Critics of the Iraq war have consistently argued that the war had little to do with terrorism and everything to do with business profits.
Americans, mourning the deaths of over 2000 servicemen in Iraq, might like to dwell on the growing evidence from Volcker, the CIA leak enquiry and other sources, as to the reasons behind that needless toll.
The actual corruption in the program was almost all between the regime of Saddam Hussein and international bankers, energy traders and other assorted hucksters, some connected to the Bush administration.
The report will reveal more than half the 4,500 companies which took part in the U.N. oil-for-food program paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein.
Those manipulating the program ranged from established trading companies to front companies set up for the purpose, and included some companies of international reputation as well as many well known in their home countries, the investigators said.
Bringing Corporations into line
The governments of the ‘coalition of the willing’, specifically the USA, British and Australian governments, should respond with sanctions against named corporations.
Those corporations cited should be immediately stripped of any government contracts and barred until such time as they either clear their names or make positive social restitution for their corrupt activities.
This is profit by deception, theft and murder! These corporations must pay back in full, to their own nation’s and Iraq’s citizens before they should be allowed back into the game.
The ‘corporation’, as an entity, has now grown to rival many ‘sovereign states’ in economic clout. The problem is they seem to be accountable to no one, and use their influence to subvert our democracies.
Government must develop the guts to demand compensation for corporate corruption and institute independent oversight programs to keep them in reign.
The difficulties, however, are manifest. Corporate influence has become so intertwined with government that it is becoming impossible to see the edges anymore.
One of the architects of the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, dragged a bag load of corporate interest into the White House. He had already been involved in dubious corporate practices before becoming VP.
"When Cheney was running Halliburton, it sold more equipment to Iraq than any other company did. As first reported by The Financial Times on Nov. 3, 2000, Halliburton subsidiaries submitted $23.8 million worth of contracts with Iraq to the United Nations in 1998 and 1999 for approval by its sanctions committee.” Press Action.
Halliburton also has had dealings with Iran and Libya, both on the State Department’s list of terrorist states. Halliburton’s subsidiary Brown & Root, the Texas construction firm that does much business with the U.S. military, was fined $3.8 million for re-exporting goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions.
In Australia, the old flagship Australian Wheat Board, now corporatised as the AWB, is on the Volcker list.
The Australian government is currently trying to ram through highly restrictive anti-terrorism legislation. To counter resistance, the government is using all the terrorist scare tactics it can muster to reign in detractors.
In that climate it is not surprising that Australian farmers are furious that their produce might be funding the bloody insurgency in Iraq.
Desperate to develop new markets, AWB became the largest supplier of wheat to Iraq under Saddam, and sold about 10 million tonnes of grain under the oil-for-food program.
Chairman of West Australian farmers group Western Grain Growers, Leon Bradley, said
"This destruction [Iraq] has been partly funded courtesy of the AWB, It's ironic that our Government forces farmers to supply their wheat to an organisation that steals food out of the mouths of children."
AWB has always strongly denied any deliberate wrongdoing in its dealings with Iraq, saying it never knowingly paid kickbacks. For the country's grain growers, they had better be right. It is difficult to see how the major grain marketer of a country could be penalized without hurting thousands of growers in the process.
Penalising after the fact is never as satisfactory as proper oversight and avoidance of implications of corruption.
Act of Will
It will take a massive act of will, and a process of instituting strong anti corruption agencies with a brief for corporate as well as public sector governance to beat the greed and corruption infecting our institutions.
It will also take a massive act of will by ordinary people to get of their behinds and start demanding change.
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