Did Bush & Blair know?

Gideon Polya, “Did Bush & Blair know? Australia funded the Iraqi insurgency.”, MWC News, 16 April 2006, not cached by Google.

Did Bush & Blair know? Australia funded the Iraqi insurgency.

WARS have always fundamentally been about “RESOURCES” - whether land, gold, oil, slaves, chattels or livestock – and consequently pre-war intelligence was always fundamentally concerned with “resources” as well as with purely military matters.

Intelligence these days is critically involved with trade and commerce – indeed non-Anglo-Celtic countries are severely disadvantaged by the Echelon satellite surveillance system involving the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Echelon’s ability to monitor every message in the world provides the Anglo-Celtic countries (Anglo-Celtia) with an extraordinary commercial advantage . However others are catching up, and the French (severe critics of Echelon in the European Parliament) have now developed their own version, amusingly dubbed “Frenchelon” by the French weekly magazine Le Point.

“Resource” and “commercial” matters are key areas for all intelligence services and the mutually-cooperative Anglo-Celtic intelligence services make it their business to know what is going on in these areas. Echelon provides an extraordinarily powerful tool in this process that enables them to monitor every electronic message in the world – e-mails, telephone calls, electronically transmitted contracts and tenders, the whole works.

Bearing this in mind, the global reader should be alerted to an Inquiry being held in Sydney, Australia. Dubbed the Cole Inquiry (after the presiding Commissioner Cole) it is concerned with how the Australian Wheat Board (AWB, Australia’s monopoly wheat trader) paid up to US$250 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s régime, diverting this huge sum from the UN Oil-for-Food Program and hence from extremely scarce food and medicine for Iraqis suffering under US-enforced Sanctions. The mechanism used for the illegal transfer of these huge funds since 1999 involved AWB paying exorbitant “trucking fees” to an Iraqi Government front company based in Jordan.

Remembering that Anglo-Celtic intelligence services would certainly have already been well aware of any commercial links with Iraq, the existence of kickback arrangements with the Iraqi Government only began to surface among “non-spooks” in the late 1990s. The Canadians and Americans are competitors of Australia in the huge Iraq wheat trade – a market that was traditionally dominated by Australia because of the suitability of Australian wheat for Iraqi purposes. US and Canadian intelligence services would certainly have passed on any information about corrupt dealings putting their own countrymen at a major disadvantage.

Indeed by 2000 the existence of Iraqi kickback arrangements was common knowledge among intelligence, trade, diplomats, foreign affairs officials and in the US and Canadian wheat industry – while the Australian Government “knew nothing”. Charles Duelfer (senior member of the UN inspection team in pre-war Iraq and head of America's Iraq Survey Group post-invasion) has declared that “It was really systemised, I think, in 2000. And I don't think it was, you know, it wasn't a big secret”; and Samir Sumaidaie (current Iraqi Ambassador to the UN) has told the ABC Four Corners investigative TV program that Australian diplomats would have known about the kickbacks system, stating that “Trade officials and embassy, if they are well informed, they should know. I mean, it's part of, it was at that time, I would say, general knowledge or public knowledge” (see: ABC )

In the Land of Lies the Truth is simply the opposite of every assertion. The racist, right wing Australian Government won the 2001 election by capturing the red-neck, racist vote by, among other things, claiming that Muslim refugee “boat people” had “thrown their children overboard

In 2000 the Canadians raised the matter of Iraqi demands for kickbacks with the UN official concerned (Felicity Johnston, a British Customs Service officer seconded in 2000 to the UN to inspect company contracts to Iraq under the UN Oil-for-Food program). Ms Johnston then officially raised the matter with the Australian Embassy in Washington - which then informed Canberra. Canberra, on receipt of a simple denial from AWB, simply denied any AWB corruption to the UN. While Kofi Annan has given the UN official (now back in the UK) permission to write and speak to the Cole Inquiry, the British Foreign Office has (so far) declined to do so (see: Daily Telegraph and here ).

What have the Brits got to hide - that their Intelligence were well aware of the scam and had very likely passed this KEY information on to the British Government?

On March 8, 2001, US Ambassador James Cunningham informed the UN Security Council about Iraqi kickback scams under the UN Oil-for-Food Program : "We have evidence that kickbacks have been requested. We don't have very good evidence that they've been paid, but one assumes that this is happening."

In January 2004 the Iraqi newspaper al-Mada listed 270 former government officials, activists and journalists from more than 46 countries suspected of profiting from the UN Oil-for-Food programme. Congressional investigation estimated that the Iraqi government had gained $5.7 billion from smuggling oil and $4.4 billion from kickbacks on contracts. By April 2004 the UN Volker Inquiry had been set up (see: The Guardian).

