Bush, Blair Iraq war lies, new information

Posted on April 11, 2019 by petrel41

British demonstrators condemn Tony Blair outside the Chilcot Inquiry in 2010

Thursday, 11 April 2019

WAR ON IRAQ PLANNED LONG BEFORE 2003

SIXTEEN years on from the start of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, further evidence has emerged that the war was planned long before the attack took place and that the stated reason for it, ie ‘Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was bogus.

Speaking before the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee last week, the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral The Lord West of Spithead, revealed that he was told in June 2002, ‘that we would be invading Iraq with America at the beginning of the following year’.

‘It was quite clear that the Government were thinking we have to get Parliament and others on side. But what was interesting was that as it developed, there was all this stuff on weapons of mass destruction and everything, and it did seem to me that people were looking for a casus belli that they could discuss in Parliament,’ Lord West said.

Let’s think back to what we – the public – were actually told in 2002/3. Bush and Blair and their acolytes repeatedly said that the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein could prevent war by admitting he had WMDs and disarming.

As late as 25th February 2003, Blair was saying that ‘even now’ Saddam could avoid war by ‘accepting the UN route to disarmament.’ ‘I do not want war,’ he told the House of Commons. ‘I do not believe anyone in this House wants war. But disarmament peacefully can only happen with Saddam’s active co-operation.’

But it’s clear that whatever Saddam did, he and his country were going to be hit with Shock and Awe. The whole charade of weapons inspectors, sent in to search for weapons that were not there, was designed to try and convince people that war was a last resort and not the first option.

Crucially, the invasion had to come before the weapons inspectors finished their job and gave Iraq a clean bill of health – as then the pretext for war would have gone. Admiral West’s revelations, which follow on from similar comments he made in 2016, are not the only ones we’ve had from Inside the Tent figures about what was really going on in 2002/3.

In his memoir My Life, Our Times, published in November 2017, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2003, admitted that the Iraq War was ‘not justified’.

He also said ‘we were all misled on the existence of WMDs’.

According to Brown, a key US intelligence report which not only refuted the claim that Iraq was producing WMDs, but also their ‘current ability to do so’, was not seen by the British government. An attempt to pass the buck? You make your own mind up. Earlier, the former British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said that President Bush had first asked Tony Blair for his support in a war against Iraq at a private White House dinner just nine days after the 9-11 terror attacks, which had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq.

We also know from the Chilcot Inquiry that on 28th July 2002, Tony Blair sent Bush a memo in which he pledged ‘I will be with you, whatever.’ He went on: ‘The military part of this is hazardous but I will concentrate mainly on the political context for success’.

That involved trying to ‘encapsulate our casus belli in some defining way’, with weapons inspections the chosen route. ‘If he (Saddam) did say yes, we continue the build-up and we send teams over and the moment he obstructs, we say: he’s back to his games.

‘That’s it. In any event, he would probably screw it up and not meet the deadline, and if he came forward after the deadline, we would just refuse to deal.’ As for timing, Blair says ‘we could start building up after the break. A strike date could be Jan/Feb next year.’

Blair continued to scare us witless right up to the launch of the invasion in March 2003 about Saddam’s deadly arsenal. A critical claim, contained in the so-called ‘September Dossier’, was the one that Iraq possessed chemical weapons which could be assembled and launched within 45 minutes.

This led to the infamous ‘Brits 45 minutes from Doom’ headline in Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and similarly terrifying headlines in other newspapers. Yet in 2004, Blair said that he had not realised before the war that the alleged weapons were not missiles but only battlefield munitions.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote in the Guardian: ‘I was astonished by his reply as I had been briefed that Saddam’s weapons were only battlefield ones and I could not conceive that the prime minister had been given a different version.’

In July 2003 a Foreign Affairs committee report declared: ‘We conclude that the 45 minutes claim did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source.’

It is clear that the Iraq War was a plan hatched by neocon extremists in Washington and lurid claims of Iraqi WMDs, which did not exist, were made to justify it. The Nuremberg Judgement of the trial of the WW2 Nazi leaders stated: ‘War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.

