Tag Iraq

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima’

Amer­ica, kick­ing ass:

Dra­matic increases in infant mor­tal­ity, can­cer and leuk­aemia in the Iraqi city of Fal­lu­jah, which was bom­barded by US Mar­ines in 2004, exceed those repor­ted by sur­viv­ors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Naga­saki in 1945, accord­ing to a new study.

Dr Busby says that while he can­not identify the type of arma­ments used by the Mar­ines, the extent of genetic dam­age suffered by inhab­it­ants sug­gests the use of uranium in some form. He said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against build­ings to break through walls and kill those inside.”

Hero: Mike Prysner

Click through for the video.

Wikileaks reveals video showing U.S. air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Col­lat­eral Murder, another U.S. mas­sacre, this time caught on tape. When you watch the video bare in mind the U.S. mil­it­ary claimed the vic­tims died in a battle that took place between U.S. forces and insurgents:

There is no ques­tion that coali­tion forces were clearly engaged in com­bat oper­a­tions against a hos­tile force”

—Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl,

spokes­man for U.S. forces in Bagh­dad. (New York Times)

The real­ity is a bunch of cow­ard red­necks fly­ing around in heli­copters com­mit­ting murder from high above.

When the Nurem­berg Tribunal described a war of aggres­sion as the supreme war crime, because it “con­tains within itself the accu­mu­lated evil of the whole,” this is the kind of thing they were talk­ing about. These trig­ger happy red­necks fly­ing around in heli­copters just shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place.

And this red­neck nation won­ders why people want to fly planes into their buildings.

Help arrest Tony Blair

Great piece by George Mon­biot on the cam­paign to arrest Tony Blair:

Already the cam­paign has borne fruit. Out­side the Chil­cot inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the web­site, tried to appre­hend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police. She qual­i­fies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to rel­ev­ant char­it­ies. The fund will remain open until Blair is offi­cially pro­sec­uted, and we will keep pay­ing out to those who fol­low Grace’s example.

You can donate here.

Plans for war crimes prosecution against Blair

Finally. Let’s hope this guy is good.

Former Director of Public Prosecutions: Blair is a deceitful sycophant

Ken Mac­Don­ald, Dir­ector of Pub­lic Pro­sec­u­tions between 2003 – 2008, writ­ing for the Times:

The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes stead­ily clearer. This was a for­eign policy dis­grace of epic pro­por­tions and play­ing foot­sie on Sunday morn­ing tele­vi­sion does noth­ing to repair the dam­age. It is now very dif­fi­cult to avoid the con­clu­sion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarm­ing sub­ter­fuge with his part­ner George Bush and went on to mis­lead and cajole the Brit­ish people into a deadly war they had made per­fectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increas­ingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.

Hind­sight is a great temp­tress. But we needn’t trouble her on the way to a con­fid­ent con­clu­sion that Mr Blair’s fun­da­mental flaw was his syco­phancy towards power.

Since those sorry days we have fre­quently heard him repeat­ing the self-regarding man­tra that “hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right”. But this is a narcissist’s defence and self-belief is no answer to mis­judg­ment: it is cer­tainly no answer to death.

Actually Obama, America did seek war in Afghanistan

Obama accept­ing his Nobel prize:

… per­haps the most pro­found issue sur­round­ing my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is wind­ing down. The other is a con­flict that Amer­ica did not seek …

Except that Amer­ica did seek armed con­flict with Afgh­anistan.

In Octo­ber of 2001 the Taliban pub­licly offered to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third coun­try, provided the U.S. hal­ted the illegal bomb­ing of Afgh­anistan and pro­duced the neces­sary evid­ence about involve­ment of bin Laden or any of his asso­ci­ates in the 11 Septem­ber attacks. Bush rejec­ted this, put­ting an end to any pos­sib­il­ity of a poten­tially peace­ful, legal res­ol­u­tion to the events of 11 Septem­ber 2001, and opened up the way for the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Afgh­anistan, Iraq and the threat of inva­sion of Iran, along with the mil­lions who have lost their lives or had them des­troyed as a result.

Inquiries into invasion of Iraq are a smokescreen

There have been a num­ber of inquir­ies into the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq but as someone com­ment­ing on the European Tribune web­site put it, they

… are not inten­ded to reach a find­ing that the pub­lic find cred­ible, they exist to provide a smokescreen for a few years to cover the estab­lish­ment for a few years in the hope every­one for­gets about it.

We invaded Iraq and all we get is this lousy t-shirt’

They invade and lay waste another coun­try, des­troy the lives of mil­lions of Iraqis for gen­er­a­tions to come, all on some trumped up drivel about “weapons of mass destruc­tion.” Now they’re arguing over the real reason. Oil. It’s not enough that con­trol of Iraq’s crude is being div­vied up amongst the cap­it­al­ists of the world.…

Another theory on Iran’s presidential election

I was sur­prised today to find one of my favour­ite tech­no­logy com­ment­at­ors, John Gruber of Dar­ing Fire­ball, declar­ing that no doubt remains as to whether the elec­tion was fraudulent. Really, because a theo­cratic gov­ern­ment is crack­ing down on dis­sid­ents? If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my exper­i­ences in the Middle East it is that all is not…

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