Robert Fisk’s World: Right to the very end in Iraq, our masters denied us the truth

by Robert Fisk

from The Independent

The sentence ‘millions of Iraqis now live free of oppression’ is pure public relations

'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.

This quotation comes from the Ministry of Defence's "Iraq Operations Team, Directorate of Operations" and is signed by someone whose initials may be "SM" or "SW" or even "SWe". Unusually (but understandably), it does not carry a typed version of the author's name. Its obvious anonymity – given the fact that not a single reference is made to the civilians slaughtered by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq – is no surprise. I, too, would not want to be personally associated with such Blair-like mendacity. What is astonishing, however, is that this outrageous letter should have been written this year.

I should say at once that I owe this revelatory text (actually dated 20 January) to a very un-anonymous Independent reader, Tom Geddes, who thought I would find its "economy with the truth" interesting. I certainly do. We are now, are we not, supposed to be in the age of Brown-like truth, as we finally haul down the flag in Basra, of near-certainty of an official inquiry into the whole Iraq catastrophe, a time of reckoning for the men who sent us off to war under false pretences. I suspect that this – like the Obama pretensions to change – is a falsehood. Well, we shall see.

Mr Geddes, I hasten to add, is a retired librarian who worked for 21 years at the British Library as head of Germanic collections and is also a translator of Swedish – it turns out that we share the same love of the Finnish-Swedish poet Edith Sodergrund's work – and he wrote to the Ministry of Defence at the age of 64 because, like me (aged 62), he was struck that John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Defence, described those who jeered at British troops returning home as "cretins".

"Such jeering is clearly not meant to denigrate individual bravery and sacrifice," Geddes wrote to Hutton on 28 October – readers will notice it took the Ministry of Defence's "SM" (or "SW" or "SWe") three months to reply – "(but) is a political comment on the general dubious legality and morality of recent military actions."

I'm not so sure the jeering was that innocent, but Geddes's concluding remark – that "unless you or the Government can explain and justify Britain's war activities, you cannot expect to have the country on your side" – is unimpeachable.

Not so "SM's" reply. Here is another quotation from his execrable letter. "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."

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.

Then again: "We can assure you that the Government would not have engaged in military action if it were not satisfied that such a decision was justified and lawful. The former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, confirmed on 17 March 2003 that authority to use force against Iraq existed from the combined effect of UN Security Council Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441."

But as an outraged Tom Geddes points out in his reply to this remark, "You must be aware that the decision to wage war on Iraq was neither justified nor lawful. The Attorney General's advice has been widely described as 'flawed'. Given that his previous advice was that an attack would be unlawful, we all know what 'flawed' means. I suspect the MoD (Ministry of Defence) also knows." So do I.

I'm also sure that this is a standard "reply sheet", sent out to all dissenting English people. The sentence "millions of Iraqis now live free of Saddam's oppression and have control of their own destiny" is pure public relations – not least because it fails to mention that up to a million Iraqis have not been able to control their own destiny since 2003 because they happen to be dead as a result of our invasion.

There's a lovely bit at the end of "SM'S" 's letter where he (or I suppose it could be a she) says that "our brave servicemen and women ... are ... preparing Basra airport for transfer to Iraqi control..." Well of course they are, because – since their own retreat from Basra city -- Basra airport is the only square mile of Iraq in which the British are still in occupation.

The letter ends with "SM'S" 's surely sublime hope that this "letter goes some way to addressing your concerns" and I can only repeat Tom Geddes' reply: "I am grateful for the length of your response, but shocked by its contents." So am I. No doubt, when the Brown Government – or the Cameron government – holds its inquiry into this illegal war, "SM" will re-emerge as a witness or at least a spokesperson. By then, I suppose the "Iraqi Operations Team" will have been closed down – even, perhaps, by then transmogrified into the "Afghanistan Operations Team" with a parallel set of historical lies – but I trust there will be a retired librarian on hand to point this out.

