• 82 von 100 Irakern gegen Besatzung Zeitung veröffentlicht geheime Umfrage der britischen Armee: 65 Prozent der Bevölkerung befürworten Widerstand
• "Friedensverrat" Neue Strafanzeige gegen Bundesregierung wegen deutscher Beteiligung am Irakkrieg
• "Mäusejournalismus" im Irak Robert Fisk über die katastrophale Sicherheitslage
• Tödliche Folter Zahlreiche "Einzelfälle" in US-Militär
• Wundersame Ergebnisse Referendum über irakische Verfassung: So lange »prüfen«, bis die Zahlen stimmen
• The ploy of the Iraqi referendum
• Constitution Referendum: Too Democratic to be American!!
• Vote Figures for Crucial Province Don't Add Up
• A Rotten Foundation Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?
• Ergebnis im Irak zurechtgezählt Mehrheit soll für neue Verfassung gestimmt haben. CNN: 2000 US-Soldaten getötet
• Iraqi Constitution Adopted Despite Two-Third Rejection in Sunni Provinces !
• Iraq referendum produces a divisive and illegitimate result
• Iraqi Vote Lights The Fuse
• Money for Nothing Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors' pockets.

                   82 von 100 Irakern gegen Besatzung
         Zeitung veröffentlicht geheime Umfrage der britischen
        Armee: 65 Prozent der Bevölkerung befürworten Widerstand

Rainer Rupp

Einer geheim in Auftrag gegebenen Umfrage der britischen Armee zufolge befürworten bis zu 65 Prozent der Iraker Angriffe auf anglo-amerikanische Soldaten unter anderem durch Selbstmordanschläge. Nicht einmal ein Prozent der irakischen Bevölkerung glaubt demnach, daß die andauernde Besetzung des Landes die Sicherheit erhöht. Dieses berichtete die britische Zeitung Sunday Telegraph unter Berufung auf eine der Zeitung vorliegenden Kopie der Umfrageergebnisse. Sie zeigten »nach zweieinhalb Jahren blutiger Besatzung zum ersten Mal die wahre Stärke der gegen die westlichen Truppen gerichteten Stimmung im Land«. Demnach lehnten 82 Prozent der Iraker die Präsenz der Besatzungstruppen ab. 67 Prozent fühlten sich durch die ausländischen Truppen unsicherer. 43 Prozent glauben, daß sich durch die Besatzerpräsenz die Aussichten für Frieden und Stabilität verschlechtert haben. Und 72 Prozent besitzen keinerlei Vertrauen in die fremden Truppen.

Die Umfrageergebnisse entlarven auch die Behauptungen der britischen und US-amerikanischen Regierungen, wonach sich die Lebensbedingungen des Durchschnittsirakers seit der Invasion verbessert haben. Derzeit verfügen 71 Prozent der Bevölkerung nicht über sauberes Wasser, 47 Prozent werden nicht ausreichend mit Elektrizität versorgt, und bei 70 Prozent funktioniert die Kanalisation nur schlecht oder gar nicht. Zudem sind 40 Prozent der im Süden lebenden Iraker, zumeist Schiiten, arbeitslos. Noch vor wenigen Tagen hatte der britische Generalstabschef, General Sir Mike Jackson, seinen Soldaten gratuliert, »weil sie dem irakischen Volk helfen, ein neues und besseres Irak zu bauen«.

Indes bestätigten die US-Streitkräfte den Tod von vier Mitarbeitern der Halliburton-Tochter Kellogg Brown & Root. Der Vorfall liegt schon vier Wochen zurück, wurde aber erst am Wochenende bekannt. Demnach hatte eine wütende Menschenmenge in Duluija nördlich von Bagdad am 20. September das Feuer auf den Konvoi eröffnet. Zwei Personen seien sofort tot gewesen, zwei Schwerverletzte durch Kopfschüsse ums Leben gebracht worden.

junge Welt vom 24.10.2005
http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/10-24/004.php

• * *

                       "Friedensverrat"
         Neue Strafanzeige gegen Bundesregierung wegen
              deutscher Beteiligung am Irakkrieg

23.10.2005

Pressemitteilung von Armin Fiand und Alexander Bahr

In einem Urteil vom 22. Juni diesen Jahres hatte das Bundesverwaltungsgericht gegen den deutschen Beitrag zum Irakkrieg "gravierende völkerrechtliche Bedenken" geäußert. Gestützt auf dieses Urteil, haben der Rechtsanwalt Armin Fiand und der Historiker und Publizist Dr. Alexander Bahar nun erneut Strafanzeige gegen die verantwortlichen Mitglieder der deutschen Bundesregierung wegen "Friedensverrats" erstattet.

Im Krieg der USA und ihrer "Koalition der Willigen" gegen den Irak stand Deutschland nicht abseits. Die deutsche Bundesregierung hat den angreifenden Staaten unter anderem Überflug-, Bewegungsund Transportrechte eingeräumt. Generalbundesanwalt Kay Nehm hat es bisher aber strikt abgelehnt, ein Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Bundeskanzler Schröder, Bundesaußenminister Fischer und Bundesverteidigungsminister Struck wegen des Verdachts des "Friedensverrats" einzuleiten.

Artikel 26 des Grundgesetzes verbietet die Vorbereitung eines Angriffskrieges. Paragraph 80 Strafgesetzbuch (StGB) droht demjenigen, der sich über dieses Verbot hinwegsetzt, eine empfindliche Freiheitsstrafe an.

Hierauf gestützt, waren zu Beginn des Irakkrieges zahlreiche Strafanzeigen erstattet worden, die Kay Nehm allesamt zurückgewiesen hat. Im Wesentlichen hat er seine Weigerung, Ermittlungen aufzunehmen, damit begründet, dass sich aus dem Völkerrecht nicht eindeutig ergebe, was unter einem "Angriffskrieg" zu verstehen sei. Paragraph 80 StGB könne auch schon deshalb nicht angewendet werden, weil die Unterstützungshandlungen Deutschlands nicht ein solches Gewicht hätten, dass sie als Kriegsbeteiligung angesehen werden könnten. Im Übrigen hätte die Unterstützung den von Deutschland übernommenen Bündnisverpflichtungen entsprochen. Die Frage, ob der Krieg gegen den Irak völkerrechtswidrig war, hat der Generalbundesanwalt offengelassen, weil sie angeblich nicht entscheidungserheblich sei.

Auch die von dem Hamburger Rechtsanwalt Armin Fiand und dem Historiker und Publizisten Dr. Alexander Bahar eingereichten Anzeigen wurden auf diese Weise abschlägig beschieden. Die dagegen erhobenen Gegenvorstellungen und Dienstaufsichtsbeschwerden hatten keinen Erfolg.

Dr. Bahar und Rechtsanwalt Fiand haben sich nunmehr erneut mit einer gemeinsamen Eingabe an den Generalbundesanwalt gewandt, weil sie der Auffassung sind, daß sich inzwischen neue Erkenntnisse ergeben haben, die es erforderlich machen, den Vorgang wieder aufzugreifen, Ermittlungen einzuleiten und Anklage zu erheben. Diese neuen Erkenntnisse leiten sie insbesondere aus folgenden Fakten her:

• Nach einer Studie, die von Wissenschaftlern aus den USA und dem Irak gemeinsam erstellt und im Oktober 2004 in dem renommierten Wissenschaftsmagazin "The Lancet" veröffentlicht wurde, waren dem Krieg gegen den Irak bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt über 100.000 irakische Menschen, vor allem Frauen und Kinder, zum Opfer gefallen.
• Dafür gab und gibt es keine Rechtfertigung, weil nach der fast einhelligen Meinung aller namhaften Völkerrechtler der Krieg gegen den Irak völkerrechtswidrig war. Der ehemalige US-amerikanische Außenminister Colin Powell hat dies jüngst sogar selbst bestätigt, indem er erklärt hat, seine Rede im Februar 2003 vor dem UN-Sicherheitsrat, in der er "überzeugende Beweise" für die Existenz von Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak und für die Komplizenschaft des Irak mit Al-Qaida präsentiert hatte, sei ein "Schandfleck" in seiner politischen Karriere, er fühle sich "furchtbar", daß die angeblichen Beweise falsch gewesen seien.
• Das Bundesverwaltungsgericht hat sich in einem 136 Seiten umfassenden Urteil vom 22. Juni 2005, das weithin Aufsehen erregte, mit der Frage befasst, ob der Krieg gegen den Irak völkerrechtlich zulässig war beziehungsweise ist, und wie die von der Bundesrepublik Deutschland erbrachten Unterstützungshandlungen völkerrechtlich einzuordnen sind. Nicht nur gegen die Rechtfertigung des Krieges, auch gegen den deutschen Beitrag machte das Gericht "gravierende völkerrechtliche Bedenken" geltend. Nach Auffassung des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts verstieß der Irak-Krieg eindeutig gegen die UN-Charta. Die deutschen Unterstützungsleistungen seien nicht geringfügig, sondern erheblich. Das Staatsgebiet Deutschlands sei als Ausgangspunkt oder "Drehscheibe" für gegen den Irak gerichtete militärische Aktionen benutzt worden. Das gelte vor allem für die gewährten Überflugrechte. Indem die BRD ihr Hoheitsgebiet anderen Staaten zur Durchführung von Angriffshandlungen gegen den Irak zur Verf ügung gestellt habe, sei sie völkerrechtlich so zu behandeln, als wäre sie selbst der angreifende Staat - so die Quintessenz des Urteils. Auf Bündnisverpflichtungen könne sich die Bundesrepublik Deutschland nicht berufen, weil es keine Verpflichtung gebe, völkerrechtswidrige Handlungen von Bündnispartnern zu unterst ützen.

