CLINTON SPEECH ON IRAQ HE TOO IS RESPONSIBILE

a speech in Dubai, Bill Clinton declared that the Iraq War was a "big mistake". The speech was made in the context of rising civillian and US casualities in Iraq. Clinton by referring to the Iraq War as a mistake is obviously playing to the domestic Democratic lobby in order to gather support for the next Pesidential candidate from the Democratic party, who could even be Hiliary Clinton. Of course, a consumate politician like Clinton can paly politics and thetre is nothing wrong in that per se. However,he implies that he had no real responsibility for the happenings in Iraq. Hence I would like to set the record straight.First of all, Clinton gave unqualified support to the invasion of Iraq ibn 2003. As former president he cannot claim that he was misled by the false propaganda emanatinf from the White House. If the truth be told George Bush was only follwing in the path alid out by Bill Clinton during his twi terms in the White House.Second, Bill Clinton was primarily responsible for imposing the UN sanction regime on Iraq qhich resulted in creating a huge humanitarian crisis in Iraq. In fact half a million Iraqi children perished as a direct consequence of the ruthlessly inhuman sanction's regime of the UN. Clinton cannot escape the responsibility for that.Third, Bill Clinton along with the British Government subjected Bagdad to weeks of ariel bombardment in 1993. Further in 1998, he signed the Iraq Liberation Act which made regime change the ofricial policy of the US Governemt. On the pretext of allowing the UN Weapons insectors the protection for carrying out their task, Clinton ordered the bombing of Bagdad for 4 days. Need we forget the bombing of Kossovo which resulted in thousands of fatalities.Given the record of his Administration, Bill Clinton cannot really distance himself from the killing fields of Iraq. In fact it was his administration that laid the ground for US involvement and George Bush II blundered into the mess aided and abetted by the faulty intelligence.

USA USES BANNED CHEMICALS IN IRAQ

It is a delicious bit of irony that the ostensible reason for American invasion of Iraq remains the ABC weapons allegedly developed by Saddam Hussein. It has now become abundantly clear that not only was the intelligence with respect of the WMD program of the erstwhile President of Iraq flawed but there appears to have been what one senator delicately called "cherry picking ." So a savage brutal war was waged against a nation which was down on its heels due to the UN sanctions. The people of Iraq have been crushed under two oppressive regimes:One the warlord regime of Saddam Hussein and the "shoot and scoot"wild west regime of the Anglo-Saxon coalition troops. We have during the course of the last one year catalogued the awful story of the travails the ordinary Iraqi living outside of the Grren Zone is expriencing.USA is a signatory of the Geneva Convention which bans the use of chemical weapons. In fact one of the charges that the regime in Bagdad has levelled against Saddam Hussein pertains to the use of a chemical against the Shiaa population in the South of the country at the end of the I st Gulf War. According to the Reprt prepared by William R Brankowitz of the US Army Chemical Materials Agency, a classified document printed for private circulation with security clearance,the USA dumped 7,346 canisters of a banned chemical White Phosphorous in the Atlantic Ocean in order to comply with the Geneva Convention against the use of Chemical Weapons.. Along with WP 421,157 pounds of radiological waste and 20 drums of cyanide were sunk in the Atlantic Ocean btween 1962 to 1989.What is disturbing is the growing evidence that in thwe assault on Fallujah last year( extensively covered on our blog) the US troops used White Phosphorous against civillian population. Clincs in and around Fallujah treated hundreds of people including children with severe burns and lesions of the skin caused by exposure to the chemical. The patriotic "embedded journalists" who reproduce uncritically the lies dished out by the Bush and the Bushmen did not once report the use of the banned chemical in the American media. The world got wind of the use of the blatant violation of the Geneva Convention from the Italian Press.The Italian TV aired a documentary feature produced by Sigfrido Ramicci and Maurizio Torrealta where shocking visuals of the horrendous damage done by the indiscriminate use of WP are given.A web site called globalsecurity.org WP results in "painful chemkical burn injuries".This chemical burns the skin right up to the demal level and leaves the clothes intact. This is because the chemical is used as a highly lipis solution.The response of the US state department to this war crime has been as expected flat denial followed by the most fraudlent of excuses. The use of the WP for illumination of the battle field is permitted and so the State Department spokeperson claimed the WP was used only as a battle field illuminator. Even the US battle manual ST100-3 permits the use of WP only as a smokescreen. Yet in complete violation of its own Internation obligations, and with total inhumanity to the Arab population, the Coalition used banned chemicals in an illegal outlaw manner in an illegal war of occupation.Thinking Americans must write to their Senators and Congressmen asking for a bipartisan Inquiry into the conduct of the Fallujah assault.Link: globalsecurity.org

