{"id":71355,"date":"2016-04-04T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71355"},"modified":"2016-04-02T14:58:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T13:58:39","slug":"iraq-invasion-anniversary-of-the-biggest-terrorist-attack-in-modern-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/iraq-invasion-anniversary-of-the-biggest-terrorist-attack-in-modern-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq Invasion [20 March 2003]: Anniversary of the Biggest Terrorist Attack in Modern History?"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 Mar 2016 – <\/em>Since terrorism\u2019s tragedy is again in the news, it is timely to revisit perhaps one of the biggest acts of terrorism in modern history \u2014 the illegal invasion and destruction, ongoing, of Iraq.<\/p>\n

March 20th marked the thirteenth anniversary of an action resulting in the equivalent of a Paris, Brussels, London July 7th, 2005, often multiple times daily in Iraq ever since. As for\u00a0 September 11th, 2001, there has frequently been that death toll and heartbreak every several weeks, also ongoing.<\/p>\n

America and Britain have arguably engaged in and generated the legacy of one of the longest recorded attacks of terrorism since World War Two.<\/p>\n

There are no minutes of silence or Eifel Tower bathed in the colours of the Iraqi flag \u2013 or indeed those of the other ongoing Western engineered catastrophes, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or for the US-UK complicity in the human carnage in Yemen, or for the forty three dead and two hundred and thirty nine injured in Beirut in November, reportedly by ISIS, the day before the Paris attack.<\/p>\n

The Eifel Tower did not display the Russian colours after ISIS claimed the October 2015 crash of a Russian airliner after leaving from Egypt\u2019s Sharm el-Sheikh airport, the result they stated of a bomb they placed, killing all two hundred and twenty four passengers. ISIS mass murders in Africa are mostly ignored.<\/p>\n

Since ISIS was spawned by the Iraq \u201cliberation\u201d (\u201cOperation Iraqi Liberation\u201d \u2013 OIL) it is worth revisiting<\/a> Tony Blair\u2019s speech to Parliament on March 20th, 2003, the day of the invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Tuesday night I gave the order for British forces to take part in military action in Iraq.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir mission: to remove Saddam Hussein from power and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction\u201d, said Blair.<\/p>\n

Breathtaking. Little Britain\u2019s \u201cmission\u201d was to remove from power the President of a country whose \u201csovereignty and territorial integrity\u201d was guaranteed by the UN. As for \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d, probably millions of words have given the lie to their existence and to both the US and Britain\u2019s near certainty that there were none after near ten years of exhaustive work by the UN weapons inspectors.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2026 this new world faces a new threat of disorder and chaos born either of brutal states like Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction or of extreme terrorist groups\u201d, stated the would be Butcher of Baghdad.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth hate our way of life, our freedom, our democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fear, deeply held, based in part on the intelligence that I see is that these threats come together and deliver catastrophe to our country and our world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese tyrannical states do not care for the sanctity of human life \u2013 the terrorists delight in destroying it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world, of course, faced no threat from Iraq. Even Iran, with which Iraq had fought the horrific 1980-1988 war \u2013 with both the UK and the US arming both countries and profiting handsomely from the blood, heartbreak and destruction both sides of the Iran-Iraq border \u2013 stated repeatedly that Iraq posed them no threat.<\/p>\n

As for hating \u201cout way of life, our freedom, our democracy\u201d, until the embargo was imposed on Iraq in August 1990, Iraq contributed \u00a3 millions to the British and US economies sending post-graduate university students to gain further degrees in the West, ensuring an educational broadness in the advantage of studying in both academic spheres.<\/p>\n

Visiting homes of those with the money to travel it was usually just minutes before the photo albums were produced showing joyful holidays in the UK, US and across Europe.<\/p>\n

There were, of course, near no Middle East allied \u201cterrorists \u2026 destroying\u201d entertainment venues, metro stations, commercial centres until the Iraq invasion. Attacks in Europe were near always home grown separatist groups usually feeling victims of historical injustices. Lessons are clearly never learned.<\/p>\n

