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Radio Lora, 12. Februar 2007

Alternative Radio


Rania Masri
Über die Privatisierung des Krieges
16. April 2004

Interview von David Barsamian von Alternative Radio mit Rania Masri, der bekannten Anwältin für Menschenrechte und Umweltfragen. Die geborene Libanesin ist Koordiantorin  der Iraq Action Coalition und Direktorin des Southern Peace Research und Education Center Instituts in Durham, North Carolina.

Könnten Sie uns bitte etwas über die  Rolle der privaten US-Sicherheitsfirmen im Irak sagen?
Im Laufe der letzten 10 Jahre hat sowohl die Zahl der Militärdienstleister als auch die der militärischen Gewalttaten ständig zugenommen. 2004 befanden sich neben 120 000 US-Soldaten und 8 000 britischen Soldaten 15 - 20 000 private Söldner und Glücksritter im Irak, die ausschließlich den Aktionären von Firmen wie Halliburton und Bechtel verantwortlich sind. (Laut SZ vom 13./14 Januar befanden sich nach Schätzungen von Experten 2007 mehr als 100 000 Sicherheitskräfte im Irak - also genau so viel wie reguläre US-Truppen.)
Wir alle erinnern uns an die schrecklichen Fotos der verkohlten Leichen der beiden so genannten amerikanischen Firmenmitarbeiter in Falludscha. Wer waren diese Männer, für wen arbeiteten sie?
Die Mainstream Presse berichtete damals von vier getöteten amerikanischen Zivilisten. Ganz versteckt wurde erwahnt, dass sie Angestellte der Firma Blackwater in North Carolina waren. Einer Firma, die nach eigenen Angaben die größte hoch bezahlte  private Berufsarmee aus ehemaligen Elite Marinesoldaten, Pinochet-Garden und südafrikanischen  Söldnern aufbauen will. Die Soldaten befanden sich also in Begleitung solcher Leute, als sie in Falludscha in einen Hinterhalt gerieten. Nur eine Woche zuvor hatten dort US Soldaten 70 Iraker getötet.
Bisher beauftragte man Firmen mit der Versorgung und Verpflegung der Soldaten, doch nun gibt es Firmen, die fürs Töten bezahlt werden..
Vizepräsident Dick Cheney und der US Beauftragte im Irak, Paul Bremer, stehen auf den Gehaltslisten von Halliburton bzw. Bechtel, den Profiteuren des Irakkrieges, die ohne jede Ausschreibung fette Aufträge einheimsen und die Steuerzahlen dreist betrügen, ohne dass Republikaner oder Demokraten ihrem Treiben bisher Einhalt geboten hätten.
Hat nicht Public Citizen in Washington D.C. gegen Bechtel eine Untersuchung beantragt?
Richtig, Bechtel hatte den Auftrag, die Trinkwasserversorgung in Irak wieder herzustellen. Das haben sie nicht nur nicht geschafft, sondern die Wasserversorgung ist sogar noch schlechter geworden. So schlecht, dass besonders in Sadr City, dem armen, explosiven schiitischen Viertel von Bagdad, Kinderkrankheiten rapide zunahmen.

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Paul Wolfowitz, einer der Architekten des Irakkrieges behauptete, dass es in dem vom Sunniten Saddam Hussein regierten Irak, im Gegensatz zu Saudi Arabien mit Mekka und Medina keinerlei schiitische Heilgtümer gäbe. Dummerweise hatte er dabei die irakischen Pilgerstädte Nadschaf und Kerbala  übersehen.
Nicht nur das, wie Jerusalem, sind Nadschaf und Kerbala Heiligtümer der gesamten schiitischen Welt. Natürlich bedauern einige von Saddam protegierte Sunniten seinen Sturz, aber auch in Falludscha, der sunnitischen Hochburg, gab es heftige Kritik an dem Diktator und seiner Baath-Partei.

Welche Rolle spielt eigentlich Ahmed Chalabi?
Diese schillernde Figur verließ den Irak bereits als Jugendlicher, wurde in Jordanien in Abwesenheit wegen Unterschlagung verurteilt und gründete in London den Irakischen Nationalkongress. Das Pentagon wußte, dass seine Informationen über  Iraks Massenvernichtungswaffen und Verbindungen zu Terroristen Lügengespinste waren. Nicht umsonst erklärte Präsident Bush auf einer Pressekonferenz, dass er den Irak auch dann angegriffen hätte, auch wenn er gewußt hätte, dass es keine Massenvernichtungswaffen gab.
Präsident Bush spricht immer vom "Kurshalten", "den Job beenden", vom "Nicht davonlaufen" . Soll mit dieser positiven Sprache die öffentliche Meinung manipuliert werden?
Wer will schon gerne ein Verlierer sein? Doch welchen Job wollen wir beenden? Wir wissen doch alle ganz genau, dass im Juli die Macht nicht auf die Iraker übertragen werden wird, dass sich das US Militär nicht zurückzieht, dass die von Paul Bremer und der amerikanischen Regierung ausgeheckten Handelsbeschränkungen nicht aufgehoben werden. Und dafür sollen unsere Frauen und Männer sterben, unsere Menschlichkeit geopfert und Tausende von Irakern getötet werden! Dafür dürfen die Reichen in unserem Land irakische Ressourcen ausbeuten und dort noch mehr Militärbasen errichten! Doch der Mißbrauch der Sprache geht noch weiter: Rechte wie Linke bezeichnen die irakischen Kämpfer immer nur als "Aufständische" . Wer gegen eine Besatzungsmacht kämpft, ist jedoch kein Rebell, sondern ein Widerstandskämpfer. Gegen diese Ehrenbezeichnung wehren sich unsere Medien mit Händen und Füßen. Dabei würde es ja schon reichen, wenn sie sie einfach nur als "Kämpfer" bezeichnen würden.

