Iraq
Is Burning? Enjoy The show!
By Gabriele Zamparini
01 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
Merriam-Webster Online dictionary describes the word “genocide”
as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political,
or cultural group”. According to
international law “genocide means any of the following
acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of
the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring
children of the group to another group.”
What we all call the “Iraq
war” is not a war but the deliberate annihilation of an entire
country. If this is not “genocide” maybe we should create
a new word that could summarize the following.
Remember the first Gulf War?
Surgical bombings, smart missiles and a great show on TV. There were
between 142,000 and 206,000 Iraqi deaths directly attributable to the
Gulf War in 1991. (1)
The UN sanctions against
Iraq, wanted by the governments of the US and the UK and imposed on
6 August 1990 (HIROSHIMA DAY) ended only with the invasion and occupation
of Iraq in 2003. In 1996, Madeleine Albright – US Ambassador at
the United Nations and soon to become Secretary of State under President
Clinton – said about half million children murdered by those sanctions:
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the
price is worth it." (2) And the sanctions went on.
Those sanctions killed a
terrifying number of innocent people. One million? Two millions? Will
we ever know? Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General
and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1997-98) said: “I had been
instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide:
a deliberate policy that had effectively killed well over a million
individuals, children and adults.” After thirty-four years with
the United Nations, he resigned in protest over the effects of the embargo
on the civilian population. (3)
Hans Von Sponeck, who had
succeeded Denis Halliday as UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian
Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000), resigned on February 13, 2000. He
asked: “How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed
to such punishment for something they have never done?” Like Halliday,
he had been with the United Nations for more than thirty years. (4)
The Washington
Post reported in November 2004: “Acute malnutrition
among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States
led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by
the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government. After
the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily
declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this
year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation
with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N.
Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi
children suffering from "wasting" a condition characterized
by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.” We’ll
never know how many of those 400,000 babies have survived.
On 29 October 2004, the British
medical journal The
Lancet published ‘Mortality before and after the
2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey’:
Making conservative assumptions,
we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since
the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess
deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent
deaths. (Interpretation)
Most individuals reportedly
killed by coalition forces were women and children. (Findings)
This
study reads:
"The researchers found
that the majority of deaths were attributed to violence, which were
primarily the result of military actions by Coalition forces. Most of
those killed by Coalition forces were women and children... Eighty-four
percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition
forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery."
('Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion', October
28, 2004)
Of course the propaganda machine kept repeating the more digestible
numbers compiled by Iraq Body Count. You know, the “30,000 more
or less”…
The last Lancet study estimates
655,000 excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war.
This study is “the best estimate of mortality to date in Iraq
that we have, or indeed are ever likely to have”, as an international
group of twenty-seven academics in the fields of the medical sciences
recently
wrote in a piece in the Melbourne Age.
Compare to its population
it’s as if 30 millions US citizens (10% of its population) had
been slaughtered since 1990. Of course, more or less… Is there
a word for such a crime? Understandably the butchers we have elected
to power in our free and democratic world don’t want to talk about
numbers and have been doing all they can to discredit even the most
serious studies science can give us. Obediently, the usual court of
jesters has done a great job to hide the truth behind mountains of lies.
Freedom! Freedom! Democracy! Democracy!
And the winner is…
Now that Iraq has been completely
destroyed (the real mission accomplished), it can be useful to remember
one particular event: at 15:55 on 7 June 1981 – as the Federation
of American Scientists website reports
“the first F-15 and
F-16's roared off the runway from Etzion Air Force Base in the south.
Israeli air force planes flew over Jordanian, Saudi, and Iraqi airspace.
After a tense but uneventful low-level navigation route, the fighters
reached their target. They popped up at 17:35 and quickly identified
the dome gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. Iraqi defenses were
caught by surprise and opened fire too late. In one minute and twenty
seconds, the reactor lay in ruins. Baghdad reiterated a previous statement
that the French atomic reactor was designed for research and for the
eventual production of electricity. In a statement issued after the
raid, the Israeli government stated that it had discovered from "sources
of unquestioned reliability" that Iraq was producing nuclear bombs
at the Osiraq plant, and, for this reason, Israel had initiated a preemptive
strike.
The attack raised a number
of questions of interpretation regarding international legal concepts.
Those who approved of the raid argued that the Israelis had engaged
in an act of legitimate self-defense justifiable under international
law and under Article 51 of the charter of the United Nations (UN).
Critics contended that the Israeli claims about Iraq's future capabilities
were hasty and ill-considered and asserted that the idea of anticipatory
self-defense was rejected by the community of states. In the midst of
this controversy, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) came
under fire from individuals and from governments who complained that
the Vienna-based UN agency had failed to alert the world to developments
at Osiraq. IAEA officials denied these charges and reaffirmed their
position on the Iraqi reactor, that is, that no weapons had been manufactured
at Osiraq and that Iraqi officials had regularly cooperated with agency
inspectors. They also pointed out that Iraq was a party to the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (informally called the Non-Proliferation
Treaty or NPT) and that Baghdad had complied with all IAEA guidelines.
The Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, it was pointed out, was not
under IAEA safeguards, because Israel had not signed the NPT and had
refused to open its facilities to UN inspections.”
Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is carrying out genocidal
policies against the Palestinian People, nuking its neighbors and strongly
influencing the empire’s policies in the region. This superpower
has had an important role in the destruction of Iraq and the so-called
re-shaping of the Middle East. Of course all this (and much more) is
taboo in our Western societies that allowed themselves to be blackmailed
by the merchants of the “holocaust industry” and surrendered
any serious critical discussion about the role of this country in the
geopolitical order. In its sixty years of existence, Israel has shown
over again the deepest contempt for international law, decency and human
values. As a result we have a state arrogantly above the law, above
morality and above critical discussion, which is to say, the only democracy
in the region.
In spite of all of that we
haven’t lost our sense of humor. Now that Avigdor Lieberman, the
head of the “far-right” Yisrael Beitenu party, joined the
Israeli government, there is a chorus of indignation in the West: someone
even sees the perils of fascism…
NOTES
1) Source: U.N. 1991 the
Ahtisaari report; Daponte 1993
2) Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions
against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have
died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you
know, is the price worth it?" US Ambassador at the United Nations
(soon to become Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright: "I think
this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth
it." CBS - "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996
3) Source: The New Rulers
of the World, by John Pilger, Verso, 2002
4) Ibidem
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