Washington Post Prints Iraq Lies, 2013 Edition
By Peter Hart | FAIR | March 22, 2013
How long can media keep printing lies about the Iraq War? Today’s Washington Post (3/22/13) provides one answer, since they printed an 0p-ed by former Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley where he argued this:
After Hussein was deposed, we did not find the stockpiles of WMDs that all the world’s major intelligence services, the Clinton and Bush administrations and most members of Congress thought that he had. It was less an intelligence failure than a failure of imagination. Before the war, no one conceived what seems to have been the case: that Hussein had destroyed his WMD stocks but wanted to hide this from his enemy Iran. The U.S. team charged with searching for WMDs concluded that Hussein had the intention and the means to return to WMD production had he not been brought down. (With Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, it is a good bet that he would have.)
This is complete, utter nonsense; a serious newspaper would be ashamed to print it.
Long before the war, the government had intelligence from the most famous defector from Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel. The government publicly claimed that what Kamel told them confirmed their threats about Iraq’s WMDs.
In fact, what Kamel actually told IAEA inspectors in 1995 was that the weapons stockpiles had been destroyed. This was reported right before the invasion by Newsweek magazine.
So it is 100 percent false to talk about “a failure of imagination.”
It is also false to talk about how “all the world’s major intelligence services” were in agreement on Iraq intelligence. Some remained quite skeptical about the analysis being promoted by the Bush administration. As a matter of fact, the Washington Post (3/18/03) printed an article to the effect right before the before the war started:
As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged—and in some cases disproved–by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports.
So the Post is publishing something that flies in the face of what its own reporters documented at the time.
What about the idea that Iraq was hiding its absence of WMDs from Iran? If they were, they weren’t do a very good job of it. Before the war, Saddam Hussein went on CBS with Dan Rather (60 Minutes II, 2/26/03) and stated quite clearly that he had no such weapons: “I think America and the world also knows that Iraq no longer has the weapons,” he told Rather. You can watch the video here.
To top it all the off, the parenthetical at the end–which stands as a final justification for the war–is completely unsupported; there is no evidence to suggest that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Does the Post factcheck op-eds? By the looks of it, they do not. But something tells me that if you submitted a column that made completely factual observations about Iraq–saying, for example, that there was clear evidence before the war that Iraq had destroyed its WMDs, and that Iraq had done its best to make clear that it didn’t possess any–you would have little chance of getting it published. And if, by some miracle, it did make through the early editing process, someone would demand that you substantiate these accurate claims.
No such burden would appear to have been placed on Stephen Hadley, who was part of the team that told the lies that took the country into war. Thanks to the Washington Post, he is still doing so.
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Iraq, Iran, Red Lines and Headlines
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | February 6, 2013
Could this repeated history be any more obvious?
This was August 5, 2002:
And this was November 8, 2011:
This was September 9, 2002:
And this was October 9, 2012:
This was also September 9, 2002:
This was September 17, 2002:
And this was May 9, 2006:
This was September 22, 2002:
And this was November 6, 2011:
This was September 10, 2002:
And this was November 9, 2011:
This was September 17, 2004:
And this was January 27, 2009:
This was October 6, 2004:
And this was January 25, 2010:
This was April 25, 2005:
And this was October 8, 2012:
This was September 6, 2007:
And this was February 4, 2013:
*****
The Reporters Who Got Iraq So Wrong
By Peter Hart | FAIR | February 6, 2013
Ten years ago today, Colin Powell made the Bush administration’s case for going to war against Iraq. Much of what he said about Iraq’s threats to the United States was false. But the media coverage gave the opposite impression, and most of the pundits and journalists who promoted the justifications for the war paid no price for their failures.
As FAIR reported at the time, even before the Powell address there were reasons to be skeptical of the administration’s claims. On February 4, 2003, FAIR published “Iraq’s Hidden Weapons: From Allegation to Fact,” which made the point that “it has not been demonstrated that Iraq continues to hold unconventional weapons.” FAIR criticized coverage like that of the New York Times (2/2/03), which asserted that “nobody seriously expected Mr. Hussein to lead inspectors to his stash of illegal poisons or rockets, or to let his scientists tell all.”
As the FAIR release concluded:
The media convey to the public the impression that the alleged banned weapons on which the Bush administration rests its case for war are known to exist, and that the question is simply whether inspectors are skillful enough to find them.
Powell’s address was instrumental in pushing a faulty media line on Iraq’s WMDs further. That much was clear in the coverage right after his appearance at the United Nations, as FAIR documented on February 10 in “A Failure of Skepticism in Powell Coverage.”
In Andrea Mitchell‘s report on NBC Nightly News (2/5/03), Powell’s allegations became actual capabilities of the Iraqi military: “Powell played a tape of a Mirage jet retrofitted to spray simulated anthrax, and a model of Iraq’s unmanned drones, capable of spraying chemical or germ weapons within a radius of at least 550 miles.”
