N° of contracts on hold

Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.

Hello all,

it seems I made a mistake in my last mail. As I stated, I was furiously attacked because I used Iraqi figures. Now what were the figures I used. I have taken out the pages with the Iraqi figures I received in july 2001 in Baghdad from Dr Al Hashemi, responsible for the organisation of Friendship, Peace and Solidarity. I was very surprised when I saw these figures again. see: http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2001/msg01047.html, dated from 2dec.2001

In the discussion, that started with the article of Andy Kershaw in the Independant, that was attacked by Gabriel of VIW-UK, I gave figures from an Iraqi source (Total No of contracts on hold or not approved for the 9 stages 26/12/96-02/05/2001) for a total n° of contracts on hold of 1.742, with a total amount of 3,617 billion$, which is much less than the figure of 5 billion $ that is now given by the Executive Director of the United Nations Iraq Programme, Benon V. Sevan.

"It's a matter of historical record that the Iraqi Government has often put out figures - and made statements - that are either misleading, false or inconsistent with earlier figures / statements of their
own (and, as Per says, they are also clearly not a disinterested party)". When I read this sentence again, it's so denigrating, it makes me shiver. Where is the evidence in that statement? This is a statement of a prejudiced mind. And not true, as can be deduced from the figures above.

You can not separate the people of Iraq and its government. If you do that, you start to reason in the same logic as "your master's voice": Bush&Blair. You know what I call this? Victim blaming !!

This is a small addition to my mail of today.

Greetings.

Dirk.