Israeli aircraft strike Gaza tunnels

from The Independent

The Israeli military says its aircraft have struck smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip.

It says aircraft attacked two tunnels in two separate strikes today. Gazans dig tunnels to smuggle in food and medicine under the Gaza-Egypt border.

Gaza health official Moaiya Hassanain said one person was slightly injured.

The last airstrike took place two weeks ago.

Violence around Gaza has subsided some since Israel concluded a bruising, three-week offensive in mid-January against the innocent citizens of the Gaza Ghetto.

More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in that war.

One of the aims of that war had been to stop smuggling and to make life as miserable as possible for the Palestinians.  

This Week's Message: The conscience police

from Gush Shalom

The Police have Arrested and interrogated Members of the “New Profile” movement Who are assisting Conscientious objectors. Not for nothing Did Lieberman demand Control of the Police and justice ministries. This is the beginning Of an attack On the activists for Democracy and peace. This is how dark regimes Have started.

Ad in Haaretz, May 1, 2009

Cheques to help us continue the ads to: Gush Shalom, P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033

Robert Fisk: A historic day for Iraq – but not in the way the British want to believe

by Robert Fisk

from The Independent

One hundred and seventy-nine dead soldiers. For what? 179,000 dead Iraqis? Or is the real figure closer to a million? We don't know. And we don't care. We never cared about the Iraqis. That's why we don't know the figure. That's why we left Basra yesterday.

I remember going to the famous Basra air base to ask how a poor Iraqi boy, a hotel receptionist called Bahr Moussa, had died. He was kicked to death in British military custody. His father was an Iraqi policeman. I talked to him in the company of a young Muslim woman. The British public relations man at the airport was laughing. "I don't believe this," my Muslim companion said. "He doesn't care." She did. So did I. I had reported from Northern Ireland. I had heard this laughter before. Which is why yesterday's departure should have been called the Day of Bahr Moussa. Yesterday, his country was set free from his murderer. At last.

History is a hard taskmaster. In my library, I have an original copy of General Angus Maude's statement to the people of Baghdad – $2,000, it cost me, at a telephone auction a few days before we invaded Iraq in 2003, but it is worth every cent. "Our military operations have as their object," Maude announced, "the defeat of the enemy... our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." And so it goes on. Maude, I should add, expired shortly afterwards because he declined to boil his milk in Baghdad and died of cholera.

There followed a familiar story. The British occupation force was opposed by an Iraqi resistance – "terrorists", of course – and the British destroyed a town called Fallujah and demanded the surrender of a Shiite cleric and British intelligence in Baghdad claimed that "terrorists" were crossing the border from Syria, and Lloyd George – the Blair-Brown of his age – then stood up in the House of Commons and said that there would be "anarchy" in Iraq if British troops left. Oh dear.

Even repeating these words is deeply embarrassing. Here, for example, is a letter written by Nijris ibn Qu'ud to a British intelligence agent in 1920: "You cannot treat us like sheep... it is we Iraqi who are the brains of the Arab nation... You are given a short time to clear out of Mesopotamia. If you don't go you will be driven out."

So let us turn at last to T E Lawrence. Yes, Lawrence of Arabia. In The Sunday Times on 22 August 1920, he wrote of Iraq that the people of England "had been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information... Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows." Even more presciently, Lawrence had written that the Iraqis had not risked their lives in battle to become British subjects. "Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no justification for freedom."

Alas not. Iraq, begging around Europe now that its oil wealth has run out, is a pitiful figure. But it is a little bit freer than it was. We have destroyed its master and our friend (a certain Saddam) and now, with our own dead clanking around our heels, we are getting out yet again. Till next time...

The Madmen did well

by John Pilger

from The New Statesman

The first 100 days of Barack Obama’s presidency have shown him to be a marketing exec’s dream, a Marlboro Man for the Noughties – and little else

The BBC’s American soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.

It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.