Dan Rather, introducing an interview with Powell (60 Minutes II, 2/5/03), shifted from reporting allegations to describing allegations as facts: “Holding a vial of anthrax-like powder, Powell said Saddam might have tens of thousands of liters of anthrax. He showed how Iraqi jets could spray that anthrax and how mobile laboratories are being used to concoct new weapons.” The anthrax supply is appropriately attributed as a claim by Powell, but the mobile laboratories were something that Powell “showed” to be actually operating.
Commentator William Schneider on CNN Live Today (2/6/03) dismissed the possibility that Powell could be doubted: “No one disputes the findings Powell presented at the U.N. that Iraq is essentially guilty of failing to disarm.” When CNN‘s Paula Zahn (2/5/03) interviewed Jamie Rubin, former State Department spokesperson, she prefaced a discussion of Iraq’s response to Powell’s speech thusly: “You’ve got to understand that most Americans watching this were either probably laughing out loud or got sick to their stomach. Which was it for you?”
If you turn to FAIR’s “Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline” (3/19/07), you see that February 6 Washington Post op-ed page had Mary McGrory writing: “I don’t know how the United Nations felt about Colin Powell’s ‘J’accuse’ speech against Saddam Hussein. I can only say that he persuaded me, and I was as tough as France to convince.” She added that she “heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein, with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I had thought.”
And Richard Cohen (2/6/03) announced that the debate was over:
The evidence he presented to the United Nations–some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail–had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool–or possibly a Frenchman–could conclude otherwise.
Obviously, the fools and Frenchmen were correct. And as FAIR documented, independent-minded journalists were reporting that some of the administration’s claims did not stand up to scrutiny. The Associated Press had a detailed look at the state of Iraq intelligence on January 18. The skepticism and good judgment of those reporters (and others) should have been the rule, not the exception, if journalists had been doing their jobs.
But most journalists did a different job. And most of them faced no consequences whatsoever for being so disastrously wrong.
Insinuation as War Propaganda
By Anthony Gregory | The Independent Institute | February 23, 2012
In 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration made its case for war with Iraq. There were assertions given about Saddam’s maintenance of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. What was never said explicitly, however, was that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Yet by late 2003, seventy percent of polled Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally behind 9/11. Bush’s Republican voters were especially convinced of this.
Yet Bush and his officials never said this. And after the multiple disasters of the Iraq war began to present themselves with great clarity, the Bush officials were questioned about their pre-war intel. Yet they could say, strictly speaking, one thing they never claimed was Saddam was behind 9/11.
Condoleezza Rice had said something about the attacks originating in the same region or area as Iraq. There was all sorts of insinuation that Saddam might have been involved. And surely the Bush team never put an ounce of effort into disabusing the American people of the completely false notion that Saddam was behind 9/11. The vast majority of Americans believed it—indeed, at times, more Americans thought Saddam was behind the attacks than believed the Iraq War was just!—yet it was not only completely untrue, but not directly rooted in any explicit assertion given by the administration. Various pro-war commentators had said it, but Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell—none of them ever did.
Fast forward a decade to the current day. Seventy-one percent of Americans—almost exactly the percentage that thought Saddam was behind 9/11—think that Iran has nuclear weapons. It’s a small sample, but it is consistent with polls over the last couple years, each one showing a majority believing Iran already has nukes, and almost nine out of ten Americans sure that Iran is seeking them.
Indeed, talking with “respectable” liberals—the type who listen to NPR and watch Jon Stewart—I find repeatedly that even folks who don’t want to go to war assume that every reasonable American knows that Iran is on the brink of having nukes, if the regime doesn’t already have them.
What’s bizarre about this, other than the fact that there is no credible evidence that Iran has nuclear weapons, is that no one in a position of official authority is claiming it either! Every report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, even when framed in a way to make Iran seem ominous, confirms the “non-diversion” of nuclear materials to weaponization purposes. The CIA and intelligence community have consistently stood by the National Intelligence Estimate findings that Iran has not sought a nuclear weapon since 2003 (and Iran doing so back then is only suspected based on very scant evidence produced by the Israeli government).
What’s more, in the last week or so, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stressed that not only does Iran not have nuclear weapons; there is no evidence that Iran even wants nuclear weapons!!
Even if Iran wanted to make nuclear weapons, it would probably take three or more years. Iran is reportedly attempting to enrich its uranium to 19.75% LEU. Nuclear weapons require 95%—and there is no evidence that Iran has the means to do this. It is even more dubious to believe a nuclear-armed Iran would be some sort of unprecedented threat for the United States, but that’s neither here nor there.
