Informazione
IRAQ = JUGOSLAVIJA
4: Beware Iraqoslavia
A - Kosovo and Iraq: Same Bombs, Different Lies
(by David Edwards and Media Lens - www.dissidentvoice.org - April 1,
2004)
LINK:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204C.html
Beware Iraqoslavia
By Stephen Schwartz - Published 02/02/2004
Yugoslavia's Example; Iraq's Future...
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204C.html
--- A ---
Kosovo and Iraq: Same Bombs, Different Lies
by David Edwards and Media Lens
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 1, 2004
The truth about the invasion of Iraq was perhaps best summed up by Ray
McGovern, one of the CIA's most senior analysts:
"It was 95 per cent charade. And they all knew it: Bush, Blair, Howard."
(Quoted John Pilger, "Universal justice is not a dream
<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5193>
,"
ZNet, March 23, 2004)
One might think that exposés of this kind would lead the media to take
a fresh look at some of the US-UK governments’ earlier claims
justifying war. Consider, for example, the 78-day NATO assault on
Serbia from March 24 until June 10, 1999, said to have been launched to
protect the Albanian population of Kosovo.
Blair’s Battle Between Good And Evil
What is so striking about the US-UK government case for war against
Serbia is the familiarity of much of the propaganda. In a key pre-war
speech on March 18 last year, Blair said of Iraq:
“Looking back over 12 years, we have been victims of our own desire to
placate the implacable... to hope that there was some genuine intent to
do good in a regime whose mind is in fact evil.” ("Tony Blair's speech"
The Guardian, March 18, 2003)
In similar vein, Blair described the war with Serbia as “a battle
between good and evil; between civilization and barbarity; between
democracy and dictatorship”. (Quoted, Degraded Capability, The Media
and the Kosovo Crisis
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/074531631X/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , edited by Philip
Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Pluto Press, 2000, p.123)
Blair also referred last year to the lessons of “history”:
“We can look back and say: there's the time; that was the moment; for
example, when Czechoslovakia was swallowed up by the Nazis - that's
when we should have acted.
“But it wasn't clear at the time. In fact at the time, many people
thought such a fear fanciful. Worse, put forward in bad faith by
warmongers." (Ibid)
Four years earlier, in March 1999, British defence Secretary, George
Robertson, insisted that intervention in Kosovo was vital to stop “a
regime which is bent on genocide.” A year later, Robertson also
conjured up the ghost of Nazism to justify NATO’s action:
“We were faced with a situation where there was this killing going on,
this cleansing going on - the kind of ethnic cleansing we thought had
disappeared after the second world war. You were seeing people there
coming in trains, the cattle trains, with refugees once again.” (ITV,
Jonathan Dimbleby programme, June 11, 2000)
President Clinton referred to “deliberate, systematic efforts at...
genocide” in Kosovo. (Quoted, John Pilger, introduction, Phillip
Knightley, First Casualty, Prion Books, 2000, p.xii)
In a speech in Illinois in April 1999, Blair alluded to Kosovo: “The
principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects
war crimes and acts of genocide can never be an internal matter.”
(Blair, The Guardian, March 15, 2000)
This rhetoric depicting “genocide”, even a kind of Holocaust, in Kosovo
certainly merits comparison with the claim that British bases in Cyprus
were under threat from Iraqi WMD that could be launched within 45
minutes of an order being given.
So how did the keen and critical intellects of the "free press" -
backed up by vast research and investigative resources - respond? Did
they scrutinize and challenge these extraordinary claims as they so
patently failed to do with regard to the Iraqi WMD "threat"?
