Mark Weber : Iraq: A War For Israel

INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW

 

Iraq: A War For Israel

By Mark Weber

The U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq in March-April 2003, and the occupation that followed, cost more than four thousand American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, and brought death to many tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Why did President Bush decide to go to war? In whose interests was it launched?
In the months leading up to the attack, the President and other high-level US officials repeatedly warned that the threat posed to the US and world by the Baghdad regime was so grave and imminent that the United States had to act quickly to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq.

On Sept. 28, 2002, for example, Bush said:
"The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given... This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year."

On March 6, 2003, President Bush declared:
"Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people... I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he's a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I've got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction... The American people know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."
These claims were untrue. As the world now knows, Iraq had no dangerous "weapons of mass destruction," and posed no threat to the US. Moreover, alarmist suggestions that the Baghdad regime was working with the al-Qaeda terror network likewise proved to be without foundation.

So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack Iraq?
Whatever the secondary reasons for the war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush - who was already fervently committed to Israel - resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies
.
This is so widely understood in Washington that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May 2004 to acknowledge that the US invaded Iraq "to secure Israel," and "everybody" knows it. He also identified three of the influential pro-Israel Jews in Washington who played an important role in prodding the US into war: Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary; and Charles Krauthammer, columnist and author. [1]
Hollings referred to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues to acknowledge this truth openly, saying that "nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on." Due to "the pressures we get politically," he added, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies.

Some months before the invasion, retired four-star US Army General and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark acknowledged in an interview: "Those who favor this attack [by the US against Iraq] now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel." [2]


Six months before the attack, President Bush met in the White House with eleven members of the US House of Representatives. While the "war against terrorism is going okay," he told the lawmakers, the United States would soon have to deal with a greater danger: "The biggest threat, however, is Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. He can blow up Israel and that would trigger an international conflict." [3]

Bush also spoke candidly about why the US was going to war during a White House meeting on Feb. 27, 2003, just three weeks before the invasion. In a talk with Elie Wiesel, the well-known Jewish writer, Bush said: "If we don't disarm Saddam Hussein, he will put a weapon of mass destruction on Israel and they will do what they think they have to do, and we have to avoid that." [4]

Fervently Pro-Israel

President Bush's fervent support for Israel and its hardline government is well known. He reaffirmed it, for example, in June 2002 in a major speech on the Middle East. In the view of "leading Israeli commentators," the London Times reported, the address was "so pro-Israel that it might have been written by [Israel prime minister] Ariel Sharon." [5]  In an address to pro-Israel activists at the 2004 convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Bush said: "The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state." He also told the gathering: "By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America." [6]
Condoleeza Rice, who served as President Bush's National Security Advisor, and later, as his Secretary of State, echoed the President's outlook in a May 2003 interview, saying that the "security of Israel is the key to security of the world." [7]

Long Range Plans

Jewish-Zionist plans for war against Iraq had been in place for years.
In mid-1996, a policy paper prepared for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined a grand strategy for Israel in the Middle East. Entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," it was written under the auspices of an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.

Specifically, it called for an "effort [that] can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right..." [8]
The authors of "A Clean Break" included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, three influential Jews who later held high-level positions in the Bush administration, 2001-2004: Perle as chair of the Defense Policy Board, Feith as Undersecretary of Defense, and Wurmser as special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control. The role played by Bush administration officials who are associated with two major pro-Zionist "neoconservative" research centers has come under scrutiny from The Nation, the influential public affairs weekly. [9] The author, Jason Vest, examined the close links between the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), detailing the ties between these groups and various politicians, arms merchants, military men, wealthy pro-Israel American Jews, and Republican presidential administrations
JINSA and CSP members, notes Vest, "have ascended to powerful government posts, where... they've managed to weave a number of issues - support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general - into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core... On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war - not just with Iraq, but ‘total war,' as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it... For this crew, ‘regime change' by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative."

Samuel Francis, author, editor and columnist, also looked into the "neo-conservative" role in fomenting war. [10] "My own answer," he wrote, "is that the lie [that a massively-armed Iraq posed a grave and imminent threat to the US] was fabricated by neo-conservatives in the administration whose first loyalty is to Israel and its interests and who wanted the United States to smash Iraq because it was the biggest potential threat to Israel in the region. They are known to have been pushing for war with Iraq since at least 1996, but they could not make an effective case for it until after Sept. 11, 2001..."