In October 2004 the Australian Ambassador to Washington, Michael Thawley, met with Senator Norm Coleman (Minnesota) (presumably on instructions from the Australian Government), assured him of AWB’s honesty and successfully headed off investigation of AWB by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which was investigating the UN Oil-for-Food scandal .

In October 2005 the Volker Report was issued - revealing that the AWB had paid kick-backs to the Saddam Hussein régime totalling over US$250 million - over 14% of the total of US$1.8 billion of such kick-backs paid during the period of 1997-2003 associated with the US$35 billion UN Oil-for-Food program (see MWC News ). “Food” was a major area of corruption, “wheat” was the biggest “food” item and AWB was the biggest supplier of wheat – yet the Australian Government still “knew nothing”. However after the Volker Report the Australian Government was forced to set up the Cole Inquiry (albeit with cleverly designed limitations to protect Government Ministers).

In Februrary 2006 Dennis Richardson (immediate former Head of Australia’s peak Intelligence organization, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, ASIO, and presumably on instructions from the Australian Government), assured Senator Norm Coleman that the former Australian ambassador had not KNOWINGLY mislead him in denying AWB corruption and ABC. The Australian Government STILL claims that nobody told them about the kickbacks, even though ASIO clearly MUST have known.

In the Land of Lies the Truth is simply the opposite of every assertion. The racist, right wing Australian Government won the 2001 election by capturing the red-neck, racist vote by, among other things, claiming that Muslim refugee “boat people” had “thrown their children overboard” (despite being advised otherwise before the election, hundreds of people KNOWING otherwise and ASIO knowing otherwise) (see: here ). Similarly, in 2003 Australia invaded Iraq on the basis of the numerous Bush-Blair claims of WMDs and other Iraqi threats that were subsequently shown to be false (and which ASIO knew at the time to be false or unproven to the extent that a top Intelligence officer, Andrew Wilkie, resigned in protest from the companion Office of National Assessments (ONA) in the week before the war) . The Australian Government still denies – with ONA support – that it does not know how many Iraqis have died post-invasion (there have actually been about 0.5 million avoidable post-invasion deaths) (see MWC News).

The Cole Inquiry rolls on and a succession of witnesses have testified to an extraordinary saga of AWB corruption, public service incompetence and government “looking the other way” despite dozens of warning e-mails sent to relevant Government Departments and copied to Ministers over 6 years (excuse: “we can’t read all our e-mails”), queries from the UN and the US Senate (excuse: “we trusted AWB”) and briefings from AWB itself in mid-2005 (excuse: “we weren’t told of AWB corruption”). Government politicians had shares in AWB and indeed the former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson sold a stack of AWB shares just before the Volker Report came out in October 2005. The Australian Government Ministers STILL insist “we knew nothing” (for a detailed exposé see ABC TV Four Corners transcripts: and here ).

I'm embarrassed as an Australian by what has happened here. We have funded the Iraqi insurgency. And that has so far killed or maimed two divisions worth of American soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqis.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley

(a loyal friend of America)

Warren Reed (a former Australian Security and Intelligence Service (ASIS) agent) was asked by ABC journalist Helen Vatsikopoulos whether it was possible that Australian Intelligence would NOT have known about the AWB kick-backs to Saddam Hussein. 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.”

The latest revelations of the AWB saga are avidly reported by Australian media. However what has NOT been reported by lying, racist, holocaust-denying Australian Mainstream Media has been the HUMAN COST of this corrupt diversion, specifically 21,000 Iraqi infant lives as reported by Australian Senator Rachel Siewert (Hansard, Senate, Wednesday 1 March 2006, pp30-31; see , here and MWC News ).

This tawdry saga has been dubbed “Wheat for Weapons” by the Australian Opposition Labor Party, noting that Australian armed forces have been in the Gulf supervising Sanctions or making war on Iraq since 1990. The AWB affair involves an outrageous Australian BETRAYAL of its own soldiers as well as an Australian BETRAYAL of its ALLIES. According to Opposition Leader Kim Beazley (a loyal friend of America): "I'm embarrassed as an Australian by what has happened here. We have funded the Iraqi insurgency. And that has so far killed or maimed two divisions worth of American soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqis”. This Australian BETRAYAL of American, British, Australian and indeed other Coalition soldiers has been reported in the Australia media - but not (so far) to my knowledge in US or UK Mainstream Media (however see MWC News ).

This saga raises serious questions for ALL the UK-US-led Coalition countries: given that British and American Intelligence MUST have been aware of the AWB scam (like Australian Intelligence and virtually everyone else with an interest since about 2000), did they then inform the British and American Governments? Did Bush and Blair KNOW that their ally Australia had funded Saddam Hussein to the extent of US$250 million dollars and “funded the Iraqi insurgency” that has killed and maimed thousands of Coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqis? Did Bush and Blair keep quiet in the interests of the “Endless War”? Did Bush and Blair BETRAY their own soldiers?