Please read this article, & pass it on to everyone you know, but above all
else please ACT on Feb 15th.
Together we can stop this madness.
Full details of both protests are after John Pilger's piece
BLOODY COWARDS Jan 29 2003
JOHN PILGER ON LEADERS WHO WANT WAR YET KNOW LITTLE
OF IT
Bush and Blair..have cowardice of the man who causes death not by his own
hand but through a chain of command
John Pilger
WILLIAM Russell, the great correspondent who reported
the carnage of imperial wars, may have first used the expression, "blood on
his hands", to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance,
order
the mass killing of ordinary people.
In my experience, "on his hands" applies especially
to those modern political leaders who have had no personal experience of
war,
like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony
Blair. There is about them the essential cowardice of the man who causes
death and suffering not by his own hand, but through a chain of command that
affirms his "authority".
In 1946, the judges at Nuremberg, who tried the Nazi
leaders for war crimes, left no doubt about what they regarded as the
gravest
crimes against humanity. The most serious was an unprovoked invasion of a
sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the
murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the "highest
authority".
Blair is about to commit both these crimes, for
which
he is being denied even the flimsiest United Nations cover, now that the
weapons inspectors have found, as one of them put it, "zilch". Like those in
the dock at Nuremberg, he has no democratic cover. Using the archaic "royal
prerogative", he did not consult parliament or the British people when he
dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a
foreign power, the Washington regime.
Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W
Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and
ambitions
of "endless war" and "full spectrum dominance" are a matter of record. All
the world knows their names: Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney and
Perle; and Powell, the false liberal. Bush's State of the Union speech last
night was reminiscent of that other great moment, in 1938, when Hitler
called
his generals together and told them, "I must have war". He then had it.
To call Blair a mere "poodle" is to allow him
distance from the killing of innocent Iraqi men, women and children for
which
he will share responsibility. He is the embodiment of the most dangerous
appeasement humanity has known since the 1930s. The current American elite
is
the Third Reich of our times, although this distinction ought not to let us
forget that they have merely accelerated more than half a century of
unrelenting American state terrorism: from the atomic bombs dropped
cynically
on Japan as a signal of their new power, to the dozens of countries invaded,
directly or by proxy, in order to destroy democracy wherever it collided
with
American "interests", such as a voracious appetite for the world's natural
resources, like oil.
When you next hear Blair or Straw or Bush talk about
"bringing democracy to the people of Iraq", remember that it was the CIA
that
installed the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad from which emerged Saddam Hussein.
"That was my favourite coup," said the CIA man responsible. When you next
hear Blair and Bush talking about a "smoking gun" in Iraq, ask why the US
government last December confiscated the 12,000 pages of Iraq's weapons
declaration, saying they contained "sensitive information" which needed "a
lit
tle editing".
Sensitive indeed. The original Iraqi documents
listed
150 American, British and other foreign companies that supplied Iraq with
its
nuclear, chemical and missile technology, many of them in illegal
transactions. In 2000, Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office minister, blocked a
parliamentary request to publish the full list of law-breaking British
companies. He has never explained why.
As a reporter of many wars, I am constantly aware
that words on the page like these can seem almost abstract, part of a great
chess game unconnected to people's lives. The most vivid images I carry make
that connection. They are the end result of orders given faraway by the
likes
of Bush and Blair, who never see, or would have the courage to see, the
effect of their actions on ordinary lives: the blood on their hands.
Let me give a couple of examples. Waves of B-52
bombers will be used in the attack on Iraq. In Vietnam, where more than a
million people were killed in the American invasion of the 1960s, I once
watched three ladders of bombs curve in the sky, falling from B-52s flying
in
formation, unseen above the clouds.
THEY dropped about seventy tons of explosives that
day in what was known as the "long box" pattern, the military term for
carpet
bombing. Everything inside a "box" was presumed destroyed.
When I reached a village within the "box", the
street
had been replaced by a crater. I slipped on the severed shank of a buffalo,
and fell hard into a ditch filled with pieces of limbs and the intact bodies
of children thrown into the air by the blast. The children's skin had folded
back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood,
while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. A small leg had been so
contorted by the blast that the foot seemed to be growing from a shoulder. I
vomited.
I am being purposely graphic. This is what I saw,
and
often; yet even in that "media war", I never saw images of these grotesque
sights on television, or in the pages of a newspaper. I saw them only pinned
on the wall of news agency offices in Saigon as a kind of freaks' gallery.
Returning to Vietnam, I often came upon terribly
deformed children in villages where American aircraft had sprayed a
herbicide
called Agent Orange, in what was known as "Operation Ranch Hand". Agent
Orange was banned in the United States, not surprisingly, for it contained
Dioxin, the deadliest known poison. This terrible chemical weapon, which the
cliche-mongers would now call a weapon of mass destruction, was dumped on
almost half of South Vietnam.