In the aftermath of the 2001 Nine-Eleven terror attacks, ardently pro-Zionist "neo-conservatives" in the Bush administration - who for years had sought a Middle East war to bolster Israel's security in the region - exploited the tragedy to press their agenda. In this they were backed by the Israeli government, which also pressured the White House to strike Iraq.
"The [Israeli] military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq," reported a leading Israeli daily paper, Haaretz, in February 2002. [11] The Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian, the respected British daily, reported in August 2002: "Israel signalled its decision yesterday to put public pressure on President George Bush to go ahead with a military attack on Iraq, even though it believes Saddam Hussein may well retaliate by striking Israel." [12]
Three months before the US invasion, the well-informed Washington journalist Robert Novak reported that Israeli prime minister Sharon was telling American political leaders that "the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime." Moreover, added Novak, "that view is widely shared inside the Bush administration, and is a major reason why US forces today are assembling for war." [13]

Israel's spy agencies were a "full partner" with the US and Britain in producing greatly exaggerated prewar assessments of Iraq's ability to wage war, a former senior Israeli military intelligence official has acknowledged. Shlomo Bron, a brigadier general in the Israel army reserves, and a senior researcher at a major Israeli think tank, said that intelligence provided by Israel played a significant role in supporting the US and British case for making war. Israeli intelligence agencies, he said, "badly overestimated the Iraqi threat to Israel and reinforced the American and British belief that the weapons [of mass destruction] existed." [14]
The role of the pro-Israel lobby in pressing for war has been carefully examined by two prominent American scholars, John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University. [15] In an 81-page paper, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," they wrote:
"Pressure from Israel and the [pro-Israel] Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure... Within the United States, the main driving force behind the Iraq war was a small band of neoconservatives, many with close ties to Israel's Likud Party. In addition, key leaders of the Lobby's major organizations lent their voices to the campaign for war."
Important members of the pro-Israel lobby carried out what professors Mearshiemer and Walt call "an unrelenting public relations campaign to win support for invading Iraq. A key part of this campaign was the manipulation of intelligence information, so as to make Saddam look like an imminent threat."
For some Jewish leaders, the Iraq war is part of a long-range effort to install Israel-friendly regimes across the Middle East. Norman Podhoretz, a prominent Jewish writer and an ardent supporter of Israel, was for years editor of Commentary, the influential Zionist monthly. In the Sept. 2002 issue he wrote:
"The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil [Iraq, Iran, North Korea]. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen."
Patrick J. Buchanan, the well-known writer and commentator, and former White House Communications director, has been blunt in identifying those who pushed for war: [16]
"We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging US relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity...
"Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?
"Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud."
Uri Avnery - an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, and a three-time member of Israel's parliament - sees the Iraq war as an expression of immense Jewish influence and power. In an essay written some weeks after the US invasion, he wrote: [17]
"Who are the winners? They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the ed-op pages of the influential newspapers... The immense influence of this largely Jewish group stems from its close alliance with the extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who nowadays control Bush's Republican party. ... Seemingly, all this is good for Israel. America controls the world, we control America. Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power."
In Britain, a veteran member of Britain's House of Commons bluntly declared in May 2003 that Jews had taken control of America's foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US into war. "A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians," said Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy and the longest-serving House member. "There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States," he added. [18]

Summary

For many years now, American presidents of both parties have been staunchly committed to Israel and its security. This entrenched policy is an expression of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America's political and cultural life. It was fervent support for Israel - shared by President Bush, high-ranking administration officials and nearly the entire US Congress - that proved crucial in the decision to invade and subdue one of Israel's greatest regional enemies.
While the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq may have helped Israel, just as those who wanted and planned for the war had hoped, it has been a calamity for America and the world. It has cost many tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the US. In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the United States, and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti-American terrorists.
Americans have already paid a high price for their nation's commitment to Israel. We will pay an ever higher price - not just in dollars or international prestige, but in the lives of young men squandered for the interests of a foreign state - until the Jewish-Zionist hold on US political life is finally broken.

