Twin challenges of peace and development: UN & global development-II

THE United Nations, being the only representative body with universal recognition and authority, has an obligation under its Charter to address the twin challenges of peace and development. While its performance in terms of global peace and security has been held hostage by power politics and political expediencies, its activities in the area of economic and social development have made a difference.

Through a series of its major conferences and summits, the UN has built a normative framework of internationally agreed development goals and commitments and established its role in global macroeconomic policy-making. It is also seeking to address the challenges of globalization by evolving new norms of international cooperation and forging a partnership for poverty eradication and sustainable development among all relevant governmental, non-governmental and institutional stakeholders.

In this pursuit, the UN provides an inter-governmental forum for dialogue and decision on the whole range of global development agenda. In this process, it has been able to engage not only the member governments but also all relevant non-state actors including multilateral institutions and civil society. This multilateral approach has been followed through the relevant organs and bodies of the UN, namely, the General Assembly in regular and special sessions and its Second Committee, and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) along with its subsidiary bodies.

The UN’s global conferences have essentially served a dual purpose: first, addressing global issues that could not be dealt with from a national perspective alone, and second, establishing a pattern of pluralistic diplomacy, which has not only supplemented conventional diplomacy but also set in motion what could be described as “new multilateralism”. In both cases, the UN, in its universally representative capacity, assumes a special role and importance in the process of transformation of the global consensus on development into reality.

The major UN conferences of the 1990s included the World Summit on Children (New York, 1990), the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), the UN Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), the UN Conference on Habitat (Istanbul 1996) and the World Food Summit (Rome, 1996). Most of these conferences were followed by their five-year reviews, which highlighted the need to give new impetus to the realization of the agreed goals and objectives.

Since the beginning of this millennium, the development agenda has been brought into sharper focus through the Millennium Summit (New York, 2000), the International Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey, 2002) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002). The goals and objectives emanating from these three landmark events are closely linked with the key objectives agreed upon at other major UN conferences and summits.

The Millennium Summit in September 2000 provided a new direction to the UN for adapting this organization to the needs of the 21st Century. In their Millennium Declaration, the world leaders, while reaffirming their faith in the UN and its Charter, committed themselves to certain fundamental values (freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility) in pursuit of a better world in the new century. They acknowledged that the responsibility for “managing worldwide economic and social development, as well as threats to international peace and security, must be shared among all nations of the world and should be exercised multilaterally. In this regard, they recognized the centrality of the UN’s role.

The International Conference on Financing for Development at Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002 was a timely initiative to help mobilize international cooperation in six key areas of development finance: aid, trade, debt, investment, domestic resources and international financial, monetary and trading systems. This was the first- ever international conference under UN auspices on global macroeconomic policy development which for years had been seen as the exclusive domain of the Bretton Woods institutions and WTO.

The conference outcome, known as Monterrey Consensus, presents a comprehensive framework of global response to the challenges of financing for development. The document is neither a charter of demands from the developing world, nor a list of conditionalities by the developed countries. It is essentially meant to evolve a new development paradigm based on mutually beneficial cooperation through partnership and interdependence.

The WSSD in Johannesburg (August 26 - September 4,2002) was meant to review the 10-year performance in implementing sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Summit and to develop a new action-oriented plan for meeting the challenges of poverty and environmental degradation.

It was not expected to produce any miracles and, as an implementation-focused summit, was essentially aimed at reinforcing the international will and commitment for attainment of the agreed sustainable development goals. It adopted a 50-page “plan of implementation”, proposing practical and sustained steps to address many of the world’s most pressing problems.

From the outcomes of these major three UN conferences, it is evident that trade and development are inseparable. This was also acknowledged at the fourth session of the WTO ministerial conference in Doha in November 2001. The work programme established in Doha sought to bring more specific focus on issues of direct concern to developing countries in the WTO’s trade negotiations and other activities. These include implementation of previous General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and WTO agreements, decisions and understandings, particularly on non-discriminatory access to products of developing countries (agriculture, textiles and clothing).

In recent years, there has been a growing concern in the developing countries on the deep damage done to their societies and economies by corruption of officials and public leaders and movement of illicitly acquired funds across borders. Besides corruption, crime, including the drug trade and human trafficking, is another source of funds that are being laundered in large scales. Mostly, banking facilities in the developed world and their offshore affiliates are benefiting from these funds.

