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Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Noam Chomsky at May 04, 2005

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I have no doubt that the US-UK are very indignant that there is at least some marginal recognition of the truth. In this morning's (April 24) NY Times, for example, in an article by Warren Hoge. "There is no question that the bulk of the illicit oil revenues came from the open sale of Iraqi oil to Jordan and to Turkey, and that that was a way of going around the oil-for-food program [and that] We were fully aware of the bypass and looked the other way." That's Democratic Senator Levin, in today's story, and was very clear before from the Volcker reports -- as conservative as you can get -- and other sources. The US winked at illegal shipments to its allies Turkey and Jordan, with a big rip-off for Saddam. Everything that passed through the Gulf was being monitored by the US Navy. The US and UK monitored everything very closely, and if they had cared about illegal contracts, they would have blocked them. The absurdity increases when we look at the numbers. Thus the great crime of the UN is that one employee, Benon Sevan, may have borrowed $160,000 from an aunt in Cyprus, maybe involving some oil-for-food scam. And that Kofi Annan's son ripped off some sum that is also utterly trivial in comparison with what the US-UK authorized. Gets worse, when you review the actual numbers. That aside, none of this begins to compare with the many billions of dollars of Iraqi oil exports ripped off by the US-UK occupation. No one knows where it has gone. If there's any serious inquiry, it's very likely to show that in just a year or two of occupation the US-UK stole far more than Saddam did (with US-UK help). And that too is small potatoes. The real point of this entire PR scam is to divert attention away from the effects of the US-UK sanctions, which not only killed 100s of thousands of people while devastating the civilian society and strengthening Saddam, but also compelled the population to rely on him for survival, which is probably what saved him from the fate of a host of other gangsters that the US-UK supported, many quite comparable to him: Ceausescu, Suharto, Marcos, etc. -- all overthrown from within despite strong US support to the end. These are all matters that have to be sent deep into the memory hole, so that the commissar class can yelp about how the US liberated the population from Saddam. Even if the scam is exposed about the US role in oil-for-food robbery, the US and its doctrinal system will still have won, by diverting attention from the major crimes to some misdeeds that are very minor in comparison -- only maybe $20 billion. That's a major propaganda achievement, already past history -- if we let the history disappear by focusing on who stole more money, as the doctrinal system wants us to.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Sef101960, Yellow at Jun 01, 2005 17:21 PM
Wasn't it the case that according to the UN resolution that created the oil for food program in 1996 that the money was to be held in and administered by a UN escrow account in the US. I forget the exact source but at the time of the opening of hostilities in March 2003, there was about 20 billion left in the account about $8.8 billion of which ultimately was unaccounted for and presumed stolen by the US. There was no accountibilty as to exactly how much money was in this account at the time of the war, where it went, or who was responsible. Was it the 661 committee? They were the ones overseeing and approving transactions based on UN Security Council criteria. Also and in conjunction with Prof. Chomsky's comments on US corruption, where is the transparency on the reconstruction contracting? Is there a public declaration of how much money so far has been alloted to whom on what basis and for what? Where is the money coming from, the US taxpayer or Iraqi oil revenues (and if the later, who is approving it, the US appointee in the oil ministry?) Many questions about the multi-billion dollar occupation, which is much less transparant than the much maligned oil for food program (and which probably saved more Iraqi lives than the US reconstruction program at least per dollar spent), need to be answered!

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Antiamerican800, Bernardo at May 10, 2005 06:09 AM
Tony Blair is a sniveling little weasel and Christian flake. Blair is Bush's sidekick whose rouged cheeks glistens un-naturally under the press conference lights. He is the whipping boy for Bush's humiliation, squeeling while being Humped from behind.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Antiamerican800, Bernardo at May 10, 2005 05:12 AM
What are the motivations of people who come here and start speaking on behalf of corporations and the FBI? What do they get out of it? I doubt they are investors or stockholders in corporate investment firms and Wall street otherwise they would be sailing around in their yachts and guzzling martinis. You don't have to agree with Chomsky all the time but that's different from licking the Giorgio Armani loafers of the corporate manager.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Peterson, David at May 10, 2005 03:09 AM
Friends:

