Product Description

Following the US declaration of a `war on terror', Washington hawks were quick to label Iraq part of an `axis of evil'. After a tense build-up, in March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, purportedly to protect Western publics from weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But was this the real reason, or simply a convenient pretext to veil a covert agenda?

Using official sources, Ahmed investigates US and British claims about Iraq's WMD programmes, and in the process reveals the hidden motives behind the 2003 invasion and the grand strategy of which it is a part. He shows that the true goals of US-British policy in the Middle East are camouflaged by spin, PR declarations, and seemingly noble words. The reality can only be comprehended through knowledge of the history of Western intervention in the region. Ahmed demonstrates that such intervention has been dictated ruthlessly by economic and political interests, with little regard for human rights. He traces events of the past decades, beginning with the West's support for the highly-repressive Shah of Iran, his subsequent usurpation by the Ayatollah's Islamist regime, and the West's resultant backing of Saddam Hussein. The sponsorship of Saddam's tyranny - a self-serving tactic intended to strategically counterbalance Iran - included the supply of technology to build WMD as well as tacit complicity in their use against Iranians and Kurds.

Ahmed's meticulous research into the secret history of Western manoeuvrings in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, reveals the actual causes of the first Gulf War, the humanitarian catastrophe created by the twelve-year sanctions policy against Iraq, and the consistent obstructions of the `Oil for Food' programme. He also provides information on the West's own widespread use of WMD, and the likely culprits of the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #264797 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-16
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

John Pilger, journalist and author of The New Rulers of the World
`As the US serves notice that it plans to dominate world affairs by force, this finely researched book offers a timely and powerful warning to us all.'

About the Author
NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED is an author, human rights activist, and political analyst specializing in the study of conflicts.Ahmed was a researcher at the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a UN-affiliated NGO. He was also an IHRC delegate to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in 2001, where he delivered a paper on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is the author of a variety of reports on human rights practices, as well as a best-selling book, The War on Freedom, published in English, German and Italian.

Ahmed's work on the history and development of conflict in Afghanistan has been recommended as a resource by leading universities, including Harvard and California State. He was recently named a Global Expert on War, Peace and International Affairs by the Freedom Network of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation in Chicago, and is a member of TRANSCEND, the international network of scholars specializing in peace and conflict resolution. His archive of political analyses, published on the Web by the Media Monitors Network, has been nominated a Cool Site on the Netscape Open Directory Project. Ahmed appears regularly on radio shows in the U.S. as an expert on US foreign policy. He lives in Brighton, England, with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Oil and power
Ahmed's analysis of the war in Iraq contains at least a big part of the truth, and, for me, the essential part.
The war was/is all about control of Middle east oil, because Iraq possesses probably the world's biggest inexpensive and high quality oil reserves.
As Ahmed clearly explains, our technological civilization is totally dependent on oil and the actual oil reserves are now being depleted at a rate of about 2 per cent each year. Control of the oil price is a crucial problem for the West, if it wants to keep its actual living standard.

Saddam, in fact, began to act independently as an oil producer and even asked to be paid in Euros (see an important article in the English paper 'The Guardian' of February 26 2003). If this policy should be adopted by other oil producers, the US would not only lose control of the oil reserves, but even of the oil price.

Fundamentally however, Ahmed's analysis is based on respect of basic human aspirations: freedom, independence, human rights.

One could say that his analysis is naïve (or idealistic), and contrary to 'normal' human behaviour, which is search for power, dominance, unchallenged hegemony. The citations of George F. Kennan and Madeleine Albright in this book are most typical (or should I say, cynical) in that respect.
Ahmed's book is a magnified example of the deeds of an unchallenged political and military power. Of course, as he proves time and again, the international sanctions against Iraq were illegal. Of course, they were intended to the fall of Saddam and the installation of a pro-Western government.
And unfortunately, nobody who wields total power (one needs another analysis why some nations got it and others not) has not exploited it in his own interest or lost it without a struggle (see the masterful analysis of power by Laura Betzig).

