THE RECORD
April 09, 2003

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

The brutal fact of history is that we are ruled through the control of information. Even now, in our so called "information age", when access to information and knowledge should be the most elementary and democratic right of every citizen, it is being controlled and dosed out in distorted forms to the public by the corporate media. This manipulation of information is a crime against democracy.

On the other hand there are millions of pieces of information available from alternative media outlets and thanks to the Internet, the public never had such opportunity to information as they have now. The problem is that very few are using it.

This hysteria over the pros and cons of the ongoing war in Iraq is a prime example of the deliberate distortion of facts to mislead the public and to brainwash people to support the new world order of corporate dominance. Of course, it is still called "freedom", but then "freedom" was also the platform of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. We're led to believe that this so called "coalition" of the USA and Britain is fighting to depose a brutal and murderer and bring democracy to Iraq.

There's no question that Saddam is a major criminal and murderer, but then like Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and many others, he is the creation of the same folks who are out to get him now. As the envoy of Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld shook the hand of and praised Saddam long after he allegedly gassed his own people. Because he was then a trusted ally nobody gave a hoot about it then and they don't talk about it now.

Between 1983 and 1990 the Reagan and Bush administrations authorized $5 billion in loan guarantees to Iraq and the Italian National Bank of Lavorno a further $4.5 billion, of which $1 billion was guaranteed by the US Department of Agriculture. By 1990 the US oil purchases from Iraq had jumped from the previous 80,000 barrels per day to almost 700,000 barrels.

Between 1985 and 1990 the US Commerce department gave out 771 licences to Iraq for dual purpose technology exports, almost all of it going into military use, much of it for chemical and other mass destruction weapons. The evidence has been in the open for many years. The US government of Bush Sr. overruled its own policies 15 times against the exports of certain military munitions to Iraq.

On July 25 1990, when Saddam started his sabre rattling against Kuwait the US Ambassador went to see him and declared: "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait", effectively giving him the green light to invade, which he did a week later.

A few months ago, when the Iraqis deposited 12,000 pages of records on their military hardware with the UN, the US government confiscated the papers and stole 8,000 pages of them to cover up the tracks of their activities on behalf of Saddam. Fortunately, they weren't the only ones in existence and some European papers have published the list of American, British and European companies who sold weaponry and technologies to Iraq.

The story of collaboration by the American and British governments with Saddam goes on and on in sordid, dirty. Meanwhile the controlled media and corporately owned politicians are misleading the public with cheap propaganda about the reasons for this war. I've heard it all before.

I'm not a pacifist nor would I shed a tear to see Saddam and other dictators, as well as Bush's chicken hawks, in prison. But I don't support attacking countries to steal their property.

The Iraqi people will be "liberated, right into destitution. Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves. By a curious coincidence the majority of the populations of oil exporting countries, like the Saudis, the Congo, Venezuela, etc. are living in filth, sickness and destitution, while the oil companies are draining the country and raking in billions. So, nothing will change for Iraq on this line.

Vice President Dick Cheney's Haliburton corporation did $72 million worth of rebuilding for Saddam after the Gulf War. When he left the company for his new position, he received a $37 million golden handshake. Now Haliburton, albeit only as a subcontractor, may get many millions worth of contracts for the rebuilding, together with Bechtel, Stevedoring Services, International Resources Group and a long line of US companies. The contracts are already out and signed. The plans are to privatize everything, which means selling off the infrastructure and services of the country to US controlled multinationals, so they can bleed the people into eternity. This is what our "great friends" call "liberation".

Copyright (c) 2003, West's International