Those protests were largest in precisely the countries where elected governments are defying public will by endorsing or helping the Bush Administration. In Europe, only Britain is an active military partner; only the right-wing governments in Spain and Italy have additionally pledged cooperation. The results: Up to two million rallied in Rome; in the streets of London, 1.5 million; 650,000 in Madrid; in Barcelona, Spain, a city of only 1.5 million, 1.3 million jammed Saturday's streets.

As we've been saying on these pages all along, this is not simply about a single event, although it will be catastrophic to the citizenry of Iraq, but a backlash to a much more insidious issue, that of empire building, and US hegemony. The story continues.....

In those countries, and here in the United States, it was clear from both media reports and interviews with ordinary citizens that far more than the lives of Iraqis were seen as being at stake. Repeatedly, the same theme emerged: it was not just war, but democracy itself that was being threatened.

International media reports emphasized what anti-war protests in the U.S. have also increasingly seen: that many protesters have never done this before. In the United States, many, in fact, are not from the "protest left" at all; the diversity of attendees is one of the most remarkable characteristics of these events, and far outstrips the ideological diversity (or openness to such diversity) of the entirely left-leaning organizers.

It hasn't mattered; Bush, and politicians who share his arrogance, have been the ones driving new recruits into the anti-war movement. Around the world, a generation was inspired by the dream of universal democracy that came with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. That has been followed, in many places rather quickly, by the sinking realization that the global corporate priorities which supplanted the Cold War have heralded less, not more, democracy.

More here..........

Time will tell. Those in power have been given a sign, and are on notice that "We The People" are angry. They ignore us at their own peril.

I'm reminded of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer two weeks and a day past, when The Weekly Standard's David Brooks said something to the effect that he would say this to the demonstrators: "Why are you doing this, can't you see that Saddam is a bad man, and has killed thousands of you?" The obvious answer to this query is that, yes whilst Saddam is a bad guy, and has killed thousands of us, so have the bombs dropped by the US, the sanctions over the past decade, and you've poisoned our environment with your depleted uranium warheads. Now you want us to accede to another war? We may be wrong, but who's established the high moral ground? Certainly not you, David. Nor have your friends at PNAC.

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Two NOW Transcripts

The first is a conversation between NOW's Jane Wallace and Seymour Hersh

JANE WALLACE: Thank you for joining us.

SY HERSH: Glad to be here.

JANE WALLACE: It might be safely said that the one country for whom the war on terror has been a bombless bonanza is Pakistan. In a matter of two weeks they went from being an international pariah, to being our new best friend.

The aid started flowing. It is flowing in the billions. Are they worthy of our friendship and our aid, the Pakistanis?

SY HERSH: In a perfect world, sure, it would be great if Musharraf, the head of the country can hold it together and they can become secular. And we can avoid having an Islamic republic with a lot of nuclear weapons. But it's dicey.

JANE WALLACE: What kind of dicey?

SY HERSH: I think it's a losing game. I think it's a losing game and I think there's a lot of evidence that Musharraf is certainly much more interested in his own survival than ours. I can't give you chapter and verse of things. He came to American when and when there was tremendous concern about the fate of Danny Pearl, the WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter.

And he was here about a week or so before it became known that Pearl was dead. And the whole time, we later learned, that he was here, when he was saying, you know telling us that he was doing everything he can. He was sure he was alive. He knew that Pearl was dead. We now know that. We knew he was deceiving us.

JANE WALLACE: How do we know that?

SY HERSH: Because--

JANE WALLACE: Time of death on Pearl?

SY HERSH: More than that. There's-- we were able to unravel a lot of information, WALL STREET JOURNAL reporters and others about when he died. And there was, if you remember, there's been a trial. And everything that showed up in the trial indicated that-- witnesses told about telling the government things-- weeks before we thought they had.

JANE WALLACE: There is a man facing death, facing hanging, Saeed Sheikh, in the murder of Daniel Pearl. Saeed Sheikh is reported, in various quarters, to have been an ISI Pakistani intelligence agent.

SY HERSH: Asset. Yeah.

JANE WALLACE: Do you believe that?

SY HERSH: This certainly is a case when he gave up, he turned himself in basically eventually to ISI and-- who-- not-- not right away, but pretty immediately. He turned a-- he was made available to the ISI and they debriefed him first.

JANE WALLACE: Why would he turn himself in to Pakistani intelligence as opposed to the police?

SY HERSH: There's no question he has some connection. There's no question he had some deep standing-- long standing connection to Pakistani intelligence.

JANE WALLACE: Now let me draw the picture ... If in fact he has a deep long standing connection to Pakistani intelligence, we are supporting a government that has some responsibility in the murder of an American reporter?

SY HERSH: What can you do?

JANE WALLACE: Let's talk about Konduz. During the war with Afghanistan--

SY HERSH: Great story.

JANE WALLACE: -- you reported that during a key battle our side in that battle had the enemy surrounded. There were a reported perhaps 8,000 enemy forces in there.

SY HERSH: Maybe even more. But certainly minimum that many.

JANE WALLACE: It's your story, take it.

SY HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near ... it's one little village and it's a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly-- through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very...

We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz-- the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to-- the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that's how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn't do it that day.

JANE WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy.

SY HERSH: They're whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy.

JANE WALLACE: And suddenly they're told to back off--

SY HERSH: From a certain area--

JANE WALLACE: -- and let planes fly out to Pakistan.

SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more-- or more heavily weighted-- Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated-- no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe mmore. I've heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only-- Al Qaeda but they were also-- you see the Pakistani ISI was-- the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.

And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.

JANE WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized?

SY HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized — Donald Rumsfeld who — we'll talk about what he said later — it had to be authorized at the White House. But certainly at the Secretary of Defense level.

JANE WALLACE: The Department of Defense said to us that they were not involved and that they don't have any knowledge of that operation.

SY HERSH: That's what Rumsfeld said when they asked him but it. And he said, "Gee, really?" He said, "News to me." Which is not a denial, it's sort of interesting. You know,

JANE WALLACE: What did we do that? Why we would put our special forces guys on the ground, surround the enemy, and then-- fly him out?

SY HERSH: With al Qaeda.

JANE WALLACE: With al Qaeda. Why would we do that, assuming your story is true?

SY HERSH: We did it because the ISI asked us to do so.

JANE WALLACE: Pakistani intelligence.

SY HERSH: Absolutely.

JANE WALLACE: Yeah.

SY HERSH: Yeah. That's why. You asked why. Because we believe Musharraf was under pressure to protect the military men of — the intelligence people from the military, ISI, that were in the field. The Pakistanis were training the Taliban, and were training al Qaeda.

When the war began, even though this is-- again, you know, this is complicated. Musharraf asked, as a favor, to protect his position. If we suddenly seized, in in the field, a few dozen military soldiers, including generals, and put them in jail, and punished them, he would be under tremendous pressure from the fundamentalists at home.

So, to protect him, we perceive that it's important to protect him, he asked us-- this is why when I tell you it comes at the level of Don Rumsfeld, it has to. I mean, it does. He asked-- he said, "You've got to protect me. You've got to get my people out."

The initial plan was to take out the Pakistani military. What happened is that they took out al Qaeda with them. And we had no way of stopping it. We lost control. Once there planes began to go, the Pakistanis began-- thousands of al Qaeda got out. And so-- we weren't able to stop it and screen it. The intent wasn't to let al Qaeda out. It was to protect the Pakistani military.

SY HERSH: What else can you do? We need the idea of some sort of country as a bulwark to what's going-- look, Afghanistan is smoking today. You know if you want another reality, the reality that nobody wants to hear about is that probably from Khandhar to Jalalabad and all of the southern part of Afghanistan is cowboy and Indian territory.

It's ISI. It's Taliban. It's Pashtun. Some al Qaeda. You know you don't find our troops-- a little bit in-- on the coast near-- you know in the north-- the northern territories. We're-- it's-- we have un-- we're-- we're really at square one even in Afghanistan.

JANE WALLACE: Okay, I'm gonna slow you down because you know your material very well. The northwestern part of Pakistan--

SY HERSH: Right.

JANE WALLACE: --that borders on Afghanistan now is where the-- the al Qaeda forces are said to be regrouped?

SY HERSH: Along with Kashmir. They probably are there too.

JANE WALLACE: Yes. This is where some of our American troops-- we have about 8,000 left in Afghanistan, are facing some of the heaviest fighting they've seen in a year.

SY HERSH: The forces that are seeing heavy fighting are a few special forces that are there and some elite units from the 82nd Airborne. Most of our troops are just guarding bases. But we have some elite units in contact. Yes.

JANE WALLACE: What you're saying is that then part of the forces our guys are facing are forces that are being supported by or intermixed with Pakistan intelligence which is a government we support. And al Qaeda, which is supported by a government we support. In other words we're doing battle with ourselves to some degree?