Die Verfasser der Eingabe an den Generalbundesanwalt sind der Auffassung, daß durch die neuen rechtlichen Erkenntnisse, vor allem durch die Ausführungen im Urteil des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts, die früheren Argumente des Generalbundesanwalts samt und sonders als widerlegt anzusehen sind. Der Generalbundesanwalt muß sich der Sache erneut annehmen. Er ist nach dem Gesetz verpflichtet, bei Vorliegen zureichender tatsächlicher Anhaltspunkte wegen aller verfolgbaren Straftaten einzuschreiten, die zu seinem Zuständigkeitsbereich gehören. Das gebietet das Legalitätsprinzip, das dem Gleichheitssatz aus Artikel 3 des Grundgesetzes Rechnung trägt. Dieses Prinzip besagt, daß die Staatsanwaltschaft jede Straftat ohne Ansehen der Person verfolgen muß.

Der Generalbundesanwalt ist zwar ein politischer Beamter und als solcher weisungsgebunden. Diese Gebundenheit kann jedoch nicht so weit gehen, daß er sich aus Gründen der Staatsraison oder um der Bundesregierung einen Gefallen zu erweisen, über Recht und Gesetz hinwegsetzt.

Die deutsche Bundesregierung hätte sich weigern können (ohne daß ihr irgendwelche Sanktionen gedroht hätten) und weigern müssen, den Krieg gegen den Irak zu unterstützen. Nur dann hätte sie im Einklang mit dem Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag vom 12.09.1990 gehandelt, durch den dem vereinigten Deutschland die völkerrechtliche Verpflichtung auferlegt worden ist, dafür zu sorgen, daß von deutschem Boden nur Frieden ausgehen wird.

http://www.freace.de/artikel/200510/231005b.html

• * *

                  "Mäusejournalismus" im Irak
       Robert Fisk über die katastrophale Sicherheitslage

22.10.2005

Bereits am Donnerstag der vergangenen Woche veröffentliche die britische press gazette einen Artikel über einen Auftritt des bekannten Journalisten Robert Fisk in einer Buchhandlung anläßlich seines neu erschienenen Buches "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" ("Der Große Krieg um die Zivilisation: Die Eroberung des Mittleren Ostens").
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/131005/mouse_journalism_is

Dort berichtete er, daß selbst er, der den anderen Journalisten im Irak in der Vergangenheit so häufig "Hoteljournalismus" vorwarf, weil sie die Sicherheit ihrer Hotels praktisch nie verlassen, sich nur noch in der Lage sieht, "Mäusejournalismus" zu praktizieren: das kurze Auftauchen am Ort des Geschehens, um gleich wieder zu verschwinden.

"Sie können sich nicht vorstellen, wie schlimm es im Irak ist", so Fisk. "Vor einigen Wochen besuchte ich einen Mann, dessen Sohn von den Amerikanern getötet worden ist und ich war fünf Minuten in seinem Haus, als bewaffnete Männer draußen auf der Straße auftauchten. Er mußte hinausgehen und mit ihnen diskutieren, damit sie mich nicht mitnahmen. Und das war ein gewöhnlicher Vorort von Baghdad, nicht das sunnitische Dreieck oder Fallujah. Es ist an dem Punkt angelangt, wo, als ich beispielsweise hinging, um einen Blick auf den Ort einer großen Bombe in einem Busbahnhof zu werfen, ich aus dem Auto sprang und zwei Photos machte, bevor ich von einer Menge aufgebrachter Iraker umringt wurde. Ich sprang zurück ins Auto und floh. Ich nenne das 'Mäusejournalismus' - und das ist alles, was wir jetzt tun können. Wenn ich jemanden an einem bestimmten Ort besuche gebe ich mir 12 Minuten, weil das die Zeit ist, die es meiner Annahme zufolge dauert, bis ein Mann mit einem Mobiltelephon bewaffnete Männer in einem Auto herbeigerufen hat. Also bin ich nach 10 Minuten weg. Man soll nicht gierig sein. So ist die Berichterstattung im Irak."

Er fuhr fort: "Dieses Land ist jetzt die Hölle - eine Katastrophe. Sie können sich nicht vorstellen, wie schlimm es ist. Keine der Berichte, die ich üblicherweise sehe außer dem Guardian und Patrick Cockburn im Independent vermitteln wirklich die absolute Qual und das Elend im Irak. Das Gesundheitsministerium, das zum Teil von den Amerikanern geleitet wird, gibt keinerlei Zahlen über zivile Opfer heraus; den Mitarbeitern ist es einfach nicht gestattet, uns diese Zahlen zu geben. Als ich einmal vor fast vier Wochen in das städtische Leichenschauhaus in Baghdad ging, kam ich morgens um 09:00 Uhr an und dort waren die Leichen von 9 Menschen, die gewaltsam ums Leben gekommen waren. Bis zum Mittag waren es 26 Leichen. Als ich es schaffte, Zugriff auf den Computer der Leichenhalle zu bekommen, entdeckte ich, daß im Juli allein in Baghdad 1.100 Iraker getötet worden sind. Wenn man das auf den ganzen Irak hochrechnet kommt man auf 3.000 oder mehr im Monat, also 36.000 im Jahr. Die Zahlen, die von 100.000 zivilen Opfern sprechen, sind also nicht gerade übertrieben. Aber niemand will darüber berichten."

"Eine der Freuden der Besatzungsmächte ist, daß die Journalisten sich nicht bewegen können. Wenn ich mit dem Auto außerhalb Baghdads reisen will, brauche ich zwei Wochen für die Planung, weil die Straßen mit Rebellen, Kontrollpunkten, maskierten Männern und Halsabschneidern überschwemmt sind. So sieht es aus. Es ist fast unmöglich, an unabh ängige Informationen außerhalb von Baghdad oder Basra zu gelangen. Die meisten Journalisten, die reisen können, tun dies als Mitglieder von Militärkonvois mit Panzern zu ihrem Schutz. Das letzte Mal, als ich nach Najaf fuhr, war die Straße mit ausgebrannten amerikanischen Fahrzeugen, zerstörten Polizeifahrzeugen, verlassenen Kontrollpunkten und bewaffneten Männern überzogen. Das ist der heutige Irak -- er ist in einem Zustand der Anarchie und viele Gegenden von Baghdad sind jetzt in Wirklichkeit in den Händen der Rebellen", so Fisk weiter.

"Dies ist ein Krieg, wie ich nie zuvor über einen berichtet habe", sagte er. "Wieder und wieder entkommen wir lebendig, weil wir Glück haben. Und es wird immer schlimmer, nicht besser - glauben Sie nicht, was Blair Ihnen sagt."

"Es ist sehr traurig, sagen zu müssen, daß ich nicht weiß, ob wir weiterhin aus dem Irak berichten können. Ich weiß nicht, ob ich persönlich weiterhin dorthin zurück gehen kann. Diese letzte Reise war derart gefährlich und angsteinflößend, daß ich tatsächlich zu einigen Leuten sagte, daß wir darüber sprechen müssen, ob die Risiken es wert sind", so Fisk.

http://www.freace.de/artikel/200510/221005a.html

• * *

                         Tödliche Folter
              Zahlreiche "Einzelfälle" in US-Militär

24.10.2005

Eine Meldung einer US-Bürgerrechtsorganisation vom Montag belegt erneut, daß die Folterung von Gefangenen durch US-Gefangene keineswegs auf "Einzelfälle" zurückgeführt werden kann, wie dies von offizieller Seite immer wider behauptet wird.
http://www.aclu.org/International/International.cfm?ID=19298&c=36

Aufgrund einer Analyse von bisher veröffentlichten Autopsieberichten und Totenscheinen stellte die "American Civil Liberties Union" (ACLU) - aufgrund dieser unvollständigen Berichte - fest, daß es sich selbst nach Ansicht des US-Militärs bei 21 von 44 Todesfällen in Gefangenschaft um Tötungsdelikte handelte.
http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/

"Ohne Frage haben US-Verhöre zu Todesfällen geführt", sagte Anthony D. Romero, Geschäftsführer der ACLU. "Hochrangige Offiziere, die von der Folter wußten und untätig dasaßen und jene, die diese Methoden schufen und guthießen müssen zur Verantwortung gezogen werden. Amerika muß aufhören, seinen Kopf in den Sand zu stecken, und sich mit dem Folterskandal beschäftigen, der unser Militär erschüttert hat."

Die Mörder der Gefangenen stammten den Berichten zufolge sowohl aus verschiedenen Gattungen des US-Militärs als auch der CIA. Die Autopsieberichte sprechen von Todesfällen durch "Erwürgen", "Ersticken" und "stumpfe Gewalteinwirkung". Der überwiegende Teil der vorgeblich natürlichen Todesfälle wurde demnach auf "Arterienverkalkung" zurückgeführt.

Der Tod eines "gegnerischen Kriegsgefangenen" im Irak, der durch "Wasserentzug" und einem "Hitzschlag" verursacht wurde, wurde als "Unfall" bezeichnet, obwohl die Umgebungstemperatur über 43 Grad Celsius betrug und es zu den üblichen Foltermethoden der USA gehört, Gefangene Hitze oder Kälte auszusetzen.

Am 9. Januar 2004 starb ein Iraker, während er von "einer anderen Regierungsbehörde" - die übliche Umschreibung für die CIA - verhört wurde. Zum Zeitpunkt seines Todes, der durch Ersticken und stumpfe Gewalteinwirkung verursacht wurde, stand er, oben an einen Türrahmen gefesselt, mit einem Knebel im Mund.

Am 26. November 2003 wurde ein Gefangener in der irakischen Stadt Al-Qaim während eines Verhörs durch den Militärgeheimdienst getötet. Die Autopsie sprach in diesem Fall von "Ersticken durch Erdrücken". Ein weiterer Gefangener wurde am 4. November 2003 im US-Gefangenenlager Abu Ghurayb während eines Verhörs durch Mitglieder der Spezialeinheit Navy Seals und eine "andere Regierungsbehörde" durch "stumpfe Gewalteinwirkung und behinderte Atmung" getötet.

