Iraq deaths - how PC racist Australian lying, spin & oil-for-food kickbacks killed Iraqi kids

The UN Volker Report (2005) has disclosed that the monopoly Australian Wheat Board (AWB) was responsible for kickbacks totalling US$225 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. The kickback mechanism involved excessive trucking fees paid to a Jordanian company half-owned by the Iraqi Government. The Australian Government has repeatedly said "we knew nothing" but expert whistleblowers have said that competent officials MUST have known.

In 2004 the Australian Ambassador to the US 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. (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitem...).

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$225 million (http://www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm).

After the release of the Volker Report the Australian Government set up a judicial inquiry in Australia, the Cole Inquiry, with limited terms of reference but the powers of a Royal Commission. The NEW Australian Ambassador to the US (previously the boss of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, ASIO) told the Americans that the Australian Government was not previously aware of the scandal.

The Australian Government claims that it simply did not know about the kickback scandal.

AWB whistleblower Dominic Hogan, has testified about AWB corruption and that the Australian 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).

On 10 February 2006 on ABC TV’s Asia Pacific Focus program, former intelligence agent Warren Reed and others were interviewed 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 had 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.”

However 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.

Warren Reed: “Absolutely impossible ... 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 further asked: “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.”

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...). 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/oc...).

The "humanitarian" annual UN Oil for Food allocation was LIMITED and was clearly INADEQUATE. However Australian greed and corruption effectively diverted US$225 million from this CRUCIAL SOURCE of MEDICAL FUNDING and FOOD for Sanctions-crippled Iraq.

The Australian Government has been actively GAGGING public servants, serving military, intelligence officers and SCIENTISTS (e.g. see: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/cont...). There is now an entrenched culture in Australian universities, corporations, public service, politics and media of politically correct racism (PC racism), cowardice, lying by omission, untruth by omission, looking the other way, spin and intimidation. Thus Australian academics, public servants, politicians and media simply will NOT MENTION the horrendous avoidable mortality (excess mortality) and infant mortality associated with UK-US state terrorism (democratic imperialism , democratic tyranny, democratic Nazism) and Coalition war crimes in Iraq.

Australian corruption has contributed directly to carnage in Iraq. United Nations reports have 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-p...).