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Ist die Liberalisierung der irakischen Wirtschaft durch die Besatzungsmacht nicht illegal?
Natürlich ist sie illegal, aber trotzdem wurden Subventionen für die heimische Wirtschaft gestrichen, während man ausländischen Unternehmen erlaubte, irakische Unternehmen mit Ausnahme von Öl zu 100% zu übernehmen und die Gewinne außer Landes zu schaffen. So hat man bereits im Vorfeld jede zukünftige irakische Regierung entmündigt.

Warum haben die Amerikaner ihren Empfang im Irak so falsch eingeschätzt?
Als arabische Amerikanerin hat mich die anfängliche Geduld der Iraker sogar überrascht. Erst als es mit dem Wiederaufbau nicht voran ging und das menschenverachtende Auftreten der Soldaten immer mehr irakische Opfer forderte, und aus dem US-Verteidigungsministerium verlautete, dass irakische Opfer nicht zählten, schlug die Stimmung um, formierte sich der Widerstand.
Wir hätten gewarnt sein können, denn im Laufe ihrer Geschichte haben die Iraker schon vielen Besatzungsmächten Widerstand geleistet.

Wie viele Iraker sind im ersten Jahr seit Kriegsbeginn gestorben?
Die Schätzungen für diesen Zeitraum liegen bei 10 000 zivilen Opfern. Genaue Zahlen fehlen, da die Amerikaner irakische Opfer ignorieren und darüber hinaus dem Gesundheitsministerium in Bagdad die Veröffentlichung von Opferzahlen verboten haben. (Für das Jahr 2006 belief sich nach Informationen der UN die Zahl der toten Zivilisten auf 35 000. siehe SZ vom 17.1.07) Mögen Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld und seine Generäle auch alles abstreiten und als arabische Propaganda abtun, wir haben authentische Fotos von US Soldaten, die auf Zivilisten zielen und auf die Fahrer von Krankenwagen. (www.EmpireNotes.org) oder (www.aboutbagdad.com). Diese Bilder kann auch die Propaganda der amerikanischen Medien nicht aus der Welt schaffen, die im Mittleren Osten immer nur auf die  muslimischen Gläubigen starren und sie beschimpfen und bedrohen. Sie verlieren jedoch kein einziges kritisches Wort, wenn Präsident Bush behauptet, Gott habe ihm befohlen, Afghanistan anzugreifen oder Generalleutnant Boykin meint, wir müßten - wie einst die Kreuzritter - unsere Feinde im Namen Jesu besiegen.

Wie sind Sie eigentlich zur Politik gekommen?
Als arabische Amerikanerin sehe ich auf beiden Seiten geliebte Menschen sterben. Meistens sind es arme farbige junge Leute vom Land, die man dazu verführt hat, Iraker zu töten, die ihre Heimat verteidigen. Sie töten und sterben für den Profit einer kleinen Elite gut organisierter, meist weißer Amerikaner.
Wir dürfen diesem Treiben nicht mehr länger zusehen, wir können die Gesellschaft verändern, denn wir sind viele, und die, die von der Besatzung und der Unterdrückung profitieren, sind nur wenige. Geben wir die Hoffnung nicht auf, es liegt in unserer Macht, etwas zu verändern!



RANIA MASRI
Privatizing War
Interviewed by David Barsamian
Boulder, Colorado  16 April 2004

Rania Masri is a human rights advocate and environmental scientist. Born in Lebanon, she is the coordinator of the Iraq Action Coalition and served as the Arab Women's Solidarity Association's representative to the United Nations. She's the director of the Southern Peace Research and Education Center at the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, North Carolina. As a dynamic speaker, she's in great demand all over the country. She's also a producer of a new documentary entitled About Baghdad.


As the situation Iraq has worsened, many Americans have been quite surprised to learn of the extensive role that private firms now play in the fighting on the ground. What information do you have on that?

We know that the privatization of military services and of military violence itself has been increasing over the past ten years. But right now it's reached, I would say, a very dangerous level. And I'll give you one example. We have in Iraq right now around 120,000 U.S. troops. And arguably the second largest army, other than the U.S. Army, is the British army, the U.S.'s strongest coalition partner. They have 8,000 troops. We have another group of people that are between 15- and 20,000 in Iraq, and they are private mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, unaccountable except to their shareholders, and mostly paid for by U.S. governmental contracts and by corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel.

Many are familiar with the gruesome photographs on the front page of the New York Times, on April 1, 2004, of two of the contractors, as they're described, their burnt bodies hanging from a bridge in Falluja. Who were these people, and what corporation were they working for?

Interestingly, the mainstream press continues to tell us that we had four American civilian contractors killed. And you would only find it maybe at the eighth paragraph down in the article, "Oh, by the way, these four men used to work for Blackwater in North Carolina." And that's it. You would have to scour to find out more about Blackwater. Blackwater, according to their own CEO, is intent on building "the largest private professional army." They pay between $100,000 to $200,000 a year for these former military men, former Navy Seals, as well as former men who used to serve under Pinochet in Chile and former South African military men, to go and to either guard Paul Bremer in Iraq, to do other allegedly defensive work, but it's up for question. And these were the men who were going into Falluja with four U.S. military men when they were ambushed and killed. And it's important to remember that a week earlier in Falluja we had 70 Iraqis who were killed by the U.S. military.

What is it about this particular group of private contractors in terms of the scale of their operations - and you said that they're almost double the number of British troops in Iraq - what is it that's different from previous situations?

Their number. Their number has dramatically increased from what they were, say, in 1991. We are more used to privatization of military services, such as the work that Halliburton does. Halliburton right now is taking over much of the work of the military in the sense that they're washing the clothes of the military. They're feeding them. They're doing services that could be given to civilians. That's what Halliburton is doing. And many of us are more familiar with that line of work. But now we have men who are being paid to kill. And it raises immense questions of accountability. It raises immense questions of transparency. And it also should raise a question to us, Why is Paul Bremer, who is the head of the U.S. occupational authorities, being defended by Blackwater soldiers rather than by the U.S. military?