Today, as the poison continues to move through water
and soil and food, children continue to be born without palates, and chins,
and scrotums, or are stillborn. Many have leukemia. You never saw these
children on the TV news then; they were too hideous for their pictures, the
evidence of a great crime, even to be pinned up on a wall; and they are old
news now. That, and the peeled back flesh and the small smashed limbs, are
the true face of war. Will you be shown it by satellite when Iraq is
attacked? I doubt it.
I was starkly reminded of the children of Vietnam
when I travelled in Iraq two years ago. A paediatrician showed me hospital
wards of children similarly deformed: a phenomenon unheard of prior to the
Gulf war in 1991. She kept a photo album of those who had died, their smiles
undimmed on grey little faces. Now and then, she would turn away and wipe
her
eyes.
More than 300 tons of depleted uranium, another
weapon of mass destruction, were fired by American aircraft and tanks, and
possibly by the British. Many of the rounds were solid uranium, which,
inhaled or ingested, causes cancer. In a country where dust carries
everything, swirling through markets and playgrounds, children are
especially
vulnerable. For twelve years, Iraq has been denied specialist equipment that
would allow its engineers to decontaminate its southern battlefields. It has
also been denied equipment and drugs that would identify and treat the
cancer
which, it is estimated, will affect almost half the population in the south.
LAST November, Jeremy Corbyn MP asked the junior
defence minister Adam Ingram what stocks of weapons containing depleted
uranium were held by British forces operating in Iraq. His robotic reply
was:
"I am withholding details in accordance with Exemption 1 of the Code of
Practice on Access to Government Information."
Let us be clear about what the Bush/Blair attack
will
do to our fellow human beings in a country already stricken by an embargo
run, like a medieval siege, by America and Britain and aimed largely at the
civilian population, who are denied even vaccines for children.
Last week, the Pentagon in Washington announced,
matter-of-factly, that it intended to shatter Iraq "physically, emotionally
and psychologically" by raining down on its people as many as 800 cruise
missiles in two days.
This will be more than twice the number of missiles
launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War. A military
strategist called Harlan Ullman told American television: "There will not be
a safe place in Baghdad. The sheer size of this has never been seen before,
never been contemplated before." The strategy is known as "Shock and Awe"
and
Harlan Ullman is apparently its proud inventor. He said: "You have this
simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not
taking
days or weeks but minutes."
What will his "Hiroshima effect" actually do to a
population of whom almost half are children under the age of fourteen?
The answer is to be found in a "confidential" United
Nations document, based on World Health Organisation estimates, which says
that "as many as 500,000 people could require treatment as a result of
direct
and indirect injuries." A Bush/Blair attack will destroy "a functioning
primary health care system" and deny clean water to 39 per cent of the
population. There is "likely [to be] an outbreak of diseases in epidemic, if
not pandemic proportions."
It is Washington's utter disregard for humanity, I
believe, together with Blair's lies that have turned most people in this
country against them, including people who have not protested before.
Last weekend, Blair said there was no need for the
UN
weapons inspectors to find a "smoking gun" for Iraq to be attacked. Compare
that with his reassurance, in October 2001, that there would be no "wider
war" against Iraq unless there was "absolute evidence" of Iraqi complicity
in
the September 11. And there has been no evidence.
Blair's deceptions are too numerous to list here. He
has lied about the nature and effect of the embargo on Iraq by covering up
the fact that Washington, with Britain's support, is withholding more than
$5billion worth of humanitarian supplies approved by the Security Council.
He
has lied about Iraq buying aluminium tubes which, he told Parliament, were
"needed to enrich uranium".The International Atomic Energy Agency has denied
this outright.
He has lied about an Iraqi "threat", which he
discovered only following September 11 2001 when Bush made Iraq a gratuitous
target of his "war on terror". Blair's "Iraq dossier" has been mocked by
human rights groups.
HOWEVER, what is wonderful is that, across the
world,
the sheer force of public opinion isolates Bush and Blair and their lemming,
John Howard in Australia. So few people believe them and support them that
the Guardian newspaper this week went in search of the few who do - "the
hawks". The paper published a list of celebrity warmongers, some apparently
shy at describing his or her contortion of intellect and morality. It is a
small list.
In contrast, the majority of people in the West,
including the United States, are now against this gruesome adventure, and
the
numbers grow every day. It is time Members of the House of Commons joined
their constituents and, in so doing, reclaimed the true authority of
parliament. MPs like Tam Dalyell, Alice Mahon, Jeremy Corbyn and George
Galloway have stood alone for too long on this issue, and there have been
too
many sham debates, manipulated by Downing Street. If, as Galloway says, a
majority of Labour backbenchers are against an attack, let them speak up
now.
Blair's fig leaf of a "coalition" is very important to Bush, and only the
moral power of the British people can bring the troops home without them
firing a shot.
