British artists against Iraq war

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

British stars mark decade of war with new event

Wednesday 03 April 2013

Actor Timothy West will join musician Brian Eno and comedians Arthur Smith and Shappi Khorsandi to stage a show raising funds for the anti-war movement.

Stop the War Coalition has announced that it will host a benefit event to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the war on Iraq.

Ten will comprise 10 10-minute pieces of new plays, music, poetry and comedy introduced by leading political figures such as Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Lindsey German, Jeremy Corbyn MP and Ken Loach.

The event takes place on Sunday April 7 at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court, starting at 6pm. Call (020) 7565-5000 for more information.

This is in London.

Brian Eno on the Iraq war:

“Far from admitting it was a mistake, there’s now a vigorous effort to rewrite history and convince us that, in the end, it has all turned out for the good. In order that we don’t embark on yet another stupid war – in Iran, or Mali, or anywhere else – we need to remember what really happened in Iraq.”

Related articles

• Iraq war based on lies (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Cheney Iraq War Motive Revealed (huffingtonpost.com)
• “Why I Am No Longer A Republican”: It Has A Lot To Do With The Iraq War (mykeystrokes.com)
• How About That Tenth Anniversary Of The Iraq War (stirringtrouble.wordpress.com)
• Iraq War 10 years on: How the invasion and conflict was reported in Mirror front pages (mirror.co.uk)
• Man found in Anacostia River was Iraq war veteran (stripes.com)
• Somodevilla’s Haunting Iraq War Anniversary Photo from Arlington (bagnewsnotes.com)

Iraq, Afghanistan, $6 trillion wars?

This 2009 video from the USA is called Rethink Afghanistan War (Part 3): Cost of War.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

Costs of Iraq, Afghanistan wars could rise to $6 trillion

2 April 2013

Over a decade of US wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq will in the end cost as much as $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household.

These wars have left the United States heavily indebted and will have a profound impact on the federal government’s fiscal and budgetary crises over a protracted period. These are the conclusions of a new report issued by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Drafted by Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard and a leading expert on financial, budget and veterans issues, the report attributes the largest share of the trillions of dollars in continuing costs in care and compensation for hundreds of thousands of troops left physically and psychologically damaged by the two wars.

“The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history—totaling somewhere between $4 billion and $6 trillion,” Bilmes writes. “This includes long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid.”

Another major share of the long-term costs of the wars comes from paying off trillions of dollars in debt incurred as the US government failed to include their cost in annual budgets and simultaneously implemented sweeping tax cuts for the rich.

In addition, huge expenditures are being made to replace military equipment used in the two wars. The report also cites improvements in military pay and benefits made in 2004 to counter declining recruitment rates as casualties rose in the Iraq war.

Biles warns, “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

Among the most staggering findings of the report is that some 1.56 million US troops—56 percent of all Afghanistan and Iraq veterans—are receiving medical treatment at Veterans Administration facilities and will be granted benefits for the rest of their lives. According to figures cited in the report, fully “one out of every two veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan has already applied for permanent disability benefits.”

The report stresses that the official figure of 50,000 American troops “wounded in action” vastly underestimates the real human costs of the two US wars.

It notes that, “One-third of returning veterans are being diagnosed with mental health issues—suffering from anxiety, depression, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” In addition, over a quarter of a million troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries (TBI), which, in many cases, are combined with PTSD, posing greater problems in treatment and recovery.

Constituting a particularly grim facet of this mental health crisis is the doubling of the suicide rate for US Army personnel, “with many who attempted suicide suffering serious injuries.”

Overall, the Veterans Administration’s budget has more than doubled over the past decade, from $61.4 billion in 2001 to $140.3 billion in 2013. As a share of the total US budget it has grown from 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent over the same period.

Soaring medical costs for veterans is attributable to several factors. Among them is that, thanks to advancements in medical technology and rapid treatment, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived wounds that would have cost their lives in earlier conflicts.

While the US government has already spent $134 billion on medical care and disability benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the report estimates that this figure will climb by an additional $836 billion over the coming decades. It notes that the largest expenditures on health care for World War II veterans took place in the 1980s, roughly four decades after the war, and that spending on medical care and disability payments for Vietnam War veterans is still rising.

The most common medical problems suffered by troops returning from the two wars, according to the report, “include: diseases of the musculoskeletal system (principally joint and back disorders); mental health disorders; central nervous system and endocrine system disorders; as well as respiratory, digestive, skin, and hearing disorders.” Fully 29 percent of these troops have been diagnosed with PTSD.

Among the most severely wounded are 6,476 soldiers and Marines who have suffered “severe penetrating brain injury,” and another 1,715 who have had one or more limbs amputated. Over 30,000 veterans are listed as suffering 100 percent service-related disabilities, while another 145,000 are listed as 70 to 90 percent disabled.

The worst of these casualties have taken place under the Obama administration as a result of the so-called surge that the Democratic president ordered in Afghanistan. “Walter Reed is treating hundreds of recent amputees and severe casualties—the hospital received 100 amputees for treatment during 2010; 170 amputees in 2011; and 107 amputees in 2012,” the report states. “The Marines have suffered an especially high toll.”

As the report points out, massive direct spending on the two imperialist interventions continues. Over 60,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan. It is estimated that the cost of deploying one American soldier for one year in this war amounts to $1 million. These troops continue suffering casualties—including in so-called “green on blue” attacks by Afghan security forces on their ostensible allies. As they are brought home, they will further drive up the costs of medical care and disability compensation.

Moreover, Obama’s claims that the “tide of war is receding” notwithstanding, an “Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement” signed by the US president and America’s puppet in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, envisions US military operations continuing in Afghanistan for at least another decade after the formal withdrawal deadline at the end of 2014.

