Why is the government being so nice to Andrew Wilkie? One theory floated in the weekend papers is that it’s trying to avoid a damaging leak. That makes sense – a few days before Wilkie’s resignation, I published an article from ‘Jane’s Defence Weekly’ which discussed widespread unease in intelligence circles about the rationale for war (Tony Blair: The whole world’s in his hands), and a steady stream of leaks from intelligence and foreign affairs sources in Britain and the US attests to the unease.
But the obvious reason for the kid gloves is that murmuring sweet nothings about Wilkie’s right to speak hides the fact that the Government is not actually engaging with what he’s saying, let alone confronting his key claim – that the Office of National Assessments (ONA) does NOT assess that without war Saddam is likely to give WMDs to terrorists, and assesses that AN INVASION is likely to have that effect. That claim leads to Wilkie’s conclusion – that our decision to go to war has nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam’s WMDs, ie that the government is lying to the Australian people.
I analysed Howard’s answers to questions after his Thursday address to the nation in Deconstructing JW Howard. Fran Kelly asked:
You said today that this judgement, Australia’s judgement, reflects the intelligence community’s professional assessment. Well, in recent days we’ve had an ONA officer quit his post, saying that ONA had given the Government advice that the more Saddam Hussein is pushed, the greater the chance of him using his weapons of mass destruction or linking up with terrorists. Will you release the ONA reports on Iraq, just as you released the ONA report on the children overboard, here in the National Press Club address 16 months ago?
Howard replied:
Well that particular ONA report, as you know Fran, in relation that I mentioned 16 months ago, merely repeated press reports. I’m not going to release ONA assessments which, almost of all of which remain classified. What I said to you today represented their general view. As far as Mr Wilkie is concerned, I respect his right to have another view. It’s not surprising in a large public service and a reasonably large intelligence community, that you’re going to have a range of views. In the end, all of these things involve questions of judgement…
Get it? Wilkie has a right to another view, end of story. But Wilkie did not say it was HIS view, he said it was ONA’s ASSESSMENT. Howard oh-so-gently gently asserts the opposite but runs a mile from proving it.
There’s something else Howard won’t release either – the government’s legal advice to back his claim that a non UN sanctioned invasion of Iraq would not breach international law. Thus Howard refuses to prove the two claims which are essential to making the case for war to the Australian people.
Trust him? Howard has form. On Thursday, he admitted to misleading the Australian people just before the 2001 election by claiming an independent ONA assessment – which he read out – backed his claims that children were thrown overboard. The admission served to bat away Fran’s request that he release the ONA assessment backing his claim that ONA believed Saddam was likely to give his WMDs to terrorists unless we invaded Iraq. ONA assessments were not made public, he said – the children overboard ONA assessment was OK to releasesbecause it merely summarised media reports.
There is another recent example of Howard misleading the Australian people to serve his political interests. Just after we heard of the sinking of SIEV-X and the deaths by drowning of hundreds of asylum seekers, Howard closed down debate on Australia’s responsibility by stating categorically and repeatedly that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters. Despite documents gradually forced out of the bureaucracy which all said the opposite – that SIEV-X likely sank in international waters – he refused point blank to produce the advice he said he relied on. The actual advice that went to him at the time recently surfaced – it too confirmed the documentary trail of advice contradicting Howard’s claim.
To me, Howard’s address to the nation made it crystal clear that his stated reasons for joining the war are false. I believe he has made the judgement that because the United States is on the rampage, and will continue to be so, the world will become a more dangerous, unstable place, and that the best spot for Australia amid the turmoil is under America’s skirts. It’s that simple. He really is a puppet, by choice.
Tomorrow negotiations will begin in Australia on a free trade agreement between Australia and the United States, the one the Yanks got excited about last year after Howard said yes to its plans to invade Iraq, and the one Howard made a point of pressing when he met Bush recently.
Howard wants us so tied to the United States militarily and economically that the US would feel compelled to defend us if our security was threatened. Backing the US in its adventure, of course, adds to the risks we face. He must have judged that the balance of risks favours us going with the United States anyway.
The Australian’s Paul Kelly said this of Howard’s position on Saturday:
First, Australia is going to war because of the US alliance, not because Iraq represents a direct threat to Australia. Second, the Australian public, like much of the world, does not accept his argument that the risks of doing nothing outweigh the risks of war.
… Most of the global community disagrees with Howard about the risk. Howard argues, in effect, it is so great that Australia must play a high profile role with the US, if necessary outside the Security Council, to attack Iraq pre-emptively at the possible cost of breaching the Western alliance, marginalising the UN, risking Hussein’s use of his weapons and fanning the hostility of the Islamic world.
… He has failed to mount a persuasive argument that a war to disarm Iraq is an imperative now when the risks are so vast and the national interest could be prejudiced.