It's also reported that the head of the government in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, is also surrounded and protected by private military contractors. Is that accurate?

Yes. And it's worrisome, again, because the way we are told about these men is that they are contractors. We're not told that they're soldiers of fortune, we're not told that they're mercenaries, we're not told that these are armed men who are different from the U.S. military in uniform and in accountability. So then it leads us to a different emotional state when we hear that they've been attacked. And we need to be very, very wary about who these men are and how they're being reported in the press.

Talk more about the remuneration that they receive. One could safely say that it's significantly more than what U.S. troops are paid. Why aren't the U.S. troops that are deployed there, are professionally trained and are in a chain of command, doing this kind of security work?

I honestly don't know, because you would think that the U.S. military could be able to protect Paul Bremer, unless Paul Bremer doesn't want to be surrounded by men in uniform and he likes the idea of being surrounded by men in civilian clothing. It leads to a lot of questions that we need to be posing to our representatives, and posing very publicly. Why is it that our government is moving more and more and more towards privatization of military services? Could it be because our government wants to skirt accountability? Could it be because our government wants to take these men, have them do work that suits its interest without doing the work under the U.S. flag, without, therefore, damaging the U.S. name, without pointing to the men who have brought them there. Because the U.S. government could easily lift its hands and say, "We had nothing to do with this. We didn't order this." Could that be one of the reasons why they're doing this - the lack of accountability? A lack of accountability that would not only lead to grosser financial expenditures, but possibly grosser expenditures on all of us in the sense of human life.

The two major U.S. private corporations that have benefited enormously financially from the war on Iraq are Halliburton and Bechtel, two corporations that have close ties with the Bush Administration. It's common knowledge that Vice President Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton. He still receives compensation from that Texas-based corporation. The other is Bechtel, which also has links to the Bush Administration and to high figures in the Republican establishment, like George Shultz. To what extent can you document the nature of the contracts that they've received? No competitive bids, for example.

Let me give you another conflict of interest. Paul Bremer was a former Bechtel official. Paul Bremer. We've got conflicts of interest in numerous, numerous arenas. The head of USAID was a former Bechtel official. If we think about how far the conflict of interest has gone, that opens our eyes to the extent of these contracts. We have no-bid contracts, we also have cost-plus contracts, which means that this company says, It's going to cost me, let's say, $100,000 to build this school, and I want a 7% profit on top of that cost, which is ludicrous. It's absolutely ludicrous. And we know for a fact that Halliburton has taken up measures not to reduce its costs but to increase its costs so that it can increase its profit. It has no incentive to reduce its costs. So we have no-bid contracts, we have cost-plus contracts. On top of that, we have no accountability. I'll give you example. We have had one Halliburton contract that was extended, worth $587 million, and it was renewed in ten minutes, with six pages of documentation. No accountability.

There are also reports of price gouging on gasoline that Halliburton was bringing from Kuwait to Iraq, a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world.

Not only price gouging on gasoline, but also attempted theft of U.S. taxpayer money by charging taxpayers for meals they never served to the U.S. military.

One would think that the Republicans in particular, with their reputation for being fiscally conservative, would be vigilant and agitated about these kinds of scandals that are occurring.

Unfortunately, the Republicans just want to rally behind their Republican leader, irrespective of politics, irrespective of what's actually happening. So rather than picking up the Republican mantra of accountability and transparency and fiscal responsibility, which is something they've been shoving down all our throats, they've shied away from that and just said, "No, we just need to rally behind the president." And unfortunately, the Democrats aren't even picking it up. There is some activity in Congress, but not as much as we need there to be. And there is a limit to how much we as an American public can say, Well, the Democrats lack a spine and the Republicans lack a spine. Both parties will continue to lack a spine so long as we, the American public, allow them to lack that spine.

Public Citizen is an organization in Washington, D.C. In early April 2004, they called for an investigation of Bechtel. Could you talk about that?

Bechtel has contractual obligations to restore drinking water, which you could claim is the most important thing to be restored in Iraq, the most important thing. They have failed in their contractual obligations. And in some instances the water has actually gotten worse. And since we've all been hearing talk about Sadr City, what was formerly known as Saddam City, and has always been an extremely impoverished area of Baghdad, this is an area that would have been, technically speaking, one of the first areas that the U.S. occupation authorities should have been taking care of, because it would have been one of the first to welcome the occupation. But what we have seen is that the water situation in Sadr City has gotten worse than it was pre-invasion. It's gotten worse. In numerous areas literally the water tap runs dry. There is very little access to water. There is very little access to electricity. And when you have dirty water, not simply lack of water, what it results directly in is an increase of childhood diseases and an increase of numerous epidemics. And we have seen these epidemics increase. And I have to say, Bechtel is the one responsible, because Sadr City and numerous other areas in Baghdad are under Bechtel's responsibility to repair the water system.

Sadr City has a population of about 2 million, and it's mostly Shia. A lot of Americans, even administration officials, still don't appreciate the nuances and differences between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam. For example, before the invasion - this was reported widely in the European press - Bush met with some of the Iraqi leaders, so-called leaders in exile, people like Ahmed Chalabi and Kanan Makiya and others, and at this meeting Bush learned for the first time that there are two different Muslim communities in Iraq, Shia and Sunni. That's rather an interesting oversight, one would say. If you want to understand Iraq, you have to know about these kinds of differences.

