In the June 2002, edition of Policy Review, Robert Kagan, the Neoconservative co-founder of The Project for the New American Century and associate editor of the Rupert Murdoch owned Weekly Standard, wrote this:"We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies... On the all-important question of power, the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power, American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power… Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus…In January 2003, Kagan said this in The Washington Post:
American military strength has produced a propensity to use that strength…
Americans can imagine successfully invading Iraq and toppling Saddam... Europeans, not surprisingly, find the prospect both unimaginable and frightening…
America’s power, and its willingness to exercise that power, unilaterally if necessary, represents a threat to Europe’s new sense of mission. Perhaps the greatest threat. American policymakers find it hard to believe, but leading officials and politicians in Europe worry more about how the United States might handle or mishandle the problem of Iraq, by undertaking unilateral and extralegal military action, than they worry about Iraq itself and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction… They fear such action might destabilize the Middle East and lead to the unnecessary loss of life…
After September 11, even many American globalizers demand blood… The United States has no choice but to act unilaterally… American power, even employed under a double standard, may be the best means of advancing human progress…
Many Europeans today have come to consider the United States itself to be the outlaw, a rogue colossus...
Americans are powerful enough that they need not fear Europeans… American leaders should realize that they are hardly constrained at all, that Europe is not really capable of constraining the United States".
"To appreciate fully the unparalleled political and moral courage of Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and the other six European leaders who called for solidarity with the United States in a statement published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, you really have to live in Europe and feel the mood out here. Never mind that Blair, Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, et al. planted themselves at the side of President Bush in the coming confrontation with Iraq, at a time when polls in Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere around Europe show opposition to American policy running at 70 percent or higher. And never mind that they insisted America's war on terrorism must be Europe's war, too, at a time when… most Europeans do not feel the slightest bit threatened by international terrorism…In the March/April 2003, issue of the US magazine, Mother Jones, Kagan was quoted as saying:
This was nothing compared with the unabashed pro-Americanism of their declaration. The eight European leaders actually wrote of ‘American bravery, generosity and farsightedness’… Such sentiments are pure heresy these days in Europe, where anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity… the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States couldn't be thicker. In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain's finest minds propounding… the conspiracy theories… concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy…
At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the US wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture WMD, it is not also invading Israel.
Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too… but here's what Americans need to understand: in Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream view...
The ‘European street’ is more anti-American than ever before… History offers few examples of political leaders willing to sail head-on into such gale-force winds. That is why Blair and his colleagues deserve so much admiration… In a few months, Blair and his colleagues may come out of this stronger for having the guts to take an unpopular stand now."
"We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies."The Jewish Neocon cited above has never been to war himself.
On 7 June 2002, 10 months before Gulf War II began, The Telegraph reported thus:
"Tam Dalyell, the veteran Labour MP, last night said Tony Blair was a worse leader than Margaret Thatcher and consigned him to last place when he ranked the eight Prime Ministers he had known in his parliamentary career… Even Michael Foot was rated a more effective leader by Mr Dalyell, despite presiding over Labour's disastrous election defeat in 1983.Then, on 27 March 2003, The Guardian featured an interview with Dalyell, the father of the House of Commons, in which he said:
Mr Dalyell condemned Mr Blair's ‘presidential’ style… The MP for Linlithgow said Mr Wilson, Mr Callaghan, John Smith, Hugh Gaitskell, Mr Foot and Neil Kinnock were all better leaders".
"My constituency Labour party has just voted to recommend that Tony Blair reconsider his position as party leader… I agree with this motion. I also believe that… he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague."On 18 January 2004, Colin Brown said this in The Sunday Telegraph:
"Mr Dalyell confided to me that he had changed his opinion of Mr Blair. ‘He is not the worst,’ said Mr Dalyell last week. ‘He is by far the worst.’ Mr Dalyell, 71, announced last week that he would retire at the next election after more than 40 years at Westminster.
Mr Blair, perhaps thankful that his adversary was quitting, led the tributes to him. ‘Fiercely independent, Tam's persistence in pursuing causes close to his heart is legendary,’ Mr Blair told the House.
The kind remarks by the Prime Minister cut little ice with the member for Linlithgow who, as the longest-serving MP, is also Father of the House… ‘Tony should go,’ he declared. ‘And he should take his friend Lord Falconer with him’."
On 25 July 2002, Tony Blair said this at a press briefing, justifying the sale of arms to Israel:"The fact is if we don't supply those parts someone else will… Once you start saying that you are not going to supply parts to the United States on the basis that these weapons might be sold at some point to Israel or indeed to any other country, I'm afraid the practical reality is not that the parts wouldn't be supplied, but that you would find every other defence industry in the world rushing in to take the place that we had vacated."On 25 July 2002, The Mirror reported thus:
"PM Accused of Backing the Death Merchants. Britain sold military equipment worth £22.5million to the Israelis last year, almost doubling the deals since the Palestinian uprising began two years ago. A total of 299 separate contracts were agreed by the Government in 2001 alone."On 26 July 2002, Richard Bingley wrote the article Campaign Against the Arms Trade for The Mirror.
This said:
"We have heard this argument, that if we don't sell it, someone else will, before - from the mouths of slave traders and drug dealers. The Prime Minister's emphatic defence of the indefensible raises questions about his sense of morality… The near-doubling of sales to Israel at such a time of tragedy is scandalous and breaks EU rules and Labour's own ethical guidelines. But sadly it comes as no surprise.On 9 August 2002, Alison Swersky, a journalist with the Totally Jewish news website reported thus:
It is natural for arms dealers to target areas where there is conflict and the Government is facilitating this trade in death."
"The Labour Friends of Israel is routinely consulted by Tony Blair on Middle East policy. The pro-Israel lobby group is also seen by budding backbenchers as a way of climbing the ministerial ranks."