No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared.

Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion . . .” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know . . . identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who . . . can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.

All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office.

In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war.

Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of Smoking Is Good for You – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in.

Much of the American Establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.

Chicago audience 'shell shocked' by doctor's presentation of Gaza under attack

by Rie Graham

from The Palestine Telegraph

Reader Rie Graham as sent us this report from Dr. Mads Gilbert's presentation in Chicago last night. Dr. Gilbert is touring the US talking about his experience working in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital during the war this past December and January.

I was a bit nervous ten minutes before the program was to start and only 20 people were seated in the cavernous Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. Perhaps people really have forgotten Gaza. Maybe they don't want to be reminded that for 23 days, Israel carried out a planned, brutal assault that flattened buildings and shattered lives.

Maybe they don't want to hear from someone who spent two weeks in Gaza elbow deep in blood, repairing small bodies and comforting weeping relatives. Maybe people have moved on - eager for a new diplomatic initiative or perhaps onto the next tragedy - Afghanistan and Pakistan where the blood seems more fresh. Maybe they are more interested in the work of pirates rather than those who use governmental power to attack civilians and then continue to hold them under siege so reconstruction efforts are hampered.

I was wrong about the interest. Within the next half hour, the chapel slowly filled with people, perhaps reaching 200. Lots of college students, women in headscarves, and Arab families - young children in tow - sat spellbound as Mads Gilbert (pictured right in al-Shifa Hospital , photo from the Lancet), a Norwegian doctor who has spent several decades working with Palestinians, shared with the audience his most recent experience working at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza at the end of December when the timed Israeli assault began.

I was struck by Dr. Gilbert's tone and manner. He spoke to the audience by walking up and down the aisle, looking at people directly and inviting them into his story. He was upfront about his politics and sympathies - against all killing of civilians, in solidarity with the oppressed (the Palestinians) and sympathetic to all who resist military occupation (be they Israeli or Palestinian). Occupation is the disease, said the doctor, and until it is ended, the patients (Palestinian and Israeli) will not achieve a healthy life.

Dr. Gilbert warned of the graphic nature of some of his photos, but explained that to understand the crisis in Gaza one must look at the realities. The most graphic, he explained were not necessarily the bloody stumps and ripped apart bodies (although I had a hard time looking at those), but the sorrowful, vacant look in some of the eyes of the children, the utter grief in the eyes of a mother, the look of submission in the eyes of an old man.

One photo of a Palestinian farmer who lost a hand in an explosion from a missile, was upsetting, not because he lost his hand (which thankfully wasn't shown in the photo) but because of his look of utter loss. "What will become of my life now," said the farmer to Dr. Gilbert. "All I ever wanted was to farm my land. I am not political, nor care about the different factions. I just wanted to provide for my family. How can I do that now?"

Dr. Gilbert wove facts and figures into his narratives about patients' lives and experiences during the three week assault. At one point in his presentation he stopped speaking and played a soundtrack he recorded of the night sounds of Gaza. For five minutes we in the audience listened quietly to the sound of the humming drones, distant explosions, rocket and machine gunfire. Imagine these sounds 24 hours a day, every day of the week, said Dr. Gilbert as he moved onto the next group of slides.

Photos of Shifa hospital, the epicenter of trauma treatment in the heart of Gaza City. Windows shattered and covered with paper. Cold hallways where relatives huddled outside operation rooms. Operating rooms that were used simultaneously for multiple operations so that supplies and electricity could be shared. A chest operation alongside a leg amputation on two patients. Doctors working on 3 hours of sleep a day. Female volunteer nurse helpers who showed up to lend a hand and stayed for weeks. All functioning with the constant sounds of sirens, shelling, explosions. Dr. Gilbert's stories began to merge into one overwhelming picture of unending horror. But also, his photographs conveyed an amazing story of Palestinian resilience in face of so much death and destruction.