We Can Do 1389 The Media Get In Line
Reviewing UK media performance, British historian Mark Curtis writes of
the Kosovo war:
“The liberal press notably the Guardian and Independent backed the
war to the hilt (while questioning the tactics used to wage it) and
lent critical weight to the government’s arguments.” In so doing, the
media “revealed how willingly deceived it is by government rhetoric on
its moral motives.” (Curtis, Web of Deceit
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0099448394/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , Vintage, 2003, pp.134-5)
Thus, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian: “the prize is not turf
or treasure but the frustration of a plan to empty a land of its
people”. It was “a noble goal”. (Freedland, "No way to spin a war," The
Guardian, April 21, 1999)
A Guardian editorial described the war as nothing less than “a test for
our generation”. (March 26, 1999)
The attack was intended to stop “something approaching genocide”,
Timothy Garton Ash insisted. (Garton Ash, "Imagine no America," The
Guardian, September 19, 2002)
The Mirror referred to “Echoes of the Holocaust.” (Quoted, Pilger, op.,
cit, p.144)
The Sun urged us to “Clobba Slobba”.
The New Statesman’s John Lloyd wrote that the war showed “the most
powerful states are willing to fight for human rights”. (July 5, 1999)
As British bombs rained on Serbia, a breathless Andrew Marr wrote
articles in the Observer entitled:
"Brave, bold, visionary. Whatever became of Blair the ultra-cautious
cynic?" (April 4, 1999)
"Hail to the chief. Sorry, Bill, but this time we’re talking about
Tony." (May 16, 1999)
Marr declared himself in awe of Blair’s “moral courage”, adding: “I am
constantly impressed, but also mildly alarmed, by his utter lack of
cynicism.”
A subsequent BBC documentary on the alleged Serbian genocide, ‘Exposed’
(BBC2, January 27, 2002), was billed as a programme marking Holocaust
Memorial Day, no less.
Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times:
"Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs
certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week
you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by
pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can
do 1389 too."
(Friedman, The New York Times, April 23, 1999)
A Nexis database search showed that in the two years 1998-1999 the Los
Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and Time used
the term “genocide” 220 times to describe the actions of Serbia in
Kosovo. In the ten years 1990-1999 the same media used the same word
just 33 times to describe the actions of Indonesia in East Timor.
Following Indonesia’s invasion in December 1975, some 200,000 East
Timorese, or one-third of the population, are estimated to have been
killed in one of history's premier bloodbaths. The contrast is even
more astonishing when we consider the number of people actually killed
in Kosovo.
Pure Invention The Kosovo “Genocide”
So how real was the Serbian genocide in Kosovo compared, say, to the
threat of Iraqi WMD? And did this alleged mass abuse of human rights
justify the 78 days of NATO bombing that claimed 500 Yugoslav civilian
lives, causing an estimated $100 billion in damage, striking hospitals,
schools, major
industrial plants, hotels, libraries, housing estates, theatres,
museums, farms, mosques, trains, tractors, bridges and power stations?
In February 1999, one month before the start of NATO bombing, a report
released by the German Foreign Office noted that “the often feared
humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Albanian population has been
averted”. In the larger cities “public life has since returned to
relative normality.” (Quoted, Mark Curtis, op., cit, p.136)
Another German report, exactly one month before the bombing, refers to
the CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) seeking independence for
Kosovo from Serbia:
“Events since February and March 1998 do not evidence a persecution
program based on Albanian ethnicity. The measures taken by the
[Serbian] armed forces are in the first instance directed towards
combating the KLA and its supposed adherents and supporters.” (Ibid,
p.136)
Following the war, NATO sources reported that 2,000 people had been
killed in Kosovo on all sides in the year prior to bombing. George
Robertson testified before the House of Commons that until mid-January
1999, “the Kosovo Liberation Army was responsible for more deaths in
Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been”. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky,
Hegemony or Survival
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805074007/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , Routledge, 2003, p.56)
This is supported by Nicholas Wheeler of the University of Wales who
estimates that Serbs killed 500 Albanians before the NATO bombing,
implying that 1,500 had been killed by the KLA. The KLA had openly
declared that their strategy was to provoke Serbian forces into
retaliatory action that would generate Western public support for NATO
intervention.
