War on Iraq

Letter to the Observer

Iraqi war deaths, Manufacturing Consent, War Lies
Published on 1 Comment on Letter to the Observer

Sir,

it takes particular cheek to cite the partisan TCS website refering to the Lancet as “Al-Jazeera on the Thames” when the website in question is well known for its activism on behalf of corporate intrerests and the “journalist” who provided you with this quote has managed to both misread and misrepresent the Lancet report [1] in his own writings on the subject.

He made exactly the same mistake as your article did when it stated that:

The report’s authors admit it drew heavily on the rebel stronghold of Falluja, which has been plagued by fierce fighting. Strip out Falluja, as the study itself acknowledged, and the mortality rate is reduced dramatically.

When in fact the excess mortality figure the report arrived at, of 98,000, was reached with the Falluja figures left out of the calculations. If these had been included, the figure would have been even higher.

All of which leads me to conclude that the writer of your article, rather than reading the report itself and drawing his own conclusions, has instead relied on the accusations of those for whom this report is embarassing and who have an ulterior motive in bringing it into doubt.

Yours sincerily,

Martin Wisse

[1]: PDF file

70,000 march against the occupation of Iraq

Antiwar, War on Iraq
Published on

The Guardian reports about the anti-war and anti-occupation march in London yesterday, which was held as the closing
demonstration of the European Social Forum. Amongst the
demonstrators were also the parents of British soldiers killed in Iraq:

Rose Gentle and Reginald Keys – parents of two soldiers killed in Iraq – were helping to launch a new organisation supporting former service personnel.

Mrs Gentle’s son, Private Gordon Gentle, 19, from Glasgow was serving with the Royal Highland Fusiliers when he was killed in a roadside blast in Basra in June this year. Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, 20, from Llanuwchllyn, near Bala in north Wales, was one of six Red Caps killed by a mob while manning a police station 120 miles north of Basra in June last year.

The parents are supporting the UK Veterans and Families for Peace organisation, which aims to tackle the welfare issues soldiers face after leaving the forces, as well as taking an anti-war stance.

Acording to the Guardian, some 70,000 people marched. Far less then before the war, but still a respectable figure, especially considering how little attention the media has paid to this demo. It shows that the issue is still alive in the UK and won’t blow over soon.

And that’s why I don’t watch Newsnight more often…

Numpties, War Lies, War on Iraq
Published on

Because I get so godddamn aggresive from those stupid, deeply venal Labour pricks who come on and lie and lie about the war on Iraq. For fucks sake, you did not go to war because Saddam was a bad man or because he might think about starting up a WMD program in the next century or so, certainly not because he was so rude to the UN. And don’t think we don’t know the UN arms inspectors weren’t kicked out but recalled, both in 1998 and in 2003.

No, you went to war because you said he was a menace to your country, he had weapons of mass destruction and missiles that could hit the UK within 45 minutes. You said he had ties with Al Quaida and might hand over nuclear bombs to them. You knew at the time, as we suspected all along, that you lied. Now that everybody knowns these reasons were lies it behooves you to be a fucking bit less smug and stop lying.

But it is so easy to lie when nobody takes you to account. Your political opponents for the most part won’t, because they were either stupid enough to believe you or complicit enough to collued in your lies. The media won’t because they have to work with you and they like their cozy little jobs too much. The people can’t, because you made it abundantly clear you have nothing but disdain for them. But don’t be too fucking secure. Someday, you will get what’s coming to you.

Hopefully, it will be soon.

Torture

American Gulag, War on Iraq
Published on

We’ve all seen the photos by now and been disgusted by them. US and UK soldiers torturing prisoners? Surely that’s something
that couldn’t happen, shouldn’t have happened. Surely it is only an isolated occurrence, done by a few psychopaths and this should not reflect on the UK or US military as a whole. Even Bush himself said:

“I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated,” Bush said.
“Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do
things in America.”

Isn’t it?

I genuinely would like to believe that, but I’m not sure I can. I don’t think these were isolated incidents. Ever since the September 11 attacks, the US leaders have fostered an atmosphere in which civil liberties and human rights are to be shoved aside in the name of security. Guantanamo Bay, the way in which Josef Padilla and others are held indefinately without charge, the prisoners taken during the Aghanistan campaign and in Iraq who are still held in the region, the alleged transfer of prisoners from US custody to countries who don’t have great moral objections against torture, the support for dictatorial regimes who make the appropriate anti-terrorist noises, all of them point to the inescapeable conclusion that this is how “we do things in America”.

If their leaders give such sterling examples, can you blame these soldiers for being extra zealous?

Consider also the wider content. First, you have this atmosphere of fear drummed into us by the Bush administration, where we are told drastic measures are needed to keep us safe, that we don’t have time for legal niceties and where civil and human rights are luxuries. Second, there is the inevitable wartime dehumanisation of the enemy, combined with the US military’s emphasis on keeping its troops safe, no matter the cost in enemy or bystanders’ lifes. If nobody bats an eye at US snipers killing ambulance drivers during the battle for Fallujah, why the outrage about what happens after the battle is over?

Third, this is made worse by the framing of the war against Iraq and the wider War Against Terror, as a struggle between good and evil, where “we” are Good and the enemy is Evil and so anything “we” do is automatically right, while anything the enemy does is automatically wrong. Finally, this Manchurian worldview has always had a strong attraction for a lot of Americans; in a culture where quite a lot of people consider prison rape not as much an unfortunate excess as an integral and welcome part of the prison system, is it strange that enemy prisoners are sexually abused?

This is not to say that all or even most US and UK soldiers would do these things, but these are not “isolated incidents” either.

How to quote out of context

Manufacturing Consent, War on Iraq
Published on

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If you follow news and political blogs, you have likely seen the following quote, from a John Pilger
authored article in The New Statesman:

Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country.

No matter where you read it, it would’ve likely been followed by a rant about how silly John Pilger is to
think the Iraq of Saddam was safe and how morally repugnant he was to say this while people were being tortured and killed and so on.

How many blogs however, put this quote in context:

Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country.Once, in the Edwardian colonnade of Baghdad’s book market, a young man shouted something at me about the hardship his family had been forced to endure under the embargo imposed by America and Britain. What happened next was typical of Iraqis; a passer-by calmed the man, putting his arm around his shoulder, while another was quickly at my side. “Forgive him,” he said reassuringly. “We do not connect the people of the west with the actions of their governments. You are welcome.”

At one of the melancholy evening auctions where Iraqis come to sell their most intimate possessions out of urgent need, a woman with two infants watched as their pushchairs went for pennies, and a man who had collected doves since he was 15 came with his last bird and its cage; and yet people said to me: “You are welcome.” Such grace and dignity were often expressed by those Iraqi exiles who loathed Saddam Hussein and opposed both the economic siege and the Anglo-American assault on their homeland; thousands of these anti-Saddamites marched against the war in London last year, to the chagrin of the warmongers, who never understood the dichotomy of their principled stand.

You don’t have to agree with Pilger, but wat I’m saying is, you know, read the entire article before
getting indignant. If you need to quote people out of context, your case does not get stronger.