‘To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’

The Iraq War was clearly a war of aggression, and as such, an example of ‘the supreme international crime’, yet, sixteen years on, no one has been held accountable for it. That’s in spite of over 1m people losing their lives following the invasion and the war greatly increasing the threat from terrorist groups.

Even Tony Blair himself has conceded there were ‘elements of truth’ in the claims that the Iraq War led to the rise of Daesh/IS [ISIS]. Worse still, the war on Iraq was followed by more aggression against Libya, in 2011, and Syria, wars which like the invasion of Iraq, have helped provoke a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions.

Let’s go back to 27th January 1998, more than three and a half years before 9-11.

It was on that date that a letter was sent to President Clinton, on behalf of the neoconservative ‘Project for a New American Century’.

The letter called for ‘removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now has to be the aim of American foreign policy’. Among the signatories to the call to arms were Elliott Abrams and John Bolton.

Abrams is now the US special envoy to Venezuela– and seeking regime change in Caracas, while Bolton is President Trump’s National Security Advisor and warning us about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons programme’. It’s as if the Iraq War never happened.

George W. Bush:

– Invaded Iraq on a pack of lies

– Bombed hospitals, homes and markets

– Killed, maimed and displaced millions of innocents

– Ravaged the country with depleted uranium, white phosphorus and cluster bombs

– Gave rise to ISIS

Where is this “soul” you speak of? https://t.co/TZtzrAmg2i

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) December 1, 2019

GEORGE BUSH CALLS IRAQ INVASION ‘UNJUSTIFIED’ IN CRINGEY SLIP-UP Former President George W. Bush made a major slip-up when he deplored the “wholly unjustified” invasion of Iraq during a speech. He made the error while referencing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” Bush said before correcting his error. “I mean, of Ukraine … I’m 75.” [HuffPost]

Trump administration protects Bush from war crimes prosecution

Posted on April 8, 2019 by petrel41

This 8 April 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Secretary of State Pompeo Protecting Bush Jr. from War Crimes Prosecution (Pt 1/2)

With the revocation of the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor’s US visa, Pompeo and Bolton are trying to make sure that high-level US government officials are never prosecuted for war crimes committed in Afghanistan or elsewhere, says Law Prof. Francis Boyle.

This 8 April 2019 video from the USA is the sequel.

Iraqi throws shoes at Bush, 10 years ago

Posted on December 14, 2018 by petrel41

Today is the 10 year anniversary of a heroic act. pic.twitter.com/0VEjauNpdn

— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) December 14, 2018

10 years ago, an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at then United States President George W Bush, who had invaded and destroyed his country.

Tortured in George W Bush’s USA

Posted on April 26, 2018 by petrel41

This 2009 video from the USA says about itself:

This is part 1 of a documentary about terror suspect Ali al-Marri, who’s been held at the Charleston Navy Brig for 7 years without a trial. We went to the Mideast to film this right after the Presidential election in 2008. Our story highlights this case as a prime example of how the law and the Constitution can easily be ignored in a time of war. In February 2009, al-Marri learned he will finally have his case heard in court.

Translated from Dutch daily De Volkskrant:

New evidence shows that Americans also used torture methods in the United States itself. The Qatari Ali al-Marri tells for the first time how he was treated in the aftermath of 9/11.

by Maud Effting, Tom Kreling and Huib Modderkolk

Ali al-Marri looks at the door of his American cell that swings open. ‘Pack your things’, the guard says in the doorway. “We’re leaving.” He looks up. Al-Marri – dark eyes, long black hair and a beard – has been trapped in the US for almost a year and a half, where he has come from Qatar to study. Now he is suspected of involvement in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

When he has gathered his things together, his hands and feet are chained. Then guards chain his hands to his waist. He gets ski goggles on which the glass is made black. A pair of headphones goes over his ears. This is how he shuffles behind his guards. In the past year he has been waiting in prison for something to happen with his case. Waiting for a formal charge, a conviction, a punishment. Sometimes he was moved. He was suddenly put in another cell. He waited there again. But this time it is different. Outside he hears the rotors of an aircraft turning. He peeks along the side of his glasses and then he sees them. Soldiers. He knows bad things will happen. He has never seen soldiers in prison. “Am I declared to be an enemy combatant?” He asks. “Yes”, says a soldier. It is June 23, 2003 and Ali al-Marri disappears in the plane that will take him to the military prison: the Navy Brig in South Carolina. From now on, other rules apply.

