Lying governments are the bane of our age of democratic unaccountability.
“War” and lies go together. Robert Frisk and his correspondent, retired librarian, Tom Geddes, tear apart a letter from by some public relations hack of the British Government. The anonymous respondent wrote, via Truthdig and The Independent:
“We acknowledge,” the letter says, “that violence has claimed the lives of many thousands of Iraqi civilians over the last five years, either through terrorism or sectarian violence. Any loss of innocent lives is tragic and the Government is committed to ensuring that civilian casualties are avoided. Insurgents and terrorists are not, I regret to say, so scrupulous.”
The writer was oblivious to Britain’s long and inglorious history of imperialism, and many similar statements have been made before that blame the victims for the crude and barbaric violence of the invaders and the noble civilization they represent. In this instance, Britain was not the principle, merely the pathetic lap dog, and if that is not a cause for disgrace it hard to know what might be.
Robert Fisk takes issue with a plain lie:
“It is important to remember that our decision to take action (sic) in Iraq was driven by Saddam Hussein’s refusal to co-operate with the UN-sponsored weapons inspections… The former Prime Minister has expressed his regret for any information, given in good faith, concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which has subsequently proven to be incorrect.”
And replies:
I am left breathless by this lie. Saddam Hussein did not “refuse to co-operate” with the UN weapons inspectors. The whole problem was that—to the horror of Blair and Bush—the ghastly Saddam did co-operate with them, and the UN weapons team under Hans Blix was about to prove that these “weapons of mass destruction” were non-existent; hence the Americans forced Blix and his men and women to leave Iraq so that they and Blair could stage their illegal invasion. I saw Blix’s aircraft still on the ground at Baghdad airport just two days before the attack. Note, too, the weasel words. Blair did not give his information “in good faith”, as SM claims. He knew—and the Ministry of Defence knew (and I suppose SM knew)—they were untrue. Or “incorrect” as “SM” coyly writes.
And then there is the question of the “flawed” opinion of the Attorney-General.
Apparently the inhumane and lawless murder of people and causing of human suffering was such fun for the boys and girls of the Defence Forces that now the same process has to be repeated in Afghanistan. Somebody must have told them there is not much to smash up there, so now there is Pakistan.
The stench of the innocent death will continue to infuse Governments until legal accountability is brought to bear on those responsible, in the first instance, for murder. The state of rottenness extends beyond any one national state.
ELSEWHERE:
Lyn at Public Opinion quotes Trevor Cook on the decision to purchase $100 million worth of means of murder, and thus fund more royally the Industrial-Military Complex, as if it was running short of ready cash:
This decision will re-make some of the basic architecture of Australian politics. It turns the ALP into the party of war hawks, outspending the conservatives on defence…In its better times the ALP has been the party of international co-operation and peace, now it’s funding a potentially dangerous arms build-up. That’s profoundly sad, in my view.
And the economic opportunity cost? Let us not think about it.
The British disgrace could not be more complete. Blair, the suitably pompous ring master, sort to do what the tobacco lobbists so favour, according to Chris Lloyd at Empire Burlesque:
[Blair] was in the news, however, after the UK government was forced to release memos from 2004, detailing Blair’s frantic, mendacious attempts to suppress word of the rising death count among civilians in the war that he and George W. Bush engineered on the basis of knowingly false and deliberately manipulated information. In October 2004, the world’s leading medical journal, The Lancet, released a careful study showing that an estimated 98,000 people had died from war-related causes in the first 18 months of the aggression and occupation. Blair first tried to stop publication of the figures, and then later told Parliament, “We do not accept these figures at all,” the BBC reports. The memos show various ministries trying to pass off responsibility for dealing with study; no one wanted the impossible task of squaring Blair’s blatant lies to Parliament with the scientific fact of the study.
This same farce was repeated — on both sides of the Atlantic — two years later, when The Lancet reported a further study, using the same methodology, showing that a minimum of 650,000 people had died as a result of the conflict.
John Howard was a mere political schemer.
Note: OK so it is Robert Fisk. Somebody tell me when I make these mistakes.