1.

Cover Story

Iraq

THE GHOST AT GLENEAGLES
By John Pilger

** From Iraq to the G8: The Polite Crushing of Dissent and Truth **

New Statesman
July 7, 2005 (?)

http://www.newstatesman.com/200507110004

Over the past two weeks, the contrast between two related "global" events has been salutary. The first was the World Tribunal on Iraq held in Istanbul; the second the G8 meeting in Scotland and the Make Poverty History campaign. Reading the papers and watching television in Britain, you would know nothing about the Istanbul meetings, which produced the most searing evidence to date of the greatest political scandal of modern times: the attack on a defenseless Iraq by America and Britain.

The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. "We are here," said the author Arundhati Roy in Istanbul, "to examine a vast spectrum of evidence (about the war) that has been deliberately marginalized and suppressed, its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation, the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted uranium munitions, napalm, and cluster bombs, the use and legitimizing of torture . . . This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record: to document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily anguished."

"Temporarily anguished" implies that, even faced with such rampant power, the Iraqi people will recover. You certainly need this sense of hope when reading the eyewitness testimonies which demonstrate, as Roy pointed out, "that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq."

The most shocking testimony was given by Dahr Jamail. Unless you read the internet, you will not know who Dahr Jamail is. He is not an amusing Baghdad blogger. For me, he is the finest reporter working in Iraq. With the exception of Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, and several others, mostly freelancers, he shames the flak-jacketed, cliché crunching camp followers known as "embeds." A Lebanese with American citizenship, Jamail has been almost everywhere the camp followers have not. He has reported from the besieged city of Falluja, whose destruction and atrocities have been suppressed by western broadcasters, notably by the BBC. (See www.medialens.org/alerts).

In Istanbul, Jamail bore his independent reporter's witness to the thousands of Iraqis tortured in Abu Ghraib and other American prisons. His account of what happened to a civil servant in Baghdad was typical. This man, Ali Abbas, had gone to a U.S. base to inquire about his missing neighbors. On his third visit, he was arrested without charge, stripped naked, hooded and forced to simulate sex with other prisoners. This was standard procedure. He was beaten on his genitals, electrocuted in the anus, denied water, and forced to watch as his food was thrown away. A loaded gun was held to his head to prevent him from screaming in pain as his wrists were bound so tightly that the blood drained from his hands. He was doused in cold water while a fan was held to his body.

"They put on a loud speaker," he told Jamail, "put the speakers on my ears and said, 'Shut up, fuck, fuck, fuck!' He was refused sleep. Shit was wiped on him and dogs were used on him. "Sometimes at night when he read his Koran," said Jamail, "(he) had to hold it in the hallway for light. Soldiers would come by and kick the Holy Koran, and sometimes they would try to piss on it or wipe shit on it." A female soldier told him, "Our aim is to put you in hell . . . These are the orders from our superiors, to turn your lives into hell."

Jamail described how Falluja's hospitals have been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment, with U.S. marines assaulting staff and stopping the wounded entering, and American snipers firing at the doors and windows, and medicines and emergency blood prevented from reaching the hospitals. Children were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.

The two men responsible for this, George Bush and Tony Blair, attended the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. Unlike the Iraq Tribunal, there was saturation coverage, yet no one in the "mainstream" -- from the embedded media to the Make Poverty History organizers and the accredited, acceptable celebrities -- made the obvious connection of Bush's and Blair's enduring crime in Iraq. No one stood and said that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounted to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalizing Iraq, where British and American violence was the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown (UNICEF).

In Edinburgh, a shameless invitation-only meeting of Christian Aid supporters and church leaders was addressed by Britain's treasurer, Gordon Brown, the paymaster of this carnage. Only one person asked him, "When will you stop the rape of the poor's resources? Why are there so many conditions on aid?" This lone protestor was not referring specifically to Iraq, but to most of the world. He was thrown out, to cheers from among the assembled Christians.

That set the theme for the G8 week: the silencing and pacifying and co-option of real dissent and truth. It was Frantz Fanon, the great intellectual-activist of Africa, who exposed colonial greed and violence dressed up as polite do-goodery, and nothing has changed, in Africa, as in Iraq. The mawkish images on giant screens behind the pop stars in Hyde Park beckoned a willful, self-satisfied ignorance. There was none of the images that television refuses to show: of murdered Iraqi doctors with the blood streaming from their heads, cut down by Bush's snipers.