SY HERSH: I'll make it better. We have reason to think, from intelligence-- I haven't written this that-- that the Saudi's are financing some of this all the way.

JANE WALLACE: Financing what?

SY HERSH: Saudi's put a lot of money into Pakistan to religious aspects. I'm not saying the Saudi's necessarily-- the Saudi government knows that the money they're putting in is ending up supplying the forces that are in contact with our forces in the northern territories. But the fact is the Saudi's are still a supplier of a great deal of funds to Pakistan. We've got a country that's teetering on the edge, we don't want Pakistan to go Islamic. We don't want the weapons to get out of control.

JANE WALLACE: How exactly did the Pakistanis acquire nukes?

SY HERSH: They stole the technology from Europe-- to-- basically-- they used enriched uranium, Enriched uranium makes as perfectly a good a bomb as plutonium without a big nuclear reactor that anybody can see and-- and get intelligence on. They began turning out warheads. We now know I-- as they say, we estimate up to 40-- and that's just a rough guess.

JANE WALLACE: Forty warheads means what in terms of destructive power?

SY HERSH: Well, it depends the average warhead probably-- takes out New York. A good chunk of New York.

JANE WALLACE: So forty warheads is a lot--

SY HERSH: Yeah.

JANE WALLACE: --for a country the size of Pakistan?

SY HERSH: I would say one isn't a lot if you can fire it. Yes, if you know how to do it and-- and-- it's a lot. They--

JANE WALLACE: So formidable, especially in a third-world country where we're not entirely sure--

SY HERSH: It could--

JANE WALLACE: --who's in charge of the switch?

SY HERSH: Well, we'd like to think that the military and Musharraf is in charge of the switch. That makes us very happy to think that. That's the whole issue. The issue is making sure and reinforce Musharraf being in charge of the switch, which--

JANE WALLACE: But the--

SY HERSH: It's--

JANE WALLACE: --on the--

SY HERSH: --it's a--

JANE WALLACE: -- issue--

SY HERSH: --it's a crap game. It's a roll of the dice. That's what it is.

JANE WALLACE: You reported recently that not only do the Pakistanis have the nukes, the international community knew that. That's why they were ostracized for many years, because they wouldn't stop developing their own nuclear program. So they were blackballed by the rest of the world. Forget it, we're not trading with them anymore.

They were in that position when 9/11 struck. Not only do they have these nuclear weapons, but then they go one further to put it in our face and start helping North Korea develop the same cheaper, more efficient warheads. What is that about? These are our new best friends?

SY HERSH: Well, this started before they became our new best friends. This isn't-- this started in '97. What I did is I wrote about an intelligence report that the White House had for, what, eight months before it became known.

I love the story that this administration does live in a sort of a web of it's own sort of stories. They-- the story they put out was last fall one of our guys goes to North Korea, the Pyongyang and-- and confronts the North Koreans. And they admit they have it. And we're stunned. They've admitted they have it. Something we've known they've had for a year.

What they did is in '97-- they buy missiles from North Korea. The North Korean government is insane. Half the people starve and meanwhile they have a tremendously efficient missile system. They-- they-- if-- if the leader of that country decided that he wanted to-- to get rid of the missiles and start spending money on-- on-- on food, they could all live. There's enough there. But it's-- it's a madness society.

And so the North-- the North Koreans are supplying missiles for-- for Pakistan for years. And in '97, Pakistan had some serious economic problems. And I can tell you right now i-- if nu-- if Pakistan's economy is-- is in the toilet, North Korea's deep in the sewer.

So here they are. North Korea's-- one of their great exports is missiles for cash and then they sell some missiles to the Paks. And the Paks come to the North Koreans in '97 and they say, "Hey guys, we can't pay. We got no money. We're broke too. But we've got something in kind. I'm giving you the most--" this is actually an interpretation the community-- intelligence community, same people in the American intelligence community.

And by the way, there's a lot of good people in our system. And awful lot. And they must be very frustrated with it, because I think things at the top-- it's a very strange world at the top of this government. It's a cocoon. And no bad information invited. I'm talking about in a-- in the-- in the leadership.

JANE WALLACE: What do you mean cocoon, no bad information invited?

SY HERSH: Oh, I just don't think it was hard-- I don't think they could sell this story of the-- the-- I don't think the intelligence community was-- was able to get the President and the Vice President and other people to focus on North Korea-- for a year before it became known. It was just-- they didn't wanna focus on it. They had other issues.

But the Paks then start giving the fruits of their 10, 15 years, 20 years of nuclear labor to the North Koreans. And you have to understand, to start with a centrifuge and some designs and get to the point where you can actually make bomb-grade material is a 12, 15 year process. The Paks--

JANE WALLACE: It's very sophisticated?

SY HERSH: Oh. The Paks cut it way down to a couple years, three, four, maybe five years.

JANE WALLACE: So you could really spin 'em out?

SY HERSH: You can kick it out. You can put it in high gear. They gave 'em prototypes of the centrifuges that they made. They gave 'em prototypes of the warheads. They gave 'em test data.

There's something called cold testing. You can actually test natural uranium in a warhead and it gives you a lot of information about the real stuff-- enriched stuff would work.

JANE WALLACE: So both third-world powers become more dangerous?

SY HERSH: To put it mildly.

JANE WALLACE: Colin Powell did not deny your story. He did go out of his way to say, the Secretary of State, that Musharraf has assured the State Department that this is not happening now.

SY HERSH: Right.

JANE WALLACE: That's all-- well, what do you make of that?

SY HERSH: It's the-- it's the-- it's the-- the three-card Monty we have going, which is that, "What are you going to do with this guy? Are you going to say--" it's clear that some of the help that Musharraf gave the North Koreans took place after 9/11. That is a continuum.

Musharraf's answer to us was a-- you know, "Oh my god. There's gambling on the premises?" You know shades of Casablanca. And, "I'll stop it right now." And we say, "Great." What else are we gonna do?

Are we gonna take a run at this guy and make it-- make him more vulnerable to his critics that are there already? The fundamentalists-- the Islamic-- the mujahadin? So we--

JANE WALLACE: Or are we gonna pretend it didn't happen or-- or at least it's stopped?

SY HERSH: We-- the rationalization for pretending it didn't happen or that it's stopped-- and it probably has stopped. The rationalization-- first of all, why shouldn't it stop? They've got what they need already?

The rationalization is that we can't jeopardize Musharraf. We've gotta keep him going. Prop him up as much as possible.

JANE WALLACE: This is getting to be a very costly prop up.

SY HERSH: Absolutely. But you know, let me give you another-- theory. Why do you think Pakistan has only helped North Korea with nuclear weapons? Why haven't they helped other countries?

JANE WALLACE: I don't know why.

SY HERSH: Well, the answer is, they probably have. They're interested in spreading it to the Third World. How much control does Musharraf have?

JANE WALLACE: Do you have any evidence?

SY HERSH: No, no. I'm just telling you-- heuristically, I'm just telling you-- I'm telling what I-- my instinct tells me that in a perfect world, if our editor of the world's newspaper, I would-- I would want to look at our-- is Pakistan-- I'd look at Pakistan and Iran, look at Pakistan and-- and Indonesia. Look at Pakistan even and Lebanon. There's a lot of ties that I'm interested in. Are they gonna be spreading nuclear technology into the Muslim world above and beyond their own country?

JANE WALLACE: If we were really going after the people who sponsored al Qaeda, wouldn't we be bombing Pakistan?

SY HERSH: Well, it'd be attacking Pakistan is not like attacking Afghanistan, or Iraq. They have an air force. They have nuclear weapons, of course. They have a-- very strong powerful Army. We're not gonna attack Pakistan. That would be-- that would be an impossible chore. If you said to me, "Are we better off in Pakistan or in Iraq in terms of beating terrorism?" I would say to you-- if you'd asked me that question, I would say, "No question. Let's forget about Iraq and let's focus on Pakistan and start doing-- the money we're gonna spend if we go to war there, even in moving troops, if we tried to use some of that money in-- in positive ways in Pakistan, we might be able to accomplish more than we are right now."

JANE WALLACE: The picture you are painting here is that we're dealing with the devil.

SY HERSH: It's not a perfect world.

The second is a dialogue between Bill Moyers, John Nichols and Robert McChesney.

BILL MOYERS: John Nichols, you call your book OUR MEDIA. What do you mean by that?

JOHN NICHOLS: The media in this country was intended by the founders of this country to be ours, to be something that served us as citizens.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: And what we've had happen to our media system in the United States in the past 50 years especially, is it's increasingly become the province of private commercial interests to use — to suit their own naked self interest to advance their commercial concerns. And the political concerns and the social concerns of free press as a hallmark of democracy have been lost in the shuffle.

JOHN NICHOLS: I don't think that the current structures of media allow journalists to do the job that Jefferson and Madison and the founders of this country, intended. Their concept was that you don't restrain what people say. That you — and here's the critical thing — Jefferson and Madison, I hate to inform Rupert Murdoch on this, that they weren't thinking about him.