The consequences of not speaking out go well beyond
an attack on Iraq. Washington will effectively take over the Middle East,
ensuring an age of terrorism other than their own. The next American attack
is likely to be Iran; the Israelis want this, and their aircraft are already
in place in Turkey. Then it may be China's turn. "Endless war" is Vice
President Cheney's contribution to our understanding.
Bush has said he will use nuclear weapons "if
necessary". On March 26 last, Geoffrey Hoon said that other countries "can
be
absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use
our nuclear weapons."
Such madness is the true enemy. What's more, it is
right here at home, and you, the British people, can stop it.
-On Saturday February 15, a great demonstration
against an attack on Iraq will be held in Central London. Contact the Stop
the War Coalition: 07951 235 915 and [EMAIL PROTECTED]
'Scotland says Not in Our Name, Mr Blair!'
The anti-war march and rally outside the Labour Party conference on Saturday
15th February organised by the Scottish Coalition for Justice Not War will
start from Glasgow Green NOT George Square as previously advertised.
There are two reasons for this:
George Square will not be big enough for the 20,000 (plus) people expected
to attend.
There will be a 'Festival of Love' event in the Square and the Council has
offered CND the Green instead.
Assembling on Glasgow Green will mean some important changes to advertised
details:
The march needs to assemble from 10am and will move off at 11.00am. (not
11.30 and 12.00 as previously advertised)
The route to the SECC is two and a half miles long (4km). It will take 2 and
a half hours for the march to complete the route. We want as much of the
march as possible to arrive at 1.30pm in time for when Mr Blair is due to
start his speech at 2pm. (It is possible that when the front of the march
reaches the SECC the end of the march will still be leaving Glasgow Green).
Public transport links to the Green are poor. If anyone belongs to a group
planning to attend the demonstration the organisers strongly urge you to
come in a coach or minibus. Freshers Haugh - an area on Glasgow Green - has
been set aside by the Council and the organisers with space for up to 120
coaches. (Cars will not be allowed to park on Freshers Haugh but details of
car-parking near Glasgow Green are available from Scottish CND.)
Coming by coach to the event will also make leaving the SECC a lot easier
after the demonstration. We are still negotiating with the Council and the
Police about arrangements for moving people away from the SECC when the
protest ends. Bells Bridge (over the Clyde to the Science Park) will be
closed through out the Labour Party conference for security reasons. It
still has not been decided whether we will be allowed to use the covered
bridge over the Expressway from the SECC to Finnieston train station - it
may be closed for security reasons as well.
We are therefore negotiating with the police about getting a street close to
the SECC closed for coaches to collect people after the demonstration.
Details about this will be available by the end of this week and will be
sent out to anyone who we know is organising transport and will be available
by phoning or emailing the Scottish CND office. (See below)
(Please note some green and black leaflets with 'Stop the War Coalition' on
them are circulating with the wrong e-mail address for contacting the
organisers of this demonstration - it is NOT [EMAIL PROTECTED] - this
is the wrong address. Use [EMAIL PROTECTED] instead.)
We are also making arrangements to help deal with the length of the march.
The police have provisionally agreed for us to place people carriers /
minibuses at points in the march for people to ride in if they find the
march is too long.
Please note the agreed order of the march will be:
Families with young children
Trade Unions
Palestinian support groups
Peace groups
Political parties
Others
Samba ya Bamba, Sheboom and Beat That have agreed already to join the
march - we're hoping other bands will make it as well. The bands will be
organised at points throughout the march. We will find out this week whether
bands will be able to travel on flat bed trucks.
Details of the rally at the SECC have not been finalised. We are asking
people to bring drums, whistles, airhorns and anything to make noise with
for the 'Jericho Rumpus' which will start at 2pm when Tony Blair is due to
start his speech. We are also producing card doves, peace symbols and cards
saying 'Not in My Name' for people to sign and tie around the SECC.
A detailed briefing will be available from Scottish CND as soon as most of
the details are finalised - if you want a copy and haven't received mailings
from the Scottish Coalition or CND before, contact the Scottish CND office.
Organising this event is taking a lot of hard work and cash. It is set to be
the largest peace event in Scotland for over twenty years. Groups are coming
from as far away as Manchester for it instead of the London demonstration on
the same day.
To make this a successful day a huge team of people are required on the day
and the week before. People are needed to help with setting up on Glasgow
Green on Friday evening and on Saturday morning, with stewarding the march,
setting up the rally site and with helping everyone get away from the SECC.
(Training and briefings for stewards will be arranged in the fortnight
before the 15th Feb in Glasgow.)
If you have any time to help please contact the Scottish CND office.
Scottish Coalition for Justice Not War
C/o Scottish CND, 15 Barrland Street, Glasgow, G41 1QH
Tel: 0141 423 1222 email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In peace
Phill Jones
Campaigns Worker, Scottish CND,
For the Scottish Coalition for Justice Not War
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