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Recent
Stories
May
17 / 18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
May
16, 2003
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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May
19, 2003
The Awkward Lies that Led to War
Of Blair, Hussein and Genocide
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
Britain's Prime Minister Blair has now claimed
that the war in Iraq was justified by the discovery of mass graves.
The ugly truth is that mass graves have become pretty common
things since the beginning of the twentieth century, although
many of the world's most savage and horrific acts left no such
evidence, as in the case of America's napalming, carpet-bombing
and throat-cutting millions in Vietnam.
No one can be genuinely surprised to learn that a dictator kills
people, especially those who rebel against him, but no one should
slip into shabby abuse of the word genocide as many reporters
do and as politicians like Blair are happy to allow them to do.
Genocide is the effort to destroy a whole class or kind of people,
not the killing of a group of rebels or enemies.
Of course, we've not seen even a modest discovery of the weapons
of mass destruction Mr. Blair went on and on about for months
to justify the invasion of a country that was threatening no
other country. Blair went through several iterations of producing
what were called dossiers, although they proved utterly unconvincing,
with no genuine evidence. There was what proved to be a cribbed
graduate-student paper used on one of his supposedly top-secret
intelligence efforts.
Once, Blair frantically asserted that Hussein could mount an
attack with chemical or biological weapons within 48 hours. Although
one must concede this in no way surpasses the grossness in lying
of Colin Powell's solemn recitation about satellite photos of
actual components for chemical and biological warfare.
There was that phony study by an institute in Britain, given
great publicity by Blair's government, claiming Hussein could
build an atomic bomb in a very short time. There was a phony
biography of Hussein, done by another Englishman, making the
same claim. There were the phony papers that surfaced in Italy
about Iraqi transactions to buy uranium. And then there were
the genuinely-qualified experts, the UN weapons inspectors, who
were not allowed to do their jobs.
So I suppose after all that, plus a great many awkward lies stumbled
over by President Bush, Blair would feel under some obligation
to find a reason for a rash, unjustified war, even if it is on
an ex post facto basis.
Blair knows perfectly well that these recently-discovered dead
go back many years to uprisings in Iraq after the first Gulf
war. The graves can be no surprise since virtually every detail
of the uprisings was known to British and American governments.
The CIA had many informers, both inside Iraq and as refugees,
it had genuine information from spy satellites and high-flying
aircraft, it had telephone and Internet interceptions, and it
had information from Mossad, people who keep a very close watch
on that neighborhood. This information would have kept the two
governments about as well informed as Hussein himself.
For some reason, I don't recall any great outrage expressed at
the time. I don't recall the British or American governments
doing anything, or even threatening to do anything, at the time.
Could that possibly be because the uprisings in Iraq were actively
encouraged from outside? The United States did this knowing full
well that it had no intention of helping those it incited to
revolt, and it did this knowing the dreadful price that would
be exacted by Hussein for the rebels' almost-certain failure.
In other words, just to keep unrest and turmoil going for Hussein,
the United States, and its loyal ally, Britain, deliberately
helped send those thousands to certain death. Now, years later,
Blair and Bush want to use their poor broken remains as evidence
for different claims. Hypocrisy and immorality simply do not
come on uglier terms.
The United States has pulled this kind of dirty trick a number
of times on people like the Iraqi Shia or the Kurds who find
themselves in vulnerable situations, but one does not associate
that kind of ruthless activity with modern Britain. Well, one
doesn't associate all the phony arguments and claims made by
Blair with modern Britain either. Or the cozy barbecues in rattlesnake
country with a powerful ignoramus. Perhaps I just have a somewhat
fogged-over idea of the behavior of British governments.
Blair says that because a mass grave has been found which may
contain 3,000 bodies (although in Conrad Black's Telegraph we
early find "up to 15,000." One wonders why not "up
to half a million" while you're at it?), invading Iraq against
all international laws and public opinion, killing at least 3,000
more people (I tend to include the poor conscripts who die for
their country and not just the unambiguous civilians), including
scores of children, was justified.