At the same time, I think that the differences have been overblown, because the way we've been told about Iraq in our press, not only during this invasion and occupation but since the days of the sanctions, is that Iraq is a country composed of Kurds, Sunni, and Shia, which in one way is sociologically false, because most Kurds are Sunnis, so then where does that place them? And what about the other ethnicities and the other religions? It's a false dichotomy. In another way it's very worrisome, because they are presenting Sunnis and Shia as these tribal religious factions that have never gotten along, whereas in Iraq perhaps they have the highest rate of intermarriage between Sunnis and Shia than anywhere else in our world. It's no exception to find an Iraqi family that has a Sunni mother and a Shia father, for example. So they have this long history of living together and working together and marrying each other. Not this very divisive thing. But when we continually hear Sunni, Shia, Sunni, Shia, we get this idea that, oh, they're warring. And then we hear that of the U.S. military and the way that I believe very much that they're trying to cause divisions between them, trying to build that unrest. And, of course, it's failed, because George Bush has managed to unite Iraqis, with the exception of some communities, by the horror of the occupation itself.

Which communities has he not united?

The Kurds generally have not been as united as the other Iraqis in opposing the occupation, I think because they're still struggling to define what would be their political struggle - do they want to have federalism in Iraq, do they want to seek an independent Kurdistan. And so long as they have that uncertainty, both within their leadership and possibly within their community, as to what they want, it makes it harder to unite with the other Iraqis, who are getting to be very, very vocal and growing in number, who are saying very clearly that we want an end to this occupation.

Since the first Gulf War ended in 1991, the Kurdish enclave in the north has been a kind of U.S. protectorate. It had a great deal of autonomy. The Kurds do speak a different language, a Persian-related language, and they're from a different racial group, Indo-European. And, of course, they had been targeted by Saddam Hussein for persecution. So there is no love lost there between the Kurds and Saddam Hussein. But now Saddam Hussein is no longer there. Where are they going?

That's a good question. And I have to say, I don't think there is love lost between Saddam Hussein and most communities in Iraq, be they Kurdish or be they Arab. You have Shia communities that have been opposed to him, you have Sunni communities that have been opposed to him, you have the Turkman, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the other communities in Iraq that also have been persecuted and suffered under Saddam Hussein. As to where the Kurds are going, really we don't know. But what is worrisome is this kind of interim constitution that has been decided by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council with no democratic representation in Iraq. And one of the many problematic things that this interim constitution does is it allows 20% of the Iraqi population, the Kurds, to have veto power over 80%. And, again, to me it's not a question of do we agree with this or not, but we need to recognize what the consequences of this are. And I believe very much that what this does is it strips away national identity and creates another identity. And whenever you create another identity and place national identity as secondary to this first identity, then you are building seeds of division and possibly building seeds for a civil war. We saw it in Lebanon with the way that the French designed the Lebanese constitution and the way they stripped a national identity in Lebanon and gave the Lebanese sectarian identities. And it's very worrisome that this interim constitution is going to be doing the same in Iraq.

One of the architects of the war on Iraq was Paul Wolfowitz. He's deputy secretary of defense, a well-known neocon who used to work for Senator Henry Jackson.  Incidentally, he's also regarded as somewhat of an expert on Islam. He was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia during the Suharto dictatorship. In an interview he gave with National Public Radio before the war, he said that the Shia were different in Iraq. That the situation in Iraq was different compared to that in neighboring Saudi Arabia. And the interviewer asked, How? And Wolfowitz said, Well, Saudi Arabia has holy cities, Mecca and Medina, but Iraq doesn't have any. Talk about the significance of Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala for Shia.

Both Najaf and Karbala are regarded as holy cities for Shia, and arguably for all of Islam, because I believe very much that when you have an area that's regarded as holy by a percentage of the Muslim community, then in a way it becomes holy to all Muslims. So for him to say that, it's like saying Jerusalem is not holy for Muslims. And Jerusalem does have a lot of holy significance. It's regarded, if we can claim, as the third holiest site for Muslims. So it speaks volumes as to his ignorance, and it also speaks volumes that anyone can claim to be an expert on Islam while residing so far away and while building a politics based upon racism and deceit.

Karbala is the shrine of Imam Hussein, who was the son of the caliph Imam Ali. Imam Ali is buried in Najaf. Again, these are the two most sacred Shia pilgrimage sites. In fact, Shia from India, Pakistan, Iran, other countries go to Najaf and Karbala performing their religious obligations. So it's very, very significant for them. The Shia in Iraq make up 60% of the population. The common thread that one hears in all news reports is that because Saddam Hussein was Sunni, that the 20% Sunni minority in Iraq were riding high, they were all driving limousines and doing really well. Was there a lot of prejudice in favor of the Sunnis?

I would argue no. And I have to make very clear, this is the 20% of the Arab Sunni population of Iraq and not the general Sunni population. But, no. For example, now in Falluja, it is being represented in the mainstream media as, oh, Saddam Hussein lovers were there and they're very empathetic to Saddam Hussein, and yet we hear reports, if we dig through the press, of men in Falluja making comments such as, When Saddam Hussein told us to go to work, we would take three days off. When he told us one thing, we would do the other. So there is no love lost, even in Falluja, for Saddam Hussein. We have to understand, whenever you have a leader who stifles freedom of speech, stifles free expression, stifles political parties of any nature, even freedom within the Ba'ath party itself, of course it's going to cause resentment across all Iraqi sectors. And especially, again, when you have Sunnis and Shia living so close together, if one community is impacted, it's impossible for the other community not to be impacted. So, yes, there probably was a sliver of Iraqis who financially benefited from Saddam Hussein's reign, and they're the ones who are most upset to see him go. But I feel very uncomfortable claiming that Sunnis in general, or even the Arab Sunnis in general, were better loved by Saddam Hussein and therefore more resentful of what's happened. It's actually not true at all.

A key figure in the Iraq story is Ahmed Chalabi. Who is he and what role has he played?