And, as the report points out, “The US is maintaining a vast diplomatic presence in Iraq, including at least 10,000 private contractors providing support in security, IT, logistics, engineering and other occupations; as well as logistics support and payments for leased facilities in Kuwait.”

Finally, there was the way in which the US government financed the wars, which was based on just as much of a lie as the phony pretexts of terrorism and “weapons of mass destruction” used to launch them.

The Bush administration claimed at its outset that the Iraq war would finance itself out of Iraqi oil revenues. When Bush’s National Economic Council director Lawrence Lindsey told the Wall Street Journal that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, he came under intense fire from others in the administration who claimed that this was a gross overestimation, and he was forced to resign.

Washington ended up borrowing some $2 trillion to finance the two wars, the bulk of it from foreign lenders. This accounts for roughly 20 percent of the total amount added to the US national debt between 2001 and 2012. According to the report, the US “has already paid $260 billion in interest on the war debt,” and future interest payments will amount to trillions of dollars.

“It is important to note that this borrowing has not been used to invest in the capital stock of the country,” the report notes. “For example, investing in education, infrastructure and knowledge (R&D) benefits the nation, so this is debt for a helpful purpose. By contrast, the war debt has been especially unhelpful.”

Vast resources literally went up in smoke in Iraq and Afghanistan, while tens of billions of dollars were squandered on supposed aid and reconstruction programs that were riddled with corruption, incompetence and inefficiency, doing little or nothing to improve conditions for the populations of those countries.

In its conclusion, the report seeks to dispel illusions that ending full-scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will produce any kind of “peace dividend” that could help ameliorate conditions of poverty, unemployment and declining living standards for working people in the US itself.

“Instead, the legacy of decisions made during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts will impose significant long-term costs on the federal government,” it warns. “In short, there will be no peace dividend, and the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades.”

Linda Bilmes on U.S. engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan: “The most expensive wars in US history”: here.

The report that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing as much as $6 trillion is another indication of the terrible price paid by working people the world over for the crimes of imperialism: here.

How the Pentagon corrupted Afghanistan: here.

Painful Payment for Afghan Debt: A Daughter, 6: here.

Camp Nama: New Details of the US-Run Torture Prison in Iraq: here.

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been increasing and is heading for a record high, the United Nations said today: here.

Related articles

• Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan wars will keep mounting (latimes.com)
• The wars are over, but the spending is just beginning, says a new study (familysurvivalprotocol.com)
• Study: Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost U.S. up to $6 trillion (rawstory.com)
• “Most Expensive Wars in US History”: Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan (leaksource.wordpress.com)
• Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Will Cost U.S. 4-6 Trillion Dollars: Report (ipsnews.net)
• Study Says Iraq & Afghanistan Wars Could Cost $6 Trillion: ‘There Will Be No Peace Dividend’ (thinkprogress.org)
• Calculating the True Cost of War (fcnl.org)
• Report Calculates High Cost of Iraq-Afghanistan War (thecrimson.com)
• New study claims Iraq, Afghanistan wars to cost as much as $6 trillion (wisinfo.biz)

Tony Blair supports Kuwait dictatorship

Remember how berserk neo-conservative or “liberal hawkish” supporters of George W Bush’s and Tony Blair’s Iraq war became, whenever someone mentioned the word “oil” in an Iraq context?

This video says about itself:

Stop the theft of Iraqi oil! Hassan Jumaa, Greg Muttitt and Nadia Idle talk about the Iraqi oil law.

When George W. Bush and Tony Blair started the bloody Iraq war, government propaganda, slavishly echoed by the corporate media, said the war was because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction … oops, it did not have those arms … the war was because secularist Saddam Hussein had links to ultra-religious Al Qaeda … oops, that was a lie as well … the war was because Saddam was a dictator and it would bring human rights to Iraq … oops, Saddam was one of many dictators, most of them supported by Bush’s USA and by Blair’s UK (like used to be the case for Saddam); and torture, killings, and other human rights violations got worse, not better, after Bush and Blair had invaded Iraq.

When someone dared to say “No blood for oil“, the Bushite and Blairite apologists for the Iraq war went hysterical. Their lovely baby, their lovely Iraq war, could never ever be about something as prosaic as oil corporations’ profits (or arms dealers’ profits … oil was and is a major factor in a complex of causes, not the sole 100% cause).

Let us return to Blair’s point about Saddam being a dictator, emphasized after the exposition of the “WMD” and “9/11 connection” propaganda lies. Is Tony Blair really opposed to dictators?

As turns out, he is not.

Tony Blair is a crony of the dictator of Kazakhstan, who bloodily suppresses dissent.

There is one of Blair’s many lucrative jobs, as an adviser to the Colombian death squad government.

And, as this picture says, Nicolas Sarkozy is not the only prominent NATO country politician with a dodgy Libyan track record. It shows Blair embracing Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. Gaddafi, to whom Blair deported people for torture. Gadaffi, who later (like had happened to Saddam Hussein before), in the corporate media, suddenly magically transformed from an ally to the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Gadaffi, who was brutally murdered with the consent of his suddenly ex-crony Tony Blair.

And then, there is Blair and the absolute monarchy in Kuwait.

By Rachel Sylvetsky:

London Papers: Tony Blair has Middle East Financial Interests

Claim: Tony Blair, Quartet envoy to Middle East, has secret financial deals with Kuwait’s royal family and an oil firm dealing with Middle East.

The London Daily Telegraph and the London Daily Mail have published findings on former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Middle East financial interests as disclosed by the official UK government committee which vets former ministers’ business interests.

