Louisiana is Racist as Hell

Read about The Jena Six for some proof that there is racism in America.

So many cases like this exist, especially in the South, but, of course, Right Wing pundits like BillO and Uncle Toms like Larry Elders will vilify anyone who "pulls the race card" as if we've move passed it since some white guy killed Martin Luther King and black people got to drink from the same drinking fountain and enter the front door.

I insist that everyone read about this not-so-isolated incident.

Life Under Occupation

The Nation is presenting an article that interviews 50 Iraq War veterans and their stories of Iraqi civilian collateral damage and the impact of occupation on the daily lives of Iraqis.

In an interview on Democracy Now, Staff Sergeant Timothy John Westphal states, "I thought of my family at the time and thought 'If I was the patriarch of the family, if soldiers came from another country and did this to my family, I would be an insurgent too.'"

According to Laila Al-Arian from The Nation states in the same interview that, according to the Army Surgeon General only"47% of soldiers and 38% of Marines said that Iraqis should be treated with dignity, and only 55% of soldiers and 40% of Marines said that they would turn in a friend in the military who basically killed or injured an unarmed Iraqi combatant.

Closer to War with Iran

Have We Forgotten 2003 Already?
Statement on H Con Res 21

by Rep. Ron Paul

This resolution is an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran. Citing various controversial statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this legislation demands that the United Nations Security Council charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Having already initiated a disastrous war against Iraq citing UN resolutions as justification, this resolution is like déja-vu. Have we forgotten 2003 already? Do we really want to go to war again for UN resolutions? That is where this resolution, and the many others we have passed over the last several years on Iran, is leading us. I hope my colleagues understand that a vote for this bill is a vote to move us closer to war with Iran.

Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world "do as we say, not as we do."

I strongly urge my colleagues to consider a different approach to Iran, and to foreign policy in general. General William Odom, President Reagan's director of the National Security Agency, outlined a much more sensible approach in a recent article titled "Exit From Iraq Should Be Through Iran." General Odom wrote: "Increasingly bogged down in the sands of Iraq, the U.S. thrashes about looking for an honorable exit. Restoring cooperation between Washington and Tehran is the single most important step that could be taken to rescue the U.S. from its predicament in Iraq." General Odom makes good sense. We need to engage the rest of the world, including Iran and Syria, through diplomacy, trade, and travel rather than pass threatening legislation like this that paves the way to war. We have seen the limitations of force as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. It is time to try a more traditional and conservative approach. I urge a "no" vote on this resolution.

Save the Internet

Have you signed on to Save the Internet?

Plus, my blog about how Fox is justifying the end of a free internet.

Mind the Gap

Find out why you can buy a pair of Nikes for the absolute steal of $150.

John Pilger Expose on Sweat Shop Labor.

The War of Terror

More Investigations by John Pilger on the War on Terror.

Scott Ritter on Sun Tzu's Art of Anti-War

Scott Ritter give a fantastic assessment on Uprising Radio about how the Peave Movement can combat the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media-Complex. He is a Marine and was part of the United Nations Inspection team that didn't find WMD in Iraq.

He uses Sun Tzu's Art of War to reveal simple techniques for the often sporadic and unorganized Peace Movement to win what he calls a "life and death" struggle for peace.

Dennis Miller vs Ron Paul

The far Right has seemingly sunk to new depths of entertainment news when it hires a failed comedian who lost his relevancy years ago as an informed and level headed pundit, if there even is such a thing. I don't want to go on rant here, but Dennis Miller seems to have something of an accuracy deficit that makes Bill O'Reilly look like the Encyclopedia Brittanica. FOXNews has Mr. Miller as a regular geist to give his two minute Rant styled talking points to an audience who's focus has devolved into that of a squirrel surrounded by cats with ADHD.

