back to front - revelations on iraq
WORKERS, MAY 2004 ISSUE
Revelations in the American Congressional hearings, and now being published elsewhere, are piling up to prove that the Bush and Blair governments are not really interested in fighting terrorism. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations continually refused Sudan's offer to share their files on Osama bin Laden, because the files showed his links to the Saudi government and the Bush family. The last US Ambassador to Sudan called this US refusal worse than a crime.
Director of the CIA George Tenet warned in February 2001, "Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates are the most immediate and serious threat." But Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz said in April 2001: "No, no, no, we don't have to deal with al-Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States."
Bush claimed, "The principal threat today is ... the use of long-range missiles by rogue states for purposes of terror, coercion, and aggression." So Bush and Blair asserted, even after UN inspections and sanctions had disarmed Iraq, that Iraq was still a threat. The former British Ambassador to Washington has revealed that at a White House dinner just nine days after 9/11, Blair was encouraging Bush to attack Iraq.
Five days before US forces attacked Iraq, the President's special assistant for combating terrorism resigned, saying, "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war against terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure."
Dick Cheney had predicted that after the war, "We will be greeted as liberators." Not quite — most of the deployable US army is now occupying Iraq and they have killed thousands of civilians, including about 800 people in Fallujah, where a US colonel boasted that his troops were in the killing business.
Such an attitude is reminiscent of General Westmoreland, who used to justify killing civilians in Vietnam: "It does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn't it?" A British officer described how the US forces treated Iraqi people as Untermenschen.
Blair promised Labour MPs that if they backed his attack on Iraq, he would deliver US support for the peace process in the Middle East. Now Bush and Blair back Sharon as he tears up every UN resolution and peace plan.
The 30 June handover is a charade. The US state wants permanent control of Iraq: it is building 14 huge military bases there. The commander of British forces in Basra warns that they may be there for ten years.
The war against Iraq is not against terror, not for disarmament, not for democracy — it is a US war for Iraqi oil. For the Iraqi people, it is a war against the foreign occupier.