I’d add only that Howard hasn’t even bothered to admit the risks Paul mentioned to the public, let alone assess their weight. He’s treated the Australian people like fools. No wonder so many of us are so anxious. He’s left Australians to try to make sense of what’s happening without his guidance.
Oh well. War it is. And what a war it could be. Scott Burchill sent me a couple of recent articles on the mess Northern Iraq could quickly become once the invasion begins, on the new “pre-emptive strike principle” America would just have created the precedent for.
In Kurd-Turk rivalry threatens US plans for Iraq, The Christian Science Monitor’s Ilene R. Prusher writes:
If war begins in Iraq, it could look like this: Turkey’s troops move into autonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq; Kurds view it as an act of war and open fire.
It could also look like this: Kurds move on the oil-rich Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Mosul; Turkey views the advance as a casus belli and launches an attack to prevent the cities from falling into Kurdish hands.
In either scenario, two of Washington’s key allies could wind up fighting each other instead of the forces of Saddam Hussein – not exactly what the US had in mind when it drew up plans for regime change in Iraq.
She says the US envoy has warned Turkey that if the deal to let Turkish troops follow the Yanks did not proceed because Turkey didn’t allow the US to use its territory as a base for attack, the Turks should stay out. His warning prompted this rejoinder:
“He said the Turkish military cannot enter Iraq, as if he can dictate to Turkey what Turkey can do,” says Egemen Bagis, Mr. Erdogan’s foreign policy adviser. “If the US feels they need to come 10,000 miles away to Iraq to protect their citizens from another Sept. 11,” he asks, “isn’t it right that Turkey, which is right on Iraq’s border and a longstanding ally hosting US forces, should be concerned? If Saddam is armed [with] weapons of mass destruction, Turkey has a right to be in Iraq.”
Pre-emptive strike time for Turkey, too, although not under US auspices. Oh dear. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the US had given up on Turkey and was re-routing its ships accordingly:
As a result, the U.S. diplomatic effort in Ankara has shifted to ensuring that Turkey keeps its troops out of Iraq…
Over the vocal objections of Iraqi Kurds, the administration had agreed to let Turkish troops follow U.S. forces into northern Iraq and take up positions about 121/2 miles past the border to help prevent a flow of refugees and maintain security and stability. But Khalilzad told the Turkish government that the agreement was void because Turkey had not approved the U.S. deployment.
“The situation now is that it’s all off,” the official said. “We don’t have an agreement, and we don’t want them to go in unilaterally. The mission now is to discourage and deter them from going in, and to reach an understanding with them on legitimate issues of concern.”
The paper also reported yesterday:
Kurdish militia leaders in northern Iraq have begun intense preparations for participating in a war against President Saddam Hussein’s government despite repeated pledges to heed U.S. appeals to stay out of the way…
Turkey fears that a prominent Kurdish role would lead to a permanently autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, possibly reawakening similar aspirations among Turkey’s own Kurdish minority. To avoid that, Turkish officials in Ankara have said Turkish troops will occupy part of Iraq’s Kurdish zone, ostensibly to prevent a flow of refugees into Turkey.
Turkey has also threatened to march on Kirkuk and the rich oil fields that surround it if the Kurds try to take it for themselves. Against that background, the Bush administration has put Kirkuk off limits to a direct assault by Kurdish militiamen, called the pesh merga, meaning “those who face death.”
But a senior Kurdish official said the civilian Kurdish underground, composed mainly of residents with hidden arms, is preparing to seize control of some Kirkuk neighborhoods and attack the city’s defensive perimeter from the rear when U.S. troops draw near. “It’s not just us,” he said, predicting that Iraqi Arabs and members of Iraq’s Turkmen minority also will rise up against Hussein’s government. “Be sure, there will be Arabs helping us, Turkmen who are helping us. All the people inside will take the city.” The plan is rarely talked about, he explained, because “we don’t want to embarrass the Americans.”
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Today, some final thoughts by you before the war. I’ve just published John Wojdylo’s latest piece on the people’s instinct, Loving the farthest, and Polly Bush’s first piece on the war, There’s daggers in men’s smiles. I’ve also published the Press Council judgement upholding the complaint against The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of last year’s civil disobedience forum in NSW Parliament at the bottom of Press Council to reader: We’ll choose your friends then close the door.
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Recommendations
I got a shock last night while watching the news when George Bush put out his roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. You’ll remember I floated the idea of a UN sanction for war in return for a binding commitment from the US to get peace in the really big war in the Middle East on February 28, in Incompatible values. This was in response to Bush’s big speech on democracy in the Middle-East and his personal commitment to a Palestinian state. In the last few days I’ve been sent quite a few US articles focusing on the fact that many leading neo-cons are Jewish, a ticklish topic, to say the least. Yesterday John Bennettsent me a piece by Republican Christian fundamentalist Pat Buchanan in the latest issue of The American Conservative magazine, Whose War?. Buchanan makes the incendiary claim that certain Jewish powerbrokers in the neo-con club are more loyal to Israel than America. The puff reads: “A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.” Amid the mess the world’s in, the last thing anyone needs is an upsurge in anti-Semitism, especially, from Bush’s perspective, from the Republican fundamentalist moral majority so supportive of his presidency. I wonder if that’s part of the reason for Bush’s move yesterday, to dispel the perception in parts of his core constituency that he’s captive to a Zionist cabal.