Far from averting a humanitarian crisis, it is clear that NATO bombing
caused a massive escalation of killings and expulsions. The flood of
refugees from Kosovo, for example, began immediately +after+ NATO
launched its attack. Prior to the bombing, and for the following two
days, the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported no
data on refugees. On March 27, three days into the bombing, UNHCR
reported that 4,000 had fled Kosovo to the neighbouring countries of
Albania and Macedonia. By April 5, the New York Times reported “more
than 350,000 have left Kosovo since March 24”.
A study by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) records “a pattern of expulsions and the vast increase in
lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war
began on March 24” and that “the most visible change in the events was
after NATO launched its first air strikes”. (Curtis, op., cit, p.137,
our emphasis)
A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee investigating the war
concluded:
“It is likely that the NATO bombing did cause a change in the character
of the assault upon the Kosovo Albanians. What had been an
anti-insurgency campaign albeit a brutal and counter-productive one
became a mass, organized campaign to kill Kosovo Albanians or drive
them from the country.” (Ibid, pp.137-8)
The media response was to exactly reverse cause and effect suggesting
that bombing was justified as a way of halting the flood of refugees it
had in fact created. Philip Hammond of South Bank University comments:
“the refugee crisis became NATO’s strongest propaganda weapon, though
logically it should have been viewed as a damning indictment of the
bombing. The hundreds of thousands of Serbs who fled the bombing were
therefore determinedly ignored by British journalists”. (Hammond and
Herman, op., cit, p.127)
Robert Hayden of the University of Pittsburgh reported that the
casualties among Serb civilians in the first three weeks of the war
were higher than all of the casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the
three months that led up to the war. And yet, Hayden points out, “those
three months were supposed to be a humanitarian catastrophe”. (Quoted,
Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1567511767/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , Pluto Press, 1999, p.20)
Hammond indicates the awesome scale of the truth buried by the media:
"We may never know the true number of people killed. But it seems
reasonable to conclude that while people died in clashes between the
KLA and Yugoslav forces... the picture painted by Nato - of a
systematic campaign of Nazi-style genocide carried out by Serbs - was
pure invention." (Hammond and Herman, op., cit, p.129)
In other words, the US-UK assault on Serbia, like the assault on Iraq,
was made possible by audacious government manipulation of a public
denied access to the truth by an incompetent and structurally corrupt
media. Journalists, indeed, were so utterly fooled by government
propaganda that they proudly proclaimed their role in supporting the
“humanitarian intervention”.
Responding to Alastair Campbell’s accusation of press cynicism over the
Kosovo intervention (another familiar theme from the 2003 Iraq war),
Channel Four correspondent Alex Thomson wrote: “If you want to know why
the public supported the war, thank a journalist, not the present
government’s propagandist-in-chief.” (Quoted, Charles Glass, "Hacks
versus flacks," Z Magazine, August 1, 1999)
The Guardian’s Maggie O’Kane wrote:
“But Campbell should acknowledge that it was the press reporting of the
Bosnian war and the Kosovar refugee crisis that gave his boss the
public support and sympathy he needed to fight the good fight against
Milosevic.” (Ibid)
John Simpson of the BBC joined the fray: “Why did British, American,
German, and French public opinion stay rock-solid for the bombing, in
spite of Nato’s mistakes? Because they knew the war was right. Who gave
them the information? The media.” (Ibid)
So much for "neutral" and "objective" reporting. As a result, Blair is
now able to use the lie of Kosovo to justify more recent killing. In a
speech earlier this month, Blair said of the Iraq war:
“The real point is that those who disagree with the war, disagree
fundamentally with the judgement that led to war. What is more, their
alternative judgement is both entirely rational and arguable. Kosovo,
with ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians, was not a hard decision for
most people; nor was Afghanistan after the shock of September 11; nor
was Sierra Leone.” (‘Tony Blair's speech’, The Guardian, March 5, 2004)
Kosovo was “not a hard decision for most people” because awkward facts
pointing to something other than a “battle between good and evil” were
kept well out of sight.
Postscript A Silver Lining
We are eager to avoid the impression that the alliance of state
violence and media servility always results in tragedy, death and
disaster sometimes there are happy endings.