Terrorism In Jordan: The American Occupation of Iraq and its consequences

The exposion in the Hyatt Grand Hotel at Amman killed nearly 60 people and injured 300 more. The responsibility for the blast has been taken by Al_Qaeda in Iraq led by the illusive Abu Musab Zarqawi.The attack in Jordon itself is proof, if proof is needed, that the Al Qaeda is capable of pulling of spectacular terror attacks in the region. Jordon has been a key ally of the US in its war of occupation in Iraq. Infact the utility of Jordon is more direct as far as US war efforts are concerned:"security personel" from US and other parts of the world brought into Iraq on conttract transit through Jordon. Further, Jordon is the only country in the region, apart from Egypt, to sign a peace treaty with Israel. There is also a demographic reason for the growing unrest in Jordon:more then half the population otf the country is Palestenian and was born in refugee camps where the living conditions are appaling.American occupation of Iraq has converted Iraq into a strong base for the Al -Qaeda. The violence has now begun to spill into Saudi Arabia, Jordon andmbelieve it or not even Iran. The American bombing of Fallujah (reported extensively on this blog) provided just the opportunity for Al Qaeda to reorganise itself and there is a steady influx of militants from the porous borders with Syria. A few years ago educated Islamic people may have scoffed at then very idea of the revival of the Caliphate. Now this concept has moved out of the sermons of mullahs in the mosques and is freely discussed in the cafes of Bagdad and Cairo which only goes to show athat the common man no longer regards the nation state as the center of his political loyalties.Another factor that is contributing to the groqing instability in the region is the American induced and encouraged Sunni-Shia divide. Iraqi society was essentially an interweave of Sunni, Christian, Kurdish and Shiaa communtities. This bond was reinforced during the decade Iran Iraq war, in which the USA provided every kind of weapon to Saddam Husseain. This age old tradition of amity between the different ethnic and racial groups has been undermined by American occupation. Identity politics encouraged by the occupying forces has made Iraqis extremely sensitive to primordial loyalties of sect and clan to the exclsion of other attributed of modern citizenship. The newly"ratified" Iraqi constitution virtually legeslates the exclusion of Sunnis from the political arena abd the Al Qaeda has found yet another grievance to espouse.The western media, the aptly named"embedded journalists" has not highlighted the fact that several Shiaa groups are being armed by the occupying forces as a prelude to eventual American withdrawal. The Freedom Guard is the most notorious of such groups. This group has been deployed against the Sunnis in Anbar province. American occupation has given the fuel to Islamic Terrorism

Civillian Casualities in Iraq

The highly respected medicak journal The Lancet that has been at the fore front of medical research for more that 150 yearshas in a recent issue highlighted the consequences of the American areal bimbing on Iraq using a sophisticated statistical technique called cluster analysis. The margin of error is less that 3% in most cases.The team looked carefully at the mortality figure reported in select households in the week immediately preceeding the Ameican bombing campaign in March 2003. This figure was compared to the mortality reported after the campaign to "liberate" Bagdad from the forces loyal to Saddam. The team from John Hopkins University found that by correlating the figure thus obtained over 33 neighbourhoods estimated that more than 100,000 civillians, of whom the large propotion happen to be non combatant women and children,had died as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN ACTION.The unacceptable civillian casualities has made the World wonder whether the US Under George Bush has no qualms about inflicting death on unarmed civillians in the name of Freedom and Democracy.. George Bush spoke of winning political capital which he intends on the benefit of Americans. I would like to state the he has got this capital by wanton and callous bloodshed on a minumental scale.The report made public needs to be placed on the table of the Security Council and the opinion of the World raised againstsuch actions. It is of coursr not my case that the American political establishment be hauled before a war crimes tribunal.This will not happen and in 1945 the War Crimes Tribunal was set up only because Germany lost the war. More recentlyMilodovan Milosovisch was arraigned in the Hague only because he was militarily and politically defeated.However this does not negate the fact that atrocities and gross violations of the rules of combat are taking place in that insane and unneccessay war in Iraq and the world must protest.