Unlrich Adami: “If you want to see the real agenda of this war, read George Monbiot’s A wilful blindness. An extract:
Last year, the Sunday Herald obtained a copy of a confidential report produced by the (New American Century) Project in September 2000, which suggested that blatting Saddam was the beginning, not the end of its strategy. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” (Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century)
The wider strategic aim, it insisted, was “maintaining global US pre-eminence”. Another document obtained by the Herald, written by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, called upon the United States to “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”.
On taking power, the Bush administration was careful not to alarm its allies. The new president spoke only of the need “to project our strength with purpose and with humility” and “to find new ways to keep the peace”. From his first week in office, however, he began to engage not so much in nation-building as in planet-building.
The ostensible purpose of Bush’s missile defence programme is to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. The real purpose is to provide a justification for the extraordinarily ambitious plans – contained in a Pentagon document entitled Vision for 2020 – to turn space into a new theatre of war, developing orbiting weapons systems which can instantly destroy any target anywhere on earth11. By creating the impression that his programme is merely defensive, Bush could justify a terrifying new means of acquiring what he calls “full spectrum dominance” over planetary security.
Immediately after the attack on New York, the US government began establishing “forward bases” in Asia. As the assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones noted, “when the Afghan conflict is over we will not leave Central Asia. We have long-term plans and interests in this region”12. The US now has bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Georgia. Their presence has, in effect, destroyed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which Russia and China had established in an attempt to develop a regional alternative to US power.
In January, the US moved into Djibouti, ostensibly to widen its war against terror, while accidentally gaining strategic control over the Bab Al Mandab – one of the world’s two most important oil shipping lanes. It already controls the other one, the Strait of Hormuz. Two weeks ago, under the same pretext, it sent 3000 men to the Philippines. Last year it began negotiations to establish a military base in Sao Tome and Principe, from which it can, if it chooses, dominate West Africa’s principal oilfields. By pure good fortune, the US government now exercises strategic control over almost all the world’s major oil producing regions and oil transport corridors.
It has also used its national tragedy as an excuse for developing new nuclear and biological weapons13, while ripping up the global treaties designed to contain them. All this is just as the Project prescribed. Among other enlightened policies, it has called for the development of a new generation of biological agents, which will attack people with particular genetic characteristics14.
Why do the supporters of this war find it so hard to see what is happening? Why do the conservatives who go beserk when the European Union tries to change the content of our chocolate bars look the other way when the US seeks to reduce us to a vassal state? Why do the liberal interventionists who fear that Saddam Hussein might one day deploy a weapon of mass destruction refuse to see that George Bush is threatening to do just this against an ever-growing number of states? Is it because they cannot face the scale of the threat, and the scale of the resistance necessary to confront it? Is it because these brave troopers cannot look the real terror in the eye?
Lloyd Mcdonald: “This piece, by musician Brian Eno, is in the European edition of Time but apparently not fit for its intended audience so it’s missing from the US edition. The US needs to open up to the world
Damian Joyce recommends Lunch with the chairman in The New Yorker, a piece on how prominent neo-con Richard Perle is not only on a government advisory panel telling the government to wage war on Iraq, but has a stake in a company seeking to profit from homeland security contracts. Apparently it’s the done thing in America.
A reader advises of a new campaign to stop the war, from the culture jammers network Abusters:
Dear Jammers,
In spite of opposition from the world – proven in poll after poll – > Bush’s oil-thirsty war machine marches on. Feeling frustrated? It’s time to take a new stand and hit Rogue Nation USA exactly where it counts – right in the economy. It’s time to Boycott Brand America. Are you ready? The Boycott Brand America pledge is already up at adbusters – check in to sign it, find out more, and help circulate the pledge. Let’s build this boycott into an international mass action on par with the peace marches!
Ever since the Tampa transformed Australian politics, someone has sent me the “Marine Digital maritime newsletter’. In the latest issue:
“Shipping Industry Anxious About War Premiums: South Korean shipping companies and exporters are locked in a growing concern over the issue of war premiums charged for vessels operating along the Middle East routes. According to the Korea Shipowners Association, the war premiums are expected to increase by at least 200 percent from the usual rate of 0.01 percent, if a war between the U.S. and Iraq breaks out in the region.”
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Jonathan Toze in Canberra (this is Jonathan’s debut on Webdiary)
Death of the Liberal Party
A bit of an extreme declaration perhaps, but one that I have been watching develop with increasing dismay over the last few years. Not a sign of dissent has appeared as the rules of standard political party behaviour in a Westminster system have been torn up and discarded.