He's quite an interesting character. Here we have a man who left Iraq when he was in his early teens and has been convicted in absentia, but convicted nonetheless, in Jordan of embezzling a significant amount of money from the bank. He had to flee Jordan in the back of a trunk. He then went on to London, and much later founded the Iraqi National Congress. He's on the Pentagon payroll. He is one of the men directly involved in feeding lies to the Pentagon, lies which I'm sure the Pentagon knew were lies. It's not as if the Pentagon accepted them as truths. Lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lies about Iraq's links to terrorism. Lies that he admits now were lies. But he's, like, Well, now you're here. So he's a man who has no regard for his own community as Iraqis, no regard for the truth, no regard for his patronage father, the U.S., since he's willing to play with U.S. lives in this war in this fashion. And he's a man who has the audacity to now claim that he wants democracy and he wants to represent the Iraqi people. A man who has spent most of his life in exile, and yet a man who, as recently reported in mid-April on Al-Jazeera - there are rumors possibly circulated by him, possibly by others - that he has dreams of becoming King Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq. So, interestingly, and not surprisingly, in Iraq itself, all these members of the governing council, not just Ahmed Chalabi, but all these members are viewed, rightfully so, as Iraqis in exile who have come, who have not suffered along with Saddam Hussein, not suffered along with them through the Iraq-Iran war, through the sanctions, through any of these wars, and now claim to feel them and now claim to want to represent them. In addition to all this, Ahmed Chalabi, in addition to being a convicted embezzler and a well-known liar, also has very strong relationships not only with Wolfowitz but also with right-wing, Likudist, Zionist settlers.

The New York Times reports that Chalabi is still receiving $340,000 a month from the Pentagon. If what you say is accurate - and I don't think it's very controversial - that all of these distortions and fabrications about Iraq's weapons and mobile chemical labs and resin and anthrax and all the rest, why do you think the Bush Administration was so gullible?

I don't think they were gullible. I can't give them that benefit of the doubt, because the lies were so transparent. If myself as simply a reader of the news, somebody who is not a weapons investigator, somebody who is not within the CIA intelligence, could read through the lies simply by reading UNSCOM reports, simply by reading UNMOVIC reports, those of the U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, could see through the lies that Ahmed Chalabi was making. There is no way that I can believe that the Pentagon and the Bush Administration could not see through those lies. They used those lies, just as the Bush Administration created other lies, and just as the Bush Administration continues to create lies. In Bush's mid-April press conference, he again attempted to emotionally manipulate the American public by attempting to tie in, what is happening in Iraq against the U.S. military to what happened in Lebanon against the U.S. military in the bombing of the Marine barracks, to what happened in Madrid, the massacre and the very tragic bombing that happened in Madrid, to what happens in Jerusalem and in other parts of the Palestinian territories and Israel with regard to the suicide bombings, to 9/11, presenting all of these as the same and regarding all of the aggressors as "terrorist" and as "they." This is worrisome. So we have a Bush Administration that I cannot claim is gullible but that is being criminally negligent, that is deliberately fabricating, and, on top of it, being extremely stupid in its formation of this occupation and its maintenance of this occupation.

That press conference in mid-April was his third in prime-time in almost three and a half years in office. He's given fewer press conferences than any president in modern history.

He's also taken more time on leave than any president. Forty percent of his term has been on vacation.

I think he's been in Camp David and Crawford, Texas, for eight months, if one does the calculations. He did say in that press conference, "Even with what I know today about the stockpile of weapons [that they don't exist], I would have attacked Iraq." That's a very interesting admission.

But it's no surprise, because we all know, and, again, by reading their own documents - it's not by being conspiratorial, it's not by coming up with theories. It's by reading the documents of the Project for the New American Century. It's by reading Pentagon documents. We know very clearly, this is a war that was planned and then reasons were attempted to be sold to the American public to get the American public to accept this war, versus, oh, discovering that we need to go to war and then planning a war. No, this was a war that was planned initially. And it's a very old-fashioned war that has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with, one, controlling natural resources - the oil, the water, the controlling of the population, possibly the creation of cheap labor in Iraq; two, and equally important, the further increase of U.S. military bases around the world. We know that 14 permanent U.S. military bases are being built right now in Iraq and being planned to remain in Iraq for at least a number of years, if not longer. We know that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is going to have 3,000 employees, the largest embassy in the world. This isn't an embassy; this is an occupational headquarters. Those are two of the main reasons for this war, not the only reasons but the main reasons. Security, freedom, democracy, all of those are empty words that get thrown at us as Americans that they hope that we will swallow and then close our minds and ears and hearts to what is happening in Iraq.

During that Bush press conference, as well as on numerous other occasions, the constant terms that are used vis-à-vis Iraq are "finish the job," "stay the course," "we're not going to quit and run," "we have to stand firm," " we have to show resolve." You've talked a lot about the use of language in shaping and forming public opinion.

All of these are positive terms. Who wouldn't want to finish the job or stay the course? And, of course, all of us reject being called quitters. But we need to stop and say, What is the job that we are intent on finishing? We're not building democracy in Iraq. We know that for a fact. We know for a fact that, come July, there will be no elections, there will be no transfer of power, there will be no transfer of sovereignty, there will be no removal of U.S. military troops, there will be no revoking of the illegally imposed economic structural changes that Paul Bremer and the U.S. Authority have imposed on the Iraqi population. None of that will happen. So what is this job that we are intent on finishing, unless we, the American public, are willing to sacrifice our men and women and to sacrifice our own humanity by killing thousands of Iraqis to finish the job of controlling other people's resources and empowering the rich in this country and building more military bases. If that is the job we want to finish, let us be honest about it, and let us then see if the American public will be open to it. There is other language that's being used that I find to be equally damaging, because it's being embraced by everyone in this country, from the right to the left, and this is calling the Iraqi fighters insurgents. The technical definition of an insurgent is someone who rises up against a governmental authority. We do not have a government in Iraq. And if we claim that the Iraqi fighters are insurgents, then we are implying that the U.S. occupation is a legal governmental authority. They're not. Going back to the legal definition, the Iraqi fighters are resisters. Whether or not you agree with them, that is what they are, because they are rising up against a military occupation. We may want not want to use that term, because that has moral baggage associated with it. "Resistance" is always viewed as a positive term, and that's why the mainstream media is running from it. But if the mainstream media doesn't want to use the term that's legally accurate but that has a positive implication, the very least they can do is call them fighters, not insurgents or rebels but simply fighters.