The Daily Mail described Blair as waging an “extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq”, referring to the just revealed fact that Mr. Blair serves as advisor to a South Korean firm, UI Energy, since August 2008, and has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007.

In addition, the daily claimed, the former head of state who is now the Middle East Quartet’s envoy to Israel “went to great efforts to keep hidden a separate £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq’s neighbor Kuwait”, since June 2008, reportedly with the task of producing a report on the oil state’s future over the next 30 years.

Emir of Kuwait meets former British PM Tony Blair: here.

Tony Blair’s company ‘to make £27m advising Kuwait on how to govern itself’: here.

Well, how does the absolute monarchy Kuwait govern itself, now that Tony Blair has been advising it for years, getting loads of money for that?

This video is called Kingdoms of Loathing: Kuwait, Bahrain step up crackdown on opposition.

This video says about itself:

American Teenager Tortured in Kuwait

Gulet Mohamed, an American teenager detained in Kuwait nearly 4 weeks ago and placed on an American no-fly list, says he was severely beaten by his Kuwaiti captors during a weeklong interrogation about possible contacts with terrorism suspects in Yemen. According to Mohamed, he was simply in the country on a quest to learn more about religion.

Read the full story here.

Read Glenn Greenwald’s article in Salon (audio interview with Gulet’s brother included) here.

Gulet finally arrived back to the United States on January 21st. Check out the video here.

Tony [Blair] Of Arabia Earns $43M As Advisor To Kuwait, While Getting Paid By Morgan Stanley And The UN. Read more here.

Kuwaiti finance minister faces questions over deal to pay ‘millions’ to Tony Blair’s company for advising royal family: here.

From the Kuwait Times:

KUWAIT: Opposition MP Faisal Al-Mislem yesterday [16 April 2012] targeted a contract awarded by the previous government to a consultancy firm headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair. In a series of questions to Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah, the lawmaker demanded to know the government agency that signed the contract with Blair. He asked if the contract was awarded to Blair on a personal basis or as head of a consultancy firm and if legal procedures were followed in the process.

Mislem inquired about the exact task given to Blair, the contract’s cost, names of the team selected to work with him and on what basis they were selected. The lawmaker asked if Blair completed his mission and if it achieved its results and inquired about its failures if any. He also asked if Blair’s studies had been incorporated in Kuwait’s development plan. Mislem also asked if Blair is still working on other studies. The said contract was awarded to Blair’s consultant firm several years ago at a cost exceeding KD 1 million according to local media reports.

From the Belfast Telegraph in Ireland:

Bare-faced Tony Blair up to his truth-bending tricks again

By Eamonn McCann – 22 March 2013

Defending the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Tony Blair this week cited Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against his own people as an example of the fundamental evil which the invasion was designed to extirpate.

The reference was to events in the town of Halabja, population 60,000, on March 16, 1988. Halabja had been captured the previous day by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, at that time in alliance with Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war. The response of the Baghdad regime was swift and merciless.

At dawn on March 16, Iraqi bombers sharked across the sky, dropping chemical bombs from Migs, supplied by Russia, and Mirages, supplied by France.

The town was smothered in a fog of death.

The first journalists to arrive in the aftermath were from Iran. Their pictures were flashed around the world, to revolt the conscience of hundreds of millions of people.

One observer described the scene: “The streets were strewn with corpses. People had been killed instantaneously by chemicals in the midst of the ordinary acts of everyday life. Babies still sucked their mothers’ breasts … In the space of a few hours, 5,000 people had died.”

By any definition, this was a crime against humanity. Had it been advanced at the time as a casus belli, many with no stomach for war of any kind might have backed an invasion.

But Saddam was able to shrug off any possibility of an outraged world retaliating. And he was right. Iraq was seen at the time as a secular bulwark against the radical Islam of the Ayatollahs. Five months after the massacre, the UN sub-committee on human rights rejected – by 11 votes to eight – a resolution condemning the dictatorship for human rights violations.

In the US, a Senate resolution calling for sanctions against Iraq was vetoed by George Bush Snr. Bush then authorised a billion-dollar loan to Saddam to build a chemical plant.

Britain’s response to Halabja, and a myriad of other crimes by Saddam, emerged in the course of the Scott Inquiry in 1992 into the collapse of the trial of four directors of machine-tools company Matrix Churchill, which had been selling Saddam equipment with a potential for military use in breach of sanctions that had been imposed in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The four men’s defence was that the company had secretly been encouraged by John Major’s Government to continue shipping the equipment.

The trial collapsed when the Government – citing “the public interest” – refused to hand over documents which the defendants claimed would back up their version of events.

(It is worth noting in passing that it was the invasion of oil-rich Kuwait, not his slaughter of the Kurds, which prompted sanctions and a 180-degree turn in attitudes towards Saddam; Bush now referring to him as “the new Hitler.”)

There is not a word about any of this from Blair, as he offers the Halabja massacre in justification of the invasion. But, then, Blair, morally inert, has never allowed trivia like truth to stand in the way of war.

We know from the Chilcot Inquiry into the war that Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell wrote on September 17, 2002, to Blair’s top sidekick, Alastair Campbell, about the foreword to a dossier Blair was preparing for presentation to Parliament.

“In the penultimate para, you need to make it clear that Saddam could not attack us at the moment,” he wrote.

“The thesis is he would be a threat to the UK in the future if we do not check him.”

Just a week later, Blair stood up in the Commons and told MPs that Saddam Hussein posed “a current and serious threat to the UK national interest.”

Other spurious claims in the dossier included that Iraq had formulated “military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons … Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them”.

Thus the Evening Standard front-page splash on September 24: ’45 minutes from attack’. The Star followed up next morning: ’45 minutes from a chemical war’. The front page of The Sun warned: ‘Brits 45 mins from doom’.