On the front page of the Guardian, the Age of Irony was celebrated as real life became more satirical than satire could ever be. There was Bob Geldoff resting his smiling face on smiling Blair's shoulder, the war criminal and his jester. Elsewhere, there was an heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviors of the world's poor while lauding "compassionate" George Bush's "war on terror" as one of his generation's greatest achievements; and there again was Brown, the enforcer of unfair rules of trade, saying incredibly that "unfair rules of trade shackle poor people"; and Paul Wolfowitz, beaming next to the Archbishop of Canterbury: this is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, devised much of Bush's so-called neo-conservative putsch, the mendacious justification for the bloodfest in Iraq and the notion of "endless war."

And if you missed all that, there is a downloadable PDF kit from a "one Campaign" e-mail to "help you organize your very own ongoing Live8 party." The suppression of African singers and bands, parked where Geldoff decreed, in an environmental theme park in Cornwall, in front of an audience of less than 50 people, was described correctly by Andy Kershaw as "musical apartheid."

Has there ever been a censorship as complete and insidious and ingenious as this? Even when Stalin airbrushed his purged comrades from the annual photograph on top of Lenin's mausoleum, the Russian people could fill in the gaps. Media and cultural hype provide infinitely more powerful propaganda weapons in the age of Blair. With Diana, there was grief by media. With Iraq, there was war by media. Now there is mass distraction by media, a normalizing of the unmentionable that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people," wrote the playwright Arthur Miller, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied."

Deploying the unction of Bono, Madonna, Paul McCartney, and of course Geldoff, whose Live Aid 21 years ago achieved nothing for the people of Africa, the contemporary plunderers and pawnbrokers of that continent have pulled off an unprecedented scam: the antithesis of 15 February 2003 when two million people brought both their hearts and brains to the streets of London.

"(Ours) is not a march in the sense of a demonstration, but more of a walk," said Make Poverty History's Bruce Whitehead. "The emphasis is on fun in the sun. The intention is to welcome the G8 leaders to Scotland and ask them to deliver trade justice, debt cancellation and increased aid to developing countries."

Really?

In Lewis Carroll's classic, Alice asked the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter to show her the way out of wonderland. They did, over and again, this way, that way, until she lost her temper and brought down her dream world, waking her up. The people killed and maimed in Iraq and the people willfully impoverished in Africa by our governments and our institutions in our name, demand that we wake up.

2.

THE BOMBS ULTIMATELY BELONG TO BLAIR AND BUSH
By John Pilger

Socialist Worker
July 8, 2005

http://socialistworker.org/2005-2/550/550_00_Pilger.shtml

No one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs that killed and caused mayhem in London yesterday. No one should also doubt that this outrage has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq.

They are “Blair’s bombs,” and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about other people’s violence.

He was warned. Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism “with Britain and Britons a target.” Had Blair heeded that warning -- instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat -- the Londoners who died yesterday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Three weeks ago, a classified CIA report revealed that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq had turned that country into a focal point of terrorism. None of the intelligence agencies regarded Iraq as such a flashpoint before the invasion. On the contrary, in 2003, the CIA reported that Iraq “exported no terrorist threat to his neighbors,” and that Saddam Hussein was “implacably hostile to Al-Qaeda.”

Blair’s and Bush’s invasion changed all that. In invading a stricken and defenseless country at the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, Blair’s adventure became self-fulfilling, and his epic irresponsibility has brought the daily horrors of Iraq home to Britain.

For more than a year, he has urged the British to “move on” from Iraq, and this week, it seemed that his spin doctors and good fortune had joined hands. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics to London created the fleeting illusion that all was well, regardless of messy events in a faraway country.

Above all, the G8 meeting in Scotland and its accompanying "Make Poverty History" campaign and circus of celebrities served as a cover for what is arguably the greatest political scandal of modern times: an illegal, rapacious invasion conceived in lies.

