Gideon Polya, "Australian Corruption & Huge Iraq Deaths", MWC News, 15 February 2006, not cached by Google..
Australian Corruption & Huge Iraq Deaths
Australia has been a major supplier of wheat to Iraq. During the Sanctions War against Iraq (1990-2003), Australia continued to sell wheat to Iraq but the UN Volker Report (2005) has disclosed that this involved massive kickbacks. The monopoly Australian Wheat Board (AWB) was responsible for US$222 million out of an estimated US$1.8 billion of illicit payments to Saddam Hussein’s régime during the UN Oil For Food program in 1999-2003. Subsequently elicited AWB documents from 2000-2001 indicate that the kickback mechanism involved excessive trucking fees paid to a Jordanian company half-owned by the Iraqi Government.
In late 2004 the Australian Ambassador to the US (evidently on instructions from the Australian Government) successfully lobbied to get a US Senate Committee to drop investigations into allegations that AWB had paid kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein régime in Iraq. (see: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200602/s1559372.htm).
The UN Volker Inquiry into kickbacks to the Iraqi Government via the UN Oil for Food Program named AWB as THE major abuser. The kickbacks were paid via Alia, a Jordanian trucking company half-owned by the Saddam Hussein régime, and totaled US$222 million (see: http://www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm ).
The Volker Report precipitated a judicial inquiry in Australia, the Cole Inquiry, albeit with limited terms of reference. The Government instructed its NEW Ambassador to the US to tell the Americans that they did not know about the scandal. The new Ambassador was previously the Head of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO) – the same organization that FAILED to warn the Australian Government of the lack of substance to UK-US pre-invasion claims about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction etc. (all these claims were subsequently shown to be false).
The Australian Government has adopted a position that it was simply not told – that it simply did not know about the kickback scandal.
However a AWB whistleblower Dominic Hogan, has testified about a culture of intimidation within AWB and stated that the Government could have spotted the kickbacks 5 years ago by simply checking the price of wheat in any daily newspaper. The US was charging US$140 a tonne, with freight bringing this up to US$170 a tonne – but Australia was getting US$214 a tonne from the Iraqis (The Age, Melbourne, 7 February 2006).
If we are to believe the Australian Government, various government ministers, key public servants and intelligence officers ALL looked the other way. The bemused public has a choice between 2 hypotheses, specifically massive lying by commission by Government – or reckless, comprehensive incompetence by Government, public servants and intelligence officers that beggars belief.
On 10 February 2006 on ABC TV’s Asia Pacific Focus program, Helen Vatsikopoulos interviewed former intelligence agent Warren Reed and others over the AWB scandal (for the transcript of “Australian wheat exporter goes against the grain” see: http://abcasiapacific.com/focus/).
Asked about the AWB scandal, Australian Prime Minister Mr John Howard stated: “I did not know. Mr Downer [the Foreign Minister] did not know. Mr Vaile [the Deputy PM and Trade Minister] did not know. And on the information that I have and based on the advice that I have received, I do not believe that anybody in the departments were told.”
Warren Reed (a former Australian Security and Intelligence Service (ASIS) agent) was asked whether it was possible that Australian Intelligence would NOT have known about the AWB kick-backs to Saddam Hussein via a Jordanian trucking company (Alia) half-owned by the Iraqi Government, and specifically whether it was possible “that they didn’t get a whiff of this entire issue”.
Warren Reed’s response: “Absolutely impossible, Helen, that they did not know. In fact, if you look at the core part of the governmental system in Canberra that has to do with our international survival, our role on the global stage, particularly trade-wise, Foreign Affairs, even eaves-dropping, the whole intelligence apparatus that’s geared to knowing these things. There is no way, absolutely no way, those sorts of people didn’t know … So the Government did know. And I would defy the Prime Minister on oath to say he’d never heard anything about it, he had no knowledge at all that this could occur. If Mr Downer [Foreign Minister], and Mr Vaile [Deputy PM and Trade Minister] and our prime Minister had not an inkling that this sort of thing was going on, then they should be shot at dawn. They are unfit to hold these positions. That’s the extent to which everybody would know about it.”
Warren Reed was asked a further pertinent question: “the Cole Inquiry has implicated the [Australian] Wheat Board … there has been talk of kickbacks not only to Iraq but to Pakistan, to Indonesia, to Bangladesh… in your experience, 10 years out in the field, how widespread is the payment of kickbacks in the region?”
Warren Reed’s reply: “Oh, so widespread … I couldn’t think of one circumstance where they would not pay … It’s expected.”
Australian corruption cost the equivalent of one quarter of Iraq’s annual medical budget
A major Australian newspaper reported the resignation of AWB managing director under the headline “AWB probe claims its first scalp” (The Age 10 February 2006). But what has been the human cost of this affair in Iraq?
In 2004 the estimated annual per capita medical expenditure was US$37 in Iraq and US$3,100 in Australia. According to UNICEF (2006), in 2004 the under-5 infant mortality in Iraq (population 28 million) was 122,000 as compared to 1,000 in Australia (population 20 million) (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html). A roughly 100-fold difference in annual per capita medical expenditure is reflected in a 100-fold difference in under-5 infant mortality and this horrendous, continuing war crime constitutes passive genocide (see: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm).
The UN Oil for Food scheme was FINITE and clearly INADEQUATE and indeed constitutes a huge crime against humanity. However Australian greed and dishonesty diverted US$225 million from this source of medical funding – equivalent to about one quarter of Iraq’s annual medical budget.
Even if we accept Australian Government assertions that “we knew nothing”, they are surely morally obliged to put that $225 million (and indeed much, much more) back into medical services for Iraqis.
The World’s Best Practice risk management protocol involves the successive processes of gathering information, scientific analysis and systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately in the “free” democracies blessed with “freedom of speech” this has become a World’s Worst Practice protocol of denying information (lying by omission and commission, censorship and self-censorship), corrupt analysis (politicized and self-serving processing) and no systemic change (merely counterproductive blaming and shaming that will preserve a dangerous system and further inhibit sensible reportage).
In Australia, government authorities have been actively GAGGING public servants, serving military, intelligence officers and SCIENTISTS (e.g. for the full transcript of ABC TV Four Corner’s investigative report “The Greenhouse Mafia” see: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1568867.htm). There is now an entrenched culture in Australian universities, corporations, public service, politics and media of cowardice, lying by omission, untruth by omission and of “looking the other way”.
What can decent people do? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people must INFORM everyone about gross abuses of humanity and commit themselves to ETHICAL dealings with countries, corporations and people complicit in gross abuses of humanity. Should citizens of the world believe Australian government or corporate assertions, trade with Australian companies or send their children to study in the Australian universities that have generated a society with such entrenched dishonesty, corruption and politically correct racism?
Australian corruption has contributed directly to carnage in Iraq. Careful analysis of United Nations mortality data has revealed that the post-invasion avoidable mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan now totals 2.1 million (and the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality 1.7 million) through NON-PROVISION of life-sustaining requisites by the US-led Coalition in violation of the Geneva Conventions. This ongoing crime is now the subject of a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya211205.htm).