According to most international legal experts, the occupying power, which is what the U.S. is, cannot undertake to transform the economy of the country it's occupying. Nevertheless, the U.S. has proceeded to do that. You've talked about Bechtel and Halliburton and many other examples of the privatization of the Iraqi economy. It's clearly illegal.

It is illegal. And Paul Bremer has gone on record since September of last year as telling us he wants to restructure the Iraqi economy. He's not mincing his words on that. He wants to restructure the Iraqi economy, and he has been doing that by removing all domestic subsidies; by imposing a maximum flat tax of 15%, with loopholes so big Halliburton can go right through; and, most importantly, by coming up with an order that allows foreign corporations to own 100% of any Iraqi sector, with the exception of oil, and then, on top of that, to remove 100% of their profits out of Iraq without delay at any time. And these laws have been reimposed this year, 2004. It's not simply laws that were passed in 2003. They've been reimposed.
And there have been numerous other things. In the beginning of April and the end of March, we have seen Paul Bremer impose laws that will strip the current Iraqi governmental ministries and possible future Iraqi governmental ministries of their ability to change the contracts that Bremer has given out to U.S. corporations and to change the economic structuring that Paul Bremer has imposed on Iraq over the past year. So he's stripping away future sovereignty of Iraq, not only present sovereignty.

The U.S. was counting on being greeted as liberators when it attacked Iraq, to be received with sweets and flowers. How could they have been so far off the mark in their perceptions of what Iraq was like and what the reception would be?

I have to say, as an Arab American, I thought the reception they were going to get was going to be much harsher than what they actually got. And what our team of producers from About Baghdad who went to Iraq for a month in July 2003 found, again contrary to our own expectations, was that generally Iraqis were being very patient and were saying, "Look, we don't like you here, we don't like the idea of an American tank strolling through the streets of Baghdad, it feels like the tank is coming on our hearts, but we will be patient, and we will see what you will do, and we will see if you will actually reconstruct, we will see if you will actually give us our security and give us back what is ours. We will give you time." And if we remember those comments that happened in July of last year, and what has been happening until April of 2004. We've seen an increase of armed resistance against the U.S. military that has gone hand in hand with two things: one, the lack of reconstruction; and, two, the U.S. military's abject disregard for Iraqi lives and abject disregard for the fact that Iraqis are human beings. And now we actually have to state this: Iraqis are human beings. They are not bad apples. They are not bad seeds. They are not these subhuman individuals. They are human beings. And we now have 25,000 individuals held in detention cells in Iraq without charge, without trial. We have numerous, numerous incidents that happen every day, even before the Falluja massacre and the siege of Najaf right now, of Iraqi civilians being killed haphazardly, indifferently by U.S. soldiers. We have comments by the Department of Defense in which an official states, "Iraqis do not count, they do not matter . . . We do not keep track of how many die. They do not count." So it's in response to the U.S. occupation's actions in Iraq that we've seen this resistance. Had the U.S. occupation actually been true to their own statements, they possibly might have been greeted in the way that they expected to be greeted. But they're greeted in response to their own actions in Iraq this past year.

U.S. troops in Iraq often call Iraqis Hajjis or Ali Babas, clearly derogatory terms. There used to be this song, "What a Difference a Day Makes." I think it was by Dinah Washington. And one could say, "What a difference a year makes." A year ago, on April 9, Saddam's statue came down. Iraq was liberated. I'm looking at a headline a year later, which says "Few Celebrate Iraqi Anniversary."

I have to say that few celebrated April 9 last year even. Those celebrations that we may have seen were staged. They were much, much, much smaller than we may have thought if we had simply seen the pictures on the mainstream press and seen the television footage. Much smaller. And we need to remember, it was the U.S. military that took down the Saddam Hussein statue. And a year later it's the U.S. military that's taking down pictures of Moqtada al-Sadr in the same place that they took down pictures of Saddam Hussein. Whoever decides to change Iraqi leadership, they have to be Iraqis, from Iraq, not foreigners armed with weapons, not Iraqi exiles who have no idea what's been happening in the country, but Iraqis themselves. And Iraqis themselves have not been allowed by the U.S. government, not only by this administration but dating back to George Bush Sr., to express their own sovereignty within their own country.

There were fewer than perhaps 150 people in Firdos Square in central Baghdad on that day that the statue was brought down, and half of them were journalists.  And according to As'ad AbuKhalil, on this program, he said he actually could identify members of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress right in the center of the celebration.

They were clearly identifiable. And there were other reports that these men, these Iraqis, were not even from Baghdad. So not only were they working with Ahmed Chalabi, but they were actually brought in from Kuwait. If there were to be celebrations, you would imagine that they would be spontaneous, that the Iraqi people would be celebrating spontaneously. Yes, a lot of Iraqis did rejoice once Saddam Hussein's regime fell, yes; but many of them were the same Iraqis who had attempted to have a regime change in Iraq themselves but were blocked by both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. military in our previous history. So we have a lot of history we need to examine, we have a lot of things we need to break down. And, most importantly, we as Americans need to be cynical of our press and cynical of our leadership.

Not knowing history, as Howard Zinn says, is a very dangerous thing. For example, there was a long history of Iraqi resistance to British occupation right after World War I, when the British moved in and took over from the Turks.  And perhaps, if the Americans had had some knowledge of that particular background, it would have given them a better understanding of the dynamics of a people and a culture.