That was not their idea that some Australian press magnate could come to the United States and buy up media and create Fox, or do whatever. They were anticipating small farmers, small business people, coming together maybe to start a newspaper in their town. And...

BILL MOYERS: But we don't live in that world anymore.

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, we don't live as far from it as we think. We have created structures that make it virtually impossible to do that.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

JOHN NICHOLS: Look at how our broadcast systems are structured in this country. Look at what we're talking about...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Giving all the air waves to a handful of firms to own. There's nothing written in natural law that we have to turn over these lucrative monopoly licenses to our prime air waves to a handful of enormous trans-national firms. There's nothing in the First Amendment that says that. The press system is really the oxygen of a free society.

You can't govern your own lives with a viable press system. The founding fathers, Jefferson and Madison, understood that. Their notion of freedom of the press was that the people of the country have to consciously construct a system that fosters diverse views and examination of policies, and draws people into social life.

BILL MOYERS: So how is the media failing us in your judgment, in your estimate?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Well, I think the problem we face is that the sort of drawing people into social life to understand issues, to understand how people in power operate, to keep them in check, and people who want to be in power, gets lost in the shuffle. That's not where the most money can be made.

Unfortunately, where the money lies, where the profits are for the firms that own and dominate our media system, comes in sort of zeroing out the journalism. Because that's too expensive to do the hard stuff. Gets you in trouble with people in power.

So you have a situation where the same companies that control our broadcast journalism, they're going for the government, trying to get tax relief and deregulation, so they get bigger and bigger. Or are they gonna want to be tough on the same government they're looking for special deals from.

BILL MOYERS: Give me some examples of how you think journalism, corporate journalism, is failing us. Take politics. What's an example?

JOHN NICHOLS: We had, in the fall of 2000, a political crisis in this country, and one that the whole world took very, very seriously. We had an unsettled Presidential election.

And yet, our media tended to cover that as purely a political fight between two parties. James Baker would get up and say the Bush line. Warren Christopher would get up and say the Gore line. And that would be accepted pretty much as the end of the story. There were too few people saying, "Look, we're not gonna do stenography to power. We're not gonna take this official source versus that official source. We're gonna go for the truth. And I think that what we have in this...

BILL MOYERS: Because truth would have been?

JOHN NICHOLS: The truth is, who won?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Investigate what they're saying...

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah, let's really get in there and...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: ...balancing the two claims, investigate what they're saying...

BILL MOYERS: Some papers did that, don't you think?

JOHN NICHOLS: Some did. And, but you know what the interesting thing is? That much of the best journalism about it — and this is, I think, broadly accepted — was done by British papers. What I'm saying is that the notion of a pox on both your houses is a healthy one for journalists to practice, to disbelieve both official sources, and to go for — suggest that, well maybe they're both spinning us.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: You know, I think what happened is our whole electoral coverage has really deteriorated in the country. And if you look at the figures, the amount of coverage of electoral campaigns in broadcast media has plummeted. At the same time, what's happened is the amount of campaign advertising has risen dramatically. So we've seen that the main unit for a candidate to run now is their political advertising.

BILL MOYERS: You write in your book, "Elected leaders refuse any longer to address what the American people want to know about. But they will tell you, the media mavens will tell you, "We're giving people what they want."

JOHN NICHOLS: I wish they'd come out and talk to my mom.

BILL MOYERS: Your mom?

JOHN NICHOLS: My mom, on Union Grove, Wisconsin. And...

BILL MOYERS: Population?

JOHN NICHOLS: It's about 3,000.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah?

JOHN NICHOLS: And you know, my mom has pretty much, gotten pretty close to giving up on television news. She says, "You know, it's just — this is just ridiculous."

"I wanna know what's going on. I wanna know real information about whether we should go to war. When the question of "why do they hate us" comes up, I want a real dialogue about that. I don't want, you know, 'Well, they must be crazy because they're French.'"

BILL MOYERS: But John, they wouldn't be doing this if it didn't make money. They wouldn't be making money if enough people weren't watching to satisfy the advertisers.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: You know, you're right. But the way to look at this, it's not all demand driven. I think the crucial thing is much of this is supply driven.

The reason we don't have international coverage, or hard investigative pieces on how power works in our society, isn't that people aren't necessarily interested in it. That basically isn't done because it costs so much. It's so much cheaper to have a couple of blowhards exchange insults...

BILL MOYERS: Well now, let's not get personal.

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Or so much cheaper to have people just sort of press release of what someone in power is than to go out and investigate the press release. So it's really supply driven. It's just inexpensive to do.

And then of course when people watch it, they say, "Well, we're giving people what they want." But let's give them some really good investigative journalism, how power works in our society. I think people love that. They're just not given a choice to vote for that in the marketplace.

BILL MOYERS: What's the truth we're not getting right now from the press in the Iraqi buildup?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Let me put this in one context. The United States has been in 7, 8 major wars in the last 100 years. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Central American wars, the first Persian Gulf war. Those are the major ones. We now know historically that in each case the administration in power wanted to push a war and it was willing to lie, do whatever it took to get the support of the American people to do it.

So I think if you're a working journalist, and I teach journalism, what you should go — any time there's a government that says, "we've got to go to this war" and starts waving the flag and telling you, "we have to...have to..." and the more passion you get, the more you check for your wallet. The more you get skeptical, the more you say, "Well, wait a second, we've been down this road before. We're journalists. We better get to the bottom of this and investigate all this and not take them at face value." And that's the starting point of good journalism when it comes to getting into war.

And if you start there, I think John, you can field this, but in the claims that we're being given, a lot of them are just taken at face value and not being investigated.

JOHN NICHOLS: Now one of the things in this incredible period is the way that we treat the French. There is sort of this line of, "well the French must be crazy." You know how could they not be with us? And how can the Germans not be with us? And what's with this 'old Europe'?

Well, the fact of the matter is, it's a good question folks might ask. Could it possibly be that the French and the Germans know more than we do? Like they have learned a lot more over a number of recent years certainly, about Afghanistan and about Iraq and about those parts of the world.

And more importantly, might they have had experiences that would be worthy of pondering? And I think good journalism would go and ask, you know, "why aren't you with us?" And I would also look at one other thing that I think has really been lost. And that is, that in every country in the western — every western democracy, there's a huge debate about this war.

Let's actually go beneath that surface level, are you with us or against us? And look at what's really going on in all of these countries.

BILL MOYERS: But the United States government ostensibly has intelligence sources that say there is a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Maybe the French intelligence don't have that or the German intelligence don't have that. Are you saying we shouldn't give our leaders the benefit of the doubt when they say that we have this information and you need to trust us?

JOHN NICHOLS: Of course not.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Of course not.

JOHN NICHOLS: Why would you ever give any — this is...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: In the matter of war and peace given the track record of our leaders in war and peace this century?

BILL MOYERS: These people are trying to kill you and you and me. These terrorists who struck one mile from here on the 11th of September.

JOHN NICHOLS: The war on terror is a terrific example of where, I think, media has failed us. But it didn't fail us after September 11th. It failed us before. If you remember the summer before September 11th, think about what the big story of that summer was. There were two of them actually.

One was Gary Condit's sex life. And boy, the cable channels were going back every night. You know we found he maybe tied somebody to a bed. We knew more details about Gary Condit's sex life than our own.

BILL MOYERS: And the audiences were way up.

JOHN NICHOLS: Oh they were. And the other big story was shark attacks off Florida. Now it turned out there weren't any more shark attacks than any other year but it was a fun story to do. And so again and again reporters on the beach talking about shark attacks.

Well, you know what? Maybe if during that period we had devoted — we in the media, and I count myself as a part of it — if we'd devoted a little more of our resources to just checking the official terrorism warnings, to listening to Gary Hart and Lorne Rudman who had put in quite a remarkable report.

BILL MOYERS: Former Senators who were...

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: ...who were heading this commission on...

JOHN NICHOLS: They're saying that there's a — we are looking at a potential terrorist attack. Maybe if we've done what much of the rest of the world's media do, which is actually spend some time in Afghanistan. Look at some of the 'churn' that was going on there. And maybe if we asked the question of, "well, why did we send planes over to bomb Afghanistan a few years ago? What's there that we're so concerned about?" Maybe if we'd done a better job before September 11th, at the very least, if September 11th had happened, we wouldn't have had ordinary citizens the day after saying, what's going on here? Why do they hate us? I think George W. Bush has every right, and indeed a responsibility, to 'spin' this situation and to talk about this situation as he believes is proper. As he believes we should go.

But I think good journalism takes George W. Bush and his opinion and then takes other opinions. Mixes it all up. Gives people access to a lot of that dialogue, to a lot of that debate and let's the American people make some decisions. Remember, this is not just about the President. This is about the people.

