A
Deafening Silence On Report Of
One Million Iraqis Killed
By Patrick Martin
17 September, 2007
WSWS.org
When
those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning
for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will
be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September
14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British
polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million
violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.
This staggering figure demonstrates
two political facts: 1) the American war in Iraq has produced a humanitarian
catastrophe of historic proportions, with a death total already higher
than that in Rwanda in 1994; 2) those arguing against a US withdrawal
on the grounds that this would lead to civil war, even genocide, are
deliberately concealing the fact that such a bloodbath is already taking
place, with the US military in control.
The reaction to the ORB report
in the US political and media establishment was virtual silence. After
scattered newspaper reports Friday, there was no coverage on the Friday
evening television newscasts or on the cable television news stations.
There was no comment from the Bush White House, the Pentagon, or the
State Department, and not a single Republican or Democratic presidential
candidate or congressional leader made an issue of it. On the Sunday
morning talk shows on all four broadcast networks the subject was not
raised.
This was not because those
involved were unaware of the study, which received wide circulation
on the Internet and was prominently reported in the British daily press.
Nor was there any serious challenge to the validity of the study’s
findings.
Opinion Research Business
(ORB), founded by the former head of British operations for the Gallup
polling organization, is a well-established commercial polling firm.
It gave a detailed technical description of the methods used to make
a scientific random sample.
Six months ago, by contrast,
an ORB survey in Iraq was hailed by the White House because some of
its findings could be given a positive spin in administration propaganda.
That survey, conducted in February and made public March 18 in the Sunday
Times of London, found that only 27 percent of Iraqis believed their
country was in a state of civil war and that a majority supported the
Maliki government and the US military “surge,” and believed
life was getting better in their country.
That survey also reported
figures on violence that largely dovetail with those of the survey conducted
in August and reported last Friday, including 79 percent of Baghdad
residents experiencing either a violent death or kidnapping in their
immediate family or workplace. But its findings of Iraqi political opinions—not
the figures on deaths—were given headline treatment in the US
press, with articles in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor
and other national media outlets.
White House press spokesman
Tony Snow cited the ORB poll at a March 23 news briefing, when he used
its findings to rebut the results of a poll of Iraqis by ABC News, the
British Broadcasting Corporation, the German ARD network and USA Today
newspaper. Asked about the ABC poll’s finding that Iraqis were
more pessimistic about the future, Snow declared, “there was also
a British poll at the same time that had almost diametrically opposed
results.” He added that the British poll had “twice the
sample” of the ABC poll, and should therefore be considered more
authoritative.
The March ORB poll was widely
hailed in the far-right media, including Fox News Network. The right-wing
magazine National Review declared, “Supporters of Operation Iraqi
Freedom will be buoyed by a new poll of Iraqis showing high levels of
support for the Baghdad security plan and the elected government implementing
it.”
The latest ORB poll, focusing
on the enormous death toll produced by the US invasion, has received
no such positive reception at the White House. There is, of course,
ample reason for such hostility. The figures reported by ORB undermine
Bush administration claims that its goal in Iraq is to “liberate”
the Iraqi people from tyranny and terrorism, or to defend “freedom
and democracy.”
The real motivation for the
war was spelled out by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan
in a newly published book of memoirs, in which he wrote, “Whatever
their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of
mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also
concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable
for the functioning of the world economy. I’m saddened that it
is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The
Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Equally significant is the
silence from congressional Democrats and the Democratic presidential
candidates, all of whom claim to be opposed to the Iraq war. This antiwar
posturing, however, has nothing in common with genuine compassion for
the plight of the Iraqi people or principled opposition to the predatory
interests of American imperialism in the oil-rich country.
The Democrats oppose the
Bush administration’s conduct of the war, not because it has been
a bloody and criminal operation, but because it has been mismanaged
and unsuccessful in accomplishing the goal of plundering Iraq’s
oil resources and strengthening the strategic position of US imperialism
in the Middle East.
The Democrats do not want
to highlight the massive scale of the bloodbath in Iraq, as suggested
by the ORB survey, because they share political responsibility for the
war, from the vote to authorize the use of force in October 2002, to
the repeated congressional passage of bills to fund the war, at a total
cost of more than $600 billion. In any war crimes trial over the near-genocide
in Iraq, leading Democrats would take their place in the dock, second
only to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war cabal.
Appearing on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program Sunday, the 2004 Democratic presidential
candidate, Senator John Kerry, denounced suggestions that congressional
Democrats would allow the United States to be defeated in Iraq. He criticized
the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on the ground that
it had weakened US national security interests, particularly in relation
to Iran.
“We’re not talking
about abandoning Iraq,” Kerry said. “We’re talking
about changing the mission and adjusting the mission so that the bulkier
combat troops are withdrawn, ultimately, within a year, but that you
are continuing to provide the basic backstop support necessary to finish
the training, so they stand up on their own, and you are continuing
to chase Al Qaeda.”
Kerry made it clear that
he advocated a more aggressive, not less aggressive, policy in the Middle
East. “We need to get out of Iraq in order to be stronger to deal
with Iran,” he said, “in order to deal with Hezbollah and
Hamas, to regain our credibility in the region. And I believe, very
deeply, they understand power.”
When “Meet the Press”
host Tim Russert pressed Kerry on the refusal of the Democrats to force
the White House to stop the war by cutting off funding, Kerry evaded
the question, claiming—falsely—that such action would require
67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto. The supposed
67-vote hurdle is an obstacle deliberately conjured up by the congressional
Democrats, in order to play their double game of publicly posturing
as opponents of the war while allowing the Bush administration to continue
waging it.
Kerry continued: “I
will fund the troops to protect the national security interests of America,
to accomplish a mission that increases our national security and protects
the troops themselves. We are not proposing failure...”
What does the pursuit of
“success” mean in the context of the reports of 1.2 million
violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion and occupation? It means
the devastation of that country will continue until the American and
international working class intervenes to put an end to it.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.