While covering the Kosovo crisis, CNN’s leading foreign correspondent,
Christiane Amanpour, married James Rubin, chief public relations
official of the US State Department. Amanpour had announced that her
future husband’s war was for “the first time... a war fought for human
rights”. And, after all, “only a fraction of 1 percent of the bombs
went astray”. (Quoted, Hammond and Herman, op., cit, p.113)
The BBC’s defence correspondent, Mark Laity, may not have found love
during his coverage of NATO’s slaughter, but he did subsequently accept
the post of press secretary to the NATO Secretary General, George
Robertson, who had also moved on from his position as British Defence
Secretary.
David Edwards is the editor of Media Lens <http://www.medialens.org/> ,
and the author of Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and
Political Freedom
<http://www.southendpress.org/books/btitles.shtml#burningall>
(South End Press, 1996). Email: editor@....
<mailto:editor@...>
Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
<http://www.medialens.org/>
Please consider donating to Media Lens:
http://www.medialens.org/donate.html
Other Recent Articles by David Edwards and Media Lens
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<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0318.htm>
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4: Beware Iraqoslavia
A - Kosovo and Iraq: Same Bombs, Different Lies
(by David Edwards and Media Lens - www.dissidentvoice.org - April 1,
2004)
LINK:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204C.html
Beware Iraqoslavia
By Stephen Schwartz - Published 02/02/2004
Yugoslavia's Example; Iraq's Future...
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204C.html
--- A ---
Kosovo and Iraq: Same Bombs, Different Lies
by David Edwards and Media Lens
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 1, 2004
The truth about the invasion of Iraq was perhaps best summed up by Ray
McGovern, one of the CIA's most senior analysts:
"It was 95 per cent charade. And they all knew it: Bush, Blair, Howard."
(Quoted John Pilger, "Universal justice is not a dream
<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5193>
,"
ZNet, March 23, 2004)
One might think that exposés of this kind would lead the media to take
a fresh look at some of the US-UK governments’ earlier claims
justifying war. Consider, for example, the 78-day NATO assault on
Serbia from March 24 until June 10, 1999, said to have been launched to
protect the Albanian population of Kosovo.
Blair’s Battle Between Good And Evil
What is so striking about the US-UK government case for war against
Serbia is the familiarity of much of the propaganda. In a key pre-war
speech on March 18 last year, Blair said of Iraq:
“Looking back over 12 years, we have been victims of our own desire to
placate the implacable... to hope that there was some genuine intent to
do good in a regime whose mind is in fact evil.” ("Tony Blair's speech"
The Guardian, March 18, 2003)
In similar vein, Blair described the war with Serbia as “a battle
between good and evil; between civilization and barbarity; between
democracy and dictatorship”. (Quoted, Degraded Capability, The Media
and the Kosovo Crisis
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/074531631X/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , edited by Philip
Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Pluto Press, 2000, p.123)
Blair also referred last year to the lessons of “history”:
“We can look back and say: there's the time; that was the moment; for
example, when Czechoslovakia was swallowed up by the Nazis - that's
when we should have acted.
“But it wasn't clear at the time. In fact at the time, many people
thought such a fear fanciful. Worse, put forward in bad faith by
warmongers." (Ibid)
Four years earlier, in March 1999, British defence Secretary, George
Robertson, insisted that intervention in Kosovo was vital to stop “a
regime which is bent on genocide.” A year later, Robertson also
conjured up the ghost of Nazism to justify NATO’s action:
“We were faced with a situation where there was this killing going on,
this cleansing going on - the kind of ethnic cleansing we thought had
disappeared after the second world war. You were seeing people there
coming in trains, the cattle trains, with refugees once again.” (ITV,
Jonathan Dimbleby programme, June 11, 2000)
President Clinton referred to “deliberate, systematic efforts at...
genocide” in Kosovo. (Quoted, John Pilger, introduction, Phillip
Knightley, First Casualty, Prion Books, 2000, p.xii)
In a speech in Illinois in April 1999, Blair alluded to Kosovo: “The
principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects
war crimes and acts of genocide can never be an internal matter.”
