EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq

by Susan Lindauer

  At the start of the Gulf War in August, 1990, three Iraqi dinar bought $1 U.S. dollars. By the time of President Bush’s inauguration, the value of the dinar had collapsed to a rate of 2,000 dinar to every $1 U.S. dollar.

  To put that in context of family income, a typical Iraqi government pension ran 250 dinars a month93—the equivalent of 12 U.S. cents. On that income, a middle class Iraqi family made do with a piece of bread and a cup of tea at the noon meal followed by rice for dinner.94 Poor families in Iraq fared infinitely worse, forced to choose which child to feed each day, because government rations got exhausted by mid-month, leaving them with nothing to eat at all. Malnutrition reached staggering levels.

  By the end of sanctions, in 2003, 1.7 million Iraqis had died from starvation and lack of medicine, counting only children under the age of 5 and adults over the age of 60.95

  The deaths of children age 6 and over, and adults age 59 and under, were excluded from mortality statistics on sanctions-related deaths. Otherwise the death toll would have climbed dramatically higher.96

  As it was, the World Health Organization reported that 500,000 children had died by the end of 1996, raising alarms that the U.N. sanctions had become a policy of “mass death.”97 The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) acknowledged that in state-controlled areas of Iraq, the mortality rate of children under the age of 5 had more than doubled in 10 years.98

  Officially, UNICEF estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 children under age 5 died each month.99 However, the Iraqi Health Ministry published statistics averaging 11,000 dead each month in 2000, much higher than the United Nations wanted to acknowledge.100 The Iraqi Health Ministry documented 8,182 child deaths from diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition in January, 2000 alone, compared with just 389 deaths in the same month of 1989, the year before the trade embargo went into effect.101

  Under the guise of demanding Iraq’s disarmament, the United Nations had succeeded in killing more Iraqi people with its sanctions policy than all the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction ever used in history, combined, according to the prestigious Foreign Affairs Journal.102

  Internationally, the Iraqi sanctions acquired a harsh reputation as a policy of genocide.

  On top of that, only 41% of Iraq’s population had access to clean water, and 83 % of Iraqi schools required substantial repairs.103

  The “oil for food” program was such a failure that top bureaucrats at the United Nations were ashamed to run it. A year before President Bush’s inauguration, Hans von Sponeck of Germany, the U.N.’s senior humanitarian coordinator, tendered his resignation from the “oil for food” program, calling Iraqi sanctions “a true human tragedy that needs to be ended.”104

  “The very title that I hold as a humanitarian coordinator suggests I cannot be silent over that which we see here ourselves,” Von Sponeck said.

  Jutta Burghardt, head of the U.N. World Food Program in Iraq, joined him in resigning to protest the depth of human misery created by their own relief programs.

  “How long the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, should be punished for something they have never done?” Von Sponeck posed a rhetorical question that echoed through Amabassadors’ cozy chambers at the United Nations.105

  That criticism displeased the U.S. and Britain. But Von Sponeck’s despair echoed Dennis Halliday, the first humanitarian coordinator of the “oil for food” program, who resigned from a 34 year career at the U.N. in September 1998 after reaching the same conclusions.

  Halliday called the sanctions “a totally bankrupt concept.”106

  “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It’s as simple and terrifying as that,” the former assistant Secretary General at the U.N. warned, in his resignation.

  “The middle class and the professional classes, the very people who might change governance in Iraq, have been wiped out, and those that remain are struggling to stay alive and keep their families alive.”

  The severity of damage to the middle class and professional Iraqis qualified as a critical flaw in the sanctions policy design.

  Indeed, on the other side of the debate, some people have wondered how human rights activists, who champion democratic freedoms for all peoples, could oppose a policy tool like sanctions, which help to undermine despotic governments.

  It’s because we believe so passionately in the rights of all people to have input to government policy, and to speak freely about government decision making, including the right to criticize the government. The rights of democracy are essential to what we do every day, and we want those rights for all people.

  We oppose sanctions out of recognition that ordinary people have almost no power in those societies. It seems deeply unjust to punish them for government activities and policies that they cannot possibly hope to change. Worst still, the extra burden of sanctions has the counter-productive effect of crushing those people even further. All of their energies must shift to providing basic necessities for their families. There’s nothing left to engage in community transformation or political reform movements. By necessity, their daily life must focus entirely on economic survival.

  In short, sanctions defeat any hope of authentic political reforms.

  Alas, the United Nations was caught in a macabre steel trap of its own design. Security Council resolutions rigidly declared that sanctions could not be lifted until Iraq proved that it possessed no Weapons of Mass Destruction.

  Iraq wept tears of blood that it had no weapons left to destroy—a truth the U.S./British invasion verified as tragically accurate. U.N. inspectors had destroyed every weapon system in the country before its teams pulled out in December, 1998. Post-war assessments show Iraq’s weapon stocks had been eradicated by late 1996.

  All those Iraqis had suffered and died for nothing—1.7 million people died for a lie.

