IRAQ

New Zealand News: Robert Fisk: US fostering sinister sort of democracy


Paul Bremer's taste in clothes symbolises "the new Iraq" well. He wears a business suit and combat boots. As the pro-consul of Iraq, you might have thought he'd have more taste.

The result? Iraq, with the world's second-highest reserves of oil, is now importing fuel.

Then comes Baghdad airport. Sure, it's going to reopen. But it just happens that the airport, with its huge American military base and brutal US prison camp, comes under nightly grenade and mortar attack.

No major airline would dream of flying its aircraft into the facility in these circumstances.

The Iraqis are told, for example, that the first flights will be run by "Transcontinental Airlines" (a name oddly similar to the CIA's transport airline in Vietnam), which is reported to be a subsidiary of "US Airlines", and the only flight will be between Baghdad and - wait for it - the old East Berlin airport of Schonefeld.

Health services? Well, yes, the new Iraqi health service is being encouraged to rehabilitate the country's hospitals and clinics. But a mysterious American company called Abt Associates has turned up in Baghdad to give "Ministry of Health Technical Assistance" support to the US Agency for International Development and "rapid response grants to address health needs in-country".

It has decreed that all medical equipment must accord with US technical standards and modifications - which means that all new hospital equipment must come from America, not from Europe.

Inevitably, it has been one of the American commentators from the same failed lunatic right as Wolfowitz - Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum think tank, which promotes American interests in the region - to express this in its most chilling form.

He now argues that "democratic-minded autocrats can guide [Iraq] to full democracy better than snap elections". What Iraq needs, he says, is "a democratically minded [sic] strongman who has real authority", who would be "politically moderate" but "operationally tough" (sic again).

Of course, it's difficult to resist a cynical smile at such double standards, although their meaning is frightening enough. What does "operationally tough" mean, other than secret policemen, interrogation rooms and torturers to keep the people in order - which is exactly what Saddam set up when he took power, supported as he was at the time by the US and Britain?

What does "strongman" mean other than a total reversal of the promise of "democracy" which Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair made to the Iraqi people?

Democracies are not led by autocrats, and autocrats are not led by anyone but themselves.

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