Actually, the British general at that time used the same language the American general has used this past year. "We come as liberators, to liberate you." No foreigner, no matter how noble his heart, can ever come as a liberator. Every foreigner comes with his own interest in mind, not the interest of the Iraqi people. And the U.S. occupation has proved that this past year, that they are intent on doing what they want to do, which is restructuring the Iraqi economy, creating an acquiescent population, building military bases throughout, forcing upon Iraq a relationship with Israel that is not welcome among the Iraqi population, and at the same time deceiving its own troops. We have too many troops in Iraq who actually believe they're building democracy, and they don't understand why they're being shot at, because maybe they're not even thinking that maybe we're being shot at because yesterday we ourselves shot at Iraqis. [omission] What's needed for this occupation to continue is not only deceit but racism - racism here at home and racism abroad. And there is a great deal of racism within our community here in the United States that we need to tackle head on, and it's racism against all people of color. And we need to recognize that and struggle against it.

T. S. Eliot, in his classic poem "The Waste Land," said "April is the cruelest month." And April 2004, for American troops in Iraq, has been as well the deadliest month in the yearlong occupation. But what's occluded or not mentioned, which you referred to briefly, was that there is no accounting of Iraqi deaths. Do you have any idea how many thousands of Iraqis have died?

We only have very conservative estimates. We know for a fact that at least 10,000 Iraqis have been killed, since the start of the invasion. Not since the start of the occupation but since the start of the invasion itself. At least 10,000.

Is that civilian or military?

I believe civilian. We don't know how many Iraqi military men have been killed from the invasion and the occupation. We don't know. Not only does the U.S. military not keep track, but also the U.S. military has prohibited the Iraqi Ministry of Health from keeping track of the number of Iraqi civilians that are killed by the occupation authorities. They're prohibited from that. We know that in Falluja in a little bit more than one week, in Falluja, a city of 200,000, we have had between 600 to 700 Iraqis killed. We know that is a conservative number. We know that for a fact. We know we've had 1200 wounded in Falluja alone. We know we've had two football fields in Falluja transformed into mass graves. These are mass graves that the U.S. military has created in Iraq in the month of April.

The U.S. is saying those are all insurgents, they are fighters, and they were killed in battle.

It's interesting also that the U.S. military defines fighters as men under the age of 65.

In response to reports of Iraqi civilian deaths on Al-Jazeera, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said on April 15,  "Vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable," "outrageous nonsense," "Our forces don't go around killing civilians." "We are," he said, "experiencing a test of will and we will meet that test."

I don't know what test of will he's experiencing. He seems to be experiencing a test of conscience that he's given up, because we have pictures - not simply statements, pictures - from Falluja that show us for a fact the U.S. military is targeting civilians. Not only targeting civilians but targeting ambulances. We have pictures that are broadcast. You can see them. Go to EmpireNotes.org - that's www.EmpireNotes.org - and you see these pictures of ambulances with sniper bullets aimed right at the chest of the driver. So it's not like there were a machine gun that you could say, "Oh, the U.S. military was scared and they didn't know." Ambulances with sirens, painted very clearly as ambulances, with two to three sniper bullets aimed right at the chest of the driver. Not only that, we have numerous eyewitness reports from Americans in Falluja - if we claim not to trust Arab media with their television - that have shown us examples of unarmed Iraqi men shot in the back. And it's very important to note that although we have U.S. generals claiming that the Arab press is biased, they're not showing us pictures that show us otherwise. And all they're basically saying is, "Change the channel, change the channel."

"Change the channel" is from General Mark Kimmitt in Baghdad, when he was asked by one of the Arab journalists in the audience that "We're seeing all these images," and Kimmitt said, If you don't like it, "change the channel."

Actually, that's my advice to everybody who does not have Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the two television networks in Iraq. Do not watch American television. It's my recommendation for everything, because you're not going to be told the truth, you're going to be told lies. And it's interesting that one of the demands of the U.S. military from the beginning of their siege of Falluja has been, We want Al-Jazeera to leave Falluja. That means they're obviously scared of what Al-Jazeera show the world. Instead of saying, "We welcome the media into Falluja, because we know we're not targeting civilians, let the media come in and see all these fighters that we are killing"; rather, "We want the media out." That speaks volumes.

There have been two academic studies of television - viewing patterns in the United States, one from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a more recent one from the University of Maryland. And they show a direct correlation between the number of hours that you watch television and your inability to answer questions on national and international issues. The margin of error was particularly high for those who watched the Fox network, for example. So it's kind of like that old adage, The more you watch, the less you know.

Completely. The more you watch, the less you know. So my advice is to simply turn off the television. And when you read The New York Times and the Washington Post, read them with a red pen, and read them with the understanding that there is no such thing as objectivity. No one is objective. To be objective means you have no history, you have no experience, and you have no mind, because what it means to be objective is not placing things in context. And we have to do that. So you have to understand about every writer who writes, what is their frame of reference, what is their own ideology, what is their angle that they're writing from, and read it with that grain of salt. And then read the counterpoint and discover the truth on your own.

Talk more about stereotypes. I'd like a nickel for every NPR report I've heard that begins with the adan, the Islamic call to prayer, or, for that matter, any television story, that always has a mosque as a background. This kind of cements the image in American minds that the Arab Middle East is simply Islam. There is nothing else. That's all people do: They're worshipping 24/7. And there is no other life going on: there is no music, there is no culture, there is no theater, there is no poetry. There is nothing there except Islam.

I have to say, as somebody who grew up in the Gulf - I grew up in Bahrain, which is a small island off the east coast of Saudi Arabia - I have felt more surrounded by religion in the Bible Belt in North Carolina than I ever felt in the Arab world, ever felt. And yet we don't hear reports from North Carolina or from the South that start with a Baptist church or with an evangelical preacher, even though that would be more accurate for the South than starting with a mosque in Iraq. There is this gross simplification. And it's not simply out of laziness. It's out of a disregard to present people in their complexity. Iraqis are not one-dimensional; Iraqis are people just like us. They have the same dreams, the same aspirations, and they have a much, much longer history than any of us in the United States. We're talking about a country with at least a 5,000-year history. One note about music. For those of us who love the guitar, the guitar is the grandson of the oud, and the oud is a beautiful instrument that was born in Iraq. And this is just one of the many gifts we have all been given from the people from that land.