Ein Afghane starb am 6. November 2003 an "zahlreichen Verletzungen durch stumpfe Gewalteinwirkung auf Kopf, Körper und Extremitäten" in einer US-Basis in der Provinz Helmand. Am 6. Juni 2003 wurde ein 52 Jahre alter Iraker im US-Gefangenenlager Whitehorse in Nasiriyah erwürgt. Die Autopsie ergab außerdem zahlreiche Knochen- und Rippenbr üche und weitere Verletzungen.

Bei den Dokumenten handelt es sich um Schriftstücke, die von dem USVerteidigungsministerium im Rahmen des Informationsfreiheitsgesetzes auf Antrag der ACLU und weiterer Organisationen veröffentlicht worden sind. Es kann mit Sicherheit angenommen werden, daß die veröffentlichten Fälle keineswegs alle Fälle von durch Folter getöteten USGefangenen darstellen.

http://www.freace.de/artikel/200510/241005b.html

• * *

                          Wundersame Ergebnisse
                  Referendum über irakische Verfassung:
                So lange »prüfen«, bis die Zahlen stimmen

Rainer Rupp

Weder die zwischen 90 bis 99,11 Prozent Ja-Stimmen zur neuen irakischen Verfassung in vielen schiitischen Provinzen noch die außerordentlich hohe Zustimmung in drei von vier sunnitisch dominierten Provinzen haben bei den US-Besatzern auch nur den Gedanken an Wahlbetrug aufkommen lassen. Mit der Erklärung, beim Referendum habe es »noch weniger Irregularitäten gegeben als bei den Wahlen im Januar«, hatte der Berater von US-Außenministerin Condoleezza Rice, James Jeffrey, bereits unmittelbar nach den Wahlen die Marschrichtung vorgegeben. An die halten sich seither die Mitarbeiter der »unabhängigen« Wahlkommission im Irak (IECI) in ihren öffentlichen Verlautbarungen eisern.

Massiven Wahlbetrug beklagen jedoch die Würdenträger und Stammesführer in der Provinz Ninive. In der größtenteils von sunnitischen Arabern, die die Verfassung ablehnen, bewohnten Provinz hat den vorläufigen Ergebnissen der IECI zufolge jedoch die große Mehrheit auf wundersame Weise für die Verfassung gestimmt. Nur in einer der vier sunnitischen Provinzen, in Salaheddin, hätten sich 81,5 Prozent der Wähler dagegen entschieden. In den anderen zwei, in der heiß umkämpften Al-AnbarProvinz ebenso wie in Dijala, gibt es ähnlich sonderbare Ergebnisse wie in Ninive.

Nach vorläufigen Zahlen der IECI hatten in Ninive 326000 Wähler für die Verfassung und 90000 dagegen gestimmt. Diese kamen zustande, nachdem laut IECI mehr als 90 Prozent der Stimmen aus 300 Wahlstationen ausgezählt worden waren. Der US-Verbindungsoffizier zum IECI in Ninive, Major Jeffrey Houston, gab dagegens 424491 Nein- und 353348 Ja-Stimmen an. Wegen der ethnisch-religiösen Zusammensetzung von Ninive ist aber auch bei diesem »Ergebnis« die hohe Zustimmung zweifelhaft. Laut offizieller Bevölkerungsstatistik vor der USInvasion lag der Anteil der Kurden dort bei nur sechs Prozent. Auch bei den Januarwahlen hatten Kurden und Schiiten in Ninive für ihre Kandidaten nur 130000 Stimmen zusammenbekommen. Um nun jedoch über 350000 Wahlberechtigte für die Verfassung zu gewinnen, hätten die Kurden und Schiiten einen wirklich sagenhaften Erfolg bei sunnitischen Arabern haben müssen.

Derweil entschuldigt das IECI die nochmalige Verschiebung der Bekanntgabe der Endergebnisse mit weiteren Prüfungen. Kritiker werfen dem IECI und seinen amerikanischen Mentoren jedoch vor, die Zeit zu benötigen, um in Ninive und den anderen sunnitischen Provinzen stimmigere Ergebnisse zu fabrizieren.

junge Welt vom 25.10.2005
http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/10-25/005.php

• * *

The ploy of the Iraqi referendum

Elias Akleh

October 23, 2005

-- The Iraqi referendum had been played so cleverly that all types of media, although most British papers were more cautious than others, and all political figures could not but call it an expression of democracy. Yet this "democracy" is being used to manipulate Iraqis into accepting the dictates of the American administration.

The American power elite has been very proficient in this type of manipulation; after all, they had used the same tactics for almost 227 years since the establishment of the American Constitution, to impose their own ideologies on the people, and make them believe that these ideologies are their very own.

The trick started with Paul Bremer immediately after the invasion of Iraq. He canceled the old Iraqi constitution and all the previous laws claiming that they are the laws of the tyrant Saddam Hussein, and replaced them with American imported laws - the laws of American democracy that should fit all other nations. Iraqis had no say but to accept these laws.

The new Iraqi interim National Assembly members were so pleased to have political jobs with American dollar salaries that this made them eager to please their "American liberators", and they did not question nor criticize these laws. Bremer's laws became the basis for the Iraqi government, the Iraqi elections and the Iraqi constitution.

The articles in the draft of the Iraqi constitution were carefully "cooked" by the "appointed" members of the National Assembly, who are not, really, true representatives of the people. The mostly Shia and Kurdish government, with the directives of the Americans in the background, had written the draft constitution by themselves for themselves.

The draft has nothing to do with the will of the people. It is a decree imposed from top to bottom, and comes from the political elite who run Iraq along with the Americans out of the 'green zone' of Baghdad. All negotiations about the constitution were done within the isolated 'green zone' away from the average common Iraqi.

The negotiators were out of touch with the people. The Iraqi people were alienated from the process. They were not invited to participate in the discussion to offer their own views and to listen to and to understand the views of others. They were barred from this democratic process, therefore they lack any sense of ownership of this constitution. To them it is a foreign imported product imposed on them.

A draft constitution is a very complex legal document with a lot of legal obscure terms that could be understood only by those who had studied the law. Its language is written in a way that allows different interpretations, of which many could be contradictory.

The average Iraqi would have difficulty reading and understanding the exact meaning of the draft. The majority of them would vote according to the recommendations of their religious and tribal leaders rather than according to their own understanding and their own conviction of the constitution. This makes it an ethnic voting, which is exactly what the American administration is aiming for: ethnic division of the people.

The occupational forces succeeded in creating ethnic division among Iraqis. They favored Kurds and Shias, and discriminated against Sunnis. They have used Kurdish and Shia militias to raid Sunni cities in an attempt to create hatred among these groups. All the military and political statements regarding Iraqis are deliberately loaded with ethnic terminology.

The media outlets, even the independent and the opposing media outlets, had fallen into the ethnic terminology trap; they talk about Iraqis in terms of the three major ethnic groups. Iraqis, at the beginning, fought this ethnic division and emphasized unity, yet the discriminatory policies of the Shia majority government, the car bombings and the Kurdish and Shia militia raids in the Sunni cities had led the majority of the people to fall into the same ethnic trap.

This growing ethnic hatred affected the way that people voted in the referendum. The majority of Shias and Kurds tended to vote yes on the draft, while the majority of the Sunnis tended to vote no. The Shias, making up about 60 percent of the population, were urged during Friday religious sermons to vote yes for the constitution. Their leading cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, declared it a religious duty to vote yes. A yes vote will provide them autonomy in the southern Iraqi regions.

Likewise the Kurds, about 20 percent of the population, largely support the constitution to guarantee their own independence in the north as the nucleus for a Kurdish State. The Sunni Arabs, on the other hand, widely oppose the constitution because they are convinced that its federalist system will tear the country into Kurdish and Shia mini-states in the oil-rich regions of the north and the south, and leave the Sunnis weak in the center without any shares in the oil revenue.

During the elections last January the Sunnis boycotted the elections and found themselves, later on, without any voices in the government and out of the circle of political decision making. It seems that they have learned from this mistake, for this time they hit the polling centers in greater numbers in an attempt to vote down the draft constitution. They have learned the importance of voicing their opinion.

There was only one question on the ballot paper, written in Arabic and Kurdish, which the voter should answer: "Do you support the draft constitution?"

This is actually a stupid vote and gives the illusion that a person had made a real choice. A constitution is comprised of many articles. Some of them are good for a certain group of people, and not good for other groups. Some articles are good for the public good but would hurt a minority. The question limits the voter to either accept or reject the draft as a whole. This creates a dilemma to voters, who are not given the opportunity to reject some articles and accept others as is the case in other countries.

The democratic spirit that the Iraqis are exhibiting in this referendum is cheated by what is offered to them. The draft constitution does not offer unity and democracy to Iraqis, but division and chaos. Most educated Iraqis understand this fact and want to vote against the draft.

Iraqis abroad want to defeat the draft because they oppose religious federalism, and seek sectarian rule, human and women's rights, and a solid fair constitution that would serve the coming generations of Iraqis. Unfortunately Iraqis abroad were not allowed to vote this time around, although their voices were sought in the January elections.

There are two versions of the draft and each has a different introduction in Arabic. The first version starts with "We the peoples of Iraq ..." while the second starts with "We the peoples of the valley of the two rivers ..." This introduction strikes at the heart of the Arab nationality of the Iraqis by hinting that Iraqis are comprised of different nations.

This is very dangerous especially when combined with articles 115 and 116, which call for the right of each province to tear itself apart from the whole country and to form its own mini state at the request of only one-tenth of its voters. This mini state would have the right to write its own constitution, to define its own laws and to take its own local language. If this is not dividing Iraq what is?