Because of his new status as enemy combatant- President George W. Bush signed the papers – he will disappear into a black hole from today on. He will not have contact with his lawyers for nearly a year and a half. His family has no idea where he is. And if he still lives at all. A week after the September 11 attacks, Bush was given the power by Congress to “use all necessary and appropriate means” in the fight against terrorism. For so-called enemy combatants, this meant that they could be held indefinitely and without trial. Most of the enemy combatants were detained at Guantánamo Bay after 2001. Only three were jailed on US American territory. Ali al-Marri was one of them.

For the first time, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri (52) is telling his story. He is a Qatarese banker who came to the US with his wife and five children just one day before September 11, 2001, to study information technology . He previously earned his bachelor’s degree in the US. He was arrested after the attacks. Initially he was seen as an important witness. He refused, however, to say something and gradually the accusations became more serious. Members of Al Qaeda in Guantánamo Bay were supposed to have said – maybe after torture – that he had ties with them: al-Marri supposedly belonged to a sleeping cell of Al Qaeda, waiting for instructions. After that, the FBI treated him for years as an important terrorism suspect.

Al-Marri denies to this day that he had anything to do with Al Qaida … Now he is here in a room in Amsterdam, and he wants to tell how he was treated in prison. How they tried to break him spiritually. And what total isolation did to him. How he was slowly dehumanized. On US American territory. His story is supported by new documents that show that the methods used in al-Marri are inhuman or torture according to international law.

… The log says that a senior officer of the Navy Brig passes. “Do I have any rights?” asks al-Marri. “No”, the man says. …

In December 2003, the interrogations seem to change: FBI agent Ali Soufan comes to the jail. He is one of the few Arabic-speaking agents at the service, famous for confessions he extracted from terrorist suspects. …

The atmosphere changes, al-Marri says. “Soufan said he could have my family imprisoned and tortured. He threatened that he would rape my wife in front of me, that he would put my children in the cell next to me so that I could hear them cry. He could make me disappear to black sites where they could do what they wanted with me. “Soufan said he had homosexual soldiers who wanted to have fun with me. …

They screamed that I had to keep my mouth shut. At one point I saw someone gesturing that this did not work. One interrogator walked out. “After a minute he was back, he says. “In his hands he had duct tape and a pair of white sports socks. They stuck my mouth shut with tape. “It does not work: the tape gets loose because he pushes it away with his tongue.” They try again. “Soufan pushed my jaws to open my mouth – he knew exactly what to do. Then he pushed the socks in. He shouted: stop singing, you will listen. Then he closed my mouth – one hand under my chin, the other on my head – while the other interrogator closed my head with tape. He went four, five times, horizontally and vertically. “Al-Marri begins to hum. They push his head towards the photos, shout close to his face, hit his cheeks with two hands, sit on his lap: they want him to listen. With two fingers they push his chin up. “I breathed through my nose. But from one moment to the next I suddenly got no air. I choked. It felt like you were trying to breathe under water. I could not do anything. The only thing I wanted was to take out those socks. But my hands were shackled. “I do not know where I was suffocated. The socks? My saliva? My tongue? It was as if I was drowning. I struggled, my body was shocked. I tried to pull my hands out of the shackles. I remember seeing two men sitting quietly beside me and thinking: they just let it happen. “How long does everything take – he does not remember. He only knows that at a given moment he no longer perceived anything. “I have never been closer to death”, says Al Marri. According to documents, the incident takes 15 minutes, until someone removes the tape. “I started coughing, throwing up.” His description is largely supported by documents. The Defense Department only deviates over the socks. …

He has been in total for thirteen years, until he is released in 2015 and expelled to Qatar. ‘I call on people who have experienced the same thing to also go out and tell their story about this man. It will become clear what he has done. I want justice.”