BILL MOYERS: Now you say in here that the system that has created our media is one of the most corrupt you can imagine. What do you mean by that?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Well, just go back to the founding period again. The debates over the postal act and the printing subsidies were public debates, passionate. People were involved in it. They understood the importance and the significance.

We have similar policies today that set up our current media system. All our largest media companies today — and they're very large — are built on government regulations, subsidies, monopoly rights, the spectrum, the cable systems, copyright. But the crucial policies that created these aren't done with public involvement. They're not out in the open with people debating it in Congress, newspapers and media covering it.

They're all done behind closed doors in the most corrupt manner imaginable. These powerful lobbies duke it out, with no public recognition, to get these enormous monopoly subsidies. The whole system is built in our name, but without our informed consent. It's their system, but it should be ours.

BILL MOYERS: Even as we talk, the Federal Communications Commission is considering yet another move toward further consolidation. What's going on?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, what they're talking about a series of rule changes. One of the changes they're talking about would remove a very old barrier in this country that says that you can't own T.V., radio, and the newspaper in the same town. Can't be one guy that owns it all. And the reason for that is common sense, I think.

That, number one, you want a diversity of voices. And the diversity of voices is fostered by different owners, at best. Two, we have one owner of everything, and that's what would happen if you blow out this cross ownership rule.

You have one owner of everything in town.

BILL MOYERS: Is it conceivable that if these rule changes are made by the FCC, that a Rupert Murdoch, or a Ted Turner, could own the newspaper, the T.V. station, the radio station, in Madison, Wisconsin?

JOHN NICHOLS: It's totally conceivable.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Not only conceivable...

JOHN NICHOLS: It would happen.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: It's almost positive it would happen. Because that's where the money is. You can have one newsroom service an entire community, instead of having three newsrooms. Think of the savings if you've got one set of reporters serving all your news media in a town, instead of having to pay for three different sets.

BILL MOYERS: At what cost?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Well, the costs socially are enormous, which is exactly why we should be very concerned, because it violates every core liberal principle. When in doubt, it's always better to have more voices than fewer voices in media. That's the sort of — you start from there.

JOHN NICHOLS: And if you believe in a free market, if you really believe in a free market, you ought to believe that there should be a lot of different people competing within that, and maybe trying to be better than the other.

If you have one individual, or one company, really more likely a stockholder driven corporation, owning all of the media in a community, well, there's not a competition to be better per se. And because of the way media structures exist today, it's very hard to create new media there.

So the result is that you are gonna go toward those commercial values. You're gonna go to that lowest common denominator, because it's cheaper, and yeah, it appeals at some basic level.

BILL MOYERS: I think you say in your book that about a dozen companies own the greatest percentage...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: ...of radio, television...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: An overwhelming majority.

BILL MOYERS: ...music, everything.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right. And we're in a situation where we can actually look at an industry that was sort of deregulated just a few years ago, radio. In 1996, in the Telecommunications Act the radio lobby was able to get a clause put in there. It was never debated by Congress. Wasn't discussed at the community level, which lifted the cap of how many radio stations a single company could own nationally in the United States. It used to be, before that it was 40. And for years, you probably remember coming up in media, was only seven, and then 12 stations, no more than two in a single community.

And they lifted the total nationally a single company could own. And they said you can own up to eight in a single community, in the largest communities. And what's happened since 1996 is radio's been turned upside down. Something like 60, 70 percent of the stations have been sold.

A single company based in your home state of Texas, Clear Channel, owns over 1,200 stations. And radio's, I think fair to say, unless you're a shareholder in the Clear Channel company, the consensus of everyone else in this country is radio's a disaster area.

Localism's been wiped out. There's almost no local news coverage. We're getting sort of piped in announcers in the communities. There's more advertising than ever in radio. So this is an example of what we're gonna get if we do this in the rest of our media, that's our future.

BILL MOYERS: Obviously, Michael Powell, the chairman, is an ardent believer in deregulation. He says that if you take off government restrictions, you will let a thousand flowers bloom. You'll have the internet, you'll have DV— you'll have a lot of other choices out there.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right.

JOHN NICHOLS: One of the big problems is that the debate on...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: ...if that's right.

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah. It's...

BILL MOYERS: You agreeing with Michael?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, I think he's agreeing with Mao, who is the hundredth, at least. But the thing to understand about the debate on media in this country is it's perhaps the most unhealthy debate imaginable.

There are a handful of very interested parties who are deeply engaged, who think about it every day, who hire lobbyists, who spend a great deal of money, not nearly to lobby Congress, but also, to lobby the FCC.

BILL MOYERS: Who are they?

JOHN NICHOLS: The companies themselves, as well as The National Association of Broadcasters.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: The trade association.

JOHN NICHOLS: Trade associations. And they're in there fighting among themselves a little bit. "We want this structure. These guys want that structure. But it's all agreed that we're the ones at the table, we're the ones who will decide."

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: "It's our system."

BILL MOYERS: It is a closed meeting when they get together to discuss...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: ..."what do we want?"

JOHN NICHOLS: And there's a lot of closed meetings before, all along the way. And what we're suggesting is that the reason that the debate takes the shape it does is because so many other doors are shut. So much of it is inside dialogue.

Ordinary Americans, real people, my mom, your cousin, whoever, they don't even know that these debates are being — that they're taking place. And they also don't know, I think, that they have a right to be a part of them.

BILL MOYERS: When the Telecommunications Act in 1996 passed, which made this big giveaway, Bill Clinton signed it, Al Gore was there. Republicans, Democrats...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: ...all glowing at this accomplishment. I mean both parties, are they not...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: They're both in bed with this.

BILL MOYERS: ...serving...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Absolutely. And I think...

BILL MOYERS: Why?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: This is the...

JOHN NICHOLS: There's some corruption.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: This is the question...

BILL MOYERS: What?

JOHN NICHOLS: Corruption.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Pure corruption. This is really where big money crowds everything else out. The way to understand how policy makers make media in this country, communications, there's a great movie, THE GODFATHER, PART TWO.

There's a scene early in the movie where all the American gangsters are on top of a hotel roof in Havana. It's a classic scene. Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone. And they've got a cake being wheeled out to them.

And Hyman Roth is cutting up slices of the cake. And the cake's got the outline of Cuba on it, giving each gangster a slice of Cuba. And while he's doing this, Hyman Roth's saying, "Isn't it great to be in a country where we have a government that respects private enterprise, they let us own the country. And that's how media policy...

BILL MOYERS: So they divided up Cuba.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: You're saying the big media dividing up...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: ...the country of...

JOHN NICHOLS: Now...

BILL MOYERS: ...of...of...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: ...of the United States.

JOHN NICHOLS: Our air waves.

BILL MOYERS: ...for the world.

JOHN NICHOLS: Our air waves.

BILL MOYERS: Our air waves.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: And what they're doing, though, is that they're fighting among each other. They've got these huge lobbies like Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone, they each want the biggest slice.

But what they all agree is that no one else gets a slice. It's their cake. The door is shut, no press coverage, no public awareness of these policies.

BILL MOYERS: I think that's realistic but it's very pessimistic. What would you have done? Would you have the government take over the media?

JOHN NICHOLS: No.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Well, the government makes the media as it is. These policies are government policies. The question is whose interests are they gonna represent? Private interests, commercial interests in our name, or actually our involvement? The argument is that people need to participate in these policies. We give 50 to 100 talks a year around the country. And we find people are really interested in this issue. This is an issue that cuts very close to them. Not just in terms of journalism, but sort of the commercial tidal wave that's overwhelming people's lives.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Well, we see advertising and commercialism not just increasing in sort of the number of advertisements you see on television and our media. But also, permeating the editorial content, both in journalism and programming.

BILL MOYERS: More and more commercials...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: More...

BILL MOYERS: ...more and more...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Product placement.

BILL MOYERS: ...commercial values, and share...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: And I think that people are deeply concerned that this is corrosive to sort of the integrity of our public culture, that this is a real problem. It's not a left-right issue. It's — there's some people who personally benefit by — who made money off it, and there's everyone else. It's much like the environment.

JOHN NICHOLS: What we really need in this country is a movement not unlike the environmental movement of the early 1970s, that accepts the notion that, as with the environmental movement, it wasn't that the government took over every bit of land, and every sea, and every lake, and stuff like that, but it was that government regulation was seen as something that citizens ought to be a part of, not just the corporations that were regulated. And that begins to insert a public voice in this debate.

And the interesting thing is we find, in talking to members of Congress, that a lot of them are actually more interested in this than you think for an intriguing, very self serving, perhaps, reason. Members of Congress are noted, saying that in this churn of media ownership, they don't get paid attention to at the local level, either.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: More and more commercial values. And I think people are deeply concerned that this is corrosive to sort of the integrity of our public culture. That this is a real problem. And I...