The UN General Assembly has initiated negotiations to create a broad and effective international convention against corruption. The convention will address corruption in all its aspects and will seek, inter alia, to prevent and combat the transfer of funds of illicit origin derived from acts of corruption, including the laundering of funds, and returning such funds to the countries of their origin. Developing countries have a direct stake in the proposed convention and are expected to play an active role in the negotiations, which should be completed by the end of 2003.

At the UN, in recent years, there has been widely shared anxiety about the slow progress in implementation of the outcomes of the major UN conferences and summits. The era of promise must now yield to the performance phase lest the momentum of international engagement is lost. To ensure this transition from promise to performance, the follow-up process would require: recognition of the country ownership both for implementation and capacity-building, coordinated measures at the national, regional and global levels, well-integrated and coordinated monitoring of progress at inter-governmental and organizational levels, effective and coherent inter-governmental oversight supported by efficient secretariat machinery throughout the UN system, and innovative ways of engaging development actors outside the UN system, particularly civil society, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.

While governments have put in place national implementation and follow-up strategies, there is no regional effort for coordination in the follow-up processes. At the global level, the follow-up processes are somewhat staggered in various parts of the UN system. Even the intergovernmental deliberations in various UN forums are duplicative, unfocused, and sometimes inconsistent and incoherent. For instance, the issue of poverty eradication is discussed and dealt with in various intergovernmental bodies and by various parts of the system. Most of the times, same positions are repeated resulting in avoidable overlap and redundancy. Similarly, hard-core economic issues like trade, external debt and investment are spread all over the place. This not only causes dissipation of UN resources but also dilutes the message and impact on the outside world.

Since 1995, an effort has been made in the ECOSOC to promote an integrated and coordinated approach in the follow-up to the outcomes of the major UN conferences and summits by focusing on crosscutting thematic issues common to the outcomes of all major UN conferences and summits. A set of key crosscutting issues was identified on the basis of their overarching scope and has since been used by the ECOSOC for thematic consideration of the follow-up and implementation of the conference outcomes in its coordination and high-level segments.

A coordinated approach built around common themes and goals would help avoid duplication and overlap and also contribute to mutual reinforcement through joint actions at the national, regional and international levels. Sectoral approaches do not capture the full picture of development. Contrary to ill-founded apprehensions on the part of Group of 77 (developing countries and China), a coordinated approach is neither an attempt to promote any “super-agenda” over and above the existing agendas emanating from the major UN conferences, nor an exercise in setting priorities other than those established within the framework of the conferences themselves.

In order to promote systemwide coordination and integration in the conferences’ follow-up, the UN General Assembly established in December 2002, an open-ended working group (consisting of the entire UN membership), which after long discussions completed its work last month. On the basis of its recommendations, the General Assembly has adopted a comprehensive resolution, which only partially addresses the requirements of coordination and integration in the follow-up mechanisms and procedures within the UN system.

There are no quick fixes in meeting the challenges of development and sustained efforts through coordination at all levels are needed to pursue the agreed goals and targets. In pursuing implementation of the outcomes of the major UN conferences and summits, an effective, focused and result-oriented follow-up is critical. It is also important that all governmental, non-governmental and institutional stakeholders honour their commitments and the international community engages itself, with sincerity of purpose, in the global partnership for sustainable development and poverty eradication.

Every country, developed or developing, must contribute to creating an environment, at the national and global levels alike, which is conducive to development.

However, the developing world must recognize that without durable peace within and between countries, and in the absence of good governance “within countries and at the international level”; the goal of their sustainable development will remain elusive. Peace, democracy and development are mutually reinforcing and must, therefore, be pursued together in all developing countries.

The writer, a former foreign secretary and permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, is currently Senior Consultant to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Some possible pitfalls

IN LAST week’s column I wrote about the prospect of the possible return of a fairly brisk rate of growth to the Pakistani economy. I had compared the country’s economy to a tightly wound spring, which, when released, could bounce forward. A rate of growth of six to seven per cent a year for the next decade is within the economy’s reach. With luck, the GDP growth rate could go up to as high as eight per cent in some years if the weather is good and the international economic environment supportive.