To continue talking about God, as it were, George Bush told the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, that he was told by God to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

What worries me is not so much that George Bush says that but that he's gotten away with saying that, and that we still claim we are a secular nation. We're clearly not a secular nation. I believe we're a schizophrenic nation, that we don't know what we want to be. Because if we are a secular nation, then we should prohibit all public officials from making these kinds of claims, from claiming that they do have a relationship with God and that God is directing them. We are a secular nation, which means that our religion should be private and it really should be indifferent to our politics. And it's extremely worrisome, the kind of schizophrenia we've gone into, the kind of importance, that we have to know that John Kerry went to Easter Sunday worship. Why is that relevant to his presidential campaign? Why is it in any way, shape, or form relevant? It moves us all from asking the important questions - What is their reasoning? What is their voting record? What do they want? What have they done for our community lately? And these are questions that we're not asking of all our representatives.

Hostility toward Islam, and Arabs in particular, is quite marked, particularly when one hears such comments from the best-selling author and frequent TV pundit, Ann Coulter, who said, "[we] should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." And then Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, said of Islam that it is "a very evil and wicked religion." And then the past president of the Southern Baptist convention, Jerry Vines, declared that the prophet Muhammad was "a demon-obsessed pedophile." This group of quotes has been recently joined by that of Lieutenant General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who declares that the enemy is Satan and that George Bush was placed in the White House by God. It's almost what Tariq Ali is talking about, the clash of fundamentalisms. You have this extreme reaction here, and then you have the bin Laden side of it.

Very much so. And I'm sure that if we remove specific references in bin Laden's speeches and in George Bush's speeches, it would be hard to differentiate who was saying what to whom between them. But I think what's important is not only our ability as the American public to allow these individuals to get away with these comments, comments that encourage massacres, comments that encourage genocide. We have allowed them to say that. We have allowed Ann Coulter to remain in her position because we have not raised enough of a fuss over her deeply - imagine if she had said this about Judaism. Imagine if she had said this about Buddhism, even. People would have been in an uproar. But it has become acceptable at this time, 2004, nothing new, in the United States for all criticism of Arabs to be accepted, even references to them as subhuman to be accepted, and for all criticism of Islam to be accepted. And it places those of us who are Arabs, those of us who are Muslim, those of us who empathize or who understand both that ethnicity and that religion in an awkward position. Do we justify their statements by trying to explain, No, Islam is a religion of peace, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Which I'm not going to do anymore. Because I'm not going to go offer them that strength. Rather, I think it's important for us to respond to these statements as they are: they're racist and they're extremely, extremely dangerous at this time.

Lieutenant General Boykin, who still serves on the public payroll at the Pentagon, asked the now famous question, "Why do they hate us?" And his answer was, "It's because we are a Christian nation. We are hated because we are a nation of believers. Our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."

It's really scary. It's really scary to think these are statements that are being said now. I'm sure these are statements very similar to the ones that were made during the Crusades. And we have to remember, the Crusades not only resulted in the killing of Arab Muslims but also the killing of Arab Christians. So in no way can we claim that this is for the love of Jesus, anyone who knows anything about what Jesus stands for. And, again, the bottom line is, we as an American public have allowed these individuals to get away with these statements.

You're a co-producer of a new documentary film entitled About Baghdad.

I'm thrilled about this documentary, I have to say. This is the first documentary that does not simply talk about Iraqis but allows Iraqis to talk about themselves. So what we had is a five-member team went to Iraq in July 2003 and spent a month in Baghdad interviewing Baghdadis: from people who are in the insane asylum, to Communists, to Islamists, to feminists, to the young, to the old, to people who literally fought against Saddam Hussein and suffered and who are appalled at the U.S. occupation. A whole range of individuals, who are allowed to speak for themselves - what is their emotional state, what are their dreams, what are their wishes. This documentary will be released in May. I would encourage everyone to please access our Website - our Website is www.AboutBaghdad.com - and get in touch with us about how you can work with us to publicize this documentary even more. Because it not only presents Iraqis as they are, but it also destroys this false binary that we have been told, which is you either love Saddam and hate the occupation or you hate Saddam and love the occupation. We found that to be completely untrue in Iraq.

Tell me a little bit about your own background. You mentioned that you grew up in Bahrain.

I'm an Arab American, born in Lebanon, of Lebanese heritage, raised in Bahrain. I moved to North Carolina in 1986 and have been living in North Carolina ever since. So it's managing this Arab American identity and feeling that people that I love on both sides of the conflict are being killed, and are being killed - basically, very simply, we have poor people who are being seduced into joining the U.S. military, primarily from rural communities, primarily from the South, primarily from people-of-color communities, taken to Iraq to kill people in Iraq who are struggling to defend their country. And all for the benefit of neither the American public nor, of course, the Iraqi community, but for the benefit of a small number of very elite and extremely well organized, primarily white, men in the United States.

What are the origins of your politics?

I think it's simply an idea that we have a responsibility for the actions that happen around us. We're all responsible for them. It's not this idea that since I am not a member of the U.S. military, therefore I'm not responsible; since I am not an Iraqi, therefore I'm not responsible. I'm a human being. Once I know what happens, that knowledge brings with it responsibility. And there is no way to break knowledge and responsibility apart. It's a very catholic marriage, if we might claim it as such: it cannot be divided. So once I understand that there is this sense of responsibility, it becomes my choice. What am I going to do with it? Do I speak out? Do I organize? Do I try to do as much as I can to create social change? Or do I simply allow the responsibility to destroy my own conscience and to become an empty cell inside? And I think if we all recognize, that, one, we do have this sense of responsibility and, two, most importantly, there is a great deal of hope there. We do have the ability to create social change. Just remember one thing: We are the many and they are the few. And by "they" here I mean they, the ones who benefit from war, the ones who benefit from occupation, the ones who benefit from oppression. Be it economic, be it military, be it cultural, they are the few, we are the many. And there is a lot of hope and power in that.

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