This War is the most important and divisive issue to have hit the political and social landscape since, I would argue, 1975. While Tampa split the body politic, it fell in Howard’s favour. But with Howards current behaviour, this is not the case, and it confirms what I have been suspecting for quite some time. Australia now is run by an Autocracy: There is no divergence of opinion from within the leading political party, where it seems only those who think and feel like John Howard are given the leading roles.
It is impossible to believe that there is only one faction within the Liberal Party, that there is on such an important issue no divergent belief or value on the issues of violation of International Law, or the subjugation of Australian Democracy to blind personal allegiance to the American Neo -Conservative Agenda,
The state the parliamentary Liberal Party finds itself in is one of grave concern, and displays tremendous weakness. With Shane Stone in place it is not likely to be seen to or even recognised, but the corruption of the party from within could well spell a long term problem for not only the Liberal Party, but Australia as a whole as long as the Libs are in power.
One can only hope for Australia’s sake that those within who are opposed to Howard are capable of showing some spine?
Margo: I know of two Coalition politicians who have broken ranks, both because of the core demands of their constituencies. Federal Liberal MP Peter Lindsay, who holds the marginal north Queensland seat of Herbert, has spoken against the war more than once in the party room. His electorate includes defence barracks and many defence force families, and he would kiss his seat goodbye if he did not publicly oppose the war. This sort of thing is tolerated in both parties – on the Labor side in Government, MPs in seats where voters are affected by aircraft noise were given the nod to speak out publicly against the third runway. Don Page, the National Party member for the NSW state seat of Ballina on the north coast, told his voters recently – at a meeting and then through the local paper – that he opposed a war without UN sanction. Page is a seat where anti-war feeling runs high, and Page is in danger of losing his seat. Can anyone add to this tiny list of dissenters?
Gina Bowry
I am beyond hearing any more arguments pro or anti war. It has all been said. If you are pro war, let’s go in there and get the job done. If you are anti war, there are still options.
This is a war of brinkmanship. Will there actually even be a war? The USA has stationed troops around Iraq as a means of pressuring them into some form of disarmament or compliance. This has to some degree worked, even though each step “forward” is still derided by the US administration.
It has come time for GW Bush to step up to his line in the sand. He, however, has just seemed to move it again. Will there or will there not be war on Tuesday?
Saddam Hussein will not remove himself from power. The US has put itself in the invidious position of either being seen to start a war, for no clear reason, or of putting its military might and world power at risk and then stepping back without following through, after only minor resistance.
The big question for me is, will the US actually risk war with world opinion against it? Do they really want it in the first place, or were they only hoping for quick compliance (and to what end?)
That Iraq is obviously destroying some weapons is interesting. To me, it indicates that there is some anticipation that compliance will reduce or remove the chance of war. Yet each step they take is followed by an announcement from Mr Rumsfeld that says they are doing too little too late.
Iraq is actively destroying weapons which are it’s most obvious means of attack (or defence), in an attempt to be seen as complying to the UN resolution, at least in part. This is different to the Russians agreeing to destroy hundreds of obsolete nuclear warheads. This is a nation which is destroying what I can only see as part of it’s national defence assets only weeks before what could be a war for regime change in Iraq. Why would any ruler of such a country agree to destroy a weapon which could be used defensively if it truly thought it would be invaded, with or without those weapons’ capability?
Saddam seems to assume that there will be a limit to the aggressive rhetoric of the US, and they will at some point, not too far removed, come to the table and let Saddam continue to rule.
Are the American’s waiting for a pre-emptive strike on their own forces to justify an attack? How else can they force world opinion to swing enough their way to endorse their latest resolution?
If this war is just and necessary, can Bush and his allies keep letting the tide of public and world opinion wash back his line in the sand? They cannot keep letting this rogue state dictate its own terms for survival. They must invade unless there is total compliance, and soon, and accept the cost of adverse world opinion for the benefit of the world. Otherwise, it’s just a bluff.
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Chris Andrews
Disclosure: My partner is currently one of those pre deployed to the gulf in OP Bastille.
I am writing in reference to some of the dribble I have been reading in the comment pages and Webdiaries. Honestly people, we are talking about a man (Saddam) who has no regard or respect for the value of human life. He is a vicious killer, someone who under Australian laws would never see the light of day again.
Yet you defend him so that he may go and kill yet another human being in cold blooded murder. He still uses torture, yet you defend him. Since he came to power he has declared war with 2 countries, yet you defend him. He is willing to use his own people to protect his palaces and military installations, yet you defend him.
For Christ sake, he ordered the so called human shields from all around the world to guard his palaces, not his hospitals. This is a man who will put a Surface to Air missile Launcher on the roof of a hospital so when the coalition blow it up protecting themselves he instantly jumps up and down saying we’re murdering innocent civilians.
