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Re: [casi] "Diplomacy?"-John Pilger



Dear Timothy

John Pliger writes:
"undisguised threats to the General Assembly" ;  "made possible by a
campaign of bribery, blackmail and threats";  "$14bn in "debt
forgiveness""[bribe];  "Washington gave President Hafez al-Assad the green
light to wipe [WIPE] out all opposition to Syria's rule in Lebanon. To help
him achieve this, a billion dollars' worth of arms was made available
through a variety of back doors";  "Iran was bribed with an American promise
to drop its opposition to a series of World Bank loans";  "Bush sent the
Saudi foreign minister to Moscow to offer a billion-dollar bribe before the
Russian winter set in. He succeeded. Once Gorbachev had agreed to the war
resolution, another $3bn materialised from other Gulf states."; "silencing
the Security Council"; "punishment of impoverished countries "  ....Etc. All
these actions were taken to further "demo cry see"! They did not leave much
for dictators, did they?

>From 1948 to 1990 the UN was considered by the UK/US/Israel as nothing more
than useless debating forum they ignored or vetoed numerous security counsel
resolutions. In 1990 the UK/US discovered that "After a long period of
stagnation, the United Nations is becoming a more effective organization."
not for long though. Once they finished attacking Iraq they used the same
tactics to extract more resolutions from the UNSC concerning Iraq while at
the same time reduced the UNSC to be very ineffective (useless in fact) when
it comes to Israel. They demand that Iraq should comply with EVERY UNSC
resolution while they ignore the fact that Israel has defied and refused to
comply with more that 50 resolution of the same UNSC and the UN general
assembly. This added another "demo cry tic" principle of double standards.

Now they are talking about "he gassed his own people" without going into
whether he did or did not do it let me say that those who talking about the
"gassed" people have caused the death of more than the one and a half
million civilians through their "humanitarian sanctions that targets only
the régime and not the ordinary people of Iraq" !! They want me to believe
that we have that many "régime" agents "killed" and still have other
millions that could run a government that have to be killed in this new
adventure. They want me to believe that sanctions are "good" for the Iraqi
people and want me to believe that sanctions are not violations of our human
rights. I have heard many lies before but this one is hard to believe.

We the people of the "developing world" could claim that we have NO say in
what our governments do, we are poor powerless people. We have been
subjected to endless lectures about "government transparency", "good
governance", "human rights", "freedom of speech", "governments by the people
for the people" and a host of other very nice concepts. The UK/US wants us
to have the same model of government that you have. Seeing what the UK/US
govern did to attack Iraq and the impending rerun of the intimidation,
bribery, coercion, lies... makes me wonder if the British and the American
people know what is being done in their name.

I totally agree with John Pliger that this is "mafia diplomacy".  The boss
of the bosses, with the encouragement of the lesser bosses, is going to use
all the mafia tactics to try to install a little Mafioso regime in Iraq to
control the flow of cheap oil to the west. This "mafia diplomacy" will cause
the death of hunderds of thousend civilians in the attack and will cause
other thousends of the death in the aftermath (worth it!). The regrettable
thing is that it is done in the name of people who claim that they have
elected those "bosses"

Best Regards

Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar
Baghdad, Iraq



----- Original Message -----
From: "Timothy Baer" <bunnysoftchloe@hotmail.com>
To: <casi-discuss@lists.casi.org.uk>
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 3:47 AM
Subject: [casi] "Diplomacy?"-John Pilger


