Again I ask :

We aren’t we all demanding the immediate resignation of this utterly incompetent, bone lazy and despicable Government, which would never have lasted beyond 1998, if Australia’s newsmedia had done their job properly?

Secondly, as to whether the AWB and other trading monopolies are OK, I think that issue goes to the heart of the debate on capitalist globalization and the steady slide of Western governments towards outright Fascism. (Hal9000 got it right above) We, the people, need to see massive change if we are to recover our status as genuine democratic citizens, but it wont happen while the media is also in the pocket of Big Business.

Finally, on the Chalabi issue, it’s generally forgotten that when Baghdad fell under US control there was a mad rush to seize Saddam’s financial records (forget the museums, etc). The USA was desperate to safeguard evidence of their own involvement in the oil-for-food scandals, while Chalabi and other Iraqis saw an opportunity to tuck a big political ace up their sleeves. So there were at least three groups racing around the burning streets of Baghdad searching for these records.

From an old post on my blog (sorry for self-promo, but it includes URLs):

Ahmed Chalabi hired an old friend from KPMG accountants, Mr. HANKES-DRIELSMA, to investigate where the funds went. But when Chalabi was busted in a CIA raid, the KPMG papers disappeared and Drielsma’s hard disc was smashed. The KPMG report was never released.

It looked like the Bush Boyz had won the race. It wasn’t long before they started using the incriminatinn evidence against Kofi Annan and the UN, particularly invasion opponents France and Russia. Anna’s son was forced to resign. People like John Bolton were shouting that the UN was in urgent need of reform…

It’s no suprise that Mark L begins his comments here with a lash at the UN and those same countries (Russia, France, Canada…) Given all the news reports about US PsyOps and paid-for-comment journalism, I can only wonder who Mark L is working for??? Full disclosure, Mark?

PS: Iqbal Riza was a former Pakistani diplomat. One can only wonder on whose behalf he was working? He certainly was not operating at Kofi Annan’s instructions. And that has always been the real problem with the UN: excessive self-interested interference by member governments, particularly the USA.

PPS: Those “as yet untranslated” papers, which Mark L claims as evidence, are also cited by Dick Cheney as “proof” that Saddam had WMDs. Makes you wonder exactly who is working on the translation of these docs… I mean, besides Iraqi bloggers!

It just struck me as an unusual way to refer to her. Given the potential time frame, it could have said , ‘President of Indonesia’. The alleged document in question referred to her twice, once by name and once as ‘daughter of…’.

What continues to most interest me is the eagerness (desperation?) with which some people accept these kind of stories. There is a strong correlation between this and the depth of their belief in the WMD/bringing-democracy-to-Iraq story line. I think the appeal is that this bolsters their ‘everyone else was wrong too’ line(as MarkL tried to do re: JQ’s pre-war opinion). If they weren’t wrong, eg Galloway, then they were motivated only by personal gain, so have no moral standing on the issue and the MarkL’s then have no reason to feel discomforted by their own credulousness.

” The list came from over 15,000 documents which were reportedly found in the state-owned Iraqi oil corporation which had close links to the Iraqi Oil Ministry. The oil ministry was headed by allies of Ahmed Chalabi, controversial member of the Iraqi governing council who had been widely criticized for supplying the US with bogus information during the lead up to the war. Chalabi’s alleged involvement and the initial lack of corroborating evidence placed doubt on the accuracy of the al Mada list.”

Anyone who wishes to is free to take this issue up at Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, back in Australia, I’ve seen nothing to change the conclusions reached in the post.

It seems the original source is the Al-Mada newspaper(?), who claim it was a list produced by the Oil Ministry.

As Katz noted, it has done the rounds of the right blogosphere. Interestingly the sites that MarkL linked to, have a variety of versions. One states that George Galloway recieved coupons for 1 milion barrels, another that it was 19 million.

The list refers to the previous President of Indonesia as ‘the daughter of President Sukarno’. I wonder if the alleged contract put it that way!!

The initial translation appears to have come from MEMRI. With its record of dodgy translations, it’s no wonder that it’s treated with caution. And after the trouble a few newspapers had with the last batch of forged ‘documents’ relating to claims about George Galloway, this one is being given a pretty wide birth by people who aren’t as credulous as MarkL.

MarkL, your trolling was amusing to start with, but I think we’ve all had enough. All further comments from you will be moderated. Factual arguments only, and no abuse of other participants, boasts about your own brilliance and so on, please.

“I provided you with a document (in original Arabic and in translation) and with the required provenance.”

is absurd. All you’ll find is a list of names purported to have been translated from the Arabic.

Let’s examine MarkL’s document

If the individuals and groups on this list had negotiated oil deals with the Saddam regime, you’d expect to find individual contracts with their signatures on them. A document like that would be very damning evidence indeed. Who knows, one day such documents may turn up.

But what of this list?

What other information appeared on it? Did it have a heading? Did it have a date of compilation? None of these important attributes appears on the English translation.

Who compiled this list? Is it a complete list of all parties who accepted oil coupon kickbacks from the Saddam regime? Who has been left off it?

Assuming the individuals and groups named on the list were granted oil coupons, what purpose would this list serve? Why gather this information together on one document? Were these persons and groups the only recipients of oil coupons? Or were there others?

George Galloway and Fawaz Zureikat are mentioned as recipients of coupons.

In the translation their names are mispelled as “George Gallaway” and “Fawaz Rzeikat”. Try Googling the mispellings to see how this list meme has spread through the Right side of the Internet. it’s a fascinating study in groupthink.

This site:

http://simplyappalling.blogspot.com/2005/05/george-galloway-item-you-may-have.html

provides chapter and verse on the subsequent career of Fawaz Zureikat,

Briefly, you can read the circumstances behind the following statement;

“US diplomatic sources confirmed yesterday [May 2005] that Mr Zureikat has been granted visas to visit the US since the war, and that there have been no US obstacles to the renewal of his commercial ventures in Iraq.”

This is a very liberal attitude to a man who is supposed to have been a party to ripping off the Iraqi people, and who was supposed to have been instrumental in whipping up opposition to the US invasion of Iraq.

Could it be that “US diplomatic sources” disbelieve the authenticity of the famous list by which MarkL sets so much store?

The Oil Ministry was the only site guarded by US forces during the looting. Presumably, if the above mentioned individual contracts had existed, it would have been in the interests of the US to make them public, just as this famous list has been made public.

Looks like MarkL’s provenance claims are pretty dubious.

(Please note that I have not made any claims about who did compile this list.)

You’ve repeatedly called john a liar, sorry “BS artist”.

You demand proof that he was skeptical of the existence of WMD before the invasion of Iraq.

when provided with this proof, you refuse to even acknowledge it.

You also chose to ignore my post where I demonstrated pretty clearly that your claims of $70 billion in bribes are wildly exaggerated.

To be blunt, at this point I don’t think you merit any further response from anyone on this blog.