For years, neo-con apologists for the invasion of Iraq have parroted the lie that at least life is better than it was under Saddam Hussein. That was always blatantly untrue, from the massive destruction of water, power and healthcare infrastructure; not to mention the million dead, two million maimed and five million displaced. The neo-con commentators, of course, have not actually been there. Those of us who have, found the situation far worse than anything reported in the mainstream media. Indeed, perhaps the most irrefutable proof of the propaganda model of Western media is that 59% of the population believed less than 10,000 people died as a result of the Iraq War. That poll itself only made the mainstream media in a letter by known dissenters published on the Guardian’s letters page – a way of “othering” the information.
It is now extremely difficult for the media to pretend that everything is OK in Iraq, bar the odd car bomb. The AL-Maliki regime has been in the remarkable position of being both pro-Iranian and supported by the West with masses of military hardware – substantial quantities of which is now in the hands of ISIS. I don’t expect Al-Maliki to fall soon, but his area of control is decreasing by the hour. Whether the Al-Maliki regime has been any less vicious than that of Saddam Hussein is arguable. Certainly there has been a great deal less social freedom in Iraq.
I abhor dictatorship, but waging massive high technology war on a country, destroying its infrastructure and many of its people, because it has the misfortune to suffer under a dictator, is crazy. Those who genuinely believe in “liberal intervention” must finally admit that the revival of the concept of the “civilising mission” of imperialism has failed, disastrously, and brought massive misery to the world.
The harder-headed men on whose behalf Blair and Bush were acting, who never believed or cared about spreading liberal democracy, but simply wanted to gain vast wealth through control of natural resources, are less likely to be disillusioned. “Liberal intervention” has successfully acquired for these men assets in the diamond and rutile mines of Sierra Leone, and the oilfields of Iraq and Libya. My main hope from the current violent convulsions is that as few people are killed or harmed as possible. But over the next few years, it is essential that mineral riches are removed from Western interests in those countries that suffered “liberal intervention”. Otherwise we will see more of it, if it continues to appear a viable business model to the establishment.
What is Tony Blair’s current personal wealth?
And in strikes BZ like thunderbolt. Well done.
TY, J. 🙂
Finding out where Blair is from day to day is a lot harder…
Thanks, Ba’al, but not that one. You link to the letter from 52 former diplomats written a year after the invasion. It’s difficult to choose search terms for Google which doesn’t return references to this letter.
The one I’m looking for was round about the start of the war and specifically accuses Blair and the foreign Office of going to war on behalf of Israel.
Jemand
Yes you are right in your analysis. The spring of tension is always being re-set. There is no line after which the Irish troubles or the Aboriginal troubles if you like, can heal.
The West is constantly re-setting the spring. If you left the Muslims for even a few months, the victims would be overtaking and surpassing their oppressors in no time.
We know where to put the blame.
OK, sorry. *search resumes*
Meanwhile, this, which I remember from the time, possibly helped inspire that letter (which I don’t remember).
http://web.archive.org/web/20100329074314/http:/www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/17/iraq.usa
The letter I did find provoked immense fury among Israel-apologists, however. Its impact was substantial.
I feel very much in tune with the sentiments of the first comment by Richard B.
Blair, a notorious ignoramus, has, to a greater or lesser extent, ruined the lives of countless thousands in exchange for money and the plaudits of some very dubious characters of similar cast to himself. Not even he and his appalling missus can spend all the ill-gotten dosh and the poor sad bastard is going to die soon and face, as we all must, what he has done.
But to the point: given the terrible record of “liberal interventionism” which was both predictable and predicted, should those wishing to go along with Western leaders in heaping all the blame on Russia for the civil war in Ukraine not take a breath and count to ten before pronouncing how much better off Ukrainians would be (“like Poland”!) under the protective and benign umbrella of the Fourth Reich?
