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UPDATES: December 22, 2004
Dear Friends,
We wish you warmth and happiness this holiday season. Thanks to all of you for your work for disarmament, arms control, and a saner U.S. foreign policy.
In this short email update we pay tribute to Seymour Melman, the great disarmament economist, and provide links to some of our recent writing and analysis.
Happy New Year,
In this update:
I. RIP: Seymour Melman, 1917-2004
II. THE REAL SCANDAL
III. THE MISSILE DEFENSE TEST THAT WASN’T
I. RIP: Seymour Melman
1917-2004
The author of "The Permanent War Economy" and "Pentagon Capitalism" is dead. Seymour Melman, economist, writer, professor of industrial engineering, and gadfly of the military industrial complex, died in his Manhattan home on December 16, 2004.
His books, articles and speeches helped change the way Americans think about defense, security and military spending. In "The Permanent War Economy," first published in 1974, Melman carefully calculates "civilian military trade-offs," like:
460 meals for the homeless in Grand Central Terminal = $439.00 = One 155-mm (conventional) high explosive shell
Estimated cost of cleaning up 10,000 toxic-waste dumps that contaminate the nation’s soil and water = $100 billion = The Navy’s Trident II submarine and F-18 jet fighter programs.
Fast-forward 30 years to the spending on war, environmental clean up, programs for the homeless. More money for war and the military, greater disparities between need and allocation.
In an April 2003 factsheet entitled "How George Bush, his Congress and the Pentagon are Looting our Cities, Robbing our People and Stealing from our Children," Melman updates his numbers and offers these trade-offs:
Annual cost to provide sanitary water to the 2.4 billion people worldwide = $10 billion = 2 Navy CVN6-B Aircraft Carriers
Research program to develop zero emissions, coal gasification power plants = $11 billion =Amphibious Assault Ship Program
Noam Chomsky, quoted in the New York Times obituary for Seymour Melman, said "the country is a lot different than it was 30 or 40 years ago and [Melman] had a big role in that. There’s much more widespread opposition to the diversion of resources to military production, to the use of force in international affairs, to nuclear development."
Later in life, Melman devoted himself to the peace dividend and economic conversion, advising the United Nations and chairing the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament.
His last book, "After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Economy," was published in 2001. An archive of Melman’s more recent writings is online at www.aftercapitalism.com
II. THE REAL SCANDAL
The Oil-for-Food program may have been corrupt, but more dangerous dealings have been ignored
Frida Berrigan, In These Times
December 21, 2004
Was the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food program (OFF) rotten? It looks like it. The U.N. Security Council created the program in 1996 to mitigate the impact on the civilian population of the economic sanctions aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein. It allowed Hussein’s government to use the revenue from oil sales to purchase food, medicine and other humanitarian commodities.
The program is over and the sanctions have been lifted, but a number of recent reports have revealed that the program was used as a conduit by Saddam Hussein to generate illicit revenue to buy weapons.
In July, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report asserting that Hussein had used the program and other illicit means to generate more than $10 billion. Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s Special advisor for strategy regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, agreed with the GAO’s total figure, but estimated that just 16 percent, or about $1.7 billion, was related to the OFF.
These revelations, along with a swirl of other allegations-including the purported involvement of Kojo Annan, the secretary-general’s adult son, and assertions that the former head of the OFF, Benon Sevan, took bribes-have elicited a prompt response from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The Secretariat asked Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, to head a probe into the OFF. Volcker will release a preliminary report in January, with final conclusions to be published by mid-2005.
Members of Congress have been quick to believe the worst of the allegations and demand the severest penalties. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led the vitriolic charge against the United Nations in a December 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed article. Coleman’s subcommittee has initiated a series of investigations into the OFF; in the article he blamed Kofi Annan for the corruption he has supposedly uncovered. He also made the unsupportable but damning claim that Hussein’s stolen billions are funding the current insurgency in Iraq, writing that "our troops would probably not have been placed in such danger if the United Nations had done its job in administering the sanctions and oil for food." Coleman concluded by calling for Kofi Annan’s resignation: "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks and under-the-table payments that took place under the United Nations’ collective nose."
Coleman’s crusade has a lot of support. A House of Representatives resolution calling for Annan’s resignation in order to "restore confidence" in the United Nations as an institution has 52 signatures. Companion bills in the House and Senate propose withholding a percentage of U.S. dues to the United Nations until it cooperates with a congressional investigation, separate from Volcker’s investigation.
But members on both side of the aisle oppose these punitive acts. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently expressed his confidence that Volcker, a "smart guy, and tough," will carry out a "full and complete investigation." Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on Coleman’s subcommittee, called the attack on Annan "unwarranted and unfair."
Levin is right. Conservative attempts to blame Kofi Annan obscure many facts-chiefly that the Secretariat did not oversee the OFF. The Security Council created the program and was responsible for its policing. The United States is one of the council’s five permanent members.
If Annan should not be held responsible, then who should?
The evidence points to Washington. The skimming, smuggling and kick-backing that occurred under the OFF appears to be small compared with the amount of revenue Saddam Hussein generated through illegal government-to-government transactions with Jordan, Syria and Turkey that had the tacit approval of Congress and the White House under Presidents H.W. Bush and Clinton.