Why should we have to prove that this man no longer has weapons of mass destruction, should he not be the one trying to prove it instead? He has defied the world for 12 long years – can someone honestly say when enough is enough. Saddam is a lying, deceitful, evil man.
Making speeches may not be the PM’s strong point, but at least someone in this damn country has some back bone to stand up for human rights. Let’s end this now. Saddam could end this now, but he chooses not to. In the couple of months the UN weapons inspectors have been back in the country how many times they have caught him out lying already, and yet you defend him and what’s worse, you damn believe him.
Open your eyes people, the PM can not just come out and tell you all the intelligence they have. If he did he would signing the death certificate of our own men and women, What is the first thing everyone did when September 11 and the Bali bombing occurred? They immediately asked why did we not know about it and if we did then why did we not do anything to prevent it.
Well ladies and gentlemen, we know Saddam has WMD and we know he has links to extremist groups. Do you really want someone to drop a biochemical bomb on someone before we do anything?
I sure as hell don’t. Instead of fighting amongst ourselves and providing Sadam with encouragement let’s stand united and when he sees he has no choice only then will diplomacy have a chance.
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Shawn in Arkansas( The home of Bill)
Let’s have a little bit of a fact finding mission here. I live in America, my father fought the second world war, I married an Australian, we met in London. To the best of my judgement, these were the freedoms my father fought for. I could travel, I could meet someone, they could meet me. The world wasn’t a bad place, was it? Look at it from an American point of view, as much as you hate to!
What are you angry about? What do you dislike? I’ll tell you what you dislike. You dislike that we’re right. And we’re right about many things. Do you remember Chamberlain? Do you remember appeasement? Do you remember Hitler? Do you remember Mussolini? Do you remember Stalin?
Do you remember YOUR GRANDFATHER? Did you think he was a fool? Did you think he was ignorant? Do you remember WW1/ WW2?
THEN, If you remember these things, and you have a knowledge of history, you know that bad men, do bad things, and it takes a greater power, a greater sense of self, to stand, to unite and to fight for what is right.
If you’re not with us, you’re against us. This isn’t a Bush “redneckism”, this a “truthism”.
Finally find the courage within your self to not feel inferior, to stand up against tyranny in the face of evil. And see it as it is – a threat to the Western World, Capitalism, Australia, America , Great Britain.
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‘Poindexter’
I am staggered by the superficial reportage of John Howard’s latest address. To state the blinding obvious, the PM fully expected to be delivering a Churchillian/Menzies speech with the war already underway. Hence the switch to the ” Great Hall ” – forget the red herring of security – this was about gravitas. He could hardly announce we were in a shooting war from the rooms of the Telstra Press Club.
Unfortunately for JWH, things were delayed – those nasty ” spoilers ” held up the invasion schedule – HENCE, Mango, the PM delivered a re-hash, re-gurgitation word for word of the speech every Liberal MP has been forced to give in the recent Parliaments ” debates “. Check the Hansard – nothing new, nothing that had not already been chanted/shrieked across the Lower and Upper Chambers by the sheep already ( talk about a rubber-stamp Parliament!)
This was patently a substitute speech for the war leader address he planned to be delivering until those nasty French ” spoiled ” his game.
Still, only a few more days before his historic address to the nation telling us what I for one have known since last September, that we are in the largest Anglo-American invasion since D-Day 1944 and the ADF is going in boots and all.
It amazes me that journos still, at this late hour, will not wake up and smell the cordite. JWH, who brooks no dissent, made a firm irrevocable decision committing the ADF to war in September 2002.
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Jackson Manning (nom de plume)
John Howard is such a coward he has refused to answer essential questions about this war by pretending he didn’t commit to war on Iraq months ago. Even at three minutes to midnight on the war clock he refuses to fess up and give the Australian people the answers they deserve. He has offered no proof, no justification, just month-after-month of rehashed Bushisms.
Such serious breaches of democratic trust should surely prove electorally unforgivable – though one must never underestimate the ALP’s capacity to let its timidity and short-sightedness ensure it snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
Soon the clock will strike twelve, the war will begin, and in all likelihood it will be over in weeks, days, possibly even hours if Saddam’s people rebel. That much of the Bush administration’s gamble is probably correct.
Immediately afterward, the Government’s formidable Op-Ed and talkback cheer-squad – the Joneses, Ackermans, Bolts, Sheridans and Devines – will surely gloat about the spectacular success of the stars and stripes and urge us all to forget the ‘discredited’ UN and put our faith in the brand new reich – the one financed by corporate crooks and run by unelected zealots like Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle.
But at that stage – just weeks away – it will pay for us to remember that the long-term consequences of this adventure are yet to unfold. In the longer run the blowback from this folly could well claim the lives of many more Australian kids than Iraqi – though none should be considered more important than the other.
