[Peace-discuss] AWARE commentary recorded for WILL-AM

[Morton K.Brussel]

Excellent statement. Let's hope WILL doesn't get cold feet; their feet 
seem already cool.

MKB

On Mar 19, 2004, at 10:40 AM, Randall Cotton wrote:

> I just got back from recording the (slightly revised) audio commentary 
> below
> for WILL:
>
> Their editorial board will meet on Monday to decide on "placement".
>
> On our web site (anti-war.net), I put an annotated version, with links 
> to
> source references (and I refer to this fact in the audio). I had to do 
> most
> of that research anyway to satisfy the "editorial board", which wanted 
> cited
> references. Yep, references. For an opinion/commentary piece =8-P
>
> It took 3 1/2 weeks to get this far, though they say that future pieces
> shouldn't take so long for them to handle.
>
> We shall see...
> R
> ----------------------------------------------
> Do you remember the old justifications for invading Iraq? The claim 
> that
> they had a nuclear weapons program? That they had stockpiled weapons
> of mass destruction? That Saddam was working with Al Qaeda? And the
> insinuation that Iraq had something to do with 9/11?  Now, President 
> Bush
> has finally abandoned them all. Most folks listening to *this* 
> broadcast
> have probably learned by now that these claims are increasingly seen as
> fraudulent and that even the Administration can see they're crumbling 
> away.
>
> So as belief that the war in Iraq was justified erodes in America and
> the body count rises daily, our President now claims his purpose was
> a humanitarian one - to save the world from Saddam Hussein, who, as he
> tirelessly points out, killed countless Iraqis, invaded other countries
> and used chemical weapons on his own people. This is all true, but 
> Saddam
> did nearly all his killing, invading and gassing more than ten years 
> ago
> when conditions were very different - in particular, the U.S. supported
> him politically, financially and militarily, helping *enable* Saddam to
> accomplish his worst atrocities. The administration always conveniently
> ignores the fact that since the first Gulf War in 1991, conditions 
> changed
> dramatically for Saddam. He no longer enjoyed the support of the U.S. 
> or
> any other country and in 2003 before the war, even Saddam knew that any
> such misbehavior on his part would likely seal his own doom. At that 
> time,
> there was no discernable prospect of Saddam committing mass atrocities 
> or
> invading anyone. Although Saddam's regime was always brutally 
> repressive,
> by the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, Saddam's most horrible atrocities
> and his foreign invasions were historical data points far more than
> contemporary dangers. A Human Rights Watch report released in January
> addressed this by saying:
>
> "The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a 
> humanitarian
> intervention... Saddam Hussein's atrocities should certainly be 
> punished,
> and his worst atrocities, such as the 1988 genocide against the Kurds,
> would have justified humanitarian intervention then. But such 
> interventions
> should be reserved for stopping an imminent or ongoing slaughter. They
> should not be used belatedly to address atrocities that were ignored in
> the past."
>
> Meanwhile, the most reliable estimates of innocent civilians killed in
> this war range above 10,000. In particular, a detailed accounting by 
> the
> research group "Iraq Body Count" estimates civilian deaths as high as
> 10,430. And now, media reports say the country may be edging toward 
> civil
> war. Perhaps the administration could point to some individuals in Iraq
> that they saved from the hands of Saddam, but given the damage we've 
> done,
> any claim that the people of Iraq as a whole will ultimately be better 
> off
> is, at best, conjecture. A guess. A hunch. An increasingly implausible
> hunch. And you cannot justify starting a war that kills thousands of
> innocents based on a hunch. What if your hunch is wrong?
>
> For more information on this commentary, including factual references,
> go to the AWARE website at anti-war.net.
>
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