Moreover, this would allow Israeli Jews, who immigrated from Iraq to Israel, to return to Iraq, and according to article 133 reclaim properties, form their own region, then turn it into a second Israeli state that would have its own language, its own laws, and more dangerously its own army. Such a mini-Israeli state would become part of the "Iraqi Federation" and demand to voice its opinion in the political decision making, and eventually, with the backing of both USA and Israel, would control Iraq.

This American imported constitution does not serve Iraqis. Its goal is to fragment Iraq into weaker religious federations for ease of manageability and control.

Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit Jala and lives in the US. Acknowledgement to Arab Media Internet Network (AMIN)

Article nr. 17096 sent on 24-oct-2005 05:45 ECT

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• * *

Constitution Referendum: Too Democratic to be American!!

Sabah Ali, BRussells Tribunal

The referendum on the Iraqi draft constitution sounded perfectly democratic. Every Iraqi is entitled to vote freely, express what he (she) thinks of it: yes, no, or boycott. No pressures, no dictations, no interference, no intimidations what so ever. If the Iraqis say yes, the democratic political process would proceed, if no, the whole process would be repeated again. No harm done. What can be more democratic than this?!

Only one thing: It sounds too good to be true, especially in a country like the occupied Iraq.

To begin with, the majority of Iraqis did not know what the constitution, they were voting for, was. They knew about it through the TV satellite channels debates. 5 million dollars were spent on printing millions of the draft copies for the Iraqis to read before they vote. But unfortunately, the copies did not reach the readers until two days before the referendum date, that is, if they reached at all (which brings to the minds that the candidates' names in the January 2005 elections were not announced until 5 days before the balloting, but that was for security reasons, to be fair). I live in one of the biggest central areas of Baghdad, no one around received any copy. Anyway, there were too many drafts, too many changes, different versions in different languages, that in the end they do not know which the final draft was, to give their votes to.

There were so many hot debates on very essential points: its legality in the first place as a law put under and by the occupation, the rush, the introduction, federalism, the identity of Iraq, the Islamic law, the official languages in Iraq, debaathification, the religious references and traditions, women (oh, especially this) the sectarian tendencies ...etc. Curiously enough no debate was made on the economic system (which should be one of the most important points). It should be mentioned, however, that these debates were mainly in the media and the political milieu. The ordinary people just listened, if they did, and shook their heads (too many daily problems and difficulties to worry about). One question on their lips, though: why changing the constitution NOW, does not the government already have enough problems to take care of? The constitution would solve the problems, we were told, would stabilize Iraq, and end the lawlessness...

The preceding weeks to balloting were very busy cleaning the (hot spots) of insurgents. The beginning was the Tallafar massacre, then Alqaim and Haditha, which were described as cities of ghosts (again bringing to the minds the Falluja massacre before the January elections). Understandably enough, the media was too busy covering the Draft Constitution debates to pay any attention to the humanitarian tragedies in those areas, not to mention the civilian casualties. But again, fighting the terrorists is part of the whole process of democratization of Iraq, isn't it!

Extreme security measures were taken, life was practically stopped. On the voting day, Oct 15, a curfew was imposed. People had only to walk to the nearest voting stations (which were no less than 30 kilometers in some rural areas). In the Anbar province 70 stations were not opened at all.

In one area of Baghdad, two women found it too far to walk, a neighbor volunteered to drive them. The car was shot by the Iraqi National Guards, killing the three voters.

In another area, the people went many times to the (nearest) station only to be told that the balloting box was not there yet, they were told to come back after 2 pm, the box was to be there for sure. At 2 pm, the same station was closed and locked.

Good sources say that all the stations were supervised by members of one political party.

Many times it was announced that Al-Sistani (the religious Shiite reference) calls upon the Iraqis to participate in the referendum, many very big banners were hung in different parts of Baghdad said so too. But some newspapers denied that he said so. The Al-Sistani office did not confirm or deny. In the balloting stations, however, the banners called upon the Iraqis to vote YES. Actually the streets of Baghdad and other cities were covered with banner and posters encouraging the people to say YES to the draft. Not a single banner calling for the opposite position was allowed.

However, the Islamic Party worked for months in the mosques calling upon the Iraqis to vote NO. It even signed a pact with many other political parties and groups. Two days before the balloting date, it changed its attitude to YES.

An eyewitness in one on the stations described how at the end of that day, one of the supervisors visited a station and found out the 100 cards said NO, and more than 200 said YES. He did not like it, and told the monitors to (add) extra 100 YESs. Another eyewitness described how a NO, would face a storm of curses by the station supervisors.

News from the Anbar province, the hottest spot, said that the American helicopters and Apaches, were roaming the skies, shootings and bombings were heard all that day, but they did not know what was going on. There was fighting. The guess was to frighten the people and prevent them form going out.

The Albu Obeid village, near Ramadi, was heavily bombed Friday night Oct 14, killing 22 and injuring many. Nothing was mentioned in the news, as usual.

On Monday 17, the American troops announced killing 70 terrorists in Ramadi. The medical sources said they received 40 bodies of civilians; 20 of them were children, the rest women and civilians in the village of Albu Farrage, north of Ramadi. Eye witnesses said that the children were surrounding an American tank which was on fire, when the airplanes shot them.

Back to the balloting: It was announced that 3 Iraqi provinces said NO, in Salah Addeen, Anbar (94-95%), and Musol (80%-100%) in different parts of the city. This means that the draft failed, because, according to the Transitional Administrative Law put by Bremer, the ex-American head of the occupation authorities, if two thirds in 3 provinces said NO, the constitution fails.

(Strangely) enough the Referendum committee denied that there is any official numbers in Musol yet, 8 days after the balloting, and that there are such numbers available in 12 other provinces which said YES!!! The implication is obvious; the Musol results are going to be changed.

Bush and Rice were very quick in announcing from Washington that the referendum succeeded. It would.

• ps. Detailed numbers of each district in Musol are available a week ago.

Article nr. 17106 sent on 24-oct-2005 10:46 ECT

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• * *

Vote Figures for Crucial Province Don't Add Up

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (IPS) - The early vote totals from Nineveh province, which suggested an overwhelming majority in favour of Iraq's draft constitution that assured its passage by national referendum, now appear to have been highly misleading.

The final official figures for the province, obtained by IPS from a U.S. official in Mosul, actually have the constitution being rejected by a fairly wide margin, but less than the two-thirds majority required to defeat it outright.

Both the initial figures and the new vote totals raise serious questions about the credibility of the reported results in Nineveh. A leading Sunni political figure has already charged that the Nineveh vote totals have been altered.

According to the widely cited preliminary figures announced by the spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) in Nineveh, 326,000 people voted for the constitution and 90,000 against. Those figures were said to be based on results from more than 90 percent of the 300 polling stations in the province.

Relying on those "unofficial" figures, the media reported that the constitution appeared to have been passed -- on the assumption that the Sunnis had failed to muster the necessary two-thirds "no" vote in Nineveh. No further results have been released by the IECI since then, and the final tally from the national referendum is not expected until Friday at the earliest.

However, according to the U.S. military liaison with the IECI in Nineveh, Maj. Jeffrey Houston, the final totals for the province were 424,491 "no" votes and 353,348 "yes" votes. This means that the earlier figures actually represented only 54 percent of the official vote total -- not 90 percent, as the media had been led to believe. And the votes which had not been revealed earlier went against the constitution by a ratio more than 12 to 1.

These ballots could only have come from the Sunni sections of Mosul, a city of 1.7 million people. Although the votes from polling centres in those densely populated urban areas would take longer to count than those from more sparsely populated towns and cities outside Mosul, they should not have taken much longer than those for the Kurdish sections of Mosul.

Thus there seems to be no logistical reason for failing to announce the results for the 340,000 votes that went overwhelmingly against the constitution. Rather, the evidence suggests that it was a deliberate effort to mislead the media by Kurdish and Shiite political leaders who were intent on ensuring that the constitution would pass.

They knew that all eyes would be on Nineveh as the province where the referendum would be decided. By issuing figures that appeared to show that the vote in Nineveh was a runaway victory for the constitution, they not only shaped the main story line in the media that the constitution had already passed, but effectively discouraged any further media curiosity about the vote in that province.

The final figures revealed by the U.S. military liaison with the IECI suggest a voter turnout in Nineveh that strains credibility. On a day when Sunni turnout reached 88 percent in Salahuddin province and 90 percent in Fallujah, a total of only 778,000 votes -- about 60 percent of the eligible voters -- in Nineveh appears anomalous. Even if the turnout in the province had only been 70 percent, the total would have been 930,000.

The final vote totals suggest that the Sunnis, who clearly voted with near unanimity against the constitution, are a minority in the province. It is generally acknowledged that Sunnis constitute a hefty majority of the population of Nineveh, although Kurdish leaders have never conceded that fact.

A total of 350,000 votes for the constitution in the province is questionable based on the area's ethnic-religious composition. The final vote breakdown for the January election reveals that the Kurds and Shiites in Nineveh had mustered a combined total of only 130,000 votes for Kurdish and Shiite candidates, despite high rates of turnout for both groups.

To have amassed 350,000 votes for the constitution, they would have had to obtain overwhelming support from the non-Kurdish, non-Arab minorities in the province.

According to official census data, before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Assyrian Christians and Sunni Arabs accounted 46 percent of the more than 350,000 people on the Nineveh plain. Most of the others are Shabaks and Yezidis. Kurds represented just 6 percent of the population.

But the Kurds have asserted political control over the towns and villages of the plains, with a heavy Kurdish paramilitary and Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) presence. That Kurdish presence provoked widespread opposition and some public protests among nonKurdish communities on the plains, especially Christians and Shabaks.

