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TRADE RESOURCE CENTER
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UPDATES: October 27, 2004
Dear Friends,
Our hearts go out to Margaret Hassan and her family. Hassan is the director of CARE international take hostage by Iraqi insurgents October 19th. Hassan is one of eight foreigners believed to be in captivity in Iraq right now. Citizens from Japan, Lebanon and France as well as an Iraqi American are also being held hostage.
The weather is cooling down, the campaign are heating up, and the Arms Trade Resource Center is delivering another fresh batch of commentary, observation, and information direct to your inbox.
In this edition of the ATRC Update, we look at Iraq, and offer some resources on many facets of the many faceted problem of occupation. And then we turn our attention to this hemisphere, looking at Colombia, where U.S. continues to pump money, weapons and training with all most no oversight or criticism.
In this update:
I. IRAQ UPDATE (1)
II. IRAQ UPDATE (2)
III. MORE RESOURCES ON IRAQ (lots of good stuff here)
IV. COLOMBIA’S OIL: OUR WEAPONS
V. A SECURE AMERICA IN A SECURE WORLD
VI. WEAPONS TRADE OBSERVER
>VII. RECENT ATRC PUBLICATIONS
I. Iraq UPDATE
by William Hartung
The recent New York Times/CBS 60 Minutes report on the nearly 380 tons of high- intensity explosives that disappeared from a military facility in Iraq in the wake of the U.S. intervention last year is just the latest example of how misguided and incompetent the Bush administration's war effort has been (see link at the end of the section).
Following on the report of their own hand-picked inspector, Charles Duelfer, who indicated that Iraq had no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion- and no active programs to acquire them- this latest report delivers a devastating one-two punch to the administration's original rationale for going to war.
Not only did Iraq not possess the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that were cited as the imminent threats requiring a rush to war, but once the United States did go into Iraq, it failed to secure the high-priority weapons sites that the International Atomic Energy Agency told it about.
In short, the weapons they warned about did not exist, and the weapons they knew about were not secured. In the mean time, the much-maligned UN inspection regime has now been vindicated. It did a far better job of disarming Iraq, and keeping track of its weapons programs, than either U.S. intelligence or U.S. military actions of the past decade and one-half, as a recent article by David Cortright and George Lopez in Foreign Affairs makes abundantly clear (see link at the end of this section).
Continued inspections and monitoring would have been a far more effective way to prevent Iraq from threatening its neighbors or U.S. interests. Instead, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives have been lost, at a cost that will reach $200 billion and counting by the end of next year.
And contrary to popular belief, a weapons monitoring and inspection program would have been sustained (under relevant UN resolutions) even if broader UN economic sanctions were lifted. To those in the Bush administration- and among its apologists- who argue that it was better to act than not to act against Saddam Hussein, the clear answer is that war is not the only form of "action" when other effective tools are available to get the job done at far less cost in lives, dollars, and in the reputation of the United States in the world community.
RESOURCES
A. "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq," By James Glanz, William J. Broad, and David E. Sanger, New York Times, October 25, 2004
B. "Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked," By George A. Lopez and David Cortright, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004
II. MORE IRAQ
by Frida Berrigan
What do you say about a President who sends almost 200,000 soldiers into a warzone, and blithely believes that, "We're not going to have any casualties?... Bush’s comment to friend and fellow born-again rightwinger Pat Robertson before the March 2003 invasion, demonstrates callousness, ignorance, and cravenness.
1,114 soldiers have been killed so far, an average of two every day. Even those who do not die are casualties. The military reports that more than 8,000 soldiers have been wounded, and that includes a significant number of soldiers who are returning home without legs or arms. But that figure only tells part of the story, the military does not count the more than 16,000 soldiers who have been medically evacuated from Iraq for injures and ailments not contracted during combat.
The Department of Defense count of wounded soldiers also does not include emotional breakdown as a war wound. More than 5,000 veterans from Iraq have been diagnosed with mental problems. In fact, psychological trauma is the third most common diagnosis after bone and digestive problems. Among those, 800 soldiers have become psychotic.
The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in July that found that 16% of soldiers returning from Iraq might suffer major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. These are not counted as wounds, just as the more than 27 suicides by soldiers have not counted as war deaths.
We know Americans are not the only ones who are dying. Last year, General Tommy Franks said "We don’t do body counts." Thus, there is no official record of how many Iraqis have been killed in the war. www.IraqBodyCount.net tries to keep a credible tally. They say that as many as 15,377 Iraqi civilians have been killed.