Notes

1. Remarks by Ernest F. Hollings, May 20, 2004. Congressional Record - Senate, May 20, 2004, pages S5921-S5925. See also: M. Weber, ""Iraq Was Invaded to Secure Israel," Says Senator Hollings..."
(http://www.ihr.org/news/040716_hollings.shtml)
2. The Guardian (London), August 20, 2002.
3. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 186. See also p. 188
4. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 320.
5. R. Dunn, "Sharon Could Have Written Speech," The Times (London), June 26, 2002.
6. Bush address to AIPAC convention, Washington, DC, May 18, 2004.
7. A. S. Lewin, "Israel's Security is Key to Security of Rest of World," Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY), May 14, 2003. Rice's interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharnonot is quoted.
8. Text posted at  http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm  See also: J. Bamford, A Pretext for War (Doubleday, 2004), pages 261-269; B. Whitaker, "Playing Skittles with Saddam," The Guardian (Britain), Sept. 3, 2002.
9. J. Vest, "The Men From JINSA and CSP," The Nation, Sept. 2, 2002
(http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest).
10. S. Francis, "Weapons of Mass Deception: Somebody Lied," column of Feb. 6, 2004
(http://www.vdare.com/francis/wmd.htm).
11. A. Benn, "Background: Enthusiastic IDF Awaits War in Iraq," Haaretz, Feb. 17, 2002. Quoted in J. J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," March 2006, p. 30, and p. 68, fn. 146.
12. Jonathan Steele, "Israel Puts Pressure on US to Strike Iraq," The Guardian (London), August 17, 2002.
13. Robert Novak, "Sharon's War?," column of Dec. 26, 2002.
(http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/26/column.novak.opinion.sharon/).
14. L. King, "Ex-General Says Israel Inflated Iraqi Threat," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5, 2003.; See also: J. J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," March 2006, p. 29, and p. 67, fn. 142.
15. John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,"  March 2006, pages 29, 30, 32.(http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf). A shorter version appeared in the London Review of Books, March 23, 2006. (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html). The two authors followed up their paper with a detailed book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux: 2007).
16. P. J. Buchanan, "Whose War?," The American Conservative, March 24, 2003.
(http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html).
17. Uri Avnery, "The Night After," CounterPunch, April 10, 2003
(http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04102003.html).
18. F. Nelson, "Anger Over Dalyell's 'Jewish Cabal' Slur," The Scotsman (Edinburgh), May 5, 2003; M. White, "Dalyell Steps Up Attack On Levy," The Guardian (London), May 6, 2003.

About the Author

Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977).


http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml

Things Fall Apart: Iraq

 By Peter Van Buren on June 26, 2014

The mistakes of U.S. foreign policy are mostly based on the same flawed idea: that the world is a chessboard on which the U.S. makes moves, or manipulates proxies to make moves, that either defeat, counter or occasionally face setbacks from the single opponent across the table.

The game held up for a fair amount of time; the U.S. versus the Nazis (D-Day = checkmate!), the U.S. versus Japan (Lose an important piece at Pearl Harbor, grab pawns island by island across the Pacific, and so forth). Most of the Cold War seemed to work this way.

And so into Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration seemed to believe they could invade Iraq, topple Saddam and little would be left to do but put away the unused chessmen and move on to the next game. In reality, world affairs do not (any longer?) exist in a bipolar game. Things are complex, and things fall apart. Here is a quick tour of that new form of game in Iraq.

Iran

– Iranian transport planes are making two daily flights of military equipment into Baghdad, 70 tons per flight, to resupply Iraqi security forces.

– Iran is flying Ababil surveillance drones over Iraq from Al Rashid airfield near Baghdad. Tehran also deployed an intelligence unit to intercept communications. General Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, visited Iraq at least twice to help Iraqi military advisers plot strategy. Iran has also deployed about a dozen other Quds Force officers to advise Iraqi commanders, and help mobilize more than 2,000 Shiite militiamen from southern Iraq.

– As many as ten divisions of Iranian military and Quds Force troops are massed on the border, ready to intevene if Baghdad comes under assault or if important Shiite shrines in cities like Samarra are threatened, American officials say.

– Suleimani was a presence in Iraq during the U.S. Occupation and helped direct attacks against American troops. In particular, Iraqi Shiite militias under the tutelage of Suleimani attacked American troops with powerful explosive devices supplied by Tehran. These shaped charges were among the very few weapons used toward the end of the U.S. Occupation that could pierce U.S. armor, and were directly responsible for the deaths of Americans.

– General Suleimani is also the current architect of Iranian military support in Syria for President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. calls for Assad to give up power, and was steps away from war in Syria to remove Assad only months ago.

– Should America conduct air strikes in Iraq (some claim they are already stealthily underway), those strikes would be in direct support of Iranian efforts, and perhaps Iranian troops, on the ground.

– The United States has increased its manned and unmanned surveillance flights over Iraq, and is now flying about 30 to 35 missions a day. The American flights include F-18s and P-3 surveillance planes, as well as drones.