Swersky also discussed the possible appointment of discredited New Labour MP and arch-Blairite, Stephen Byers, to the post of Chairman of the New Labour 'Friends of Israel' political organisation. This is what she said:"Political rumours were rife in Westminster this week that discredited former transport secretary Stephen Byers was favourite to take over the chairmanship of the Labour Friends of Israel lobby group.So, the leading members of the Jewish community in Britain would have been very happy for a politician, whom the media had very publicly dubbed a liar, to head the tremendously influential lobby group, the New Labour Friends of Israel.
The MP for North Tyneside, dubbed a ‘liar’ by the national press after a series of political bungles and cover ups, resigned from the top ministerial posting after stating he’d become a ‘distraction from what the government is achieving'…
Byers was unavailable for comment this week, keeping himself out of the public eye since the ‘News of The World’ revealed he had allegedly cheated on his long-term partner with a Labour councillor at a conference in Cardiff.
However, many pundits see the potential move by the ex-minister as a return to frontline politics… Previous incumbent Stephen Twigg MP for Enfield Southgate is now an Education minister. LFI director David Mencer said: 'MPs on the LFI executive are in the process of selecting a new chairman and it’s in our best interest to ensure that the new chairman of the organisation retains our influence at the highest levels of government.’
Lord Greville Janner, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: ‘I will be very happy if Stephen Byers accepts a major position with Labour Friends of Israel and I hope he does. He has always been very pro-Israel and a good friend of the Jewish people.’
Board of Deputies director-general Neville Nagler said: ‘We work very closely with the Labour Friends of Israel and we are happy to work with anyone elected to that position.’
Zionist Federation president, Eric Moonman, said: ‘I think he is the best man for the job. He has been a good friend to the community in the past, which goes beyond anything in his own constituency. I also think he is someone that can deliver the goods. He has good contacts and this will be very helpful in these difficult times, especially in terms of media coverage'."
Figure it out.
In August 2002, the top US Neocon, Richard Perle, said this:"Tony Blair has shown extraordinary courage in defending Western values in the Balkans, in combating international terrorism, and in the current confrontation with Saddam… Neither the president nor the British Prime Minister will be deflected by Saddam's diplomatic charm offensive, the feckless moralising of 'peace' lobbies or the unsolicited advice of retired generals."On 11 August 2002, The Northern Echo, local newspaper of the Sedgefield constituency, polled 887 constituents chosen at random and interviewed over the phone.
64.6 per cent were against the looming war. Just 17.6 per cent of Blair's constituents felt he would be right to support a US attack on Iraq. The Echo said:
"No one we contacted in the past week had a good, or sympathetic, word to say about Saddam. But time and again, our pollsters were told that people wanted real evidence that he possesses weapons of mass destruction before they were prepared to think about supporting a war. There was concern that Mr Blair is clinging too tightly to US President George Bush's coat-tails, and that diplomacy and the UN weapons inspectors had not been given enough time…Thing is, in May 2005, 24,429 Sedgefield teletubbies voted for Tony Blair. Doesn't add up does it? How can a man, so universally despised, rake in so many votes? Are the people up there in Trimdon all thick? Are they brainwashed? Are they just a bunch of groupies who get turned on by bad behaviour?
There was a deep worry that innocent civilians in Iraq would be the ones to suffer most from an attack… people suggested that Mr. Blair was concentrating too much on the world stage and not enough on the problems of the public services closer to home…
Peter Barron, editor of The Northern Echo, said: 'This represents a clear message to Tony Blair from his own backyard that there is great unease about this country's role in military action against Iraq.'
The feeling of many was summed up by Neil Hetherington, who runs the Nags Head in Sedgefield. He said: 'Tony Blair seems to be like George Bush's puppet. We should only go to war if there is a genuine threat against us'."
Perhaps our former PM and his posse had read up on the sayings of old Joe Stalin, who once said: "I care not who votes in an election, I care only who counts the vote".Perhaps TB stuck us with the postal vote scam so that the Stalinists within the establishment can never be voted out. Perhaps, he stuffed a few ballot boxes, perhaps a few got lost.
Perhaps there are a lot of fluffy, little lambs up north who, when it seems safe, will whisper, 'we don't want this war.' But, when it comes to the crunch, will all bleat in unison, 'we do want this warmonger.'
Uncle Joe, as FDR used to call Stalin, is the second-greatest mass murderer of his own people in all human history. They reckon he polished off about sixty million whilst he was in power. Mao Tse Tung exterminated at least eighty million Chinese before and after the revolution.
Marxism, eh, isn't it wonderful?Karl Marx was Jewish. Descended from Rabbis on both sides of his family. He was such a good Jewish dad that two of his daughters committed suicide.
Tony Blair's only got one daughter. She has, allegedly, tried to commit suicide twice.
In a Channel 4 poll of the 100 Worst Britons We Love To Hate, after more than 100,000 people had voted, Tony Blair came top by a mile. Margaret Thatcher came third. I remember being very encouraged by this at the time. To see two of the greatest traitors this country has ever produced in first and third did seem to suggest that there were plenty out there paying attention to the onward march of everything awful.
Jordan, (Katie Price) of plastic bosom and upper lip fame, came second by the way. (She's Jewish too)
Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Stephen 'Lyers' Byers, John Prescott, Lord Irving, Peter Tatchell, Edwina Currie, Cherie Blair, Nigella Lawson, Vanessa Feltz, Tracy Emmin, Posh and Ginger Spice, Naomi Campbell, Cliff Richard, Elton John, Ben Elton and Ian Duncan-Smith also appeared in the top 100.
I wonder whom the Sedgefield teletubbies and the Trimdon sheeple (those who voted for B Liar in 2005) thought the most awful Brit? Shakespeare, Nelson and Alfred the Great, probably.