  For Iraq’s part, after the U.N.’s self righteous departure, officials in Baghdad called the U.N.’s bluff and refused to let inspection teams back into the country. Where the U.N. expected contrition, they got scorn. Iraq resolved that any resumption of weapons inspections must stipulate a guarantee that once Baghdad demonstrated compliance with the inspections process, and proved the status of its disarmament, sanctions would have to be lifted. Inspections could not go on endlessly, as before, without producing evidence of illegal weapons production. Iraq would reject any sort of cooperation that failed to achieve that goal.

  There was some morality in Washington, if only a token for humanity. In the year before President Bush’s inauguration, future Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich teamed up with Democratic Whip David E. Bonior and Rep. John Conyers, soon to be chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Together they introduced a bill that would have permitted the export of food and medicine to Iraq. The bill had 70 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.107

  Chief sponsor, Rep. Bonior, called the sanctions “infanticide masquerading as policy.” He swore that some members of Congress “refuse to close our eyes to the slaughter of innocents.”

  Alas, by and large, when President Bush swore the oath of office on January 20, 2001, most Americans could have cared less about Iraq’s suffering.

  However, the International Community was a different matter. In the year before 9/11, the international community had woken up to the misery manufactured by the U.N.’s central economic planning in Iraq, and the effect of handicapping political reforms for average Iraqi citizens. Ordinary people around the globe recognized a human catastrophe was underway in Iraq, and the United Nations had caused it. Pressure rose in Europe, China and Russia to resolve their conflict with Baghdad. The International Community was sick to death of watching Iraq’s misery from the sidelines.

  After 10 long years of international passivity, in September, 2000 humanitarian groups around the world took bold and courageous action.

  In a lesson straight out of the Berlin Air Lift, humanitarian groups mobilized to organize rescue
flights into Baghdad International Airport, transporting activists, medical staff and urgently needed medical supplies to the Iraqi people.

  Notably, the Germans and the Russians came first, memorializing that great lesson of breaking the blockade on East Berlin during the Cold War. The French and Italians seized the example—And finally Jordan sent a plane carrying ministers, doctors and medicines to Baghdad.

  It was the first Arab flight to Iraq in 10 years. Yemen and Morocco took heart from Jordan’s leadership and flew into Baghdad, too.

  The flights sparked fierce debate on the Security Council, with France insisting that planes only needed to notify UN bureaucrats of their flight plans. France and Russia pointed out that no flight ban was contained in the U.N. sanctions resolutions. The flight ban had been self-imposed, and was thus righteously rejected.

  Baghdad International Airport had been designed and built by a French architectural company in 1982 to handle 7.5 million passengers annually. The airport had been closed since the outbreak of the Gulf War on the night of January 16, 1991. It reopened on August 15, 2000.108 As champions of human dignity mobilized internationally, and refused to bow to the crude absurdity of U.N. sanctions any longer, the emptiness of moral authority of the sanctions exploded into the open.

  When I saw the humanitarian airlifts organized by activist groups all over the world, I knew the sanctions would fall.

  Far more importantly, U.S. Intelligence recognized it too. Those courageous pilots flying those medical airlifts changed the whole dynamic of peace. By their actions, they showed that the world could not stomach this cruelty against Iraq’s people any longer. With one brave act of defiance, they forced a complete reconsideration of global policy simply by refusing to cooperate with injustice. Sanctions would have to go.

  Parts of the United Nations Community had started to reach the same conclusions. In August, 2000 the U.N. Sub Commission on Human Rights issued a report by Belgian law professor, Marc Bossuyt declaring that sanctions were “unequivocally illegal.”109

  After 10 years enforcing sanctions, the United Nations woke up to recall that the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibits the collective punishment of civilians, and “expressly prohibits the starving of civilian populations and the destruction of what is indispensable to their survival.” After a decade of denial, the UN Human Rights body finally admitted that “All economic activities are seriously affected (by sanctions in Iraq), particularly in the areas of drinking water supplies, electricity and agriculture.”110

  The UN report concluded “that sanctions have led to a disaster in Iraq comparable to the worst catastrophes of the past decades.”

  Finally, sanctions were judged and condemned as a massive policy failure.

  If Europe was a new convert to anti-sanctions philosophy, sentiments among the Arab peoples had always championed Baghdad’s cause. The Arab Street had discovered its collective voice amidst the continuous U.S. bombings of Iraqi cities—20,000 air sorties by the close of the Clinton Administration. Arab fundamentalists had rallied to Iraq’s cause for years in a boiling froth of rage over the deaths of innocents in Baghdad. For a long time Arab governments smirked over the take down of Saddam, glad for America’s wrath to point at other leaderships every bit as totalitarian as their own. But the Arab Street was always alive with the fires of retribution.

  After 10 years, Arab governments began to heed those street chants. By the close of the Clinton Administration, even Washington’s Arab allies blistered criticism on sanctions policy. Qatar called for Gulf Nations to normalize relations with Iraq and lift sanctions. Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates followed Qatar’s example, and took steps to reactivate their diplomatic ties with Baghdad.