(Blair, The Guardian, March 15, 2000)
This rhetoric depicting “genocide”, even a kind of Holocaust, in Kosovo
certainly merits comparison with the claim that British bases in Cyprus
were under threat from Iraqi WMD that could be launched within 45
minutes of an order being given.
So how did the keen and critical intellects of the "free press" -
backed up by vast research and investigative resources - respond? Did
they scrutinize and challenge these extraordinary claims as they so
patently failed to do with regard to the Iraqi WMD "threat"?
We Can Do 1389 The Media Get In Line
Reviewing UK media performance, British historian Mark Curtis writes of
the Kosovo war:
“The liberal press notably the Guardian and Independent backed the
war to the hilt (while questioning the tactics used to wage it) and
lent critical weight to the government’s arguments.” In so doing, the
media “revealed how willingly deceived it is by government rhetoric on
its moral motives.” (Curtis, Web of Deceit
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0099448394/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , Vintage, 2003, pp.134-5)
Thus, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian: “the prize is not turf
or treasure but the frustration of a plan to empty a land of its
people”. It was “a noble goal”. (Freedland, "No way to spin a war," The
Guardian, April 21, 1999)
A Guardian editorial described the war as nothing less than “a test for
our generation”. (March 26, 1999)
The attack was intended to stop “something approaching genocide”,
Timothy Garton Ash insisted. (Garton Ash, "Imagine no America," The
Guardian, September 19, 2002)
The Mirror referred to “Echoes of the Holocaust.” (Quoted, Pilger, op.,
cit, p.144)
The Sun urged us to “Clobba Slobba”.
The New Statesman’s John Lloyd wrote that the war showed “the most
powerful states are willing to fight for human rights”. (July 5, 1999)
As British bombs rained on Serbia, a breathless Andrew Marr wrote
articles in the Observer entitled:
"Brave, bold, visionary. Whatever became of Blair the ultra-cautious
cynic?" (April 4, 1999)
"Hail to the chief. Sorry, Bill, but this time we’re talking about
Tony." (May 16, 1999)
Marr declared himself in awe of Blair’s “moral courage”, adding: “I am
constantly impressed, but also mildly alarmed, by his utter lack of
cynicism.”
A subsequent BBC documentary on the alleged Serbian genocide, ‘Exposed’
(BBC2, January 27, 2002), was billed as a programme marking Holocaust
Memorial Day, no less.
Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times:
"Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs
certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week
you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by
pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can
do 1389 too."
(Friedman, The New York Times, April 23, 1999)
A Nexis database search showed that in the two years 1998-1999 the Los
Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and Time used
the term “genocide” 220 times to describe the actions of Serbia in
Kosovo. In the ten years 1990-1999 the same media used the same word
just 33 times to describe the actions of Indonesia in East Timor.
Following Indonesia’s invasion in December 1975, some 200,000 East
Timorese, or one-third of the population, are estimated to have been
killed in one of history's premier bloodbaths. The contrast is even
more astonishing when we consider the number of people actually killed
in Kosovo.
Pure Invention The Kosovo “Genocide”
So how real was the Serbian genocide in Kosovo compared, say, to the
threat of Iraqi WMD? And did this alleged mass abuse of human rights
justify the 78 days of NATO bombing that claimed 500 Yugoslav civilian
lives, causing an estimated $100 billion in damage, striking hospitals,
schools, major
industrial plants, hotels, libraries, housing estates, theatres,
museums, farms, mosques, trains, tractors, bridges and power stations?
