Meanwhile, attempting to deceive his own people about just how prostrate and prostituted to the U.S. and Israel Jordan really is, the King continues to sponsor such publications as the Jordan Times which lets off a little steam by publishing such worthwhile articles about Iraq as the one by Dr. Omar al Taher that follows. But on the really important and vital issues the Jordan Times along with other controlled and subsidized publications in the Hashemite Kingdom can never be counted on to really stand up and be counted.

[Ha'aretz, Tel Aviv, 6 February 2002]: The American administration has decided to increase significantly the financial aid it provides to Jordan, following the support voiced by King Abdullah II last week for the war on terrorism. The aid is also intended to beef up Jordan's defenses along its eastern border, against a possible military threat from Iraq.

The 2003 budget proposal submitted by President George W. Bush yesterday to Congress, shows that the administration plans to transfer some $198 million in civilian aid (compared with $78 million in 2001), and $250 million in military aid (compared with $150 million last year) to Jordan.

The increase in military aid is earmarked for fortifying Jordan's eastern border and improving Jordanian defenses against a possible attack by Iraq, in case the U.S. decides to launch an attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein. The civilian aid is meant to enable the Jordanian economy to free itself from its current dependency on Iraq, particularly when it comes to oil.

The American administration believes that King Abdullah, who visited Washington last week, is willing to assist the U.S. in its fight against terror. They also came to the conclusion that he is making sincere efforts to revive the peace process in the Middle East.

Israel still leads the list of countries getting financial aid from the U.S., receiving a total of $2.7 billion annually, of which military aid comprises $2.1 billion. In the past year, the U.S. increased Israel's military aid at the expense of the civilian aid component; this trend will continue in 2003, according to yesterday's U.S. budget proposal.

Egypt, No. 2 on America's foreign aid list, will receive $1.915 billion dollars, of which $615 million is earmarked for civilian aid. This is the first time that Egypt will receive a higher amount of civilian aid than Israel.

The administration also decided to enlarge grants for other countries that have come out as allies in the war against terror. Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Yemen, Morocco and the Philippines will all receive grants from the U.S. in the framework of its foreign aid budget.

Altogether, the Bush administration has asked Congress to approve a 12 percent increase in foreign aid for the fiscal year 2003, bringing the U.S. foreign aid budget up to a total of $4.1 billion.

WASHINGTON (Reuters - 2/1/2002) - Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Friday criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy and took aim at the president's labeling of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an 'axis of evil.'

Albright also questioned the administration's public relations approach to the detainees from Afghanistan being held at a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said the U.S. approach to the issue had been damaging diplomatically.

In an interview with NBC's 'Today' show, Albright said President Bush made a 'big mistake' lumping together Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his State of the Union address.

In his speech on Tuesday night, Bush used harsh language to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea, saying they were committed to developing weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped.

'First of all they (Iran, Iraq and North Korea) are very different from each other,' said Albright, who was Secretary of State in the Clinton administration.

In the case of Iraq, Albright said the United States had been trying to contain President Saddam Hussein since 1991 and strong action was necessary. However, the situation with Iran was more complicated and the United States needed Tehran's help in dealing with Afghanistan.

Looking at North Korea, Albright said it was a mistake to walk away from that communist state. The United States has attempted to hold talks with North Korea about its weapons program but that process has gone nowhere.

'When we left office, we left the potential of a verifiable agreement to stop the export of missile technology abroad on the table. I think it's a mistake to walk away from that. We know that North Korea is dangerous but lumping those three countries together is dangerous,' she said.

The United States has come under fire from human rights groups and several Western governments for its treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, who are being held in open-air cells at a U.S. naval base there.

Albright said instead of showing the world conditions at the Cuban prison, the United States had become involved in an 'arcane' discussion about why it would not give its captives prisoner of war status, which grants certain rights.

She suggested releasing a video to show the conditions under which the detainees were being held, which visitors to the prison had said were adequate.

'It would help us not only with the problem in Pakistan but also generally where the international community thinks we have lost our minds,' said Albright, referring to the kidnapping of an American journalist in Pakistan whose captors have demanded the release of prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay.

Having visited Iraq lately, I couldn't help noticing that the very fabric of Iraqi society is gradually disintegrating. Mass migration from the country to urban areas has transformed the once great and prosperous cities of Baghdad and Basra into huge shantytowns; corruption, prostitution and beggary are commonplace. Eleven years of sanctions have eroded the previously resilient and vibrant middle class, rendering it destitute and helpless. The far-reaching implications of the embargo are destined to continue to impact Iraqis' lives for decades to come.

