Prime Minister Tony Blair faces trial by both theatre and television as he prepares to step down and the debate over his role in the Iraq war intensifies.

Tonight, Channel 4 presents “The Trial of Tony Blair” which portrays future events as the Prime Minister leaves office after more than a decade in power.

It is some time in the future. Gordon Brown is moving in. President Clinton is looking for her second term in the White House. And Tony Blair has swapped the corridors of power for carpet swatches in his home in Connaught Square.

Says writer Alistair Beaton: “I gather Mr Blair is very concerned about his place in history. This film is my idea of where that place might be. Whether it’s fiction or prediction remains to be seen.”

Later this spring, Tricycle Theatre, with a reputation for political plays based on real-life trials and inquiries, is staging “Called to Account: The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the Crime of Aggression Against Iraq – a Hearing“.

The play will be based on a debate between two leading lawyers — Philippe Sands for the prosecution and Julian Knowles for the defence. Both belong to the same law practice as Blair’s wife, Cherie Booth. They will examine witnesses including parliamentarians, diplomats, UN officials, lawyers and intelligence experts.

Richard Norton-Taylor, a journalist at the Guardian newspaper, will condense the transcript from the lawyers’ debate into a play, which will run from April 19 to May 19.

Reuters previews both productions

And, if some light relief is required, the Prime Ministers old band, Ugly Rumours, have apparently reformed to release a single. Watch a trailer here and go here for more info.

From Stop the War

Predictably, Tony Blair is virtually alone among world leaders in supporting George Bush’s “new strategy” for Iraq. Blair says the plan “makes sense”. Is this the same Tony Blair who barely one month ago welcomed the Iraq Study Group’s report, saying, “It is practical, it’s clear, and it offers also the way of bringing people together”? The ISG report called for a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and dialogue with Iran and Syria — in other words, the opposite of Bush’s “new strategy.”

There is one group that has always had the power to stop Blair’s compulsive subservience to George Bush: members of parliament. So far, the majority have acquiesced in every stage of Blair’s warmongering. On 24 January, Iraq will be debated and voted on in parliament. Stop the War has called for a lunchtime lobby of MPs, followed by an evening demonstration outside the House of Commons (details below). Between now and then we need to do everything possible to ensure that MPs know that they must not repeat their abject performance on 31 October 2006, when only 12 Labour MPs voted for an inquiry into the whole Iraq disaster.

You can fax your MP easily from here

In Iraq the UN is warning of a looming humanitarian refugee crisis with over 3 million Iraqis diplaced form their homes by insecurtiy. Tonight, Bush is expected to annouce an escalation in the conflict with about 20,000 extra troops for Baghdad and Anbar province.

Apparently not content with the catastrophe created there, the US has now started overt military action in Somalia. Reports yesterday said that air strikes had killed over 20 in south Somalia. British citizens were said to be amongst the wounded. A long insurgenecy war in that country now also appears highly likely with the Ethiopian army acting as proxies for US policy.

Reuters: “People don’t understand why the Americans have bombed the field. The Islamists are not there, they are miles away,” he said. Local people have fled the area but are unable to cross the sealed Kenyan border, he added.

The Pentagon has declined to comment on the air strikes. There have also been reports of helicopter attacks. Somali officials have declined to say whether the attacks were carried out by U.S. or Ethiopian aircraft.

UNHCR: Incessant violence across much of Iraq’s central and southern regions is forcing thousands of people to leave their homes every month, presenting the international community with a looming humanitarian crisis even larger than the upheaval aid agencies had planned for during the 2003 war.

UNHCR estimates there are at least 1.6 million Iraqis displaced internally, and up to 1.8 million in neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. Egypt hosts an estimated Iraqi population of more than 150,000, and in the first half of 2006 Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

See also: Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq’s most precious commodity

From Ceasefire Campaign

Add your voice to the chorus demanding a response to the Iraq Study Group report’s recommendations. Tell President Bush to change course NOW!

President Bush, we implore you to recognize that your policies in the Middle East have not brought democracy or stability, but have profoundly threatened the peace of the region and the world. We urge you to adopt some of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and restart the Middle East peace process, pursue a diplomatic strategy and withdrawal from Iraq, and engage in talks with Iran. Countless lives and hopes for a better future hang on your decision.