GIRL BLOG FROM BAGDAD

I am an ardent blogger and have quite a few blogs posted in different web sites. I do not know why, but I do find the world of blogging extremely challenging. One goes to parts of the world one has only heard of, Bagdad for one. I read a particular blog form bagdad posted by a woman who calls herself riverbend, possibly she lives near the bend in the river Tigrios that flows through Bagdad. I have also been a keen advocate of peace in iraq and have done a lot of writing in my blogs on the atrocities of the US troops. However, I do not live in Iraq and my knowledge about what is happening in entirely from embedded journalists, whose reports are unvasrlnished American propaganda.

This brings me to riverbend. Her blogs are full of humour, not the dark black humour, but the humour that makes enduring the horrible nighmare of life in Bagdad bearable. She wries well, and I would even say that she is a stylish writer. There is no frenzied Yankee Get Out kind of reaction. She is much too educated for that. She records the sufferings of ordinary Iraqis who are outside the Green Zone who are trying to get by without losing their dignity and the compassion. I name RIVER BEND as the personality of the year who has brought the life in Bagdad within reach of people around the world.

I have read almost all her posts and have been touched by the simple and deliberrately understated manner in which she repotrs from the city of Bagdad.

is LORDS OF ALL THE WORLD A REVIEW

Historians have always had problems while dealing with large territorial empires and their raison d' etre for their very existence. The Roman Empire for instance claimed to have brought peace to a warring Europe, and formulated the concept of pax romana to justify is conquests. Edward Gibbon rightly said that the pretence of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence, an acknowledgement that the ideological formulations of Vergil, Livy and Tacitus wre exactly self serving. More recently, Napoleon justified his ruhless war of expansion by claiming to be the inheritor of the French Revolution. And of course, we have the "white mans' burden" theory of the English Empire. Now the Americans have their own take on the imperial ideologies of the past by claiming that they advocate democracy and human rights the world over. As ideological formulation such statements are not subject to refutations and it does not matter that the USA ends up supporting the worst kinds of criminal regimes in the world.

Antony Pagden is a Professor ofn History at Johns Hopkins University and is one of the leading American historians of the Spanish Empire in the New World. His book Lords of All the World
is a classic study of imperial ideologies as fashuioned by the Christian Empires of the Eary modern period. How did the educated churchmen of the sixteenth century justify the expropriation of land and human rights of the Amer Indian population? How did Christian theology justify the acts of Cortes and his conquistidores?How was slavery justified using the theology of Saint Augustine? An answer to all these questions is found in the book.

Paul Volcker and His Report

After the end of the first Gulf War the United Nations at the instigation of the USA and other Western Powers imposed a most horrendous regime of sanctions on Iraq. Iraq was forbidden even to sell oil and as a consequence the quality of life and the civil infrastructure of Iraq virtually collapsed. It is well known that nearly 800,000 children dies prematurely because of the nobn availability of paracteamol, a drug that all take for granted. In these circumstances the UN decided to allow Iraq to export its Oil and import food, the program that came to be called Food for OUIl Program. The moneies gained by the export of Iraq oil was to be deposited in an escrow account maintained by the UN. So far so good. Then the likes of KOjo Annan, the son of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, got on to the act and subverted a viable humanitarian program into a get rich fast scam in which the minnions of Saddam Hussain were accomplises. Shell companies were created and the Iraqi Oil Ministry at Bagdad assigned the right to lift and sell oil in the international market at a lower cost and the differnece in price to the tune of 50cents a barrel was deposited against the accounts of individuals in the Jordon National Bank.This was a scam waiting to happen and Paul Volcker has done a comendabel job in following the money trail and has perused 20 million documents in order to arrive at the truth. The fact is that some of the leading Third world politicians like Natear Singh, India's Foereign Ministeer seem to have made millions at the cost of starving and dying Iraqis. Ofcourse, no thief ever says even if he is caught with his finger in the till. even acknowledges that he is a thief. And the same with the like of Natwr Singh and his son Jagat Singh. There is now an outrage agaIst these clowns and they have been thoroughly exposed by Paul Volcker and his team.There is howeve a small problem. Paul Volcker in his interveiw with LA tIMES STATED THAT HE CHANGED THE LANGUAGE OF THE REPORT vis a vis Kofi Annan. I think that a splendid job was compromised by allowing this needless concession to Kofi Annan. The father claims that Cotecna, for which his son Kojo works obtained contracts without his knowledge. Given the way the UN system works this is impossible and Paul Volcker muist have nailed the lie of Kofi Annan,as the credibility of a truthful and accurate Report stands compromises as a consequence.