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Saudi Attack Kills 22 Mostly Foreign Oil Workers, Sends Oil
Prices Soaring
Ex-Baathist With Ties to the CIA and Saudi Intelligence Picked
To Be New Iraqi Prime Minister
Rick MacArthur and Scott Ritter On The Lies of Our Times
Saudi Attack Kills 22 Mostly Foreign Oil Workers,
Sends Oil Prices Soaring
Militants killed 22 people in the Saudi Arabian city of
Khobar this weekend and held at least 40 more hostage in an
upscale housing complex mainly populated by foreigners working
in the oil industry. We speak with political science professor
and Middle East expert As'ad AbuKhalil.
Islamic militants killed 22 people in the Saudi Arabian city
of Khobar this weekend and held at least 40 more hostage in
an upscale housing complex mainly populated by foreigners
working in the oil industry.
Shortly after dawn on Saturday, a group of armed men dressed
in military-style uniforms scaled an unguarded wall of the
compound in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern province and then
went door to door, pulling residents from their homes.
The gunmen reportedly separated Muslims from non-Muslims,
releasing a Lebanese woman after telling her they were in
search of "infidels" and Westerners.
13 foreigners died in the initial attack, the others died
when Saudi commandoes raided the complex in an attempt to
end the 25- hour siege. Three of the four attackers escaped
and remain at large.
Among the 22 people killed were workers from Asia, Africa
and Europe, as well as four Saudis and an American. A militant
web site has posted an audio statement by a leader of al-Qaida
in Saudi Arabia, taking responsibility for the attacks. In
the statement, he says the attack was an attempt to destabilize
worldwide oil markets and the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Oil prices rose sharply in opening trading today in response
to the attack. Prices hit 20-year highs in May but eased last
week after Saudi Arabia pledged to increase production and
urged OPEC to do the same. The attack is the third on foreigners
in Saudi Arabia in a month.
- As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California
State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC,
Berkeley. He is the author of several books including Bin
Laden, Islam, and America's New "War on Terrorism"
and the forthcoming book Saudi Arabia and The US: The Tale
of the Good Taliban. He runs a new blog called "The
Angry Arab News Service."
Ex-Baathist With Ties to the CIA and Saudi Intelligence
Picked To Be New Iraqi Prime Minister
The Iraqi Governing Council was dissolved today as a newly
selected Iraqi government emerged comprising many key members
of the Council including Ayad Allawi who will become prime
minister. Andrew Cockburn talks about Allawi's ties to the
old Baathist regime, the CIA, MI6, Saudi intelligence and
how Allawi claims that Iraq had WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda.
The US pick for Iraqi president in the post June 30 Iraqi
government has refused to take the position after being picked
by the Iraqi Governing Council.
The U.S. had been heavily lobbying for former Iraqi foreign
minister Adnan Pachachi to fill the largely symbolic seat.
On Monday, US occupation head Paul Bremer forced the council
to delay a vote when it appeared Pachachi didn't have enough
votes. The London Independent reported Bremer threatened to
veto any vote by the governing council if it did not select
Pachachi.
Earlier today the council, under this pressure, picked Pachachi,
only for him to say no to the job. Then the council picked
his main opponent, another Sunni, Ghazi al-Yawar, a tribal
leader who also sits on the Governing Council.
In his first public remarks after being appointed Yawar said
wanted the United Nations Security Council to grant the country
"full sovereignty through a Security Council resolution
to enable us to rebuild a free, independent, democratic and
federal unified homeland." Last week Yawar criticized
the draft for giving too little control to Iraqis over U.S.
troops remaining on their soil.
While the presidency will be a largely symbolic position,
the U.S. offered up no protest on Friday when the Council
picked Ayad Allawi, a former Baathist who has ties to the
CIA and Saudi intelligence, to be prime minister.
- Andrew Cockburn, independent journalist who frequently
writes for the Independent
and Counterpunch.
He is co-author of the book "Out of the Ashes: The
Resurrection of Saddam Hussein." He recently wrote
a profile of Iyad Allawi for Salon titled "A
man for all intrigues"
Rick MacArthur and Scott Ritter On The Lies of Our
Times
While The New York Times published a long overdue apology
about its Iraq war coverage, many observers say the confession
was too little, too late. We speak with Harpers publisher
Rick MacArthur and former UN weapons inspector about the Times
coverage. Call it a kinda' culpa. Last week, the New York
Times published a long overdue apology about its Iraq war
coverage. In an Editors Note buried on page A10, the paper
declared, "We have found a number of instances of coverage
that was not as rigorous as it should have been." It
continued, "Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive
in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged-or failed
to emerge."
