• Ten years later, the worst imaginable scenarios have played out: Iraq wrecked, U.S. bankrupt
During a March 14 interview, AMERICAN FREE PRESS spoke with Erin Evers of Human Rights Watch. In the past, she has also worked with the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Program, thus gaining invaluable firsthand knowledge of that nation’s problems.
When asked to describe daily life in Iraq, Evers replied, “The residents of Baghdad feel insecure because of ongoing terrorist attacks. Many are also being targeted by security forces, while corruption is rife in political and judicial institutions.”
On an even more basic level, Evers continued, “Most people in Baghdad wouldn’t say they’re leading normal lives. Movement is extremely difficult due to checkpoints, roadblocks and blast walls. Many neighborhoods are still cordoned off, and people—especially women—can be stopped and harassed at any time.”
As to their state of mind, Evers provided these insights. “Iraqis are angry. They feel like victims after decades of dictatorship under Saddam Hussein and occupation by the U.S. After everything they’ve endured, most worry that it’s all been for naught, an opportunity wasted.”
Indeed, from 2003-2011 the United States has spent $823B in Iraq, although total long-term healthcare costs and other expenditures may reach an astounding $4T. At a time when U.S. bridges, highways and other infrastructure crumble from disrepair, $60B in taxpayer money has been earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. A March 6 Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) 186-page report concluded that approximately 15% of these funds were wasted outright. Other allocations disappeared via embezzlement and kickbacks.
One example should be enough to infuriate any red-blooded American. In June 2004 the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority earmarked $35M for a Fallujah waste-water treatment facility. They projected an 18-month construction window. Eight years later, total expenditures rose to $108M and it’s still not finished, serving only one-third of city-dwellers. Worst of all, contractors estimated they need another $87M to complete the project by 2014.
After reading the SIGIR report, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) commented, “The level of fraud, waste and abuse in Iraq was appalling,” whereas Iraq’s Interior Minister Adnan Al-Assadi stated, “You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities, but you cannot point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States.”
It’s worth remembering that 5,000 years ago, civilization began in Mesopotamia—the land between two rivers—Iraq. Today, after a decade of war, Iraq is in ruins and may never recover.
‘High Priests of War’ Still Have Blood on Hands
Long before other journalists in the alternative media pointed out that a host of Israeli partisans, otherwise known as neocons, were responsible for pushing the Bush administration toward war with Iraq in 2003, AFP’s Michael Collins Piper penned what still remains the ultimate book on this subject.
Published in 2004, Piper’s The High Priests of War ventured into territory that the Jewish-controlled press refused to touch. While the American public got duped into believing smokescreen stories about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMDs, Piper chronicled the exploits of such nefarious figures as Richard “The Prince of Darkness” Perle. Also exposed were staunch Zionists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doughlas Feith and Scooter Libby, as well as The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol.
To get an idea of what actually transpired in the lead-up to war, Piper cited a little-known bit of advice offered by a supposedly “educational” group called the Israel Project. They told their Zionist allies, “If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.”
And that explains why Vice President Dick Cheney falsely warned his countrymen about Iraqi “mushroom clouds” while the neocons trotted-out Secretary of State Colin Powell to push their phony WMD rhetoric. Powell later called it “the lowest point in my life.” Yet, behind the scenes, Piper described the real movers and shakers: The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) that called for a “New Pearl Harbor” 9-11 strike that would get the wheels of their war machine turning.
To his credit, Piper also clarified precisely who the neocons are. Despite being called “neoconservatives,” these “reformed Trotskyites” are actually big government Israel-firsters. From this writer’s perspective, the only real difference between them and 1920s-style Progressives is that these fake conservatives possess a bloodthirsty penchant to fight Zionist wars for them.
Unfortunately, all of these war criminal neocons are still at large, escaping justice after deceiving Americans into accepting a lie that 19 cave-dweller Muslims orchestrated the 9-11 terror strikes which then led to the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These treasonous men got away with murder, and 10 years later the blood is still on their hands.
U.S. Covert Ops Remain in Iraq
• CIA still arming death squads, weapons still crossing the border, half of Iraqis living in squalor
To understand what’s happening in Iraq 2013, on March 14 AFP contacted one of the most outspoken voices on the scene today. As an Iraqi-American writer and activist who founded the website Mask of Zion, Jonathon Azaziah definitely pulls no punches.
When questioned about President Barack Obama’s role in Iraq over the past four years, Azaziah said, “Obama is even more dangerous than Bush, who everyone knew was a Christian Zionist controlled by the Christian Zionist cabal. But liberals and the antiwar community see Obama’s black skin and eloquence and they’re blindsided by him.”
