Op 22 november 2012 stond in de NRC de volgende vraag van de jurist, oud-hoofdredacteur en journalist Folkert Jensma:
De Uitspraak: Mag je alles op internet beweren waar je zin in hebt?
Mag je zomaar alles beweren over een ander waar je zin in hebt, op Faceboook, Twitter en in blogs? [...]
Het juridische antwoord was: Nee, je mag niet 'alles op internet beweren waar je zin in hebt.' Jensma voegde hieraan toe:
De rechter gebruikt in de inleiding bij het vonnis het begrip ‘internetterreur’.
Aangezien het volgende advies van de NRC ook op internet verscheen:
Nu de oorlog is begonnen, moeten president Bush en premier Blair worden gesteund. Die steun kan niet blijven steken in verbale vrijblijvendheid. Dat betekent dus politieke steun - en als het moet ook militaire,
stel ik nu de vraag waarom Jensma die rechterlijke uitspraak in het geval van de NRC negeert. Een illegale inval in een soevereine staat zelfs militair steunen is in strijd met het internationaal recht dat een agressieoorlog expliciet en impliciet verbiedt. De NRC-oproep verscheen op 20 maart 2003, aan het begin van het Irakese bloedbad, toen Folkert Jensma hoofdredacteur van de NRC was. De New York Times en de Washington Post hebben naderhand hun excuses aangeboden voor de wijze van berichtgeving over het grootscheepse geweld tegen de Irakese bevolking:
May 27, 2004 | When the full history of the Iraq war is written, one of its most scandalous chapters will be about how American journalists, in particular those at the New York Times, so easily allowed themselves to be manipulated by both dubious sources and untrustworthy White House officials into running stories that misled the nation about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Times finally acknowledged its grave errors in an extraordinary and lengthy editors note published Wednesday. The editors wrote:
'We have found ... instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been ... In some cases, the information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge ... We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.'
http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/27/times/
'We have found ... instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been ... In some cases, the information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge ... We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.'
http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/27/times/
Kortom: je mag niet 'alles op internet beweren waar je zin in hebt.' Er is zeker in het geval van de NRC duidelijk sprake geweest van wat een rechter 'internetterreur’ zou kunnen noemen. Een terreur die vele honderdduizenden Irakese doden en gewonden heeft veroorzaakt, en het opbreken van een land in etnisch gezuiverde gebieden en meer dan een miljoen vluchtelingen tot gevolg had. Waarom wordt Folkert Jensma hier niet persoonlijk verantwoordelijk voor gesteld, en dan bedoel ik, niet alleen moreel, maar ook juridisch? Mag je zomaar consequentieloos publiekelijk oproepen en opruien om terreur te steunen? Waarom mag dat? En Folkert Jensma, waarom zwijg je daarover? Je vond het kennelijk belangrijk genoeg om erover te schrijven naar aanleiding van een tamelijk onbenullige zaak die niet in een massaslachting is geeindigd. Waarom blijf je nu zwijgen over jouw oproep in nota bene de krant en op internet om het illegale westerse geweld met nog meer terreur te steunen? Vertel het ons, waarom je je niet verantwoordelijk voelt voor jouw maskerade van woorden. Ook, misschien wel juist, journalisten net als politici mogen niet oproepen het recht te schenden. Vergeet de woorden niet van Cherrycoke in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon:
Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent to be left within the reach of anyone in Power, -- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even Curiosity, of Government.
Een oproep tot geweld is nooit vrijblijvend en consequentieloos. Taal is de moeder van de gedachte, niet haar dienstmeid, zoals Karl Kraus voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog benadrukte. Je kunt niet zomaar op een achternamiddag in een comfortabel kantoor over het lot van miljoenen anderen mee beslissen. Jij dacht van wel. Waarom? Laat het weten. Ik zal jouw antwoord integraal publiceren. Lees ook even dit, dan weet je waarvoor je mede verantwoordelijk bent.
Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent to be left within the reach of anyone in Power, -- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even Curiosity, of Government.
Een oproep tot geweld is nooit vrijblijvend en consequentieloos. Taal is de moeder van de gedachte, niet haar dienstmeid, zoals Karl Kraus voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog benadrukte. Je kunt niet zomaar op een achternamiddag in een comfortabel kantoor over het lot van miljoenen anderen mee beslissen. Jij dacht van wel. Waarom? Laat het weten. Ik zal jouw antwoord integraal publiceren. Lees ook even dit, dan weet je waarvoor je mede verantwoordelijk bent.
America's Other Dark Legacy In Iraq
When the United States, the United Kingdom, and the “coalition of the willing” attacked Iraq in March 2003, millions protested around the world. But the war of “shock and awe” was just the beginning. The subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority bankrupted the country and left its infrastructure in shambles.
It’s not just a question of security. Although the breathtaking violence that attended Iraq’s descent into sectarian nightmare has been well documented in many retrospectives on the 10-year-old war, what’s often overlooked is that by far more mundane standards, the United States did a spectacularly poor job of governing Iraq.
It’s not that Iraq was flourishing before the occupation. From 1990 to 2003, the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Iraq that were the harshest in the history of global governance. But along with the sanctions, at least, came an elaborate system of oversight and accountability that drew in the Security Council, nine UN agencies, and General Secretary himself.