Assyrian Christians are particularly afraid the constitution's article 135, which divides the Christian community into Chaldeans and Assyrians, will be used by Kurds to expropriate their lands and villages in North Iraq.

Michael Youash, director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project in Washington, has spoken with Assyrian Christian leaders in two district towns, Bakhdeda and BarTilla, on the Nineveh plain where Christians represent roughly half the combined total population of more than 100,000 people.

He says Assyrian Christian political organisations mounted big demonstrations against the constitution in both towns, and that their local leaders are sure that very high percentages in both towns voted against the constitution.

In response to an e-mail query, Maj. Houston, the U.S. military liaison with the IECI, said, "It was my understanding that the Christian communities would be opposed to the constitution," but he dismissed the suspicions of vote fraud in the province.

Saleh al-Mutlek, one of the Sunni negotiators on the constitution last summer and now a leading opponent of the constitution, told reporters, "There is a scheme to alter the results" of the vote. He alleged that members of the Iraqi National Guard had seized ballot boxes from a polling station in Mosul and transferred them to a governorate office controlled by Kurds.

A former U.S. military liaison with the Nineveh province IECI has confirmed a similar incident of seizure of ballot boxes from a polling station during the January elections.

According to Maj. Anthony Cruz, Kurdish militiamen tried to bribe local electoral commission staff to accept ballots that had obviously been tampered with. Cruz also confirmed a much larger ballot-stuffing scheme by Kurdish officials in the province, as reported by IPS in September.

On Monday, the Electoral Commission announced that it would conduct an audit to examine the high "yes" vote, but it is not clear that it will include the results in Nineveh.

• Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June (END/2005)

http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=30692

• * *

                       A Rotten Foundation
              Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?

By KEVIN ZEESE

"It wouldn't surprise me if the election was rigged," said a U.S. Army officer in Mosul who requested anonymity from Time and who worked on security arrangements for the poll with Iraqi security and election officials. "I don't even trust our election process."

If democracy is supposed to provide legitimacy to government = what does a fraudulent election provide? The U.S. occupation, already suffering a host of problems = false reasons for the invasion, lack of international support, wanning support in the U.S., Abu Gharib prison scandals, the Fallujah attack, the killing of civilians, a strengthening insurgency, lack of support by former generals and foreign service officers, and generals on the ground saying the presence of U.S. troops are increasing the strength of the insurgency = now has a voting scandal on its hands.

For many of us who work on democracy issues in the United States the specter of President Bush bringing democracy to the world has always been ironic. The President was appointed by a politicized 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision after the vote count was stopped in Florida = when the vote count was completed by media outlets it showed Vice President Al Gore had won. Yet, the President in his second inaugural promised to bring democracy to countries where it does not exist. And, he insists we continue to occupy Iraq in order to bring democracy to that much beleaguered country.

The vote on the proposed new Iraqi Constitution was critical to President Bush's efforts. It was a vote the administration had to win to prevent a large increase in opposition to Iraq in Congress. But now, the vote count has been delayed in the midst of claims of unusual results in some critical Iraqi provinces.

The Constitution can be defeated either by not receiving majority support nationally or by being opposed by two-thirds of voters in three governorates. It appears that two predominantly Sunni Arab governorates, Anbar and Salaheddin, have voted against the constitution by a two-thirds vote according to press reports.

The provinces of Diala and Ninawah, which are ethnically mixed but thought to be majority Sunni, may be decisive in determining whether opponents of the draft have the two-thirds majority needed to defeat it. In Diala early returns showed 55 percent opposed = within the credibility of the mixed electorate.

More controversial are reports that up to 70 per cent of the voters in Ninawah voted "yes" a tally that some local Sunni Arab politicians say does not correspond with reports that they received on election day. According to the Financial Times, Saleh al-Mutlek, a Sunni politician and prominent opponent of the charter, said that in the provincial capital of Mosul, carloads of Iraqi National Guards had seized ballot boxes from a polling station and transfered them to a governorate office controlled by Kurds. "There is a scheme to alter the results" of the referendum, he claimed. Other Sunnis have claimed members of the main Shia and Kurdish parties in some governorates had filled out blank ballots and stuffed them into boxes after the polls closed resulting in unusually high numbers of voters.

In the constitutional vote huge discrepancies were reported in the Nineveh governorate, whose capital is Mosul. Sources close to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said that 55% of the voters there voted against the constitution, Abd al-Razaq al-Jiburi, the secretary general of the Iraqi Independent Front said, "I have been informed by an employee of the electoral high commission in Mosul that the voting for the constitution has been 'no.'" He added, according to reporter Dahr Jamail, that his sources within the IEC said the "no" vote in Nineveh ranged between 75-80%.

On September 30, historian and national security expert Gareth Porter wrote: "it now appears very likely that the document will be defeated by a two-thirds majority in the three Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar, Salahadeen and Nineveh, plunging Iraq into a new political crisis." He went on to write: "However, one way such a defeat could be averted is by massive vote fraud in the key province of Nineveh. According to an account provided by the US liaison with the local election commission, supported by physical evidence collected by the IEC, Kurdish officials in Nineveh province tried to carry out just such a ballot-stuffing scheme in last January's election." He describes how the US was dependent on Kurdish militia to deliver ballots resulting in ballots being denied to non-Kurdish areas as well as massive ballot stuffing resulting in the election of Kurdish officials.

Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission ordered an audit of "unusually high" results in certain governorates, but added that such "anomalies" did not imply fraud or wrongdoing. Early numbers from the Associated Press - which aren't endorsed by the Electoral Commission - showed almost twice as many "yes" votes for the constitution as the total number of voters in January's elections for the National Assembly. Late on Monday, the commission said a final vote count, which had been expected by the end of this week, would be delayed a few days in order to "recheck, compare and audit" results. Poll officials said tallies of more than 90 per cent either for or against the document would be subjected to special scrutiny.

Driving doubts are results that do not pass the straight face test. In Ninevah initial reports claimed 75 percent favored the Constitution. This is a majority Sunni Province. Making it less believable were the results in neighboring province, Salaheddin, were 71 percent were voting against the Constitution. The two provinces are similar, both with Sunni Arab majorities.

In some jurisdiction press reports indicate 99 percent support for the Constitution = numbers so astounding that they are reminiscent of the votes in favor of Saddam Hussein in previous Iraqi elections!

The questions about whether there was vote fraud are serious, but will probably not be resolved to the satisfaction of many. As a result Sunni's are likely to discount the vote and the violence is unlikely to abate. Time reports some Sunni views: "We have proved we are against the constitution," said Mishaan al-Jubouri, a Sunni legislator from the Liberation and Reconciliation Party. "The Sunni Arabs will reject this constitution totally."

"It will be very difficult to convince people to come back to the political process," said Saleh Mutlaq, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group that strongly opposed the constitution. "People will be disappointed that their voices mean nothing." That will be bad for Iraq, "and for the people occupying it," he added ominously.

Ratifying this constitution was more important to the Bush agenda then to Iraqis. It was conducted on a U.S. timetable, not an Iraqi timetable. Yet, in the end, it will not solve the Bush Administration's problems = in fact it will make them worse.

Sadly, the vote on the Iraqi Constitution, whose legitimacy was already a problem because it was conducted without any international monitors, changes were being made up until the last days before the vote and many Iraqis did not even see the document they voted on, is now been made worse by the questions about whether the vote was fixed to meet U.S. needs. In the future, Iraqis will see that they have given up their oil wealth, their national identity and their secular government based on the very fragile foundation of a potentially fraudulent vote.

Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising.

October 20, 2005

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese10202005.html

• * *

                   Ergebnis im Irak zurechtgezählt
          Mehrheit soll für neue Verfassung gestimmt haben.
                    CNN: 2000 US-Soldaten getötet

Rüdiger Göbel

Die von den US-Besatzern ausgearbeitete Verfassung für den Irak ist von der Mehrheit der Bevölkerung angenommen worden. Das behauptete die sogenannte unabhängige Wahlkommission in Bagdad am Dienstag, zehn Tage nach der Abstimmung. 78,59 Prozent der Wähler hätten sich beim Referendum am 15. Oktober für die neue Konstitution ausgesprochen, 21,41 Prozent dagegen. Dies habe eine neuerliche Auszählung der Stimmen ergeben. Nur in zwei mehrheitlich von Sunniten bewohnten Provinzen - Anbar und Salaheddin - sei eine Zweidrittelmehrheit gegen den von Washington gepuschten Verfassungsentwurf zustande gekommen. In Ninive, einer dritten überwiegend von Sunniten bewohnten Provinz, habe zwar auch eine Mehrheit gegen das Papier gestimmt. Mit 55 Prozent Nein-Stimmen sei dort aber die notwendige Zweidrittelmehrheit klar verfehlt worden. Die Verfassung wäre durchgefallen, wenn sie in mindestens drei der 18 irakischen Provinzen mit mehr als zwei Drittel der Stimmen abgelehnt worden wäre. Wie erwartet kam Washingtons Schmierenkomödie damit zu einem Happy-End.

Die Wahlbeteiligung lag nach Angaben der Stimmauszähler bei 63 Prozent. Ob die in Bagdad präsentierten Ergebnisse mit dem tats ächlichen Votum übereinstimmen, darf weiter bezweifelt werden. So hatte die Wahlkommission ursprünglich sogar behauptet, die Verfassung sei in Ninive von 78 Prozent angenommen worden. Dies klang jedoch zu unglaubwürdig. Die deutliche Korrektur der JaStimmen nach unten wurde am Dienstag nicht näher erläutert. Aus anderen Provinzen wurden Zustimmungsraten von mehr als 99 Prozent gemeldet.

