The spin-doctors of the Bush-Blair camp must be getting desperate. First it was WMD, and then it became WMD programme, and now it is Saddam’s mass graves, which are being used as justification for the unprovoked aggression committed upon the sovereign state of Iraq. According to the UN resolution that was relied upon, the legal pretext was disarming Saddam of his mythical WMD. The absence of WMDs has confirmed the war crimes committed by the Bush-Blair camp, since one cannot disarm someone if the weapons to disarm do not exist in the first place. Therefore there is no legal justification for the attack and it also proves that Iraq had conformed to the UN resolutions as it claimed prior to the war. Furthermore, the two prominent UN Inspectors Scott Ritter and Hans Blix have already highlighted, the coalition forces have not been able to disprove the Iraqi declaration given prior to the war. The Bush Administration is not even entitled to plead manslaughter, since it knew clearly that Iraq possessed no WMD. Murder and genocide is the only verdict that can be dispensed for this tragic episode of history. This knowledge of the Bush Administration was televised by John Pilger’s documentary “breaking the silence”, where Collin Powell announced in Cairo (Feb 24, 2001) that Saddam had no WMD, not even conventional weapons. Condoleezza Rice also stated clearly that the US policy of containing Saddam was successful and he did not constitute a threat.
So the embarrassing issue of WMD is being conveniently replaced with the “discovery” of Saddam’s mass graves, as if the West is an innocent virgin being rouse to Saddam’s cruelty. Similar to the infamous 45 minutes, statistics are already being plucked out of thin air without independent verification. As they say “sexed-up”. Figures are being quoted from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Let us examine the mass graves in terms of its probable composition. There are three possible sources: Firstly, the victims of the war with Iran in the 80s would constitute a good proportion, coupled with the on going execution of the various political opponents and dissidents. During this period the US was fully supporting and aiding Saddam Hussein. The US had full knowledge of what Saddam was doing with the weapons and raw materials that were being supplied to him; hence the US have already failed the virginity test as proof of its innocence. At that time the regional policy of containing the Iranian revolution and the politics of the cold war justified turning a blind eye to the brutal suffering of the ordinary Iraqi civilians. Second source is the result of the suppression of the revolt led by the Shia’s after the first Gulf war, which the Americans encouraged but then retreated on their promise and simply watched the slaughter. The third and the final source has not been talked about to date, which is much larger then the previous two sources. These victims are the result of the US aggression and the sheer cruelty and cowardice displayed during the first Gulf war, where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were buried alive under the sand. Then, there was the needless genocide of the retreating soldiers and civilians on the route to Basra. What about the hidden mass graves of the half a million children who di! ed as a direct consequence of the barbaric economic sanctions? What about the deaths arising from the routine bombings over the self-declared no-fly zone, and the civilian installations like water purification plant and sewage installations? What about the on going suffering that is still being inflicted due to the usage of depleted uranium, and the illegal cluster bombs? A good reminder at this point would be the other “made in USA” mass graves in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Philippines, Central and Latin America.
One also has to consider that the mass graves in Iraq cannot be construed as a threat to the security of any foreign country, which justifies a pre-emptive strike. Let us not forget that mass graves also exists in other parts of the world, hence why be selective? Since a threat to its own security could not be construed, Bush now raises the moral flag, his benevolent intent of removing a cruel regime to justify the war, after actively supporting it for a decade. The US Empire was built upon committing genocide, tyranny, oppression and uprooting peaceful civilisations, and has continued to commit atrocities on a scale that dwarfs the Nazis, therefore it cannot have any claim to higher moral grounds. Nelson Mandela also pointed this out prior to the war on Iraq. Capitalist nations operate on the basis of profit maximisation, greed and exploitation. Their use of military force to achieve that is natural and imprinted in their hearts and souls.
Finally the ordinary Iraqis themselves did not ask the US to intervene. Some argued that the fear of Saddam prevented the masses from withholding their support for the US military intervention. However the reality in the post Saddam era paints a different picture. Mass demonstrations, hatred, and graffiti’s of anti-US slogans are generally pervasive. US soldiers are not being greeted with flowers but bullets from the Iraqi resistance movement. Call them what you like, “foreign terrorist”, “Saddam loyalists”, “Islamic fundamentalists”, none of which has yet been proven, but one thing is for certain, that they could not operate without the support of the ordinary Iraqi masses. The US has begun to acknowledge grudgingly that the resistance is emanating from the local population. Even the so-called oppressed Shia’s are not coming forward to greet the US as liberators apart from the handful of stooges, and dissidents that they have. This is simply because true liberation comes from within a nation, and not from a marauding invaders with a foreign culture and alien values.