On 17 August 2002, Gerald Kaufman, the former Shadow Foreign Secretary, told these unusually straightforward truths in The Spectator :
"The United States has already, in my view rightly, been criticised internationally not just for failing to initiate genuine peace efforts in the Israeli–Palestine conflict but for giving active support to brutalities the Israelis have inflicted on the Palestinians…In an earlier Commons debate, on 26 November 2001, Kaufman frankly admitted:
Bush's recent four-page White House lawn speech, containing two pages of orders to the Palestinians and two paragraphs of suggestions to the Israelis, was not simply unhelpful but positively harmful…
Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president of my political lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military, and diplomatic illiteracy…
Any war against Saddam, launched by Bush and supported by Tony Blair, would have the overt support of precisely one other country: Israel. Israel today, in its repression of the Palestinians, has the full support of precisely one other country: the United States."
"During a heated debate, a Conservative Member for Eastbourne, Sir Charles Taylor, told me to get back to Jerusalem. Alec Douglas-Home, when he was Foreign Secretary and there was a controversy about war in the middle east, said that I was more loyal to Israel than I was to England, something that I do not think could be said about me today."And yet, prior to the attack upon Iraq, when Westminster voted for the final time, despite what Kaufman had said in The Spectator article just seven months before, he voted the way that Tony Blair, George Bush and Israel wanted him too. On 18 March 2003, Gerald Kaufman voted to go to war.
If I was a Jewish MP, and I'd said what Kaufman said in The Spectator, if someone had once said that 'I was more loyal to Israel than I was to England,' I don't think I'd be puffing my chest out and saying that such a remark was 'something that I do not think could be said about me today,' if I thought for one moment that I might vote to make war upon the Iraqi people when the time came.
I think I'd be keeping my head down and hoping that no one would notice whose side I was on.
On 17 August 2002, Corporal John Gregory shot Sergeant Robert Busuttil dead at a barbecue in Afghanistan before turning his gun on himself.
The incident occurred while both men were on peacekeeping duties in Kabul.
John's widow, Annette, blamed his actions on anti-malaria medication, saying the drugs had affected his moods.
Army accused over soldier deaths
On 21 August 2002, The Guardian quoted General Wesley Clark (Nemerovsky) thus:
"Those who favour this attack now tell you candidly and privately that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel."The unvarnished truth from a bloke whose dad was a Jew. Remarkable.
Dick Cheney, the most powerful US Vice President in history, was President Ford's Chief of Staff and George Bush senior's Defence Secretary.When Gulf War 1 was drawing to a close, Bush senior encouraged the Kurds, the Shi'ites and various others to rebel against Saddam's authority. As soon as they had him on the back foot, Bush pulled the plug and the attempt to topple him failed, leading to massive reprisals. At this time, Cheney said:
"The breakup of Iraq would probably not be in US interests."When he was the CEO of Haliburton Oil, immediately prior to becoming the Vice President of the USA, Cheney argued for positive changes of US policy towards Iran, as Haliburton was a significant investor in Iranian oil.
The first company to be given a contract for future operations in post-Saddam Iraq was Haliburton. It is interesting to note that this company, through its European subsidiaries, has, over the years, sold spare parts to the Iraqi oil industry, despite UN sanctions.
Far from asking to be compensated when George W. headhunted his daddy’s Defence Secretary for the post of VP, Haliburton gave their parting CEO $42,000,000 in severance pay. Don’t you just wonder why?
Cheney was also a former member of the ENRON board. Cheney got his cash out before the scandal hit and lost nothing. Ordinary Enron pensioners lost everything. On the 20 of January, 2002, The Observer said this:
"The Enron scandal was set to deepen yesterday as congressional investigators considered legal action that will force Vice-President Dick Cheney to disclose the agenda of talks he held with the bankrupt company…On 26 August 2002 Cheney made a major speech to the Veterans of Foreign wars. This is it:
Democrats… are proposing civil litigation to break Cheney's silence on six meetings he held with Lay and other Enron executives to discuss America's emergency energy plan… Cheney has refused to disclose the contents of the meetings, citing executive privilege…
Cheney took office amid concern that he was too close to the energy industry. He left the government of Bush's father to become chairman of Halliburton, the world's biggest oil drilling equipment manufacturer, and later returned to politics declaring a personal fortune worth tens of millions.
On Friday, it was revealed that Cheney stepped in to try to help Enron collect a $64 million debt from a giant energy project in Dabhol, near Bombay, owned primarily by Enron."
"The danger to America requires action on many fronts all at once… We must take the battle to the enemy… The United States has entered a struggle of years… a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy…
In this war we've assembled a broad coalition of civilized nations that recognize the danger and are working with us on all fronts. The President has made very clear that there is no neutral ground in the fight against terror… old doctrines of security do not apply…
The Iraqi regime has… been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago… These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.
On the nuclear question, many of you will recall that Saddam's nuclear ambitions suffered a severe setback in 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor. They suffered another major blow in Desert Storm and its aftermath.
But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons… Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge… What he wants is time and more time to husband his resources, to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons programs, and to gain possession of nuclear arms.
Should all his ambitions be realized, the implications would be enormous for the Middle East, for the United States, and for the peace of the world.
The whole range of weapons of mass destruction then would rest in the hands of a dictator who has already shown his willingness to use such weapons…
Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors…
As President Bush has said, time is not on our side. Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two working together, constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action…
Iraq is rich in natural resources."
On 10 January 2003, Cheney said this:"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or individual terrorist".
On 14 September 2003, Cheney said two different things when questioned by the press. The first thing he said was:
"We believe he has reconstituted nuclear weapons".And then, without batting an eyelid, he said this:
"We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon."Nobody picked him up on it.