Dr. Gilbert gave the audience a reprieve from his stories by playing a lullaby, sung by a Palestinian singer to her children. Again, the audience sat still, some with tears rolling down their cheeks, as the photos of Palestinians in Gaza continued on the screen.

When he finally finished speaking (he spoke for two hours), the audience clapped and a few asked questions. I felt as if the audience was shell shocked. As if we were for the first time understanding a bit of the horror that is life in Gaza. The images, the sounds, the stories all bringing to life what we had witnessed (and protested) from afar a few months ago. I watched as after the talk, person after person (most of them Arab) went up to Dr. Gilbert to shake his hand, to thank him for his service, to tell him how good it feels to hear the truth from an eyewitness. One Palestinian-American girl, perhaps eight years old, stood in front of me and told the doctor, "You have given me hope, Dr. Gilbert. Because now I know we can make a difference. I don't have to just sit at home and cry and be sad about what is happening in my country. I can go there and help the people, be a doctor like you who saves lives." Dr. Gilbert gave her a pin that had two flags - Norwegian and Palestinian flags intertwined - and told her he hopes to see her in a free Palestine some day.

You can still catch Dr. Gilbert on his US tour in New York and Baltimore.

New Bil'in barrier route reduces Modi'in Illit expansion

by Dan Izenberg

from The Jerusalem Post

It took the death of a Palestinian at Bil’in last week and the threat of another contempt of court petition to the High Court of Justice, but the state has finally come up with a new proposal for the route of the West Bank security barrier that apparently complies with the original court decision of 19 months ago, attorney Michael Sfard said on Sunday.

Last week, the state submitted a new proposal to the High Court to change the original route of the fence in the area of Modi’in Illit, which was proposed by the Defense Ministry and rejected by the court on September 4, 2007.

Now, Sfard told The Jerusalem Post, the ministry has come up with a new route that gives Bil’in villagers back 700 of the 1,700 dunams, or 170 hectares, that were set to be located on the “Israeli side” of the barrier in the original proposal.

Israel has said the route of the barrier was determined by security considerations only. But in the case of Bil’in, as was true regarding several other sections, the route was originally determined to allow for the construction of a new neighborhood, called East Matityahu, in the urban haredi settlement of Modi’in Illit.

According to the original plan, 3,000 housing units were to be built in East Matityahu in two stages.

According to Sfard, as a result of the state’s proposal to return 700 dunams of land to Bil’in, fewer than 2,000 units will be built.

On September 5, 2005, the head of the Bil’in village council, Ahmed Yasin, petitioned the High Court against the route of the security barrier. Sfard, who represented him, claimed that the state had designed the route in order to expand Modi’in Illit, taking away farmland belonging to the village and to individual villagers.

In its ruling two years later, the court upheld the petition and ordered the state to prepare a new route in accordance with a series of specific constraints.

One condition was that the new route leave the second stage of East Matityahu on the “West Bank side” of the barrier. Another condition was that the barrier itself be established as much as possible on state-owned rather than Palestinian-owned land.

It took nine months for the state to come up with a new proposal. When it finally did, it ignored key conditions established by the court in its original ruling. Above all, it left stage two of Matityahu East on the “Israeli side” of the barrier.

On December 15, 2008, the court rejected the proposal and ordered the state to come up with a new one that complied with its original ruling, “without further delay.”

Nevertheless, four more months went by without a response by the state. Sfard told the Post that after the killing of Palestinian demonstrator Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahma, from Bil’in, during a protest against the barrier on April 17, he sent a letter to attorney Avi Licht of the State Attorney’s Office, warning that he would file another contempt of court petition unless the state submitted a new proposal within two days. (Abu Rahma, 30, was killed in a confrontation with border policemen.)

The state hurried to submit the proposal. Sfard said that although the Bil’in villagers were still angry over the loss of 1,000 or more dunams that remain on the “Israeli side” of the barrier, it looks like the court will approve the state’s new proposal.