Presuming it would even work – and the jury’s still out – even a Missile Defence Shield won’t protect the schoolkids of, say, Sydney from a smallpox attack or an atomic transit van.
At the very least our world’s only system of almost-democratic global law, the UN, looks likely to fall victim to the might-is-right mindset that brought us two world wars in the first half of the Twentieth Century and millennia of bastardry before it. Don’t believe the line that the UN will have failed its test; if the UN croaks it will be because the sole superpower and its whitebread colonialist cronies pushed it so hard against a wall it splattered.
It’s hard not to worry about this. The total destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have already taught us the old ways must be overcome if the human race is to have any hope of continuing. It should be obvious that war must be a last resort and that global domination is now a redundant wetdream for psychopathic control freaks.
The sixties were no accident of history as the hardcore conservative rump likes to pretend. The ‘revolutions’ of that decade – pacifism, environmentalism, feminism, anti-racism and respect for human diversity – did not emerge from nowhere. Rather, they are essential evolutionary tools for human survival in a post-nuclear age.
As the global mass demonstrations against this war should indicate ‘the people’ themselves are moving on.
But alas, our prime minister is stuck following the patterns of the past – suck-holing up to the dominant power in the hope he can trade not only international law, the UN and the lives of our soldiers but also Medicare, the PBS and our quarantine laws for an anti-free trade agreement (let’s be honest, it’s ‘special’ trade not free trade we’re seeking) with the biggest bastards on the block — the corporate-owned, televangelist-run US Republican Party.
Time is tick, tock, tick, tock, ticking away, Johnny. It’s too late to turn back the clock.
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Hannah Newman (nom de plume)
I usually make a point of reading Webdiary everyday but haven’t had the chance to get my daily fix of late. And then bam! I hop on today, after a two week absence, and read John Wojdylo’s attack on Jack Robertson (Against Human Rights in Iraq). Before I know it I feel my blood pressure rising – as it usually does after reading one of John’s hysterical, self-righteous columns. While I applaud your commitment to giving all sides of the war argument a fair go, I have decided that despite being usually tempted by John’s provocative and needling articles, I am boycotting the chunks of (cyber) space you give him in Webdiary for my own sanity and health.
Don’t get me wrong, I do want to read alternative viewpoints. I actually want to be convinced that somehow as we edge closer and closer to war, that there are compelling reasons to do so. I want to be convinced that a blanket bombing of Iraq and its aftermath will deliver liberation to its people. I want to be assured that all alternative avenues have been determined and tried. To this end however, John does the pro-war lobby a great disservice since all he does is try to shame those against war by calling them anti-human rights.
It’s a sick and troubled world we live in when a call for no war is seen as anti-human rights. Although, it just goes to show the perverted means the pro-war right will go to, to drum up support for their war. Yes, call those who want peace evil and against Iraqi democracy so you can all sleep better at night as the bombs fall half a world away.
I guess the truly good thing to come from all this debate so far is that despite having to ride on the back of oil and WMD, the plight of the Iraqi people is finally getting the international attention it deserves and countries like Australia will think twice before sending out our navy vessels to turn back desperate Iraqi refugees.
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Peter Woodforde in Melba, ACT
Today, Sunday 16 March 2003, was the 35th anniversary of Operation Muscatine, north-east of Quang Ngai City, which, according to a hearty message of congratulation from William C Westmoreland, Commander US Forces: “Dealt enemy heavy blow. Congratulations to officers and men of C-1-20 [Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry] for outstanding action.”
We should remember the families of Song My (My Lai), from babies to great-grandmas, butchered like sheep in a supposedly successful and praiseworthy military action.
But this is not a time for recrimination against the United States, a country of great institutions and great people, set, like our own, amidst great flaws.
We should also remember the courage and sacrifice of a small group of young American servicemen who put their lives on the line that day to save a small number of the massacre survivors, and who met years of danger, harm and ridicule during the despotic and bloodthirsty Nixon-Kissinger era to expose the evil.
And we should try to remember all the words of Matthew 5:3-12, surely never heard at Dubya and Condoleeza’s bloody awful prayer breakfasts:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
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Edna Ross forwards this report from the frontline.
Letter from Iraq -an American photojournalist’s letter home
Some of you have written to me with concerns for my safety in Iraq, but this was easily one of the safest assignments I have taken. In all my time in Iraq, in spite of an intense awareness of the threat of an impending attack by the United States, I haven’t met a single Iraqi who had a harsh word for me. Iraqis are very good at distinguishing between the U.S. government and a U.S. citizen.
It seems to me that as a photojournalist, Iraq is where I might best play a role in making a small difference. I’ve done some work in Iraq for Newsweek and Time magazines but that kind of work has really become secondary for me. I do what I can to influence (in admittedly small ways) what kinds of stories those big magazines do, but ultimately their stories are nearly worthless at confronting the inhumanity of American foreign policy in the Middle East. I will continue to work with Time and Newsweek (and with other corporate media) on stories that I don’t find offensive, but the bulk of my efforts are now going into reaching alternative media and in supporting anti-war groups in the states. I hope I can find some time soon to come to the states for a speaking tour of sorts.