Cheney, who isn't Jewish, is a member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. He, like almost all the Neocon warmongers of a certain age, was a draft dodger during the Vietnam war. His excuse was:
"I had other priorities in the Sixties than military service".On 26 August 2002, Henry Kissinger was quoted thus by Cheney in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars:
"The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, and the demonstrated hostility of Saddam Hussein combine to produce an imperative for pre-emptive action."In the second half of 2002 the US and the UK dropped more bombs on Iraq than they did during the whole of 2001.
On 29 May 2005, The Times reported thus:
"The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.On 10 September 2002, Tony Blair said:
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make 'regime change' in Iraq legal.
Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that 'the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime'.
The new information… shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.
During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%.
However, between May 2002 and the second week in November, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 1441, which Goldsmith said made the war legal, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of 126.1 tons, or 36%.
By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone.
Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to 'degrade' Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf War.
It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with 'serious consequences' for failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors.
The briefing paper prepared for the July meeting — the same document that revealed the prime minister’s agreement during a summit with President George W Bush in April 2002 to back military action to bring about regime change — laid out the American war plans.
They opted on August 5 for a 'hybrid plan' in which a continuous air offensive and special forces operations would begin while the main ground force built up in Kuwait ready for a full-scale invasion.
The Ministry of Defence figures, provided in response to a question from Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, show that despite the lack of an Iraqi reaction, the air war began anyway in September with a 100-plane raid.
The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only "entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems".
"Let me tell you why I say Saddam Hussein is a threat that has to be dealt with. He has twice before started wars of aggression. Over one million people died in them… Uniquely Saddam has used these weapons against his own people, the Iraqi Kurds. Scores of towns and villages were attacked. In one attack alone, on the city of Halabja, it is estimated that 5,000 were murdered and 9,000 wounded in this way…Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator for Nebraska and a Vietnam veteran, is on record as having said this:
When dealing with dictators, and none in the world is worse than Saddam, diplomacy has to be backed by the certain knowledge… that behind the diplomacy is the possibility of force being used. I say to you… if we do not deal with the threat from this international outlaw and his barbaric regime, it may not erupt and engulf us this month or next; perhaps not even this year or the next. But it will at some point. Saddam has a nuclear weapons programme too".
"It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war. They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off…Good idea, Chuck. Maybe Mr Perle would like to take Mr Blair with him.
Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad."
The fact is that NONE of the US-Jewish Neoconservative warmongers who got Tony Blair to send our own boys to go fight and die in their dirty war for oil and Israel fought in Vietnam. Anyone else who chose not to fight in that ugly, imperialistic episode I would applaud. For the warmongering, draft-dodging skin-savers, I have nothing but contempt.
And these were (and still are) Blair's best international friends.
On 12 September 2002, Vice-Presidential candidate in 2000, Orthodox Jew Senator Joseph Liebermann, said:"We want retaliation, and we will have it… Retaliation for yesterday's atrocities is only the end of the beginning of what should be our response…On 14 September 2002, Tony Blair said this on the floor of the House of Commons:
If we are truly involved in a war against terrorism, then our allies in Europe and elsewhere must come to our side as we came to theirs in World War II… We must convince them that they will either be allies of allies or allies of our enemies."
"It is an 11-year history, a history of the UN will flouted, lies told by Saddam about the existence of his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes… His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working… The WMD programme is not shut down, it is up and running now… The intelligence picture is extensive, detailed and authoritative…On 24 September 2002, Tony Blair quoted from the 'dodgy dossier in the House of Commons:'
There has been a real concern on our part not to exaggerate the intelligence we get…
We know, again from our history, that diplomacy, not backed by the threat of force, has never worked with dictators and never will… There is no way that this man, in this region above all regions, could begin a conflict using such weapons and the consequences not engulf the whole world… Iraq, the region and the whole world would be better off without Saddam…regime change in Iraq would be a wonderful thing…
We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people… The ending of the regime would be the cause of regret for no-one other than Saddam… The threat of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda."
"The biological agents we believe Iraq can produce include anthrax, botulinum, toxin, aflatoxin and ricin. All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death…It later transpired that this claim was based on 'evidence' supplied by one Iraqi defector, eager to please. He would later apologise for this 'mistake.' He didn't apologise for lying of course. He will only do that when someone stuffs a cattle prod up his lying behind and turns it up all the way.
The document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them… Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes ... and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability."
Roll on that day.
Blair added:
"The dossier shows that Iraq continues to produce chemical agent for chemical weapons; has rebuilt previously destroyed production plants across Iraq; has bought dual-use chemical facilities; has retained the key personnel formerly engaged in the chemical weapons programme; and has a serious ongoing research programme into weapons production."All the sites in the dodgy dossier were visited by UN inspectors and given a clean bill of health. B Liar was lying.
In the full 'Executive Summary' of the dodgy dossier, Tony B also claimed that Saddam had 'developed mobile laboratories for military use, corroborating earlier reports about the mobile production of biological warfare agents.'
This porkie was rubbished by Dr. David Kelly, who saw the vehicles in question and stated his belief that they were for producing hydrogen. He was almost certain of this as they were built to a British design.
Kelly was later to 'commit suicide' after Blair's Rottweiler, Alistair Campbell, 'outed' him to the media.
Blair also said:
"There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civil nuclear power programme of nuclear power plants and, therefore, has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium."Subsequent to this assertion George Bush began to ratchet up his rhetoric.
On 7 October 2002, he said:"We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy, the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade…On 10 October 2002, George Bush also said:
We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases… Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints…
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahideen', his nuclear holy warriors… If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, he could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."
"If the Iraq regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than one year."And then, on 28 January 2003, in his State of the Union address, Bush said:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."However, on 7 March 2003, Mohamed El Baradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that his team and 'outside experts,' had figured out that:
"These documents ... are in fact not authentic".One intelligence source described the forged documents as: 'total bullshit:' Whether some jobsworth in Niger supplied these forgeries to the Italian government, who then gave them to MI6, or whether MI6 was behind the whole thing, has never been established. What is certain is that Blair was warned that the uranium claim was rubbish a long time before El Baradei told the UN.
