LMN
2004-08-29 10:34:57 UTC
NOW WE ARE THE IRAQ EXTREMISTS Aug 22 2003
John Pilger
THE "liberation" of Iraq is a cruel joke on a stricken people. The Americans and
British, partners in a great recognised crime, have brought down on the Middle
East, and much of the rest of the world, the prospect of terrorism and suffering
on a scale that al-Qaeda could only imagine.
That is what this week's bloody bombing of the United Nations headquarters in
Baghdad tells us.
It is a "wake-up call", according to Mary Robinson, the former UN Humanitarian
Commissioner.
She is right, of course, but it is a call that millions of people sounded on the
streets of London and all over the world more than seven months ago - before the
killing began.
And yet the Anglo-American spin machine, whose minor cogs are currently being
exposed by the Hutton Inquiry, is still in production.
According to the Bush and Blair governments, those responsible for the UN outrage
are "extremists from outside": Al-Qaeda terrorists or Iranian militants, or both.
Whether or not outsiders are involved, the aim of this propaganda is to distract
from the truth that America and Britain are now immersed in a classic guerrilla
war, a war of resistance and self-determination of the kind waged against foreign
aggressors and colonial masters since history began.
For America, it is another Vietnam. For Britain it is another Kenya, or indeed
another Iraq.
In 1921, Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude said in Baghdad: "Our armies do not
come as conquerors, but as liberators."
Within three years 10,000 had died in an uprising against the British, who gassed
and bombed the "terrorists".
Nothing has changed, only the names and the fine print of the lies.
As for the "extremists from outside", simply turn the meaning around and you have
a succinct description of the current occupiers who, unprovoked, attacked a
defenceless sovereign country, defying the United Nations and the opposition of
most of humanity.
Using weapons designed to cause the maximum human suffering - cluster bombs,
uranium-tipped shells and firebombs (napalm) - these extremists from outside
caused the deaths of at least 8,000 civilians and as many as 30,000 troops, most
conscripted teenagers. Consider the waves of grief in any society from that
carnage.
AT their moment of "victory", these extremists from outside - having already
destroyed Iraq's infrastructure with a 12-year bombing campaign and embargo -
murdered journalists, toppled statues and encouraged wholesale looting while
refusing to make the most basic humanitarian repairs to the damage they had caused
to the supply of power and clean water.
This means that today sick children are dying from thirst and gastro-enteritis,
that hospitals frequently run out of oxygen and that those who might be saved can
not be saved.
How many have died like this?
"We count every screwdriver," said an American colonel during the first Gulf war,
"but counting civilians who die along the way is just not our policy."
The biggest military machine on earth, said to be spending up to $5billion-a-month
on its occupation of Iraq, apparently can not find the resources and manpower to
bring generators to a people enduring temperatures of well over the century -
almost half of them children, of whom eight per cent, says UNICEF, are suffering
extreme malnutrition. When Iraqis have protested about this, the extremists from
outside have shot them dead.
They have shot them in crowds, or individually, and they boast about it.
The other day, Task Force 20, an "elite" American unit murdered at least five
people as they drove down a street.
The next day they murdered a woman and her three children as they drove down a
street.
They are no different from the death squads the Americans trained in Latin
America.
These extremists from outside have been allowed to get away with much of this -
partly because of the web of deceptions in London and Washington, and partly
because of those who voluntarily echo and amplify their lies.
In the current brawl between the Blair government and the BBC a new myth has
emerged: It is that the BBC was and is "anti-war".
This is what George Orwell called an "official truth". Again, just turn it around
and you have the real truth; that the BBC supported Blair's war, that day after
day it broadcast and "debated" and legitimised the charade of weapons of mass
destruction, as well as nonsense such as that which cast Blair as a "moderating
influence" on Bush - when, as we now know, they are almost identical warmongers.
Who can forget the BBC's exultant Chief Political Correspondent Andrew Marr, at
the moment of "coalition" triumph. Tony Blair, he declared, "said that they would
take Baghdad without a blood bath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be
celebrating. And on both those points he has been conclusively proved right."
