Behind the Numbers Redux:

How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told

T he International Rescue Committee in late January 2008 released a new report on the mortality in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. The report caught the eye of some news agencies, who quickly whipped up trite little articles as supposed expressions of horror. Over and over it has been declared "the world's forgotten crises." There are reasons why Darfur is in the crises of the day, the poster crises, and why Congo is hardly mentioned. [1]

However, the story of war and plunder in Congo is not unreported. It is a story that has been censored, manipulated, and covered up even while it is ostensibly being told. Plenty of information has been published about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and plenty of this is flak, designed to whiteout the truth, and help keep the real story buried, and that includes the truly honest representations of war and suffering in Congo that have been published. Just because the mainstream doesn't cover it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. This is the falsification of consciousness.

While the true death toll in Congo over the past series of wars-for the Congolese it is one long contiguous war-will never be known, it is far higher than the IRC figures. In the IRC's tidy statistical equations there is no recounting the ordeal of the millions of people who have disappeared into the swamps, the tropical forests, the mass graves, torture chambers and death camps, or after crossing borders. The entire exercise in counting the dead is another way to do little to stop it. The IRC is about profits, but that is not all.

The International Rescue Committee has been described in the past as the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, and it is. This is exactly what is going on with the IRC today, and more, when the IRC-heavily subsidized by the very same profiteers-sends its body counters into Congo. But the IRC is not only the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, it is also the ideal instrument of intelligence gathering.

The IRC capitalizes on their access to refugee populations, conflict areas and individual refugee encounters and interviews to gather intelligence on armed groups, leadership, resources, weapons and geographical conflicts, information that is selectively used to serve the greater interests of the IRC and its partners.

America's Secret Warriors

Amongst the trustees or overseers of the International Rescue Committee is Henry Kissinger, a man whose interests run very deep in Congo. Henry Kissinger is tied to Freeport McMoRan (FXC) and FCX is all over the copper and cobalt show in Katanga. FCX director J. Stapleton Roy was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine Albright, 1999-2000, during the Clinton administration invasions of Rwanda (1994) and then Congo/Zaire (1996); Roy retired to join Kissinger Associates.

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