Blair took us to war a few weeks later knowing that this bit of the propaganda jigsaw was total bollocks and he did not tell us.
On 14 July 2003, the BBC reported Hans Blix, the former head of Unmovic, the UN weapons inspectorate, thus:
"A weapon is... also about a means of delivery and it seems highly unlikely that there were any means of delivering biological or chemical weapons in 45 minutes… I don't know exactly how they calculated this figure of 45 minutes in the dossier. That seems pretty far off the mark to me… They over-interpreted the information they had."On 24 September 2002, Tony Blair said this in the Commons:
"We know that diplomacy, not backed by the threat of force, has never worked with dictators and never will. The threat of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda. The history and the present threat are real."On 24 September 2002, Llew Smith, the Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, delivered just about the most telling anti-war speech heard in Westminster before the invasion of Iraq began.
This is it:
"If we should decide to go to war with Iraq, it will not be a war against Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism. Nor will it be a war about liberty, democracy, human rights, or the defence of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs. As is often the case in war, this war will be about money and power, who controls the Gulf, and setting up a puppet Government in the middle east… it will be about oil.So, what is this decent bloke doing now?
We are told that the war will be about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's threat to use such weapons against the world. That is an ironic claim coming from the United States, which has 25,000 nuclear weapons and warheads, and from the United Kingdom, which has a massive nuclear arsenal. Not even Iraq's neighbours believe that such weapons are a threat to them or the rest of the world.
That claim has been made by the United States, a country that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens with atomic bombs—weapons of mass destruction. It has been made by the very same country that carpet-bombed Vietnam with napalm, destroying its crops, environment and the lives of millions of its citizens, once again with weapons of mass destruction, weapons which in theory the United States and the United Kingdom are opposed to.
The irony and hypocrisy of America's warning against rogue states, and, in particular, Iraq, having weapons of mass destruction, is also highlighted by its continued economic and military support for Israel—a nuclear weapons state.Mordecai Vanunu is rotting in an Israeli prison when his only crime was to tell the truth about Israel's nuclear capability when all around him were lying.
If this war is about liberty, what have the UK and the US done about Vanunu's liberty? I am ashamed to say that we have done nothing.
We are not simply concerned about nuclear weapons because, as former President Clinton declared in a state of the union address, in the context of Iraq, there is a need to 'confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists and organised criminals seeking to acquire them.'
The hypocrisy knows no limits. It was the United States who supplied Iraq with much of the matériel required for it to build its biological weapons programme. Those exports continued at least until 1989, despite the fact that Iraq had been reported to be engaged in chemical, and possibly biological, warfare against the Iranians, the Kurds and the Shi'ites since the early 1980s. Yet we are now informed that one of the reasons for war is to protect those very same people.
During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the United States gave military aid and intelligence information not only to Iraq but to both sides. Saddam Hussein was then, as now, an evil psychopath—but then he was the west's evil psychopath and a favoured recipient of weapons and of export credits to subsidise them. Even the Tory Government were prepared to sell him military equipment, including—would you believe it?—plutonium. They actually agreed to the export licence that allowed that to happen.
The United States and the UK also tell us that the war is necessary because of the refusal of Saddam Hussein to allow in the weapons inspectors. Or, at least, they said that before Saddam had agreed to those inspectors going into Iraq. Now that he has agreed, they give the impression that that was not the most important issue. It must also be remembered that the weapons inspectors were in Iraq for about six years after the last war.
For the United States to consider going to war to pursue the goal of weapons inspectors is hypocrisy. Less than a year after the United States Congress passed an Act to implement the chemical weapons convention, the US Senate allowed it to ignore the convention and deny weapons inspections at US facilities. It was agreed that, if there were to be such inspections, the United States could decide who the inspectors would be.
Never short of reasons to go to war, the United States also tells us that this is a punishment for Iraq intervening in or attacking other countries. By that logic, we should also attack Israel, which is invading Palestine and breaking UN resolutions on a daily basis. Will the Government also answer the question posed by Mo Mowlam, when she asked: 'Can you imagine if President Putin had made a similar speech to President Bush' but had argued that 'Russian forces should be used to enforce UN resolutions against Israel?'
Putting aside that point, it is still hypocritical for the United States to justify war on the ground of one country attacking or intervening in another, when we consider its own record. We should not forget that, since 1945, the United States has intervened in or invaded Albania, Angola, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Chile, Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Panama, South Korea, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Uruguay, Vietnam and Zaire. The list goes on, yet little or nothing has been done in response to those acts of aggression or intervention.
We are also led to believe that the war is a crusade against terrorism. Bush uses the tragedy of 11 September to support this claim, yet there has been no evidence that Iraq was involved. President Bush told the United Nations: 'the United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it.'
But if the UK and United States bomb Iraq, the liberty of many Iraqi people will be achieved only by their death. Is that the kind of victory President Bush and our Prime Minister are seeking? Have not the people of Iraq suffered enough in the last war and from the ensuing sanctions, which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens?
Some years ago Madeline Albright, then UN ambassador, was reminded of the tragic death of so many people in Iraq as a result of the war and the sanctions, and was asked whether the price was worth it. She replied: 'I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it'.
I do not, and that is why I will be joining the demonstration against the war on Saturday in London, and why I will use every opportunity not only to protest but to use my vote against the possibility of such a war."
I don't know. He stood down at the 2005 General Election. Makes you wonder if Our Dear Leader didn't give the order of the jackboot to a New Labour backbencher inclined to tell as much of the truth as this.
Blaenau Gwent is one of the safest Labour seats in the country. However, when the Labour voters took to the polls in 2005, to determine who the successor to Llew Smith would be, they dismissed the Blair babe who was parachuted in from outside the constituency. Instead they elected an independent candidate, one of their own, who had been set aside by the party machine.