Over the past two weeks, the contrast between the coverage of the G8, its marches and pop concerts, and another “global” event has been salutary. The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul has had virtually no coverage, yet the evidence it has produced, the most searing to date, has been the silent specter at the Geldoff extravaganzas.

The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. Its expert, eyewitness testimonies, said the author Arundathi Roy, a tribunal jury member, “demonstrate that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq.”

The most shocking was given by Dahr Jamail -- for me, the finest reporter working in Iraq. He shames the flak-jacketed, cliché-crunching camp followers known as “embeds.”

He described how the hospitals of besieged Falluja had been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment -- with U.S. Marines assaulting staff and stopping the wounded entering, and American snipers firing at the doors and windows, and medicines and emergency blood prevented from reaching them. Children and the elderly were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.

We have heard little of this. Imagine for a moment the London hospitals that received the victims of yesterday’s bombing under such an attack. Unimaginable? But it happens, in our name.

The two men responsible for this, George Bush and Tony Blair, arrived smiling at the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. No one in the British “mainstream” has made the obvious connection of what they have done in Iraq. No one has stood up and said that Blair’s smoke-and-mirrors “debt cancellation” at best amounts to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalizing Iraq, where British and American violence is the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

The unstated theme of the G8 week has been silencing and pacifying and co-opting dissent and truth. The mawkish images on giant screens behind the pop stars in Hyde Park beckoned a willful, self-satisfied ignorance. There were no images of murdered Iraqi doctors with the blood streaming from their heads, cut down by Bush's snipers. They and the suffering inflicted on their country have been airbrushed.

On the front page of the Guardian, the Age of Irony celebrated as real life became more satirical than satire could ever be. There was Bob Geldoff resting his smiling face on smiling Blair’s shoulder -- the war criminal and his knighted jester.

Elsewhere, there was a heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviors of the world’s poor while lauding “compassionate” George Bush’s “war on terror” as one of his generation’s greatest achievements; and there was Gordon Brown, the enforcer of unfair rules of trade, saying incredibly that “unfair rules of trade shackle poor people”; and Paul Wolfowitz, beaming: This is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, devised much of Bush’s so-called neo-conservative putsch, the bloodfest in Iraq and the notion of “endless war.”

And if you missed all that, there is a downloadable pdf kit from “one Campaign” e-mail to “help you organize your very own ongoing Live8 party.” The suppression of African singers and bands, parked where Geldoff decreed in an environmental theme park in Cornwall, far from the vaunted global audience, was described correctly by Andy Kershaw as “musical apartheid.”

For the politicians and pop stars and church leaders and polite people who believed Blair and Brown when they declared their “great moral crusade” against poverty, Iraq was an embarrassment. The killing of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians by mostly American gunfire -- reported in a peer-reviewed study in the Lancet -- was deleted from mainstream debate.

Has there ever been a censorship as complete and insidious and ingenious as this? In our free societies, the unmentionable is that “the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people,” wrote the playwright Arthur Miller, “and so the evidence has to be internally denied.” Not only denied, but distracted by an entire court of jesters.

Deploying the unction of Geldoff, Bono, Madonna, Paul McCartney and company, the invaders and plunderers of Iraq and the pawnbrokers of Africa, headquartered in London and Washington, have pulled off an unprecedented scam: the antithesis of February 15, 2003, when 2 million people brought both their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London.

The people killed and maimed in Iraq and the people willfully impoverished in Africa by our governments and our institutions in our name, deserve the return of that anger -- before Blair and his court can exploit the atrocity and tragedy that has now befallen London, and which need never have happened.

3.

LEST WE FORGET: THESE WERE BLAIR’S BOMBS
By John Pilger

Truthout
July 10, 2005

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071005X.shtml

In all the coverage of last week's bombing of London, a basic truth is struggling to be heard. It is this: no one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs, but no one should also doubt that this has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are "Blair's bombs", and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about "our way of life," which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled.

Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism "with Britain and Britons a target." A House of Commons committee has since verified this warning. Had Blair heeded it instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat the Londoners who died on Thursday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Three weeks ago, a classified CIA report revealed that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq had turned that country into a focal point of terrorism. None of the intelligence agencies regarded Iraq as such a flashpoint before the invasion, however tyrannical the regime. On the contrary, in 2003, the CIA reported that Iraq "exported no terrorist threat to his neighbours" and that Saddam Hussein was "implacably hostile to Al-Qaeda."