  The United States faced one more problem: A chilling prophecy out in the deserts of Afghanistan was coming to fruition. In late December, 1998, an intrepid journalist for TIME Magazine,111 Rahmullah Yusufzai trekked out to the secret encampment hiding a young jihadi named Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden emerged from his caves to wax eloquent praise on the masterminds of the terrorist bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, Kenya—and to claim credit for attacking targets inside the United States as early as 1993—encompassing the first attack on the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

  When Yusufzai asked what the U.S. should expect from him now, Bin Laden gave a chilling reply: “Any thief or criminal robber, who enters another country, in order to steal, should expect to be exposed to murder at any time. For the American forces to expect anything from me personally reflects a very narrow perception. Thousands of millions of Muslims are angry. The Americans should expect reactions from the Muslim world that are proportionate to the injustice they inflict.”112

  The Arab Street was ready to unleash its impotent rage. Europe had awakened to the implications for Middle East volatility. The United States and Britain, however, clung to their shared superpower status as a false cloak of protection, convinced that no government, much less a small guerrilla entity, could knock them off their pedestal of power and cultural elitism.

  It was the final days of the Clinton Administration. The U.S. and Britain had become isolated on the U.N. Security Council. The world of nations collectively opposed any further aggression against the Iraqi people. Coming into power, newly elected President George Bush had no chance to peddle his game plan to oust Saddam Hussein. The mere suggestion of war with Iraq would have sparked outrage and gotten denounced forthwith as a “rogue action,” without provocation.

  An Era of Peace was breaking out over the world community. Humanitarian activists braced to score a great victory against the misery of U.N. Sanctions.

  And a time bomb was ready to explode on the Arab Street.

  The CIA was fully conscious of all these factors. It was the political reality that confronted them. They had to deal with it. They had a legitimate purpose, however, which was to guarantee that the United States controlled the agenda for resolving the conflict with Iraq at all phases. They did not want to relinquish that power to their allies on the U.N. Security Council or other Arab governments. It was their job to hold power tightly in the hands of Washington.

  Like it or not, that motivation was entirely rational from the standpoint of U.S intelligence. It was such a matter of political necessity that the Pro-War cabal could not ignore it, either.

  Republican leaders would have to overcome the obstacle of peace if they hoped to achieve their secret agenda of leading the international community to War in Iraq. They would have to turn the whole world topsy turvy to get their chance.

  As horrific as it was, 9/11 fit the bill.

  CHAPTER 5:

  IRAQ’S PEACE OVERTURES

  TO EUROPE AND THE

  UNITED STATES

  “The first casualty, when war comes, is Truth.”

  U.S. Senator Hiram Warren Johnson, 1918

  In such a radically changing political climate, the CIA could not stay passive.

  Simply put, the status quo had to change. With pressure building from the international community to force a change, the CIA recognized it would have to adapt in order to retain control of the outcome, and secure the most favorable benefits for Washington.

  Warming relations between Iraq, Europe, Russia and Asia wasn’t the only “bad news” for Pro-War Republicans in the months before 9/11. Woefully for the War Camp, Baghdad was locked in a highly successful, two-prong strategy to undercut whatever international support for sanctions remained. The Iraqi Government aggressively courted foreign corporations to visit Baghdad, and publicly rewarded trade missions with highly lucrative reconstruction contracts in any post-sanctions period.

  That created a secondary concern with regards to future oil rights in Iraq. U.S. demand for Iraqi oil, and its avaricious desire for future exploration and development contracts continued unabated, despite U.S. hostilities to Saddam’s government. U.S. refineries proved to be Iraq’s best customers from the late 1990s onward, importing 750,000 barre
ls per day, or 9 percent of total U.S. imports.113 Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Bayoil and Koch Petroleum ran the most Iraqi oil through their refineries.

  If the U.S. was Iraq’s most loyal customer, for obvious reasons it was not Iraq’s favorite customer. Iraq made a practice of rewarding friendly nations that opposed sanctions with major oil exploration and development contracts that would become active in any post-sanctions period. Among those allies, Russia stood out. Baghdad gave favored status to Russian shipping and trading firms, “taking large volumes of crude…. away from previous customers.”114

  Thus, as Russia confronted its own critical period of economic upheaval, it emerged as Iraq’s largest trading partner, winning 40 percent of all oil export contracts under the “oil-for-food” program. The transfer of contracts to Russian oil traders was widely regarded as payback for Moscow’s refusal to allow Washington and London to revise sanctions in the Security Council, as opposed to ending them outright. President Vladimir Putin declared a strong desire for close bilateral relations with Baghdad.

  Most significantly, Iraq awarded a highly lucrative contract to LUKoil, Russia’s premiere oil corporation. The 1997 LUKoil contract to develop the West Qurna field, expected to produce 600,000 barrels per day, was the largest deal signed by any international oil company under Saddam’s government.115 Oil rights carried an estimated value of $20 billion for LUKoil, with 3 percent ownership by the Russian government.