Double-Market Penetration
_ Hedging Bets in the War on Terror? _
by Shelton Hull
When the hammer finally drops upon the criminal organization presently based in Baghdad, Americans should hope that our liberationist forces are diligent in their efforts to disgorge evil-doers from the former Mesopotamia. It is likely, however, that we’ll miss a few well-groomed Ba’athist sympathizers in and out of the condemned regime, some of whom may actually be promoted to positions of “leadership” within Iraq’s inaugural democracy. It’s also likely that those partly responsible for arming Hussein and his cronies over the past decade of sanctions and inspections may escape the wrath of Freedom’s fighters. Why? Because, in this world run by and for corporate interests, the only thing worse than providing aid and comfort to the enemy is doing so without the cover of free-market Machiavellian capitalism.
On December 7, 2002, the Hussein regime turned in an 11,900-page declaration of its chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional weapons holdings, which makes a fine scouting report for our leaders, who’d already declared that the report means nothing in the general scheme of regime change. It was immediately denounced by the US and Britain as being woefully inadequate, constituting perhaps a material breach of UN Resolution 1441. Subsequent examination proved the document to be perhaps a tad too complete, and it was cut by about 75% for distribution to all but the five permanent member-nations of the UN Security Council.
Only Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States have “official” access to the full report, and everyone else’s decision to support or not support our war will be based on Cliffs Notes. So, today’s question is: exactly what was it in Iraq’s weapons dossier– a document upon which the future of that country and arguably the entire world rests– that necessitated the omission of more content than what remains for the majority of Earth’s population, including all of our allies in the Gulf region, most of Europe, every non-Communist Asian nation and the entire southern hemisphere?
Possibly, evidence of treason. The German daily Die Tageszeitung published leaked portions of Iraq’s “first draft” on Dec. 19; they were subsequently piggybacked by London’s holy trinity of conspiracy theory, the Independent, the Guardian and the Financial Times. The implication, based on these reports, is that it was deemed necessary to protect certain multinational conglomerates who provided Saddam Hussein with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, and sometimes the weapons themselves. This would be shocking if it weren’t obvious, problematic had such information not been effectively redacted from the domestic media, utterly scandalous if not already a common feature of American history. IG Farben, anyone?
Of 130 companies named, 80 are German, but 24 are based in the United States, including Axel Electronics, Canberra Industries Inc., Cerberus, Consarc, DuPont, Finnigan-MAT-US, Hewlett-Packard, International Computer Systems, Leybold Vacuum Systems, Tektronix, TI Coating and Unisys. Amusingly, there are also 50 foreign companies who did business with Iraq through American holdings, perhaps because they knew it was safe. Among them: China Wanbao Engineering Company, Cerbag, Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique, Sciaky, Societe General pour les Techniques Nouvelles and Thales Group (of France); Ali Ashour Daghir, C. Plath-Nuclear, Endshire Export Marketing, Euromac Ltd-UK, International Computer Systems, Inwako, Matrix Churchill Corp., MEED International and XYY Options, Inc. (Britain); Fanuc, Hammamatsu Photonics KK, NEC–which may be Nintendo, Osaka and Waida (Japan); Boehler Edelstahl and Sebatra (Belgium); Zayer (Spain); ABB (Sweden). (To save space, I have only listed those 38 who assisted Iraq’s nuclear program.) Of ten countries named in a partial list, only Russian companies kept their trade limited to conventional weapons (or at least successfully concealed their activity), making them the only Security Council nation that isn’t technically complicit in the very crimes for which Iraq will soon be crushed, again.
The real tragedy here is that such information only came out via a preemptive Iraqi PR strike. That it was deemed worth damaging Bush’s credibility by butchering the report to protect companies unworthy of his grace serves to reinforce the axiom that corporate loyalty is mostly internally-aimed, and that patriotism is but a cynical marketing ploy, like American flags sewn by children in Communist countries. Ground war in the Gulf could kill hundreds of allied soldiers; they will be killed by weapons sent there by Americans, in clear violation of domestic and international law. The complicit CEOs will ride this war to bounteous profits for many fiscal quarters to come, thus preserving (in theory) our way of life. This bitter irony may provide some soon-to-be ruined families with the only laughs available to them in FY2003.