Is it unrealistically optimistic to project a growth rate of up to eight per cent during good years? Not necessarily so. We need only to look at India’s growth record over the last two and a half decades to suggest that an increase in GDP of this magnitude is possible in countries with significant amounts of suppressed growth. Pakistan is in the same situation today as India was in the early 1990s. Like India it could also experience a growth spurt and make it last for a while with supportive policies and a favourable domestic environment.

It would be wrong to assume that the state of nirvana has been achieved. There are still some pitfalls the economy could confront as it begins to move forward. I promised to elaborate on two of these in this week’s column. The most serious is the difficulties the economy could run into and the prospect of another political crisis. Such a crisis, were it to develop, will not only deflect the attention of the policymakers in Islamabad; it will also discourage new investments in the economy. We know from our experience how difficult it is to make good economic policy and invite investors to take risks when the political system is dysfunctional. To make the system work requires what the Americans are now calling the process of nation-building. Pakistan is still at the beginning stage of that process.

Poor state of law and order and an inefficient legal and judicial system is another obstacle that may slow down the rate of economic recovery. A great deal of attention is required in this area to create an investor friendly environment. I will deal with each of these two constraints in turn.

First, the possibility of return of political instability. Let me start with a bit of history. The term nation-building had gained considerable currency in the fifties and sixties as scores of new states that had gained independence from colonial rule began to define themselves. In the seventies and eighties, interest in this process on the part of development practitioners flagged as the global economy wrestled with a number of economic problems, including inflation, a sharp increase in the price of oil, and the problem of debt that ruined a number of developing economies. In the 1990s, attention shifted to the socialist countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a score of countries, liberated from the control of Moscow, began the difficult process of making the transition to market-based economic systems.

The area of development has been subject to fads. Nation-building is now back in fashion — largely the result of America’s preoccupation with the dangers to the global system which many Washington-based policymakers attribute to the Islamic world’s underdeveloped political systems. A number of them have concluded that America and the West will have to get the world of Islam to develop politically and socially in order to save themselves from the “nine-eleven” types of horrors. Once regime changes had been brought about in Kabul and Baghdad, the administration of President George W. Bush began the process of nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq. That process is not going too well for the reason that the goals that were to be achieved were never clearly defined.

What does nation-building actually involve? Does it mean democratization of the political system by introducing representative forms of government in countries that have only seen authoritarian rule? Or does it mean that the laborious and time-consuming effort aimed at building institutions without which democracy cannot take root? Or, again, does it mean concentrating mostly on providing people with basic needs and services before inviting them to proceed to the polling booth?

It is important to answer these questions, particularly in the context of Pakistan and at a time when the country seems set to revive economic growth. One major problem Pakistan’s economy could run into is the possibility of another structural failure in the political system. President Pervez Musharraf and his colleagues are wrestling with the crisis created by the opposition’s refusal to accept the Legal Framework Order which constitutes the backbone of the system of political checks and balances the military is attempting to introduce in the country. It was General Musharraf’s wish to prevent another constitutional crisis in the country that prompted him to create a role for the military in the system. This is not acceptable to the political groups that oppose him in the National Assembly elected in October 2002.

Given Pakistan’s past history, there is a real danger that politics may cause the economy to stumble again. And, given the fact that after three years of hard work by Islamabad, the economy is on the verge of a possible take-off, it would be unfortunate if this opportunity is sacrificed at the altar of politics. If the military under the direction of President Musharraf has to choose between economic stability and growth on the one hand and a quick return of democracy on the other, it must choose the former.

It is interesting that after 9/11 even the liberal community in the West that had actively espoused the cause of democracy in the developing world has begun to develop serious doubts about the wisdom of forcing change at a pace faster than permitted by local circumstances. In a widely read book, Fareed Zakaria, a member of the liberal establishment, has presented a convincing case for adopting a more measured approach in introducing democracy in developing countries. I will discuss in greater detail in a future article Zakaria’s thesis. At this time, I just want to underscore the important point that the recent experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have led even those who have always voted for democracy as the best form of government in all societies to begin to talk about a phased approach.