To sign their petition go here

By Colin Brown and Andy McSmith in The Independent

The Government’s case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

A devastating attack on Mr Blair’s justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, “at no time did HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests.”

Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been “effectively contained”. He also reveals that British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed. “I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed),” he said.

“At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that ‘regime change’ was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.”

He claims “inertia” in the Foreign Office and the “inattention of key ministers” combined to stop the UK carrying out any co-ordinated and sustained attempt to address sanction-busting by Iraq, an approach which could have provided an alternative to war. Mr Ross delivered the evidence to the Butler inquiry which investigated intelligence blunders in the run-up to the conflict.

The Foreign Office had attempted to prevent the evidence being made public, but it has now been published by the Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs after MPs sought assurances from the Foreign Office that it would not breach the Official Secrets Act. It shows Mr Ross told the inquiry, chaired by Lord Butler, “there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW [chemical warfare], BW [biological warfare] or nuclear material” held by the Iraqi dictator before the invasion. “There was, moreover, no intelligence or assessment during my time in the job that Iraq had any intention to launch an attack against its neighbours or the UK or the US,” he added.

The full transcript of evidence given to the Butler inquiry is available here

(more…)

From Stop The War

Close to 4000 Iraqis were killed in October, the highest figure since the 2003 invasion. November is going to record an even higher figure. The United Nations says 3000 Iraqis flee the country every day. Another 9,000 flee their homes every week to become internal refugees. US troops are being killed at a rate of close to three a day, with many more seriously injured. Six British soldiers have been killed this month, the second highest monthly figure since the beginning of the war.

Against this backdrop, the clamour to find an “exit strategy” dominates discussion of the war. Except, that is, in the British parliament. This week a cross-party attempt by over 100 MPs to give parliament the opportunity to discuss how Britain can extricate itself from the Iraq catastrophe was blocked by the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Two anti-war MPs, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, have now tabled a parliamentary motion calling for the immediate withdrawal of all British troops. Stop the War is calling on all its supporters to lobby their local MP by letter, email or at MP’s weekly surgeries to urge them to add their name to the following motion:

Early Day Motion EDM 335

That this House notes with alarm the conclusion of the October 2006 Lancet report that coalition forces in Iraq have been directly responsible for the deaths of at least 186,000 Iraqis since the start of the 2003 invasion; recognises that according to a September 2006 Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll, 78 per cent. of Iraqis believe that the US military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing; recalls the conclusion of the April 2006 US National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism that the Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement; further notes the recent statement by the Head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, that British forces should be withdrawn from Iraq soon because their presence exacerbates the security problems; further notes that there have been over 118 British military deaths in Iraq since the 2003 invasion; and calls on the Government to withdraw all British forces from Iraq immediately.

LOBBY YOUR MP TO GET THEIR SIGNATURE ON PARLIAMENTARY MOTION EDM 335: IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ. Writing by post is the best way to get a response but you can also contact them through the web-site http://www.writetothem.com/ or by visiting them at their weekly surgery and raising the issue face to face.

From the Ceasefire Campaign:

“Dear friends

Over the last few days, almost 50,000 of us have supported the call for a new plan for Iraq! Thanks to you, our Iraq ad ran this week in major newspapers in London and Washington, DC, calling for a new diplomatic role for the international community and the withdrawal of Coalition forces from Iraq. Click below to see the ad and add your voice of support:

www.ceasefirecampaign.org

If you have not yet joined our call for a new direction in Iraq, please consider doing so at this crucial moment. Coalition governments are beginning to accept that there is no military solution, but they haven’t settled on what an alternative diplomatic approach looks like. With hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths already in Iraq, we cannot afford to miss this chance to demand a new course. Your voice could make a difference over the coming week.”

By Nick Egnatz in nwitimes

The esteemed British Medical Journal Lancet has just published a new study, compiled by a team of physicians from Johns Hopkins University and Iraqi doctors, on civilian deaths in Iraq. The study estimates 600,000 additional civilian deaths because of violence since we invaded 3 1/2 years ago.

