02-14-06,9:35am
Once again, after being exposed as liars, the Howard Government is trying to lay the blame for corruption at the feet of a government agency. The government claims that it knew nothing about the payment of bribes to the Saddam Hussein regime by Australian Wheat Board representatives in Iraq in the oil-for-food program, pointing the finger instead at the Office of National Assessments. Howard said the agency, which reports to the government on international developments, had had no information about the payments.
But Australian Treasury officials who had worked in the US occupation administration of Iraq told the government more than two years ago of corruption in the selling of Australian wheat. In 2003 Treasury officials noted in a report that was sent to the Bush, Blair and Howard Governments: “The previous regime required that 10 percent of the face value of contracts they submitted under the oil-for-food program be paid directly to the regime.”
Thus, Wheat Board officials bribed the regime to win contracts for Australian wheat, as opposed to wheat from other countries: they were paying bribes through the back door even as the US, along with Britain and Australia, invaded the country through the front door.
The oil-for-food program came out of the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 by the UN following that country’s invasion of Kuwait. US bullying and manipulation ensured that the sanctions continued after the Gulf War in 1991. This was despite warnings from the UN at the time that “the Iraqi people may soon face further imminent catastrophe, which could include epidemic and famine, if massive life supporting needs are not rapidly met.”
The oil-for-food program began in December 1996. It was fundamentally flawed because it was based on the false premise that sanctions could continue while at the same time the Iraqi people could be protected from their impact. The sanctions were a crime against humanity, a disaster causing the deaths of an estimated two million Iraqis and inflicting suffering on many more.
The 1991 war and the sanctions severely weakened Iraq, its infrastructure, such as water, power and health services, all but destroyed by US bombing. This softened the country up for the current invasion and occupation which began in March 2003 based on the lie that there were weapons of mass destruction in the country.
Initially, when the oil-for-food program was found to have been used to line the pockets of corrupt companies and their compliant governments, the US used it to try and attack the UN itself.
Undermining the UN is still high on the agenda of the Bush administration as reflected in their choice of US representative at the world body, the stridently anti-UN campaigner, John Bolton.
Now, here in Australia the chaff has hit the fan and the Howard Government is in full denial mode in the face of one revelation after another that it knew full well what was going on. It is a government that has been mired in lies and corruption from the time it came to office in 1996.
Howard even cynically posed as the defender of Australian farmers as the number of his ministers implicated in the affair continued to grow. “We must take care that Australia’s wheat farmers, who have fought for years against the trade-distorting subsidies of competitors, and whose incomes are only now beginning to recover from the drought, are not damaged in the fallout”, said Howard last week. He didn’t mention the fallout farmers are already feeling from the trade-distorting Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the US.