Speaking truths that are rarely heard, Azaziah added, “People tell me that Obama’s thumbing his nose at Benjamin Netanyahu, but I ask them: why is his administration still sending Israel $3B a year in military aid? Obama’s foreign policy is just as Zionistic and imperialistic as Bush’s. He’s as much a neocon as Bush, but Obama wears a mask to hide it.”
With plenty of ammunition to support his arguments, Azaziah insisted, “Obama is the biggest mass murderer on the planet Earth today. Not only is his administration overseeing an unrelenting covert warfare campaign in Syria, but they’re conducting drone strikes from one end of the world to another.”
As for Iraq, conditions most certainly haven’t improved over the past four years. “The CIA has increased support to Iraqi militias and death squads,” Azaziah remarked, “and Obama hasn’t pulled them out. The flow of weapons is still coming across Iraq’s border, so it’s a fallacy to say the U.S. has left.”
When it comes to living conditions, despite billions allocated for reconstruction, Azaziah sees no betterment. “Quite bluntly, Iraq’s entire social order and structure has been annihilated. Half the people live in poverty, one-third are unemployed, while running water and electricity remain insufficient. In Fallujah, they don’t have power 18 hours a day. Bombs still cause 40-50 deaths on a daily basis, plus the cancer rate in Fallujah from depleted uranium is higher than [it was in] Hiroshima and Nagasaki after we nuked them.”
Azaziah closed with this distressing observation. “When I think of Iraq today, one word comes to mind: decimation.”
Will U.S. Fight More Wars to Keep Petrodollar Safe?
• Want to get bombed? Suggest taking something else besides U.S. dollars for oil
When most people discuss the motivations behind the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003, control of the country’s oil and threats to Israel are the two most common topics that come up. There remains one subject, however, that many people remain in the dark about even to this day, and that is Saddam Hussein’s announcement on October 30, 2000 that Iraq would no longer accept U.S. dollars for Iraqi petroleum.
As I wrote in my book, The New World Order Illusion, during Richard Nixon’s second term, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Treasury Secretary William Simon negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd where all OPEC oil would be sold solely in U.S. dollars. Because every nation now required our money, the U.S. dollar became the de facto global currency.
This stockpiling of U.S. dollars thus created an inordinate demand for America’s currency. If Hussein got away with bucking OPEC’s status quo, the rationale was that a domino effect would ensue and other anti-U.S. nations would follow suit.
Since the world has been effectively propping up the American economy for the past four decades by holding U.S. dollars in reserve, the U.S. has enjoyed a unique position in history, whereby Washington could live trillions of dollars beyond its means and rack up astronomical deficits without concern.
What would happen, then, if the petrodollar suddenly went away? First of all, with the evaporation of global demand, Ben Bernanke could no longer create billions of dollars each month out of thin air to monetize our debt. If he did continue to dump trillions into the system, inflation would skyrocket. To offset further devaluation, the Fed would be compelled to increase interest rates, thus eliminating the days of low-cost mortgages.
Next, with 43¢ of every dollar either being borrowed or printed without backing, the federal government’s bloated bubble would burst. With 50M people collecting food stamps and nearly half of U.S. residents collecting some type of government check, Uncle Sam could no longer finance all these programs. As such, welfare, social security and pensions would all face reductions.
Obviously, the current size of government couldn’t persist, and as a result, amid massive federal layoffs, no locale would suffer more than Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, all of whom continue to prosper while the rest of America languishes in recession. In addition, the reason Wall Street is breaking records can be traced directly to banks pumping Bernanke’s “free money” into the stock market. But without quantitative easing, say goodbye to your 401ks. Anyone who doubts this need only look at the Pentagon where daily its 16 reserved parking lots are filled with 8,770 vehicles. Inside the Pentagon there are 23K military and civilian employees and an additional 3K support personnel.
As it is today, the American empire persists for two reasons: the petrodollar and military dominance. If demand for the petrodollar were wiped out, the U.S. standard of living would nosedive.
Here’s the bitter reality: Americans are war-weary, but they don’t want to surrender their government social programs. So, the question everyone must ask themselves is: if the petrodollar is endangered, are Americans willing to enter another war—at the banking cabal’s bequest—against those who threaten the way of life we’ve become accustomed to? One thing is certain: once the tides of history shift, they don’t return. Just ask the Greek, Roman, British and Ottoman empires.
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and author of over 40 books.