Kritiker des Washingtoner Verfassungsentwurfes hatten vor dem Votum gewarnt, das darin festgeschriebene föderale System ziele auf eine Spaltung des Zweistromlandes ab. So steht zu befürchten, daß der schiitisch dominierte Süden und der kurdisch kontrollierte Norden des Irak mit ihren Erdölvorkommen abgetrennt werden.

An der Besatzungsrealität indes ändert auch die neue Verfassung nichts. Das Londoner Internationale Institut für Strategische Studien (IISS) geht davon aus, daß die ausländische Militärpräsenz noch jahrelang andauern wird. Selbst nach dem Ende der Amtszeit von US-Präsident George W. Bush im Januar 2009 würden voraussichtlich noch »einige weitere Jahre« große Truppenverbände im Irak bleiben, sagte Patrick Cronin vom IISS am Dienstag. Der US-Sender CNN berichtete am selben Tag unter Berufung auf die Besatzungstruppen, die Zahl der im Irak-Einsatz getöteten amerikanischen Soldaten sei inzwischen auf 2000 gestiegen.

junge Welt vom 26.10.2005
http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/10-26/004.php

• * *

            Iraqi Constitution Adopted Despite Two-Third
                   Rejection in Sunni Provinces !

Hassan El-Najjar

Al-Jazeerah, October 26, 2005

According to their own rules, designers of the Iraqi constitution decided that it could be rejected if voters in three provinces reject it by two-third of votes. Well, voters in the three Sunni provinces of Salahuddin, Al-Anbar, and Ninewah, together, rejected the constitution by about 77% of the vote. However, the Electoral Commission announced the adoption of the constitution because voters who rejected it in one province did not do that with two-thirds of the vote, which is a controversial opinion that may be contested.

The Iraqi Electoral Commission announced today that voters in the Iraqi Sunni Province of Ninewah rejected the constitution by 55% of the vote. Previously, it announced that in the Salahuddin province, 81.5 percent of voters rejected the Constitution. It also announced that in the Sunni province of Al-Anbar, more than 97 percent voted against the new constitution.

Thus, the constitution was rejected in two Sunni provinces with more than two-third of voters. But because the rejection was very high, adding the rejection of the third province of Ninewah (55%) would still produce more than two-third of voters rejecting the constitution in the three provinces together, that is about 77%.

Despite this fact, the Electoral Commission announced that the Sunnis failed to reject the constitution in three provinces, which is not true.

News Background

Ninewah Province Rejects Constitution by 55% of the Vote, Three Sunni Provinces Reject it Together by 77%, Yet Commission Announced it Adopted, Sunnis Reject Fraudulent Results

Iraqi voters approve US-backed constitution

Khaleej Times, (Reuters)

25 October 2005

BAGHDAD - Iraqi voters have ratified a new US-backed constitution despite opposition in Sunni Arab areas, officials said on Tuesday.

Iraq's Electoral Commission, revealing final results from the Oct. 15 referendum, said 79 percent of voters backed the constitution against 21 percent opposed in a poll split largely along Iraq's sectarian and ethnic lines.

Several Shi'i and Kurdish regions voted between 95 and 99 percent "Yes"; in Sunni Anbar 97 percent said "No".

Sunni leaders reject Iraq charter

Tue Oct 25, 2005 10:52 AM ET

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Arab Sunni leaders rejected a referendum which ratified a new Iraqi constitution on Tuesday, saying "fraudulent" results would discourage them from taking part in December elections and fuel (the resistance).

"Violence is not the only solution, if politics offers solutions so that we can move in that direction. But there is very little hope that we can make any gains in the elections," said Sunni leader Saleh Mutlaq.

"I call on the free world. I call on the United Nations to intervene. We will not accept any referendum or election without international observers."

U.S. officials sponsoring the political process had described the election, in which many in the disaffected Sunni Arab minority took part, as a success for democracy.

But Mutlaq and other prominent Sunnis who had been involved in negotiations on the draft charter accused the Iraqi electoral commission of bowing to U.S. pressure and fixing results in favor of Shi'i and Kurdish leaders dominating the government

Prominent Sunni Hussein al-Falluji predicted more bloodshed after what he called a referendum manipulated by Washington.

"We all know that this referendum was fraud conducted by an electoral commission that is not independent. It is controlled by the occupying Americans and it should step down before elections in December," Falluji said.

"Politics is linked directly to security on the ground. The situation can only get worse now. I have just prayed to God to expose the truth about what is happening in Iraq."

(Additional reporting by Reuters Television)

Draft Constitution Adopted by Iraqi Voters

Oct 25, 2005 7:29 AM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's landmark constitution was adopted by a majority of voters during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday.

Results released by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq showed that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat it.

Nationwide, 78.59 percent voted for the charter while 21.41 percent voted against, the commission said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.

"Whatever the results of the referendum are ... it is a civilized step that aims to put Iraq on the path of true democracy," Farid Ayar, an official with the electoral commission, said before reading the final results.

Two mostly Sunni Arab provinces - Salahuddin and Anbar - had voted against the constitution by at least a two-thirds vote. The commission, which had been auditing the referendum results for 10 days, said a third province where many Sunnis live - Ninewah - produced a "no" vote of only 55 percent.

Ninewah had been a focus of fraud allegations since preliminary results showed a large majority of voters had approved the constitution, despite a large Sunni Arab population there.

Election commission officials and U.N. officials, who also took part in the audit, "found no cases of fraud that could affect the results of the vote," Ayar said.

The constitution, which many Kurds and majority Shiites strongly support, is considered another major step in the country's democratic transformation, clearing the way for the election of a new Iraqi parliament on Dec. 15. Such steps are considered important in any decision about the future withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Iraq.

Many Sunni Arabs fear that the constitution will create two virtually autonomous and oil-rich mini-states of Kurds in the north and Sunnis in the south, while leaving many Sunnis isolated in poor central and western regions with a weak central government in Baghdad.

Some fear that the Sunni Arab loss in the referendum could influence more of them to join or support Sunni-led insurgents who are launching attacks across the country against Iraq's mostly Shiite and Kurdish government and U.S.-led forces.

Article nr. 17190 sent on 27-oct-2005 01:45 ECT

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• * *

Iraq referendum produces a divisive and illegitimate result

James Cogan, WSWS

October 27, 2005

The result of the October 15 referendum in Iraq endorsing the draft constitution will only deepen the catastrophe caused by Washington's attempt to establish a pro-US client state in the country. According to the Iraqi Electoral Commission, 63 percent of registered voters, or some 10 million people, cast a ballot, with 79 percent supporting the constitution and 21 percent voting no. The breakdown of the figures, however, shows a population that has been bitterly divided along sectarian and ethnic lines by the Bush administration's policies since the 2003 invasion.

The referendum itself was completely contrived. The Iraqi people had no say in the draft constitution, which was drawn up behind closed doors by pro-occupation parties and US officials, or in what questions would be asked on the referendum. If a free and fair vote had been taken on whether US troops should leave Iraq, the answer would have been a resounding yes. A recent survey by the British Ministry of Defence found 82 percent of Iraqis--from all backgrounds--"strongly oppose" the occupation.

Instead Iraqis were asked to vote on a constitution that creates the mechanisms for the transformation of the Iraqi state into a decentralised federation of "regions", with the key oil-producing areas in the north and south in the hands of the Kurdish nationalist and Shiite fundamentalist parties that have worked with the US occupation. It obliges all future Iraqi governments to re-organise the economy, including the currently state-owned oil industry, on free market principles. Authority over the development of Iraq's considerable untapped oil reserves, which will be contracted to private companies, is stripped from the Baghdad government and handed over to the regional states.

The beneficiaries of the plunder will be transnational energy conglomerates and a narrow layer of the Kurdish and Shiite elite. The predominantly Sunni Arab population in Iraq's central and western provinces faces being marginalised in a resource-poor region. They will be ruled over, however, by a central government controlled by Kurdish and sectarian Shiite parties, whose main concern will be to suppress opposition to the neo-colonial exploitation of the country.

Sunni Arab bitterness toward the constitution found sharpest expression in two majority Sunni provinces where the anti-occupation insurgency has strong support and US repression of the civilian population has been intense. In Salah al Din province, the no vote was 81.75 percent, with large turnouts in rebellious cities such as Tikrit and Samarra. In the western province of Anbar, where the US military has slaughtered or detained thousands of Sunnis in cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim, 97 percent voted no.

In four provinces where the population is a diverse mix of Iraq's various communities, the outcome was a dangerous polarisation that can only intensify the sectarian conflicts that have been developing since the 2003 invasion.

In Baghdad, where the insurgency is most active, the vote was 77.7 percent for and 22.3 against, with the no vote concentrated in Sunni suburbs of the capital. In Tamin province, where the city of Kirkuk has already been the scene of bloody clashes between Kurdish militias with Sunni and Turkomen groups, the result was 62.9 percent yes and 37.1 percent no. In Diyala province, with its mixed Sunni-Shiite capital of Baquba, the vote was 51.2 percent for and 48.8 percent against.

In 12 provinces with a majority Kurdish or Shiite population, where the pro-occupation parties argued that the sectarian constitution was essential to improving the conditions of life for the common people, the yes vote ranged between 95 to 99 percent.

Across the Shiite south, however, growing distrust of the governing Shia parties--Da'awa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)--saw the voter turnout fall markedly compared with the election in January. The government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari formed earlier this year repudiated its election pledge to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign occupation troops as soon as it took up office in Baghdad.

The suspiciously high yes vote of over 90 percent in southern cities like Amara, Samawa and Diwaniyah, where there is considerable Shiite animosity toward the occupation and the governing parties, led to immediate accusations of vote rigging.

The greatest controversy, however, surrounds the official count in the northern province of Ninewa, where the majority of people in the capital Mosul are Sunni Arab, Turkomen or other ethnic minorities opposed to the constitution. After a 10-day delay, the no vote was declared to be 55 percent, against a yes vote of 45 percent.