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Maltmann, Hkmac at May 08, 2005 06:01 AM
Re Dr Chomsky's comment on the missing billions by the US and UK from Iraq compared to the portion of the $160,000: perhaps these references from 2003 and 2004 will help. A staggering US$4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the country has disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the US-controlled body that rules Iraq. Source: Christian Aid Report Oct 2003 (available online) WASHINGTON — A soon-to-be-released audit will show that at least $8.8 billion in Iraqi money that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority there cannot be accounted for, FOX News has confirmed. ...The draft audit by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general chastises the CPA — formerly led by L. Paul Bremer — for "not providing adequate stewardship" of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq. Source: Fox News – Aug 20, 2004 Christian Aid pointed to the difficulty of determining exactly what Iraq is earning from oil. Two different CPA documents give different figures for oil revenues through the end of May.... Christian Aid says it attempted its own calculation of Iraq's oil revenues using publicly available figures and came up with 13 billion dollars.' Source: IPS – June 28 2004 Again - nothing Chomsky reports on is terribly controversial - and all the information (as he often states) is available in the public domain.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Varleyross, Ronniedobbs at May 05, 2005 22:14 PM
realpc says - Where is the evidence of the US stealing from Iraq? . . . We are expected to assume that since of course the US always steals, no evidence is required. i say - first of all, the US is stealing from Iraq just by laying hands on that oil. The money from that oil, if it belongs to anyone, should go to the people of Iraq who can only legitimately lay claim to it. You can point to all the statistical data you want. it isn't even necessary in this case. The proof is in the pudding. And to answer your question, you can assume that the US always steals when it's in its interest to do so. every decision that it makes is done to preserve the capitalist order. chomsky should not have to repeatedly justify his opposition to capitalism in every blog. go read "understanding power." He assumes that you are working from that perspective, as well he should. Because, if you do not find capitalism distasteful, nothing he says will make sense. as for this yakov bok character, if you have an axe to grind, this is not the place to do it. i don't care if it makes you feel like you are doing something good for Israel. it is a waste of time. practically everyone that goes to this site was brought here by chomsky. just look at the amount of comments his blogs generate. no one comes even close.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 05, 2005 20:52 PM
It should be noted that the U.S's plundering of Iraqi wealth is not confinded to "illegal" thefts and missing funds. Focusing too much on the 'irregularities" risks missing the big picture of legal theft on a massive scale. A large part of the theft is "legal" and above borad. Iraqi oil revenue is used to pay for the damages caused by U.S invasion and the contracts for rebuilding go to U.S comapnies. These companies hire U.S personels at several times the costs even when there are plenty of Iraqis who have the know hows and are desperate to find jobs. This is theft. The U.S pro counsel Paul Bremer passed a set of decrees that opened up Iraq's economy to unlimited foreign take overs and privatizations, effectively enshrining the right to loot in the law. If this hole is not pluged in the long run it is much more damaging than a few millions missing here and there. "You fail to note that S. Hussein had been working to destablize the M.E. and tip the balance of power in his favor for the last 20 "YB Except you failed to mention for most of those years when SH was actually destablizing the ME(war with Iran) he did so with strong U.S backing. It was exactly the U.S's goal to destablizing the ME and tip the balance of power through SH.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Bok, Yakov at May 05, 2005 19:45 PM
If I'm a machine, what will I say next? By the way, what's my pattern? Democracy Now is hardly a "conservative sourse." Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations said on NPR: "We know now that Saddam Hussein had embezzled something like $20 billion out of the oil-for-food program, and that was a lot of money that could have been used to restart his WMD program. In fact, he did have plans to build longer-range missiles and to keep the nucleus of his other chemical and biological capacities so that he could reconstitute in the future. You know, the problem is we don't know what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had remained in power, but I think the probability is that the outcome would not have been a good one." Hussein is engaging in the criminal act - he is embezzling. By shifting the blame to the U.S., you are engaging in the exact rhetoric that Chomsky decried. Further, if the U.S. did act, you would have complained about that as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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By Protocol4, Nemo at May 05, 2005 17:20 PM