ISIS

– ISIS, currently seen as a direct threat to both Iraq, Syria and the Homeland, is a disparate group of mostly Sunni-affiliated fighters with strong ties to Syria. The U.S. is now at war with them, though it appears that as recently as 2012 the U.S. may have had Special Forces arming and training them at a secret base in Safawi, in Jordan’s northern desert region. There are reports that the U.S. also trained fighters at locations in Turkey, feeding them into the Syrian conflict against Assad.

– ISIS has been funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three supposed U.S. allies. “The U.S. Treasury is aware of this activity and has expressed concern about this flow of private financing. But Western diplomats’ and officials’ general response has been a collective shrug,” a Brookings Institute report states.

– ISIS itself is a international group, though added 1,500 Sunni Iraqis it liberated from a Shia prison near Mosul. A senior U.S. intelligence official said there are approximately 10,000 ISIS fighters — roughly 7,000 in Syria and 3,000 in Iraq. There are between 3,000 and 5,000 foreign fighters who have been incorporated into ISIS ranks.

Turkey

– The New York Times reports Turkey allowed rebel groups of any stripe easy access across its borders to the battlefields in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad. An unknown number of Turks are now hostages in Iraq, and Turkey continues its tussles with the Kurds to (re)fine that border.

– “The fall of Mosul was the epitome of the failure of Turkish foreign policy over the last four years,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “I can’t disassociate what happened in Mosul from what happened in Syria.”

Iraq

– With the official Iraqi Army in disarray, Prime Minister Maliki is increasingly reliant on Shiite militias primarily loyal to individual warlords and clerics, such as the Madhi Army. Despite nine years of Occupation, the U.S. never defeated the Madhi Army. Prime Minister Maliki never had the group surrender its weapons, and now, with the Baghdad government too weak to disarm them, they exist as the private muscle of Iraq’s hardline Shias. Once loosed onto the battlefield, Maliki will not be able to control the militias. The Mahdi Army has also sworn to attack American“advisors” sent to Iraq, believing them to be a vanguard for a second U.S. occupation. Many of the most powerful militias owe their ultimate loyalty not to the Iraqi state, but to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr has much blood on his hands left over from the Occupation.

Syria and Israel

– Syrian government aircraft bombed Sunni targets inside Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 57 civilians and wounding 120. Syrian warplanes also killed at least 12 people in the eastern Iraqi city of Raqqa Wednesday morning. A U.S. official said it was not clear whether the Iraqi government requested or authorized Syrian air strikes in Iraqi territory.

– Israeli warplanes and rockets struck targets inside Syria the same day as Syria struck Iraq.

Checkmate

It should be clear that there is no such thing as simply “doing something” in this crisis for the U.S. As with the 2003 invasion itself, no action by the United States can stand alone, and every action by the United States will have regional, if not global, repercussions apparently far beyond America’s ability to even understand.

A chess game? Maybe, of sorts. While American interest in Iraq seems to parallel American interest in soccer, popping up when world events intrude before fading again, the other players in Iraq have been planning moves over the long game. In the blink of an eye, U.S. efforts in Syria have been exposed as fully-counterproductive toward greater U.S. goals, the U.S. has been drawn back into Iraq, with troops again on the ground in a Muslim war we thought we’d backed out of. The U.S. finds itself supporting Iranian ground forces, and partnering with militias well outside of any government control, with Special Forces working alongside potential suicide bombers who only a few years ago committed themselves to killing Americans in Iraq. What appears to be the U.S. “plan,” some sort of unity government, belies the fact that such unity has eluded U.S. efforts for almost eleven years of war in Iraq.

In such a complex, multiplayer game it can be hard to tell who is winning, but it is easy in this case to tell who is losing. Checkmate.
(C) Peter Van Buren, 2014

http://latest.com/2014/06/things-fall-apart-iraq/

Iraq: What They Died For

By Peter Van Buren on July 4, 2014

As I see the images of Iraq’s unfolding civil war, sometimes I think I even recognize a place I had been, having spent a year in the midst of America’s Occupation there, 2009-2010. I was a State Department civilian, embedded with an Army brigade of some 3000 men and women far from the embassy and the pronouncements of victory and whatever bright lights Iraq might have had. I grow weary now of hearing people talk about America’s sacrifices, our investment, the need for troops or air strikes, our blood and treasure spent to free Iraq, or whatever it was we were supposed to have gone there to do.

