Iraq: 'Liberation' or War Crimes?By Ghali Hassan
10 October, 2004
Countercurrents.orgOn September 06, 2004, Charles Duelfer, head of the CIA-linked Iraq Survey Group appointed by George Bush to hunt for the illusive Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), told the US Congress: "Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and its nuclear programme had decayed since the 1991 Gulf War". Confirming earlier reports, including the UNSCOM's, that Iraq had no WMD and that the war was unnecessary and illegal. This alone should be enough ground to indict George Bush, Tony Blair and their "coalition" with war crimes committed since 1991 against the Iraqi people.
The current pretext for the war was that, the US is "bringing democracy" to Iraq. Nothing could be further from the truth. The situation on the ground in Iraq is far worse than what is portrayed by Western media, reported Patrick Cockburn of The Independent of London. This is because the media is more interested in the re-election of George Bush in November than telling American citizens the truth about the crimes committed in their names against the Iraqi people. "The numbers [of killed Iraqis] are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them", Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal wrote recently.
Iraq is far worse today than under the rule of Saddam Hussein. There is no security, no electricity and no drinking water. The construction of Iraq promised by the US is turned out to be the continuing destruction of the country. There is no work for Iraqis, and unemployment is more than seventy percent. The health and education services, once the envy of the Middle East, are in total collapse. The only employment is in the new army and police. The US is bribing young and unemployed Iraqis to join the army and the police in order to protect the Occupation and provide "soft" targets for
the Resistance.The current media propaganda that Iraq is "safe" and "on the way to democracy" is another lie. 'There are a lot of frustrated people,' Professor Huda al Nuaimi, of Al-Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad told Nancy Youssef of Knight-Ridder. 'The interim government did not serve the individual Iraqi in any way', she said. 'It's been two years now and the simplest things aren't happening, like improving security'. 'We are in the process of destruction instead of reconstruction".
Iraqis are suddenly taught everything, from boiling their drinking water and painting schools to how to vote for the right stooge and keep the Occupation alive. It sounds like if Iraqis have just evolved from the Neanderthals and need to be introduced to "civilisation".
The London-based reporter Felicity Arbuthnot wrote in the Morning Star, "Palestine and Iraq have the highest number of PhDs in the Middle East, women and men educated without discrimination. In both countries the education system has been targeted and dismantled. Iraq, prior to the embargo was awarded, two years running, a unique accolade from UNESCO". In 1981 the UNESCO honoured Iraq for being the first developing country to succeed in eradicating illiteracy. "The education system was globally unparalleled in that a child could be born into abject poverty, of illiterate parents and emerges from this free, high quality system (including University) as anything he or she wished to be. The Iraqi government, resulting in rounded east-west expertise, paid for Western Post graduate courses", added Arbuthnot. The 13 years long genocidal sanctions have succeeded in destroying the fabric of the Iraqi civil society and killed more than two million Iraqis, a third of them children under the age of five.
The Iraqi people have rejected this form of "liberation", and the Occupation of their country by foreign forces. Countless polls have shown that the vast majority of Iraqis resent the Occupation. A poll conducted by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies in May revealed that 9 out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers rather than "liberators" or peacekeepers. Other results showed Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr is the most popular voice in Iraq, because of his courageous rejection of the Occupation.
Western media pundits and intellectuals are targeting Al-Sadr unfairly accusing him of being "Muslin extremist". On the contrary, the main goal of Al-Sadr is the end of the US Occupation. Al-Sadr said recently that, he is not seeking any official post, "not now, and until I die". Al-Sadr added that he will not "participate in any political discourse as long as there is an occupation". Furthermore, very few of these Westerners expressed any opposition the puppet "government" headed by Allawi and his gang of thugs.
The Occupation forces under conditions equivalent to slavery imprison more than 7000 Iraqis throughout Iraq. They are tortured, abused and murdered by the Occupation forces. Despite the cover up of US crimes against Iraqi prisoners and detainees provided by the Occupation propaganda and the media, US crimes at Abu Ghraib prison surpassed that of the old regime. Abu Ghraib is now the symbol of Western racism and hypocrisy.
According to hospital sources and aid agencies the attacks on Fallujah on April 10, 2004 killed more than 1000 Iraqis and injured many more, most of them civilians. Human rights activist and lawyer, Jo Wilding, described some of the reality: "Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their chests and
faces. Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, takes me to the bed where a child of about 10 is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Fallujah... Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services. The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is in US territory and cut off from the clinic by snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets because nobody can go to collect them without being shot".At the time of the siege of Fallujah by US forces, Iraqi civilians were shot dead by US snipers and US aircrafts for no other reasons but venturing out of their homes. Recently, The Independent of London published a video footage that shows American pilots attacking and killing a group of unarmed
Iraqi civilians walking in the middle of a street in Fallujah.Fallujah is being bombed every night and may soon be subjected to ground assault by US forces. On Friday October 09, 2004, US planes bombed a weeding party and killed at least 12 people and injured 17 others in this criminal attack, according to the BBC News.
In Samarra, US forces have killed large numbers of civilians, including many children, and thousands of residents fleeing the city altogether. "It appears that America is trying to cover up its ugly crime against the civilian residents by making out as if those killed were all from the Iraqi Resistance", an Iraqi civilian told correspondents from the news website IslamMemo. He added that "hysteria" gripped the American forces after the heroic operation mounted against them by the Iraqi Resistance, when it
attacked two American convoys at opposite sides of the city. 'Of the 70 dead brought to Samarra General Hospital since the fighting erupted Friday, September 23,2004 were children and 18 were women, hospital official Abdul-Nasser Hamed Yassin told Associated Press. 'Another 160 wounded people also were treated', he added.On September 12, 2004, US helicopters fired on a crowd of unarmed innocent civilians gather around Bradley's fighting vehicle in Baghdad's Haifa Street killing more than 13 Iraqis, including children and an Arab journalist, and injuring dozens others. "It was almost certainly a war crime", reported Jonathan Steele of the Guardian of London.
"A more rational and humane critic must go further, and demand that Tony Blair ought to be tried for war crimes", writes David Cromwell of Media Lens. The killing of Iraqis by US Occupation forces is continuing on daily basis. "Tens of thousands of dead, hundreds of thousands of injured and
grieving - a vast illegal act of mass murder. But for our 'liberal' press a vague gesture in the direction of an apology is a 'milestone' in Blair's rehabilitation. This is, itself, a milestone in moral depravity - urbane, well heeled and well spoken - of the most lethal kind", continues David
Cromwell.After World War II the war crimes tribunal in Japan established by the US found Japan's prime minister, Tojo Hideki, and Foreign minister, Hirota Koki guilty of 'not preventing atrocities' against US prisoners of war and sentenced them to death by hanging. Furthermore, preventive war is the "supreme crime" condemned at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.
We know now that Iraq had no WMD since 1991, and hence the genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq were illegal and crimes against humanity. We also know that the pretexts for the war on Iraq were utter lies.
Surely, there is overwhelming prima facie evidence to prove that war crimes have been committed against the Iraqi people by those warmongers in the US, Britain and Australia. Those who invoke international law must submit to it. They should be tried as war criminals. It is time that the Iraqi people are truly liberated by legal means and faith in Western democracy. Justice should apply to everyone.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia: He can be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]
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