Blair is a stranger to the truth. His repellent smarm, as he repeats on television today the bare-faced lies he used to lure his country into war, compounds the sheer offensiveness of his presence in our midst.

In September last year, Bishop Desmond Tutu refused to share a platform with Blair at a gathering in Johannesburg, suggesting instead that “in a consistent world” Bush and Blair “should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers, who have been made to answer for their actions at (the International Criminal Court in) The Hague.”

Sound man, that Tutu.

Related articles

• If they had a scintilla of decency, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and John Scarlett would not show their faces in public again (dailymail.co.uk)
• Citizens’ Campaign to Arrest Former UK PM (nalonmit.wordpress.com)
• Should Tony Blair be tried as a war criminal? Majority think he was wrong to invade Iraq (express.co.uk)
• Iraq War: major new questions for Tony Blair (telegraph.co.uk)
• “It cannot be justified”: John Prescott admits to regrets over Iraq war ten years on (mirror.co.uk)

Spanish torture in Iraq scandal

This video says about itself:

Spanish soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at Diwaniya – Leaked Video – 2013.

By Alejandro López:

More evidence emerges of torture by Spanish troops in Iraq

28 March 2013

A video posted by the daily El País provides more evidence of the involvement of Spanish troops in torture and mistreatment of detainees during the Iraq war. It shows soldiers beating up two men in the detention centre in Al Diwaniyah in 2004, shortly before the newly elected Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government pulled out of Iraq that year.

Five soldiers are shown entering a cell and shouting, “Get up, get up” in Spanish. When the men don’t move, in all probability because they have no knowledge of Spanish, three soldiers begin kicking and insulting them while two others observe from the door. One of the Spanish soldiers can be heard saying off camera: “Wow! They have killed that one already”, whilst the other laughs at his companion’s joke. The men on the floor can be heard gasping, coughing and moaning.

Spanish troops were deployed in Iraq in August 2003 as part of the US-led coalition forces that former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar agreed with US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Spain also was given the command of troops from Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

A total of 1,300 troops were deployed in Najaf, south of Baghdad, one of the holiest cities in Iraq and a pilgrimage centre for the world’s Shi’ite faithful. Some idea of the mind-set drummed into the troops was indicated by the use of a new arm badge incorporating the Cross of St. James of Compostela—a symbol of the liquidation of the Muslims who were driven out of Spain after centuries of fighting in 1492. This was also the start of the period of colonialist expansion by Spain’s Catholic monarchy.

Even the centre-right newspaper El Mundo was forced to remark, “To put the Cross of St. James of Compostela on the uniforms of Spanish soldiers demonstrates an absolute ignorance of the psychology of the society in which they will have to carry out their mission”. And it added, “It would be difficult to come up with any symbol more offensive to the Shiite population than this cross”.

The Ministry of Defence has admitted the authenticity of the video and that, “In accordance with the instructions of Defence Minister Pedro Morenés, the army has placed in the hands of a military judge in Madrid the first conclusions of a summary of information in relation to a video recently published regarding a case of alleged mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Spanish soldiers”.

Nevertheless, the essential purpose of this investigation will be to whitewash the role of top policy-makers in encouraging and sanctioning the use of torture. This was not the first time torture was used on detainees by Spanish soldiers and nothing has happened to the perpetrators.

According to the Spanish journalist Olga Rodriguéz, “[In] Diwaniya, in 2004, it was not difficult to find local people who knew that Spanish troops mistreated prisoners. ‘It is an open secret’ said an Iraqi whom I had known for some time”.

In March 2004, US troops detained Flayeh al Mayali, an Iraqi translator who helped journalists and the Spanish intelligence service CNI, accusing him of helping insurgent forces murder seven CNI agents in Iraq. Mayali spent four days in Spanish custody where he says he was hooded, tied up and beaten and deprived of sleep. He then spent a year in the detention camp at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, after which he was released without charge. No investigation took place. Even National Court Judge Fernando Andreu, who opened an inquiry into the deaths of the agents, was not informed of Mayali’s detention.

In another instance, a Spanish intelligence officer admitted that the Spanish army used US “enhanced interrogation” methods that included prolonged stress positions, exposure to harsh elements, waterboarding and other examples of physical and mental torture. The officer claimed, “we Spanish do not torture or humiliate, but we put pressure. We follow the North American operating manual: we placed sandbags on the heads of those who did not collaborate to make them lose their sense of direction. For the more stubborn we would put on a heavy metal Metallica CD [...]. We also injected a syringe with liquid up their noses, it does no permanent damage and leaves no marks, but [the victim] spends ten minutes squealing like a pig”.

A Spanish soldier told the La Clave newspaper in March 2006 that “In a conflict there is always torture, but it never comes to light. What is going on with the Americans and the British is a daily occurrence. The more information is obtained [via torture], the fewer casualties there are in their own forces”.

A total of 111 Iraqis were detained by the Spanish army in Iraq, according to government sources. The names of the arrested are unknown, but the government indicated in 2006 that 78 of those arrested were handed over to the Iraqi police, whilst 33 were sent to the Baghdad Confinement Facility administered by the coalition, and most likely ended up in Abu Ghraib.

Former PSOE Defence Minister José Bono has denied any knowledge of the latest video and sought to exonerate himself and his Popular Party predecessor Federico Trillo-Figueroa, saying, “I cannot assure you outright that this never happened before I took over the ministry, but I am convinced that my predecessor never knew about this”.

