Posted on 03/22/2004 6:29:29 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
The invasion of Iraq was "organised with lies", says the new Spanish Prime Minister. Does anyone doubt this any more? And yet these proven lies are still dominant in Australia. Day after day, their perpetrators seek to obfuscate and justify an unprovoked, illegal attack that killed at least 10,000 civilians, a figure confirmed last week by Amnesty International.
Set that carnage against the Madrid atrocity. Terrible though that act of terrorism was, it was small compared with the terrorism of the American-led "coalition". Yes, terrorism. How strange it reads when it describes the actions of "our" governments. So saturated are we in the West in the devilry of Third World tyrants (most of them the products of Western imperialism) that we have lost all sense of the enormous crime committed in our name.
This is not rhetoric. In 1946, the judges who tried the German leadership at Nuremberg called the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country "the supreme international war crime". That principle guided more than half a century of international law, until Bush and Blair and Howard tore it up, covering their actions with lies. In Washington, one of the CIA's most senior analysts and a friend of George Bush snr, Ray McGovern, told me: "It was 95 per cent charade. And they all knew it: Bush, Blair, Howard."
The real reasons for this are suppressed in Australia while the latest lies are channelled and amplified by journalists who affect a spurious national "debate". I am not referring to the usual parochial windbags of the far right, but those broadcasters who may sincerely believe they are being objective. When a dissenting voice such as mine, representing the views of a great many Australians, is allowed a fleeting appearance on ABC TV, ridiculous protests the next day by both the Foreign Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and their tut-tutting media court underline the rarity of genuine debate in the Australian media.
Sunday's Insiders, on the ABC, excelled itself with interviews with Alexander Downer (Tweedledum) and Gerard Henderson (Tweedledee). How frightened of informed, alternative opinion they are as they perpetuate the orthodoxy that invading Iraq was necessary. By constantly framing the national debate in the terms and cliches of mendacious power, journalists actively collude with it, censoring by omission.
Do they ever consider that the very notion of a "war on terrorism" is absurd when the power in Washington claiming to combat terrorism has run an empire of terrorism: Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and now Haiti, again? By comparison, al-Qaeda is a lethal flea. The true danger for the world lies in a rampant superpower and where it will strike next: Korea, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, even China?
As the prisoners begin to struggle home from the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the scale of the crime is emerging. We now know that the British military command virtually refused to send troops to Iraq until Blair gave them a guarantee they would not be prosecuted by the newly constituted International Criminal Court. Blair's guarantee was worthless. That frightens the British establishment, and the Australian establishment, too. Unlike the US, Britain and Australia are signatories to the ICC.
The times are changing; Washington-manipulated show trials of Third World dictators are giving way to the promise of universal justice, however tenuous; and the dock awaits those Westerners who bring mass terrorism to faraway countries, then watch it blow back in our faces. Like al-Qaeda, they should not be allowed to get away with it.
John Pilger is an author, journalist and filmmaker.
Of course, Pilger was one of the loudest voices against sanctions for years, arguing that they were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children ... when it now is clear that if Saddam and the UN hadn't run Oil for Food as a slush fund, those kids would have had food and medicine. Ending Saddam's rule now means those kids are being fed - but all Pilger can do is call the U.S. action "terrorism" - which means all his concern about the Iraqi kids (and not even mentioning the executed victims of Saddam's regime) is all hot air and Pilger is nothing more than a vile hypocrite who will engage in any falsehood to make a point against his arch-enemy America.
But I guess I can't, because that definition of terrorism, would make John Kerry a terrorist.
1. Given:
John Kerry was the leader of a group of men who did not want to serve in Vietnam.
2. Given:
Kerry insisted that GIs should be brought home because they were being converted by the US government into subhumans who were torturing the people of Vietnam. He described ongoing, vicious behavior that he led us to believe would only end if the US got out of Vietnam.
3. Given:
Kerry didn't agitate to have the "misbehaving" soldiers punished. In effect, Kerry agitated to have the "misbehaving" soldiers rewarded, through ending the war and bringing them home.
Conclusion:
Kerry used the threat of continuing atrocities to unduly influence the US government's decision to abandon the people of South Vietnam.
Isn't that what terrorists do?
Terrorists deliberately target civilians. The United States took every effort to avoid civilian casualties.
Terrorists seek to instill despotism. The United States removed a despot.
Terrorists hide among civilians. The United States is wearing military uniforms and its soldiers are clearly identifiable as combatants.
But to Pilger, the United States is morally equivalent to terrorists.
And, sometimes, terrorists gain their goals by threatening to harm civilians, like the "old-time" skyjackers did.
I'd love to see a trial of Castro.
Other thoughts. "attack [against Iraq] that killed at least 10,000 civilians"
Double this died each year under Saddam.
" Terrible though that act of terrorism was, it was small compared with the terrorism of the American-led "coalition"."
Wrong again. In "terrorized" nations the local people fear and loath the "terrorists" - as has happened in Spain, where 11 million people took to the streets. Contrast, the people of Iraq WELCOME what has happened there. A vast majority of them agree that their future is much brighter now than it was under Saddam. As well, terrorists target civilians by definition. Our targets are military ones, and occasionally citizens are are accidentally killed. Sad, but put the blame where it belongs (Saddam).
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