My name is Lou Cantori. Steve [Bronner] and I had a chance to talk a few minutes before the program.

One of the things we were talking about was the need for civility at the present time. I don’t know how many of you have had the experience I had recently, in fact dramatically just yesterday—now it is a psychological situation in this country where there can be no discourse. The way this usually comes about when the subject of this war comes up ... I like to think it’s the other person, but maybe it’s also me, but the other person’s voice rises. It’s amazing. Before you know it they are actually shouting at you. They don’t even know they’re shouting. Yesterday I was talking to a colleague and I was talking about an entirely different matter. He insisted on talking about the war. I listened to him and when I thought he had finished I said “But…” He said “Don’t interrupt me” in a loud shouting voice.

I think that is emblematic of where we are right now as a country. You watch the media, you listen
carefully and what is happening now is there is little or no exchange of factual information, no analysis or anything. A student of mine yesterday in class made the proper linkage—I was asked what was ’90 and ’91 like because my wife and I went to Washington and demonstrated at the White House. I said it was civil; I hadn’t even thought about it. People could disagree but you could talk about it and so forth. You can’t do that now.

The reason is 9-11. What we are going through now is the heaviness of 9-11 now being directed against another people. We all, as Americans, have a burden on the subject in terms of our behavior and how we are going to go about doing this. I want to make very few remarks of a slightly analytical and factual nature but I also want to end up where Steve ended up—there is going to be, I hope, a colossal demonstration in New York on Saturday [February 15]. It’s not too difficult for any of you to get on a Greyhound bus early in the morning on Saturday and you’ll be back in Baltimore that night. I handed around a copy of an email I received today. The reason I did it is there is about three different email links on there for further information about all the demonstrations going on. Saturday is supposed to be a worldwide demonstration. I think it’s interesting the way it is being organized because it is apparently going to be New York, maybe San Francisco, and that’s all for the U.S. The whole idea is to concentrate people and to really do something massive.

Let me make a few remarks about what this administration thinks its doing, and to some extent what it is doing. There is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of foreign policy that Bush has. It would be a lot easier on our pocketbooks as taxpayers if he would simply get a crucifix and go to these evil countries and do what Buffy does in her own charming way and it would be all over with. But it is about at that level of intellectuality, isn’t it? It’s exactly the same thing.

Somehow he is going to address this question of evil, and as I say Buffy does it so much better. I am talking about the policy towards Iraq. Then there is a more serious issue and that is a legitimate one, that is, weapons of mass destruction. Factually speaking there are no nuclear weapons. I am speaking now as a specialist on the region. There is no evidence of nuclear capability at all and there hasn’t been. I said that in the beginning and there is none now. The UN inspection system has worked perfectly. By 1998 the United Nations had dismantled the nuclear capability and Mohamed El-Baradei has confirmed that the Iraqi’s have not been able to do anything since ’98.

The only question is chemical and biological. And that is a problem, but it’s probably one that could be answered by an increased inspection force. If your country is swarming with inspectors, it is not likely you could employ these things even if you have them.

At any rate, [there is the issue of] weapons of mass destruction, but probably no factual basis for it. However, I spent thirty years writing articles about Middle East international relations and American foreign policy. I happened to be a very distinguished lecturer on the Middle East in the State Department. Every time you started to talk about this during the Cold War we always said there were three foreign policy objectives of the United States in the region: 1) the containment of the Soviets, which given the Cold War was understandable; 2) oil; 3) Israel.

If you think about it right now you can’t talk about oil—if you say the word oil right now in Washington they try to laugh you off; 30-40 years of preoccupation with oil and all of the sudden it doesn’t make any difference now. Well that’s nonsense. The reason is two countries, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, that have a 20% excess capacity for extraction of oil—meaning that those two countries can control the international pricing of oil. The United States right now is obviously moving away from a diplomatic arrangement with this for Saudi Arabia and is seeking military control of Iraq in order to get their hands on the actual supply. But we can’t talk about it.

The third thing we can’t talk about is Israel. It happens to be the case that in 1996 Richard Pearl authored a document to then Prime Minister of Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu. He said “Abandon the Oslo process, stop negotiating with the Palestinians, settle the lands, take over Palestine, overthrow the regime in Iraq, and create an international environment in which Syria becomes isolated so Israel can dictate what it wants to do militarily in the Middle East.” Richard Pearl is the architect of this war policy.

But you can’t talk about this because, to state this in a slightly more sober way, Israel has been a cardinal feature in American policy in order to protect Israel. But we can’t even say that now. Never mind about increasing the power of Israel as the sixth most powerful nuclear nation in the world. You can’t talk like that but you would think we would be able to say “Look, poor little Israel needs protection. Therefore the United States is going to invade Iraq.” They are not saying that. The whole thing is just extraordinary because of what I just said in terms of oil and Israel is absolutely, objectively the case. Now you can debate it but it’s not being debated. It’s not even allowed to be on the public agenda.

Now the second thing I want to talk about is the following: Secretary Powell made what everybody
thought was an extremely affective briefing at the United Nations. Just a few days later it is pretty apparent that nearly one half of what he said was wrong. It was factually wrong because journalists and the media have gone out to visit some of the sites and photographed and the evidence on the ground contradicts what he was saying.

Most importantly right now are the allegations of the connections between al-Qaida and Baghdad through a personality by the name of Zarqawi. That has been proven wrong by the FBI and the CIA earlier in their own internal reports that were leaked to the press. So is Secretary Powell lying or is he simply telling a half truth or what? I don’t know. He has practically no credibility in terms of the substance of that briefing. Think about what the practical affect of this has been. It’s been to raise the support for the war without UN consent from about 40-43% to somewhere up to 60%. So from a strictly political point of view his briefing has worked. The truth is the entire policy is skating along on factual thin ice.

Then we come to the things that Dr. Bronner was talking about and that is where I want to end up. It is a fact that the United States condoned the death of 500,000 children in Iraq during the economic sanction period. Secretary Albright was on 60 Minutes and she was asked this question: “Madame Secretary, a study team from Harvard School of Public Medicine has gone out and they have concluded that 500,000 children have died as a consequence of the United States instigated economic sanctions.” It is very interesting—she did not challenge the figure. Then she was asked “What do you make of this?” And she said “That’s the cost of having to overthrow Saddam Hussein.” That statement was made.

So we come to where we are now. Here we are with a policy that has practically no factual basis at all and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens are going to die. No one is saying that in this country today. The typical thing now is people who were previously opposed to the war say “Let’s get it over with quickly.” They are not thinking about the bombing attack in Baghdad where about 450 women and children died in horrible circumstances. It seems to me that as American citizens we ought to be alarmed about this, we ought to be moved by it because there is something very, very wrong about this whole thing from a strictly moral and humanitarian point of view.

So my remarks were intended to start at the more factual level but I end up on the note that if Saturday in New York is the place—try to be there. Thank you.

See also Stephen Eric Bronner "Baghdad Memories"
baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/3018