Patrick Cockburn has followed up on the article in The Independent that so disgusted magnolia yesterday. Today he begins:
The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.
US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.
Iraq’s foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq’s funds would lose this immunity. The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq’s independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new “strategic alliance” with the United States. …
KagroX, posting at DKos, recalls a George W. Bush move of December 2007:
… [The "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008"] was the bill that Bush claimed he was pocket vetoing, but really couldn’t, because Congress was still in session.
But the important thing to remember is that he was vetoing a bill that:
- contained a pay raise for the troops, and ;
- enabled American veterans of the first Gulf War who actually won court judgments against the Iraqi government for having been captured and tortured by the Saddam Hussein regime to recover against frozen Iraqi assets in this country.
Bush was willing to endure the horrible optics of both of those things (as though the Vestigial Media could ever be counted on to actually notice and present those optics) in order to protect those Iraqi assets he considered so critical to that country’s “reconstruction.” Well, that and the fact that it would have put his “administration” in the position of having to admit that people were entitled to compensation for being tortured.
Now, linking to Cockburn’s new story, KagroX confirms:
Yep. The same money that was so critical to long term Iraqi and regional stability one Friedman Unit ago that it couldn’t even be used to compensate American soldiers who had been tortured by Saddam Hussein. Same money, now being held hostage by Bush to force the Iraqis to accept a perpetual American military presence in their country, all arranged without Senate approval by calling this treaty by another name: a “Status of Forces Agreement.”
Of course, the U.S. isn’t the only potentially-aggrieved party here. Also in The Indy, Ali Allawi (a former Iraqi finance minister, and one of his country’s most insightful thinkers) yesterday wrote,
… it is unclear whether the political or religious leadership are prepared to confront the US. President Bush, with an eye on history, is seeking to salvage his Iraq expedition by claiming that Iraq is now pacified and is a loyal American ally in the Middle East and the War on Terror.
It is only now that Iraqis have woken up to the possibility that Iraq might be a signatory on a long-term security treaty with the US, as a price for regaining its full sovereignty. Iraqis must know its details and implications. How would such an alliance constrain Iraq’s freedom in choosing its commercial, military and political partners? Will Iraq be obliged to openly or covertly support all of America’s policies in the Middle East? These are issues of a vital nature that cannot be brushed aside with the Iraqi government’s platitudes about “protecting Iraqi interests”. A treaty of such singular significance to Iraq cannot be rammed through with less than a few weeks of debate. Otherwise, the proposed strategic alliance will most certainly be a divisive element in Iraqi politics. It will have the same disastrous effect as the treaty with Britain nearly eighty years ago.
We’ve just seen how quickly Barack Obama moved to undo bad precedent in the Democratic Party. I don’t know whether George W. Bush will succeed on his latest horrendous gambit, but if he should, he’ll certainly help assure that, on January 21, 2009, President Obama’s first order of business may well be undoing this one.
