This may be my final opportunity to protest the dropping of bombs on the Iraqi people before it begins in 2003. I do so by sharing my recent reading and understanding with you.
Even as I write there are massive anti-war protests throughout the world, February 15,2003. And Bush has threatened his blackmail, against Germany for example.
The United States maintained its splendid isolation and reluctantly joined World War II only after the treacherous attack by Japan on Pearl Harbour in 1941. This self-evident truth remained in the history books for over 60 years. Even the Japanese believed it. Suddenly, in 2002, researchers found the wreck somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It was the Japanese ship sunk by the Americans prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. History has to be painstakingly and embarrassingly re-written: Japan DID NOT draw first blood after all.
Do you remember the name MARK FUHRMAN? He is the former Los Angeles Police Department detective who became famous or infamous in the O.J. Simpson case. In a matter not related to war, he said, "They say they have information. Information is not evidence." (FOX NEWS channel, On The Record With Greta Van Susteren, 26 November 2002)
I find it difficult to understand that no one in the USA in 1941 had information concerning the sinking of the Japanese warship. Now that the evidence is uncovered, I am appalled that the free press wallows so freely in its lack of integrity. Note that sequel reporting the discovery is a thunderous silence in the media. Such observations of the big and powerful media is not limited to lowly me. Mr. Harold Evans is a former editor of US News and World Report. He told BBC Hardtalk on December 11, 2002: Gobachev ended nuclear testing in the Soviet Union because it poisoned the world, and he urged the United States to do the same. The United States press never reported it. Evans said further that since 9/11, "the American press has muted itself." He cited for example, the alleged insider trading criminal offences committed by the current President Bush about 1990. The muted media has not investigated this.
Scott Ritter, an American, was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He told the world recently that the Bush administration is not the first government that has lied to go to war. He cited the Gulf of Tomkin incident about four decades before. Ritter describes American intelligence on Iraq as "very wrong" and "uniformly incorrect."
Robin Oakley, a CNN correspondent from London warns us to be sceptical because "Governments think it is acceptable to lie in times of war." And Walter Cronkite, perhaps the most respected American media-person alive, castigates the tendency of the Pentagon and/or the United States military, to "GLORIFY ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND BURY ITS FAILURES."
Iraqi oil reserves are the world's second largest. Bush and Blair are so greedy and eager to control those that they lie unashamedly. The misinformation they bring before the Security Council is not evidence: it cannot stand the cross examination and scrutiny to which "evidence" would normally be subjected in an American court or in a British court of law.
Bush has for some time been saying that Iraq has links with Al Qaeda while his own CIA has been denying there was any such evidence. Bush has been saying that Iraq was close to making a nuclear weapon. The IAEA has been denying the existence of any such report at the Atomic Energy Agency.
Blair's government presented a dossier, a document "cited by the prime minister and Colin Powel as the basis for a possible war." At first everybody believed it was based on British government intelligence. It turned out that part of the document was stolen from the thesis of a university student about Iraq, written some 12 years ago.
Former Labour minister Glenda Jackson, MP for Hampstead and Highgate was angry about the plagiarism. She told BBC: "It is another example of how the government is attempting to mislead the country and parliament on the issue of a possible war with Iraq. And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying."
There are some people right here in Dominica who need to be reminded that Glenda Jackson is not an enemy of Blair. She is a member of the Labour Party led by Mr Blair. We here must be careful before we choose our American and British "heroes." The Moynihan memoirs mentioned below are illustrative.
In face of these lies, bolstered by the evidence just uncovered, some sixty years late, I can easily make the following prediction:
The "mystery" as to why Bush and Blair want to bomb Iraq and willy-nilly kill any number of innocent people shall come to light some day. Some insider will write a memoir or an autobiography; or a biography, perhaps unauthorized. Fabrications and lies calculated to mislead the American people and others will be revealed. Reports about blackmail, diplomatic wiling and dealing, bribery and strong-arm manners will be de - classified. It should not take sixty years. It should not surprise you if one day you learn that current high alerts in USA and UK were spurious and were deliberately and systematically orchestrated.
The Bush administration continues to lie that it is going to war for good of the world. Perhaps their "world" comprises only the USA, Israel and perhaps Kuwait, and Blair. The overwhelming majority of people everywhere - real people as distinct from some leaders - do not endorse war. That include China and India where live a combined population of 2.3 billion. Should Bush and Blair boast about their freedom and democracy that ignores the majority of us including the Chinese and the Indians?
Recently, Time Europe asked, which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003? … North Korea, Iraq, or the United States? 339721 people chose to cast a vote. 84.5 % said the United States posed the greatest danger to world peace.
We can safely add ex - president Jimmy Carter to that number. In his Nobel - prize acceptance speech he said:
"We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgement."
Until now.
Jimmy Carter quoted Ralph Bunche: "To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering." He continued with another quotable line of his own: "For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences."
Even the sole saint of statesmen, ex - president Nelson Mandela of South Africa blasted Bush as "a president who has no foresight" and "who can't think properly."
In a recent public forum, Blair was told that Mandela criticized his policy of war with Iraq. You could almost hear Mr. Blair thinking of a response. He found none. After all, it is difficult to say anything adverse about a man, who will die immortal, who was unjustly jailed for 25 years, lived to become president, and in that powerful position, forgave all his enemies.
Mandela said that Bush and Blair are undermining the United Nations by their policy on Iraq. Noam Chomsky in his book ("Rogue States") tells us that the United States has undermined the United Nations before:
"When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 it was ordered to withdraw at once by the UN Security Council, but to no avail. The reasons were explained in his 1978 memoirs by UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.
He goes on to report that within two months some 60,000 people had been killed. The numbers reached about 200,000 within a few years, thanks to increasing military support from the US, joined by Britain as atrocities peaked in 1978." (Quoted from Chomsky, Rogues' Gallery, page 2).
Finally, a University of Amsterdam scientific survey found out that 70% of people in Holland are against the war, even if it had the blessing of the United Nations. One Dutch leader told CNN World Report (February 11, 2003), "We do not bomb innocent people in Ireland or Israel for breach of UN resolutions… Do we?"
The Dutch understand bullyism, injustice, racism, and greed. It is not enough to understand these things. We must stand up and be counted before the bombs start falling.