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Seumas Milne
We have been here before. In April 1972, the former brigadier Lord Widgery published his now notorious report into the killing of 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators by British paratroopers in Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday. The report was so widely seen as a flagrant establishment whitewash, that a quarter of a century later Tony Blair felt compelled to set up another Bloody Sunday inquiry under Lord Saville, still sitting today. In his report of the inquiry into the death of the weapons inspector David Kelly, Lord Hutton - a scion of the Northern Irish protestant ascendancy who himself represented British soldiers at the Widgery inquiry - has, if anything, outdone Widgery in his service to the powers that be.
Michael Rivero
Americans have long held themselves up as the champions of justice and freedom for the rest of the world. It is our image to the world. It is our image to ourselves. It is how we define ourselves, it is our identity, and it is who we are collectively as a nation. And, if we fail to take action in the face of the lies used to start a war, we must in the process sacrifice that image, not only to the world, but to ourselves. Either one acts like a champion of truth and freedom, or one admits one is just another sheep. There is no other choice left.
Mike Whitney
It may seem like a minor point, but there is a yawning chasm that divides “liberals-progressives” on the one hand, and “leftists-radicals” on the other. One of the fundamental differences between the two is that liberals-progressives believe that it is possible to affect substantive change within the existing system. That simply is not the case, and Iraq will illustrate that point better than any long-winded treatise. The sad fact is that Iraq is the logical exponent of the system, not some fluke. An insightful observer could have predicted with mathematical certainty that America would arrive at this particular position at precisely this period of time. It was unavoidable.
Dahr Jamail for the World Crisis Web
On this wet, blustery day, Ken O?Keefe, an ex-USA Marine and Gulf War Veteran, and Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Iraq (TJP) founder chose the infamous Paradise Square in Baghdad for his non-violent act of defiance and solidarity. Standing amidst a cluster of media in the shadow of where the staged toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein by the Americans took place, Mr. O?Keefe somberly, yet angrily stated he was to burn his USA Passport.
Faiza Rady
Former USA Attorney General, celebrated political activist and founder of the International Action Centre (IAC), Ramsey Clark has a lawyer’s way of getting things done—intelligently, promptly and efficiently. A long term anti-war activist, Clark has initiated procedures to impeach United States President George W Bush and USA Vice-President Dick Cheney for crimes committed against the Iraqi people during the war on Iraq. To get the ball rolling, the IAC has already gathered some 400,000 signatures.
Justin Raimondo
They lied us into war ? and now they’re lying about the lies. Yes, my friends, it’s come to this. Having exhausted, for the moment , their supply of fabrications, the War Party is now rationalizing ? in effect, recycling ? previously exposed lies. Logical reasons for the apparent absence of WMD in Iraq ? that they never existed in the first place, or else were destroyed after Gulf War I, as Hans Blix and Scott Ritter aver ? are completely inadmissible, but logic has little to do with it.
Robin Cook
It is not enough for No 10 now to justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that they have indeed found weapons of mass destruction - but in Libya. Their novel defence appears to be that their strategy was right and it was only a minor detail that they invaded the wrong country. They must not be allowed to get away with it. One of the questions they were repeatedly asked before the war was: “Why Iraq?” Why was such high, urgent priority attached to Iraq, when there were many other countries where the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was greater?
William Hardiker
It appears that Saddam Hussein, ex-employee of the American Government, has been extracted from his metaphorical “haystack” in Iraq ? that is, if that which all the worlds media have leapt upon during the past week is true to appearances, rather than the equally feasible possibility that expert work, accomplished courtesy of high-tech “Hollywood-style” special effects teams, presented a long US incarcerated Saddam to domestic American and world media as a much needed Christmas present in the face of escalating Iraqi insurgencies.
Noam Chomsky
An indictment of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991. At the time, Washington and its allies held the “strikingly unanimous view that whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country’s stability than did those who have suffered his repression,”
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