BILL MOYERS: If there were this movement, what would it be asking? What would it want?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Well, there's a whole range of issues we can work on let's have fewer stations that one company's allowed to own, for example. It's silly to let one station own 1,200 stations.

A tangible thing. Let's say ten stations per owner, so we get more community owners. Let's come up with something to reduce the amount of commercials that we bombard our kids with. What we're doing to children in this society is absolutely obscene.

Most other democratic societies in the world, most — many in Europe — prohibit, or sharply limit, the amount of advertising on television to children under 12. It's just irrational.

BILL MOYERS: In the interest of?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Of the children. That we can't... it's just, they take a two year old and marinate their brains in 30,000 T.V. ads a year, with the most sophisticated, psychological thinking done to go in to get them to brand imprint brands and their names is just an outrageous thing to do to children in society.

BILL MOYERS: But the media executives would say, "Look, that's for the parents to do."

JOHN NICHOLS: Hey...

BILL MOYERS: "That's not for the government to... "

JOHN NICHOLS: You know, they'd said that about cigarette advertising, too, at one point. The fact of the matter is that in this country, we accept regulation of advertising. We accept there be a public role in this.

It's just that what we've been told up to this point is in some narrow little public health areas. Well, I would suggest that we ought to take a look at the public health of our democracy.

Majority of Americans don't vote in most elections. We have every civic group — you go talk to the Rotary, you talk to the Lion's Club. They're all saying, "You know, there's just this decline in civic life. There's a decline in connectedness in this country."

And we know that the dominant part of most of our lives, as regards communication, is media. I think that we can suggest that media ought to have a role in making our civic life work better, and that that oughta be a part, not the whole of it. It can be entertaining. It can even make money for folks. But a part of it ought to be more civic.

BILL MOYERS: But you're flying in the face, are you not, of a business culture?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: This is serious business. You're absolutely right. This isn't a-- a tangential or marginal thing. We are going exactly at some of the crucial institutions in our society.

And I think we have to look around and look at the caliber of our democracy. It's deeply troubled. And it's not gonna take a band aid. And the founding fathers, not to keep harping on them, but I think their legacy here is very rich.

They understood that setting up a diverse, well funded media system with a broad range of viewpoints was the essence of building of the oxygen for democracy. And it took conscious policies. It didn't happen naturally. You had to work at it.

And we've gotta return to that principle and get public participation in the policies. There's nothing natural about our media system.

BILL MOYERS: These corporations will tell you that they earned their success and their power the old-fashioned way, the American way, by winning the robust competition of the marketplace.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Nonsense. They, the most important comp... look, they do compete. Don't get it wrong. And the people who make movies and T.V. shows are trying to get the most viewers. That's true.

But the most important competition these companies have is behind closed doors in Washington, getting these valuable monopoly licenses. Once you're given a monopoly license to T.V. spectrum in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington, a trained orangutan could become a billionaire. It's no great genius then.

But once you win that fight, the rest is a downhill slope. So I mean, yes it's true they do compete but at the same time, the most important issue is this whole system's set up by government policy. Those policies are made correctly once you win the policy behind those closed doors, the rest of it's easy.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: But no one else is allowed to play but the people who win those policy fights.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: When you said that you can own eight radio stations in a single market, when you said that you can own as many radio stations nationally as you like, that decision allowed Clear Channel to win in the public marketplace. It didn't — there wasn't some sort of competition...

BILL MOYERS: You're saying these decisions that are discussed in economic terms...

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: ...are really political decisions.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: Is that what you're saying?

JOHN NICHOLS: Absolutely.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's absolutely right. With tremendous social implications.

JOHN NICHOLS: Made by — well, the decisions are made by the FCC or by Congress. I mean they're made the same way every political decision is. The problem is that, for instance, you referenced before the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Where was the robust national debate on really what is our media environment?

BILL MOYERS: There's a wonderful moment in that debate.

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: I remember when John McCain...

JOHN NICHOLS: Of all people.

BILL MOYERS: ...spoke up and said, "You will not see this on television."

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right.

JOHN NICHOLS: And he was right! And the incredible thing was that, when we go around the country, you know, we did town meetings in places like Montpelier, Vermont and you know, the amazing thing is we did one about a year ago. The room was packed. You literally — there were people standing along the side to talk about media and democracy. What the heck is that? And yet, the interesting thing is that when we started talking about that debate, people were amazed. This was a first blush for many of them.

They were saying, "You know, in 1996, they made all this stuff." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, I think I might a heard something about that." Well, that's ridiculous. That would be, to do an equivalent, that would be saying, "You know, I think I might have heard something about the Clean Air Act," or, "I think I might a heard something about, you know, just..."

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Civil Rights.

JOHN NICHOLS: "...Civil Rights Act."

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Yeah.

JOHN NICHOLS: This is absurd. This is, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a fundamental, structural shift in the way we live our lives.

BILL MOYERS: By?

JOHN NICHOLS: And yet...

BILL MOYERS: Because?

JOHN NICHOLS: Because we, the average American spends, is it 11 hours?

BILL MOYERS: Twelve.

JOHN NICHOLS: Twelve hours in contact with some kind of media. When you radically reshape who controls that, how it works, how it's structured, that affects our lives.

BILL MOYERS: Are you saying that in the name of deregulation we're creating monopolies?

JOHN NICHOLS: Absolutely. We call it deregulation.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: It's not.

JOHN NICHOLS: It is not deregulation.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Yeah. It's regulation on the behalf of private interests, versus regulation...

JOHN NICHOLS: It's regulation...

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: ...on behalf of the public.

JOHN NICHOLS: It is regulation to pick winners. We are picking winners. Now the winner, the people who get picked are the ones who have great lobbyists, and a huge push in Washington, and they do all the right things. But we are picking winners. And I can tell you, we're also picking losers.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: That's right.

JOHN NICHOLS: The losers are our communities. The losers are — is our democracy. In fact, when John McCain had a hearing on this just in... end of January.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: Late January.

JOHN NICHOLS: There was a wonderful gentleman from Syracuse, New York there, a small town radio station owner, talked about how he was forced out. You know, that he was just... that advertising pressure and all sorts of things were brought upon him that he had to sell out.

But he told this wonderful story of how, just a few years ago, he was on there, and he was beating Clear Channel. He was doing a great job. And he was doing local reporting, and all sorts of stuff, creating it right now, in this media era, and doing a great job. The only way, as he said, that he got beat, was that they finally just said, "Well, we own all the other stations," and they made all these deals for advertisers, that it finally became impossible for him to compete.

BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that recently when the FCC, all the commissioners, came to New York to have a hearing on the rule changes here in the heart of the media universe, only one camera showed up and it was not from the corporate media?

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: It was quite striking. And I think it's always been one of the problems is that the news media that we depend on to cover important public policy issues is conflictive. There's an extraordinary conflict of interest, because our news media are owned by firms which benefit by certain types of policies. And they have no stake in engaging the public in these.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think your mother's watching right now? I didn't...

JOHN NICHOLS: Oh she will be if I tell her that... yeah.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY: She watches PBS all the time.

JOHN NICHOLS: She does. She's obsessive about it.

BILL MOYERS: Look at your mother in the camera and tell her if she really wants to join a movement and do something practical what can she do right now?

JOHN NICHOLS: It's a very simple thing. Write to your Congressman, mom. And write to your Senator. This is a really important reality of what happens in media as regards the structures and the rules and regulations, is driven by Congress. At this point we have a dawning recognition among a lot of members of Congress that things are amiss.

My mother's U.S. Senator, Russ Feingold from Wisconsin, has introduced a quite good Bill as regards radio consolidation and some things that need to be done. I'd hope my mom and people, other people in Wisconsin would cheer him on. I'd hope other people around the country would cheer him on. I think that we are at a point where dialogue can begin to be had. And there have been some wonderful people in Washington. Good activists who have been working at this for years and have done — who've put the seeds there. They've laid a lot of the groundwork.

Now we need the American people to come riding to the rescue. No change in this country has ever come out of Washington. It always comes when ordinary folks say, as they did with the environmental movement, or the anti-war movement, you know we don't like where it's headed. And members of Congress need to hear that. And members of the FCC need to hear it when they go around for these hearings around the country.

If they do, I think we have a chance. Not a certainty, but a chance to begin to kind of turn some of this around and we need to. It's what our country needs.

NOW's website

These should provide you with some color as to the abysmal performance of the American press corps and some of the myriad of reasons for their inaccuracies and outright failures. Get pissed off and pay attention!

Depleted Uranium Penetrators, Gulf War I, and implications for GW2..the Empire strikes again

Get your daily dose of US "moral clarity" right here.

Focus: Inside Iraq - The Tragedy of a People Betrayed

Wherever you go in Iraq's southern city of Basra, there is dust. It rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a plastic ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, 'the seeds of our death'...