There is, however, the darkest irony in Blair\u2019s fears that: \u201c \u2026 threats come together and deliver catastrophe to our country and our world.\u201d His and Bush\u2019s actions have delivered just that.<\/p>\n

Saddam Hussein and fundamentalism were two different planets and any inkling of a threat was instantly dealt with \u2013 yes, sometimes brutally, but Iraq and the region remained secular and apart from the domestic problems and criminalities common to near all nations, the streets were safe and life normal. In Baghdad, until the deprivation and desperation wrought by the 1990 embargo and the 1991 bombing, people did not even lock their doors.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould terrorists obtain these weapons now being manufactured and traded around the world the carnage they could inflict to our economies, to our security, to world peace would be beyond our most vivid imagination\u201d, Blair continued. Indeed. The US-UK spawned ISIS who obtained arms from the US disbanded Iraqi army, arms from the US provided and trained new Iraqi army as they fled multiple conflicts in \u00a0multiple areas, leaving all behind and indeed have \u201cobtained these weapons\u201d which have been dropped from the air to them on multiple occasions \u2014 by the US.<\/p>\n

Blair is also clearly clairvoyant:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy judgment as Prime Minister is that this threat is real, growing and of an entirely different nature to any conventional threat to our security that Britain has faced before.\u201d \u00a0Supremely ironically his infatuation with George W. Bush and the \u201cdodgy dossiers\u201d produced under his premiership to attempt to justify the legally unjustifiable, delivered exactly that of which he warned.<\/p>\n

And here is a whopper of staggering scale:<\/p>\n

Removing Saddam will be a blessing to the Iraqi people: four million Iraqis are in exile, 60% of the population dependent on food aid, thousands of children die every year through malnutrition and disease, hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes or murdered.<\/em><\/p>\n

The result of \u201cremoving Saddam\u201d (read: lynching Saddam) has been a blood soaked daily litany for thirteen years. The majority of Iraqis in exile fled to send money back home to keep their families and extended families during the decimating embargo which had resulted in basic food stuffs increasing in price often over eleven thousand fold.<\/p>\n

The \u201cthousands of children\u201d were indeed dying \u201cevery year\u201d \u2013 from \u201cembargo related causes\u201d according to the UN. The government set up a ration distribution system to try and counter the food crisis (Iraq had imported 70% of near everything.) The UN called the efficiency of the system exemplary, but the embargo prevented food and essential imports. Even soap, toothpaste, shampoo and sanitary requirements had become luxury items. Prior to the embargo, the country had free health service, food was inexpensive and plentiful and water borne diseases mostly eradicated. Between the embargo and the bombing all was destroyed.<\/p>\n

The Kurdish complexities indeed led to displacement \u2014 but Iraq too felt threatened with the CIA and Mossad ensconced in Kurdistan, which had been given near autonomy. As for \u201cmurdered\u201d, the \u201cIraq mass graves\u201d became a catch-all mantra. The tragic majority found were from the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 war and subsequent US encouraged uprising. Even Iraq\u2019s part in the monstrous deaths at Halabja<\/a> are thrown into question by a 1990 Report from the US Army War College.<\/p>\n

Blair blathered on to Parliament:<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the Iraqi people hear this message. We are with you. Our enemy is not you but your barbarous rulers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur commitment to the post-Saddam humanitarian effort will be total.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shall help Iraq move towards democracy and put the money from Iraqi oil in a UN trust fund so it benefits Iraq and no-one else.\u201d Never in the field of human conflict have so many lies been told to so many by so few \u2013 to misquote Churchill.<\/p>\n

Now to the nub of the statement: \u201cNeither should Iraq be our only concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs so often before on the courage and determination of British men and women serving our country the fate of many nations rest.\u201d Usually, when the British and US get involved \u201cthe fate of\u201d the people of nations lie in mass graves.<\/p>\n