So many people say those things. But before another one says another thing, I wish they could have seen what I saw in Iraq. This.

I

Private First Class (PFC) Brian Edward Hutson (name changed), in Iraq, put the barrel of his M-4 semiautomatic assault rifle into his mouth, with the weapon set for a three-round burst, and blew out the back of his skull. He was college- aged but had not gone and would never go to college. Notice appeared in the newspapers a week after his death, listed as “non-combat related.” Of the 4,486 American military deaths in Iraq, 911 were considered “non-combat related,” that is, non-accidents, suicides. In 2010, as in 2009, the years I was in Iraq with PFC Hutson, more soldiers died by their own hand than in combat. Mental disorders in those years outpaced injuries as a cause for hospitalization. The Army reported a record number of suicides in a single month for June 2010. Thirty- two soldiers in all, more than one a day for the whole month, around the time PFC Hutson took his life.

The M-4 rifle PFC Hutson used to kill himself, successor to the M-16 of Vietnam fame, allows the shooter, with the flip of a switch, to choose to fire one bullet per trigger pull or three. Nobody knows whether PFC Hutson spent a long time or no time with the rifle barrel in his mouth, but he must have really wanted to be dead, because he chose three shots. The bullets exploded through his brain in sequence. He left his toilet kit in the shower trailer. He still had Clearasil in the bag. Rumor was he’d had trouble sleeping. I didn’t know him.

I heard about his death at breakfast and walked over to his sleeping trailer along with some others. I took a quick look inside and saw the fan spray of blood and brain on the wall, already being washed off by the Bangladeshi contractor cleaning crew KBR had brought to Iraq for the war. The bleach solution they used was smearing more than cleaning, and the Bangladeshis had little stomach to wring out the mop heads all that often. Blood like this smells coppery. Even if you’d never smelled pooled blood before, you didn’t have to learn what it was, you already knew something was wrong in this place, this trailer, this Iraq.

Death does not redeem or disgrace. It is just a mess and no one who deals with it thinks otherwise. Don’t ask poets or pastors, because they do not know that pieces of people still look a lot like people and that extreme violence leaves bodies looking nothing like the bodies you see in open caskets or on TV. In Iraq I saw a girl crushed when a wall collapsed, her face looking like a Halloween pumpkin a few days too late. There was a drowned man in an irrigation ditch, gray and bloated, no eyes. Fish had nibbled them. You saw that stuff in Iraq. It was how war works.

A week before Hutson’s suicide, another soldier lost his life. This soldier, a turret gunner, was killed when his vehicle unsuccessfully tried to pass at thirty-five miles per hour under a too-low bridge. The Army counted deaths by accident as “combat deaths,” while suicides were not. Under a policy followed by George W. Bush and in part by Barack Obama, the families of suicides did not receive a condolence letter from the President. Suicides do not pertain to freedom. They died of the war, but not in the war.

II
But if distinctions between causes of death were made at the Pentagon, that was not the case on the ground in Iraq. The death of any soldier reverberated through the base This was, after all, a small town, and nobody was left untouched. The comfort of ritual stood in for public expressions of actual feelings, which were kept private and close. And the ritual prescribed by regulation was the same, whether the death
was by suicide or in combat. The chapel had rows of chairs set up, much as it would in Hamilton, Ohio, or Marietta, Georgia for a wedding, only at the front of the room was a wooden box, made and brought to Iraq for this purpose, with holes for the US and the unit flag and a slot to stand the deceased’s rifle.

The remains of the deceased were likely already on their way home and not with us. This was not for PFC Hutson anyway, it was for us. The box holding the flags was made of plywood, stained and varnished like paneling, and reminded everyone of a B+ high school wood shop project. The dead man’s boots stood on either side of the rifle, with his helmet on top. It was fitting no one had cleaned the boots, because the presence of the dust and dirt wiped away a lot of the standardization of the ritual. Before the event started, the hum in the room was about future meetings, upcoming operations, food in the chow hall, the workaday talk of soldiers.

There was a program, done up on a word processor, with the official Army photo of the deceased, wearing a clean uniform, posed in front of an American flag— young, so young, you could see a few red pockmarks on the side of his face, a chicken pox scar on his forehead. All these photos showed a vacant stare, same as every high school graduation photo. The printed program was standard fare— some speeches, the chaplain leading the 23rd Psalm, and a final good-bye.