If you replace "right" with "wrong", you have the truth. To the BBC's man in
Downing Street, up to 40,000 deaths apparently does not constitute a "blood bath".
According to the independent American survey organisation Media Tenor, the BBC
allowed less dissent against the war than all the leading international
broadcasters surveyed, including the American networks.
Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who revealed Dr David Kelly's concerns about the
government's "dodgy dossier" on Iraq, is one of the very few mavericks, an
inconvenient breed who challenge official truth.
One of the most important lies was linking the regime of Saddam Hussein with
al-Qaeda.
As we now know, both Bush and Blair ignored the advice of their intelligence
agencies and made the connection public.
It worked. When the attack on Iraq began, polls showed that most Americans
believed Saddam Hussein was behind September 11.
The opposite was true. Monstrous though it was, Saddam Hussein's regime was a
veritable bastion against al-Qaeda and its Islamic fanaticism. Saddam was the
West's man, who was armed to the teeth by America and Britain in the 1980s because
he had oil and a lot of money and because he was an enemy of anti-Western mullahs
in Iran and elsewhere in the region.
Saddam and Osama bin Laden loathed each other.
His grave mistake was invading Kuwait in 1990; Kuwait is an Anglo-American
protectorate, part of the Western oil empire in the Middle East.
The killings in the UN compound in Baghdad this week, like the killing of
thousands of others in Iraq, form a trail of blood that leads to Bush and Blair
and their courtiers.
It was obvious to millions of people all over the world that if the Americans and
British attacked Iraq, then the fictional link between Iraq and Islamic terrorism
could well become fact.
The brutality of the occupation of Iraq - in which children are shot or arrested
by the Americans, and countless people have "disappeared" in concentration camps -
is an open invitation to those who now see Iraq as part of a holy jihad.
When I travelled the length of Iraq several years ago, I felt completely safe.
I was received everywhere with generosity and grace, even though I was from a
country whose government was bombing and besieging my hosts.
Bush's and Blair's court suppressed the truth that most Iraqis both opposed Saddam
Hussein and the invasion of their country.
The thousands of exiles, from Jordan to Britain, said this repeatedly.
But who listened to them? When did the BBC interrupt its anti-Christ drumbeat
about Saddam Hussein and report this vital news?
Nor are the United Nations merely the "peacemakers" and "nationbuilders" that this
week's headlines say they are.
There were dedicated humanitarians among the dead in Baghdad but for more than 12
years, the UN Security Council allowed itself to be manipulated so that Washington
and London could impose on the people of Iraq, under a UN flag, an embargo that
resembled a mediaeval siege.
It was this that crippled Iraq and, ironically, concentrated all domestic power in
the hands of the regime, thus ending all hope of a successful uprising.
The other day I sat with Dennis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary General of
the United Nations, and the UN in New York. Halliday was the senior UN official in
Iraq in the mid-1990s, who resigned rather than administer the blockade.
"These sanctions," he said, "represented ongoing warfare against the people of
Iraq. They became, in my view, genocidal in their impact over the years, and the
Security Council maintained them, despite its full knowledge of their impact,
particularly on the children of Iraq.
"We disregarded our own charter, international law, and we probably killed over a
million people.
"It's a tragedy that will not be forgotten... I'm confident that the Iraqis will
throw out the occupying forces. I don't know how long it will take, but they'll
throw them out based on a nationalistic drive.
"They will not tolerate any foreign troops' presence in their country, dictating
their lifestyle, their culture, their future, their politics.
"This is a very proud people, very conscious of a great history.
"It's grossly unacceptable. Every country that is now threatened by Mr Bush, which
is his habit, presents an outrage to all of us.
"Should we stand by and merely watch while a man so dangerous he is willing to
sacrifice Americans lives and, worse, the lives of others."
John Pilger's documentary on Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror will be shown
on ITV on September 22.