The Duelfer report found that Jordan inked $4.5 billion in oil deals with Saddam Hussein, making it Baghdad’s single largest source of revenue besides the OFF and the "key to Iraq’s financial survival." This trade was unauthorized but formally acknowledged by a Security Council concerned that Jordan’s economy might collapse without access to the oil. Illegal trade with Turkey generated $710 million for Saddam Hussein. Despite the fact that Washington knew that both these allies were illegally aiding the Hussein regime, Congress continued to release billions in military aid to Jordan and Turkey.
"With Turkey, it was plain illegal," explained David Mack, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs during the period, to The Associated Press. "It was smuggling, but everybody just said, ‘Oh well, geez, it was too hard to try to do anything about that.’ "
Including the $2.8 billion in Iraqi trading with Syria, Duelfer’s report estimated that about $8 billion of the $11 billion in total illicit revenue was generated by these trade deals. Kofi Annan couldn’t stop them, the Security Council looked the other way and Congress implicitly green-lighted them for years.
The rest of the illicit money was generated through a complex system whereby the Hussein regime overpaid contractors for food and other humanitarian goods, only to be repaid in cash. Searching for instances of this abuse is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But according to Joy Gordon, a professor at Fairfield University and author of a forthcoming book on the sanctions against Iraq, on more than 70 occasions evidence was brought to the Security Council body charged with implementing the sanctions.
In the December issue of Harper’s, Gordon noted that "In not a single instance did the United States choose to block any transaction due to suspected kickbacks." While apparently unconcerned with evidence of Hussein’s exploitation of the program, U.S. contract examiners were vigilant about dual-use items, blocking billions of dollars in humanitarian contracts because of concerns that they could have some military application. In July 2002 alone, the United States had placed nearly $5 billion of these contracts on hold.
If Coleman and other members of Congress want to hold someone accountable, they could start by cleaning out their own house and examining the continued practice of providing billions in military aid to nations like Jordan and Turkey that act at cross purposes with U.S. foreign policy. That’s the real scandal.
III. THE MISSILE DEFENSE TEST THAT WASN'T
Michelle Ciarrocca, CommonDreams.org
December 19, 2004
The December 15, 2004 headline from the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency press release misleadingly read, "Missile Defense Flight Test Conducted." But the test never happened. The release went on to note that the agency was, in fact, "unable to complete a planned flight test after the interceptor missile experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched."
The $85 million "test" failure was the first test to take place since December 2002. It would have been the most advanced test to date. As the New York Times reported, in addition to launching the target from the Alaska site for the first time, this test was to use the same type of booster rocket that the system will use if it becomes operational. While the target missile was successfully launched, the ground-based interceptor automatically shut down, never even getting off the ground. Ever the optimist, Richard Lehner, Missile Defense Agency spokesman, called the test "a very good training exercise."
During the previous test in 2002, the Pentagon's ground-based missile defense system attempted to intercept a mock warhead, but didn't get very far because the "kill vehicle" failed to separate from its booster. Again, officials were quick to brush it off, saying the malfunction had nothing to do with the advanced missile technology. Lehner pointed out that separating boosters from their payloads is something the U.S. has been doing successfully for 50 years. However, the same problem occurred during an intercept test in July 2000.
To date, in the eight highly scripted intercept tests of the ground-based system, it has failed three times and serious technical challenges remain. In addition to the recent test failures and the inability to test the actual interceptors with the overall system, necessary radar and satellite networks are not complete. The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has demonstrated no capability to distinguish realistic decoys from warheads in the weightless environment of space, an essential requirement for the success of the ground- and sea-based elements of the system. A GAO report released in April 2004 notes, "testing in 2003 did little to demonstrate the predicted effectiveness of the system’s capability to defeat ballistic missiles as an integrated system." The report continues, "none of the components of the defensive capability have yet to be flight tested in their fielded configuration."
Tests results notwithstanding, missile defense remains a central tenet of President Bush's national security strategy. Early on, Bush directed the Pentagon to begin fielding initial missile defense capabilities in 2004-2005. According to the Pentagon, the initial system will have "limited capability" and will build on the facility at Ft. Greely, Alaska, which was previously designated as a site for testing purposes. Six interceptors have been installed, and another 10 interceptors could be added in 2005. The Pentagon says it will be employing an "evolutionary approach to the development of missile defenses over time," and it envisions a layered system comprising ground-based and sea-based interceptors alongside upgraded versions of the short-range Patriot missile.
Even before the added spending proposed by the Bush administration is taken into account, missile defense is already one of the most expensive military programs in history. The Pentagon has spent close to $100 billion on missile defense projects since President Reagan’s 1983 "Star Wars" speech. The last budget submitted by the Clinton administration allocated $4.8 billion for missile defense. President Bush has requested $10.2 billion for the project in his 2005 fiscal year budget, and another $50 billion is expected to be spent over the next five years to continue development and testing of ballistic missile defense system. Despite Bush’s more than 100% increase in funding for missile defense, the resulting multilayered system is no more workable than previous systems.
President Bush has said that the "gravest danger of all" facing the United States is a hostile state or terrorist group armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. If he were serious about defending the country from this threat, he would start by immediately increasing funds to safeguard, secure, or destroy the vast amounts of nuclear weapons and materials in Russia, which could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nations. Total current funding for all nonproliferation programs-international and national-is less than $2 billion. The main focus of Washington's energy and resources should be on preventive measures, which are far more effective at reducing the threat of nuclear war than any pie-in-the-sky defensive schemes.
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