It may be in the Guardian digital archive (paywall) which goes up to 2003:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/advancedsearch.html
In transit, for information …
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/mar/24/uk.iraq
The opposition was massive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War
Just read that the US will be rushing billions of dollars of weapons to Iraq.
I wonder which side they are sending them to.
They are backing both horses in that race.
Will the CIA end up fighting their own Govt. over their foreign policy?
BZ, you might make good use of this when you finally catch up with ol’ Tone. You can get a good price on eBay.
“A million? Only the other day I was being told by Je that the figure was 188,000. What causes of death are you including to arrive at a figure over five times that given by the Iraq Body Count?”
__________________
Anon asks a good question, to which the Old Lizard* Ba’alZevul replies:
“Not enough corpses, Anon? If it’s not 6 million, it doesn’t count?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A flippant reply, even if accompanied by a well-known quotation from John Donne, perhaps designed to remind us that the Old Lizard is one of the “intellectuals” of this blog.
And an evasive reply as well; I remember someone on a previous thread (it may well have been Anon) challenging the millions figures carelessly thrown around by the West/US-haters and he never got a satisfactory answer either.
Feel like providing a more serious reply, Old Lizard?
+++++++++++++++++++
* Ba’al : as moderator, you might wish to consider adding “Old Lizard” to the list of words and expressions which trips off the “Your comment is under moderation” warning? You know, like the word “K….o” does.
Where is Komodo these days? 🙂
Oh no! Groans. It’s been so nice and peaceful.
You’re right that Iraq now is in a dreadful mess, and that we got the entire strategy wrong (not least, by failing to realise that we needed to spend 5x more on rebuilding than we would on the war). However, we also have a moral obligation to deal with some of these awful dictators (Hussein, Assad, etc) all of whom commit crimes against humanity. I’d like to think that we start by having a decent foreign policy, not initially supporting these evil regimes for 30 years first, but I don’t think simply ignoring them is the solution.
Who backs ISIS, appart from the west, was it Saudi money that paid for ISIS’s Syrian arms caches and mercenaries?
Are we looking at professional false flaggers that could easily walk/march east after having gotten to Maliki and his game playing, widening the conflict.
Turkey will not be best pleased, they are on alert status as this kidnap of 80 plus their diplomat is close to a declaration of war. Turkey has made the decision not to intervene militarily and has demanded that ISIS releases its staff immediately.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
The US has condemned the kidnap and has asked for immediate release, offering help via drone strikes,(talk about adding insult to injury plus a lot of future violence to come)
The situation is such that many countries in the middle east have been rather busy buying arms at our annually, such fun…sooo popular, events in London and Farnborough and that they are armed to the teeth.
They are prepared to use these weapons systems and civilian populations, getting in the way fleeing from A to B will have nowhere to hide, or find safety.
Ben
I just wanted you to be aware that someone on Squonk’s blog has stolen your handle and is posting duplicitous and back-passage type comments about Craig on your name there :
“Craig is clearly a Statist, John. I’m beginning to think his whistleblower bona fides are an accident related to his sexual preoccupations. He has capitalized on it efficiently without genuine follow-up.”
(June 10 at 12h02, the Ukraine/Russia thread)
I suggest you get in touch with Squonk, perhaps he can finds out who’s impersonating you.
“Oh no! Groans. It’s been so nice and peaceful.”
_________________
Not for Mary, it hasn’t. I’ve just realised that she spends almost as much time on Squonk’s blog as she does on CM – and that’s a hell of a lot of time! 🙂
Where does the dear girl get the energy from?
Sorry, this is O/T. If you want to spend some great time in front of one of the most popular phonecompanies offices and stamp on one of their mobiles in disgust, please feel free to join UKUNCUT this weekend.
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/vodafone-stores-around-the-country-to-be-targeted-by-nationwide-uk-uncut-protests
Oh no! Groans. A SECOND imposter has just come to my notice!!
Someone calling him/herself “John Goss” has come out with the following:
“The reason the trolls go away when Ukraine crops up is that if the debate is opened up enlightened people who use Craig’s blog as a source of news, and there are many of these, would see what is really going on, but with no debate they can’t. I am surprised that Craig himself seems to have joined them!!!”
