With my upbringing in a farming community, and having been a farmer as well as auctioneer, one of the traits I learned from that agricultural community and life is that sooner or later bullshit, of the human kind, gets found out.
So it was with a large degree of incredulity that I watched Australia's Prime Minister John Howard say that his government had naught to do with the near $300 million in dubious payments made to a transport company supposedly linked to Saddam Hussein and that it was an Australian Wheat Board (AWB) matter now as it has been a privatised commercial entity since July 1999.
In other words ”flick pass” and "we’re in the clear, let's get on with terrorism and industrial changes."
Ah, if only it were so simple.
Now I can accept, if not condone, that the AWB's salespeople, in order to gain a near billion-dollar wheat contract, would have turned a blind eye to the fact that the transport company involved to shift wheat to Iraq was somehow tied to Saddam Hussein. But what really has got up my nose is the report in today’s Weekend Australian that Iraqi Minister Ahmed Chalabi, the bloke shown to have passed on “suss” information to the US hierarchy about Saddam Hussein’s military aspirations and capabilities (and who must be in deep, deep trouble with “the powers that be”), is now trying to hang the AWB out to dry.
What is especially galling is not that he is asking for the return of the $300 million paid to “the transport company” (commercially, that is fair enough), but that somehow Uncle Sam has slipped in with a billion-dollar wheat order from Iraq, leading to the annulment of Australia’s contract!
And we thought we were allies of President Bush!
As I said, maybe the crop is now about to be reaped and our PM, based as he sometimes is in the Bush capital of Australia, is about to see if his truck can carry the load of repaying the $300 million and while managing to elude responsibility for having approved the deal in the first place.
I am certain that the AWB people, when they struck the deal, had no idea that just seven months later, Dubya and his posse would saddle up to ”get the man that tried to kill my daddy,” and that in the process, deals such as these and other "oil for food" rackets eventually would surface.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
very interesting assortment of issues Anthony -- I was not even aware of the Australian wheat deal situation -- and a lively presentation, although the wheat deal and American-Austalian relations was probably enough for a single post.
I don't think there is any queston that it is critical that the Islamic world be assisted in moving forward, but I think giving people a say in their governments is equally important as economic development, and isn't giving people a say in their government ultimately why it is so important Iraq not fail?