There’s a lot of talk about whether or not the U.S. will go to war with Iraq. What many people don’t realize is that the U.S. is already at war in Iraq. I made two trips last month into the “no-fly zone” created by the U.S. with Britain and France in southern Iraq. Actually it would be better named the “only we fly” zone or the “we bomb” zone. “We” refers to the United States who does almost all of the flying and bombing (France pulled out years ago, and Britain is largely a nominal participant). There is another no-fly zone in the north, which the U.S. says it maintains to protect the Kurds, but while the U.S. prevents Iraqi aircraft from entering the region, it does nothing to prevent or even to criticize Turkey (a U.S. ally) from flying into northern Iraq on numerous occasions to bomb Kurdish communities there.
Turkey’s bombing in Iraq is dwarfed by that of the U.S. The U.S. has been bombing Iraq on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for the past 12 years. There were seven civilians killed in these bombings about two weeks ago, and I’m told more civilians last week, but I’m sure that didn’t get much or perhaps any press in the U.S. It is estimated that U.S. bombing has killed 500 Iraqis just since 1999.
Actually I believe that number to be higher if you take into account the effects of the massive use of depleted uranium (DU) in the bombing. The U.S. has dropped well in excess of 300 tons of this radioactive material in Iraq (30 times the amount dropped in Kosovo) since 1991. Some of the DU is further contaminated with other radioactive particles including Neptunium and Plutonium 239, perhaps the most carcinogenic of all radioactive materials, and these particles are now beginning to show up in ground water samples.
I spent a lot of time in overcrowded cancer wards in Iraqi hospitals. Since U.S. bombing began in Iraq, cancer rates have increased nearly six fold in the south, where U.S. bombing and consequent levels of DU are most severe.
The most pronounced increases are in leukaemia and lung, kidney, and thyroid cancers associated with poisoning by heavy metals (such as DU).
But the most lethal weapon in Iraq is the intense sanctions regime. The toll of the sanctions is one of the most under-reported stories of the past decade in the U.S. press. I have seen a few references to the sanctions recently in the U.S. press, but invariably they will subtly discredit humanitarian concerns by relying on Iraqi government statements rather than on the statistics of international agencies.
My careless colleague at Time magazine, for example, recently reported that “the Iraqi government blames the sanctions for the deaths of thousands of children under the age of five”. That’s simply not true. The Iraqi government, in fact, blames the sanctions for the deaths of *more than a million* children under the age of five.
But let’s put that figure aside, for there’s no need to rely solely on the Iraqi government, and let’s refer instead to UNICEF and WHO reports which blame the sanctions directly for the excess deaths of approximately 500,000 children under the age of five, and nearly a million Iraqis of all ages.
We all have an idea of the grief borne by the United States after the September 11 attacks. Employing the crude mathematics of casualty figures, multiply that grief by 300 and place it on the hearts of a country with one tenth the population of the United States and perhaps we can get a crude idea of what kind of suffering has already been inflicted on the Iraqi people in the past decade.
The greatest killer of young children in Iraq is dehydration from diarrhea caused by water-borne illnesses which are amplified by the intentional destruction of water treatment and sanitation facilities by the United States. The U.S. plan for destroying water treatment facilities and suppressing their rehabilitation was outlined just before the American entry into the 1991 Gulf War. The January, 1991, Dept. of Defense document, “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” goes into great detail about how the destruction of water treatment facilities and their subsequent impairment by the sanctions regime will lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.” I can report from my time in Iraq that all is going to plan.
Cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid (previously almost unheard of in Iraq) are now quite common. Malaria and, of course, dysentery are rampant, and immunities to all types of disease are extremely low. Even those lucky children who manage to get a sufficient daily caloric intake risk losing it all to diarrhoea. Around 4,000 children die every month from starvation and preventable disease in Iraq – a six-fold increase since pre-sanctions measurements.
Treatment of illnesses in Iraq is complicated by the inability of hospitals to get the drugs they need through the wall of sanctions. In a hospital in Baghdad I encountered a mother with a very sick one-year-old child. After the boy’s circumcision ceremony, the child was found to have a congenital disease which inhibits his blood’s ability to clot, which results in excessive bleeding. The child encountered further complications when he took a fall and sustained a head injury which was slowly drowning his brain in his own blood. In any other country the boy would simply take regular doses of a drug called Factor 8, and he could then lead a relatively normal life. But an order for Factor 8 was put on hold by the United States (prohibited for import), so the doctor, the mother, and I could only watch the child die.
Much is made of Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, but it is the sanctions, the use of depleted uranium, and the destruction of Iraq’s health and sanitation infrastructure that are the weapons of greatest mass destruction in Iraq.
