The UN mindset...

An interview with Denis Halliday, former assistant Secretary General fo the UN and former head of the UN oil for food program...

Question: Congressional analysts say the boost in the number of troops in Iraq has increased the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to 12 billion dollars per month. What is your reaction?

Answer: First of all I think half of trillion dollars is an underestimate. I think this misses the additional money that the Pentagon has spent. The great tragedy is for the people of Afghanistan and people of Iraq who are losing their lives, losing their homes, losing their future, their opportunities for good and happy lives. The second tragedy is the course that this money is being wasted while American people are suffering here from lack of good health care and lack of education. This is the country of racism, slavery and immigration problems. I mean the U.S. needs the money to be spent in its own society.

Question: What are the advantages of the Iraq war for the Bush administration that it is ready to spend such a huge amount of money to reach those goals or to kill great number of Iraqis or cause the deaths of American troops in Iraq?

Answer: I think the goal of Bush and the hawks at his administration is to decimate Iran, to diminish the Iraqi people, to allow millions to become refugees or million Iraqis to die. They will have a military presence in Iraq for the next 50 years or 60 years or 75 years. As they have maintained their presence in North Korea, Okinawa and Germany for example since the Second World War. By doing so, they can control oil and other natural resources of the Middle East for the next 50-100 years. They don’t care about the well-being of this country.

Question: Are the American people informed about the real cost of the Iraq war or not? Do they assume that their money is used wisely?

Answer: First of all they do not understand the need of education in this country, in the U.S. which is very poor. Many Americans are not literate. They don’t have access to good media, they don’t hear the truth from Al Jazeera or BBC or overseas radio, television programs. They do not quite understand what is happening but they are increasingly aware of the loss of lives of the Americans who are being doomed into going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are losing their lives for no specific purpose. The Congress seems to be serving American Corporate and the White House. I think that Congress and the White House demonstrate everyday they do not care about the well-being of the American people.