Graeme, its amazing that yakov's responses actually fit a pattern. i did some work in machine response a few years ago and yakov reminds me of some of the programmes we wrote then. i looked back at his responses (not only in this blog, but also others) and you can actually predict with some probability his stock responses, including the exact phrasing of his sentences depending on the stimuli (in this case blog postings). and this is based solely on inductive inference. its almost as if he is a machine spouting pre-programmed responses (i.e. there appears to be very little creativity). interestingly, realpc shows more variation and hence purely inductive inference is not that easy in his case.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Bok, Yakov at May 05, 2005 07:54 AM
Of course there is no source for Chomsky's claim. He does this in his books, now he's doing it on the blog. If he does provide a cite, it will probably be to something he wrote. And of course all of his good party followers will gobble it up. Talk about a cult of personality.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Mikesances, Msances at May 05, 2005 06:19 AM
realpc's question is not answered in the article by Hoge. I believe he was asking about Chomsky's claim that the US and the transitional government have been plundering Iraq after 2003. Anyone have a source for that? I'd be very interested to have it to refer to myself.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By K, Mr at May 05, 2005 00:17 AM
Neo-con free market wars is the new reality for the new millennium. Iraq is the template which allows for the desensitization of invasion for profit into other regions of the planet. Through good propaganda and beguilement the neo-con corporate army has succeeded in curbing a growing trend of 'Euroization' instead of green backing it like in the 'old days'. I'm sure when the neo-corp army heads into Iran sometime in the future it's lawyers will be dreaming up new solutions to those pesty 'international laws' because just like in the old days you could always buy your purgatory if you had enough 'capital'. Bush is going to heaven because he's rich enough now. All neo-cons are going to heaven because god loves a good capitalist. International elitism does not concern itself with human rights or values of equality if they did we'd all be special.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 04, 2005 23:45 PM
"If there's any serious inquiry, it's very likely to show that in just a year or two of occupation the US-UK stole far more than Saddam did" Where is the evidence of the US stealing from Iraq? He admits there was no serious inquiry, so why make the accusation without evidence? He implies some kind of inquiry, although not a serious one, has been done, and found evidence of theft. Why doesn't he tell us about it? We are expected to assume that since of course the US always steals, no evidence is required.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Banzelle-z, Bonzle at May 04, 2005 19:20 PM
Distraction is key to advancing their agenda. Finding other things for us to think about, allows their actions to go unchecked. What's interesting about Yakov's comment is that he seems to think that criticizing US policy and holding Saddam Hussein accountable are somehow in opposition to each other. They are really part of the same thing that the left is trying to do. Expose how the US supported the criminal, Saddam, in the 80's, (the first Gulf War was just a way of "keeping him in line" and not harming our precious economic partners in Kuwait) how we then continued to provide support to him in the form of sanctions that crippled the people of Iraq which in effect strengthened his ability to maintain power. And since US still couldn't get what it wanted with all that support for Hussein (control of Iraqi oil), then the US decided to takeover the country - ironically, keeping in power many key contacts during who worked with Saddam and the CIA during his reign. The US invasion has nothing to do with helping Iraqis, and in reviewing all our policies toward Iraq, each action has caused more harm to the Iraqi people, themselves.

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Wakingworker, Choms at May 04, 2005 16:44 PM
This is why I love Popa Noam: "That's a major propaganda achievement, already past history—if we let the history disappear by focusing on who stole more money, as the doctrinal system wants us to." Because the sad reality is that the majority of what we refer to as "the left" would probably spend most of its time and energy focused on these apparent conflicts that end up drowning the true issues and our real history. Even if the culpability happens to fall on the government it will be presented to us as a singular flaw within our "perfect system", which I believe has not even achieved true capitalism just as we all know it has never achieved true democracy!

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Re: Oil for Food, Propaganda and the US-UK Sanctions

By Bok, Yakov at May 04, 2005 16:39 PM
"diverting attention from the major crimes to some misdeeds that are very minor in comparison" Interesting choice of words. Isn't that exactly what the "progressive" left does everyone time it criticizes the U.S.? You fail to note that S. Hussein had been working to destablize the M.E. and tip the balance of power in his favor for the last 20 years. You fail to note how Hussein perpetuated the plight of the Palestinians by paying suicide bombers. So aren't you diverting attention away from the real crimes? Or is the real crime simply that the U.S., with our Constitution and economy, are the standard by which the rest of the world hopes to achieve?

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