So what’s the deal? The Obama administration (and the Bush administration, and the UN) have all had the same official position: Iran doesn’t have nukes, and the Iranians probably aren’t looking to get them. Yet seven out of ten Americans think Iran already has them. Meanwhile, every Republican presidential candidate except Ron Paul warns about the unparalleled threat of a nuclear Iran, and the Obama White House punishes the country with tighter sanctions and ever more threats.
Indeed, Obama has thrived on the insinuation that Iran has nukes. When he acted tough back in 2009 because Iran had been caught red-handed with its fledgling nuclear facility at Qom—a civilian nuclear facility that Iran readily alerted the international community to, consistent with its continuing adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory—he did so against a backdrop of insinuation that of course everyone knows Iran wants nuclear weapons. He did this even though all that existed at Qom, according to an IAEA official, was a “hole in a mountain.” Why didn’t the president remind the public instead that there is little to worry about, since the entire Defense Department and intelligence community confirm that Iran has no nuclear weapons program?
If a war begins with Iran, it will largely be on the basis of propaganda believed by the public, propaganda that the government has never officially articulated. In the past, the U.S. thrived on outright lies for war: the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Kuwaiti babies being ripped from incubators, and so forth. There has long been a fair share of unsubstantiated allegations involved behind major U.S. wars—the USS Maine being sunk by the Spanish, the Zimmerman Telegram posing an actual threat to the United States, the Serbians committing genocide of ethnic Albanians, killing many tens of thousands of civilians in the late 1990s, and so on.
Yet today lies and unproven allegations are not enough. The U.S. warfare state appears to thrive on insinuation in its war propaganda. The U.S. war machine’s top brass never outright declare the most provocative claims about U.S. enemies. That way, when the war goes south and people begin accusing the political class of misleading them, the empire’s defenders can easily say (accurately in word if not in spirit): “Bush never claimed Saddam was behind 9/11! Obama never claimed Iran had nuclear weapons!”
But don’t think for a moment that our rulers aren’t glad the American people believe what they do. It makes wars so much easier to wage when the public buys into all sorts of nonsense. The plausible deniability that insinuated propaganda gives the ruling class is just icing on the cake.
Related articles
- US spooks say no Iranian nukes (rt.com)
The “New” Iraq
By Ghali Hassan | May 4, 2010
Seven years after the illegal invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-American fascist armies, it is clear today that the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Iraqi nation was a premeditated and unprovoked act of naked aggression aimed at expanding U.S.-Israel Zionist power. These barbaric crimes ‘should never be forgotten and never be forgiven’.
“By violating international laws and conventions in 2003 in order to attack a defenceless nation for no reason [other than serving Israel’s Zionist-fascist ideology], George W. Bush [and Tony Blair were] reclaiming those most primal instincts that had led the Mongol barbarians Hulagu and Turko-Tamerlane to destroy Baghdad in 1258 and 1401 respectively. And by going back to the law of the jungle, Bush [and Blair] did not just destroy Baghdad and the whole of Iraq, but [they] also instigated a treacherous plan against the precious legal and institutional heritage that mankind has been laboriously building since the Treaty of Westphalia of October 24, 1648, generally considered the founding document of the nation-state and the first attempt at outlawing the right of might”, writes Tunisian journalist Hmida Ben Romdhane (La Presse de Tunisie, April 11, 2010). Unlike the destruction of Baghdad by the barbarian Mongols, the destruction of the Iraqi society by the West’s most recent militarised religio-fascist alliance of George Bush and Tony Blair is an act of terrorism that will live in infamy.
Unprovoked Aggression
There is no doubt that the barbaric attack on Baghdad in March 2003 will remain one of the most violent acts of terrorism in the history of mankind. According to U.S. officials, “Shock and Awe” was aimed at terrorising the entire Iraqi population and intimidating Iraq’s neighbours, particularly Syria and Iran. After 13 years of genocidal sanctions, that deprived Iraqi children and the population as a whole of essential medical supplies and nutrition, Iraqis are virtually defenceless in the face of overwhelming violence.
It is estimated that the 13-year long U.S.-Britain imposed sanctions – coated with the United Nations despicable colour – caused the death of more than 2 million innocent Iraqi civilians, including the death of more than 600,000 children under the age of 5 years. The sanctions were accurately described as the real weapons of mass destruction (WMD). According to John Mueller and Karl Mueller, the brutal and inhumane sanctions against the Iraqi people have caused far more deaths over time than the combined use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the two world wars (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999).
Unsatisfied by the enormous atrocity and resilience of the Iraqi people and their government, the U.S. and Britain concocted a pretext (WMD and link to terrorism) to justify an illegal act of aggression to occupy Iraq. After the pretext was exposed as a lie, the U.S. and U.S. accomplices concocted a new pretext to justify the illegal aggression, the West’s “moral responsibility” and concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people. The so-called “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P – not applicable to the Palestinians – was the same concept used by the German Nazis to justify Nazi terror. The difference was that the Nazis were allegedly “protecting ethnic Germans” in Poland and Russia.
