Axis of Weasel

Azerbic launches a new category today: Tales from the Crypt. Here's where I remind people -- and media types who may have forgotten -- of relevant stories from the past. To begin, a 2003 Guardian report on U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's involvement with nuclear reactor components being sold to ... drum roll please! ... North Korea.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.

The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west.

The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive, Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement" with the communist government.

The company also opened an office in the country's capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Mr Rumsfeld's office said that the de fence secretary did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time".

In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors".

And how is this relevant?

You need to ask?

Which leads me to this bit of even ancienter history.

Donald Rumsfeld chaired the space commission, which released its report on January 11, 2001. Rumsfeld’s staff director was Stephen Cambone, who became the first-ever undersecretary of defense for intelligence in March 2003. Two years previously Rumsfeld had chaired another congressionally mandated commission to assess rogue nation capacity to threaten the U.S. homeland with ballistic missiles. (2) The space commission is often referred to as the second Rumsfeld commission. Like the first commission, the more recent commission echoed the alarmism about national security threats propagated by right-wing groups such as the Center for Security Policy.

The commission concluded that it is “possible to project power through and from space in response to events anywhere in the world.…Having this capability would give the U.S. a much stronger deterrent and, in a conflict, an extraordinary military advantage.” The Rumsfeld space commission argued in Orwellian style that because the United States is without peer among “space-faring” nations, the country is all the more vulnerable to “state and non-state actors hostile to the United States and its interests.” In other words, U.S. enemies would seek to destroy the U.S. economy together with its ability to fight high-tech wars by attacking global-positioning satellites and other “space assets,” which would effectively result in a “Space Pearl Harbor.” (3)

The list of members of the Rumsfeld space commission reads like a Who’s Who of space weapons enthusiasts, military hard-liners, and military-industrial complex insiders.

Amazing what a couple of minutes of Googling can produce in the connect-the-dots department.

Feel free to send your Tales from the Crypt anytime to az@thestar.ca. All submissions I use will win minor recognition right here on this blog seen every day by, um, thousands.

Comments

[Kevin Wilson]

Beauty Zerb...without further ado, I offer up the following, culled from one of the best sites around for such stuff--The Centre for Co-operative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org.

With respect to all the hue and cry by the administration about those weapons of mass destruction that weren't found...This one's always bugged me, not least of all because of where Team Saddam's expertise came from--the good ol' U.S of A!
Here's an excerpt of a 2003 exchange between a reporter and then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer that I think sums it up quite nicely...

January 21, 2003
Corpwatch reporter Russell Mokhiber asks White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer to comment on a January 17 op-ed piece in the International Herald Tribune (see January 17, 2003) which criticized the Bush administration for its hypocritical condemnation of Iraq’s 1988 poison gas attacks on Halabja (see March 1988). [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “You and the president have repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. The biggest such attack was in Halabja in March 1988, where some 6,800 Kurds were killed. Last week, in an article in the International Herald Tribune, Joost Hiltermann writes that while it was Iraq that carried out the attack, the United States at the time, fully aware that it was Iraq, accused Iran. This was apparently part of the US tilt toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. The tilt included billions of dollars in loan guarantees. Sensing he had carte blanche, Saddam escalated his resort to gas warfare—graduating to ever more lethal agents. So, you and the president have said that Saddam has repeatedly gassed his own people. Why do you leave out the part that the United States in effect gave Saddam the green light?” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Ari Fleischer - “Russell, I speak for President George W. Bush in the year 2003. If you have a question about statements that were purportedly made by the administration in 1988, you need to address those somewhere other than this White House. I can’t speak for that. I don’t know if it is accurate, inaccurate, but you have all the means to ask those questions yourself.” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that a number of major American corporations—including Hewlett-Packard and Bechtel —helped Saddam Hussein beef up its military in the 1980s. And also the Washington Post, last month in a front-page article by Michael Dobbs said the United States during the ’80s supplied Iraq with cluster bombs, intelligence and chemical and biological agents. In that same article, they reported that Donald Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense, went to Baghdad in December 1983 and met with Saddam Hussein, and this was at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons almost on a daily basis in defiance of international conventions. So there are some specifics, and the question is—if Iraq is part of the axis of evil, why aren’t the United States and these American corporations part of the axis of evil for helping him out during his time of need?” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Ari Fleischer - “Russell, as I indicated, I think that you have to make a distinction between chemical and biological. And, clearly, in a previous era, following the fall of the Shah of Iran, when there was a focus on the risks that were underway in the region as a result of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, different administrations, beginning with President Carter, reached different conclusions about the level of military cooperation vis-a-vis Iraq. Obviously, Saddam Hussein since that time has used whatever material he had for the purpose therefore of attacking Kuwait, attacking Saudi Arabia, attacking Israel. And, obviously, as circumstances warrant, we have an approach that requires now the world to focus on the threat that Saddam Hussein presents and that he presents this threat because of his desire to continue to acquire weapons and his willingness to use those weapons against others.” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “If I could follow up on that—” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Ari Fleischer - “Russell. Russell.” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “If I could follow-up on it. You and the president have repeatedly said one of the reasons Saddam is part of the axis of evil is because he’s gassed his own people. Well, he gassed his own people with our help. You saw the Washington Post, article, didn’t you, by Michael Dobbs?” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Ari Fleischer - “I think that statement is not borne out by the facts.” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “Did you see the Post, article by Dobbs?” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Ari Fleischer - “I think that he gassed his own people as a result of his decisions to use his weapons to gas his own people.” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “But who gave him the weapons?” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Ari Fleischer - “And I think the suggestion that you blame America for Iraq’s actions is way beyond the pale.” [White House, 1/21/2003]
Mokhiber - “Who gave him the weapons?” [White House, 1/21/2003] (Ari moves on.) [White House, 1/21/2003]

[Antonia Z.]

Woo-hoo. That's a keeper.

[Kevin Wilson]

Hasn't Oceania always been at war with Eastasia? Or is it Eurasia? I'm always getting 'em mixed up lol!

[Bill-Muskoka]

And some wonder why I have the opinions I do?

Keep digging Antonia, because with each revelation of fact the light keeps getting brighter.

This very tired out one is headed to relaxation. Laters!