The president pooh-poohs the study, saying, “The methodology is pretty well discredited.” One wonders if a president whose only veto in six years was to prevent federally funded stem cell research, who does not believe in global warming and has attacked the rampant spread of HIV-AIDS in Africa with an abstinence-only program knows the meaning of the word “methodology.”

Cluster sampling is the methodology used, and it has been used around the world to measure deaths from tsunamis, earthquakes, famines and other disasters. Did President Bush question the number of deaths from the tsunami, earthquake in Pakistan or the genocide in Darfur? They all used similar methodology, with the exception there was probably not the attention to detail used in the Iraq study.

The president’s policy was voiced by General Tommy Franks’ machismo, “We don’t do body counts.”

The Geneva Conventions, which under previous administrations were considered the gold standard for international behavior, call for invading armies to use the utmost care to minimize civilian casualties. Not even attempting to count them would seem to qualify as just one more war crime for this sorry bunch.

The winds of change continue to blow…

From Times Online

THE BBC is risking a new confrontation with Downing Street by launching an investigation into the death of David Kelly, the scientist at the centre of the storm over the ‘sexed up’ dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

It is reopening the case less than three years after its management virtually imploded with the resignations of Greg Dyke, the director general, and Gavyn Davies, its chairman, in the wake of Lord Hutton’s report into the affair.

The corporation is filming a programme about the alleged suspicious circumstances surrounding Kelly’s death in an Oxfordshire wood. It has told officials who carried out a post-mortem and toxicology tests on Kelly’s body that it ‘wants to quash conspiracy theories’ about the death. But it has interviewed independent doctors who point to unexplained discrepancies in the results of Kelly’s post-mortem. They suggest that neither the wound to his left wrist nor the drugs found in his body was sufficient to kill him.

Via Blairwatch

From BBC Online

…the measure of success in foreign policy should be “minimisation of suffering” and “if that is your measure, our policy has been a rank disaster in the last few years in terms of blood shed. By that measure that invasion has been a much greater disaster even than Suez,”

A high ranking British diplomat, who quit over the war with Iraq, has called policy in the region a “rank disaster”. Carne Ross told MPs the intelligence presented to the public about weapons of mass destruction was “manipulated”.

He also added that “the proper legal advice from the Foreign office on the legality of the war was ignored”. Mr Blair has always defended the war’s legality and the Butler inquiry said there was no evidence of “deliberate distortion” of intelligence on WMD. During his 45-minute evidence session Mr Ross also attacked the “politicisation” of the diplomatic service, and claimed promotion depended on agreeing with Mr Blair.

Mr Ross, who said he had been a friend of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly and had a hand in drawing up one of the government’s weapons dossiers, said he accepted the prime minister was ultimately responsible for foreign policy. But he added: “Policy making in the run up to the Iraq was, I think, extremely poor in that I don’t think the proper available alternatives to war were properly considered.

“I think the presentation of intelligence to the public on weapons of mass destruction was manipulated and I think that the proper legal advice from the foreign office on the legality of the war was ignored.”

‘Creeping politicisation’

Mr Ross, who was head of strategy for the UN mission in Kosovo, and also played a leading role in devising policy on Iraq and Afghanistan, said decision-making power was concentrated in the hands of too small a group. And there was a “political element at work in promotions to the most senior levels of the foreign office”. He said he had also noticed a growing tendency for officials “to tell ministers what they wish to hear in order to advance one’s own individual prospects”.

He told MPs: “There is a kind of subtle and creeping politicisation of the diplomatic service that in order to get promoted you have to show yourself as being sympathetic in identifying with the views of ministers and, in particular, the prime minister.

“Secondly, and this was the case in the Conservative government before Labour took office, decision-making powers have become increasingly concentrated in Number 10… the Foreign Office has become subsidiary to Number 10.”

On Iraq, he said the measure of success in foreign policy should be “minimisation of suffering” and “if that is your measure, our policy has been a rank disaster in the last few years in terms of blood shed”.

By that measure that invasion has been a much greater disaster even than Suez,” he added.

Mr Ross said Foreign Office officials had been split over the invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Government hangs on to its right to declare war without parliamentary involvement. The Guardian reports that the government was accused yesterday of giving a “temporising and woolly” response to an inquiry by an all-party committee of peers into the role of parliament over the deployment of British forces overseas.

