A vital stage in the war against the war

Everything they told you was wrong. They said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie. They said that Saddam Hussein had the ability to create chemical weapons. It was a lie. They said that he was a threat to global peace. It was a lie. They said that he could mount a nuclear strike within 45 minutes. It was a lie. They said that he had links to Al Qaeda. It was a lie. They said that he was a threat to US security. It was a lie.

Everything they told you was wrong but they went ahead with the invasion of Iraq anyway because they wanted to get their hands on Iraqi oil. And in doing so, they gave the finger to the United Nations, and in particular to the French, the Russians and the Germans, who all expressed their principled opposition to war, at the time.
They had ideological reasons too, of course they had. They wanted to control not just the oil but the country, in the hope that they could use it as a platform to exert effective domination over the Middle East. They wanted to establish a puppet state that would act as a buffer against the rise of militant Islam in the region. And they wanted to create a military base from which they could strike against other states or interests in the region, if and when they needed or wanted to. But all of that was secondary. First and foremost they invaded Iraq because they wanted to get their grubby mitts on its plentiful oil supplies.
Meanwhile the man on whose reports they based their decision to invade and who they had intended to become the leader of the new Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, has been outed as a crook and a fraud. Which should come as no surprise to anybody – American intelligence agencies have always lined up in foreign parts with gangsters, criminals and con men. But it is a true measure of the real impulse behind the mission embarked on in Iraq by George W. Bush and, on behalf of the United Kingdom, as they call it, by Tony Blair. Everything about it was poisoned, twisted – and, ultimately, grossly inept to boot.
They said that they would be welcomed as liberators by the people of Iraq. They were wrong. They said that they would quickly establish stability in the country after the war was done. They were wrong. They said that they would be in a position to reduce the commitment of US troops in the country within a matter of months. They were wrong. They said that they would bring an end to torture in Iraq. They were wrong.
In fact, this was a brazen lie. US troops in Iraq have flouted the Geneva convention, engaged in torture as a matter of routine and killed innocent civilians, as well as prisoners of war, apparently without compunction. And they did this because, despite denials, it was sanctioned from the top down. It was part of the grand plan, one of the ways of breaking the spirit of the people and of extracting information on factions opposed to the new US-sponsored regime in Iraq, all the better to hunt them down and murder them in their homes.
They dismissed anyone who made comparisons with Vietnam as cranks. Ho, ho, ho! That could never happen again. It is a different country, a different culture, a different time. The military aren’t laughing any more, as resistance to the occupying forces continues, as the number of body bags going back to the US mounts, and as the evidence that similar atrocities to those that occurred In Vietnam have been and are being perpetrated by American soldiers in Iraq also.
The military aren’t laughing any more, as they look at the cost of this misbegotten war in terms of personnel, money and prestige. They aren’t laughing any more when they look at the quagmire that surrounds them and they attempt to figure – Jesus, is there any fucking way out of this morass?
It is dawning on the swine in the Bush administration who advocated the war and who sponsored it that it is an unholy mess – and that there is no quick fix that will allow them to get out with a semblance of credibility while also securing their own fundamental aims. It is dawning on them also that they have created the perfect conditions for a civil war – between Shia and Sunni, and between Kurds and both of Iraq’s main branches of Islam.
And so they are fighting amongst themselves to apportion blame and to distance themselves from the bad karma and its potentially foul repercussions. But they are hanging in there still, bloodying their hands further, as the bill to be picked up by the unfortunate citizens of the US – and of Britain – mounts to undreamt of disproportions.

Meanwhile, they are still giving the finger to the international community and to the United Nations. This week, they carried out an effective coup first by rejecting the nominees, put forward by the UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, to participate in the transitional government of Iraq which will ostensibly take on responsibility for running the country when the US occupation administration hands over power on June 30 – and then by appointing their own.
What we will get now is a puppet administration, comprising handpicked stooges of the US occupiers. The Americans will go on running the country, hiding behind the new Ruling Council’s veneer of legitimacy.
It is against this grotesque backdrop that George Bush is due to visit Ireland on June 25 and 26. It is against this backdrop also that the upcoming anti-war gig is being organised, in association with SIPTU and hotpress, at The Point Theatre in Dublin, on June 19.
It is incumbent on us to express our opposition to the Bush regime and to the war in Iraq in any and every way we can. There is a huge and growing anti-war movement in the United States – it is vital to provide tangible support to the millions of people who are part of that movement, both to express our solidarity with them and to harden their resolve in the fight against the war.
The US presidential election is coming up in November this year. The trip to Ireland was widely seen as an election stunt by Bush, designed to win him support within the potentially vital Irish-American community. Let’s make sure that it backfires.
No one in the US should be left in any doubt about the extent of opposition to the war here. Let’s show them…