- -
"...Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They
never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we." - George W Bush
John Pilger
THE "liberation" of Iraq is a cruel joke on a stricken people. The Americans and
British, partners in a great recognised crime, have brought down on the Middle
East, and much of the rest of the world, the prospect of terrorism and suffering
on a scale that al-Qaeda could only imagine.
That is what this week's bloody bombing of the United Nations headquarters in
Baghdad tells us.
It is a "wake-up call", according to Mary Robinson, the former UN Humanitarian
Commissioner.
She is right, of course, but it is a call that millions of people sounded on the
streets of London and all over the world more than seven months ago - before the
killing began.
And yet the Anglo-American spin machine, whose minor cogs are currently being
exposed by the Hutton Inquiry, is still in production.
According to the Bush and Blair governments, those responsible for the UN outrage
are "extremists from outside": Al-Qaeda terrorists or Iranian militants, or both.
Whether or not outsiders are involved, the aim of this propaganda is to distract
from the truth that America and Britain are now immersed in a classic guerrilla
war, a war of resistance and self-determination of the kind waged against foreign
aggressors and colonial masters since history began.
For America, it is another Vietnam. For Britain it is another Kenya, or indeed
another Iraq.
In 1921, Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude said in Baghdad: "Our armies do not
come as conquerors, but as liberators."
Within three years 10,000 had died in an uprising against the British, who gassed
and bombed the "terrorists".
Nothing has changed, only the names and the fine print of the lies.
As for the "extremists from outside", simply turn the meaning around and you have
a succinct description of the current occupiers who, unprovoked, attacked a
defenceless sovereign country, defying the United Nations and the opposition of
most of humanity.
Using weapons designed to cause the maximum human suffering - cluster bombs,
uranium-tipped shells and firebombs (napalm) - these extremists from outside
caused the deaths of at least 8,000 civilians and as many as 30,000 troops, most
conscripted teenagers. Consider the waves of grief in any society from that
carnage.
AT their moment of "victory", these extremists from outside - having already
destroyed Iraq's infrastructure with a 12-year bombing campaign and embargo -
murdered journalists, toppled statues and encouraged wholesale looting while
refusing to make the most basic humanitarian repairs to the damage they had caused
to the supply of power and clean water.
This means that today sick children are dying from thirst and gastro-enteritis,
that hospitals frequently run out of oxygen and that those who might be saved can
not be saved.
How many have died like this?
"We count every screwdriver," said an American colonel during the first Gulf war,
"but counting civilians who die along the way is just not our policy."
The biggest military machine on earth, said to be spending up to $5billion-a-month
on its occupation of Iraq, apparently can not find the resources and manpower to
bring generators to a people enduring temperatures of well over the century -
almost half of them children, of whom eight per cent, says UNICEF, are suffering
extreme malnutrition. When Iraqis have protested about this, the extremists from
outside have shot them dead.
They have shot them in crowds, or individually, and they boast about it.
The other day, Task Force 20, an "elite" American unit murdered at least five
people as they drove down a street.
The next day they murdered a woman and her three children as they drove down a
street.
They are no different from the death squads the Americans trained in Latin
America.
These extremists from outside have been allowed to get away with much of this -
partly because of the web of deceptions in London and Washington, and partly
because of those who voluntarily echo and amplify their lies.
In the current brawl between the Blair government and the BBC a new myth has
emerged: It is that the BBC was and is "anti-war".
This is what George Orwell called an "official truth". Again, just turn it around
and you have the real truth; that the BBC supported Blair's war, that day after
day it broadcast and "debated" and legitimised the charade of weapons of mass
destruction, as well as nonsense such as that which cast Blair as a "moderating
influence" on Bush - when, as we now know, they are almost identical warmongers.
Who can forget the BBC's exultant Chief Political Correspondent Andrew Marr, at
the moment of "coalition" triumph. Tony Blair, he declared, "said that they would
take Baghdad without a blood bath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be
celebrating. And on both those points he has been conclusively proved right."
