What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber?
Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's Night
In his special
report Alexander Cockburn interviews former Wiesel colleague
and Holocaust survivor Eli Pfefferkorn. What Raul Hilberg, the
Holocaust's greatest historian, really thinks about Wiesel's
"Night". Also
in this special issue: Is Hugo Chavez Hitler or Father Christmas?
Larry Lack tells the full story of Venezuela's hand-outs to Uncle
Sam's Shivering Poor. Plus, Jeffrey St Clair profiles the Endangered
Visigoth and traces the rise and possible fall of Rick Pombo,
destroyer of nature.CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please
support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
This week, the Washington Post offered
a grim overview of Iraq's epidemic of mental disorders, produced
by years of war, upheaval and neglect ("Iraq's Crisis of
Scarred Psyches," March 6). Of course, much of this psychological
damage is the fault of Saddam Hussein and the brutal regime he
installed: militarism, tyranny and the gross deceit required
to maintain them wreak serious havoc on the human mind, as Americans
are coming to know all too well. But there is a deeper history
behind the unfolding nightmare in Iraq--a method to the induced
madness--that is inextricably linked to the political and personal
fortunes of two sinister twerps named George Bush.
As historian Roger Morris has usefully reminded us, Saddam's
regime was midwifed by not one but two coups supported by the
CIA: the first brought the Baathist Party to power, the second,
an internal coup, engineered the ascension of Saddam's family-centered
faction to the top. It is unlikely that Saddam would have ever
been a position to impose his perverted militarist vision on
Iraqi society without the assistance of the elitist operatives
whose headquarters now proudly bears the name of George Herbert
Walker Bush.
Let us also remember that Saddam was sustained in his harsh rule
with the eager support of Ronald Reagan and the aforementioned
George H.W. Bush. Indeed, the latter's passionate embrace of
Saddam seemed to know no bound, so avidly did Bush ply the dictator
with money, agricultural credits (which allowed Saddam to use
his scarce hard currency for weapons) and advanced technology--includuing
"dual-use" gear for weapons of mass destruction--despite
the strong warnings of his own Cabinet against such reckless
policies, and a 1989 report by the CIA that Iraq had greatly
accelerated its nuclear program, and was now the world's largest
maker of chemical weapons.
Bush also used the global criminal network of the Bank of Credit
and Commerce International (BCCI) to secretly funnel cash and
weaponry to Saddam--then intervened to quash federal investigations
of the scam. What was BCCI? Only "one of the largest criminal
enterprises in history," according to the United States
Senate. What did BCCI do? "It engaged in pandemic bribery
of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas,"
says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation.
"It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses
and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied
the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism.
It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and
prostitution." Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime,
then.
The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's
Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used to send millions of
secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly
chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms
dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in
the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.
As soon as the BNL case broke, Bush moved to throttle the investigation.
He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice
Department posts--where they supervised the officials investigating
their old companies. The overall probe was directed by Justice
Department investigator Robert Mueller. Meanwhile, White House
aides applied heavy pressure on other prosecutors to restrict
the range of the probe--especially the fact that Bush cabinet
officials Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger had served
as consultants for BNL during their pre-White House days as spear-carriers
for yet another secretive international front that profits from
war, weapons, and the avid greasing of highly-placed palms: Kissinger
Associates. The Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably
"botched"--witnesses went missing, CIA records got
"lost," all sorts of bad luck. Most of the big BCCI
players went unpunished or got off with wrist-slap fines and
sanctions.
One of the White House aides who unlawfully intervened in the
BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. Said
factotum was later appointed by George W. Bush to a place on
the federal appeals court--a lifetime sinecure of perks and power.
Mueller, meanwhile wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to
the post in by George W. in July s2001. Well done, thou good
and faithful servants!
Then came Bush's "Gulf War," when he turned on his
protégé after Saddam made the foolish move of threatening
the Kuwaiti royals--Bush's long-time business partners, going
back to the early 1960s. Saddam's conflict with Kuwait centered
on two main issues: first, his claim that the billions of dollars
Kuwait had given Iraq during the war with Iran was simply straightforward
aid to the nation that was defending the Sunni Arab world from
the aggressive onslaught of the Shiite Persians. The Kuwaitis
insisted the money had been a loan, and demanded that Saddam
pay off. There was also Saddam's claim that Kuwait was "slant-drilling"
into Iraqi oilfields, siphoning off underground reserves from
across the border. These disputes raged for months; a deal to
resolve them was brokered by the Arab League, but fell apart
at the last minute when Kuwait suddenly rejected the agreement,
saying, "We will call in the Americans."
How worried was Bush about the situation? Let's look at the historical
record. In the two weeks before the invasion of Kuwait, Bush
approved the sale of an additional $4.8 million in "dual-use"
technology to factories identified by the CIA as linchpins of
Hussein's illicit nuclear and biochemical programs, the Los Angeles
Times reports. The day before Saddam sent his tanks across
the border, Bush obligingly sold him more than $600 million worth
of advanced communications technology. Yet a week later, he was
declaring that his long-time ally was "worse than Hitler."
Yes, the Kuwaitis had called in their marker. Like a warlord
of old, Bush used the US military as a private army to help his
business partners. After an extensive bombing campaign that openly--even
gleefully--mocked international law in its targeting of civilian
infrastructure (a tactic repeated in Serbia by Bill Clinton--now
regarded as an "adopted son" by Bush), the brief 100-hour
ground war slaughtered fleeing Iraqi conscripts by the thousands--while,
curiously, allowing Saddam's crack troops, the aptly-named Republican
Guard, to escape unharmed. Later, these troops were used to kill
tens of thousands of Shiites who had risen in rebellion against
Saddam--at the specific instigation of George Bush, who not only
abandoned them to their fate, but specifically allowed Saddam
to use his attack helicopters against the rebels, and also ordered
US troops to block Shiites from gaining access to arms caches.
It was one of the worst, most murderous betrayals in modern history--and
has been almost entirely expunged from the American memory.
Then came the Carthaginian "peace" of the victors--Iraq
sown with the salt of sanctions, which led to the unnecessary
death of at least 500,000 children, according to UN's conservative
estimates. The sanction regime actually strengthened Saddam's
grip on Iraqi society, as the ravaged people were reduced to
surviving on government handouts of food.
Now another George Bush has visited havoc on Iraq, launching
a war that has led to the complete breakdown of Iraqi society,
to year after year of deprivation, religious extremism, illegal
occupation and unbridled violence. The psychological hell wrought
by this sinister consortium--the CIA, the Bushes and Saddam--is
unimaginable, a slowly-unfolding atrocity that will chew up victims
for decades to come.
Saddam is now on trial for some of his crimes; when will his
co-conspirators join him in the dock?
Chris Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times and the
St. Peterburg Times, and a regular contributor to CounterPunch.
His blog of political news and commentary, Empire Burlesque,
can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.
Finally
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.