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> :: New Statesman

> Forget Hutton. He will not reveal what the US and UK authorities really

> don't want you to know: that radiation illnesses caused by uranium weapons

> are now common in Iraq.

>

> By John Pilger

>

> http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

>

> The disaster in Iraq is rotting the Blairite establishment. Blair himself

> appears ever more removed from reality; his latest tomfoolery about the

> " discovery " of " a huge system of clandestine weapons laboratories " , which

> even the American viceroy in Baghdad mocked, would be astonishing, were it

> not merely another of his vapid attempts to justify his crime against

> humanity. (His crime, and George Bush's, is clearly defined as " supreme "

in

> the Nuremberg judgment.)

>

> This is not what the guardians of the faith want you to know. Lord Hutton,

> who is due to report on the Kelly affair, will provide the most effective

> distraction, just as Lord Justice Scott did with his arms-to-Iraq report

> almost ten years ago, ensuring that the top echelon of the political class

> escaped criminal charges. Of course, it was not Hutton's " brief " to deal

> with the criminal slaughter in Iraq; he will spread the blame for one

man's

> torment and death, having pointedly and scandalously chosen not to recall

> and cross-examine Blair, even though Blair revealed during his appearance

> before Hutton that he had lied in " emphatically " denying he had had

anything

> to do with " outing " Dr David Kelly.

>

> Other guardians have been assiduously at work. The truth of public

> opposition to an illegal, unprovoked invasion, expressed in the biggest

> demonstration in modern history, is being urgently revised. In a

valedictory

> piece on 30 December, the Guardian commentator and leader writer Martin

> Kettle wrote: " Opponents of the war may need to be reminded that public

> opinion currently approves of the invasion by nearly two to one. "

>

> A favourite source for this is a Guardian/ICM poll published on 18

November,

> the day Bush arrived in London, which was reported beneath the front-page

> headline " Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war

> surges " . Out of 1,002 people contacted, just 426 said they welcomed Bush's

> visit, while the majority said they were opposed to it or did not know. As

> for support for the war " surging " , the absurdly small number questioned

> still produced a majority that opposed the invasion.

>

> Across the world, the " majority backs Bush " disinformation was seized

upon -

> by William Shawcross on CNN ( " The majority of the British people are glad

he

> [bush] came . . . " ), by the equally warmongering William Safire in the New

> York Times and by the Murdoch press almost everywhere. Thus, the slaughter

> in Iraq, the destruction of democratic rights and civil liberties in the

> west and the preparation for the next invasion are " normalised " .

>

> In " The Banality of Evil " , Edward S Herman wrote, " Doing terrible things

in

> an organised and systematic way rests on 'normalisation' . . . There is

> usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable,

> with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals . .

..

> others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer

> burning and more adhesive Napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in

> hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the

> mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public. "

>

> Current " normalising " is expressed succinctly by Kettle: " As 2003 draws to

> its close, it is surely al-Qaeda, rather than the repercussions of Iraq,

> that casts a darker shadow over Britain's future. " How does he know this?

> The " mass of intelligence flowing across the Prime Minister's desk " , of

> course! He calls this " cold-eyed realism " , omitting to mention that the

only

> credible intelligence " flowing across the Prime Minister's desk " was the

> common sense that an Anglo-American attack on Iraq would increase the

threat

> from al-Qaeda.

>

> What the normalisers don't want you to know is the nature and scale of the

> " coalition " crime in Iraq - which Kettle calls a " misjudgement " - and the

> true source of the worldwide threat. Outside the work of a few outstanding

> journalists prepared to go beyond the official compounds in Iraq, the

extent

> of the human carnage and material devastation is barely acknowledged. For

> example, the effect of uranium weapons used by American and British forces

> is suppressed. Iraqi and foreign doctors report that radiation illnesses

are

> common throughout Iraq, and troops have been warned not to approach

> contaminated sites. Readings taken from destroyed Iraqi tanks in

> British-controlled Basra are so high that a British army survey team wore

> white, full-body radiation suits, face masks and gloves. With nothing to

> warn them, Iraqi children play on and around the tanks.