Well, that’s just barking, isn’t it, and I conclude that the imposter is trying both to discredit John and to spread falsehoods about Craug’s blog.
Shame on him/her!
The false “John Goss” was on Squonk, btw.
Nothing to say about the horror of the Iraq war and the re-occurring nightmare for the poor souls?
Nothing to say about the abuse of Palestinian children by the Israelis?
Nothing to say about the EU Commission presidency and Agent Cameron’s objection to him?
No of course not.
Last heard of defending the BBC on the BBC Lawbreaking thread. That fits.
Who backs ISIS, appart from the west, was it Saudi money that paid for ISIS’s Syrian arms caches and mercenaries?
Qatari, allegedly. And I guess something came their way from our desire not to see the EVIL DICTATOR * Assad keeping the region under something like control.
*As totally opposed to Aliyev, Usmanov, Nazarbayev and all those nice Gulf sheikhs…
Lovely, J. But far too quick. A Stanley knife, aka boxcutter, would be preferable.
Here is the letter of the 52 Diplomats to Tony Blair
Letter of 26 April 2004 from 52 former British ambassadors, high commissioners and others to the Prime Minister on the government’s middle east policies
http://www.barder.com/politics/international/52letter/text
Sorry A Node. I see you already had that one.
“Nothing to say about the horror of the Iraq war and the re-occurring nightmare for the poor souls?
Nothing to say about the abuse of Palestinian children by the Israelis?
Nothing to say about the EU Commission presidency and Agent Cameron’s objection to him?
No of course not.”
____________________
Lots to say, Mary, but why caste pearls before swine?
An ‘exchange’ with the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus on Iraq
Posted by The Editors
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 1:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: ‘Six things that went wrong for Iraq’: one glaring omission
Hello Jonathan,
Your new article for the BBC News website is titled ‘Six things that went wrong for Iraq’ [1]. Not one of these six items is the appalling UN sanctions regime [2] that, according to Unicef, resulted in the deaths of an estimated half a million children under five [3] and likely well over one million people in total [4].
In 1998, Denis Halliday, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, resigned his post in protest at what he called ‘genocidal’ [5] sanctions. These sanctions were maintained at the particular behest of Washington and London, and involved huge propaganda efforts to obscure the truth [6]. Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, likewise resigned in 2000.
Imagine if a foreign journalist had written a piece about this country titled, ‘Six things that went wrong for the UK’. Imagine that this journalist had not mentioned that around two million British people [7] had died as a result of UN sanctions policy in the 1990s. You might well regard such a journalist as a propagandist.
You must surely be aware of the facts, and yet you choose to airbrush them from Iraqi history. Why?
David Cromwell
References
1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27802746
2. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=SponeckDifferent
3. http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/04/weekend7.weekend9
4. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pilger_John/Paying_Price_TNROTW.html
5. http://www.commondreams.org/views/070700-103.htm
6. http://johnpilger.com/videos/paying-the-price-killing-the-children-of-iraq
7. Proportional in respect of the relative populations of the UK and Iraq.
~~~
From: Jonathan Marcus
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:57 PM
Subject: RE: ‘Six things that went wrong for Iraq’: one glaring omission
Dear Mr Cromwell
I am sorry that you did not find anything useful in the piece.
As ever you choose to see things entirely from your own organisation’s curious perspective.
Thank you for troubling to write.
Jonathan Marcus
Defence & Diplomatic Correspondent
BBC News
3rd Floor Bridge
BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London W1A 1AA
~~
Dismissive arrogance.
Other comments follow.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1402583170.html
“Cast”, I guess.
Caste Noun
Each of the hereditary classes of Hindu society, distinguished by relative degrees of ritual purity or pollution and of social status: ‘members of the lower castes’.
Cast Verb
literary
throw (something) forcefully in a specified direction.
!!??