The system was certainly imperfect, and the effects of the sanctions on the Iraqi people were devastating. But when the United States arrived, all semblance of international oversight vanished.
Under enormous pressure from Washington, in May 2003 the Security Council formally recognized the occupation of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Resolution 1483. Among other things, this resolution gave the CPA complete control over all of Iraq’s assets.
At the same time, the Council removed all the forms of monitoring and accountability that had been in place: there would be no reports on the humanitarian situation by UN agencies, and there would be no committee of the Security Council charged with monitoring the occupation. There would be a limited audit of funds, after they were spent, but no one from the UN would directly oversee oil sales. And no humanitarian agencies would ensure that Iraqi funds were being spent in ways that benefitted the country.
Humanitarian concerns
In January 2003, the UN prepared a working plan anticipating the impact of a possible war. Even with only “medium impact” from the invasion, the UN expected that humanitarian conditions would be severely compromised.
Because the Iraqi population was so heavily reliant on the government’s food distribution system (a consequence of international sanctions), the UN anticipated that overthrowing the Iraqi regime would also undermine food security. And because the population already suffered from extensive malnutrition, this disruption would be quite lethal, putting 30 percent of Iraqi children under five at risk of death. The UN noted that if water and sewage treatment plants were damaged in the war, or if the electrical system could not operate, Iraqis would lose access to potable water, which would likely precipitate epidemics of water-borne diseases. And if electricity, transportation, and medical equipment were compromised, then the medical system would be unable to respond effectively to these epidemics.
During the occupation, much of this came to pass. A June 2003 UN report noted that the postwar water and sewage systems for Baghdad and other central and southern governorates were “in crisis.” In Baghdad alone, the report estimated that 40 percent of the city’s water distribution network was damaged, leading to a loss of up to half of the city’s potable water through leaks and breaks in the system. And direr still, the UN reported that neither of Baghdad’s two sewage treatment plants was functional, leading to a massive discharge of raw sewage into the Tigris River.
The food situation was similar. The UN found that farming had collapsed due to “widespread insecurity and looting, the complete collapse of ministries and state agencies—the sole providers of essential farming inputs and services—together with significant damages to power supplies.”
Likewise, the health system deteriorated dramatically. Less than 50 percent of the Iraqi population had access to medical care, due in part to the dangers associated with travel. Additionally, the report estimated that 75 percent of all health-care institutions were affected by the looting and chaos that occurred in the aftermath of the war. As of June 2003, the health system as a whole was functioning at 30-50 percent of its pre-war capacity. The impact was immediate. By early summer, acute malnutrition rates had doubled, dysentery was widespread, and little medical care was available. In August, when a power outage blacked out New York, the joke going around Baghdad was “I hope they’re not waiting for the Americans to fix it.”
The CPA gave responsibility for humanitarian relief to the U.S. military—not to agencies with experience in humanitarian crises—and marginalized the UN’s humanitarian relief agencies. Over the 14-month course of the CPA's administration, the humanitarian crisis worsened. Preventable diseases like dysentery and typhoid ran rampant. Malnutrition worsened, claiming the lives of ever more infants, mothers, and young children. All told, there was an estimated100,000 "excess deaths" during the invasion and occupation—well above and beyond the mortality rate under Saddam Hussein, even under international sanctions.
The CPA’s priorities were clear. After the invasion, during the widespread looting and robbery, occupation authorities did little to protect water and sewage treatment plants, or even pediatric hospitals. By contrast, they provided immediate protection for the oil ministry offices, hired a U.S. company to put out oil field fires, and immediately provided protection for the oil fields as well.
Corruption
In addition, the U.S.-led CPA was deeply corrupt. Much of Iraq’s revenues, from oil sales or other sources, went to contracts with U.S. companies. Of contracts for more than $5 million, 74 percent went to U.S. companies, with most of the remainder going to U.S. allies. Only 2 percent went to Iraqi companies.
Over the course of the occupation, huge amounts of money simply disappeared. Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, received over 60 percent of all contracts paid for with Iraqi funds, although it was repeatedly criticized by auditors for issues of honesty and competence. In the last six weeks of the occupation, the United States shipped $5 billion of Iraqi funds, in cash, into the country, to be spent before the Iraqi-led government took over. Auditor reports indicated that Iraqi funds were systematically looted by the CPA officials: “One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency,” read one report. “One official was given $6.75 million in cash, and was ordered to spend it one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.”
U.S. officials were apparently unconcerned about the gross abuses of the funds with which they were entrusted. In one instance, the CPA transferred some $8.8 billion of Iraqi money without any documentation as to how the funds were spent. When questioned about how the money was spent, Admiral David Oliver, the principal deputy for financial matters in the CPA, replied that he had “no idea” and didn’t think it was particularly important. “Billions of dollars of their money?” he asked his interlocutor. “What difference does it make?”
In the end, none of this should be terribly surprising—the corruption, the indifference to human needs, the singular concern with controlling Iraq’s oil wealth. It was obvious from the moment that the Security Council, under enormous pressure from the United State, passed Resolution 1483.
By systematically removing nearly every form of oversight from their self-imposed administration of Iraq, the United States and its allies laid the foundation for the looting of an entire nation’s wealth, abetted by their own wanton indifference to the needs and rights of Iraqis. Ten years after the start of the war, the CPA’s disastrous governance of Iraq stands alongside the country's horrifying descent into violence as a dark legacy in its own right.
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