If you replace "right" with "wrong", you have the truth. To the BBC's man in
Downing Street, up to 40,000 deaths apparently does not constitute a "blood bath".
According to the independent American survey organisation Media Tenor, the BBC
allowed less dissent against the war than all the leading international
broadcasters surveyed, including the American networks.
Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who revealed Dr David Kelly's concerns about the
government's "dodgy dossier" on Iraq, is one of the very few mavericks, an
inconvenient breed who challenge official truth.
One of the most important lies was linking the regime of Saddam Hussein with
al-Qaeda.
As we now know, both Bush and Blair ignored the advice of their intelligence
agencies and made the connection public.
It worked. When the attack on Iraq began, polls showed that most Americans
believed Saddam Hussein was behind September 11.
The opposite was true. Monstrous though it was, Saddam Hussein's regime was a
veritable bastion against al-Qaeda and its Islamic fanaticism. Saddam was the
West's man, who was armed to the teeth by America and Britain in the 1980s because
he had oil and a lot of money and because he was an enemy of anti-Western mullahs
in Iran and elsewhere in the region.
Saddam and Osama bin Laden loathed each other.
His grave mistake was invading Kuwait in 1990; Kuwait is an Anglo-American
protectorate, part of the Western oil empire in the Middle East.
The killings in the UN compound in Baghdad this week, like the killing of
thousands of others in Iraq, form a trail of blood that leads to Bush and Blair
and their courtiers.
It was obvious to millions of people all over the world that if the Americans and
British attacked Iraq, then the fictional link between Iraq and Islamic terrorism
could well become fact.
The brutality of the occupation of Iraq - in which children are shot or arrested
by the Americans, and countless people have "disappeared" in concentration camps -
is an open invitation to those who now see Iraq as part of a holy jihad.
When I travelled the length of Iraq several years ago, I felt completely safe.
I was received everywhere with generosity and grace, even though I was from a
country whose government was bombing and besieging my hosts.
Bush's and Blair's court suppressed the truth that most Iraqis both opposed Saddam
Hussein and the invasion of their country.
The thousands of exiles, from Jordan to Britain, said this repeatedly.
But who listened to them? When did the BBC interrupt its anti-Christ drumbeat
about Saddam Hussein and report this vital news?
Nor are the United Nations merely the "peacemakers" and "nationbuilders" that this
week's headlines say they are.
There were dedicated humanitarians among the dead in Baghdad but for more than 12
years, the UN Security Council allowed itself to be manipulated so that Washington
and London could impose on the people of Iraq, under a UN flag, an embargo that
resembled a mediaeval siege.
It was this that crippled Iraq and, ironically, concentrated all domestic power in
the hands of the regime, thus ending all hope of a successful uprising.
The other day I sat with Dennis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary General of
the United Nations, and the UN in New York. Halliday was the senior UN official in
Iraq in the mid-1990s, who resigned rather than administer the blockade.
"These sanctions," he said, "represented ongoing warfare against the people of
Iraq. They became, in my view, genocidal in their impact over the years, and the
Security Council maintained them, despite its full knowledge of their impact,
particularly on the children of Iraq.
"We disregarded our own charter, international law, and we probably killed over a
million people.
"It's a tragedy that will not be forgotten... I'm confident that the Iraqis will
throw out the occupying forces. I don't know how long it will take, but they'll
throw them out based on a nationalistic drive.
"They will not tolerate any foreign troops' presence in their country, dictating
their lifestyle, their culture, their future, their politics.
"This is a very proud people, very conscious of a great history.
"It's grossly unacceptable. Every country that is now threatened by Mr Bush, which
is his habit, presents an outrage to all of us.
"Should we stand by and merely watch while a man so dangerous he is willing to
sacrifice Americans lives and, worse, the lives of others."
John Pilger's documentary on Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror will be shown
on ITV on September 22.
- -
"...Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They
never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we." - George W Bush