The speeches were strained because the senior officers who feel it important to speak at these events rarely knew, or could know among the many troops under them, the deceased. As with every other briefing they gave, the officers read words someone else wrote for them to give the impression of authority and familiarity. The dead man’s job had something minor to do with radios and most present couldn’t say much beyond that. The eulogy thus rang a bit hollow, but you reminded yourself that the words were not necessarily intended for you alone and that the Colonel may not have been the best man for the job. He was a responsible man, trying hard to do something impossible, and he probably felt bad for his lack of conviction. He did understand more of why we were all here, in Iraq, and that a task had to be done, and that he need not be

http://latest.com/2014/07/iraq-what-they-died-for/

Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President

Lets Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President

By Neil Mackay15 September 2002: A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.
This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.
The PNAC report also:
l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1221.htm

Fallujah WAR CRIME

Fallujah

“The Americans invaded, chillingly: “house to house, room to room”, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient “City of Mosques.”

One correspondent wrote: “There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent – the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940.”

Further: “ …the ‘battle for Fallujah’ was entirely one-sided. US military and technical superiority over the Iraqi resistance (was) as great, if not greater, than the American army’s advantage over their Indian opponents in the 1870s and 1880s.”(1)

Seventy percent of houses and shops were reported destroyed, with those still standing damaged. Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, described a city: “ … completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn’t see a single building that was functioning.”(City of Ghosts, The Guardian, January 11, 2005.).

Nicholas J. Davies, author of  “Blood on our Hands – the American Invasion and Destruction of  Iraq”, has written: “The Fallujah Compensation Committee reported in March 2005 that the assault destroyed 36,000 homes, 9,000 shops, 65 mosques, 60 schools, both train stations, one of the two bridges, two power stations, three water treatment plants and the city’s entire sanitation and telephone systems.”

Fallujah: US Marines – Further Allegations of War Crimes Surface

Felicity Arbuthnot

January 16, 2014

.

"This was the battle of Fallujah. This is the noble cause that our Marlboro Men (and our "paper of record," which gave their laments such prominent play) now feel has been besmirched by the fact that some militant Sunni factions (many from the same groups the United States is now supporting, directly or indirectly, through its assistance to the Syrian rebels) seized control of the city for a time. It is this incident that has made the Marlboros and the Timesters suddenly feel that the "great sacrifices" of America's war of aggression in Iraq were made in vain. This -- not the multitude of Iraqis who have died this year alone in the violent sectarian strife that was created by the American invasion, and exacerbated by deliberate American policy.
....

The story of Fallujah, and the war that engendered that atrocity -- and the attitude toward that atrocity shown in the New York Time's recent story -- all speak plainly, despairingly of "the total moral collapse of respectable society" in this imperial age of ours.

……
[Al-Qaeda and Zarqawi]
........”

Shooting and Crying: The Unlearned Lessons of American Atrocity, Chris Floyd
January 14, 2014

Depleted uranium (DU) contaminated Iraq

Monday, September 16, 2013

When would an indiscriminate-civilian-killer weapon be deemed "morally obscene"?

.

"The World Health Organisation (WHO)  has categorically refused, in defiance of its own mandate, to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO.

........

Almost nine years later, a joint WHO - Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”."

WHO Refuses to Publish Report onCancers and Birth Defects in Iraq Caused by Depleted Uranium Ammunition, 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-refuses-to-publish-report-on-cancers-and-birth-defects-in-iraq-caused-by-depleted-uranium-ammunition/5349556

Dennis Halliday, September 13, 2013

The World Health Organisation (WHO)  has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO:

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO. (See Rob Edwards, WHO ‘Suppressed’ Scientific Study Into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq,  The Sunday Herald, February 24, 2004)

Almost nine years later,  a joint WHO- Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”.

According to Hans von Sponeck, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,

“The US government sought to prevent the WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.” (quoted in Mozhgan Savabieasfahani Rise of Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq: World Health Organization Refuses to Release Data, Global Research, July 31, 2013

This tragedy in Iraq reminds one of US Chemical Weapons used in Vietnam. And that the US has failed to acknowledge or pay compensation or provide medical assistance to thousands of deformed children born and still being born due to American military use of Agent Orange throughout the country.

The millions of gallons of this chemical dumped on rural Vietnam were eagerly manufactured and sold to the Pentagon by companies Dupont, Monsanto and others greedy for huge profits.

Given the US record of failing to acknowledge its atrocities in warfare, I fear those mothers in Najaf and other Iraqi cities and towns advised not to attempt the birth of more children will never receive solace or help.

A United Nations that is no longer corrupted by the five Permanent Members of the Security Council is what is needed.