In February 1999, one month before the start of NATO bombing, a report
released by the German Foreign Office noted that “the often feared
humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Albanian population has been
averted”. In the larger cities “public life has since returned to
relative normality.” (Quoted, Mark Curtis, op., cit, p.136)
Another German report, exactly one month before the bombing, refers to
the CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) seeking independence for
Kosovo from Serbia:
“Events since February and March 1998 do not evidence a persecution
program based on Albanian ethnicity. The measures taken by the
[Serbian] armed forces are in the first instance directed towards
combating the KLA and its supposed adherents and supporters.” (Ibid,
p.136)
Following the war, NATO sources reported that 2,000 people had been
killed in Kosovo on all sides in the year prior to bombing. George
Robertson testified before the House of Commons that until mid-January
1999, “the Kosovo Liberation Army was responsible for more deaths in
Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been”. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky,
Hegemony or Survival
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805074007/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , Routledge, 2003, p.56)
This is supported by Nicholas Wheeler of the University of Wales who
estimates that Serbs killed 500 Albanians before the NATO bombing,
implying that 1,500 had been killed by the KLA. The KLA had openly
declared that their strategy was to provoke Serbian forces into
retaliatory action that would generate Western public support for NATO
intervention.
Far from averting a humanitarian crisis, it is clear that NATO bombing
caused a massive escalation of killings and expulsions. The flood of
refugees from Kosovo, for example, began immediately +after+ NATO
launched its attack. Prior to the bombing, and for the following two
days, the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported no
data on refugees. On March 27, three days into the bombing, UNHCR
reported that 4,000 had fled Kosovo to the neighbouring countries of
Albania and Macedonia. By April 5, the New York Times reported “more
than 350,000 have left Kosovo since March 24”.
A study by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) records “a pattern of expulsions and the vast increase in
lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war
began on March 24” and that “the most visible change in the events was
after NATO launched its first air strikes”. (Curtis, op., cit, p.137,
our emphasis)
A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee investigating the war
concluded:
“It is likely that the NATO bombing did cause a change in the character
of the assault upon the Kosovo Albanians. What had been an
anti-insurgency campaign albeit a brutal and counter-productive one
became a mass, organized campaign to kill Kosovo Albanians or drive
them from the country.” (Ibid, pp.137-8)
The media response was to exactly reverse cause and effect suggesting
that bombing was justified as a way of halting the flood of refugees it
had in fact created. Philip Hammond of South Bank University comments:
“the refugee crisis became NATO’s strongest propaganda weapon, though
logically it should have been viewed as a damning indictment of the
bombing. The hundreds of thousands of Serbs who fled the bombing were
therefore determinedly ignored by British journalists”. (Hammond and
Herman, op., cit, p.127)
Robert Hayden of the University of Pittsburgh reported that the
casualties among Serb civilians in the first three weeks of the war
were higher than all of the casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the
three months that led up to the war. And yet, Hayden points out, “those
three months were supposed to be a humanitarian catastrophe”. (Quoted,
Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1567511767/
ref=ase_dissidentvoic-20/103-6059207-6497441> , Pluto Press, 1999, p.20)
Hammond indicates the awesome scale of the truth buried by the media:
"We may never know the true number of people killed. But it seems
reasonable to conclude that while people died in clashes between the
KLA and Yugoslav forces... the picture painted by Nato - of a
systematic campaign of Nazi-style genocide carried out by Serbs - was
pure invention." (Hammond and Herman, op., cit, p.129)
In other words, the US-UK assault on Serbia, like the assault on Iraq,
was made possible by audacious government manipulation of a public
denied access to the truth by an incompetent and structurally corrupt
media. Journalists, indeed, were so utterly fooled by government
propaganda that they proudly proclaimed their role in supporting the
“humanitarian intervention”.