Bush’s Iraq invasion, 15 years later

Posted on March 21, 2018 by petrel41

This 20 March 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

“It Was A Crime”: 15 Years After U.S. Invasion, Iraqis Still Face Trauma, Destruction & Violence

It was 15 years ago today when the U.S. invaded Iraq on the false pretense that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

The attack came despite worldwide protest and a lack of authorization from the United Nations Security Council. At around 5:30 a.m. in Baghdad on March 20, 2003, air raid sirens were heard as the U.S. invasion began.

The fighting has yet to end, and the death toll may never be known. Conservative estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll at 200,000. But some counts range as high as 2 million.

In 2006, the British medical journal Lancet estimated 600,000 Iraqis died in just the first 40 months of the war. The U.S. has also lost about 4,500 soldiers in Iraq. Just last week, seven U.S. servicemembers died in a helicopter crash in western Iraq near the Syrian border.

The war in Iraq has also destabilized much of the Middle East. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others have directly blamed the U.S. invasion of Iraq for the rise of ISIS.

We speak to the Iraqi-French sociologist Zahra Ali, who teaches at Rutgers University; Matt Howard, co-director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, the organization formerly known as Iraq Veterans Against the War; and Sami Rasouli, founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq.

This 20 March 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

15 Years of Mass Destruction in Iraq

On the 15th anniversary of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, CODEPINK‘s Medea Benjamin and scholar Sabah Alnasseri discuss the war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and more than 4,500 American troops–and that changed Iraq and the Middle East forever.

‘HOW DECADES OF U.S. WAR IN IRAQ SHAPED — AND SCATTERED — ONE FAMILY’ “‘I used to be okay,’ said Hilda Simonian, who regularly suffers from paranoia and flashbacks 20 years after reaching safety in Canada.” [HuffPost]

By a margin of 2 to 1, Americans now say 15 years after the Iraq War that it was a mistake.

Fifteen years ago today, on the night of March 20-21, 2003, the armed forces of the United States and Great Britain began an illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iraq, a country of 26 million people. As bombs and missiles began to rain down on Iraq’s cities, and tanks and armored vehicles crossed the border from Kuwait, US President George W. Bush set in motion a war of aggression whose catastrophic consequences now shape world politics: here.

Ex-NATO boss regrets NATO warmongering

Posted on January 7, 2018 by petrel41

Ukraine

The Dutch ex-NATO boss Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has been, deservedly, criticized on this blog.

Now, however, for a change, he has said something right. Reminding me a bit of ex-United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, with his lies on behalf of the George W Bush administration, promoting war in Iraq, which Powell later regretted. Unfortunately, many politicians seems to become wiser only after retirement than when they still had powerful jobs.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

‘NATO should not have proposed membership to Ukraine and Georgia’

Today, 20:25

Then, Georgia was ruled by dictator and George W Bush pal Saakashvili. In Ukraine, people demonstrated against NATO membership and against George W Bush. Even the ‘pro-Western’ ‘orange’ Ukrainian government opposed Bush’s NATO missile plans.

NATO has driven Vladimir Putin into a corner, making him more radical. These are not the words of Russia, but those of NATO’s former Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

According to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the West must respect the Russian red line. The speed of NATO enlargement has contributed to Putin’s aggressive stance in the former Soviet Union.

NATO should not have offered membership to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, the former NATO executive said. He calls it understandable that Putin has opposed it. …

The NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 was a breaking point in the relationship between Russia and the West. NATO opened the door for Georgia and Ukraine. Both countries were allowed to join, even though no date was mentioned. That was the wish of the American President Bush. The German Chancellor Merkel resisted. But NATO decided to leave the door ajar. That was unacceptable for Russia and Putin also said that afterwards.

The former Secretary General now says that he underestimated the response and that he should have done more to keep the parties on the same level. According to De Hoop Scheffer, the decision led to a radicalization by Putin.

He sees a direct connection with the war in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014). Meanwhile, De Hoop Scheffer is convinced that there can no longer be a question of membership for both countries.

George W Bush’s lies on the Iraq war

Posted on March 9, 2016 by petrel41

This video from the USA says about itself:

Finally – PROOF The Bush Administration LIED About Iraq’s WMDs

9 March 2016

Unfortunately Donald Trump isn’t wrong about everything. He has been very vocal about the Iraq War. In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq, which led to a near decade long war. Even though US troops left, the chaos from that decision still rages on, with no solution or end in sight. Did the United States have to invade? Why did they invade? Jonny 5, of the Flobots, tells you about the lies that the Bush Administration gave the American people so that they could start a war.