Friday, March 14, 2014

DU contaminated Iraq - "no Iraqi strategy and/or national program" - UPDATE: Not so! Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi

.
UPDATE
Reference the below paper, we received a letter (in Arabic, kindly open and translate with Google or Bing) from Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi, Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering pointing out that she and her colleagues had completed two of a three stages program, by the end of the 1990's, to locate the nuclear contaminated areas in Iraq and had specified burial sites for their disposal, findings that have been plagiarized by Dr. Al-Ansari in the below paper.
.

تحديث:ـ

ـ" تحياتي وتقديري 

بعد اطلاعي على المقالة المنشورة على موقعكم للدكتور الانصاري حول التلوث باليورانيوم المنضّب، اود ان اوضح لحضرتكم والآخرين ما يلي:

1. موضوع تحديد افضل مواقع لردم النفايات الصناعية الخطرة والمشعة مُـنجز منه مرحلتين من ثلاث مراحل منذ عام 1998، حيث تم تكليفي لإعداده من خلال قسم الهندسة البيئية في جامعة بغداد بكتاب من مجلس الوزراء، بعد ان انجزنا مع منظمة الطاقة الذرية العراقية تحديد مواقع التلوث الاشعاعي في المناطق الجنوبية بالإحداثيات الدقيقة واقترحنا جمع الاليات الملوّثة وردمها في مناطق عزل خاصة."ـ

رسالة د. سعاد العزاوي

ـ14 آذار 2014

 ............

"Abstract

Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the enrichment of natural uranium for nuclear reactor-grade or nuclear weapons-grade uranium. DU is chemically identical to natural uranium. Depleted uranium is chemically identical to natural uranium. DU is depleted with isotope of U 235 and its radioactivity is 60% of the natural uranium and increases to 80% after few months and is usually considered as low level radioactive waste (LLW).Iraq experienced two devastating wars in 1991 and 2003, during which massive amounts of new weapons and sophisticated manufactured nuclear weapons were used –called Depleted Uranium (DU).During the second Gulf war in 2003 U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was estimated that more than 1100 to 2200 tons of DU was used. As a consequence the ruminants of wars are affecting the people (30 million) and environment. There are hundreds of sites contaminated with nuclear radiation. There is no Iraqi strategy and/or national program, not even well thought out plans and scientific personnel and technical equipment required to clean Iraq of these wastes. The aim of this work is to high light the environmental implications of the two Gulf wars on Iraq and suggest possible solutions to the problem."

Engineering solution for Radioactive Waste in IRAQ

15 February 2014

.

DU contaminated sites in southern Iraq

And

A10 firing DU at the Ministry of Planning inside Baghdad,

April 4, 2003 (Zwijnenburg, 2013)

INCREDIBLE: War on Iraqi crops

Iraqi Farmers Aren't Celebrating World Food DayNov 11, 2004
As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations -- which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve. 

When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrated biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers were mourning its loss.

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.

================================

Monday, January 24, 2005

For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve.
"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'.
The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"
Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.
The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."
Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time. "
Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005

The original article on this topic: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating October 15, 2004

As per an Iraqi proverb, the day will come, sooner rather than later, when the Iraqis will shred Bremer’s Laws, soak them in water and offer the glass to Bremer to drink.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

One of the occupation's consequences ... War on Iraqi crops

.
Reference a previous posting:

For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”, January 24, 2005

Kindly note the following sections (unfortunatly, not all previous links are still active and I have updated some of them):

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve.
"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'.
The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"
Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.
The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."
Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time. "
Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005

The original article on this topic: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating October 15, 2004".
.........

This important recent (Oct 8, 2012 ) 1 hour 24 minutes documentary  is very relevant.

Genetic Roulette - The Gamble of our Lives

http://abutamam.blogspot.gr/search?q=Monsanto

The mirage of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

''The mirage of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction''
Wednesday, April 30, 2003

By Imad Khadduri
Former Iraqi nuclear scientist
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (Canada)

(YellowTimes.org) -- In late August 2002, I listened with trepidation to President Bush's burgeoning false allegations about Iraq's nuclear military capability. Even then, one could discern that the sustained use of misinformation to support the invasion of Iraq showed that the President's claims were not based on any facts. I, having worked withIraq's nuclear program for thirty years, reacted with a series of articles expounding on the fact that Iraq had ceased its nuclear weapons program at the start of the 1991 war. I refuted the claims and evidence most famously, or infamously, branded by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Security Council in February 2003 in which Powell argued that Iraq had rejuvenated its nuclear weapons program after the Gulf War.