Responding to Alastair Campbell’s accusation of press cynicism over the
Kosovo intervention (another familiar theme from the 2003 Iraq war),
Channel Four correspondent Alex Thomson wrote: “If you want to know why
the public supported the war, thank a journalist, not the present
government’s propagandist-in-chief.” (Quoted, Charles Glass, "Hacks
versus flacks," Z Magazine, August 1, 1999)
The Guardian’s Maggie O’Kane wrote:
“But Campbell should acknowledge that it was the press reporting of the
Bosnian war and the Kosovar refugee crisis that gave his boss the
public support and sympathy he needed to fight the good fight against
Milosevic.” (Ibid)
John Simpson of the BBC joined the fray: “Why did British, American,
German, and French public opinion stay rock-solid for the bombing, in
spite of Nato’s mistakes? Because they knew the war was right. Who gave
them the information? The media.” (Ibid)
So much for "neutral" and "objective" reporting. As a result, Blair is
now able to use the lie of Kosovo to justify more recent killing. In a
speech earlier this month, Blair said of the Iraq war:
“The real point is that those who disagree with the war, disagree
fundamentally with the judgement that led to war. What is more, their
alternative judgement is both entirely rational and arguable. Kosovo,
with ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians, was not a hard decision for
most people; nor was Afghanistan after the shock of September 11; nor
was Sierra Leone.” (‘Tony Blair's speech’, The Guardian, March 5, 2004)
Kosovo was “not a hard decision for most people” because awkward facts
pointing to something other than a “battle between good and evil” were
kept well out of sight.
Postscript A Silver Lining
We are eager to avoid the impression that the alliance of state
violence and media servility always results in tragedy, death and
disaster sometimes there are happy endings.
While covering the Kosovo crisis, CNN’s leading foreign correspondent,
Christiane Amanpour, married James Rubin, chief public relations
official of the US State Department. Amanpour had announced that her
future husband’s war was for “the first time... a war fought for human
rights”. And, after all, “only a fraction of 1 percent of the bombs
went astray”. (Quoted, Hammond and Herman, op., cit, p.113)
The BBC’s defence correspondent, Mark Laity, may not have found love
during his coverage of NATO’s slaughter, but he did subsequently accept
the post of press secretary to the NATO Secretary General, George
Robertson, who had also moved on from his position as British Defence
Secretary.
David Edwards is the editor of Media Lens <http://www.medialens.org/> ,
and the author of Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and
Political Freedom
<http://www.southendpress.org/books/btitles.shtml#burningall>
(South End Press, 1996). Email: editor@....
<mailto:editor@...>
Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
<http://www.medialens.org/>
Please consider donating to Media Lens:
http://www.medialens.org/donate.html
Other Recent Articles by David Edwards and Media Lens
* Bombing the Peace Protestors: People Pay the Price for Realpolitik
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0318.htm>
* Breaking the Chains of Illusions, Part Two: The Catastrophe Of
Corporate Work
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0311-2.htm>
* Breaking the Chains of Illusions: Part One
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0304.htm>
* Haiti: No News is Bad News
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0311.htm>
* Killing Hope: Bringing Hell to Haiti, Part 2
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0302.htm>
* Bringing Hell to Haiti, Part 1
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0301.htm>
* How Bush and Blair Chose War and Then Chose The Justification Part 2
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Edwards0207-2.htm>
* How Bush and Blair Chose War and Then Chose The Justification Part 1
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Edwards0207-1.htm>
* Climate Catastrophe: The Ultimate Media Betrayal
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Edwards0108.htm>
* The BBC and Hiroshima
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Edwards0106.htm>
* The Tyrant with a Thousand Faces
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Edwards_US-UK-Saddam.htm>
* Exposing the Final Lie of The War On Iraq
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Edwards_Iraq-Qaeda-Lie.htm>
* Patriotism, Progress And A Beautiful Thing
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Edwards_Patriotism-Progress-
Beautiful.htm>
* Out on a Limb – Part Two
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Edwards_Independent-Iraq2.htm>
* Out on a Limb -- Part One
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Edwards_Independent-Iraq.htm>
* Lulling Us Into Submission
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Edwards_Advertising.htm>
* The Importance of Being Nuanced: A Tragicomedy Of Media Manners
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Edwards_Nuanced.htm>
* What Should I Do? Selfishness, Happiness And Benefiting Others
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Edwards_What-To-Do.htm>
* The BBC, Self-Glorification And Disaster
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Edwards_BBC.htm>
* Adventures in Media Surreality – Part 2: Global Climate Catastrophe –
Mustn’t Grumble
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Edwards_Media-Surreality2.htm>
* Adventures in Media Surreality – Part 1: Blair’s Serious and Current
Lies
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Edwards_Media-Surreality1.htm>
* Beating up the Cheerleader
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Edwards_BBC.htm>
* Biting the Had That Feeds – Part 1
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles6/Edwards_Biting-1.htm>
* Biting the Hand That Feeds – Part 2
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles6/Edwards_Biting-2.htm>
* "Saddam Loyalists" Or "Anti-Occupation Forces"? Ask The BBC
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles6/Edwards_BBC-Stenographers.htm>
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/Edwards0401.htm
Centre for Research on Globalisation
Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation
GLOBAL RESEARCH (CANADA) : FEATURE ARTICLE
IRAQ AND THE "WAR ON TERRORISM"
by Michel Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca
16 April 2004
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO404D.html
While the Western media highlights the death and "kidnapping" of paid
mercenaries, on contract to Western security firms, there is a deafening
silence on the massacre of more than 700 civilians in Fallujah by
coalition forces.