23 February 2003


Dr Al-Ali is a cancer specialist at Basra's hospital and a member of Britain's Royal College of Physicians. He has a neat moustache and a kindly, furrowed face. His starched white coat, like the collar of his shirt, is frayed.

"Before the Gulf War, we had only three or four deaths in a month from cancer," he said. "Now it's 30 to 35 patients dying every month, and that's just in my department. That is a 12-fold increase in cancer mortality. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. That's almost half the population.

"Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. We don't know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed to get the equipment to conduct a proper survey, or even test the excess level of radiation in our bodies. We strongly suspect depleted uranium, which was used by the Americans and British in the Gulf War right across the southern battlefields. Whatever the cause, it is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us.

"The mushrooms grow huge, and the fish in what was once a beautiful river are inedible. Even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten."

Along the corridor, I met Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a paediatrician. At another time, she might have been described as an effervescent personality; now she, too, has a melancholy expression that does not change; it is the face of Iraq. "This is Ali Raffa Asswadi," she said, stopping to take the hand of a wasted boy I guessed to be about four years old. "He is nine. He has leukaemia. Now we can't treat him. Only some of the drugs are available. We get drugs for two or three weeks, and then they stop when the shipments stop. Unless you continue a course, the treatment is useless. We can't even give blood transfusions, because there are not enough blood bags."

Dr Hassen keeps a photo album of the children she is trying to save and those she has been unable to save. "This is Talum Saleh," she said, turning to a photograph of a boy in a blue pullover and with sparkling eyes. "He is five-and-a-half years old. This is a case of Hodgkin's disease. Normally a patient with Hodgkin's can expect to live and the cure can be 95 per cent. But if the drugs are not available, complications set in, and death follows. This boy had a beautiful nature. He died."

I said, "As we were walking, I noticed you stop and put your face to the wall." "Yes, I was emotional ... I am a doctor; I am not supposed to cry, but I cry every day, because this is torture. These children could live; they could live and grow up; and when you see your son and daughter in front of you, dying, what happens to you?" I said, "What do you say to those in the West who deny the connection between depleted uranium and the deformities of these children?" "That is not true. How much proof do they want? There is every relation between congenital malformation and depleted uranium. Before 1991, we saw nothing like this at all. If there is no connection, why have these things not happened before? Most of these children have no family history of cancer.

"I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. It is almost exactly the same here; we have an increased percentage of congenital malformation, an increase of malignancy, leukaemia, brain tumours: the same."

Under the economic embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council, now in its 14th year, Iraq is denied equipment and expertise to decontaminate its battlefields from the 1991 Gulf War.

Professor Doug Rokke, the US Army physicist responsible for cleaning up Kuwait, told me: "I am like many people in southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. Most of my team are now dead.

"We face an issue to be confronted by people in the West, those with a sense of right and wrong: first, the decision by the US and Britain to use a weapon of mass destruction: depeleted uranium. When a tank fired its shells, each round carried over 4,500g of solid uranium. What happened in the Gulf was a form of nuclear warfare."

In 1991, a United Kingdom Atomic Eneregy Authority document reported that if 8 per cent of the depleted uranium fired in the Gulf War was inhaled, it could cause "500,000 potential deaths". In the promised attack on Iraq, the United States will again use depleted uranium, and so will Britain, regardless of its denials.

Professor Rokke says he has watched Iraqi officials pleading with American and British officials to ease the embargo, if only to allow decontaminating and cancer assessment equipment to be imported. "They described the deaths and horrific deformities, and they were rebuffed," he said. "It was pathetic."

The United Nations Sanctions Committee in New York, set up by the Security Council to administer the embargo, is dominated by the Americans, who are backed by the British. Washington has vetoed or delayed a range of vital medical equipment, chemotherapy drugs, even pain-killers. (In the jargon of denial, "blocked" equals vetoed, and "on hold" means delayed, or maybe blocked.) In Baghdad, I sat in a clinic as doctors received parents and their children, many of them grey-skinned and bald, some of them dying. After every second or third examination, Dr Lekaa Fasseh Ozeer, the young oncologist, wrote in English: "No drugs available." I asked her to jot down in my notebook a list of drugs the hospital had ordered, but had not received, or had received intermittently. She filled a page.

I had been filming in Iraq for my documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq. Back in London, I showed Dr Ozeer's list to Professor Karol Sikora who, as chief of the cancer programme of the World Health Organisation (WHO), wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee]. There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical and other weapons.

Nearly all these drugs are available in every British hospital. They are very standard. When I came back from Iraq last year, with a group of experts I drew up a list of 17 drugs deemed essential for cancer treatment. We informed the UN that there was no possibility of converting these drugs into chemical warfare agents. We heard nothing more.

"The saddest thing I saw in Iraq was children dying because there was no chemotherapy and no pain control. It seemed crazy they couldn't have morphine, because for everybody with cancer pain, it is the best drug. When I was there, they had a little bottle of aspirin pills to go round 200 patients in pain. They would receive a particular anti-cancer drug, but then get only little bits of drugs here and there, and so you can't have any planning. It's bizarre."

I told him that one of the doctors had been especially upset because the UN Sanctions Committee had banned nitrous oxide as "weapons dual use"; yet this was used in caesarean sections to stop bleeding, and perhaps save a mother's life. "I can see no logic to banning that," he said. "I am not an armaments expert, but the amounts used would be so small that, even if you collected all the drugs supply for the whole nation and pooled it, it is difficult to see how you could make any chemical warfare device out of it."

Denis Halliday is a courtly Irishman who spent 34 years with the UN, latterly as Assistant Secretary-General. When he resigned in 1998 as the UN's Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq in protest at the effects of the embargo on the civilian population, it was, he wrote, "because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple as that ... Five thousand children are dying every month ... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these."

Since I met Halliday, I have been struck by the principle behind his carefully chosen, uncompromising words. "I had been instructed," he said, "to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that the regime – Saddam Hussein – is not paying the price for economic sanctions; on the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of untreated water. What is clear is that the Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. History will slaughter those responsible."

In the UN, Mr Halliday broke a long collective silence. On 13 February, 2000, Hans Von Sponeck, who had succeeded him as Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Baghdad, resigned. Like Halliday, he had been with the UN for more than 30 years. "How long," he asked, "should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?" Two days later, Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Programme in Iraq, another UN agency, resigned, saying that she, too, could no longer tolerate what was being done to the Iraqi people.

The resignations were unprecedented. All three were saying the unsayable: that the West was responsible for mass deaths, estimated by Halliday to be more than a million. While food and medicines are technically exempt, the Sanctions Committee has frequently vetoed and delayed requests for baby food, agricultural equipment, heart and cancer drugs, oxygen tents, X-ray machines. Sixteen heart and lung machines were put "on hold" because they contained computer chips. A fleet of ambulances was held up because their equipment included vacuum flasks, which keep medical supplies cold; vacuum flasks are designated "dual use" by the Sanctions Committee, meaning they could possibly be used in weapons manufacture. Cleaning materials, such as chlorine, are "dual use", as is the graphite used in pencils; as are wheelbarrows, it seems, considering the frequency of their appearance on the list of "holds".

As of October 2001, 1,010 contracts for humanitarian supplies, worth $3.85bn, were "on hold" by the Sanctions Committee. They included items related to food, health, water and sanitation, agriculture and education. This has now risen to goods worth more than $5bn. This is rarely reported in the West.

When Denis Halliday was the senior United Nations official in Iraq, a display cabinet stood in the foyer of his office. It contained a bag of wheat, some congealed cooking oil, bars of soap and a few other household necessities. "It was a pitiful sight," he said, "and it represented the monthly ration that we were allowed to spend. I added cheese to lift the protein content, but there was simply not enough money left over from the amount we were allowed to spend, which came from the revenue Iraq was allowed to make from its oil."

He describes food shipments as "an exercise in duplicity". A shipment that the Americans claim allows for 2,300 calories per person per day may well allow for only 2,000 calories, or less. "What's missing," he said, "will be animal proteins, minerals and vitamins. As most Iraqis have no other source of income, food has become a medium of exchange; it gets sold for other necessities, further lowering the calorie intake. You also have to get clothes and shoes for your kids to go to school. You've then got malnourished mothers who cannot breastfeed, and they pick up bad water.

What is needed is investment in water treatment and distribution, electric power for food processing, storage and refrigeration, education and agriculture." His successor, Hans Von Sponeck, calculates that the Oil for Food Programme allows $100 (£63) for each person to live on for a year. This figure also has to help pay for the entire society's infrastructure and essential services, such as power and water.

"It is simply not possible to live on such an amount," Mr Von Sponeck told me. "Set that pittance against the lack of clean water, the fact that electricity fails for up to 22 hours a day, and the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of trying to get from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable."

The cost in lives is staggering. A study by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) found that between 1991 and 1998, there were 500,000 deaths above the anticipated rate among Iraqi children under five years of age. This, on average, is 5,200 preventable under-five deaths per month.