However, in 2010 cables from the US embassy in Madrid released by WikiLeaks showed that whilst the PSOE government and judiciary were promoting a public image of independence from US imperialism, following the withdrawal of troops in 2004, they were busy working behind the scenes to prevent prosecutions of US officials and military personnel charged with war crimes, including those involved in the death of Spanish journalist José Couso.

The PSOE government also collaborated with CIA rendition flights to Guantanamo Bay, allowing them to refuel in the Canary Islands and Palma de Mallorca. According to WikiLeaks cables, the then vice-president of the PSOE government, Fernández de la Vega, met with the US ambassador and stated that, “Spain had nothing against [CIA] intelligence flights through Spanish territory”, but they wanted “to be informed” to prevent “being caught unaware”.

Ever since the death of General Franco, the army has been promoted in Spain as a humanitarian force dedicated to keeping the peace. The video lifts a curtain on this myth and shows its true nature—an occupying army in a US-led neo-colonial war.

Iraq War’s Ultimate Cost Much Higher Than First Thought: here.

The Guardian recently uncovered more evidence of how the US army helped set up death squads in support of the postwar occupation of Iraq: here.

The US and Britain not only bathed Iraq in blood, they promoted a sectarian war that now threatens the region: here.

During the Iraq war, private defense contractors providing security and support outnumbered troops on the ground at points. Contractors can enhance US military capacity but also entail risks. US experience with private security contractors holds several key lessons: here.

‘Baghdad Bob’ and his ridiculous, true predictions: here.

Related articles

• Spanish military torture in Iraq (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Icons Of The Iraq War: Prisoner Abuse — Abu Ghraib’s Lynndie England (rferl.org)
• Video of Spanish troops supposedly beating Iraqi detainees sparks outrage (elpais.com)
• British Iraq torture scandal (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War Harmed the US (juancole.com)
• Dahr Jamail Returns to Iraq to Find Rampant Torture and a Failed State Living in “Utter Devastation” + Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
• Iraq’s Secret War Files (Documentary) (mysticpolitics.wordpress.com)
• Iraq inquiry hears claims of torture by British soldiers (scotsman.com)

Bird boxes in Iraq

From BirdLife:

Bird boxes Iraqi-style

Wed, Mar 27, 2013

Kani Shok Primary Schoolgirls with the nest boxes they made (Nature Iraq)

Take a look at these photos. You might be forgiven for not knowing they were taken in Iraq, a country where the news headlines are rarely happy ones.

These are Iraqi kids, from five schools around the mountain of Peremagroon, in Kurdistan, who this spring have made and erected over 40 nestboxes as part of a conservation education programme funded by the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative.

A year ago Nature Iraq, in partnership with BirdLife International and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, embarked upon a multi-faceted, three-year conservation programme – the first of its kind in the Middle East. An online course in conservation has started at Sulaimani University and over 40 students and others have enrolled. Plans are also taking shape for developing an app to help identify birds, together with other animals and plants that children, students and Iraqi visitors to the region might expect to see around Peremagroon – one of the most important areas for biodiversity in Kurdistan.

Kani Shok Primary School with their nest boxes. (Nature Iraq)

The most exciting venture has been the nestbox project. Holes for hole-nesting birds seem to be at a premium in Kurdistan, possibly because of the destruction of woodland in the past, and the fact that many trees have not been allowed to mature. It came as a surprise to see Great Tits nesting in holes in the ground!

Hopefully this Nature Iraq project will provide nesting sites for birds such as the Great Tit and Sombre Tit – a species with a specialised habitat and globally restricted range.

This area of Iraqi Kurdistan has one of the highest densities of Eastern and Western Rock Nuthatches in the Middle East – it would be exciting if they could also be attracted to nesting in boxes.

Zewe Primary School student putting up a nest box. (Nature Iraq)

A future step will be for NI to put video cameras in some of the boxes so that Iraqi children can enjoy watching the daily lives of these enchanting birds.

This story was first published in British Birds magazine

Related articles

• Nestboxes in Paris Parks (daysontheclaise.blogspot.com)
• Lebanese bird conservationists win prize (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bird houses in your own home (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)

Shell oil-military revolving door

This video says about itself:

Shell Oil: Human rights go up in flames

Gas flaring happens when oil is pumped out of the ground, producing gas. The gas is separated out and, in Nigeria, is usually burnt as waste. This practice, combined with numerous oil spills, has left communities in the Niger Delta with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land and breathe in air that smells of oil and gas. It also makes a mockery of Shells much-flaunted business principles.

In his last speech as president of the USA, President Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex.

Today, it often seems that this complex is, more precisely, a military-oil industrial complex.

The sanctimonious denials by both Tony Blair and oil corporations like BP and Shell that these corporations, God forbid, had anything to do with preparing the war in Iraq, have been exposed as lies.

Shell plays a major role in designing the future strategy of NATO. A strategy of yet more humanitarian wars wars for oil, for other resources, for politicians wanting to avert people’s attention from domestic problems, for politicians’ delusions about their reputations in history, etc. etc.

Today, there is news about an agreement between Shell corporation and the Dutch Department of War. “Of course”, like in many other countries, the Dutch Department of War is euphemistically officially called Department of Defence.

There will be some cuts in the Dutch “Defence” department (if ALL “austerity” would directly hurt poor people, arts, the environment, etc., while the military budget would keep rising all the time, then cuts hurting poor people, arts, the environment, etc. would be more difficult to sell to the people). Now, the Dutch “Defence” department has agreed with Shell that some ex-”Defence” employees will be transferred to jobs at the multinational oil corporation. A Shell spokesperson says: “because we need people with technical skills”. Maybe, skills in preparing and waging wars for oil are considered to be “technical” skills as well.