At a press conference following the publication of the 'dodgy dossier,' George Bush said:
"Prime Minister Blair is a very strong leader and I admire his willingness to tell the truth... He has continued to make the case, like we make the case, that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace…On 25 September 2002, Tony Blair was quoted thus in The Telegraph:
The United States and our friends will act because we believe in peace. We want to keep the peace and we don't trust this man and that's what the Blair report showed today".
"It is an 11-year history, a history of the UN will flouted, lies told by Saddam about the existence of his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes, obstruction, defiance and denial… His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working…On 29 September 2002, Robert Fisk reported thus in The Independent:
With what we know and what we can reasonably speculate, would the world be wise to… do nothing, to conclude that we should trust not to the good faith of the UN weapons inspectors but to the good faith of the current Iraqi regime? I defy anyone to say that would be a responsible course to follow.
We know, again from our history, that diplomacy, not backed by the threat of force, has never worked with dictators and never will.
The threat of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda… Disarmament of all WMD is the demand. One way or the other it must be acceded to."
"Tony Blair's 'dossier' on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof, if the contents are true, that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct… it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us, for nothing.
Let's go back to 12 May 1996. Madeline Albright, the US Secretary of State, had told us that sanctions worked and prevented Saddam from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction. Our Tory government agreed, and Tony Blair faithfully toed the line.
But on 12 May, Mrs Albright appeared on CBS television. Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, asked: ‘We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?’ To the world's astonishment, Mrs Albright replied: ‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.’
Now we know – if Mr Blair is telling us the truth – that the price was not worth it. The price was paid in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. But it wasn't worth a dime. The Blair ‘dossier’ tells us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction…
This terrible conclusion is the only moral one to be drawn from the 16 pages that supposedly detail the chemical, biological and nuclear horrors that the Beast of Baghdad has in store for us. It's difficult, reading the full report, to know whether to laugh or cry. The degree of deceit and duplicity in its production speaks of the trickery that informs the Blair government…
Here is one example of the dishonesty of this ‘dossier.’ On page 45, we are told, in a long chapter about Saddam's human rights abuses, that, ‘on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands.’
What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie is in the use of the word ‘riots.’ These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jnr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia. The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr Bush Snr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair ‘dossier’ tells us.
And anyone reading the weasel words of doubt that are insinuated throughout this text can only have profound concern about the basis for which Britain is to go to war…
So there it is. If these pages of trickery are based on ‘probably’ and ‘if,’ we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How's that for a war crime?"
On 30 September 2002, Tony Blair said this on The World Today:
"We must make it absolutely clear that Saddam and the Iraqi regime have one choice: they either agree to disarm themselves of these weapons that they should never have had in the first place, or alternatively, then action will follow…
I totally understand the worries that people have."
In October 2002, Bill Clinton, who had bombed Baghdad silly for the eight straight years of his Presidency, said this at the Labour Party Conference:"I don’t care how precise your weapons are. When you set them off, innocent people die."Those attending the Labour Party conference cheered this earnest, heartfelt, intensely sympathetic and humane remark. Were they watching when Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Serbia were bombed, do you think? Do you think the New Labour groupies noticed 92 civilians, many of them children, massacred by Clinton’s BATF stormtrooper’s at Waco?
I think they probably did. I think they were watching. I think they noticed. But, hey! That was television, right, that wasn’t real. But this was. There he was, up there on the stage. That film star, you know, what’s his name, the bloke who played the part of that mass murderer, you know, that terrorist fellow!
Boy oh, boy was he good in that!
On 2 October 2002, Tony Blair said this at New Labour's party conference:
We've never been more interdependent in our needs... Globalisation and technology open up vast new opportunities... Internationally, we need a new global partnership, that moves beyond a narrow view of national interest... Interdependence is obliterating the distinction between foreign and domestic policy...'The least popular at the time' and even less popular in retrospect.
Interdependence is the core reality of the modern world. It is revolutionising our idea of national interest. It is forcing us to locate that interest in the wider international community...
The 20th Century was a century of savage slaughter, insane ideology, and unparalleled progress... with globalisation, a new era has begun...
Caution is often born of common sense, a great British trait... But there are times when caution is retreat and retreat is dangerous. Now, at the start of the 21st century, is a time for reaching out…
My vision of Britain is not as the 51st state of anywhere, but I believe in this alliance and I will fight long and hard to maintain it… For Britain to help shape this new world, Britain needs to be part of it. Our friendship with America is a strength...
I have learnt this in 5 years of government. The radical decision is usually the right one. The right decision is usually the hardest one. And the hardest decisions are often the least popular at the time."
On 7 October 2002, in a speech to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Senator Joseph Liebermann said:
"To me, post-Saddam Iraq is not a burden to be shunned but an opportunity to be relished. It can become a signal to the world, particularly the Islamic world, of our nation's best intentions…On the 9 October, 2002, The Washington Post reported thus:
In other words, we must not only 'drain the swamp' of terrorists, as Secretary Rumsfeld has put it. We also must seed the garden with our best values, and our best political and economic ideas… we can again make the world a safer and better place."
"Making truth the first casualty of our war against terrorism carries a price. Other nations and peoples are more resentful of pious hypocrisy than of Realpolitik bluntness…
Who has reason to hate this country? Only a few hundred million people; Arabs, Muslims, Serbs, and numerous others whose countries have been hit by US bombers."
On 9 October 2002, Professor Stephen Pelletiere, who headed the CIA's Iraq desk during the first Gulf War and was the principal of the US Army War College, said this:"Bush and Blair want a war in Iraq and they are both prepared to lie if necessary, in order to get one… Blair's so-called dossier is supposed to be based on 'intelligence'… It insults our intelligence by recycling old, discredited propaganda and presenting it as fact…On 10 October 2002, Kevin Dowling of the GLOBE-INTEL news website reported thus:
When lies appear in an official Government report to a sovereign Parliament, well then you have to ask yourself just what is going on…
Most of the civilians killed at Halabja, and it's very unlikely that as many as 5,000 died, were killed by Iranian poison gas… The Iranians made a photo-opportunity out of a catastrophe simply by blaming the deaths on Saddam, and then the media happily gobbled their propaganda up.