I wonder would Blair's assessment also apply to the estimated
500 tons of depleted uranium ammunition used in Iraq, hideous
stuff, really a form of dirty bomb, whose vapors and dust will
continue injuring and killing children for many years? And I
suppose Blair is counting the razor-like shards of the cluster
bombs that have crippled and lacerated so many children? Pitching
a city of 5 million into chaos with no electricity, no water,
no hospitals, no security, and no jobs was justified? Has he
allowed for the pillaging and destruction of those priceless
archeological treasures, the entire world's heritage?
In how many dozens of countries across Africa, Western Asia,
and Latin America have large groups of a regime's opponents been
murdered in recent years? Should these countries all have been
invaded? What made Hussein so particularly intolerable? Surely
Blair knows that Israel, certainly not a dictatorship, has killed
about 2,500 Palestinians in the last 2 1/2 years? That it was
responsible for tens of thousands dying in Lebanon in another
illegal invasion?
A couple of countries in South America had the nasty practice
for years of flying untried people out to sea, generally after
torturing them, and simply throwing them off the plane. Thousands
of these "disappeared ones" raised not a word of protest
from American or British governments, much less any threats of
invasion. I suspect the difference in treatment may have had
something to do with America's seeing the soldiers tossing people
out of planes as doing the Lord's work for political stability.
As we all have been given to understand, dictators in the Middle
East don't worship the same Lord, either temporal or spiritual.
Of course, there were the horrors of Pinochet in Chile, torturing
and killing thousands. And what was the role of America in those
crimes? Why, they put him in power in the first place and have
protected him since from justice. Indeed, Britain's own Baroness
Thatcher spoke out against justice for this vampire since he
assisted Britain during the Falklands war. That "political
stability" stuff goes a long way. You are free to commit
the same crimes Hussein did, so long as you do it for the right
interests.
But there have been so many, it would become tiresome to name
them all. Nasty creatures like Samoza in Nicaragua, the Shah
of Iran, Ceausescu of Rumania (a good friend of Nixon's), Marcos
in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Park in South Korea,
and President Salinas of Mexico.
There have been far more terrible events in recent decades than
Hussein's revenge for a revolt. We've had genuine holocausts,
genuine attempts at genocide. In Rwanda and Congo, where were
the US and UK when the blood of a million innocents soaked the
earth? There is every evidence a new wave is now underway in
Congo. Will Blair convince Bush next time they share a barbecued
cow in Crawford to invade Congo? Can you imagine Republican good
ol' boys like Tom Delay or Trent Lott supporting that?
And Cambodia? More than million skulls deposited over the "killing
fields," a direct result of America's destabilizing a neutral
government through invasion and bombing. Nothing was done there
to stop the killing, although the US claimed that Vietnam's effort
to stop the slaughter proved how right it had been in the first
place. Does that sound familiar, Tony?
At the end of Sukarno's reign, Indonesia went on a rampage killing
at least half a million people. People had their throats slit
and their bodies dumped into rivers for being suspected communists.
The US not only didn't lift a finger, it had intelligence people
on the phone reporting names of suspected communists not to be
missed. Mighty heroic work that.
I do not understand why Blair was willing to see the UN, NATO,
and the EU put through a meat grinder over Hussein's known killings,
which while horrible are not so far as we have evidence anything
so terrible as these others? And if they were in fact that horrible,
if there is evidence for true mass murder rather than a dictator's
punishment for a failed rebellion, why didn't Blair just tell
us so in the first place, with convincing facts?
But Blair knows perfectly well he didn't invade Iraq over these
killings, as he knows he would not invade another dictatorship
for identical acts tomorrow. He invaded over the American claim
of extraordinary weapons, which Bush said absolutely, over and
over, were there, but which we can all see are not.
Iraq was invaded simply because Hussein didn't play the game
by American rules.
John Chuckman
lives in Canada. He can be reached at: chuckman@counterpunch.org
Yesterday's
Features
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
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