>

> Of the 10,000 Americans evacuated sick from Iraq, many have " mystery

> illnesses " not unlike those suffered by veterans of the first Gulf war. By

> mid-April last year, the US air force had deployed more than 19,000 guided

> weapons and 311,000 rounds of uranium A10 shells. According to a November

> 2003 study by the Uranium Medical Research Centre, witnesses living next

to

> Baghdad airport reported a huge death toll following one morning's attack

> from aerial bursts of thermobaric and fuel air bombs. Since then, a vast

> area has been " landscaped " by US earth movers, and fenced. Jo Wilding, a

> British human rights observer in Baghdad, has documented a catalogue of

> miscarriages, hair loss, and horrific eye, skin and respiratory problems

> among people living near the area. Yet the US and Britain steadfastly

refuse

> to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct systematic

> monitoring tests for uranium contamination in Iraq. The Ministry of

Defence,

> which has admitted that British tanks fired depleted uranium in and around

> Basra, says that British troops " will have access to biological

monitoring " .

> Iraqis have no such access and receive no specialist medical help.

>

> According to the non-governmental organisation Medact, between 21,700 and

> 55,000 Iraqis died between 20 March and 20 October last year. This

includes

> up to 9,600 civilians. Deaths and injury of young children from unexploded

> cluster bombs are put at 1,000 a month. These are conservative estimates;

> the ripples of trauma throughout the society cannot be imagined. Neither

the

> US nor Britain counts its Iraqi victims, whose epic suffering is " not

> relevant " , according to a US State Department official - just as the

> slaughter of more than 200,000 Iraqis during and immediately after the

1991

> Gulf war, calculated in a Medical Education Trust study, was " not

relevant "

> and not news.

>

> The normalisers are anxious that this terror is again not recognised (the

> BBC confines its use of " terrorism " and " atrocities " to the Iraqi

> resistance) and that the wider danger it represents throughout the world

is

> overshadowed by the threat of al-Qaeda. William Schulz, executive director

> of Amnesty International USA, has attacked the anti-war movement for not

> joining Bush's " war on terror " . He says " the left " must join Bush's

> campaign, even his " pre-emptive " wars, or risk - that word again -

> " irrelevance " . This echoes other liberal normalisers who, by facing both

> ways, provide propaganda cover for rapacious power to expand its domain

with

> " humanitarian interventions " - such as the bombing to death of some 3,000

> civilians in Afghanistan and the swap of the Taliban for US-backed

warlords,

> murderers and rapists known as " commanders " .

>

> Schulz's criticism ignores the truth in Amnesty's own studies. Amnesty USA

> reports that the Bush administration is harbouring thousands of foreign

> torturers, including several mass murderers. By a simple mathematical

> comparison of American and al-Qaeda terror, the latter is a lethal flea.

In

> the past 50 years, the US has supported and trained state terrorists in

> Latin America, Africa and Asia. The toll of their victims is in the

> millions. Again, the documentation is in Amnesty's files. The dictator

> Suharto's seizure of power in Indonesia was responsible for " one of the

> greatest mass murders of the 20th century " , according to the CIA. The US

> supplied arms, logistics, intelligence and assassination lists. Britain

> supplied warships and black propaganda to cover the trail of blood.

Scholars

> now put Suharto's victims in 1965-66 at almost a million; in East Timor,

he

> oversaw the death of one-third of the population: 200,000 men, women and

> children.

>

> Today, the mass murderer lives in sumptuous retirement in Jakarta, his

> billions safe in foreign banks. Unlike Saddam Hussein, an amateur by

> comparison, there will be no show trial for Suharto, who remained

obediently

> within the US terror network. (One of Suharto's most outspoken protectors

> and apologists in the State Department during the 1980s was Paul

Wolfowitz,

> the current " brains " behind Bush's aggression.)

>

> In the sublime days before 11 September 2001,when the powerful were

> routinely attacking and terrorising the weak, and those dying were black

or

> brown-skinned non-people living in faraway places such as Zaire and

> Guatemala, there was no terrorism. When the weak attacked the powerful,

> spectacularly on 9/11, there was terrorism.

>

> This is not to say the threat from al-Qaeda and other fanatical groups is

> not real; what the normalisers don't want you to know is that the most

> pervasive danger is posed by " our " governments, whose subordinates in

> journalism and scholarship cast always as benign: capable of misjudgement

> and blunder, never of high crime. Fuelled by religious fanaticism, a

corrupt

> Americanism and rampant corporate greed, the Bush cabal is pursuing what

the

> military historian Anatol Lieven calls " the classic modern strategy of an

> endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert mass discontent into

> nationalism " , inspired by fear of lethal threats. Bush's America, he

warns,

> " has become a menace to itself and to mankind " .