As a matter of fact, Ahmed himself stops short of giving an opinion on the Iranian situation during and after the reign of the by the author much admired Ayatollah Khomeini, who installed an Islamic shiite oligarchy in Iran.

Respect of human rights on the international level can only be imposed by supranational authorities (the UN, an international court). But if these authorities try to take measures against 'vital' interests of one of its members and if that member has enough power, it will neglect all the resolutions and even completely disregard them. Even if it knows that its behaviour equals or installs the 'law of the jungle'.
It is crucial for world peace that the UN should wield international power and be able to impose sanctions.

But there is another alarming and frightening aspect of the war in Iraq: freedom of speech was curbed in order to hide the truth.
If the author is correct that US troops fired deliberately at journalists whom they considered not loyal to their cause, then this is the same as the barbarous demolition of the library of Pergamon.

This book is a compelling, provocative and must read.

Power and oil
Ahmed's analysis of the war in Iraq contains at least a big part of the truth, and, for me, the essential part.
The war was/is all about control of Middle east oil, because Iraq possesses probably the world's biggest inexpensive and high quality oil reserves.
As Ahmed clearly explains, our technological civilization is totally dependent on oil and the actual oil reserves are now being depleted at a rate of about 2 per cent each year. Control of the oil price is a crucial problem for the West, if it wants to keep its actual living standard.

Saddam, in fact, began to act independently as an oil producer and even asked to be paid in Euros (see an important article in the English paper 'The Guardian' of February 26 2003). If this policy should be adopted by other oil producers, the US would not only lose control of the oil reserves, but even of the oil price.

Fundamentally however, Ahmed's analysis is based on respect of basic human aspirations: freedom, independence, human rights.

One could say that his analysis is naïve (or idealistic), and contrary to 'normal' human behaviour, which is search for power, dominance, unchallenged hegemony. The citations of George F. Kennan and Madeleine Albright in this book are most typical (or should I say, cynical) in that respect.
Ahmed's book is a magnified example of the deeds of an unchallenged political and military power. Of course, as he proves time and again, the international sanctions against Iraq were illegal. Of course, they were intended to the fall of Saddam and the installation of a pro-Western government.
And unfortunately, nobody who wields total power (one needs another analysis why some nations got it and others not) has not exploited it in his own interest or lost it without a struggle (see the masterful analysis of power by Laura Betzig).

As a matter of fact, Ahmed himself stops short of giving an opinion on the Iranian situation during and after the reign of the by the author much admired Ayatollah Khomeini, who installed an Islamic shiite oligarchy in Iran.

Respect of human rights on the international level can only be imposed by supranational authorities (the UN, an international court). But if these authorities try to take measures against 'vital' interests of one of its members and if that member has enough power, it will neglect all the resolutions and even completely disregard them. Even if it knows that its behaviour equals or installs the 'law of the jungle'.
It is crucial for world peace that the UN should wield international power and be able to impose sanctions.

But there is another alarming and frightening aspect of the war in Iraq: freedom of speech was curbed in order to hide the truth.
If the author is correct that US troops fired deliberately at journalists whom they considered not loyal to their cause, then this is the same as the barbarous demolition of the library of Pergamon.

This book is a compelling, provocative and must read.

The Summa Theologica of Satanic Imperialism: Ahmed is a hero
"A SCIENTIFIC revolution, according to Kuhn [the scientist/linguist author of THE THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS], is not simply an addition to pre-existing knowledge. It is, within any field, 'a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals'; a complete demolition of an old theoretical and conceptual structure and its replacement by a new one based on entirely different aims and premises. The old paradigm...attacked from the outside...cannot be defeated on the basis of its own rules for, as we have seen...these rules are not only inadequate to solve new problems which have begun to arise--THEY ACTUALLY PRECLUDE ANY DISCUSSION OF THESE PROBLEMS AT ALL."