The first stories claimed that there were between 80,000 and 100,000 dead, which was obviously phony. You can't kill that many people using gas, in a concentrated period, in terrain such as exists in northern Iraq. In fact, it would be very difficult to kill even 5,000 in this way.
The great majority of the victims seen by reporters and other observers who attended the scene were blue in their extremities. That means that they were killed by a blood agent, probably either cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide. Iraq never used and lacked any capacity to produce these chemicals.
But the Iranians did deploy them. Therefore the Iranians killed the Kurds."
"Tony Blair is a liar, the man who headed the CIA's Iraq desk during the Gulf War said last night… Pelletiere said that crucial claims made in the British Government's Dossier on Iraq, and repeated by Tony Blair in his statement to the Commons, were patently false.
‘Saddam has used chemical weapons, not only against an enemy state, but against his own people,’ the Dossier states. ‘Saddam has used chemical weapons both against Iran and his own people,’ the Dossier repeats a page or two further on. In 1988 Saddam also used mustard and nerve agents against Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in northern Iraq. Estimates vary but according to Human Rights Watch up to 5,000 people were killed.’
Not so, said Pelletiere. ‘Most of the civilians killed at Halabja, and it's very unlikely that as many as 5,000 died, were killed by Iranian poison gas,’ he said".
On 12 October 2002, William Kristol, the founder of PNAC, said this in The Washington Post:"The president has succeeded in explaining why Hussein must go, why time is not on our side, why deterrence can't be counted on, and why war is necessary. But now the president has to move from building support for a war to fighting a war.'Fog of war' is a euphemism for 'spin.' Which itself is a euphemism for telling lies to those who elected you.
The president now becomes a war leader, not merely… a war mobilizer… now his task is not to educate or persuade us. It is to defeat Saddam Hussein. And that will require the president, at times, to mislead rather than to clarify, to deceive rather than to explain…
The president's duty is no longer to make the case for war or to prepare the nation for a necessary war. It is to win it as quickly, as decisively and with as few casualties as possible.
The case for war, over the past few weeks, required clarity and truth. Victory in war, over the next few weeks or months, will require using the fog of war."
On 12 October 2002, 26 British men and women, most of them young, were killed on the holiday island of Bali. Altogether, 202 people of mostly European origin were killed and 209 injured as a result of two bombs placed by Muslim fanatics in the popular tourist haunts, Irish Paddy's Bar and The Sari Club. The majority of the dead (88) were Australian.
The dead included 20-year-old Natalie Perkins and 18-year-old Laura France, two cousins from Sheffield.
The other British folk who paid with their lives for the imperial visions of the Neocons were: Tim Arnold, Neil Bowler, Daniel Braden, Chris Bradford, Jon Ellwood, Lucy Empson, Ian Findley, Emma Fox, Marc Gajardo, Thomas Hanby-Holmes, Paul Hussey, Christopher Kays, Annika Linden, David Kent, Nathaniel Miller, Peter Record, Christian Redman, Stephen Speirs, Michael Standring, Edward Waller, Clive Walton, Douglas Warner and two others I have not been able to identify.
"North Korea has admitted to having a secret nuclear program. The United States is not asking that North Korea be inspected in the way they are asking for Iraq to be inspected... They are not worried that Washington D.C. could be bombed in 24 hours... There are two things absent in North Korea: oil and Israel. THE REASON FOR THIS WARMONGERING POLICY TOWARD IRAQ IS OIL AND ISRAEL."
"Tariq Aziz has a theory. Saddam Hussein's deputy told the New York Times this week, 'The reason for this warmongering policy toward Iraq is oil and Israel.' Although no one wishes to agree with Tariq Aziz, he has put succinctly what MANY PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON APPARENTLY BELIEVE.On 8 November 2002, Tony Blair warned Saddam thus:
The lack of public discussion about the role of Israel in the thinking of President Bush is easier to understand, but weird nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room: EVERYBODY SEES IT, NO ONE MENTIONS IT. The reason is obvious... Neither supporters nor opponents of a war against Iraq wish to evoke the classic anti-Semitic image of THE KING'S JEWISH ADVISERS WHISPERING POISON INTO HIS EAR AND BETRAYING THE COUNTRY TO FOREIGN INTERESTS."
"Defy the UN's will and we will disarm you by force. Be in no doubt whatever over that." He added: "I have a message for the Iraqi people. We have no quarrel with you. We want you to be our friends and partners."'And, if you don't want to be ours, we'll slaughter you in the hundreds of thousands,' the Liar might also have said.
Iain, a former paratrooper and a senior manager for the U.N. Relief Works Agency, had been employed by Crown Agents and paid for by the British Department for International Development to head the Jenin project.
The Israeli army claimed, falsely, that their soldiers had been fired at by Palestinian gunmen within the compound and said the sniper mistook Iain for a fighter because he was carrying what appeared to be a gun, which turned out to be a mobile phone.
This account was patently ridiculous, not least because Iain was tall, had ginger hair and was clad in fluorescent UN clothing. He didn’t look the least little bit like your average Palestinian. Also, the sniper who shot Iain had a powerful telescope atop his rifle, he couldn’t fail to have known what Iain’s status was. One UN official said:
"No one believes the Israeli story that the sniper thought Iain was holding a gun. This soldier was a trained commando. He had a sight that magnified at least three times and he was only 20 metres away. What really concerns us is the lack of an apology and remorse. The message that goes out to every Israeli soldier is that it's OK to kill the UN."A fortnight after Ian’s death, 64 UN foreign staff working in the occupied territories signed an open letter which blamed the Israeli army for Mr Hook's death and called for an end to what it described as the military's 'refusal to respect the most elementary standards of humanity.'