Sunni political leaders responded to the result with allegations of blatant fraud. Saleh Mutlaq, one of the most public Sunni critics of the constitution, told journalists: "It [the result] is clearly a forgery. No respectful forger would produce such an obvious fake that could be seen through so easily." Calling for a recount of the vote in Mosul, Mutlaq declared: "There was a fraud everywhere, but it is Mosul that matters because it was pivotal to defeating this unacceptable constitution."

A no vote by two-thirds of the voters in just three provinces was all that was required to cause the rejection of the constitution nationally. According to figures published by the New York Times, if just 83,283 yes votes in Ninewa had been negative ballots instead, the constitution would have been defeated.

Mahmood al-Azzawi, a member of the Sunni-based National Dialogue Council, told Al Jazeeera: "Fraud occurred, especially in Mosul. It is too big to have any dispute about. Eighty-six percent of Mosul's residents voted no and that was according to accurate statistics made by over 300 independent supervisors in the province."

The Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the few Sunni organisations that called for a yes vote, issued an official statement declaring voter fraud had taken place in Ninewa and that the constitution was illegitimate.

Predicting that Sunnis would otherwise conclude they could achieve nothing through the US-imposed political process and would turn toward the insurgency, Saleh Mutlaq warned: "Violence is not the only solution if politics offers solutions.... But there is very little hope that we can make any gains in the elections. I call on the free world, I call on the United Nations, to intervene."

The UN, however, is directly complicit in the continuing US occupation of Iraq. Far from criticising, let alone opposing the fraudulent ballot, the UN was instrumental in organising the referendum and in rubberstamping the outcome as legitimate. UN officials dismissed allegations of vote rigging as having no bearing on the result.

Deepening crisis for US-led occupation

In recent years, accusations of electoral fraud in countries such as Serbia, Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan produced scathing denunciations from Washington and US backing for the removal of governments and their replacement with ones more amenable to American strategic interests.

The allegations in Iraq, however, were greeted with denial by the Bush administration and its international allies. White House spokesman Scott McClellan declared the outcome of the referendum to be evidence of the Iraqi peoples' "determination to build a democracy united against extremism and violence". British foreign secretary Jack Straw welcomed it as an "important step in the development of a democratic, stable and inclusive Iraq". Comparable statements were issued from Canberra, Rome, Tokyo and other capitals that have military forces in Iraq.

The reality, however, is that the ratification of the constitution will deepen the military and political crisis already confronting the US-led occupation. Even as the result of the referendum was being announced, the attempts at self-congratulation in Washington were overshadowed by the media focus on the US death toll in Iraq reaching 2,000.

The marginalisation of the Sunni population and other minorities such as the Turkomen, on top of years of brutal repression, guarantees that the armed resistance will continue to grow. In a blunt statement yesterday, Sunni politician Hussein al-Falluji told Reuters: "Our message to the American administration is clear--get out of Iraq or set a timetable for withdrawal or the resistance will keep slaughtering your soldiers until Judgment Day."

Whatever the exact composition of the next Iraqi puppet government formed in the December 15 elections, to be held under the new constitution, it will not be accepted as legitimate. To keep it in power, US imperialism will be driven into more atrocities against Iraqi civilians to suppress support for the insurgency. There are mounting allegations that the occupation forces are relying on Shiite and Kurdish death squads to terrorise the Sunni population, dragging the country closer to a fratricidal civil war.

Already, over 50 percent of Americans oppose the war and support for the Bush administration has plummeted to less than 37 percent. The stench of fraud that hangs over the October 15 ballot can only further discredit Bush's claims that young US soldiers are killing and dying to bring "democracy" to Iraq. The content of the constitution, and the manner in which it has been imposed on the Iraqi people, makes transparent that the agenda behind the 2003 invasion was not "weapons of mass destruction" or "liberation", but to seize control of Iraq's oil reserves and assert US domination in the Middle East.

To achieve these predatory ambitions, there will not be any withdrawal of US troops or any let-up in the rate of American casualties. In recent days, both US spokesman Major General Rick Lych, and a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have predicted that more than 100,000 US troops will be involved in major counterinsurgency operations in Iraq until well into the next decade.

The essential precondition for the Iraqi people to determine their own political future is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US and foreign troops from the country.

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• * *

Iraqi Vote Lights The Fuse

Robert Dreyfuss

October 26, 2005

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.

To no one's surprise, on the day that U.S. deaths in Iraq passed the symbolic 2,000 mark, the U.S.-installed Iraqi government announced, fully 10 days after the October 15 referendum, that voters in Iraq had backed the ersatz constitution. And so now the fuse is lit. Though the vote is being lavishly praised by the spokesmen for the Bush administration, it is in fact the prelude to the final unraveling of Iraq.

No one but the most credulous can believe that the vote tally in Iraq is an accurate one. Province after province racked up Saddam Husseinlike totals, with 95 percent or more of voters in 12 provinces--those heavily populated by Kurds and Shiite Arabs--voting "Yes." In Anbar province, in western Iraq, 97 percent of voters cast "No" ballots, the election commission in Iraq said, and in Salahuddin province, nearly 82 percent voted "No."

The election turned on the mixed provinces of Nineveh and Diyala, where 55 and 48 percent, respectively, also voted "No." Since the referendum would have rejected the constitution had any three provinces voted "No" by a two-thirds majority, the mostly Sunni opponents of the constitution thus failed--at least, if the election commission is to be believed. Naturally, opponents are charging that the vote was rigged--with some merit. Even the Iraqi Islamic Party, a branch of the International Muslim Brotherhood, is claiming that the election in Nineveh was stolen, presumably by mostly Kurdish militiamen who control parts of that mostly Sunni district. (Of course, the idea of calmly looking into allegations of vote fraud in a province where it is unsafe for most people to venture out of their homes is absurd on its face.)

Consider the steps that got Iraq to its current impasse.

The constitution itself was supposed to have been ready by August 1--but it wasn't. Persistent and illegal delays--not vetted by Iraq's parliament--dragged out the debate over the document's most controversial provisions far past the legal deadline. And parliament never got to make a proper vote authorizing the final draft.

There in fact was never a final draft at all. Not only did Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad scramble to provide drafts of entire articles of the constitution in the days and weeks after the August deadline, according to intelligence sources, but the various Iraqi factions squabbled over them until deep into October, up to the very eve of the vote. In fact, virtually no one in Iraq had any idea of what they were actually voting on.

Printed copies of the constitution did not reach Iraqi voters at all, in most cases. Despite assertions by the White House spokesman that "tens of millions" of copies of the constitution were printed and distributed--in a nation with only 15 million total voters!--in fact, hardly any reached voters, especially in disputed or violence-racked areas.

And the civil war and U.S. offensive military operations raged before and during the vote, and then during the drawn-out counting of votes, creating conditions that under no circumstances can be viewed as conducive to anything resembling a democratic process.

The lit fuse is the result of the two factors: First, the
constitution's inherently divisive provisions--an extreme version of federalism, the apportioning of all of Iraq's revenues from newly found oil to provinces that are likely to be controlled by Shiites and Kurds, the institutionalization of Sharia-style Islamic law, and a provision that guarantees an ever-expanding Kurdistan, among others--will lead to intensified Sunni Arab anger. That anger will be made even greater by the fact that Sunni voters so overwhelmingly opposed the constitution, and yet it passed anyway.

And second, promises that were made by Khalilzad and by the ShiiteKurdish alliance that the constitution might be amended by the Iraqi government that takes over after scheduled December 15 elections are fool's gold. The absolute dominance of the Shiite-Kurdish majority will simply combine to vote down any and all efforts to amend the document on behalf of Sunni Arab interests. So, expect anger at the unfairness of the constitutional process to lead to an intensified insurgency, more violence and eventually something that looks a lot like a full-scale civil war.

The potential for violence is made worse by the fact that those Sunnis who did, in fact, support the constitution--such as the Iraqi Islamic Party--now stand discredited. Far more credibility has been retained by the militant Sunni opponents of the constitution. In fact, after its decision to support the draft, the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) in Baghdad and several other cities were bombed, and some IIP branches openly broke with the decision by the party's Baghdad leadership. And so the IIP's decision to support the constitution may have been its final undoing. Meanwhile, the resistance goes on unchecked.

The Bush administration can applaud the approval of the constitution all it wants. But the constitution represents a "landmark day" in Iraq not because it is a step toward democracy, but because it is a step toward civil war.

Article nr. 17191 sent on 27-oct-2005 01:57 ECT

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• * *

                         Money for Nothing
           Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to
            bribe Iraqis and line contractors' pockets.

by Philip Giraldi

The United States invaded Iraq with a high-minded mission: destroy dangerous weapons, bring democracy, and trigger a wave of reform across the Middle East. None of these have happened.

When the final page is written on America's catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure-- corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi'ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

Some of the corruption grew out of the misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq, which meant that a serious reconstruction effort came second to doling out the spoils to the war's most fervent supporters. The CPA brought in scores of bright, young true believers who were nearly universally unqualified. Many were recruited through the Heritage Foundation website, where they had posted their résumés. They were paid six-figure salaries out of Iraqi funds, and most served in 90-day rotations before returning home with their war stories. One such volunteer was Simone Ledeen, daughter of leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate educational training, she nevertheless became a senior advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad. Another was former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer's older brother Michael who, though utterly unqualified, was named director of private-sector development for all of Iraq.

The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 "cashpaks," each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money "off the books," including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or "meter" oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

Thus the country was awash in unaccountable money. British sources report that the CPA contracts that were not handed out to cronies were sold to the highest bidder, with bribes as high as $300,000 being demanded for particularly lucrative reconstruction contracts.