Not since the Fascist army of Adolf Hitler invaded and occupied parts of Europe has the world witnessed such barbaric violence and destruction as that being perpetrated by the Anglo-American fascist armies. [Editor notes that the author seems to be forgetting the barbaric atrocities committed by the European and US powers in Malaya, Kenya, Korea, Algeria, Vietnam etc...] For most Iraqis today, living under U.S. military Occupation is no less brutal than Poles or Russians were living under the brutal Nazi occupation that most Westerners considered barbaric.
Prior to the invasion, Iraq was subjected to a massive and vicious propaganda campaign. The country was portrayed as a pariah state by mainstream-Zionist media and their despicable journalists distorting facts and promoting aggression. Iraq’s late president Saddam Hussein was demonised and used as a moral compass to justify Anglo-American aggression and war crimes.
Western opportunists and America’s apologists who pretended to be “against” the Anglo-American aggression and hide behind the “No War for Oil” Zionist deception have long fallen in line. The so-called “liberal class” and “progressives” have often described the murderous Occupation as a “failure” and “incompetence”, praised the U.S.-staged fraudulent elections and attacked the legitimate Iraqi Resistance as “violent insurgency” and “bigoted Sunnis”. Their criticism of the Occupation and U.S. imperialism has always been an intellectual cowardice. If the U.S. failed to impose its Zionist-imperialist agenda on Iraq, credit must go to the Iraqi Resistance. It shatters the myth of invincibility of the ‘world’s only superpower’.
From time to time the “liberal class” and “progressives” criticise Barack Obama’s policies and calling him ‘worse than Bush’, as if Obama has the power to make changes to U.S. criminal policies. The motive is to manipulate the public and deflect attention away from the anti-Muslim Zionist ruling class that control the centres of power and finance in America. We all know that Obama has no real power to make changes. He is just another product, a tool, of the Zionist ruling class. Indeed, the Obama Administration is the most Zionist administration in U.S. history.
After seven years of hibernation, the “liberal class” and “progressives”, including Israel’s apologists are back to show their loyalty (backflipping), attacking Iran and condemning Iran’s alleged “rigged” elections. It is important to remember that Iran doesn’t pose a threat to any nation, but Israel with its fascist ideology and an arsenal of nuclear weapon poses a threat not only to entire region but to the world. The same Zionist propaganda that led to the aggression against Iraq is being recycled.
The Zionists’ (the architects of the war) murderous strategy in Iraq was to destroy the fabric of the Iraqi society, and turn Iraq into a colonial dictatorship subservient to U.S.-Israel Zionist power. There was no “failure” or “incompetence” on the part of the U.S. government, as suggested by the loyal “opposition”. The destruction of Iraq was planned at least two years before the aggression in 2003. It was driven by the neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues (in lay terms, Zion-fascists) with strong ties to Israel’s fascist regime. “They openly stated that their top priority was to advance Israel’s agenda, which, in this case, was a U.S. war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, occupy the country, physically divide Iraq, destroy its military and industrial capability and impose a pro-Israel/pro-U.S. puppet regime”, writes American sociologist James Petras.
As a result of the illegal invasion and seven years of murderous Occupation, an estimated 1.5 million defenceless Iraqi civilians, mostly women, children and young men, have been murdered, with the majority by the invading Anglo-American armies. It is the most premeditated and barbaric mass murder of innocent civilians in the history of human civilisation. The “new” Iraq is a nation of orphans and widows.
Furthermore, many American officials and international organisations have quietly acknowledged that the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage was deliberate and premeditated. It was designed to remove Iraq’s history as the birthplace of civilisation. Even Adolf Hitler never thought of committing such heinous crimes during the Nazi occupation of Europe. Priceless cultural artefacts may have been stolen by Nazi officials but never destroyed. In Iraq, Museums and galleries holding the history of world civilisation were trashed and looted. Libraries were ransacked and books were burned en masse. It was all performed under the watchful eyes of the invading armies. As James Petras noted: “[T]he destruction of the scientific, academic, cultural and legal foundations of an independent state means increasing reliance on the Western (and Chinese) multinational corporations and their technical infrastructure – facilitating imperial economic penetration and exploitation”.