Almost everything is denied the people of Iraq, including food, clothing and medicine. As far back as 1994, reports out of Iraq, compiled by Western agencies, spoke of widespread chronic malnutrition and death among young children; an unprecedented human rights disaster. The result of this "collateral damage", as US and British officials wish to call it, is that over half a million Iraqi children under the age of five have been killed; twice the number of those killed by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

A quick glance at the list of items that Iraq is denied reveals the absurdity and the ugly face of the much-celebrated "new world order". The list includes: books, pencils, paper, soap, light bulbs, clean water, anaesthetic, lifesaving drugs, X-ray machines and films, heart and lungs machine, vaccines, firefighting equipment, etc. The pretext is that such items have a potential for military application. Frankly, everything has the potential for dual usage, and one is genuinely surprised that the list does not include nails, which could be used in nail bombs, and Pepsi bottles, which could be used for Molotov cocktail bombs!

The effects of the embargo against Iraq stand as a stark indictment of the Americans and the British and everything they claim to stand for. One is inclined to point to peoples, as opposed to governments, because these two countries are supposed to be democratic and free, governed by democratically elected officials who are accountable to their respective electorates, i.e., decisions made by these officials are in essence the decisions of their electorates. Their relationship is likened to the relationship that exists between a principal and an agent, which entails that the principal cannot escape liability for the acts and omissions of his agent.

By contrast, the Iraqis could in no way be blamed for the policies of Saddam Hussein because, put simply, the Iraqis never voted Saddam in office. Here lies the difference between the West and Iraq. Punishing the Iraqi people for Saddam's actions is akin to punishing an innocent child for an offence committed by his father. So much for Western fairness, equity and fair play!

Experts on the Middle East fear that this state of affairs is a recipe for disaster in so far as the future of the Middle East is concerned. Historically, Iraq has been a key player in the region, and it logically follows that it would always have a crucial role to play by virtue of the dictates of geopolitics. US and British officials talk, day in and day out, of a Middle East living in peace and harmony. What harmony would be expected from a county that has been singled out and placed under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in modern history? The effects of this genocidal war are likely to backfire, derailing all what the US and its underling, the UK, are working towards.

George Bush's and Tony Blair's sugar-coated speeches that the "quarrel is not with the Iraqi people but with the Iraqi leader" is neither here nor there. The resentment one senses in discussions with Iraqis is directed towards the two countries and, by implication, the two peoples, the Americans and the British. The fear, which is shared by many who have studied the Middle East, is that by antagonising and humiliating an entire nation, the likelihood of transforming every Iraqi into a Saddam is very much a possibility, not to say a probability.

When confronted with the fact that over 4,000 Iraqi children are dying every month due to the embargo, Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, retorted without a qualm: "Well, we think the price is worth it." Furthermore, on innumerable occasions, she went on record stating that even if the UN Disarmament Committee's report gave Iraq a clean bill of health, the US position is not to lift the sanctions so long as Saddam remained in power. This candour, which borders on insolence, explains Iraq's non-cooperative stance. The Iraqi leadership is aware that if all its weaponry (from biological weapons to even hand grenades) are accounted for and decommissioned, the sanctions are there to stay. So, why cooperate?

One cannot help recalling the eerie words of James Baker, former US secretary of state, during his eleventh hour meeting in Geneva in January 1991 with Tareq Aziz, the then Iraqi foreign minister, that Iraq "risks being relegated to a pre-industrial age status" if it doesn't pull out of Kuwait by Jan. 15. Well, this objective was fulfilled with the ejection of Iraqi troops from Kuwait on Feb. 28, 1991. Why does the West continue its aggressive foreign policy towards Iraq?

The answer lies in that following the collapse of the Soviet Union - the Arab world's traditional ally - the US resolved that the time was ripe to redraw the map of the Middle East. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 has outlived its validity, and the area was in need for a new arrangement, this time to accommodate Israel's long-term designs. Iraq, with its huge potential and nationalist aspirations, regardless of its government, was the stumbling block that needed to be sorted out, so to speak. In an interview a couple of years ago, Tareq Aziz stated that Iraq favours military strikes to the status quo. After all, war is governed by the Geneva Convention, while the silent war that has been waged over the past eleven years, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, continues to go unnoticed and doesn't make news headlines.

However, the pressing question remains: How many more Iraqis need to perish before the American and the British peoples react and put a stop to the atrocities committed in their name?

* The writer, a holder of a PhD degree in international affairs and an LLB degree from the UK, is currently a legal trainee at a law firm in Amman. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.