Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.02.2005, Side 15

Minister of Justice Björn Bjarnason
reacted by saying, “I don’t intend to
take part in this game that doesn’t
make any difference.”
The collapse of the
Progressives
As the controversy started to heat
up, members of Ásgrímsson’s
Progressive Party began to distance
themselves from the Prime Minister,
including Vice Chairman Guðni
Ágústsson and former Minister of
the Environment Siv Friðleifsdóttir.
Support for the Progressive party,
which was at 17.7% in the May
2003 elections, has plummeted
to 8% as of February 1, according
to a Fréttablaðið poll. The party’s
national convention will be held at
the end of this month. What will
this mean for Ásgrímsson and his
party? Are the Progressives splitting
in two?
“I think that the Prime Minister’s
control over the Progressive party
is pretty secure,” says Marshall. “I
wouldn’t worry about him being
ousted, but I do think he’s not
having a very good time right now.
It’s difficult to say what will happen
- it appears that nothing will. But
if they don’t clear this matter up,
people will remember this in the
long run. When you leave things
unclear for this long, you give your
opponents an opportunity.”
Making a molehill out of a mountain
Möller disagrees, saying, “There
already have been repercussions. I
wouldn’t say that this matter is off
the table in Icelandic politics, but it’s
certainly off to the side. If we think
of a subject as a hill or a mountain,
this subject is going downhill. It’s
past now, and I think the Iraqi
elections took the heat out of this
matter for the whole world. Now is
the time for all parties to focus on
the reconstruction of Iraq.”
So far, the only casualty of the Iraq
controversy has been Marshall
himself. After erroneously reporting
that the decision for Iceland to
support the US led invasion was
made before March 18, 2003,
Marshall resigned from his position
as reporter for television station Stöð
2. Whether or not any resignations
from politicians involved in this
controversy are forthcoming remains
to be seen.
If anything is to be learned from this,
it could be that the chance for the
press, members of parliament, and
the people themselves to question
the decisions made by elected
3000 BCE: The city of
Babylon arises in the region
that is now Iraq.
August 1920: British forces,
having already taken over
much of Iraq, struggle to
seize control over Fallujah. In
the ensuing battle, over 1000
British and Indian troops and
around 10,000 Fallujans die.
October 1932: Iraq becomes
an independent state.
June 1979: Saddam Hussein
becomes Iraqi president
through a coup d’etat.
August 1990: Iraq invades
Kuwait. Saddam Hussein
would later say, in court,
that he did this to control the
price of oil.
January 1991: UN Security
Council passes Resolution
678, approving military
action against Iraq.
March 1991: Iraq accepts
UN terms for cease-fire and
UN sanctions are imposed.
Official reports of Iraqi
casualties are reported
between 20,000 and
35,000.
1991 – 2003: As a result of
sanctions and intermittent air
attacks, anywhere between
half a million and a million
Iraqis die.
September 2002: US
President George W Bush, in
an address to the UN, pushes
for military action against
Iraq.
February 2003: US military
aircraft on their way to Iraq
stop in Iceland
Feb 15: Day of global protest
against war in Iraq, including
hundreds of Icelanders, who
march on parliament.
March 18 2003: A statement
of support for the US-lead
invasion of Iraq from then
Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson
appears on the White House
webpage.
March 20 2003: US-lead
military operations begin in
Iraq, with Iceland listed as a
member of “the coalition of
the willing.”
March 21 2003: Member
of parliament Þórunn
Sveinbjarnardóttir asks then-
Foreign Minister Halldór
Ásgrímsson how Iceland
ended up in the coalition
of the willing. His response
is that this happened in
a conversation between
officials in the Foreign
Ministry and officials of the
President three days earlier.
April 2003 – May 2004:
Apart from several opinion
pieces debating the pros and
cons of supporting the US-
lead war effort in Iraq, the
media is largely silent on the
Issue
January 2004: Discovery
of “mustard gas shells” by
joint Icelandic-Danish team
in southern Iraq turns out to
be erroneous.
June 2004: Movement for
Active Democracy formed
October 2004: Movement for
Active Democracy calls for
resignation of the ruling party
or vote of no confidence
January 5 2005: According
to a Gallup poll conducted
at the end of 2004, 84%
of Icelanders do not want
Iceland to be in the “coalition
of the willing.”
January 9 2005: Össur
Skarphéðinsson, chairman
of the Social Democratic
party, says that both Foreign
Minister Davíð Oddsson
and Prime Minister Halldor
Ásgrimmsson broke the law
by signing Iceland into the
coalition without bringing the
question before the public or
members of parliament.
January 11 2005: IMG Gallup
announces after a meeting
yesterday that they stand by
the results of the poll. Halldór
Ásgrímsson, Davíð Oddsson
and Minister of Justice Björn
Bjarnason each respond to
the poll by saying that it
was vague and the questions
unclear.
January 13 2005: Halldór
Ásgrímsson says on an
interview on RÚV, “I am quite
sure that Icelanders support
developing democracy in
Iraq, the elections there and
the reconstruction which lies
ahead.”
January 20 2005: It comes
to light that Iraq was only
mentioned twice during
meetings of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs in the winter
of 2002 to 2003. At neither
one of these meetings was
the possibility of Iceland´s
support for the war effort in
Iraq ever discussed.