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Hendrik Herzberg drew an interesting lesson for nation-building in the developing world from the history of Chicago. “The quintessential city that works is, of course, Chicago. The ward heelers and alderman of that city understand that political power flows not from the barrel of a gun and not even necessarily from the ballot box, but from the ability to fix potholes. Garbage that gets collected, buses and trains that take people to places, cops that whack bad guys upside the head, taps that yield water when you turn them on, lights that go on when you flip the switch, all lubricated by taxes and a bit of honest graft — these are what keep streets calm, voters pacified, and righteous reformers out of City Hall.”

Much the same point was made to me in a conversation by a senior member of the new political administration in Islamabad. “When I go campaigning in the streets I notice people don’t worry about Pakistan’s foreign policy or about the way America is treating the Muslim world. They don’t even talk about Kashmir. They are not even bothered by a little bit of corruption on the part of poorly paid government officials. Their main concern is with the availability of services — health, education, clean water, reliable electric power, city lights — they expect from the government and their representatives. If you don’t meet their expectations they will ... switch their votes [away from you] and go for a new face. If you deny them these services for a long time, they will get sufficiently agitated and throw out the entire system.”

It is precisely the services that The New Yorker wrote about and the Islamabad-based politician talked about suffered in Pakistan during the chaotic nineties. They will suffer again if the opposition to General Musharraf manages to have its way. Another politically induced economic downturn will, ultimately, cause grievous damage to politics and set the prospects of democracy’s eventual return back by years. At this moment in time what Pakistan needs the most is economic growth and all its attendant benefits.

The second pitfall the economy faces is the prospect that investment, both domestic and foreign, may not come back in the amounts needed for sustained growth. Uncertainty is the enemy of investment and nothing produces greater uncertainty than the prospect of danger to life and property. That danger may not be real; it has only to be apprehended by the investor to become reluctant to risk his capital.

There is a widely held perception, particularly outside the country, that Pakistan is not a safe place in which to do business; that the state is unable to provide adequate protection to the lives and assets of business people, particularly foreigners; that the legal and judicial systems are difficult to work to enforce contracts; that the country, in spite of all the efforts made by the government of President Musharraf, has turned xenophobic. The fact that the US State Department’s “travel advisory” still applies to Pakistan does not help remove this perception.

Pakistan is no more violent than a number of other developing countries which continue to attract foreign investors. In the case of Pakistan, however, reports of violence in the western press invariably get put in the context of the activities of such anti-western groups as Al Qaeda. It is important for the country to acquire an image that is less negative for it to attract foreign direct investment.

A sense of insecurity about life and property also inhibits investment by domestic entrepreneurs. In their case, however, poorly functioning legal and regulatory systems are more problematic. Foreign investors can always rely on courts and arbitration mechanisms outside the country. These options are not available to local businesses. These problems need the government’s attention for domestic and foreign investment to increase by significant amounts, a condition that must be met for the economy to grow at the rate for which it clearly has the potential.

Pakistan’s economic future lies in the hands of the new generation of politicians who took office after the elections of October 2002. The fact that they participated in the elections is an indication that they accepted the system under which they were held. The fact that the economy has begun to grow is an indication that political stability produces economic rewards. Disturbing it will only create another period of political chaos and economic stagnation. These are not what the people of Pakistan deserve at such a crucial time in their history.

Reinforcing failure

TONY BLAIR could have said a year, a month, a week, a day and even an hour. But 45 minutes was a precise figure. It conveyed calculation and accuracy. We can all relate to 45 minutes. That’s how long it takes to get from Piccadilly to Heathrow Airport.

The danger from Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction was elevated from imminent to here and now. Bush, on the other hand, observed with impeccable logic that they couldn’t wait till mushroom clouds appeared over American cities. Thus there was an urgency to take out Saddam Hussain who sat in one of his palaces in Baghdad, his finger on the button, itching to press the button that would send nukes flying to London and New York.

There are two scenarios here. One that Saddam Hussain possessed weapons of mass destruction. But then so too do other countries including Britain and the United States and more importantly Israel. There is about Israel’s weapons of mass destruction a stony silence though there is a great deal of concern about Iran and North Korea. The second scenario was the willingness, if not eagerness, of Saddam Hussain to unleash these weapons, something that would become academic if he did not have weapons of mass destruction.

The plot thickens. The United States and Britain had once been ‘allies’ of Saddam Hussain and can be said to have been partners-in-crime when he gassed his own people. They knew, better than others, the nature of the beast. Both the United States and Britain are democracies and they cannot mount a cavalry charge without the tacit approval of their people.