In the “new” Iraq, Iraqis are living in a climate of fear and terror today. From the outset, the Occupation fomented violence in order to destroy the Iraqi society. Before the invasion, Iraqis lived side-by-side in every city and town regardless of ethno-religious backgrounds. They accommodated intermarriage and live in a cultural and mosaic society. To encourage anarchy and insecurity, the occupying army disbanded the Iraqi Army, police and security forces and replaced them with Kurdish warlords, political gangsters, imported death squads, and religious militias. “The ‘war of all against all’ served the interests of the U.S. Occupation forces”, writes James Petras. From the outset of the Occupation, the U.S. sought to control Iraq through violence and the colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ by handing out political positions to expatriates along strictly ethno-religious lines. The so-called “political process” was designed to achieve this division of Iraq.
By propping up corrupt criminals, religious fundamentalists and terrorists who were parachuted into Iraq by the invading armies, the American and to a lesser extent the British governments were able to hide behind a facade of corrupt expatriate stooges and blaming them for the Occupation-generated violence and crimes. Corruption is one of the most effective colonial tools, brought into Iraq to deflect attention away from the Occupation. Transparency International has ranked (the ‘new’) Iraq as the fourth most-corrupt nation in the world in its annual survey. Indeed, the creation of a corrupt and illegitimate puppet government inside the Occupation Headquarters (known as the ‘Green Zone’) aimed at transforming Iraq into a “failed state” that needs Western interference and “help”.
Expatriate stooges were appointed and encouraged to compete against each other for the title of Iraq’s “strongman”. The more violent and corrupt the “strongman” the more accepted by the U.S. administration. Hundreds of young men are disappearing every month (if not every week) into “secret” prisons, where they are routinely tortured, raped, humiliated and many of them later murdered. Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) were the first to blame the puppet government for crimes committed under the radar screen of the occupying forces while they remain silent when Iraqis are tortured, raped and massacred by U.S.-British invading armies. Both, AI and HRW reports on Iraq were consciously prepared to exonerate the occupying armies and depict Iraq as a “sovereign” nation marred by violence and violation of human right law.
Violence will continue to engulf Iraq’s major cities; just enough to justify the ongoing murderous Occupation. This serves U.S.-Israel Zionist interests and diverts public attention away from the Occupation. Furthermore, to enforce colonial divisions and facilitate the liquidation of anti-Occupation Resistance leaders, the U.S. occupying army used Nazi-like methods to separate populations along ethno-religious lines by erecting walls around neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other cities. For example, the Capital Baghdad with its marked ghettoes and perpetual violence is a mirror image of Warsaw under Nazi occupation under wretched living conditions.
Deterioration of Living Conditions
Since 2003, living conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate. Once a middle-class nation, Iraq has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution. In the “new” Iraq, nearly half the population live in extreme poverty. A report by the British charity organisation, Oxfam, shows that 43 percent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty and some 8 to 10 million Iraqis need emergency aid. The country is still under the genocidal sanctions. The official unemployment rate is more than 50 percent of the Iraqi active population. The illegitimate puppet government’s own statistics revealed that 45 percent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty lacking the necessities to survive. Nearly 62 percent (15.8 million) of Iraqis ‘completely depend’ on the food rationing system to survive from month to month. The system was created by President Saddam Hussein to confront the genocidal sanctions and avert mass starvation. Despite the reduction in the number of food and non-food items by the illegitimate puppet government, many Iraqis still depend on the system to survive.
After seven years of murderous Occupation and deteriorating living conditions, Iraq is suffering the worst refugee crisis in history. “Iraq would be the world’s second-worst crisis, as the report points out, second only to Afghanistan, and ahead of Sudan. So the strain on Iraq’s neighbours, particularly Jordan and Syria, and to a lesser extent on Lebanon is immense”, said Jessica Mathews, President of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S. propaganda think-tank known for its pro-Israel Zionist bias. At least 2.7 million Iraqis are internally displaced (by violence) and living in conditions of extreme poverty, enduring constant attacks and eviction from temporary shelters. An estimated 3 million Iraqis, with the means to do so, have fled Iraq into exile in neighbouring countries. Only a small number of Iraqi refugees were allowed into those Western nations who pretend to have “liberated” Iraq. The majority of Iraqi refugees have found a safe haven in Syria and Jordan. Most of Iraqi refugees are in ‘legal limbo’, unable to work and with no hope of returning to their country. The primary causes for Iraqi refugees’ flight are violence, lack of access to water, sanitation, electricity, health care and education.
Targeting Iraq’s Education
Iraq’s education, once the best in the region, has been the target of the Occupation. Iraq’s education has been dismantled by the invading armies and their collaborators. The Iraqi curriculum has been changed to distort history and depicts the U.S. and Israel as democratic and civilised societies by covering up their war crimes, flagrant violations of international law, human rights, violent ideology, corruption, growing inequalities, gross injustices and racist policies at home and abroad. It is estimated that only 30 percent of the 3.5 million of school age were attending schools. The majority of the dropouts are female. According to a report by UNESCO, school attendance prior to the Anglo-American aggression was nearly 100 percent. The crisis is exacerbated by the increase number of orphaned children. There are at least 5 million Iraqi orphans, many of them live on the streets.
