[Peace-discuss] From John Pilger

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

John Pilger continues his excellent work. John  just sent me his latest 
article. His web site is: http://www.johnpilger.com/ 

doug

****

In his latest article for the Daily Mirror, John Pilger argues that the "high 
crime" of the invasion of Iraq that "will not melt away" and says the 
catalogue of Tony Blair's deceptions are now being revealed by the day, unravelling 
any credibility left. : Pilger :03 Jun 2003 
 
 
 SUCH a high crime does not, and will not, melt away; the facts cannot be 
changed. Tony Blair took Britain to war against Iraq illegally. He mounted an 
unprovoked attack on a country that offered no threat, and he helped cause the 
deaths of thousands of innocent people. The judges at the Nuremberg Tribunal 
following world war two, who inspired much of international law, called this "the 
gravest of all war crimes".

Blair had not the shred of a mandate from the British people to do what he 
did. On the contrary, on the eve of the attack, the majority of Britons clearly 
demanded he stop. His response was contemptuous of such an epic show of true 
democracy. He chose to listen only to the unelected leader of a foreign power, 
and to his court and his obsession.

With his courtiers in and out of the media telling him he was "courageous" 
and even "moral" when he scored his "historic victory" over a defenceless, 
stricken and traumatised nation, almost half of them children, his propaganda 
managers staged a series of unctuous public relations stunts.

The first stunt sought to elicit public sympathy with a story about him 
telling his children that he had "almost lost his job". The second stunt, which had 
the same objective, was a story about how his privileged childhood had really 
been "difficult" and "painful". The third and most outrageous stunt saw him 
in Basra, in southern Iraq last week, lifting an Iraqi child in his arms, in a 
school that had been renovated for his visit, in a city where education, like 
water and other basic services, are still a shambles following the British 
invasion and occupation.

When I saw this image of Blair holding a child in Basra, I happened to be in 
a hotel in Kabul in Afghanistan, the scene of an earlier "historic victory" of 
Bush and Blair in another stricken land. I found myself saying out loud the 
words, "ultimate obscenity". It was in Basra that I filmed hundreds of children 
ill and dying because they had been denied cancer treatment equipment and 
drugs under an embargo enforced with enthusiasm by Tony Blair.

It was the one story Blair's court would almost never tell, because it was 
true and damning.

Up to July last year, $5.4 billion in vital and mostly humanitarian supplies 
for the ordinary people of Iraq were being obstructed by the United States, 
backed by Britain. Professor Karol Sikora, head of the World Health 
Organisation's cancer treatment programme, who had been to the same hospitals in Basra 
that I saw, told me: "The excuse that certain drugs can be converted into weapons 
of mass destruction is ludicrous. I saw wards where dying people were even 
denied pain-killers."

That was more than three years ago. Now come forward to a hot May day in 
2003, and here is Blair - shirt open, a man of the troops, if not of the people - 
lifting a child into his arms, for the cameras, and just a few miles from 
where I watched toddler after toddler suffer for want of treatment that is 
standard in Britain and which was denied as part of a medieval siege approved by 
Blair. Remember, the main reason that these life-saving drugs and equipment were 
blocked, the reason Professor Sikora and countless other experts ridiculed, was 
that essential drugs and even children's vaccines could be converted to 
weapons of mass destruction.

Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMD, has become part of the jargon of our 
time. When he finally goes, Blair ought have WMD chiselled on his political 
headstone. He has now been caught; for it must be clear to the most devoted 
courtier that he has lied about the primary reason he gave, repeatedly, for attacking 
Iraq.

THERE is a series of such lies; I have counted at least a dozen significant 
ones. They range from Blair's "solid evidence" linking Iraq with Al-Qaeda and 
September 11 (refuted by British intelligence) to claims of Iraq's "growing" 
nuclear weapons programme (refuted by the International Atomic Energy Agency 
when documents quoted by Blair were found to be forgeries), to perhaps his most 
audacious tale - that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "could be activated 
within 45 minutes".

It is now Day 83 in the post-war magical mystery hunt for Iraq's "secret" 
arsenal. One group of experts, sent by George Bush, have already gone home.

This week, British intelligence sources exposed Blair's "45 minutes" claim as 
the fiction of one defector with scant credibility. A United Nations 
inspector has ridiculed Blair's latest claim that two canvas-covered lorries represent 
"proof" of mobile chemical weapons. Incredible, yesterday he promised "a new 
dossier".

It is ironic that the unravelling of Blair has come from the source of almost 
all his lies, the United States, where senior intelligence officers are now 
publicly complaining about their "abuse as political propagandists".

They point to the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul 
Wolfowitz who, said one of them, fed "the most alarming tidbits to the president 
... so instead of giving the president the most considered, carefully examined 
information available, basically you give him the garbage. And then in a few 
days when it's clear that maybe it wasn't right, well then, you feed him some 
hot garbage."

That Blair's tale about Saddam Hussein being ready to attack "in 45 minutes" 
is part of the "hot garbage" is not surprising. What is surprising, or 
unbelievable, is that Blair did not know it was "hot", just as he must have known 
that Jack Straw and Colin Powell met in February to express serious doubts about 
the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction.

IT was all a charade. Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, has spoken 
this truth: the invasion of Iraq was planned long ago, he said, and that the 
issue of weapons rested largely on "fabricated evidence". Blair has made fools 
not so much of the British people, most of whom were and are on to him, but of 
respectable journalists and broadcasters who channelled and amplified his 
black propaganda as headlines and lead items on BBC news bulletins. They cried 
wolf for him. They gave him every benefit of the doubt, and so minimised his 
culpability and allowed him to set much of the news agenda.

For months, the charade of weapons of mass destruction overshadowed real 
issues we had a right to know about and debate - that the United States intended 
to take control of the Middle East by turning an entire country, Iraq, into its 
oil-rich base. History is our evidence. Since the 19th century, British 
governments have done the same, and the Blair government is no different.

What is different now is that the truth is winning through. This week, 
publication of an extraordinary map left little doubt that the British military had 
plastered much of Iraq with cluster bombs, many of which almost certainly have 
failed to detonate on impact. They usually wait for children to pick them up, 
then they explode, as in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

They are cowardly weapons; but of course this was one of the most craven of 
all wars, "fought" against a country with no navy, no air force and rag-tag 
army. Last month, HMS Turbulent, a nuclear-power submarine, slipped back to 
Plymouth, flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates' emblem. How appropriate.

THIS British warship fired 30 American Tomahawk missiles at Iraq. Each 
missile cost 700,000 pounds, a total of 21 million pounds in taxpayers' money. That 
alone would have provided the basic services that the British government has 
yet to restore to Basra, as it is obliged to do under international law.

What did HMS Turbulent's 30 missiles hit? How many people did they kill and 
maim? And why have we heard nothing about this? Perhaps the missiles had 
sensory devices that could distinguish Bush's "evil-doers" and Blair's "wicked men" 
from toddlers? What is certain is they were not aimed at the Ministry of Oil.

This cynical and shaming chapter in Britain's modern story was written in our 
name, your name. Blair and his collaborators ought not to be allowed to get 
away with it.