The plan was drafted in February last year, just as Tony Blair was assuring the British people that the only reason was Saddam Hussein’s ‘threat’.
The Bush/Blair attack on Iraq has brought death, destruction and great bitterness to Iraq. Every indication is that most Iraqis now regard their lives as immeasurably worse than during Saddam Hussein’s rule. More than 13,000 people are held in concentration camps in their own country.
This is many more than were incarcerated in Saddam’s political prisons in recent years. None has been charged; most cannot see their families; the allegations of torture and brutality by the occupiers grow by the day. As the US-based Human Rights Watch reported last week, the worst atrocities were in the 1980s – when he was backed by America and Britain.
The uprising in Iraq has accelerated and almost certainly strengthened since the capture of Saddam. Drawn from 12 different groups, including those that were always anti-Saddam, the resistance is well organised and will not stop until the ‘coalition’ leaves. The setting up of a puppet ‘democracy’ will merely increase the number of targets. As Blair’s knowledge of imperial history will tell him, this is precisely what happened in Britain’s other colonies before they threw out their occupiers, and in Vietnam.
One piece of intelligence which was true and which we know Blair received is a report that warned him that an attack on Iraq would only increase worldwide terrorism, especially against British interests and citizens. He chose to ignore it.
Two weeks ago a panel of jurists called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the British government for war crimes in Iraq. Whether or not that succeeds, it is clear the Prime Minister will need to find another Hutton, and quickly. John Pilger, article February 2004 ‘Another Hutton Whitewash’
The most reliable estimate done by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health with Iraqis – an extraordinary survey, a meticulous and conscientious and quite courageous in the way it was carried out and peer reviewed - probably leads us to almost a million people ... The majority of terrorists is our terrorists ... I don’t think there is a War on Terror. I think that’s a propaganda notion. John Pilger, interview ‘The Decline and Fall of America’
Obama lied that America had gone to Iraq to bring freedom to that country. He announced that the troops were coming home. This was another deception. John Pilger, lecture Socialism Chicago 2009, ‘Power Illusion and America’s Last Taboo’; viz also website
The bombing has doubled since last year (2006) and this is not being reported. And who began this bombing? Bill Clinton began it. During the 1990s Clinton reigned bombs on Iraq in what was euphemistically called the no-fly zones. At the same time he imposed a medieval siege called economic sanctions, killing perhaps a million people. John Pilger, The Invisible Government
Paying the Price was filmed in 1999 in Iraq. It was about the human consequence of a blockade on that country by the United States and Britain under the United Nations’ flag of convenience. In that blockade according to UNICEF 500,000 infants under the age of five perished as a result of it. The figure that is widely accepted ... 1991-2001 is about a million people dead as a result of the blockade. Almost nothing about that destruction of lives and society has been reported in the mainstream media in this country and is known. John Pilger, In Conversation
Breaking the silence of an enormous human tragedy and crime. Even before the invasion of Iraq had happened, now the most virulent form of censorship is omission – leaving out – it’s not necessarily lying at all. Or even manipulation. Distortion, yes. But it’s omission. Just leave it out. And this entire tragedy was left out. ibid.
Parliament has never debated the invasion of Iraq. Has never been allowed to vote on whether it was right or wrong. That’s what I would call a modern liberal government where they are distractions. ibid.
Tony Blair must be prosecuted, not indulged like his mentor Peter Mandelson. Both have produced self-serving memoirs for which they have been paid fortunes. Blair’s will appear next month and earn him £4.6 million. Now consider Britain’s Proceeds of Crime Act. Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenceless country, which the Nuremberg judges in 1946 described as the ‘paramount war crime’. This has caused, according to scholarly studies, the deaths of more than a million people, a figure that exceeds the Fordham University estimate of deaths in the Rwandan genocide.
In addition, four million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes and a majority of children have descended into malnutrition and trauma. Cancer rates near the cities of Fallujah, Najaf and Basra (the latter ‘liberated’ by the British) are now revealed as higher than those at Hiroshima. ‘UK forces used about 1.9 metric tons of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003,’ the Defence Secretary Liam Fox told parliament on 22 July. A range of toxic ‘anti-personnel’ weapons, such as cluster bombs, was employed by British and American forces.
Such carnage was justified with lies that have been repeatedly exposed. On 29 January 2003, Blair told parliament, ‘We do know of links between al-Qaida and Iraq’ ... Last month, the former head of the intelligence service, MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, told the Chilcot inquiry, ‘There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection … [it was the invasion] that gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad’. Asked to what extent the invasion exacerbated the threat to Britain from terrorism, she replied, ‘Substantially’. The bombings in London on 7 July 2005 were a direct consequence of Blair’s actions.
Documents released by the High Court show that Blair allowed British citizens to be abducted and tortured. The then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, decided in January 2002 that Guantanamo was the ‘best way’ to ensure UK nationals were ‘securely held’.