The contracts were especially attractive because no work or results were necessarily expected in return. It became popular to cancel contracts without penalty, claiming that security costs were making it too difficult to do the work. A $500 million power-plant contract was reportedly awarded to a bidder based on a proposal one page long. After a joint commission rejected the proposal, its members were replaced by the minister, and approval was duly obtained. But no plant has been built.

Where contracts are actually performed, their nominal cost is inflated sufficiently to provide handsome bribes for everyone involved in the process. Bribes paid to government ministers reportedly exceed $10 million.

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier's name or provide a good description of him.

Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork. One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag. Three-quarters of a million dollars was stolen from an office safe, and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it "before the Iraqis take over." Nearly $5 billion was shipped from New York in the last month of the CPA. Sources suggest that a deliberate attempt was being made to run down the balance and spend the money while the CPA still had authority and before an Iraqi government could be formed.

The only certified public-accounting firm used by the CPA to monitor its spending was a company called North Star Consultants, located in San Diego, which was so small that it operated out of a private home. It was subsequently determined that North Star did not, in fact, perform any review of the CPA's internal spending controls. Today, no one can account for billions of those dollars or even suggest how the money was spent. And as the CPA no longer exists, there is also little interest in re-examining its transparency or accountability.

Bremer escaped Baghdad by helicopter two days before his proconsulship expired to avoid a possible ambush on the road leading to the airport, which he had been unable to secure. He has recently been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor he shares with ex-CIA Director George "Slam-dunk" Tenet.

Considerable fraud has been alleged regarding American companies, much of which can never be addressed because the Bush administration does not regard contracts with the CPA as pertaining to the U.S. government, even though U.S. taxpayer dollars were involved in some transactions.

Many of the contracts for work in Iraq were awarded on a cost-plus basis, in which an agreed-upon percentage of profit would be added to the actual costs of performing the contract. Such contracts are an invitation to fraud, and unscrupulous companies will make every effort to increase their costs so that the profits will also increase proportionally.

Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, has a no-bid monopoly contract with the Army Corps of Engineers that is now estimated to be worth $10 billion. In June 2005, Pentagon contracting officer Bunny Greenhouse told a congressional
committee that the agreement was the "most blatant and improper contracting abuse" that she had ever witnessed, a frank assessment that subsequently earned her a demotion.

Halliburton has frequently been questioned over its poor record keeping, and critics claim that it has a history of overcharging for its services. In May 1967, a company called RMK/BRJ could not account for $120 million in materiel sent to Vietnam and was investigated several times for overcharging on fuel. RMK/BRJ is now known as KBR or Kellogg, Brown and Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been the focus of congressional, Department of Defense, and General Accountability Office investigations. Defense Contract Audit Agency auditors have questioned Halliburton's charges on a $1.6 billion fuel contract, claiming that the overcharges on the contract exceed $200 million. In one instance, the company charged the Army more than $27 million to transport $82,000 worth of fuel from Kuwait to Iraq. Halliburton has also been accused of billing the Army for 42,000 daily meals for soldiers, though it was only actually serving 14,000. In another operation, KBR purchased fleets of Mercedes trucks at $85,000 each to re-supply U.S. troops. The trucks carried no spare parts or even extra tires for the grueling high-speed run across the Kuwaiti and Iraqi deserts. When the trucks broke down on the highway, they were abandoned and destroyed rather than repaired.

Responding to complaints, Halliburton refused to permit independent auditing and inspected itself using so-called "Tiger Teams." One such team stayed at the five-star Kuwait Kempinski Hotel while it was doing its audit, running up a bill of more than $1 million that was passed on to U.S. taxpayers.

Another U.S. firm well connected to the Bush White House, Custer Battles, has provided security services to the coalition, receiving $11 million in Iraqi funds including $4 million in cash in a solesource contract to supply security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had never provided airport security before receiving the contract. It also received a $21 million no-bid contract to provide security for the exchange of Iraqi currency. It has been alleged that much of the currency "replaced" by Custer Battles has never been accounted for. The company also allegedly took over abandoned Iraqiowned forklifts at the airport, repainted them, and then leased them back to the airport authority through a company set up in the Cayman Islands. Custer Battles reportedly set up a number of shell companies in offshore tax havens in Lebanon, Cyprus, and the Cayman Islands to handle the cash flow.

Two former company managers turned whistleblowers have charged that the company defrauded the U.S. government of at least $50 million. The Bush administration's Justice Department has only reluctantly, and under pressure from a Newsweek exposé, supported the rights of the plaintiffs in the case. The White House has indicated that it is not interested in assisting other investigations of fraud in Iraqi contracting, preferring to regard the CPA as a "multinational entity" and thereby limiting its vulnerability in American courts.

Another American contractor, CACI International, which was involved in the Abu Ghraib interrogations, was accused by the GAO in April 2004 of having failed to keep records on hours of work that it was billing for and of routinely upgrading employee job descriptions so that more could be charged per employee per hour. Both are apparently common practices among contractors in Iraq, and audits routinely determine that there is little in the way of paperwork to support billings. The GAO report also confirms that many private security contractors in Iraq have been charging the U.S. government exorbitant fees for their services, frequently because the contracts allow security costs to be rolled into the overall cost of the contract without being itemized. In one case, contract security guards were effectively being billed at $33,000 per guard per month while the average rate for a security specialist worked out to between $13,000 and $20,000 per month.

The CPA also spread its largesse around the U.S. armed forces, distributing over $600 million in cash to four regional commanders to fund reconstruction projects as part of the Commanders' Emergency Response Program. An audit of one region disclosed that 80 percent of the funds could not be accounted for, and more that $7 million in cash was missing. It is widely believed that many of the contracting agents working under the regional commands literally stole the money. In one reported instance, an American contracting officer doubled the price of a multimillion-dollar contract and brazenly explained that the extra money would be for his retirement fund.

Unfortunately, the corruption of the occupation outlived the departure of Paul Bremer and the demise of the CPA. A recent high-level investigation of the Iraqi interim government concluded that the corruption is now so pervasive as to be irreversible. One prominent businessman estimates that 95 percent of all business activity involves some form of bribery or kickback. The bureaucrats and fixers who live off of bribery are referred to by ordinary Iraqis as "Ali Babas," named after the character in The Thousand and One Nights who was able to access riches from a treasure cave by saying "open sesame." For the average Iraqi businessman, there was formerly only one hand out, that of Saddam's designated minion. Now every hand is out. The educated and entrepreneurial are leaving the country in droves, as is most of the beleaguered Christian minority. Huge government appropriations are approved by Iraqi lawmakers and then simply disappear. Meanwhile, life for the average Iraqi does not improve, and oil production, water supplies, and electricity generation are all at lower levels than they were when the U.S. took control in 2003. The only thing that everyone knows is that all the money is gone and daily life in Iraq is worse than it was under Saddam Hussein.

The undocumented cash flow continued long after the CPA folded. Over $1.5 billion was disbursed to interim Iraqi ministries without any accounting, and more than $1 billion designated for provincial treasuries never made it out of Baghdad. More than $430 million in contracts issued by the Petroleum Ministry were unsupported by any documentation, and $8 billion were given to government ministries that had no financial controls in place. Nearly all of it disappeared, spent on "payroll," wages for "ghost employees" in the Ministries of the Interior and Defense. In one case, an Army brigade receiving money to support 2,200 men was found to have fewer than 300 effectives. 602 actual guards at the Ministry of the Interior were billed as more than 8,200 for payroll purposes.

Iraqi Airways carried 2,400 employees even though it had not operated for over a year and had no planes. The airline itself was sold to an unidentified buyer without any paperwork to show for how much it was sold and what assets were included. It has been alleged that the buyer might well have been Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi.

Nearly all payrolls in the national guard and national police were also inflated, leading to uncertainty over how large the security forces actually were--still an open question. Absentees from the nominal rolls of police and soldiers provided by government ministries are believed to number in the tens of thousands, and as the United States Congress has figured out, frequently cited figures on available trained manpower are largely imaginary.

Even the "coalition of the willing" partners have been quick to cash in. Polish helicopters purchased as part of a $300 million deal with arms maker Bumar Ltd. were found to be obsolete, largely unflyable, and were actually rejected by the Iraqis. Bullets purchased from Poland by the Defense Ministry cost three times the normal international price. Five Polish peacekeepers have been arrested for demanding $90,000 in bribes. Both British and American soldiers have also demanded bribes from shopkeepers and travelers.

In yet another instance of take-it-while-you-can, a senior Interior Ministry official flew to Beirut in a helicopter accompanied by $10 million in newly printed Iraqi dinars. He has yet to return. Interim Iraqi President Iyad Allawi's Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan transferred $500 million to a bank account in Lebanon, allegedly to buy weapons, in a case that continues to be murky. Shaalan is reportedly vacationing abroad and has not returned to Iraq. A Bremer favorite at the Defense Ministry, Ziad Tareq Cattan, was responsible for a number of shady arms-procurement deals. A warrant has been issued for his arrest, an unusual occurrence, and he is avoiding detention by staying with family in Erbil in Kurdistan.

Countless billions will never be accounted for, and the full cost of corruption has yet to be tallied. Sources report that much of the money that was designated for the development of a national army and police force is actually going to units that are exclusively Kurd or Shi'ite in expectation of a day of reckoning over the country's oil supplies. The Kurds have made no secret of their desire to continue their autonomy-bordering-on-independence and have stated that they regard Kirkuk as their own. The Shi'ites have possession of the oilproducing region to the south and are using their control of the Interior Ministry to fill police ranks with their own pro-Iranian Badr Brigade members as well as militiamen drawn from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. The Sunnis are the odd men out, virtually guaranteeing that, far from becoming the model democracy the U.S. set out to build, Iraq will descend deeper into chaos--aided in no small part by the culture of corruption we helped to fortify.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.

October 24, 2005 Issue

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/print/coverprint.html

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