Related articles

• Shell Oil Axes Exec For Alaska Drilling Fiasco. Will More Heads Roll? (forbes.com)
• Shell reveals Iranian oil trade loss (en.trend.az)
• Shell barred from returning to drill for oil in Arctic without overhaul (guardian.co.uk)
• Setback for Shell’s Arctic oil ambitions as rigs require repair in Asia (telegraph.co.uk)
• Shell continues spilling oil in North Sea despite efforts to improve (guardian.co.uk)
• Shell oil rigs in Alaska to be repaired in Asia (guardian.co.uk)
• Niger Delta Farmers Vs. Shell Oil: Dutch Court Largely Rejects Nigerians’ Case Against Shell (thenigerianoracle.com)

British peace activist Brian Haw and the Iraq war

This video from Britain is called Recharged Magazine – Unseen Brian Haw Interview.

By Lesley Docksey in Britain:

Brian Haw and the right to protest

Friday 22 March 2013

It’s sad that well-known peace campaigners should drop below the radar not just of the politicians who hate them but of the peace campaigners who used to idolised them.

One such man, who dedicated the last 10 years of his life to confronting Parliament over the outrages of British foreign policy, was Brian Haw.

As a committed Christian and a father, Haw was appalled by the sanctions the West had imposed on Iraq which resulted in the tragic and avoidable deaths of so many Iraqi children.

Brian left his home and arrived in London’s Parliament Square, where he camped at the side of the road facing the Houses of Parliament.

Always, for those of us who continued to protest about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the awful damage our actions were doing to that nation, Haw was a figurehead, an inspiration. Few of us could claim his courage, his determination or his perseverance.

For nearly 10 years he stayed. Night after night of sleeping on the pavement, in all weathers and with little protection.

Nothing the police or Parliament did could break him and make him move. Haw’s protest caused them no end of problems as he and his anti-war placards and banners were a constant reminder of all the lies that were told in the run-up to the attack on Iraq in 2003 and continued to be told to justify the invasion.

Members of Parliament had to pass his huge collection of displays and peace messages every time they went in and out of the building.

In his haste to be rid of this “turbulent priest” of a campaigner, who harangued MPs daily with his megaphone as they went into the august halls of Westminster, the then home secretary David Blunkett introduced the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 – aimed at removing Haw by banning protests within one kilometre (0.6 miles) of Parliament without police permission.

This came into effect on August 1 2005. But where else should we protest for peace if not outside the place that had rubber-stamped Tony Blair’s desire to illegally attack Iraq?

Comedian Mark Thomas headed an action to keep protest going within the 1km barrier. He wanted to demonstrate how very ludicrous the ban was.

“The point is simply that if one person with a banner can be deemed to be a protester by the police and they need to get a licence six days in advance to enter the designated zone, then we have reached a state of absurdity,” Thomas said.

A point made all the clearer when a woman was threatened with arrest for having an iced cake with the word “peace” written on it.

On certain days individual protesters, who had each registered their very individual protests with the police – including, for instance, the right to jump off Westminster Bridge – held their protests within the designated zone. It made the new law look very stupid indeed.

But so hasty had Parliament been in creating the law that when it was challenged it discovered that the one person they had failed to ban was Haw himself.

So he stayed – and stayed. For some time he was alone, although visited and supported by many well-wishers. He became a tourist attraction.

MPs complained that they could not properly debate in the chamber because of the noise of his megaphone protest in the square outside. Presumably the constant traffic noise complete with police and ambulance sirens is conducive to a good debate.

In May 2006 his much-photographed display of placards and banners was reduced from 40 metres to just three metres in a night raid by 78 police officers – which cost a staggering £27,000.

Not so oddly, this happened within hours of artist Mark Wallinger showing two curators from the Tate Gallery Haw’s display and announcing he wanted to recreate it for an exhibition. Nevertheless Wallinger had his way and the exhibition, State Britain, ran at the Tate from January to August 2007.

Haw continued to protest with his truncated display despite numerous arrests and assaults. He was on crutches for his last years in the square. He died of cancer in June 2011 and the world became a poorer place.

Haw was joined in December 2005 by Melbourne-born Barbara Tucker. While Haw had some legal authority to stay there, Tucker doesn’t – which has meant she has been arrested an astonishing 47 times while in the square, usually on a charge of “unauthorised demonstration.”

When Haw died she nobly carried on. She has served two short spells in Holloway prison as well as suffering constant harassment from police, heritage wardens and passing rowdies.

Until January 2012 she had a tent but that was confiscated under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act.

After that she sat in a chair on the pavement, trying to sleep under a large green umbrella wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing. She has slept in the open for over a year now without a tent and has been treated for exposure. In the hope of getting her confiscated tent back, Tucker took the decision to go on hunger strike, starting on December 27 2012.

While Haw managed to achieve some media recognition for his stance, Tucker has had little to none.

One day maybe, when the world stops fighting needless, illegal and cruel wars, people will finally give these dedicated campaigners they recognition they deserve.

I’d like to see a statue of Haw in Parliament Square, confronting Westminster and challenging its dishonesty and hypocrisy as he did for so many cold, hard years.

Until then, those of us who still call ourselves peace campaigners should at least make the effort to remember how much he once meant to us all. Parliament may not like dissenters – I, for one, do.

Related articles

• Where’s Wallinger? Turner Prize artist hides a labyrinth of paintings underground (standard.co.uk)
• Citizens’ Campaign to Arrest Former UK PM (nalonmit.wordpress.com)
• Mark Wallinger commissioned for largest ever artwork on London Underground (telegraph.co.uk)

No NATO arms for Syrian war, the people say

This video is called ‘Al-Qaeda “army” presence in Syria much higher than officials say’.