Instead of remorse, Blair has demonstrated a voracious and secretive greed. Since stepping down as prime minister in 2007, he has accumulated an estimated £20 million, much of it as a result of his ties with the Bush administration. The House of Commons Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which vets jobs taken by former ministers, was pressured not to make public Blair’s ‘consultancy’ deals with the Kuwaiti royal family and the South Korean oil giant UI Energy Corporation. He gets £2 million a year ‘advising’ the American investment bank J P Morgan and undisclosed sums from financial services companies. He makes millions from speeches, including reportedly £200,000 for one speech in China.
In his unpaid but expenses-rich role as the West’s ‘peace envoy’ in the Middle East, Blair is, in effect, a voice of Israel, which awarded him a $1 million ‘peace prize’. In other words, his wealth has grown rapidly since he launched, with George W Bush, the bloodbath in Iraq.
His collaborators are numerous. The Cabinet in March 2003 knew a great deal about the conspiracy to attack Iraq. Jack Straw, later appointed ‘justice secretary’, suppressed the relevant Cabinet minutes in defiance of an order by the Information Commissioner to release them. Most of those now running for the Labour Party leadership supported Blair’s epic crime, rising as one to salute his final appearance in the Commons. As foreign secretary, David Miliband, sought to cover Britain’s complicity in torture, and promoted Iran as the next ‘threat’.
Journalists who once fawned on Blair as ‘mystical’ and amplified his vainglorious bids now pretend they were his critics all along. As for the media’s gulling of the public, only the Observer’s David Rose, to his great credit, has apologised. The Wikileaks’ exposes, released with a moral objective of truth with justice, have been bracing for a public force-fed on complicit, lobby journalism. Verbose celebrity historians like Niall Ferguson, who rejoiced in Blair’s rejuvenation of ‘enlightened’ imperialism, remain silent on the ‘moral truancy’, as Pankaj Mishra wrote, ‘of [those] paid to intelligently interpret the contemporary world’.
Is it wishful thinking that Blair will be collared? Just as the Cameron government understands the ‘threat’ of a law that makes Britain a risky stopover for Israeli war criminals, a similar risk awaits Blair in a number of countries and jurisdictions, at least of being apprehended and questioned. He is now Britain’s Kissinger, who has long planned his travel outside the United States with the care of a fugitive.
Two recent events add weight to this. On 15 June, the International Criminal Court made the landmark decision of adding aggression to its list of war crimes to be prosecuted. This is defined as a ‘crime committed by a political or military leader which by its character, gravity and scale constituted a manifest violation of the [United Nations] Charter’. International lawyers described this as a ‘giant leap’. Britain is a signatory to the Rome statute that created the court and is bound by its decisions.
On 21 July, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, standing at the Commons despatch box, declared the invasion of Iraq illegal. For all the later ‘clarification’ that he was speaking personally, he had made ‘a statement that the international court would be interested in’, said Philippe Sands, professor of international law at University College London.
Tony Blair came from Britain’s upper middle classes who, having rejoiced in his unctuous ascendancy, might now reflect on the principles of right and wrong they require of their own children. The suffering of the children of Iraq will remain a spectre haunting Britain while Blair remains free to profit. John Pilger, article August 2010, ‘Tony Blair Must Be Prosecuted’
The soundbites never stop, and the wars never stop. John Pilger, The War You Don’t See, 2010
What is the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan? Why do many journalists beat the drums of war regardless of the lies of governments? And how are the crimes of war reported and justified when they are our crimes? ibid.
The resulting TV pictures gave no sense of the bloody conquest of Iraq. ibid.
As a result of the invasion of Iraq: 740 women are widows, 4.5 million people forced from their homes. ibid.
The respectable media has played a critical part in promoting war. ibid.
Iraq: Miles of miles of vehicles of fleeing Iraqi military personnel were blown to bits, but most of the ammunition, most of the ordinance used, was depleted uranium. John Pilger, On Depleted Uranium, interview Declassified UK: Phil Miller, Youtube 32.37, 2023
One doctor referred to it [sandstorms] as ‘the seeds of death’. ibid.
This is the kind of apocalyptic result of that war. ibid.
The MSM – they are the instrument of propaganda. ibid.
Contrary to the lies that were told to the American people, Iraq had absolutely no connections to 9/11. Al Qaeda was despised by the regime in Iraq which was a secular regime not interested in religion as such. But they still wanted to go for it. And so they delayed it. They went into Afghanistan first. Now why did they decide to go for Iraq, that’s the interesting question. Tariq Ali, author ‘The Clash of Fundamentalisms’
The major reason to take Iraq was a display of imperial power. Tariq Ali
It’s a total mess. It’s been a disaster this occupation. It is not popular in Iraq … The resistance grows daily. Tariq Ali, debate with Christopher Hitchens, Democracy Now, Youtube 36.15, Ali
They are extremely unpopular. What many soldiers talk about in interview when they come on furlough is what they can’t bear is the anger, the bitterness, the hatred on the face of many ordinary Iraqis. ibid. Ali
Muslim clerics acting like pimps. Undercover in Baghdad we expose a secret world of sexual exploitation. Widows of war forced to become halal prostitutes. Men of God giving religious guidance on how to abuse children. In this hidden sex trade, even children are for sale. Undercover with the Clerics: Iraq’s Secret Sex Trade, BBC 2019