In an October 19th article titled "How Many Iraqis Are Dying? By One Count, 208 in a Week," New York Times reporter Norimitsu Onishi, tries to count Iraqi civilian dead. The estimated 208 Iraqis who were killed in war-related incidents that week was significantly higher than the average week. During that same period 23 members of the United States military died. In one day, October 12th Americans killed 46 Iraqis. In one attack that day, warplanes destroyed a kebab restaurant in Fallujah, killing the owner’s son and nephew who were nighttime guards there. Military officials said it was a meeting place for terrorists, the owner says, "it was a well known restaurant in midtown... No one can hide in there."
III. MORE RESOURCES ON IRAQ
A. THE GROUND TRUTH
"This war has destroyed me. I come home at night and breakdown. I see pictures of Iraqi children with their limbs gone and wonder... Did I have anything to do with this? Was my unit a part of this?" Lt. Michael Hoffman
The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War is a new documentary. Through intimate and candid interviews with returning soldiers of all ranks, veterans, military families, and independent footage and photographs not seen on the news, The Ground Truth looks at the long-term and often invisible effects this war is having on thousands and thousands of nameless, undecorated Americans
The film, by Patricia Foulkrod, is available for $10.00. For a limited time it is being offered for free to veterans and military organizations.
For more information and to order your copy, please visit www.TheGroundTruth.org
B. PURPLE HEARTS AGAINST WAR
William Meyers and Sumner M. Rosen are decorated veterans of WWII who oppose the war in Iraq. They have built a website called Purple Heart Veterans Against the War, where they post dispatches and provide information, in order to provoke dialogue and challenge the claims and pretensions of the Bush regime.
William Meyers earned three Bronze Stars for bravery and a Purple Heart for battle wounds. Sumner M. Rosen earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. Learn more online at www.pvaw.org
C. COSTLY MISTAKES
Here are some sobering facts that can be useful for adding zing to presentations or fliers, or to bring down the hilarity level at cocktail parties. We are grateful to the Institute for Southern Studies for compiling this Harper’s-Index-like-resource.
*Cost of the Iraq war to U.S. taxpayers per minute: $114,000
*Amount Congress has allocated for Iraq war, in billions: $152.6
*Estimated annual cost for each year U.S. stay in Iraq after 2004, in billions: $50
*Number of Fortune 500 companies with yearly profits over $1.1 trillion: 275
*Number of those companies that paid zero income tax at least one year between 2001 and 2003: 82
*Amount that the 275 companies should have paid in taxes from 2001 to 2003, in billions: $35
*Amount of net income they ended up receiving due to subsidies, breaks and rebates, in billions: $12
*Estimated federal budget deficit this year, in billions: $475
*Percent of deficit due to tax cuts passed by Congress and Bush Administration: 35
Institute for Southern Studies
D. A FAILED "TRANSITION" The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War
For more detail on some of the facts highlighted by Institute for Southern Studies, check out Foreign Policy in Focus’s new report, which provides the most comprehensive accounting of the mounting costs of the Iraq war on the United States, Iraq, and the world.
The authors of the report do not shy away from undermining the "freedom is on the march" optimism being spun out of the White House with cold hard facts like U.S. military casualties and non-Iraqi contractor deaths having been the highest during the so called "Transition."
You can find the report online at www.FPIF.org
E. FISTFUL OF CONTRACTORS
David Isenberg does more than just produce the "Weapons Trade Observer" which we plug later in this update. He recently wrote a report on Private Military Contractors in Iraq, called "A Fistful of Contractors: The Case for a Pragmatic Assessment of Private Military Companies in Iraq."
The report provides a dispassionate and detailed analysis of PMCs in Iraq. It answers such questions as: Who are they? What are they doing? Is there sufficient accountability over their actions? What measures are needed to ensure their operations are consistent with international law and human rights standards?
"A better understanding of how PMCs operate is a pre-requisite to improving and strengthening government regulation and oversight of their activities," said BASIC Executive Director, Dr Ian Davis.
Read the whole report online at BasicInt.org
IV. COLOMBIA’S OIL, OUR WEAPONS
by Frida Berrigan
Mario Murillo, the host and producer of Wake Up Call Fridays on WBAI radio in New York City, says that if you really want to know what’s going on, you have to read the "World Business" section of the New York Times. He sure is right.
On Friday, October 22, on the front page of the "World Business": section, sandwiched between "Arts and Leisure" and "Real Estate" the following blaring headline is buried: "Safeguarding Colombia’s Oil."