From daily The Guardian in Britain of Friday 22 March 2013:

Americans and Britons are deeply sceptical about the idea of arming Syria’s rebels and the possibility of sending western troops into the country, according to a bilateral poll.

Despite the escalating civil war, growing casualty figures and a rising tide of refugees flooding out of Syria, there is little appetite for more robust action than the current approach of providing “non-lethal support” to the rebels, the YouGov poll found.

There have been increasing demands on Capitol Hill to arm the opponents of the Assad regime or intervene more directly, and this week Barack Obama toughened his own rhetoric amid contested claims about Damascus using chemical weapons. But the new binational survey – produced for YouGov-Cambridge, the polling company’s academic thinktank – finds US voters opposed to the idea of supplying munitions by a 29-point margin: 45% against to 16% in favour.

Identical questions were posed in Britain, where David Cameron has, with the French president, François Hollande, recently tried and failed to persuade the EU to lift its arms embargo. But the British public emerges as even more strongly against: 57% oppose arming the rebels and 16% are in favour.

In both the UK and the US, opposition to arming the rebels is marked on the right as well as the left of the political spectrum: 52% of American Republicans and 63% of British Conservatives are against supplying arms.

Any thought of sending western troops into Syria would also be badly received – especially in the UK. By a 32-point margin (55%-23%) Britons reject the idea of sending in UK and allied troops to protect civilians. The anti-intervention lead rises to 59 points (68%-9%) if the aim were “overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad“.

In the US too, proposals to put boots on the ground would run up against public opinion. Americans lean 33%-27% against sending in troops “to protect civilians”, and are more decisively against directly enforcing regime change, splitting 42%-16% against. Although more Republicans (22%) than Democrats (14%) would be prepared to support the latter, the partisan difference are not as great might have expected given the continuing divisions over the war to topple Saddam Hussein.

A decade on from the invasion of 2003, YouGov reaffirms the verdict of other pollsters and finds a rough two-to-one (53%-27%) balance of Britons saying that the war launched by George Bush and Tony Blair was wrong rather than right.

From the Campaign Against Arms Trade in Britain:

What You Can Do

Promote human rights not arms sales

Prince Charles is just back from a visit to Saudi Arabia to help ‘enhance military links’ – despite the regime’s horrific human rights abuses and its suppression of dissent. In the UK, the government continued to push more arms sales.

Royal visits and the promotion of arms sales send the wrong message: one that condones not condemns human rights abuses, that legitimises authoritarian regimes and demoralises those struggling for democracy.

» Please write to your MP to express your concerns – and ask them to act to ensure that Saudi Arabia and other countries which abuse human rights are not invited to this September’s DSEi arms fair in London.

No weapons to Syria

Foreign Minister William Hague is chipping away at the EU arms embargo. He has announced the UK will send armoured vehicles and body armour and refuses to rule out further steps.

CAAT strongly opposes any moves to provide arms to any side in the conflict. Instead the UK should place pressure on countries giving military support to either side to end such support, and focus on non-military solutions to the conflict.

» Act now to ask William Hague to reinstate a full arms embargo on all sides in the conflict. Email William Hague today.

Arming repressive regimes: NOT OK!

Weapons supplied by the UK have been used against democracy protesters in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet the UK still spends public money on persuading some of the world’s worst human rights abusers and most unstable regimes to buy weapons. This is NOT OK.

David Cameron, on an arms sales tour of the Middle East, claimed arms sales to authoritarian regimes are ‘legitimate and right.’ This is NOT OK.

» Add your voice to CAAT’s petition to say it’s time to end government support for the arms trade.

After US President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel last week the US and its allies are moving ahead with plans to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and install a pro-Western regime. CIA operations and calls to arm the Syrian opposition are escalating, amid a US diplomatic offensive in the Middle East to isolate Assad, and the collapse of a pro-Syrian government in Lebanon: here.

Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.: here.

The CIA war against Syria: here.

USA-Syria: The Only Red Line Should be to Stay Out: here.

The US and Jordanian militaries have stepped up a secret program to train thousands of armed fighters to send into Syria with the apparent aim of carving out a buffer zone in the south of the country: here.

Western leaders divided over how to take on Syrian revolt: here.

FRANCE DETERMINED TO ARM THE ‘SYRIAN NATIONAL COALITION’: here.

In a series of interviews, UN investigator Carla del Ponte said that sarin gas used in Syria was fired by the US-backed opposition, not the regime of President Bashar al-Assad: here.

Ex-CNN Reporter Ordered to Manipulate News on Syria and Iran: here.

Related articles

• Syria, another NATO war? (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• France, UK press to lift EU arms ban for Syria rebels (worldbulletin.net)
• UPDATE 3-France, Britain fail to win easing of Syria arms ban – Reuters UK (uk.reuters.com)
• UK News: Nato countries ‘plan Syria action’ (walesonline.co.uk)
• William Hague: Britain may defy Syria arms ban (metro.co.uk)
• Obama warns of extremist threat in post-Assad Syria (dailystar.com.lb)
• EU Remains Split on Shipping Arms to Syrian Rebels (abcnews.go.com)
• US, NATO Prepare Syria Intervention (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)
• William Hague admits UK-supplied weapons could fall into the hands of jihadists in Syria (independent.co.uk)

Dying US Iraq veteran’s letter to Bush and Cheney

This video from the USA is called Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq With Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers.

By David Walsh in the USA:

Dying US army veteran denounces “illegal” Iraq War

22 March 2013

Iraq War veteran Tomas Young, currently under hospice care at his home in Kansas City, Missouri, has written a scathing “last letter,” published at Truthdig.com, addressed to former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Young, the subject of the 2007 documentary film Body of War , explains that he is writing his letter “on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end.”

