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John Pilger
The invasion of Iraq, which began one year ago today, was “organised with lies”, says the new Spanish Prime Minister. Does anyone doubt this any more? Set the carnage of the war and occupation in Iraq 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.
Patrick O'Neill
On New Year’s Eve, Jeremy Hinzman sat in a McDonald’s on N.C. 401 in Fuquay-Varina explaining his precarious situation. On December 20th, Hinzman, a U.S. Army specialist stationed at Fort Bragg, got the news he had dreaded. His unit would be shipping out to Iraq shortly after the new year for an indefinite deployment in the war on terrorism. During Christmas leave, Hinzman, who is a member of the Fayetteville Friends Meeting, discussed his options with his wife. He could go to Iraq ? option both of them rejected. He could refuse the deployment order, and face court martial and a likely prison term. Or he could follow a plan of action that thousands of young men like himself had taken during the Vietnam War ? he could flee to Canada. He chose option three.
Jyoti Mishra
A year ago today, at this time, my wife and I were walking to join what was to be the biggest ever demonstration in British history. I’ve looked at all the news services today and they don’t seem to be commemorating this event. Perhaps it’s the post-Hutton Whitewash fallout, they’ve become conveniently amnesiac. What I do remember is how we were vilified at the time by Butcher Blair and his New Labour toadies. As I’ve said before, we were the ones accused of having the blood of Iraqis on our hands, simply for having the temerity to protest against the impending war.
David R. Hoffman for the World Crisis Web
Although alleged “records” about Bush’s tenure in the National Guard are now being disseminated to quell rumors that Bush did not fulfill all his required duties, they appear to be inspiring more questions than answers. The primary one appears to be, “Was Bush being paid for National Guard service while engaging in other enterprises, thus making his alleged service’ more a paper illusion than a reality?” Would it not be the ultimate hypocrisy if the man who started the war with Iraq, and whose political party persistently condemns those living on government “doles,” is revealed to have been the recipient of unearned government income?
Xymphora
UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is now saying that he was unaware that the 45 minute claim referred to battlefield weapons. If this is true, it means he dragged his country into war without taking the time to properly inform himself of the most basic facts which served as the rationale for war. Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, actually had the audacity to say that he had not discussed the nature of the weapons with Blair because it had not then been a major issue. Hoon knew that press reports were misleading because there was in fact no imminent threat, but did absolutely nothing to correct the misapprehension, making it clear that it was intended by the Blair government that the British people be deceived. These people seem to think that a lie that they get away with is somehow blessed into becoming the truth.
Scott Ritter
I had come face to face with a phenomenon I have come to describe as the ‘theocracy of evil.’ Going beyond mere political ideology, the theocracy of evil encompasses a faith-based value system that embraces a simplistic ‘good versus evil’ opposition. If Saddam is evil, such thinking holds, then evil must be confronted, and such niceties as fact and fact-based logic no longer apply. As such, WMD became simply an enabling issue ? something designed to focus the attention of the public while those in charge pursued the broader agenda of confronting evil.
Sidney Blumenthal
On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush Administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution. Precisely because of the qualms the Administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance.
Rahul Mahajan
In the late 19th-century folk classic, the wily Brer Rabbit is caught by Brer Fox. He?s stuck to a “Tar Baby” and Brer Fox is going to eat him up. So Brer Rabbit repeatedly says, “Do anything. Roast me. Skin me. Eat me. Just don?t throw me in that briar patch.” After much importuning, the sadistic Brer Fox throws him in the briar patch and, of course, Brer Rabbit gets away. We are now witnessing a replay, with the Bush administration as Brer Rabbit, the stunning lack of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as the Tar Baby, and the expected “bipartisan commission” into the WMD intelligence fiasco as the briar patch.
Chris Floyd
A man in Lawrence, Kansas walks into a day-care center. He has a gun in his pocket but nobody sees it. He goes up to the second floor, where the preschool kids are having their afternoon snack of cookies and juice. He pulls out the gun and shoots a little boy in the head, leaving his face a mass of bone-flecked goo. Then he fires into the chest of the girl in the next chair; she dies still clutching the stuffed toy rabbit she brings with her every day. Another boy is hit while running for the door. The man is using special bullets, tipped with depleted uranium; the shot explodes the boy’s shoulder in a spray of red mist and sends his gangly body hurtling down the concrete stairwell.
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