Iraqi universities and colleges have been besieged by U.S.-created extremists and criminals. Tens of thousands of prominent Iraqis, including academics, doctors, teachers and political personalities have been murdered in cold blood in a U.S-Israel orchestrated assassination campaign dubbed “De-Ba’athification”. Many had to leave Iraq for safety reasons, which contributed to brain drain.
The planned campaign was designed not only to kill Iraq as a nation by destroying Iraq’s human resources and independence, but also to remove the base of the Iraqi Resistance to the Occupation. Professional Iraqis who survived the murderous campaign have left the country, leaving an education system in a state of collapse. Students are being graduated en masse without the necessary professional knowledge, especially those who work in the health care services. “There is really a huge difference between now and the times of Saddam Hussein, when medical graduates left college with competence to treat any patient”, said Professor Fua’ad Abdel-Razak of Baghdad university (IRIN, 16 May, 2007). Before the invasion, education and healthcare with modern health facilities were universal.
Deterioration of Iraq’s Healthcare
Iraq’s healthcare system has deteriorated at an alarming rate with a devastating impact on the health of the Iraqi people. The deterioration of the healthcare services has seen a marked increase in mortality. According to UNICEF, under the Occupation, Iraqi children are now dying faster than before invasion. One in four children under five years of age is chronically malnourished. One in eight Iraqi children die before the age of five, and millions of Iraqi children are affected by post traumatic disorder. “Healthcare in Iraq since 2003 is worse than during the sanctions. At that time we had little equipment and medicine, but in the last three years we have lost almost all the specialists”, said Dr Majeed al-Naomi in a Baghdad clinic. It is estimated that at least, 25 percent of Iraq’s 18,000 physicians had left the country since the invasion in 2003 which is devastating the healthcare system.
Furthermore, Thousands of tons of white phosphorous shells, ‘depleted’ uranium (DU), napalm, cluster bombs, and neutron bombs were dropped on Iraqi population centres, including Baghdad Basrah and Fallujah. The Anglo-American armies used more than 1700 tons of DU during the 2003 invasion on top of more than 320 tons of DU used in 1991 attacks on Iraq. In the natural environment, these weapons’ particles have extremely long half-lives and there is strong evidence of their detrimental effects on the health of the Iraqi people.
Iraqi officials are reporting incidences of cancer, deformed babies and other health problems have risen sharply since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Many suspect the causes are contamination from weapons used in years of Anglo-American criminal wars and unchecked pollution. In Fallujah, Iraqi children are suffering from brain damage, deformity and cancer. An Iraqi doctor said that the rate of deformity and cancer among children in Fallujah is extremely high when compared with the rate of cancer and deformity of that in 2003. A spike in the number of births of stillborn, deformed and paralyzed babies there has alarmed doctors. Fallujah was the target of two massive assaults by the U.S. military. In Basra, Doctor Jawad al-Ali said: “We have seen new kinds of cancer that were not recorded in Iraq before the 2003 war, types of fibrous (soft tissue) cancer and bone cancer. These refer clearly to radiation as a cause.” In Basra, Leukaemia cases were up by 600 percent since 1990.
Access to clean water remains inadequate in many parts of the Iraq. According to the World Bank survey, 87.5 percent of the population have no adequate water supply, and 20 percent proper sewage disposal. In many parts of Iraq, including Baghdad and Basra, the water, soil and air are contaminated with radio-active particles caused by DU shells without adequate healthcare services the situation is rapidly worsening for the most vulnerable Iraqis, including women and children.
The Status of women
According to UNICEF, before the Anglo-American invasion, “Rarely do women in the Arab world enjoy as much power and support as they do in Iraq”. After seven years of U.S. Occupation, the status of Iraqi women has deteriorated beyond belief. The U.S.-imposed constitution has stripped Iraqi women of all the civil and basic rights that they enjoyed before the invasion and condemns them to statutory second-class citizens. Unemployment among Iraqi women is nearly 80 percent. A report by the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) released on the fourth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion stated that: “women of Iraq have gradually lost most of their 20th century gains and privileges in the last 4 years of occupation”. You would think European Islamophobes who pretend to support Muslim womens’ “liberation” in Europe would be concerned about Iraqi womens’ rights under Occupation. Instead, they are engaged in a fascist campaign of anti-Muslim hatred to justify Western war on Muslims.
According to Professor Maha Sabria of Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, “The status of women here is linked to the general situation. The violation of women’s rights was part of the violation of the rights of all Iraqis. [...] At the same time women do not have freedom of movement because of the deteriorated security conditions and because of abductions of women and children by criminal gangs”. (Inter Press Service, 12 March 2010).