Lord Holme, chairman of the Lords constitution committee, said the government’s response to its report, Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility, demonstrated “a complete failure on the part of the government to give any real consideration to our key recommendation – that the role of parliament in the deployment of forces outside the UK should be established in a new convention”.

The government says in its response: “The ability of the executive to take decisions flexibly and quickly using prerogative powers remains an important cornerstone of our democracy”. However, it adds: “Whilst the government could in theory deploy the armed forces overseas without the support of parliament, it would be almost impossible to identify a set of circumstances which would allow the government to act without parliamentary support.”

The author of the Hutton Report is making a forlorn attempt to salvage his professional reputation by publishing a defence of his judgement, some 2 years after the enquiry. Blairwatch provides a useful reminder and critique of the task facing this rather shaky pillar of the establishment.

The Hutton Inquiry was convened in 2003 with the terms of reference to “…urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly.”

David Kelly had been an employee of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD), an expert in biological warfare, and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. Kelly’s discussion with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan about the British government’s dossier on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq led to a major political scandal. Days after appearing before a Parliamentary committee investigating it David Kelly was found dead.

The public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death, ruled that he had committed suicide, and that Kelly had not said some of the quotes attributed to him by Gilligan. One of the many inconsistencies of the Hutton report is that evidence provided to the enquiry by BBC journalist Susan Watts confirmed that Kelly had indeed had serious doubts about the “45 minutes” claim published by the British government, and that he considered the Number 10 press office to be responsible for the inappropriate insertion of this claim into the published dossier on WMD.

Lord Hutton and the UK Government obviously have no problem with paradox!

Tartan Hero tallies the Labour MPs most responsible for the defeat of last weeks call for an Iraq war enquiry:

A quick glance of Hansard shows that the following EDM1088 signatures, voted against the SNP/Plaid Cymru debate with an almost identical text wording:

The Roll of Shame:

Colin Challen (very disappointing as I admired him for his Climate Change agenda)

Ronnie Campbell

Michael Clapham

Jim Cousins (Labour Scot)

Ann Cryer

Jim Devine (Livingston MP)

Neil Gerrard

Ian Gibson (Labour Scot)

Jim McGovern (Dundee West MP)

Austin Mitchell

Linda Riordan

Jon Trickett

The rush of Scottish, or Scottish-born but representing an English seat, Labour MPs who have rallied to support Blair this time even though they have publicly campaigned against the war on Iraq is galling. Michael Connarty. Ann McKechin. And Joan Ruddock? I used to admire her for her leadership of CND in the 1980s.

Congratulations to Dr Gavin Strang for having the integrity to vote according to his beliefs and previous support for EDM 1088.

It’s very clear that because it was a Nationalist motion they couldn’t bring themselves to support the motion. Talk about putting your party prejudices before your own beliefs, and your own country’s interests, disgraceful. But we wont forget.

I hold no brief for Saddam Hussein. He is a gruesome dictator who is much better out of power, and a dangerous man who is much better in captivity. I am nonetheless sorry he will be murdered by the State. Iraq has seen quite enough death already, and like so many of the others, this will merely engender more. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died already due to the Bush/Blair invasion. The vast majority of them were totally innocent. If you kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, you are bound to kill the odd guilty one from time to time, whether by accident or design. That is the measure of the Bush/Blair achievement.

This death, just like that of al-Zaqarwi, will be hailed as a “Turning-point” by the invaders, their leaders, puppets and media spokesmen. So was the capture of Saddam, so were the elections, so was the formation of the government, so was the disbanding of the army. It is unsurprising that there have been so many – a downward spiral is just an unending circle of turning points, and Iraq has been embarked on a helter-skelter ride to Hell. Given what came after him, Bush/Blair have achieved the near impossible feat of making Saddam Hussein look like a comparatively better leader for the Iraqi people.

The trial itself was a political charade with the Americans as puppeteers. Judges were repeatedly changed if they showed any sign of independent thought. Defence lawyers who looked too effective were simply murdered. The TV cameras were turned off on the show trial if it got sticky for the US – with an American hand on the button. And the ultimate in stage management, the verdict was handed down two days before the US mid-term elections. Who honestly does not believe that timing was contrived?