Young goes on: “I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.”

Body of War (2007): Tomas Young visits Ground Zero [Credit: Ellen Spiro / Mobilus Media]

Addressing Bush and Cheney, Young writes: “I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done.”

Body of War, co-directed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, recounted Young’s story, his horrendous medical condition and his ongoing opposition to the Iraq War. Young enlisted in the US Army after the September 11, 2001 attacks, because, as he explains in his recent letter, “our country had been attacked.”

Body of War (2007): Gold Star Mothers who have lost children in the Iraq War touch Tomas Young at a Washington DC peace march [Credit: Ellen Spiro / Mobilus Media]

Only five days into his first deployment in Iraq in April 2004, while riding in a Humvee in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the young soldier was shot by an insurgent from above. The bullet severed Young’s spinal column. At the time of the making of Body of War, as the WSWS reported, he was “not only confined to a wheelchair but suffers severe attendant disabilities, including an inability to cough, trouble regulating his body temperature, dizzy spells, urinary tract infections and sexual dysfunction.”

After an anoxic brain injury in 2008, Young, now 33, explained to Truthdig’s Chris Hedges, “I lost a lot of dexterity and strength in my upper body. So I wouldn’t be able to shoot myself or even open the pill bottle to give myself an overdose.” He told Hedges, “I felt at the end of my rope … I made the decision to go on hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away.”

The Donahue-Spiro documentary included a number of moving sequences of Young participating in anti-war activities where he encountered other disabled veterans, as well as family members of soldiers who had died in Iraq. In August 2005, along with his wife at the time, Young traveled to Camp Casey, Cindy Sheehan’s protest encampment outside George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. …

“I did not join the Army to ‘liberate’ Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called ‘democracy’ in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes.”

Young describes his body “filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away,” dealing with the fact “that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.”

Toward the end of his letter, Young writes, “I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. … My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial.”

Young’s letter and condition speak to the appalling tragedy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the waste and destruction of hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of lives, all sacrificed in the pursuit of US imperialist dominance of the globe.

Related articles

• Dying Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young Explains Decision to End His Life (leaksource.wordpress.com)
• Dying Iraq War Veteran’s Open Letter To George Bush & Dick Cheney (federaljack.com)
• The Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran (goldenageofgaia.com)
• Tomas Young’s Dying Letter to Bush and Cheney (americanlivewire.com)
• Iraq War vet pens ‘last letter’ to Bush and Cheney (americansforcommonsenseblog.wordpress.com)

Iraq war based on lies

This video from the USA about the Iraq war is called WMD LIES – Bush Cheney Rumsfeld – THE ULTIMATE CLIP.

By Will Stone in Britain:

Iraq: Decade of war ‘based on lies‘

Monday 18 March 2013

Vital intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq 10 years ago was based on “fabrication” and “wishful thinking,” a new documentary broadcast tonight claims.

A BBC Panorama documentary broadcast to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war suggests British and US security services relied on several pieces of questionable information.

The programme goes on to reveal that at the same time they dismissed other information that was contradictory.

Lasting over six years the Iraq war claimed the lives of 179 British personnel, up to a million Iraqis and cost more than £9 billion.

Britain ended combat operations in 2009 but a decade on the war remains unfinished business, with ongoing questions about the legality of the invasion and the conduct of British troops.

It comes as information from the Iraq Body Count project, an independent database, revealed that the war was likely to have led to the deaths of more than 174,000 people of all nationalities.

It also calculated that the war had led to more than 39,900 combatants of all nationalities being killed.

The IBC has been continuously tracking, analysing and maintaining a public record or civilian deaths since March 20 2003 when the Iraq war began.

The organisation found that for every coalition force death, 25 Iraqi civilians lost their lives.

Stop the War Coalition officer and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Kate Hudson told the Star: “This timely documentary serves to underline what the anti-war movement has said all along – the case for going to war by Blair and his cronies was based on a tissue of lies.

“The destruction caused to Iraqi society knows no bounds. Our hearts go out to the people of Iraq on the anniversary of the illegal war.”

She praised the hard work of the IBC in keeping the war‘s death toll up-to-date, but added that because the organisation had to cross-reference every detail the real figure is “somewhere in the many hundreds of thousands.

“And the number of displaced and injured runs into the millions,” Ms Hudson added.

The Spies Who Fooled The World: A BBC Panorama Special, is broadcast tonight on BBC One at 10.35pm.

Months ahead of its date of release, it is being made clear that the UK’s Chilcot public inquiry into the Iraq war will be published without including crucial documentation: here.

10 years later, poll shows majority views Iraq invasion as mistake: here.

Iraq War Cost $800 Billion, And What Do We Have To Show For It? Here.

How the US public was defrauded by the hidden cost of the Iraq war: here.

Charts: Bush Lowballed Us on Iraq by $6 Trillion: here.

Iraq 10 years later—the deadly consequences of spin: here.

In the run-up to the Iraq war papers emerged showing Saddam tried to buy uranium from Niger. They were fake. How the US sought to conceal the deception: here.

Related articles

• Iraq anniversary: war intelligence ‘was a lie’, BBC Panorama documentary to say (mytechnologyworld9.blogspot.in)
• Iraq anniversary: war intelligence ‘was a lie’, BBC Panorama documentary to say (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cheney Iraq War Motive Revealed (huffingtonpost.com)
• Iraq war intelligence was a lie, claims WMD spy (theprovince.com)
• Intelligence based on ‘fabrication’ (standard.co.uk)
• | A decade later and the Iraq debate is still contaminated with myths! (truthaholics.wordpress.com)
• Iraq: BBC documentary says invasion based on lies (scotsman.com)
• British government sabotages Iraq war debate (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)