But to close observers of the paper of record's coverage,
the confession was too little, too late. This issue is one
which is covered extensively in our new book "The Exception
to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and
the Media That Love Them," which I co-wrote with my brother
journalist David Goodman.
During the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the Times served
as a conveyor belt for the propaganda of the administration,
cranking out stories rife with unsubstantiated claims and
outright lies. Thousands of Iraqi and American lives have
been lost in a war that owes much to a media that uncritically
acted as a megaphone for those in power. The sensational stories
the editors refer to were often given top billing on the front-page
of the paper of record, while the brief apologia was buried
on page A10.
Compare the contrition of Times editors on this issue with
the 7,000-word, five-page exposé the Times ran last
year about Jayson Blair, a young reporter who had lied and
falsified stories and was ultimately fired.
The Times said the Jayson Blair affair was a low point in
its 152-year history. But they got it wrong: It was the Times
coverage of the Bush-Blair affair that marked a new journalistic
low.
When George W. Bush and Tony Blair made their fraudulent
case to attack Iraq, the Times, along with most corporate
media outlets in the United States, became cheerleaders for
the war. And while Jayson Blair was being crucified for his
journalistic sins, veteran Times national security correspondents
Judith Miller and Michael Gordon were filling the Times' front
pages with unchallenged government propaganda. Unlike Blair's
deceptions, Miller and Gordon's lies provided the pretext
for war. Their lies took lives.
The White House war propaganda blitz was launched on September
7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister
Tony Blair stood side by side with his co-conspirator, President
George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from
a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) showed that Iraq was "six months away" from
building nuclear weapons.
But there was no such IAEA report. But the following day,
"evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times
under the twin byline of Gordon and Miller. Their article
began "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed
to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up
its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide
hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration
officials said today."
The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story
it had fed to the Newspaper of Record. The day the Times story
ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday
talk shows to advance the administration's bogus claims. On
NBC's Meet the Press, Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased
aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn't matter
that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it
was made. But Cheney didn't want viewers just to take his
word for it. "There's a story in The New York Times this
morning," he said. "And I want to attribute the
Times."
This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House
leaks a lie to the Times, the newspaper publishes it as a
startling exposé, and then the White House conveniently
masquerades behind the credibility of the Times.
Much of The Times coverage of Iraq in the build-up to the
invasion relied on Iraqi dissidents, most prominently Ahmed
Chalabi-head of the Iraqi National Conference. This week's
New Yorker has a piece on Chalabi called "The
Manipulator," which looks at Chalabi's role. The
piece quotes a key Chalabi aide Francis Brooke as saying "This
war would not have been fought had it not been for Ahmed Chalabi."
Brooke told The New Yorker that Chalabi's sophisticated marketing
operation at the I.N.C. was "an amazing success."
Brooke met Chalabi when they both worked at the Rendon Group's
Iraq project, a London-based C.I.A.-funded program to influence
global opinion on Saddam Hussein. According to Brooke, the
Rendon Group signed a secret contract with the C.I.A. that
guaranteed the company a ten-per-cent management fee on top
of whatever money it spent on the campaign.
The New Yorker also revealed that Ahmad Chalabi's niece,
Sarah Khalil, was hired last year by Patrick E. Tyler, the
chief correspondent for The New York Times, to be the paper's
office manager in Kuwait. The magazine cites Chalabi's daughter
Tamara as saying that Khalil actively supported her uncle's
efforts while she was working for the Times. In April, 2003,
after Chalabi was stranded in the desert shortly after U.S.
forces airlifted him into the country, he used a satellite
phone to call his niece for help. According to the magazine,
Khalil commandeered money from I.N.C. funds and rounded up
a convoy of S.U.V.s which she herself led across the border
into Iraq, while she was working for the Times. Khalil was
dismissed when word of her employment reached editors in New
York.
- John R. (Rick) MacArthur, publisher of Harpers
Magazine and author of the book "Second Front:
Censorship and Propaganda In the Gulf War."
- Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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