I am all in favour of Dictators and War Criminals being punished. I wish Saddam had received a fair trial, and think the Hague would have been much better – he would have been seen to get a fair trial, and I am pretty sure a fair guilty verdict. We should not lose sight of the need to hold justice over the mighty. Bush and Blair are responsible for the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state, against the wishes of the UN Security Council. They have on their hands the blood of hundreds of thousands of people. I live and hope that I will see the day when they are in the dock.

I will still be against the death penalty.

Craig Murray

“There is some validity in this critique, and certainly many on the left display an over-simplistic world view. But then so does this commentator, in being distracted from the truth of our illegal and aggressive foreign policy, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people – rather more important than being annoyed by a chap with a beard.”

From Semp

A Complete Review Of Craig Murray’s Seminar or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Hate The Left

The other night, Bradford University’s Richmond Building was graced with the presence of Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is ostensibly a great friend of the UK and the Coallition of the Willing, so dedicated to those noble values of Freedom and Democracy and Justice that when the CIA happens to drop off an individual who may or may not actually be guilty of something, in Tashkent, their security services stop at nothing to drain the suspect of every last drop of information. The standard gamut of what the US euphmeistically refers to as “hard interrogation” techniques are employed, as well as their own homegrown notoriety: the boiling of subjects alive. Either whole or limb by limb. Let Freedom Ring, baby.

So Murray came to Bradford as part of a tour supporting his new book which goes into greater detail about his discovery of this scheme of “extraordinary rendition”, and his subsequent dismissal from his post by the Home Office after he steadfastly refused to be cowed into silence on the matter. Unlike many speakers embraced by the Stop The War movement, Murray speaks with modesty and a cool head. While he does occasionally stray toward conspiracy theorist territory with some of his musings about the motivations for various wars and military strategy, he remains rooted in the overall political mainstream. This granted him a certain credibility that managed to overcome, for example, the faux-blood spattered banner of the Bradford Stop The War Coallition slung haphazardly from the whiteboard behind him. Too bad this credibility has yet to seep into the movement that supports him.

At the end of the evening, Murray opened the floor for a question and answer session. The first participant was a middle aged white man, who stood up and solemnly intoned “I’m going to say something that’s illegal.” At this point I was already thinking “Oh Christ. Here we go. ‘F*ck Tony Blair, down with capitalism. Fight the system, man'”

“You’ll say it’s glorifying terrorism. Victory to Hamas! Victory to the Insurgents in Iraq!”

When I’m angry I typically have two mental states: Quiet seething rage, and Verbose Invective. But I was so stultified by this demonstration of pure idiocy that was I stuck trotally dumb. The brutal tidal wave of deep foolishness pouring from this man’s primary oriphice seemed to knock my brain out of joint, leaving my jaw hanging, useless, totally mute. Before I even had a chance to try to organise my cluster of outraged semi-thoughts into some sort of blistering response at least half the room erupted into spontaneous applause. At that point, hell froze over, the world became a different place and a million and one shrill right-wingers were proved totally correct.

(more…)

From www.impeachblair.org

Members of Parliament today get a chance to cast vote on the need to set up an inquiry into the conduct of Government policy in relation to the war in Iraq.

The debate is secured in Plaid Cymru and SNP Opposition Day debate, and is supported by a cross party coalition of MPs. The motion concerning the debate is based on Early Day Motion 1088, ‘Conduct of Government Policy in relation to the war against Iraq’ * . The EDM and the longer version published in the House of Commons Future Business attracted 164 signatures (including 33 Labour, 60 Conservatives and 59 Liberal Democrats MPs).

Plaid Cymru’s Defence spokesperson, Adam Price MP said today:

“Three and a half years on and Iraq is mired in blood, and the shocking figures published recently show that the death toll has reached 655,000. Neither the Hutton nor Butler Inquiries addressed the question if the Parliament and country were misled into this bloody conflict. I believe that it is essential for the credibility of our democracy that we establish what combination of deception, delusion and ineptitude carried us down this fateful path.