Remember his Rants being 10 minutes long? I do. And they used to have opinions and relevance and poignant commentary about society and the human condition. Now he's turned into the slightly wittier and more articulate Sean Hannity. He's even more hawkish than Hannity, if that's even possible. But Miller is never one to be outdone by a mental midget like Hannity. I'm sorry. Mental little person.

I don't know if anyone listens to his new drive time radio show on KFI 640 am that starts at who cares and ends at just shoot me in the head. His recent guest was Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.

I was flipping through stations when I thought I heard someone speaking intelligently about the Middle East and US Foreign Policy when I suddenly realized it was Paul on the Dennis Miller Radio Show.

He did quite a nice hit job on him afterwards, once again using the same tired corporate hand out rhetoric in the form of "he's blaming America." Actually, Miller believes that if we pull out of Iraq right now their will be a blood bath. In fact, Miller believes we should stay as a matter of human rights. Paradoxically, he also believes, and mentions in the same sentence, that we should have invaded Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMD, but simply because we needed to punch someone around as an example to the rest of the world, and to make sure everyone realizes that we are strong like bull. Or bully. Beating up the bean sprout munching kid with glasses is classic bully behavior. Actually fighting someone with balls and the brawn to back it up? Never happens.

So how would Ron Paul feel if we pulled out and, as Miller puts it, proving he's more literate than the President he's rooting for, Iraq becomes "Slaughterhouse 5, 6, 7, and 8?" Paul, quite correctly, said that he would blame the architects of the war, those who got us in there in the first place. After Paul went off the air, Miller courageously confronted Paul by saying that he was blaming "Americans."

Naturally, Miller also used the time honored polemical technique of denying his listeners an objective frame of reference. He mentions, after Paul's exit, that Paul naively believes that our invasion of Iraq is what started terrorism to clime and that Middle Easterners have been crazy for 50 years or more. Naturally, Paul isn't this naive, but Miller seems to think that we are. The fact is, Paul has pointed out, accurately, that US involvement in regime change and the propping up of radical Islamists has been going on for quite some time now, dating back to 1953, when the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosadegh, was overthrown by the CIA. And, of course, it just goes downhill from there.

Its unfortunate that Miller has to play the flunky to a foreign policy that, there's no euphemistic way to put this, is dragging this country into a black hole the size of Dennis Miller's food-hole. But it also proves that news and entertainment have merged to such a degree that you have to hire a comedian to shove opinions down your throat. Oh, and, please, make it funny, because if you can't laugh about war, what can you laugh about?

Ray Robison not a Heavy Hitter

I'm a newly minted Ron Paul fan, and like most Ron Paul fans, finding any media exposure is almost next to impossible without resorting to constantly reading the same three free market blogs 50 times a day.

Imagine my surprise when I ran across an article by noted pseudo-intellectual hawk Ray Robison. Being the naive reader that I am, I thought, perhaps, that Robison had gone the way of Andrew Sullivan in backtracking hugely after Ron Paul gave him a backbone. Some of you may note that Robison has been referenced by Christopher Hitchens, former Trotskyite turned savior of the Western world. Others may additionally note that Robison actually doesn't know anything.

In his article, Robison continued his flair for disseminating obfuscations. Robison compares Paul's analysis that US policy contributes to "blowback" with the late Jerry Falwell's contention that our tolerance of homosexuality contributed to 9/11.

Did Falwell blame gays because of blowback? Or was he just intolerant of gay people? In the same way, other people's prejudices can metastasize as hatred and aggression towards us, as long as we fail to abide by their theocracy, ideology, philosophy, politics, etc. Is the hatred of gay people by Islamic extremists a case of blowback caused by US foreign policy? Of course not, they just hate gay people and the societies that foster homosexuality by allowing free people to be gay. This is why it is absolutely correct to say they hate us because of our freedom... So Paul and Falwell were correct in noting that we contribute to our own fate, an unfortunate smattering of truthfulness that scintillates the American liberal senses.

