Shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 I wrote this opinion piece, which was published in my hometown newspaper, Hawke’s Bay Today, in New Zealand. It prompted this response, by way of letter to the editor, from Hardie Martin:
After reading his Opinion in Hawke’s Bay Today on April 12, it occurs to me that anyone seeking a Minister of (dis)Information of the same calibre as Iraq’s Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, need look no further than Christiaan Briggs.
I wonder what Hardie Martin would make of today’s occupation of Iraq:
US using debts to blackmail Iraq:
“Baghdad is under pressure by Washington to accept the security deal in exchange for clearing all of Iraq’s debts,” Iraqi lawmaker Mohammed Kamid al-Humedawi told Press TV on Wednesday. The US will be allowed to set up permanent military bases, if Iraq signs the agreement. Under the deal the US forces will also be granted immunity from legal prosecution inside their bases in Iraq.
Iraqi government fuels ‘war for oil’ theories by putting reserves up for biggest ever sale:
The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London. BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani. Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation’s reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces. Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today’s sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a “war for oil” that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.