“This debate is not about revisiting old ground ‘ it is an urgent attempt to restore the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive; and of the utmost contemporary relevance if we are to prevent such tragedies from happening again. It will probably be the first and last occasion to restore proper accountability of Government.”

SNP Leader Alex Salmond said:

“This debate offers MPs a second chance – a chance to re-establish Parliamentary accountability over an executive who has led the country into a bloody quagmire – and a last chance to change strategy and direction on the disastrous course of events in Iraq.

“If this motion carries – or indeed even if it records a substantial shift in opinion since the vote which took us to war – Mr Blair’s time in Downing Street will be numbered in days, not weeks or months.”

The text of the motion is based on Early Day Motion 1088:

“That this House believes that there should be a select committee of seven honourable Members, being members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath.”

www.impeachblair.org

EMERGENCY PROTEST ON THE IRAQ WAR

TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER ASSEMBLE 5PM-7PM

PARLIAMENT SQUARE, LONDON SW1

On Tuesday 31 October, Parliament will debate and vote on the Iraq war for the first time since March 18 2003. Alex Salmond, one of the MPs who initiated the debate, says: “This is the first time since the invasion of Iraq that the government can be held to account over this illegal and unwanted war.”

STOP THE WAR COALITION has called an emergency protest in front of Parliament when the debate takes place between 5pm and 7pm. MPs must end a war which has brought nothing but mass slaughter and devastation to the people of Iraq. There is no excuse. It’s what the majority of British people want. It’s what even the head of the British armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt, wants.

From BBC Online

A senior US state department official has said that the US has shown “arrogance and stupidity” in Iraq. Alberto Fernandez made the remarks during an interview with Arabic television station al-Jazeera.

The state department says Mr Fernandez was quoted incorrectly – but BBC Arabic language experts say Mr Fernandez did indeed use the words. It comes after President George W Bush discussed changing tactics with top US commanders to try to combat the unrest.

Mr Fernandez, an Arabic speaker who is director of public diplomacy in the state department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, told Qatar-based al-Jazeera that the world was “witnessing failure in Iraq”.

From Consortium news

By Dr. Curren Warf, a professor of pediatric medicine and a board member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility

Last week, the medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006. This shockingly high figure has drawn attacks from the Bush administration and right-wing pundits.

Speaking as a medical doctor, I wish to set the record straight. The Lancet study is superb science. The study followed a strict, widely accepted methodology to arrive at its sobering conclusion. The study is being attacked not on scientific grounds, but for ideological reasons.

People may not realize that The Lancet is the world’s most prestigious medical journal. Prior to publication, the Iraq study was subjected to a thorough peer-review by specialists in the field of epidemiology.

Three of the study’s authors, Gil Burnham, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, are doctors at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. The fourth author, Riyadh Lafta, is on the faculty of Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Under dangerous conditions, researchers conducted a cross-sectional cluster sample survey involving a total of 1849 Iraqi households. The survey documented a four-fold increase in the crude mortality rate from the pre-invasion to the post-invasion periods and, in addition, characterized the causes of death.

The investigators followed the same methodology in Iraq that has had been used in estimating death and disease in other conflicts such as the Congo — where the Bush administration uncritically accepted their results. The public health tool they employed — cluster surveys — has been demonstrated time and again to be the best method of estimating rates of death in areas where vital statistics are not scrupulously maintained. Such bureaucratic vigilance is not the case in present day Iraq.

In a war-ravaged country, an estimate of war-related deaths based on the method of counting bodies will radically underestimate the number of people who have died. In Iraq today, there have been numerous reports of mass graves and of bodies dumped in fields, beside roads, or in the Tigris River.

These deaths are, by and large, not reported to authorities, as some of these deaths may be linked to police forces.

One must also consider the Muslim practice of burial where internment is swift — often on the same day. Therefore, relying on media reports of the number killed, morgue logs, or Iraq Ministry or U.S. military counts will not provide an accurate estimate of the death toll. We must also not discount the possibility of bias by government officials; the U.S. and Iraq have much to gain by minimizing civilian deaths.

Since the media has been unable to find a scientist critical of the study, they’ve turned to policy wonks with literally no expertise in the health sciences . Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Foundation derides the study, but her advanced degree is in international studies. Nor does Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies nor Michael E. O’Hanlon of Brookings have a health background.