George W Bush’s ‘super Berlin’ wall damages wildlife

Posted on February 14, 2016 by petrel41

This 2012 video is called Photos and video of wildlife stranded at the US-Mexico border wall.

From Newsweek in the USA:

The Environmental Impact of the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall

By Melissa Gaskill On 2/14/16 at 2:28 PM

A line of 18-foot-tall steel posts placed four inches apart cuts like a scar across the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge near McAllen, Texas. It’s a stretch of a barrier extending intermittently across 650 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border from California to Texas, and presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio vow to enlarge it if elected.

The barrier is intended to deter illegal immigration and smuggling. Whether it has achieved those aims remains unclear, but what is clear in this part of Texas is that sections of the barrier bisect and isolate public and private lands, threatening to decimate wildlife habitats and leaving communities on both sides of the border that rely on wildlife tourism to wither.

Trump’s wall will damage wildlife.

George W Bush godfather of ISIS, United States general says

Posted on December 1, 2015 by petrel41

On this May 1, 2003 photo, United States President George W Bush flashes a ‘thumbs-up’ after declaring victory in Iraq as he speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast. Six months after he spoke on that aircraft carrier deck under a banner proclaiming ‘Mission Accomplished’, President Bush disavowed any connection with the war message. Later, the White House changed its story and said there was a link.

The ISIS terrorist organisation has quite some ‘godbrothers’, including Turkish President Erdogan, ruling class people in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and elsewhere; as United States Vice President Joe Biden and many others have pointed out.

The main cause of the birth of ISIS was the 2003 start of the Iraq war by George W Bush and Tony Blair. As, again, many people have pointed out: including US President Obama; former United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan; and George W Bush’s ex-neo-colonial viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer. Recently, after a long time of being in denial, even Tony Blair himself half-apologized for his role as ‘godfather’ of ISIS.

Will George W Bush apologize, or half-apologize now, for his role as the other ‘godfather’ of ISIS? Will his little brother Jeb Bush (one of many Republican party candidates for the presidency; so far, public opinion polls say, remarkably unsuccessful, in spite of all his Super PAC money)? Now that an important officer in the United States armed forces has spoken on this?

By Travis Gettys in the USA:

Former head of US special forces admits: Islamic State would not exist if Bush didn’t invade Iraq

30 Nov 2015 at 09:59 ET

The former commander of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan and Iraq admitted that strategic blunders by the Bush administration had led to the rise of Islamic State militants.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told the German newspaper Der Spiegel that Americans allowed their anger of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to lead them into disastrous military policies that failed to address the root causes of terrorism — and actually helped create new and more brutal terrorists.

The misunderstanding was so great that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who now heads ISIS, was freed in 2004 from a military prison after a U.S. military commission cleared him as harmless.

“We were too dumb,” Flynn said. “We didn’t understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, ‘Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go kill them. Let’s go get them.’ Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from.

The Bush administration did not even look properly where the 9/11 perpetrators came from. They were from the Saudi Arabian absolute monarchy (staunch allies of Pentagon, CIA and US Big Oil, with Saudi Prince ‘Bandar Bush’ being particularly close to the US Bush dynasty); and from Egypt, ruled by dictatorial Pentagon and CIA ally Hosni Mubarak.

Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction.”

Now the truth emerges: Here’s how the US fueled the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

Laura Ingraham discovers Bush to blame for ISIS: ‘Iraq is worse than before we went in’

Hillary Clinton chides Jeb Bush on brother’s role in Iraq leading to ISIS

Ms Clinton is right on that. However, as her fellow Democratic party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and many others have pointed out, Hillary Clinton herself was wrong in voting for the Iraq war in 2002.

The U.S. invaded Iraq after administration officials — including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell — presented false intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s [alleged] weapons of mass destruction and alleged links to al-Qaeda.

“First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was based, then we went to Iraq,” Flynn said. “Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again.”