The \u201cfate\u201d of Iraq, of course, was to be threatened, distorted and their people hung in the balance, as so many warned, including the then head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa: \u201cIf Iraq is invaded, the Gates of Hell will open.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Bush and I have committed ourselves to peace in the Middle East based on a secure state of Israel and a viable Palestinian state.\u201d Ah, as ever about Israel. Saddam sent aid to Palestinians, displaced, bereaved, desperate and to families of those enough so to even relinquish their lives. The demonized, also secular, President Assad, of course, also supports the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cDictators like Saddam. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, threaten the very existence of such a world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda again linked together. The former never threatened the world, al-Qaeda\u2019s offshoot ISIS, non-existent in Iraq under Saddam, now threatening the Middle East, Europe, the US, and Africa.<\/p>\n

Blair concluded: \u201cThat is why I\u2019ve asked our troops to go into action tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blair was not alone making it up as he went along, singing to his pal Bush\u2019s hymn sheet.\u00a0 He was also singing to that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who six months earlier (September 2002) had assured<\/a> the US Congress: \u201cIf you take out Saddam\u2019s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region\u2026 The task and the great opportunity and challenge is not merely to effect the ouster of the regime, but also to transform the region.\u201d It has certainly done that. The Cradle of Civilization is now a valley of tears, widows, widowers and orphans.<\/p>\n

President Nobel Obama has commemorated the 20th March anniversary by sending more troops to Iraq and by the US bombing of Mosul University, killing around ninety people and injuring up to one hundred and fifty including Professor Dhafer al Badrani, Dean of Computer Sciences and his wife.<\/p>\n

According to an academic from the city:<\/p>\n

The whole faculty residential building were destroyed, university headquarter, girl\u2019s dormitory, science college, central publishing center of the university, and womens education college. The university is built on very close to the Nimrud archeological entrances to the Assyrian empires (2500 B.C.) I am sure using bunker buster bombs destroyed most of these historical sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Fallujah, besieged by militias and according to another contact: \u201c \u2026 bombed since\u00a0 January 1, 2014 by the government (armed by the USA and with US military advisers this whole time) and since August 2014 by the US Coalition\u201d, the people are starving: \u201c On March 17th a husband threw himself his wife with their three children in to the river (Euphrates) from a bridge and drowned. They were desperate from hunger \u2026\u201d And the bodies of: \u201cNearly four thousand killed civilians have been taken to the hospital since January 2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 26th forty-one people were killed and one-hundred-and-five injured at a soccer match by a suicide bomber at a stadium thirty kilometres from Baghdad.<\/p>\n

A few days ago an Iraqi in Baghdad commented: \u201cWe only had two bombs today, people went out.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 27th, Tony Blair was back giving<\/a> his views. They broadly include invading Iraq, Syria and Libya to save Europe from ISIS, remarking of ISIS: \u201c\u2026 This ideology is not interested in coexistence. It does not seek dialogue but dominance\u201d, said the man who was interested in neither and enjoined a \u201cCrusade\u201d \u2013 an equally thousand year outdated fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

Anyone who listens to the advise of the author who did so much to spawn the horror, genocide, destruction, insanity, barbarism and should be facing a War Crimes Tribunal for his part in bringing the all about, is arguably certifiably insane.<\/p>\n

Talking of insanity, the UN has designated March 20th as International Day of Happiness, a day founded to recognize happiness as a \u201cfundamental human goal.\u201d Tell that to the people of Iraq.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of <\/em>Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger’s <\/em>Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday <\/em>Returns for RTE (Ireland.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dissidentvoice.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Mar 2016 – It is timely to revisit one of the biggest acts of terrorism in modern history \u2014 the 20 Mar 2003 illegal invasion and destruction, ongoing, of Iraq. Talking of insanity, the UN has designated March 20 as International Day of Happiness, a day founded to recognize happiness as a \u201cfundamental human goal.\u201d Tell that to the people of Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}