At his Oct. 11 press conference President Bush asserted “No, I don’t call it a credible report.” He said he asked the generals and the generals told him it was wrong. When asked to give a precise number of Iraqi war-related deaths the President demurred, saying ” I do know that a lot of innocent people have died.”

Despite the scientific rigor of the Hopkins study, there is a danger that the unsubstantiated criticism by administration will color the public’s perceptions. In this age, where fact shares equal time with conjecture, critics have attempted to discredit the Hopkins study without specifically addressing the science whatsoever.

If the administration believes the Hopkins study to be flawed, the federal government should fund its own study of Iraqi mortality, and submit the methodology and results to a medical journal subject to independent peer review. After all the Hopkins study was funded in large part by a $50,000 grant from MIT; surely the federal government could afford such a study.

I belong to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility. We care about the ‘ Medical Consequences of the War in Iraq.’ In fact, that’s the title of our upcoming conference to be held at UCLA this Saturday, Oct. 21. The conference is co-sponsored by the UCLA School of Public Health and UCLA Extension. Dr. David Rush, past president of the Society of Epidemiologic Research, will discuss the Lancet Iraq study. You can register here.

As physicians, we realize the horrible human cost and needless suffering the American invasion has brought on the people of Iraq. The war has also terribly harmed our own American soldiers, 2,765 of whom have been killed and 20,000 of whom have suffered disabling injuries.

At his recent press conference, President Bush brushed aside a question to quantify the human toll of the Iraq War with the comment that ‘a lot of innocent people’ have died. 655,000 is not a guess. It is the best estimate that we have to date of the human tragedy in Iraq.

As the catastrophe in Iraq continues to unfold, an unresolved question remains on the role of Bush, Blair, and the US/UK military. To what extent were they passively incompetent in facilitating the decline into civil war, and to what extent were they actively pursuing policies that promoted that outcome?

The adoption of the ‘Salvador Option’ by the US in Iraq was reported and discussed from the beginning of 2005 onwards. As described by Newsweek, the Salvador Option looked something like this:

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called “snatch” operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

US Congressman Denis Kucinich took up the issue in April of this year in a letter to Donald Rumsfeld:

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:

I am writing to request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams.

On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has been called the “Salvador Option,” which references the U.S. military assistance program, initiated under the Carter Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan Administration, that funded and supported “nationalist” paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated and “disappeared,” including notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful in eradicating guerrillas…..

…About one year before the Newsweek report on the “Salvador Option,” it was reported in the American Prospect magazine on January 1, 2004 that part of $3 billion of the $87 billion Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations in Iraq, signed into law on November 6, 2003, was designated for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the Prospect article, experts predicted that creation of this paramilitary unit would “lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists.” The article further described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, disguised as an Air Force classified program, would be used to “support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force.” According to one of the article’s sources, John Pike, an expert of classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org. “the big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance.”…

…News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis.

The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling. Historically of course this is nothing new – divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago. However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London.

So, what did Blair know of and approve in the implementation of the Salvador Option? How does he feel about it now? Maybe someone should ask him.

From The Independent

Tony Blair has received a public warning from the country’s most senior military commander that the British presence in Iraq is threatening disaster there and in the UK.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, who took over as Chief of Staff six weeks ago, has warned the commitment to Iraq “exacerbates” problems faced by the UK in other parts of the world. He urged Mr Blair to give up his ambition to see a liberal democracy established in Iraq and settle for a “lower ambition”, warning that British troops were not invited into Iraq and the time when they were welcome has passed.

The Times reports that the comments from General Sir Richard Dannatt that he wants his forces to leave Iraq sometime soon have met with overwhelming support on the Army Rumour Service website.

MOD Oracle has more:

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, dropped a political bombshell last night by saying that Britain must withdraw from Iraq “soon” or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society.

In a blistering attack on Tony Blair’s foreign policy, Gen Dannatt said the continuing military presence in Iraq was jeopardising British security and interests around the world.

In an interview on BBC radio this morning the General went even further – pleading that the army must not be broken by a continuation of government policy in Iraq.