> Diplomacy?
>
> If you want to know how George W Bush will go about getting inter-
national
> support for war, look at how his father did it 12 years ago.
>
> by John Pilger; New Statesman; September 19, 2002
>
> The making of a United Nations fig leaf, designed to cover an
Anglo-American
> attack on Iraq, has a revealing past. In 1990, a version of George W
Bush's
> mafia diplomacy was conducted by his father, then
> president. The aim was to "contain" America's former regional favorite,
> Saddam Hussein, whose invasion of Kuwait ended his usefulness to
> Washington.
>
> Forgotten facts tell us how George Bush Sr's war plans gained the
> "legitimacy" of a United Nations resolution, as well as a "coalition" of
> Arab governments. Like his son's undisguised threats to the General
> Assembly, Bush challenged the United Nations to "live up to its
> responsibilities" and condone an all-out assault on Iraq. On 29 October
> 1990, James Baker, the secretary of state, declared: "After a long period
of
> stagnation, the United Nations is becoming a more effective organisation."
>
> Just as Colin Powell, the present secretary of state, is busily doing
today,
> Baker met the foreign minister of each of the 14 member countries of the
UN
> Security Council and persuaded the majority to vote for an "attack
> resolution" - 678 - which had no basis in the UN Charter.
>
> It was one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the United
> Nations, and is about to be repeated. For the first time, the full UN
> Security Council capitulated to an American-led war party and
> abandoned its legal responsibility to advance peacefuland diplomatic
> solutions. On 29 November, the United States got its war resolution. This
> was made possible by a campaign of bribery, blackmail and threats, of
which
> a repetition is currently under way, especially in countries such as Egypt
> and Saudi Arabia. In 1990, Egypt was the most indebted country in Africa.
> Baker bribed President Mubarak with $14bn in "debt
> forgiveness" and all opposition to the attack on Iraq faded away. Syria's
> bribe was different; Washington gave President Hafez al-Assad the green
> light to wipe out all opposition to Syria's rule in Lebanon. To help him
> achieve this, a billion dollars' worth of arms was
> made available through a variety of back doors, mostly Gulf states.
>
> Iran was bribed with an American promise to drop its opposition to a
series
> of World Bank loans. The bank approved the first loan of $250m on the day
> before the ground attack on Iraq. Bribing the Soviet Union was especially
> urgent, as Moscow was close to pulling off a deal that would allow Saddam
to
> extricate himself from Kuwait peacefully. However, with its wrecked
economy,
> the Soviet Union was easy prey for a bribe. President Bush sent the Saudi
> foreign minister to Moscow to offer a billion-dollar bribe before the
> Russian winter set in. He succeeded. Once Gorbachev had agreed to the war
> resolution, another $3bn
> materialised from other Gulf states.
>
> The votes of the non-permanent members of the Security Council were
crucial.
> Zaire was offered undisclosed "debt forgiveness" and military equipment in
> return for silencing the Security Council when the attack was under way.
> Occupying the rotating presidency of the council, Zaire refused requests
> from Cuba, Yemen and India to convene an emergency meeting of the council,
> even though it had no authority to refuse them under the UN Charter.
>
> Only Cuba and Yemen held out. Minutes after Yemen voted against the
> resolution to attack Iraq, a senior American diplomat told the Yemeni
> ambassador: "That was the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast."
> Within three days, a US aid programme of $70m to one of the world's
poorest
> countries was stopped. Yemen suddenly had problems with the World Bank and
> the IMF; and 800,000 Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia. The
> ferocity of the American-led attack far exceeded the mandate of Security
> Council Resolution 678, which did not allow for the destruction of Iraq's
> infrastructure and economy. When the United States
> sought another resolution to blockade Iraq, two new members of the
Security
> Council were duly coerced. Ecuador was warned by the US ambassador in
Quito
> about the "devastating economic consequences" of a No vote. Zimbabwe was
> threatened with new IMF conditions for its debt.
>
> The punishment of impoverished countries that opposed the attack was
severe.
> Sudan, in the grip of a famine, was denied a shipment of food aid. None of
> this was reported at the time. By now, news organisations had one
objective:
> to secure a place close to the US command in Saudi Arabia. At the same
time,
> Amnesty International published a searing account of torture, detention
and
> arbitrary arrest by the Saudi regime.
> Twenty thousand Yemenis were being deported every day and as many as 800
had
> been tortured and ill-treated.
>
> Neither the BBC nor ITN reported a word about this. "It is common
knowledge
> in television," wrote Peter Lennon in the Guardian, "that fear of not
being
> granted visas was the only consideration in
> withholding coverage of that embarrassing story." When the attack was
over,
> the full cost was summarised in a report published by the Medical
Education
> Trust in London. More than 200,000 people were killed or had
> died during and in the months after the attack. This also was not news.
> Neither was a report that child mortality in Iraq had multiplied as the
> effects of theeconomic embargo intensified. Extrapolating from all the
> statistics of Iraq's suffering, the American researchers John Mueller and
> Karl Mueller have since concluded that the subsequent economic punishment
of
> the Iraqis has "probably taken the lives of more people in Iraq than have
> been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history".
>
> Today, the media's war drums are beating to the rhythm of Bush's totally
> manufactured crisis, which, if allowed to proceed, will kill untold
numbers
> of innocent people.
>
> Little has changed, and humanity deserves better.
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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>
>
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