Hans Von Sponeck said, "Some 167 Iraqi children are dying every day." Denis Halliday said, "If you include adults, the figure is now almost certainly well over a million." A melancholia shrouds people. I felt it at Baghdad's evening auctions, where intimate possessions are sold to buy food and medicines. Television sets are common. A woman with two infants watched their pushchairs go for pennies. A man who had collected doves since he was 15 came with his last bird; the cage would go next.

My film crew and I had come to pry, yet we were made welcome; or people merely deferred to our presence, as the downcast do. During three weeks in Iraq, only once was I the brunt of someone's anguish. "Why are you killing the children?" shouted a man in the street. "Why are you bombing us? What have we done to you?" Through the glass doors of the Baghdad offices of Unicef you can read the following mission statement: "Above all, survival, hope, development, respect, dignity, equality and justice for women and children."

Fortunately, the children in the street outside, with their pencil limbs and long thin faces, cannot read English, and perhaps cannot read at all. "The change in such a short time is unparalleled, in my experience," Dr Anupama Rao Singh, Unicef's senior representative in Iraq, told me.

"In 1989, the literacy rate was more than 90 per cent; parents were fined for failing to send their children to school. The phenomenon of street children was unheard of. Iraq had reached a stage where the basic indicators we use to measure the overall wellbeing of human beings, including children, were some of the best in the world. Now it is among the bottom 20 per cent."

Dr Singh, diminutive, grey-haired and, with her precision, sounding like the teacher she once was in India, has spent most of her working life with Unicef. She took me to a typical primary school in Saddam City, where Baghdad's majority and poorest live. We approached along a flooded street, the city's drainage and water distribution system having collapsed since the Gulf War bombing. The headmaster, Ali Hassoon, guided us around the puddles of raw sewage in the playground and pointed to the high-water mark on the wall. "In the winter it comes up to here. That's when we evacuate.

We stay for as long as possible but, without desks, the children have to sit on bricks. I am worried about the buildings coming down." As we talked, an air-raid siren sounded in the distance.The school is on the edge of a vast industrial cemetery. The pumps in the sewage treatment plants and the reservoirs of potable water are silent, save for a few wheezing at a fraction of their capacity. Those that were not bombed have since disintegrated; spare parts from their British, French and German manufacturers are permanently "on hold".

Before 1991, Baghdad"s water was as safe as any in the developed world. Today, drawn untreated from the Tigris, it is lethal. Just before Christmas 1999, the Department of Trade and Industry in London restricted the export of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever.

Dr Kim Howells told Parliament why. His title of Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Competition and Consumer Affairs perfectly suited his Orwellian reply. The children's vaccines were, he said, "capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction".

American and British aircraft operate over Iraq in what their governments have unilaterally declared "no fly zones". This means that only they and their allies can fly there. The designated areas are in the north, around Mosul, to the border with Turkey, and from just south of Baghdad to the Kuwaiti border. The US and British governments insist the no fly zones are "legal", claiming that they are part of, or supported by, the Security Council's Resolution 688.

There is a great deal of fog about this, the kind generated by the Foreign Office when its statements are challenged. There is no reference to no fly zones in Security Council resolutions, which suggests they have no basis in international law.

I went to Paris and asked Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary-General of the UN in 1992, when the resolution was passed. "The issue of no fly zones was not raised and therefore not debated: not a word," he said. "They offer no legitimacy to countries sending their aircraft to attack Iraq." "Does that mean they are illegal?" I asked. "They are illegal," he replied.

The scale of the bombing in the no fly zones is astonishing. Between July 1998 and January 2000, American air force and naval aircraft flew 36,000 sorties over Iraq, including 24,000 combat missions. In 1999 alone, American and British aircraft dropped more than 1,800 bombs and hit 450 targets. The cost to British taxpayers is more than £800m.

There is bombing almost every day: it is the longest Anglo-American aerial campaign since the Second World War; yet it is mostly ignored by the British and American media. In a rare acknowledgement, The New York Times reported, "American warplanes have methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq ... pilots have flown about two-thirds as many missions as Nato pilots flew over Yugoslavia in 78 days of around-the-clock war there."

The purpose of the no fly zones, according to the British and American governments, is to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shi'a in the south against Saddam Hussein's forces. The aircraft are performing a "vital humanitarian task", says Tony Blair, that will give "minority peoples the hope of freedom and the right to determine their own destinies".

Like much of Blair's rhetoric on Iraq, it is simply false. In nothern Kurdish Iraq, I interviewed members of a family who had lost their grandfather, their father and four brothers and sisters when a "coalition" aircraft dive-bombed them and the sheep they were tending. The attack was investigated and verified by Hans Von Sponeck who drove there especially from Baghdad. Dozens of similar attacks – on shepherds, farmers, fishermen – are described in a document prepared by the UN Security Section.

The US faced a "genuine dilemma" in Iraq, reported The Wall Street Journal. "After eight years of enforcing a no fly zone in ... Iraq, few military targets remain. 'We're down to the last outhouse,' one US official protested. 'There are still some things left, but not many.'"

There are still children left. Six children died when an American missile hit Al Jumohria, a community in Basra's poorest residential area: 63 people were injured, a number of them badly burned. "Collateral damage," said the Pentagon. I walked down the street where the missile had struck in the early hours; it had followed the line of houses, destroying one after the other. I met the father of two sisters, aged eight and 10, who were photographed by a local wedding photographer shortly after the attack. They are in their nightdresses, one with a bow in her hair, their bodies entombed in the rubble of their homes, where they had been bombed to death in their beds. These images haunt me.

I flew on to New York for an interview with Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He appears an oddly diffident man, so softly spoken as to be almost inaudible.

"As the Secretary-General of the United Nations which is imposing this blockade on Iraq," I said, "what do you say to the parents of the children who are dying?" His reply was that the Security Council was considering "smart sanctions", which would "target the leaders" rather than act as "a blunt instrument that impacts on children". I said the UN was set up to help people, not harm them, and he replied, "Please do not judge us by what has happened in Iraq."

I walked to the office of Peter van Walsum, the Netherlands' ambassador to the UN and the chairman of the Sanctions Committee. What impressed me about this diplomat with life-and-death powers over 22 million people half a world away was

that, like liberal politicians in the West, he seemed to hold two diametrically opposed thoughts in his mind. On the one hand, he spoke of Iraq as if everybody were Saddam Hussein; on the other, he seemed to believe that most Iraqis were victims, held hostage to the intransigence of a dictator.

I asked him why the civilian population should be punished for Saddam Hussein's crimes. "It's a difficult problem," he replied. "You should realise that sanctions are one of the curative measures that the Security Council has at its disposal ... and obviously they hurt. They are like a military measure." "Who do they hurt?" "Well, this, of course, is the problem ... but with military action, too, you have the eternal problem of collateral damage." "So an entire nation is collateral damage. Is that correct?" "No, I am saying that sanctions have [similar] effects. We have to study this further."

"Do you believe that people have human rights no matter where they live and under what system?" I asked. "Yes." "Doesn't that mean that the sanctions you are imposing are violating the human rights of millions of people?" "It's also documented the Iraqi regime has committed very serious human rights breaches ..."

"There is no doubt about that," I said. "But what's the difference in principle between human rights violations committed by the regime and those caused by your committee?" "It's a very complex issue, Mr Pilger."

"What do you say to those who describe sanctions that have caused so many deaths as 'weapons of mass destruction' as lethal as chemical weapons?" "I don't think that's a fair comparison." "Aren't the deaths of half a million children mass destruction?" "I don't think that's a very fair question. We are talking about a situation caused by a government that overran its neighbour, and has weapons of mass destruction."

"Then why aren't there sanctions on Israel [which] occupies much of Palestine and attacks Lebanon almost every day of the week? Why aren't there sanctions on Turkey, which has displaced three million Kurds and caused the deaths of 30,000 Kurds?" "Well, there are many countries that do things that we are not happy with. We can't be everywhere. I repeat, it's complex." "How much power does the United States exercise over your committee?" "We operate by consensus." "And what if the Americans object?" "We don"t operate."

There is little doubt that if Saddam Hussein saw political advantage in starving and otherwise denying his people, he would do so. It is hardly surprising that he has looked after himself, his inner circle and, above all, his military and security apparatus.

His palaces and spooks, like the cartoon portraits of himself, are everywhere. Unlike other tyrants, however, he not only survived, but before the Gulf War enjoyed a measure of popularity by buying off his people with the benefits from Iraq's oil revenue. Having exiled or murdered his opponents, more than any Arab leader he used the riches of oil to modernise the civilian infrastructure, building first-rate hospitals, schools and universities.