With heightened apprehension, I listened to Vice President Dick Cheney's claim on MSNBC that the U.S. does not accept the results of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) extensive inspections nor its failure to find any evidence of a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The IAEA explicitly exposed the fact that a uranium procurement document provided by British and American intelligence as a piece of evidence proving Iraq's nuclear weapon capability was, in fact, a planted forgery. Cheney provocatively claimed, on the day before Bush's 48 hours ultimatum to invade Iraq, that U.S. intelligence had proof otherwise. My last retort to that incredible plain lie was that some bogus evidence might be planted once U.S. forces were on the ground in Iraq.

Bombing to waste, yet again, the main Nuclear Research Center at Tuwaitha, and foolishly allowing American soldiers to break IAEA protective seals and openingTuwaitha's radioactive burial mound for looters who then contaminated themselves and their families, the Americans have yet to produce their "evidence" of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. Why is Cheney now silent about Iraq's nuclear weapons program? With U.S. troops in control of Iraq, this information cannot be a "national security" issue anymore.

In addition to the non-existent nuclear weapons program, two developments in the past two months have convinced me that, since 1991-1992, Iraq did not rejuvenate its chemical or biological weapons programs, either.

The first development was a Newsweek story on March 03, 2003 unveiling, after eight years of suppression, the transcript of Hussain Kamel's debriefing by officials from the IAEA and the U.N. inspection team known as UNSCOM; this debriefing took place after Kamel defected to Jordan in 1995. In it, he affirmed that Iraq had indeed destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles after the Gulf War. All that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches." The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. According to John Barry, who broke the story, the CIA and MI6 were told the same account and "a military aide who defected with Kamel ... backed Kamel'sassertions about the destruction of WMD stocks." But these statements were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more."

On February 26, 2003, a complete copy of Hussain Kamel's transcript -- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive" -- was obtained by Glen Rangwala, theCambridge University analyst who in early February revealed that Tony Blair's "intelligence dossier" was plagiarized from a student thesis. This transcript can be seen athttp://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf.

On page 7 of the transcript, an UNSCOM Russian expert, with the name of Smidovich, asked the direct question: "Were weapons and agents destroyed?"

"Nothing remained," was Kamel's reply.

Smidovich insisted: "Was it before or after inspections started?"

Hussain Kamel replied: "After visits of inspection teams…"

Smidovich insisted: "We could not find any traces of destruction."

Hussain Kamel reiterated: "Yes, it was done before you came in. The place they buried them was found by you."

Smidovich recollected: "Is this the place north of Baghdad where they were buried?"

Hussain Kamel replied: "It was in the month you came in. Destruction of warheads started but I could not remember the details."

Tellingly, Iraq, in January 2003, collected and provided access to UNMOVIC to more than twenty personnel who actually participated in the events of the above revelation. UNSCOM then carried out further extensive excavations at that site.

Hussain Kamel also had a few remarks on the bottom of page 5 on the habitual liar, Khidhir Hamza, who kept claiming throughout the nineties, on CNN and FOX as well as to Congressional Committees, that Iraq was on the verge of producing nuclear bombs. His accusations continued up until March 2003 when he suddenly quieted down and headed for Kuwait to receive his new post in the new "Iraqi" government.

The revelation of Hussain Kamel's detailed confession, by itself, did not induce me to endorse his assertion bluntly or publicly, though it was illuminating and historically authentic. Previously we had heard of his confession, but not of its contents.

It was the second event, which took place two weeks ago, which convinced me of the futility of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Amer Al Saadi, the chemical engineer and a senior scientific consultant to the Iraqi government, was the first prominent personality to surrender to the American forces after his German wife interceded with a German TV station to arrange for his surrender. For the past decade, he had been a polished, dignified and assured spokesman. He participated in the biological weapons program since its start in the early eighties. I knew him personally and had great admiration for his scientific integrity. In a ten-minute interview with German TV, Al Saadi asserted that: "I was always telling the truth. Iraq does not have chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. I have nothing to hide. Time will bear me out."

Indeed, time is bearing him out to the chagrin of Bush and Blair. The American and British hopes of finding any WMDs in Iraq, not planted by them, are vanishing mirages.

Bush, Blair and their senior officials lied to their people, knowingly, and waged a criminal invasion in lieu of this reason. Is this the democracy model for a "liberated" Iraq?

[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham(United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada.]

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