Blair's and Bush's invasion changed all that. In invading a stricken and defenceless country at the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, their adventure became self-fulfilling; Blair's epic irresponsibility has brought the daily horrors of Iraq home to Britain. For more than a year, he has urged the British to "move on" from Iraq, and last week it seemed that his spinmeisters and good fortune had joined hands. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics to London created the fleeting illusion that all was well, regardless of messy events in a faraway country.

Moreover, the G8 meeting in Scotland and its accompanying "Make Poverty History" campaign and circus of celebrities served as a temporary cover for what is arguably the greatest political scandal of modern times: an illegal, brutal and craven invasion conceived in lies and which, under the system of international law established at Nuremberg, represented a "paramount war crime."

Over the past two weeks, the contrast between the coverage of the G8, its marches and pop concerts, and another "global" event has been striking. The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul has had virtually no coverage, yet the evidence it has produced, the most damning to date, has been the silent specter at the Geldoff extravaganzas.

The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. Its expert, eyewitness testimonies, said the author Arundhati Roy, a tribunal jury member, "demonstrate that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq." The most shocking was given by Dahr Jamail, one of the best un-embedded reporters working in Iraq. He described how the hospitals of besieged Fallujah had been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment, with U.S. marines assaulting staff and stopping the wounded entering, and American snipers firing at the doors and windows, and medicines and emergency blood prevented from reaching them. Children, the elderly, were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.

Imagine for a moment the same appalling state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals that received the victims of Thursday's bombing. Unimaginable? Well, it happens, in our name, regardless of whether the BBC reports it, which is rare. When will someone ask about this at one of the staged "press conferences" at which Blair is allowed to emote for the cameras stuff about "our values outlast[ing] theirs"? Silence is not journalism. In Fallujah, they know "our values" only too well.

While the two men responsible for the carnage in Iraq, Bush and Blair, were side by side at Gleneagles, why wasn't the connection of their fraudulent "war on terror" made with the bombing in London? And when will someone in the political class say that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounts to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalizing Iraq, where British and American violence is the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown (UNICEF).

The truth is that the debt relief the G8 is offering is lethal because its ruthless "conditionalities" of captive economies far outweigh any tenuous benefit. This was taboo during the G8 week, whose theme was not so much making poverty history as the silencing and pacifying and co-opting dissent and truth. The mawkish images on giant screens behind the pop stars in Hyde Park included no pictures of murdered Iraqi doctors with the blood streaming from their heads, cut down by Bush's snipers. Real life became more satirical than satire could ever be.

There was Bob Geldoff on the front pages resting his smiling face on smiling Blair's shoulder, the war criminal and his knighted jester. There was an heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviors of the world's poor while lauding "compassionate" George Bush's "war on terror" as one of his generation's greatest achievements; and there was Paul Wolfowitz, beaming and promising to make poverty history: this is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, was an apologist for Suharto's genocidal regime in Indonesia, who was one of the architects of Bush's "neo-con" putsch and of the bloodfest in Iraq and the notion of "endless war."

For the politicians and pop stars and church leaders and polite people who believed Blair and Gordon Brown when they declared their "great moral crusade" against poverty, Iraq was an embarrassment. The killing of more than 100,000 Iraqis mostly by American gunfire and bombs -- a figure reported in a comprehensive peer-reviewed study in the Lancet -- was airbrushed from mainstream debate.

In our free societies, the unmentionable is that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people", as Arthur Miller once wrote, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied." Not only denied, but distracted by an entire court: Geldoff, Bono, Madonna, McCartney et al, whose "Live 8" was the very antithesis of 15 February 2003 when two million people brought their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London. Blair will almost certainly use last week's atrocity and tragedy to further deplete basic human rights in Britain, as Bush has done in America. The goal is not security, but greater control. Above all this, the memory of their victims, "our" victims, in Iraq demands the return of our anger. And nothing less is owed to those who died and suffered in London last week, unnecessarily.