Naturally, in addition to this, I found several misconceptions in his review. Since he had contact information, I thought I would kindly point out some of his mistakes. It went something like this:

I read your article, and you are correct that there are many details missing from the Ron Paul's position of which he has only 30 seconds to explain during the 2nd Republican Presidential debate.

But those are details you haven't bothered to research, since the argument is full of polemics. Allow me to innumerate:

1. Claiming that Falwell blaming gays for 9/11 is somehow similar in any way to Paul's assertion that US foreign policy contributed to events leading to 9/11 is, at best, fallacious. Falwell's claim has no backing whatsoever, and I challenge you to find documented evidence that suggests that our tolerance of homosexuality contributed to 9/11. Paul assertion is well documented and confirmed by more state officials and policy makers than you care to learn about, not the least of whom are, Chalmers Johnson, CIA Chief Michael Sheuer, and the esteemed war architect Paul Wolfowitz. Not to mention that such assertions are within the 9/11 Commission reports.

2. If you care to look outside of a 30 second rebuttal, you might discover that Paul is not simply linking 10 years of bombing of Iraq under Bush I and Clinton. The list is myriad and Paul is well aware of them: Including a decade of bombing of Iraq, sanctions against Iraq, though ultimately Hussein's fault, were instrumental is the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi civilians through lack of resources and medicines, support for dictators, including Saddam Hussein, the Taliban (in March 2001 Bush II gave the Taliban 4 million dollars), the Saudi Family (who are, unlike your insinuations, an oppressive theocratic regime), the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran, to name a few. Osama bin Laden himself was once an ally of the United States. Details, details, details...

Does any of that excuse killing 3000 Americans in cold blood? Should we allow extremism to fester? No. Obviously not. Neither should we circumvent the Constitution and our principles to defeat an enemy. If we compromise on the principles that make us uniquely American, then the enemy has already won.

An informed criticism of US policies and it real consequences is the domain of citizenry. Stifling that criticism wishful platitudes is irresponsible and undemocratic.

That seemed like a fair assessment of the article. I didn't browbeat him or anything. This was his response, which I copy and paste here:

bush gave the people of afghanistan aid money, not the fucking Taliban.
spread your lies somewhere else you sick fuck...

and in conclusion fuck you you fucking pussy ass fucking cunt

Robison is the man that the Right proudly flaunts as an expert analyst of secret documents and a commentator. He is probably most noted for being wrong, as YourPlanetisDoomed points out:

James Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama. He was contracted to work with the Iraqi Survey Group at the Combined Media Processing Center in Qatar, though only as an administrator working alongside others to triage/gist/digitise captured documents and other related media. He is neither a linguist nor a professional intelligence analyst. Indeed, it seems Ray has been rebuked by his seniors more than once for getting ideas way above his station.

Needless to say, I felt justified in offering this rebuttal:

Wow. I'm the pussy. You don't seem to deal well with people.

After your Ritalin kicks in, you might be able to calm down enough to go to a therapist and then maybe get your GED once you learn to read. Then maybe you'll be able to struggle through difficult reading material like the 9/11 Commission Report. Its riveting. Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, Mmmm. Book taste good. Make happy. Brain more big.

In conclusion, Bush didn't give the Afghan people 4 million dollars. He gave the Taliban 4 million dollars as a reward for fighting their own personal war on drugs. Specifically, destroying opium crops.

Thanks for poking the hole into my response, even though it was wrong. Next time, let your mother check your homework first.

We'll see if he has anything further to say.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd (is that really how his last name is spelled?) are too old to catch ghosts. And, frankly, who's going to top Ghostbusters 2? It had Bobby Brown and everything.

In an effort to prove my point, Imams in Malaysia have its their prerogative to issue a fatwa declaring "exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims." This includes genies.

Why, you might ask?

Abdul Shukor Husin, The National Fatwa Council's chair stated, without a hint of irony, "We don't want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs."