Dr. Chris Knight, London
From BLOOD RELATIONS:
MENSTRUATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CULTURE

"[A] very selective history [as compiled here of 19th and 20th century presidents] demonstrates there are many varieties of presidential lies. Some concern grand policy matters, some concern secret government activity...Sissela Bok, the author of LYING: MORAL CHOICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE, defines [a lie] simply as "an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a STATEMENT (emphasis his)"...I would propose a slightly different standard for White House occupants. If a President issues a statement, he or she has an obligation to ensure the remark is truthful... It is not enough for a president or White House contender to BELIEVE what he is saying is true; he/she [like scientists, doctors, journalists and other professionals whose careers are built on a basic understanding of honesty, research, integrity and the public trust] should KNOW it to be true--within reasonable standards...Lying in office not only poses a potential risk for [a sitting president], a president who lies is a risk to the nation. He might steer the country into a war under false pretenses. Or, if he comes to be regarded as untruthful by a significant portion of the public, he might fail to rouse the country for military action that is indeed warranted. A liar in the White House is a national security threat."

David Corn
THE LIES OF GEORGE BUSH
From the Introduction
(Published in 2003, before
the start of the Iraq war)

"This [neoconservative] focus on reintergrating Iraq into the regional framework of order under US hegemony was no doubt heightened by the fact that Iraq challenged the US monopoly over the oil trade, maintained through the fact that oil transactions occur in US dollars. Since 1971...the dollar has...become the de facto world reserve currency... Overall, since the world economy is fundamentally oil-dependent, this...lends the US a dominant trading advantage...In November 2000, Iraq began trading its oil in euros, and profited handsomely in the process. Iran, Venezuela and Russia--all key oil producers--have also considered and/or moved towards switching to the euro..."

"The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq--or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network conglomerate wants a puppet government in Iraq--is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way..."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR
From Part Two, Chapter Seven: "False Pretexts"

and

Quote by
Wiliam Clark
"The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War
with Iraq: a Macroeconomic and
Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth"
Independent Media Center, January, 2003

"An objective assessment of the 2003 war in Iraq...shows clearly that it was nothing less than a...colonial enterprise, fundamentally opposed to elementary humanitarian principles and motviated by longstanding imperial values."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR
From the Postscript

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the Mozart-like prodigy of modern of political analysis, has done it again. Rivalling some of the best of Noam Chomsky, Michel Chussodovsky and Arundhati Roy... definitively making all non-scientific, non-factually based analysis of American foreign policy irrelevant at best, heinously (though ironically) unpatriotic and inhumane at worst... with almost six hundred footnotes rivalling the nearly seven hundred that helped prove his case in THE WAR ON FREEDOM, Ahmed lays the inhumanity of American foreign policy in Iraq bare for any American with the courage to read it, and discover the true nature of its leaders. And, for a world that must prepare its very lives for the worst in us.

COVERT ECONOMIC WARFARE AS INSTIGATOR OF MILITARY ACTION

Of the many painful and unquestionable facts revealed in this monumental book, the most important is the paradigm shift in American foreign policy perception waiting for people; a paradigm shift in perception that happens inevitably with the understanding of this one concept: economic warfare. In much the same way the concept of "emotional incest" dismantles the entire bedrock philosophy of Freudian psychology (where the children are supposedly asking for it), Ahmed shows how the United States, at the end of the Cold War, all but forced Kuwait to manipulate the oil prices in 1990 by dumping oil into the market at half its cost value, effectively bankrupting the Iran-war damaged, oil-based Iraqi economy. This form of overt economic warfare declared by Kuwait--and covertly supported by the US--demanded a response from Saddam Hussein that actually started with his protests in the United Nations (unliek his normally brutal methods)--but led inexorably to military invasion when Kuwait refused to stop as his people were starving, and the UN did nothing. And Hussein's 1991 invasion of Kuwait, as Bush, Sr. knew it would, rationalized a) the invasion of Iraq in 1991, b) the continuance of the military build-up in America after the end of the Cold War, and c) virtually all foreign policy in the Middle East to the present day. The culture killing sanctions--economic warfare part II--came next, and lasted until the present military war. Human life in the Middle East means less than nothing to most of our administration--and not really much here as well, considering the current body count of our soldiers.

I will say no more about this book except this: do not pretend to believe in democracy until you find the moral courage to read it.