"We condemn the Israeli army in the strongest possible terms for its wanton act against an unarmed man… UN staff, international and Palestinian alike, have been verbally abused, stripped, beaten, shot at and killed by Israeli soldiers."Senior UN officials tacitly approved the letter, hoping it would prevent a cover-up. Extraordinarily, it was decided that the UN inquiry would be carried out by John Logan, who is a former member of the US naval intelligence branch, not an organisation given to overmuch criticism of Israeli behaviour. His report generated so much criticism that it had to be rewritten. ‘A lot of people thought it was a whitewash,’ said one senior official.
"The investigator had what you might call a more than normal sympathy for Israel's point of view."The Washington Post, a newspaper which has been owned by a Jewish family for over 50 years, reported Iain’s death thus:
"Israel Army Radio reported today that an initial investigation into Hook's death showed that an Israeli soldier had shot him as he came out of an alley from where Palestinian gunmen had been firing earlier, mistaking a cell phone he was carrying for a hand grenade. An army statement released later today said two soldiers fired at Hook inside the U.N. compound because he had an object that appeared to be a gun."The Israelis also stated that their army sent an ambulance right away, but that when it arrived he was already dead.
"After I was interrogated, I asked permission to remain with the men, hoping to minimize the violence. When I refused to leave, I was forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that if I returned to the area I would be shot.So, you have a choice. You can believe what Israel says, or you can believe what Caoimhe says. For people like you and me there’s no choice to make. We know who the liars are. For people like Bush and Blair there’s no choice to make either. Truth means trouble.
At the United Nations compound, I spoke briefly with Iain Hook, who said he was trying to negotiate with the soldiers for women and children to go home. He came out of the UN compound waving a blue UN flag, and the soldiers' only response was to broadcast with their microphone in English:
‘We don't care if you are the United Nations or who you are. F*** off and go home!’ He insisted that he wanted to provide safe passage for his forty Palestinian workers and himself using legal means.
After this, I met a group of children who told me that a ten-year-old friend of mine, Muhammad Bilalo, had been killed and three children had been wounded by tank fire, one of whom sustained brain damage. So I went to where the children were gathered, and the tanks were firing on them erratically. I implored them not to shoot live ammunition at unarmed children.
A soldier raised his upper body and his gun out of the hatch of the second vehicle and began shooting. I was shot in the thigh. When I fell they continued shooting in my direction. No ambulances were allowed into the camp, so I was carried on a makeshift stretcher to where a Red Crescent ambulance could reach me. While I was in the Emergency Room of Jenin Hospital, Iain Hook of UNRWA was brought in. He died a few minutes later.
Having been present in the Camp all morning, I can testify that any Palestinian fighters had stopped shooting a good two hours before either of us was wounded. When I passed the UN compound in the morning, it was surrounded by Israeli Army snipers and soldiers who were shooting erratically into the Camp. Two people were killed and six wounded. I was not caught up in any kind of crossfire as the Israeli Occupation Forces are falsely stating, and I don't believe that Iain was either."
One thing you can be certain of is this, Caoimhe Butterly will never be invited to a party by the likes of these.
On 2 of April 2005, The Socialist Worker reported thus:
"Tony Blair's government is involved in a cover-up over the killing of the British United Nations official Iain Hook, who was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier in 2002. Last week the foreign office flatly refused to release the information it holds on Iain’s death, saying this could damage relations with Israel…
Iain was shot as he stood in the UN compound at the West Bank town of Jenin in November 2002. The Israeli army forced an ambulance to wait for 25 minutes while Iain bled to death…
A UN source told Socialist Worker, 'It’s hardly surprising that the British government is reluctant to make clear the circumstance of Iain’s death. The UN itself has suppressed a report on his death. The government has refused to give out this information rather than upset the Israelis, even though Iain was a British citizen and an employee of the government.
The circumstances in which Iain was killed were quite straightforward. He was shot in the back after he had been on the phone to the Israelis for several hours trying to get his people safely out of the UNRWA compound. The Israelis claimed Palestinian fighters were in the compound. This was never the case. An Israeli soldier decided he was going to shoot Iain'."
"There is curfew, collective punishment and the reported refusal to allow Arafat into Bethlehem on the ground that he has damaged the position of the Christians in Palestine. I must say that he has not damaged their position nearly as much as the Israeli tanks have done. There is the shooting of innocent individuals, including members of the international community: I refer to the shooting of Iain Hook on 22 November.Just shows how wrong a trusting Tory can be, doesn’t it?
Only yesterday in Gaza, Israeli security forces attacked a bus belonging to the United Nations Works and Relief Agency. All these factors create the circumstances in which terrorism thrives. That must be brought home to the Israeli Government, as must the fact that the western world cannot launch a consequential attack on those whom the Israelis identify as their enemies. Mr. Sharon must be disabused of the notion of a crusade. There will be no such crusade against Iraq, Iran or whoever is next on the list."
Andrew Robathan, Conservative MP for Blaby, also mentioned Iain several times in the Commons and was critical of the IDF. Ernie Ross, New Labour MP for Dundee West, mentioned him and was critical of the IDF. Peter Kilfoyle, New Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, also mentioned him and was also critical of the IDF.
Michael Ancram, Jack Straw, Hilary Benn and John Gummer, mentioned the death of Iain Hook in Parliament but were not critical of the IDF.
Mike O’Brien, Bill Rammell and Clare Short, mentioned Iain Hook in the Houses of Parliament in response to questions.
No other MP ever mentioned Iain on the floor of the House, although John Austin tabled an EDM commemorating Iain Hook and criticising Israel.
Tony Blair never mentioned him.
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