Furthermore, as a result of the U.S. Occupation and its violence, there are 2.5 million widows in Iraq, the highest in the world. According to the United Nations, in 2006, 90 to 100 women were widowed each day by the Occupation and its collaborators. Many of these widows do not know what happened to their spouses and most of them receive no assistance from the puppet government.
Throughout Iraq, women are living in fear of their lives and dignity. Kidnapping and rape are the common crimes under the Occupation. Over 10,000 women have suffered detention at the hands of U.S. forces and their Iraqi collaborators. The majority of detainees remain without charges. They are tortured and abused on regular basis. (See my: Iraq: A cluster of torture prisons, Online Journal, March 08, 2006). The situation for Iraqi women reflects the country’s situation under U.S. military Occupation.
Elections and Colonial Dictatorship
The recent U.S.-staged illegitimate elections were conducted in an atmosphere of terror and execution perpetrated by the Occupation forces and their collaborators. The final outcome of fraudulent elections was ensured. Like the 2005 elections, the 2010 elections were widely regarded, both in Iraq and outside Iraq, as rigged and fraudulent elections. The elections designed to legitimise the Occupation and validate a corrupt U.S.-imposed colonial dictatorship led by U.S. stooges. With a puppet government in place, the U.S. can claim that Iraq is sovereign and that U.S. Occupation of Iraq is legitimate (See my: Iraq’s Fraudulent Elections, New Matilda, January 19, 2005; Iraq: A Colonial Dictatorship, Global Research, April 29, 2005).
Unlike Iran’s recent free elections that have been condemned as “rigged” by the Zionist media and Western opportunists, Iraq’s fraudulent elections – under murderous foreign military Occupation – were promoted and praised as “democratic”. While Iyad Allawi, the U.S.-created thug claimed “victory”, prolonged post-elections’ wrangling is the norm. He has called for the privatisation of Iraq’s industries and Iraq’s oil and gas resources. Before he was parachuted into Iraq, Allawi was a Western-paid terrorist based in Europe. He still is a paid terrorist. In Iraq, Allawi and his associates were involved in terrorism, including the bombing of buses used by schoolchildren. Whatever, there is no evidence that a puppet government will demand an end to the Occupation. Meanwhile, Nori al-Maliki, the Iranian quisling has not given up his chance to continue serving U.S. and Iran interests from his office in the ‘Green Zone’.
Meanwhile, Obama’s “commitment” to troops’ withdrawal by the end of 2011 is flawed. It is a propaganda designed to manipulate the public and promote the perception that Iraq is a free and sovereign nation. The Occupation continues, but it is “invisible occupation”, as Priya Satia of Stanford University rightly called it. “In reality, most of the ‘withdrawing’ forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte [pause] offstage in expensive, built-to-last [military bases]” (Financial Times, July 01, 2009). “But Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for invisible occupation again: indeed they never fall for it the first time … in 1932”, added Satia. Moreover, the so-called “Status of Forces Agreement” between the U.S. military and the puppet government is a fraud, because it was never ratified by the Iraqi people. It is a deal between an occupier and a puppet government.
American military bases are being built (against the wishes of the Iraqi people) to enforce a permanent colonial occupation and to serve U.S.-Israel Zionist interests… There are nearly 300 U.S. military bases in Iraq; many of them are the size of small towns. American advisors (at least 1,400 CIA agents) will remain stationed in the largest embassy in the world in the centre of Baghdad as a symbol of U.S. imperialism. In addition, there are at least 100,000 mercenaries (‘private war contractors’) fanning violence throughout Iraq.
Finally, the impacts of the murderous Occupation on the lives of the Iraqi people are reflected in numerous Western polls that revealed a significant majority of Iraqis despise the presence of U.S. troops and mercenaries and want an end to the murderous Occupation. Hence, without armed resistance, it is unlikely the U.S. will end its illegal colonial Occupation of Iraq. The legitimate Iraqi Resistance to the Occupation will continue until Iraq is liberated.
The premeditated and deliberate destruction of Iraq in pursuit of U.S.-Israel Zionist expansion constitutes a war of aggression that resulted in genocide. The ultimate responsibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Anglo-American fascist armies in Iraq rests with those who deliberately planned and executed an act of unprovoked aggression. George Bush, Tony Blair and their accomplices are guilty of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Their crimes are reminiscent of the crimes committed by Nazi leaders. In civilised societies they would be hanged for their crimes.
The Iraqi people have the right to live in a sovereign nation free of repression, torture and terrorism; to enjoy justice and respect for human rights, and prosperity. The only condition to build a new Iraq for all Iraqis, proud of its history and Arab identity, is the liberation of the Iraqi people from U.S. colonial Occupation.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
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Militant Zionism and the Invasion of Iraq
By Ron Andreas
September 22, 2008
Unlike the Western oil majors, the militant Zionist proponents of greater Israel view stability and peace in the Middle East as inimical to their goals. Chaos and strife create the “revolutionary atmosphere” (as Ben Gurion one of the key founders of the state of Israel put it) in which more land and water resources can be taken under their control. This fact explains the motive behind the ceaseless provocations and destabilization that the Israeli military and secret services perpetrate.