>

> The unspoken truth is that Blair, too, is a menace. " There never has been

a

> time, " said Blair in his address to the US Congress last year, " when the

> power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood or when, except in

the

> most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for

> our present day. " His fatuous dismissal of history was his way of warning

us

> off the study of imperialism. He wants us to forget and to fail to

recognise

> historically the " national security state " that he and Bush are erecting

as

> a " necessary " alternative to democracy. The father of fascism, Benito

> Mussolini, understood this. " Modern fascism, " he said, " should be properly

> called corporatism, since it is the merger of state, military and

corporate

> power. "

>

> Bush, Blair and the normalisers now speak, almost with relish, of opening

> mass graves in Iraq. What they do not want you to know is that the largest

> mass graves are the result of a popular uprising that followed the 1991

Gulf

> war, in direct response to a call by President George Bush Sr to " take

> matters into your own hands and force Saddam to step aside " . So successful

> were the rebels initially that within days Saddam's rule had collapsed

> across the south. A new start for the people of Iraq seemed close at hand.

>

> Then Washington, the tyrant's old paramour who had supplied him with $5bn

> worth of conventional arms, chemical and biological weapons and industrial

> technology, intervened just in time. The rebels suddenly found themselves

> confronted with the United States helping Saddam against them. US forces

> prevented them from reaching Iraqi arms depots. They denied them shelter,

> and gave Saddam's Republican Guard safe passage through US lines in order

to

> attack the rebels. US helicopters circled overhead, observing, taking

> photographs, while Saddam's forces crushed the uprising. In the north, the

> same happened to the Kurdish insurrection. " The Americans did everything

for

> Saddam, " said the writer on the Middle East SaId Aburish, " except join the

> fight on his side. " Bush Sr did not want a divided Iraq, certainly not a

> democratic Iraq. The New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman, a guard

dog

> of US foreign policy, was more to the point. What Washington wanted was a

> successful coup by an " iron-fisted junta " : Saddam without Saddam.

>

> Nothing has changed. As Milan Rai documents in his new book, Regime

> Unchanged, the most senior and ruthless elements of Saddam's security

> network, the Mukha-barat, are now in the pay of the US and Britain,

helping

> them to combat the resistance and recruit those who will run a puppet

regime

> behind a facade. A CIA-run and -paid gestapo of 10,000 will operate much

as

> they did under Saddam. " What is happen-ing in Iraq, " writes Rai, " is

> re-Nazification . . . just as in Germany after the war. "

>

> Blair knows this and says nothing. Consider his unctuous words to British

> troops in Basra the other day about curtailing the spread of weapons of

mass

> destruction. Like so many of his deceptions, this covers the fact that his

> government has increased the export of weapons and military equipment to

> some of the most oppressive regimes on earth, such as Saudi Arabia,

> Indonesia and Nepal. To oil-rich Saudi Arabia, home of most of the 11

> September hijackers and friend of the Taliban, where women are tormented

and

> people are executed for apostasy, go major British weapons systems, along

> with leg irons, gang chains, shock belts and shackles. To Indonesia, whose

> unreconstructed, blood-soaked military is trying to crush the independence

> movement in Aceh, go British " riot control " vehicles and Hawk

> fighter-bombers.

>

> Bush and Blair have been crowing about Libya's capitulation on weapons of

> mass destruction it almost certainly did not have. This is the result, as

> Scott Ritter has written, of " coerced concessions given more as a means of

> buying time than through any spirit of true co-operation " - as Bush and

> Blair have undermined the very international law upon which real

disarmament

> is based. On 8 December, the UN General Assembly voted on a range of

> resolutions on disarmament. The United States opposed all the most

important

> ones, including those dealing with nuclear weapons. The Bush

administration

> has contingency plans, spelt out in the Pentagon's 2002 Nuclear Posture

> Review, to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, Syria, Iran and China.

> Following suit, the UK Defence Secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, announced that

for

> the first time, Britain would attack non-nuclear states with nuclear

weapons

> " if necessary " .

>

> This is as it was 50 years ago when, according to declassified files, the

> British government collaborated with American plans to wage " preventive "

> atomic war against the Soviet Union. No public discussion was permitted;

the

> unthinkable was normalised. Today, history is our warning that, once

again,

> the true threat is close to home.

>

> © New Statesman 1913 - 2004

>