Flynn, who served just before his retirement as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, admitted that he regrets his role in the Iraq War.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Flynn, who served from 2004 to 2007 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It was huge error,” he continued. “As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him.

Deposing Saddam Hussein should have been done by the Iraqi people. Not by a foreign military invasion, causing over a million dead, millions of injured people, over four million refugees, etc. etc. Like the colonels’ dictatorship in Greece was not finished by invasion by NATO (which considered the dictators to be allies), but by the Greek people. Like the dictatorships in Portugal, in Spain, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Indonesia, etc. were all finished by the people, without any bloodbath like Bush’s and Blair’s in Iraq.

The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.”

TED CRUZ GOES AFTER MARCO RUBIO “Ted Cruz on Monday offered his strongest denunciation so far of Marco Rubio‘s foreign policy views, assailing his Republican presidential rival as a proponent of ‘military adventurism’ that he said has benefited Islamic militant groups. He even tied the Floridian to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.” [Bloomberg]

‘HOW THE ARAB WORLD CAME APART’ This five-part New York Times investigation meticulously traces “the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis.” [NYT]

George W Bush’s, Tony Blair’s, war crimes in Iraq

Posted on June 15, 2015 by petrel41

This 14 April 2015 video from the USA says about itself:

Thom Hartmann shares a report that says 1 million Iraqis are dead as a result of former President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Another video from the USA used to say about itself:

One million killed in Iraq?

10 August 2007

Independent group uses Lancet study to project Iraq death toll

Last year, the medical journal The Lancet published an estimate of 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq based on a demographic study conducted by field workers questioning people in clusters throughout Iraq.

The group Just Foreign Policy has taken that number and projected it using Iraq Body Count, which tallies deaths reported by Western media sources. This leads to a rough estimate that one million Iraqis have now been killed in the conflict since the U.S.’s 2003 invasion and occupation.

When The Lancet published the 650,000 estimate, President George W. Bush said: “600,000 or whatever they guessed at is just, it’s not credible.”

We speak to Les Roberts, now at Columbia University, who is co-author of The Lancet piece “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey.” Roberts has studied other conflicts, including in Congo, where his estimates have been widely accepted.

We also speak with Robert Naiman of the group Just Foreign Policy.

By James B Thring in Britain:

Damning account of Western genocide in Iraq

Monday 15th June 2015

Genocide in Iraq by Abdul-Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani (Clarity Press, £18.99)

THIS book may read read like a scene-of-the-crime thriller but, in providing a factual account of the genocide in Iraq, it provides damning grounds for prosecuting George Bush, Tony Blair and others for their war crimes in that country.

According to its authors, the sanctions imposed by the West killed 450,000 children by 1995 and continued for eight years after US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright affirmed that the price of those deaths was “worth it.”

This video from the USA is called Madeleine Albright Says Deaths Of 500,000 Iraqi Children Is Worth It.

The “shock and awe” bombing campaigns and further US state terrorism murdered another 600,000 by 2006. Iraq’s suffering was compounded by its oil income being sequestrated in a New York bank, with most of it diverted to global oil and private security corporations.

Head of the US occupation Paul Bremer spent little in restoring hospitals, water, power or other essentials. Instead, his actions bore out the definition of genocide which includes not only killing large sections of society but deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.

The writers expose the blockade of vital items such as milk formula and medical syringes under the guise of “sanctions.”

These are not weapons of mass destruction. And the International Atomic Energy Agency was prevented from importing equipment to locate up to 2,000 tons of US depleted uranium weapons, from which millions still suffer painful and deadly effects.

Bremer, unaccountable to Iraqi authority, instituted laws — enforced by terror and the US army — expelling or murdering Sunnis, violating international law in the process. To avoid prosecution, the US refused to join the International Criminal Court.

…

As the results of the Chilcot inquiry are delayed yet again, this book demonstrates why Blair and others should be prosecuted for genocide now. We owe it to the survivors.

And such an action may deter copy-cat atrocities — after all, Syria, Yemen, Iran and North Korea and are all very much on the neocon hit-list.

Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, told Britain’s incoming ambassador to the US to “get up the arse of the White House and stay there,” according to the now-retired ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer’s forthcoming memoirs: here.