The “iron wall” policy established by Ze’ev Jabotinsky prior to the founding of the Jewish state requires the expulsion of Christian and Muslim Arabs from Palestine. Such a goal requires war or other violent means. David Ben Gurion stated, “What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out . . . a whole world is lost.” This reality, of the necessity for violent upheaval to achieve Zionist aims, exposes which party is the true aggressor in the Middle East.
Ralph Schoenman writes that the goal of capturing the “promised land” requires “Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings.” This strategy has been put forward by Oded Yinon (an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry) in 1982 in the World Zionist Organization’s publication Kivunim. Here’s what Oded Yinon had to say on Iraq:
“The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas, such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front. Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.”
“An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon.”
“In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and Shiite areas in the South will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.”
In their struggle to expand the Jewish state in the “land of Israel,” Zionists have attempted to portray their interests as coinciding with those of the Western imperial powers. Conversely they have tried to portray their opponents as enemies of those powers. Yet the only business sector of the Western powers that has interests that align with Israel’s convulsive militarism is the military industrial complex. An elaborate structure has been established to forge a de facto alliance between Israel’s war hawks and the US military industrial complex. This alliance is evidenced in entities such as the Center for Security Policy, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
These think tanks and their neoconservative media mouthpieces published a number of policy papers that plainly call for regime change, border change, and demographic upheaval. In 1996 an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, sponsored a document titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which proposed that the Netanyahu regime “should ‘make a clean break’ with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel’s claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan whereby Israel would ‘shape its strategic environment,’ beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein . . . to serve as a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.”
The “study group” behind the policy included Douglass Feith, David Wurmser, and Richard Perle among others. The document was intended for the incoming Israeli government yet many of its planners went on to become influential with the Bush regime.
In an “Open Letter to the President,” dated February 19, 1998, a number of neocon lobbyists recommended “a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam Hussein and his regime.” Among the letter’s signers were Elliot Abrahms, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney, Joshua Muravchik, Martin Peretz, and Steven Solarz. The similarities between the two document’s recommendations draw a stark picture of loyalty to the interests of Israel first and foremost, with the interests of the military industrial complex being served in a secondary way. Many of the same sponsors went on to issue a report titled: “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” which called for an expanded US military presence in the Middle East using Iraq as a stepping stone for regional force application: “While the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
Nine days after 9/11, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney of the Project for a New American Century sent a letter to President Bush demanding measures against Iraq, Syria, and Iran “. . . even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the recent attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq . . . We believe the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation . . .”
On October 29, 2002 William Kristol and Robert Kagan revealed the unfolding agenda to the readers of the Weekly Standard in an article, ominously titled The Gathering Storm: “When all is said and done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to WWII: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But compared with what looms over the horizon . . . a wide-ranging war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back to the U.S [emphasis added]. . . . Afghanistan will prove to be an opening battle . . . But this will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously.”
The radical cabal of Zionists tried to enlist popular support for the wars by alluding to Iraq’s energy resources as Paul Wolfowitz did when he stated, “Iraq sits on a sea of oil.” However, after five years of occupation likely costing trillions of dollars, there is little hope of securing any preferential access to, much less, reliable control over any energy resources. Prior to the invasion, Exxon/Mobil was the world’s biggest publicly traded entity, a distinction that now falls on its Chinese competitor, SINOPEC.
While the relative market share of U.S. oil majors has declined, the destruction of Iraqi society, the devastation of its scientific and intellectual institutions, and the dismantling of its industrial infrastructure, all Zionist goals, have been achieved. Similarly, the American economy has been brought to a standstill due to high oil prices resulting from the wars and the current account deficit that is largely a result of borrowing for war spending. Over the course of the occupation, the U.S. dollar has declined in value by nearly 40 percent.
Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz has stated that the sanctions imposed on Iran coupled with the war atmosphere in the Gulf region, in general, have caused investment in and development of new oil production to come to a halt, exacerbating the high prices that result from the constant threats issuing out of Tel Aviv and the neocon institutes in Washington. It remains to be seen whether the non-Zionist elites in the Western world can begin to challenge the endless wars for Israel by, at the very least, opposing the sanctions against dealings with Iran.
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The Real Story of How Israel Was Created [Stolen]
By ALISON WEIR | October 11, 2011
To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine.
The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.
In reality, while the UN General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.
Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.
Third, the US administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations, and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.
The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.
It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 per cent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 per cent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds.
Let us look at the specifics. … continue
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