He also mentioned that meta-beings of that nature were beyond the scope of human comprehension. Which leads me to ask, if lesser supernatural beings are beyond human comprehension, what does that say about our ability to comprehend a Supreme Being, the Supreme Being?

Hmm...

Cut and Run? Never!

Luckily for the people of Iraq, Dick Cheney understands their particular wants and needs better than they do. Cheney, along with others in the Bush Administration deliver fair and balanced justice and tough love like a caring father who beats the gay out of his son because he loves him (Not that Iraqis are gay, and not that there's anything wrong with that).

I'm sure that the recent large demonstration in Iraq's spiritual center of Najaf, hundreds of thousands strong, won't affect the measured and stoic considerations that Cheney has for the people of Iraq. They have, unbeknownst to their political naivete, fallen for the Crazy Left-Wing Liberal Communist Baby-Killing America-Hating Godless Democrat's Cowardly Cut and Run Strategy (CLWLCBKAHGDCCRS). But a level headed Cheney understands their mistake, and like their tough but loving father, will assure them that "that the American people do not support a policy of retreat or defeat." Cheney will not allow the Iraqi people to accept defeat. He will guide them towards democracy and self-determination even if it kills every last one of them. He will do this by letting them know that what they want as a people, is not what they really want.

Of course, their burgeoning sense of Democracy is so very quaint. And our Administration certainly lauds them like a pat on the head. Isn't it cute? And just think, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe says, "Iraq [...] is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions, and that was something they could not do under Saddam." Just look at them "gather" with their foamy Nerf Democracy. Don't hurt yourselves! If you scrape a knee, don't worry. We've got our Howitzer packed with Neosporin. And though "this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny" the Iraqi people need to understand that "we have much more progress ahead of us."

The Iraqis are naive. They don't understand that a functioning democracy allows for people like Don Imus to say whatever they want without fear of government reprisal. But the Iraqi people haven't learned that a functioning democracy also means their government isn't listening.

Thanks to the efforts of Dick Cheney and the rest of America's strong father figures, I think they're learning.

Fair and Balanced

See how an Israeli paper covers Zionism:
On racism against Arabs.
On the hubris of Right Wing Zionism.

Vae Victis

Aircraft Carrier? I hardly Know 'Er!

For those of you who have thought that going to war with Iran would be unthinkable, think on the fact that the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis will be deployed this month to the Persian Gulf to join aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf. This could easily and understandably be considered a military blockade by the nation of Iran and at the very least, a provocative action.

The United States has a history of provoking native peoples going back to the birth of our nation and then blaming them for our going to war.

Luckily for us, Tehran is so far proving much more civilized than Washington. After all, a military blockade is an act of war. The New York Post reports that the carrier groups are "meant to make Iran rethink its nuclear program" in a hawkish article entitle How to Fight Iran. Not surprisingly, no one is too keen on mentioning that to start another war with Iran, or even a military blockade, would be an act of international terrorism by our own definitions, and George Bush would be considered a terrorist.

According to the United States Criminal Code:

(1) the term "international terrorism" means activities that—

(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping

In fact, the whole New York Post article is on how to conduct a terrorist operation by a large and well funded terrorist organization. The organization: The United States of America. The funds: Loans from China and Japan as well as United States Taxpayer Dollars.

Pax Americanna et Vae Victis.

Minimum WAGE! Hee-yah!

An article from the esteemed pundit John Martin from www.strike-the-root.com has mentioned a few problems with a National Minimum Wage increase.

Luckily, I've already written an article that easily sweeps away all of his concerns. I suggest everyone read his article so that one can familiarize oneself with the so called argument from the Right, which would seem reasonable to the uninformed. Follow up with my short essay, The High Cost of Low Wages".

To respond further:

Notice that he doesn't bother to ask why any of those negatives to the economy occur. None of those so-called consequences are endemic like an immune response to the common cold. All of those actions are unnecessary and directed actions by corporate entities.

