HAROLD Pinter, an American academic and winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature said in 2005: “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and, as a consequence, the public; an act to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East, masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications have failed to justify themselves – as liberations. We have brought torture, misery, degradation and death to people and we call it bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.”
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America does not engage simply for the purpose of compassion or humanitarianism. Defending corporations is hardly the only reason they invade foreign governments. They do so, I believe, to acquire more of whatever is good to have.
This determination to control the rest of the world has resulted in more than 1.3 million troops stationed at 1000 military bases in 150 countries, as an example – 48,000 in Japan, 37,000 in Germany, 27,000 in South Korea, 9800 in Afghanistan and so on. Like each of these American operations, the “regime change” in Iraq seemed to have worked. It is now patently clear this operation has created a monstrous consequence which is continuing aggressively to manifest itself to this day and beyond.
On September 15, 2002, the Herald Scotland published an article titled ‘Bush plans on Iraq regime change before becoming president’. It revealed Bush and his cabinet were planning an attack on Iraq before he took power. The intent was to overwhelm the Gulf Region. The region consists of Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran. All are accessible to either the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman, all are dancing on volumes of oil. Before the war, the US imported nearly one quarter of its imported oil from the Persian Gulf, including 10 billion tons from Saddam Hussein.
With the United Nations and a large number of other countries (including France and Germany) opposing the US, it was positioned to allow investigation as to whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of “mass destruction”. The two organisations chosen to make the examination were the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). Both reported back that they could find no weapons of “mass destruction”.
Bush denounced IAEA and UNMOVIC and responded, “our intelligence agents estimate that Saddam Hussein had the chemical materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard gas and Vx nerve agent, such chemicals could kill untold thousands”.
This announcement would have been stunningly risible if it wasn’t true. For these chemicals were provided to Saddam by the US when Iraq was in retreat of an American constructed war against Iran. It was an action against the UN, who had banned the use of chemical weapons.
Bush had by now left his position, in 2009. If he had looked back he would have seen the grotesque consequences he had subjugated in Iraq, and now included Syria – reducing the countries to devastation.
A new authority, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is now re-constructing the show, thanks to the president, for he must accept that the cynical and authoritarian political strategy has become an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.
