Truth about Iraq?

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
Truth about Iraq?
1
Tue, 08-03-2004 - 8:19am
Please refute the article or the source if you can. And notice it didn't come from the American media.



http://globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=1030

'Can't Blair See that this Country is About to Explode? Can't Bush?'

The Independent (London) Sunday 01 August 2004

By Robert Fisk

The Prime Minister has accused some journalists of almost wanting a

disaster to

happen in Iraq. Robert Fisk, who has spent the past five weeks

reporting from

the deteriorating and devastated country, says the disaster has

already

happened, over and over again.

The war is a fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons of mass

destruction that

didn't exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida

which didn't

exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I'm talking

about the

new lies.

For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats

that did not

exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq

has fallen

outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we

are not

told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But

unless

an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis

in Baghdad

alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended.

But we

are not told.

The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident

at Saddam

Hussein's "trial". Not only did the US military censor the tapes of

the event.

Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other

defendants. But

the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the

courtroom -

that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the

room he

believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This,

after all, was

the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he

initially looked

"disorientated" - CNN's helpful description - because, of course, he

was meant

to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked

Judge

Juhi: "Are you a lawyer? ... Is this a trial?" And swiftly, as he

realised

that this really was an initial court hearing - not a preliminary to

his own

hanging - he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence.

But don't think we're going to learn much more about Saddam's future

court

appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad

and the

man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi

press two weeks

ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And

I can see

why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he'll want to talk about the

real

intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were

primarily with

the United States.

Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous

experience.

I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq.

Westerners are

murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and

American

trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few

hours

later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair,

grinning in the

House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating

competition; so much

for the Butler report.

Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days

is like

tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realise that Iraq is about to

implode?

Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed "government"

controls only

parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are

car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla,

Fallujah,

Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "Prime

Minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists,"

Blair

announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't

get it. The

disaster exists now.

When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside

police

stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even

the

National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has

been twice

postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five

weeks, I

find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have

spoken to,

not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African -

believes

that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is

deteriorating by

the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so.

But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his

Republican

supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support

the "coalition", that

they support their new US-manufactured government, that the "war on

terror" is

being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an internet site

and watch

two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing

at the

vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers

here list

another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go

down to visit

the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there,

each day,

are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming

and weeping

and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in

cheap coffins.

I keep re-reading Tony Blair's statement. "I remain convinced it was

right to

go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life." And I

cannot

understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even

Chamberlain

thought that; but he didn't find it a difficult decision - because,

after the

Nazi invasion of Poland, it was the right thing to do. And driving

the streets

of Baghdad now, watching the terrified American patrols, hearing yet

another

thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors after dawn, I

realise what all

this means. Going to war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the

most

difficult decision Blair had to take because he thought - correctly -

that it

might be the wrong decision. I will always remember his remark to

British

troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British soldiers was not

Hollywood but

"real flesh and blood". Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was

shed - but

for weapons of mass destruction that weren't real at all.

"Deadly force is authorised," it says on checkpoints all over Baghdad.

Authorised by whom? There is no accountability. Repeatedly, on the

great

highways out of the city US soldiers shriek at motorists and open

fire at the

least suspicion. "We had some Navy Seals down at our checkpoint the

other day,"

a 1st Cavalry sergeant says to me. "They asked if we were having any

trouble.

I said, yes, they've been shooting at us from a house over there. One

of them

asked: 'That house?' We said yes. So they have these three SUVs and a

lot of

weapons made of titanium and they drive off towards the house. And

later they

come back and say 'We've taken care of that'. And we didn't get shot

at any

more."

What does this mean? The Americans are now bragging about their siege

of Najaf.

Lieutenant Colonel Garry Bishop of the 37th Armoured Division's 1st

Battalion

believes it was an "ideal" battle (even though he failed to kill or

capture

Muqtada Sadr whose "Mehdi army" were fighting the US forces). It

was "ideal",

Bishop explained, because the Americans avoided damaging the holy

shrines of the

Imams Ali and Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a

Muslim army

occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury and then bragged that they

hadn't damaged

Canterbury Cathedral? Would we be grateful?

What, indeed, are we to make of a war which is turned into a fantasy

by those

who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their

lives, US

Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage-

taking is

having an "effect" on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions

are now

as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only

four hours of

electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns

poking from

windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for

them. This is

the "safer" Iraq which Mr Blair was boasting of the other day. What

world does

the British Government exist in?

Take the Saddam trial. The entire Arab press - including the Baghdad

papers -

prints the judge's name. Indeed, the same judge has given interviews

about his

charges of murder against Muqtada Sadr. He has posed for newspaper

pictures.

But when I mention his name in The Independent, I was solemnly

censured by the

British Government's spokesman. Salem Chalabi threatened to prosecute

me. So

let me get this right. We illegally invade Iraq. We kill up to 11,000

Iraqis.

And Mr Chalabi, appointed by the Americans, says I'm guilty

of "incitement to

murder". That just about says it all.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
In reply to: mnmgla
Tue, 08-03-2004 - 10:18am

Insightful article.


Blair & Bush are both delusional about the results in Iraq, IMO.

 


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