January 21 2005: Pétur
Gunnarsson, the office
manager of the Progressive
Party, offers his own
explanation as to how Iceland
ended up as one of the nations
in the coalition that invaded
Iraq, saying that Iceland was
added by the US as a “public
relations move.”
January 22 2005: A full page
statement from the Movement
for Active Democracy appears
in the New York Times
yesterday entitled “The
Invasion of Iraq – not in our
name”.
January 23 2005: Reuters
erroneously reports that
Iceland is no longer on any list
of American allies of the war
in Iraq.
January 25 2005: Halldór
Ásgrímsson admits on
television station Stöð 2 that
he allowed military aircraft on
their way to Iraq to stopover in
Keflavík in February 2003.
January 26 2005: Jón Ásgeir
Sigurðsson of “Spegillinn”
confirms on radio station Rás
1 that after speaking with
officials for the US State
Department, the White House,
and the National Security
Advisor that Iceland is still
in fact a part of the coalition
of nations supporting the US-
lead war effort in Iraq. Iceland
is even still listed on the
White House´s own webpage
concerning the nations in this
coalition.
Today: Over 100,000 Iraqi
civilians, half of whom are
women and children, have
died as a result of the
invasion. Over 1600 coalition
forces have lost their lives.
Aid workers continue to be
kidnapped and/or executed
on a weekly basis.
From “Baghdad Burning,”
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
The United States has ended its physical search for weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, which was cited by the first
administration of President George W Bush as the main reason
for invading the country, the White House has said.
Why does this not surprise me? Does it surprise anyone? I always
had the feeling that the only people who actually believed this
war was about weapons of mass destruction were either paranoid
Americans or deluded expatriate Iraqis- or a combination of both.
I wonder now, after hundreds and hundreds of Americans actually
died on Iraqi soil and over a hundred-thousand Iraqis are dead,
how Americans view the current situation.”
From “Healing Iraq,”
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com
”One problem [in the Iraq elections] was the special ink that
voters have to dab their fingers with. Many Iraqis were concerned
that insurgents would catch them on their way back to Baghdad
and recognise people who had voted.
Some resourceful Iraqis had already devised several methods to
get rid of the stain. One of these is to paint your fingers with skin
lotion before you enter the polling station, wipe your finger clean
immediately after voting and before the ink dries, on returning
home dip your finger in boiling detergent and rub it repeatedly.”
From “Free Iraq,”
http://abutamam.blogspot.com/
“PS: “In the run-up to Iraq’s elections, the State Department’s
spokesman this week ticked off the final markers of progress:
130 planeloads of voting materials had landed in Iraq, including
90,000 ballot boxes and 60 million ballots — a flurry of up to 15
flights a day to Iraqi airfields.” - MSNBC.com, January 29, 2005
There are about 25 million Iraqis, and about 15 million of them
are elligible to vote (many are indeed boycotting it). What will
they be doing with the extra 45 million ballots?”
From “Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches,”
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog
“Earlier today while I was in the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad
the US base there was mortared 8 times. We heard it just after
finishing huge plates of kebabs at a sidewalk restaurant. After
finishing the meal an old woman came to our table and asked if
she could take our leftovers.
He took two plastic bags and began dumping our half eaten
salads and extra bread into them. She thanked us and blessed
us, then began to shuffle off…Abu Talat and I both quickly
walked over to her and gave her a small wad of Iraqi Dinars. We
walked back to the car not saying a word about it.”
From “My War,”
http://cbftw.blogspot.com/
“So my AG looks over at me and with a mischievous smile says,
“Watch this!” and then he starts chanting: “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
over and over again, next thing you know all these little kids,
100’s of them, started chanting U-S-A!! Over and over again,
each time a little louder. We were both laughing and thought this
was all funny until I saw the reaction on the older people’s faces
on the side of the road. They didn’t look too thrilled about that,
once I immediately noticed that, I said, “Dude, that’s not cool!
Make them stop yelling that shit!” But it was too late, these kids
were having too much fun chanting U-S-A! Next thing you know I
saw an older middle eastern lady wearing all black pick up a rock
and throw it at us, which of course started a huge chain reaction
of rock throwing at us. We got out of that neighborhood in a
hurry after that. Lesson learned.”
Baghdad Blogs
An aid worker, three Iraqis, and
a US soldier on the Net
Planning your own
incusion into the
Middle East?
Come on now - quit frontin’.
You know you want it.
But you best not go
unprepared. After all, how are
you gonna distinguish between
peace-loving surrenderers and
terroristic cockblockers out to
burn you to death and hang
your carcass from a bridge?
Take a tip from the Pentagon
and fly over your designated
ass-kickin’ zone with these
flyers that the US military
dropped over Iraq before the
invasion. For more samples, go
to the link below.
Clip and save!
http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/
leaflets/showleaflets.asp
officials should be taken quickly.
This controversy could have been
investigated thoroughly from the
very start - instead, over a year
went by before anyone took the
matter seriously. Whether this issue
will quietly disappear or result in
consequences for those involved is
anyone’s guess. However, as Róbert
Marshall told us, “I don’t think it’s
ever too late for the news to have an
effect. Just look at Watergate. The
break-in happened in 1972. Nixon
was re-elected, and the Watergate
story didn’t actually get him out of
office until August 1974. Things like
this can happen over time.”
“If we think of a subject as a hill or a mountain, this subject is going
downhill” - Ásta Möller, vice MP for Davíð Oddsson