In this day and age of total media management, it is not too difficult to create a climate of fear. The spin-doctors use all the tools of witch-doctors, superstitions, incantations, hocus pocus but spin-doctors have technology available to them and are, therefore, more glib, more sophisticated in their misrepresentations and outright fudging.

It is said that no one has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. Even ‘a good enough memory’ is no longer enough for we now have video-tapes. Blair now says, it was not weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussain had but programmes for weapons of mass destruction. I find it confusing.

Was it weapons or programmes that Saddam Hussain was about to launch? Blair is sticking to his guns (or is it programmes?) and has an independent source for the intelligence that Saddam Hussain was trying to buy uranium from Niger and this intelligence was not shared with the Americans.

Bush has taken the easy way out. He has declared the case closed. Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Rome has spoken, the case is concluded. The CIA Director has taken the fall and we are told that he is an honourable man. National Security Adviser Ms Condolezza Rice has appeared on numerous television talk-shows to convince the American public that the CIA made an honest error and there was no attempt to mislead the American public and what’s a little fib when the world has been rid of Saddam Hussain and the Iraqis have been liberated and are about to walk through the pearly gates of a heaven of democracy.

Since Rome was not built in a day, a heaven of democracy will take longer and American troops will have to stay, perhaps for four years according to General Tommy Franks. Meanwhile, an Iraqi Advisory Council has been set up, all good men (and women) hand-picked by the Americans, so reminiscent of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in the 1930s of the British Raj, not self-government but the first step in the journey of a thousand miles.

What has been happening to intelligence is that the remedy has been prescribed for a disease that has not been identified. This is in the style of Anthony Trollope’s Mr Turnbull who, having predicted evil consequences “was now doing his best in his power to bring about the verification of his own prophecies.” George Tenet has accepted full responsibility for the ‘gaffe’ in President Bush’s State of the Union address.

I am reminded of the story of an American tourist in Trafalgar Square and his guide points to Nelson’s Column and says with obvious pride, “that’s the man who made Britain what it is today.” The American responds: “It seems unfair to blame it on one man.” The Niger-uranium bit had been excised by the CIA in an earlier speech President Bush had made in Cincinatti. Yet it found its way back. Intelligence becomes less than useless when it is politicised.

Is it an intelligence failure that the Americans and British now find themselves bogged down in Iraq and are increasingly facing the prospect of a protracted guerilla-war? In the Korean war, the Americans failed to heed the warning that the Chinese would intervene if their forces crossed the Yalu River.

The Kennedy brothers were convinced that there would be a mass uprising against Castro if exiles with American military support were to land on the beaches in Cuba. Instead, there was the Bay of Pigs.

Intelligence failure or a political decision gone sour? So rosy were the reports that were being sent from Vietnam that victory was just round the corner and then came the Tet Offensive startling the policy-makers into the realization that the war was not being won, it was being lost. The solution was sending in more troops, reinforcing failure. It is now being paraded that getting rid of Saddam Hussain far outweighs finding weapons of mass destruction. Stalin was no less a brutal tyrant than Saddam Hussain. But not just the military but the people of Russia fought tooth and nail against the German invaders, not in order to save communism but their motherland. It is given to all of us to learn from history or treat it as bunk.

The principal intelligence failure in Iraq was to misread Iraqi nationalism, the same mistake that was made in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh may have been a communist but he was also a nationalist and the Vietnamese who fought so fiercely and valiantly did so to protect their hamlets and villages and towns. Military force was singularly inappropriate for winning hearts. Not many, if any, Viet Cong had read Karl Marx. Saddam Hussain has gone but who is to say another will not be propped up, Diem assassinated and replaced by Nguyen Van Thieu. That too was reinforcing failure.

Too many White House lies

“WORSE than a crime, it was a blunder,” was how the cynical French minister Talleyrand famously described Napoleon’s murder of the Duke d’Enghien. The same may be said of President George Bush’s attempts to murder the leader of a sovereign nation, Saddam Hussein, and his foolhardy eagerness to invade Iraq.