In this way he fostered a relatively large, healthy, well-fed, well-educated middle class. Before sanctions, Iraqis consumed more than 3,000 calories each per day; 92 per cent of people had safe water and 93 per cent enjoyed free health care. Adult literacy was one of the highest in the world, at around 95 per cent. According to the Economist's Intelligence Unit, "the Iraqi welfare state was, until recently, among the most comprehensive and generous in the Arab world."

It is said the only true beneficiary of sanctions is Saddam Hussein. He has used the embargo to centralise state power, and so reinforce his direct control over people's lives. With most Iraqis now dependent on the state food rationing system, organised political dissent is all but unthinkable. In any case, for most Iraqis, it is cancelled by the sense of grievance and anger they feel towards the external enemy, western governments.

In the relatively open and pro-Western society that existed in Iraq before 1991, there was always the prospect of an uprising, as the Kurdish and Shia rebellions that year showed. In today's state of siege, there is none. That is the unsung achievement of the Anglo-American blockade.

The economic blockade on Iraq must be lifted for no other reason than that it is immoral, its consequences inhuman. When that happens, says the former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, "the weapons inspectors must go back into Iraq and complete their mandate, which should be reconfigured. It was originally drawn up for quantitative disarmament, to account for every nut, screw, bolt, document that exists in Iraq. As long as Iraq didn't account for that, it was not in compliance and there was no progress.

"We should change that mandate to qualitative disarmament. Does Iraq have a chemical weapons programme today? No. Does Iraq have a long-range missile programme today? No. Nuclear? No. Biological? No. Is Iraq qualitatively disarmed? Yes. So we should get on with monitoring Iraq to ensure they do not reconstitute any of this capability."

Even before the machinations in the UN Security Council in October and November 2002, Iraq had already accepted back inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. At the time of writing, a new resolution, forced through the Security Council by a Bush administration campaign of bribery and coercion, has seen a contingent of weapons inspectors at work in Iraq. Led by the Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, the inspectors have extraordinary powers, which, for example, require Iraq to "confess" to possessing equipment never banned by previous resolutions. In spite of a torrent of disnformation from Washington and Whitehall, they have found, as one inspector put it, "zilch".

An attack is next; we have no right to call it a "war". The "enemy" is a nation of whom almost half the population are children, a nation who offer us no threat and with whom we have no quarrel. The fate of countless innocent lives now depends on vestiges of self-respect among the so-called international (non-American) community, and on free journalists to tell the truth and not merely channel and echo the propaganda of great power.

It is seldom reported that UN Security Resolution 687 that enforces the embargo on Iraq also says that Iraq's disarmament should be a step "towards the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction ..." In other words, if Iraq gives up, or has given up, its doomsday weapons, so should Israel. After 11 September 2001, making relentless demands on Iraq, then attacking it, while turning a blind eye to Israel will endanger us all.

"The longer the sanctions go on," said Denis Halliday, "[the more] we are likely to see the emergence of a generation who will regard Saddam Hussein as too moderate and too willing to listen to the West."

On my last night in Iraq, I went to the Rabat Hall in the centre of Baghdad to watch the Iraqi National Orchestra rehearse. I had wanted to meet Mohammed Amin Ezzat, the conductor, whose personal tragedy epitomises the punishment of his people. Because the power supply is so intermittent, Iraqis have been forced to use cheap kerosene lamps for lighting, heating and cooking; and these frequently explode. This is what happened to Mohammed Amin Ezzat's wife, Jenan, who was engulfed in flames.

"I saw my wife burn completely before my eyes," he said. " I threw myself on her in order to extinguish the flames, but it was no use. She died. I sometimes wish I had died with her." He stood on his conductor's podium, his badly burnt left arm unmoving, the fingers fused together.

The orchestra was rehearsing Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and there was a strange discord. Reeds were missing from clarinets and strings from violins. "We can't get them from abroad," he said. "Someone has decreed they are not allowed." The musical scores are ragged, like ancient parchment. The musicians cannot get paper.

Only two members of the original orchestra are left; the rest have set out on the long, dangerous road to Jordan and beyond. "You cannot blame them," he said. "The suffering in our country is too great. But why has it not been stopped?"

It was a question I put to Denis Halliday one evening in New York. We were standing, just the two of us, in the great modernist theatre that is the General Assembly at the UN. "This is where the real world is represented," he said.

"One state, one vote. By contrast, the Security Council has five permanent members which have veto rights. There is no democracy there. Had the issue of sanctions on Iraq gone to the General Assembly, it would have been overturned by a very large majority.

"We have to change the United Nations, to reclaim what is ours. The genocide in Iraq is the test of our will. All of us have to break the silence: to make those responsible, in Washington and London, aware that history will slaughter them."

This is an edited extract from John Pilger's latest book, 'The New Rulers of the World', published next month by Verso, as a fully updated paperback at £8
22 February 2003 18:53

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I think the article speaks for itself. The use of DU penetrators should be a war crime. With a half-life of over 4 billion years, anywhere they are used, becomes a nuclear waste site, well, forever. If we are saving the Iraqi citizenry from Saddam, who is to save them from us?

Rumsfeld in Memory Hole

Neo-conservatives caught again in staggering hypocrisy

Saturday 22.02.2003, CET 22:40

Rumsfeld was on ABB board during nuclear deal with North Korea

The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s east coast.

Rumsfeld – who is one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea – was a member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post.

Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld “was at nearly all the board meetings” during his decade-long involvement with the company.

Maybe, maybe not

However, he declined to indicate whether Rumsfeld was made aware of the nuclear contract with North Korea.

“This is a good question, but I couldn’t comment on that because we never disclose the protocols of the board meetings,” Eberhardt said.

“Maybe this was a discussion point of the board, maybe not.”

The defense secretary’s role at ABB during the late 1990s has become a bone of contention in Washington.

The ABB contract was a consequence of a 1994 deal between the US and Pyongyang to allow construction of two reactors in exchange for a freeze on the North’s nuclear weapons programme. North Korea revealed last year that it had secretly continued its nuclear weapons programme, despite its obligations under the deal with Washington.

The Bush government has repeatedly used the agreement to criticise the former Clinton administration for being too soft on North Korea. Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, has been among the most vocal critics of the 1994 weapons accord.

Dirty bombs

Weapons experts have also speculated that waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called “dirty bombs”.

Rumsfeld’s position at ABB could prove embarrassing for the Bush administration since while he was a director he was also active on issues of weapons proliferation, chairing the 1998 congressional Ballistic Missile Threat commission.

The commission suggested the Clinton-era deal with Pyongyang gave too much away because “North Korea maintains an active weapons of mass destruction programme, including a nuclear weapons programme”.

From Zurich to Pyongyang

At the same time, Rumsfeld was travelling to Zurich for ABB’s quarterly board-meetings.

Eberhardt said it was possible that the North Korea deal never crossed the ABB boardroom desk.

“At the time, we generated a lot of big orders in the power generation business [worth] around $1 billion…[so] a $200 million contract was, so to speak, a smaller one.”

When asked whether a deal with a country such as North Korea – a communist state with declared nuclear intentions – should have been brought to the ABB board’s attention, Eberhardt told swissinfo: “Yes, maybe. But so far we haven’t any evidence for that because the protocols were never disclosed. So maybe it was a discussion point, maybe not,” says Eberhardt.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clark, recently told “Newsweek” magazine that “Secretary Rumsfeld does not recall it being brought before the board at any time”.

It was a long time ago

Today, ABB says it no longer has any involvement with the North Korean power plants, due to come on line in 2007 and 2008.

The company finalised the sale of its nuclear business in early 2000 to the British-based BNFL group.

swissinfo, Jacob Greber

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Commentary: There is a lot left unsaid here. Such as, "where are the minutes to the meetings?" I think we can conclude Rumsfeld knew. Where are these peoples' morals? Ahh, yes, George W.'s amazing, "moral clarity." He gets this from his invisible friend that he claims to have a "personal relationship" with. WTF is that? Delusional comes to mind.

Paul Wolfowitz's comments are ludicrous. It is uncommon knowledge that NK's nuclear weapons program was largely developed under the Reagan and Bush 1's watch. Oh, the hypocrisy!!!!! Need evidence? I would.

This from the Federation of American Scientists' website:

A close examination by the IAEA of the radioactive isotope content in the nuclear waste revealed that North Korea had extracted about 24 kilograms of Plutonium. North Korea was supposed to have produced 0.9 gram of Plutonium per megawatt every day over a 4-year period from 1987 to 1991. The 0.9 gram per day multiplied by 365 days by 4 years and by 30 megawatts equals to 39 kilograms. When the yearly operation ratio is presumed to be 60 percent, the actual amount was estimated at 60% of 39 kilograms, or some 23.4 kilograms. Since 20-kiloton standard nuclear warhead has 8 kilograms of critical mass, this amounts to mass of material of nuclear fission out of which about 3 nuclear warheads could be extracted.

For the unspun version see this page. You owe it to yourself to read all of the information found there. It's quite enlightening.

The whole PNAC bunch are rotten apples.