He doesn't mention that while there has been no mandatory minimum wage increase at the lowest echelons of production and service since 1997, which, according to him, would cause a significant economic downturn, there has been plenty of discretionary wage increases at the highest pay levels without any thought to the impact on the economy.

His so called fears about inflation are a veritable Red Herring as the introduction of the a minimum wage in 1933 did nothing to hurt the economy nor did it cause inflation. A look at reports of inflation before the minimum wage will show wild changes of inflation sometimes nearing 25%.

U.S. Department of Labor
Inflation Data

There has been a steady increase in the minimum wage since 1933 with no discernible correlation to inflation rates. On the contrary, after the establishment of a minimum wage, inflation remained more or less steady at around 3% with world wide economic shocks that never brought inflation much over 10% for more than a year. Moreover, after the last wage increase inflation average around a comfortable 2% for 3 years. Contrast with last year's inflation of over 4% after no wage increases for almost 10 years.

If this gentleman wants a true free market atmosphere without government interference, then, in addition to ditching the minimum wage he's going to have to give up taxpayer subsidies, neo-liberal trade policies, the U.S. Military whose "de facto role...will be to keep the world safe for our economy", and corporate bailouts by taxpayer dollar, all of which benefit large businesses and healthily moneyed elites, none of which benefit the taxpayers in the middle or the few at the bottom. With all of the government interference on behalf of businesses, I think one little minimum wage increase on behalf of the worker is only fair.

If not, we can get rid of all of government interference and negotiate wages the old fashioned way. Remember factory fires? Remember 13 hour days, 6 days a week? Eleven year olds toiling in factories, so fed up that these children went on strike? Remember those strikes being put down by bloody force? No, most people don't remember that. That's because some people want you to forget.

Benjamin Franklin Speaks from the Grave

If Benjamin Franklin were to pull his hefty gout infested carcass from the grave today, his zombified hand would point a skeletal finger and the Nation and in a gargled voice he would yell, "Called it!"

"I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, — if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."

And we would all sit back with satisfied grins and say, "Dude! You so called it!" Then we would run screaming because, Jesus Christ! Benjamin Franklin Zombie Attack!

Disney/ABC and Free Speech

Coverage of Corporate Giant Disney/ABC's attack on small time blogger Spocko.

He Takes His Secrets to the Grave. Our Complicity Dies with Him

Robert Fisk offers these incites from Common Dreams:

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.

"Mr Fisk... at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon," he said. "There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank revetments - thousands of them - all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!"

I was with Saddam's forward commandos at the time, under Iranian shellfire, noting how the Iraqi forces aligned their artillery positions far back from the battle front with detailed maps of the Iranian lines. Their shelling against Iran outside Basra allowed the first Iraqi tanks to cross the Karun within a week. The commander of that tank unit cheerfully refused to tell me how he had managed to choose the one river crossing undefended by Iranian armour. Two years ago, we met again, in Amman and his junior officers called him "General" - the rank awarded him by Saddam after that tank attack east of Basra, courtesy of Washington's intelligence information.

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".

I saw the results, however. On a long military hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and mucus from their lungs - the very carriages stank so much of gas that I had to open the windows - and their arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes against Iran.

We still don't know - and with Saddam's execution we will probably never know - the extent of US credits to Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the sum of which was spent on the purchase of American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $300m. By 1987, Saddam was being promised $1bn in credit. By 1990, just before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, annual trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $3.5bn a year. Pressed by Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then Secretary of State, but the same James Baker who has just produced a report intended to drag George Bush from the catastrophe of present- day Iraq - pushed for new guarantees worth $1bn from the US.

In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert military assistance to Saddam guaranteed £250m to Iraq shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the very chemical components sent by the US, was later hanged. Within a month of Bazoft's arrest William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, said: "I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if we play our diplomatic hand correctly... A few more Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would make it more difficult."

Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS Stark when, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam's excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.