via Institute for Public Accuracy:
Gordon has written extensively on the Oil-for-Food program, including articles in Harper’s Magazine and Le Monde Diplomatique. She said today: “The Volcker Committee’s final report focuses a great deal on improprieties that had little impact on the Oil-for-Food program.
Where it adds up the actual money involved, it finds that the amount of money that went into Iraq illicitly through the program totaled $1.8 billion over the seven-year history of the program. This is far less than had been claimed in earlier CIA and GAO reports, and by contrast it is much much less than the amount of Iraqi funds that were mismanaged by the U.S. or disappeared altogether during its occupation of Iraq — in just a 14-month period. Just one example, according to the audit reports that have been released, was that no information could be provided about what happened to $8.8 billion of Iraqi funds sent to ministries under U.S. control. The Volcker reports’ claims of financial improprieties are minor compared to the magnitude and the speed with which Iraq’s funds disappeared once they were in the hands of the U.S. occupation.”
Joy Gordon’s Cool War
Others commenting include Ian Williams, Bert Sacks, and Kathy Kelly.
Community of Democracies is the “monumentous new movement” meant to stand head and shoulders above and possibly one day replace the UN for making the egregious mistake of extracting one too many bribes from the U.S. and refusing to genuflect deeply with infinite reverence, I’m guessing.
From a speech Condoleezza Rice delivered in April 2005 at the Third Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies in Santiago:
We must let all governments know that successful relations with our democratic community depend on the dignified treatment of their people. To strengthen democratic principles, all free nations must demand that leaders who are elected democratically have a responsibility to govern democratically. Abandoning the Rule of Law for the whim of rulers only leads to the oppression of innocent people.
To advance our democratic consensus, all free nations must insist that upholding democratic principles is the surest path to greater international status.
Does Rice feel the U.S. is upholding those principles in Iraq?
The true costs of the Bush administration’s alliance with the Shiite government against the Sunnis must be spelled out. It encourages the Shiites to carry out extralegal repression against Sunnis who aren’t sufficiently compliant. It has also inflamed Sunni passions against both the U.S. forces and the Shiites. Finally, it has solidified Sunni support for the insurgency, as dramatically demonstrated by the nearly total boycott of the January elections within Sunni strongholds. And no Iraqi political system can be stable, much less evolve into a liberal democracy, while such a sectarian war is being fought.
The strategic blunder of the U.S. alliance with the Shiites in the Iraqi civil war recalls the U.S. intervention in the 1983 Lebanese civil war between Christian and Shiite Islamic factions, in which U.S. forces fought on the side of the Christian minority. Colin Powell recalled later opposing what he called “America sticking its hand into a thousand year-old hornet’s nest.”
Iraq: Stop Intervening in the Civil War
By Gareth Porter | August 23, 2005