Thanks to Bush’s blundering, nearly 50 per cent of US army combat units are now stuck in a spreading guerilla war in Iraq, costing four billion dollars monthly, that is becoming the biggest, most expensive, and bloodiest foreign mess since Vietnam. This when the US is threatening military action against North Korea.

As the furor in Washington grows over Bush’s admission of false claims about Iraqi uranium imports from Niger in his keynote state of the union address, administration officials are viciously blaming one another.

George Tenet, CIA’s overly meek director, became the fall-guy for the uranium fiasco, though he repeatedly warned the White House its claims were unsubstantiated. Blame rightly belongs to Bush himself, and to his woefully inadequate national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

Either Bush and Ms Rice knew the uranium story was a lie, or they were unfit for high office. Uranium ore is no more threatening than cake mix. To weaponize it, ore must be laboriously transformed into uranium hexafluoride gas, then separated and enriched in huge, highly visible plants, equipped with ‘cascades’ of thousands of high-speed centrifuges. The US knew conclusively there were no such nuclear plants in Iraq. French intelligence warned the Niger story was bogus.

Nor had Iraq any means of delivering nuclear or biowarfare weapons. In short, zero offensive capability, and zero threat. At the time, Bush critics, including this columnist, dismissed as nonsense his claims that Iraq was an “imminent threat” to the US. We were denounced as ‘un-patriotic’ and ‘friends of Saddam’ in the pro-war press. Former UN inspector Scott Ritter, who challenged White House lies, was vilified and smeared with loathsome personal attacks by the neo-con media.

The fake Niger uranium story apparently came from Vice-President Dick Cheney’s hawkish chief of staff, Lewis Libby, and the Pentagon’s Paul Wolfowitz, both friends of Israel’s Likud Party, and was approved by Rice. Three days before the US invasion of Iraq, Cheney actually claimed Iraq “has reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

As the Niger uranium scandal grows, it is increasingly clear the White House’s campaign to drive Americans into an unjustified, unnecessary war had nothing to do with Iraq’s alleged weapons nor its internal repression.

Bush’s jihad against Iraq was designed to assuage Americans’ fury and fear over 9/11 by making Saddam Hussein a whipping boy for the attack in which he had no part. The jolly little wars against Afghanistan and Iraq were also designed to make Americans forget that the Bush White House had been caught napping by the 9/11 attacks, and was deeply involved with the huge Enron financial disaster.

Who now remembers that witch-hunting Attorney-General John Ashcroft actually cut spending on ant-terrorism before 9/11, or that Washington was giving millions to the Taliban until four months before 9/11?

How better to get Americans to support a war than by insinuating, as did Bush, that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, and claiming Iraq was about to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction. A pre-emptive attack on Iraq was urgent to save America, insisted Bush.

A weak-kneed Congress and credulous public went along with White House warmongering, while the spineless UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and arms inspector, Hans Blix, wriggled like jellyfish. Most Democrats, including current presidential candidates, joined Bush’s lynch mob.

It was not just the Niger canard. A torrent of lies that would have made Dr Goebbels envious poured from the administration, all aimed at justifying a war of aggression, thwarting the UN Security Council, ending UN inspections in Iraq, crushing a foe of Israel, and grabbing Iraq’s oil riches.

Virtually all administration claims about Iraq’s weapons had been disproved by UN inspectors before Bush went to war. Exposed as fakery: the drones of death; aluminium tubes for centrifuges; chemical munitions bunkers; mobile germ labs; hidden Scuds; links to Al Qaeda and ‘poison camps;’ Saddam’s smallpox; Saddam’s secret nuclear programme. And the biggest lie of all, Bush’s absurd claims there was “no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” and that it “threatened all mankind.”

Thanks to the shameful complicity of the US media, which amplified White House propaganda, 75 per cent of Americans were led to believe Iraq attacked the US on 9/11, and was in league with Al Qaeda. Bush’s faux war on terrorism was re-directed, by clever White House spin, into a hugely popular campaign against Iraq. The failure to kill Osama bin Laden was covered up by the rush to murder Saddam.

The torrent of lies produced by the Bush White House and its neo-conservative, pro-Israeli allies would be farcical were it not for the deaths of so many Americans and Iraqis.

Of course, all politicians lie, but lying one’s country into an unnecessary war is an outrage, a crime, and an impeachable offence. — Copyright Eric S. Margolis, 2003.