If the New York Times wanted to engage in real truth telling, it should actually read "Safeguarding America’s Oil," because, as the article goes on to explicate, that is how the United States is treating Colombia’s oil.
With a dateline: Puerto Vega, Colombia, reporter Juan Forero writes, "In the biggest, most ambitious army offensive in Colombia's 40-year rebel war, 18,000 counterinsurgency troops have since January fanned out across four isolated southern states, a lawless swath that for years functioned as a de facto republic for Marxist rebels. Aided by American helicopters, planning and surveillance, Colombian forces have the stated goal of penetrating the historic heart of Colombia's largest rebel group to "strike a decisive blow to narco-terrorists," as Gen. James Hill, the commander of United States forces in Latin America, put it earlier this year.
"The Bush administration, meanwhile, reversed American policy and dispatched Special Forces trainers from Fort Bragg, NC to train Colombian soldiers to protect a 500 mile pipeline used by Occidental Petroleum."
The article goes on to talk about how this level of American intervention is helping Colombia attract new investment in its oil production: ExxonMobil has moved in, ChevronTexaco has extended contracts, Harken Energy Company, Bush’s former company, has signed a new exploration contract.
As Major Pedro Sanchez, who is the second in command of the battalion protecting oil installations, says, "there’s a feeling of safety, that we are keeping the peace. We provide confidence so companies can explore here."
But what about the Colombian people? Do they enjoy a feeling of safety? Do they have any confidence?
According to the Washington Office on Latin American, Colombia suffers the most dire human rights situation in the Western Hemisphere. Leftist guerrillas fight the state and officially outlawed right-wing paramilitary organizations, which are often allied with sectors of the Colombian armed forces. Civilians caught between the warring groups suffer the majority of the casualties, and 2.7 million Colombians live as internal refugees. The State Department’s annual human rights report 2003, found that the Colombian military continued to collaborate with illegal paramilitary groups, and impunity remained a core problem.
COLOMBIA RESOURCES
The Arms Trade Resource Center is tracking this issue carefully as we put the "finishing touches" on our long awaited WEAPONS AT WAR report, documenting U.S. weapons sales and military aid to regions of conflict. We will let you know when this report is available.
In the meantime, Center for International Policy, Latin America Working Group, and the Washington Office on Latin America have worked together on an important new report, "BLURRING THE LINES: Trends in U.S. Military Programs With Latin America," In 2003, write the report’s authors, U.S. military aid to Colombia came to $860 million dollars, just short of the $921 million spent on economic and humanitarian assistance in the same year. The report warns that, if recent trends hold, military aid may actually exceed economic assistance.
V. A SECURE AMERICA IN A SECURE WORLD
Maybe to prove that all this bad news has not disheartened them, the folks at FPIF also recently released a paper that offers a " new framework for security," in which they argue that a different approach would not fight a "war on terrorism."
Rather, it would treat terrorism as an ongoing threat that needs to be tackled through a strong, coordinated strategy focused on strengthening civilian public sectors and enhancing the international cooperation necessary to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.
In clean clear language, this report debunks the Bush administration’s security strategy and outlines a new approach that we can only hope the Kerry team is paying close attention to.
Read it and then forward it to Sandy Berger, Kerry’s top foreign policy adviser www.FPIF.org
VI. WEAPONS TRADE OBSERVER
A plug for our friend David Isenberg, a noted independent analyst and writer on military, foreign policy, national and international security issues. Isenberg produces the "Weapons Trade Observer" email list, which has been going on, in one form or another, for about ten years now. It covers weapons-arms trade/transfer/sale issues, large and small, all over the world, and is held in high regard by institutes, government officials, and researchers around the world.
It includes, but is not limited to, articles on arms sales, arms transfers, weapons upgrades, arms shows, military-industrial developments, small arms proliferation, black and gray market sales, export control issues, et cetera. The list is ENTIRELY noncommercial, as in FREE.
You can sign up to it by going to lists.topica.com/lists/sento and clicking on the subscribe link, or send an email to sento-subscribe@topica.com
VII. RECENT ATRC PUBLICATIONS
We have not been slacking. Visit our News page to find links to these "hot off the press" articles
A. Foreign Policy In Focus -- Commentary
Balancing Security and Democracy: Lessons from Indonesia by Frida Berrigan, October 25, 2004.
B. Common Dreams
Fighting Terror with Terror? "Morally, Politically and Legally Wrong" by Frida Berrigan, October 22, 2004.
C. Foreign Policy In Focus -- Policy Brief
Missile Defense All Over Again by Michelle Ciarrocca, October 2004.
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