The situation is so bad that Dennis Halliday, the former Humanitarian Coordinator for the UN in Iraq, took the dramatic step of resigning his position in protest at the sanctions. “We are in the process of destroying an entire society”, Halliday wrote. “It is as simple and terrifying as that.” “It is illegal and immoral.” And Halliday isn’t alone. His successor, Hans Von Sponeck, also resigned in protest and went so far as to describe the sanctions as genocide. These are not left-wing radicals. These are career bureaucrats who chose to throw away their careers at the UN rather than give tacit support to unethical policies driven by the United States.
Being in Iraq showed me the utter devastation U.S. policy (war and sanctions) has wrought there and has given me a vision of what horror a new war would bring. And, of course, an attack on Iraq would be just the beginning of a terrifying chain of reactions throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. Having worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Palestine in the past year, I am intensely aware of how the fragile politics and powers outside Iraq can be dramatically unsettled by a U.S. Invasion within Iraq.
It’s easy to imagine an impending tragedy of enormous proportion before us, and I ask myself who must step up and take responsibility for stopping it. Clearly the U.S. government is the most powerful actor, but it is equally clear that we cannot turn aside and realistically expect the U.S. government to suddenly reverse the momentum it has created for war. So I feel the weight of responsibility on me, on U.S. citizens, to do whatever we can with our individually small but collectively powerful means to change the course of our government’s policy. I try to picture myself 10 or 20 years in the future, and I don’t want to be in the position where I reflect on the enormous tragedies of the beginning of the 21st century and admit that I did nothing at all to recognize or prevent them.
I don’t know how this letter will sound to my friends and family who are living in the U.S., in a media environment which does very little to effectively question U.S. policy and almost nothing to encourage ordinary people to participate in making a change. I imagine this letter may sound like the political rant of some kind of extremist or anti-American dissident. But that’s not how it feels to me. This doesn’t feel like a political issue to me so much as it feels like a personal issue. I am appalled on a very human level at the suffering which U.S. policy is already inflicting and I am terrified by the prospects for an even more chaotic and violent future.
And let’s be honest about U.S. policy aims. Those in the U.S. government pushing for war say they are doing so to promote democracy, to protect the rights of minorities, and to rid the region of weapons of mass destruction.
But is the U.S. threatening to attack Saudi Arabia or a host of other U.S. allies which have similarly un-democratic regimes? How many of us would advocate going to war with Turkey over the brutal repression of its Kurdish minority and of the Kurds in Iraq? And do we expect the U.S. to bomb Israel or Pakistan which each have hundreds of nuclear weapons? Let’s remember that leaders in the previous weapons inspection team in Iraq had declared that 95% of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities were destroyed. And let’s not forget that in the 1980s, when Iraq was actually using chemical weapons against the Kurds and the Iranian army, the U.S. had nothing to say about it. On the contrary, at that time President Reagan sent a U.S. envoy to Iraq to normalize diplomatic relations, to support its war with Iran, and to offer subsidies for preferential trade with Iraq. That envoy arrived in Baghdad on the very day that the UN confirmed Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and he said absolutely nothing about it. That envoy, by the way, was Donald Rumsfeld.
While Iraq probably has very little weaponry to actually threaten the United States, they do have oil. According to a recent survey of the West Qurna and Majnoon oil fields in southern Iraq, they may even have the world’s largest oil reserves, surpassing those of Saudi Arabia. Let’s be honest about U.S. policy aims and ask ourselves if we can, in good conscience, support continued destruction of Iraq in order to control its oil.
I believe that most Americans – Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Purples or whatever – would be similarly horrified by the effects of sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq if they could simply see the place, as I have, up close in its human dimensions; if they could see Iraq as a nation of 22 million mothers, sons, daughters, teachers, doctors, mechanics, and window washers, and not simply as a single cartoonish villain.
I genuinely believe that my view of Iraq is a view that would sit comfortably in mainstream America if most Americans could see Iraq with their own eyes and not simply through the eyes of a media establishment which has simply gotten used to ignoring the death and destruction which perpetuates American foreign policy aims. While the American media fixates on the evils of the “repressive regime” of Saddam Hussein, both real and wildly exaggerated, how often are we reminded of the horrors of the last Gulf War, when more than 150,000 were killed (former U.S. Navy Secretary, John Lehman, estimated 200,000). I simply don’t believe that most Americans could come face-to-face with the Iraqi people and say from their hearts that they deserve another war.
I believe in the fundamental values of democracy – the protection of the most powerless among us from the whims of the most powerful. I believe in the ideals of the United Nations as a forum for solving international conflicts non-violently. These are mainstream values, and they are exactly the values that are most imperilled by present U.S. policy. That’s why, as a citizen of the United States and as a member of humanity, I can’t rest easily so long as I think there is something, anything, that I can do to make a difference.
(The family asked for the author’s name to be suppressed.)