The operation in Fallujah is casually described by the Bush
administration as "a crackdown" against extremists:
"This violence we've seen is a part of a few people trying to stop the
progress toward democracy. Fallujah, south of Baghdad, these incidents
were basically thrust upon the innocent Iraqi people by gangs, violent
gangs." (President Bush, 11 April 2004)
According to CNN, an unduly high death toll was the unfortunate result
of the "rules of engagement", which required leading a military
operation against insurgents in a densely populated urban area. The
civilians were said to have been caught in the cross-fire.
The US military claims that most of the deaths were insurgents, an
assertion which is refuted by statements emanating from the hospitals
and by several eye-witness reports:
"We've been seeing it with our own eyes. People were told to leave
Fallujah and now there are thousands trapped in the desert. There is a
13 km long convoy of people trying to reach Baghdad. The Americans are
firing bombs, everything, everything they have on them. They are firing
on families! They are all children, old men and women in the desert.
Other Iraqi people are trying to help them. In Falluja the US military
have been bombing hospitals. Children are being evacuated to Baghdad.
There is a child now, a baby, he had 25 members of his family killed,
he's in the hospital and someone needs to be with him ... The Americans
are dropping cluster bombs. They are bombing from the air. There are
people lying dead in the streets. They said there'd be a ceasefire and
then they flew in, I saw them, and they began to bomb. They are fighting
back and they are fighting well in Falluja. But we are expecting the big
attack in 24-48 hours. It will be the main attack. They will be taking
the town street by street and searching and attacking. They did this
already in a village near-by. Please get help, get people to protest,
get them to go to the Embassies, get them out, get them to do something.
There is a massacre" (Eyewitness Report from Fallujah,
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/JAS404A.html )"During the course of
the roughly four hours we were at that small clinic, we saw perhaps a
dozen wounded brought in. Among them was a young woman, 18 years old,
shot in the head.... Doctors did not expect her to survive the night.
Another likely terminal case was a young boy with massive internal
bleeding. I also saw a man with extensive burns on his upper body and
shredded thighs, with wounds that could have been from a cluster bomb"
(See http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAH404A.html )
Coalition forces, using their own snipers equipped with precision rifles
on rooftops, are targeting women and children. Ambulances carrying the
wounded are being targeted by the US Marines:
"The most horrible brutality was the targeting of ambulances which
carried pregnant women who were about to give birth. There were tens of
bodies which are still under debris and we could not arrive at the
places as US snipers prevented people from getting them out." (quoted in
Al Jazeera, press conference of Dr Abd al-Salam al-Kubaisi, 16 April
2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
6B0698D9-3C9D-4CB8-9275-10ECD0D46565.htm )
The killings were ordered by the US military. Tens of thousands of
refugees have fled the city. The various member states of the occupying
forces including Italy and Japan, are responsible alongside the US-UK
coalition, for these massacres, in accordance with international law and
the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal. (See
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NUR203A.html ).
The Security firms are also involved in the killing of civilians.
Western and Iraqi sources confirm the presence of some 1500 private
mercenaries working alongside and/or collaborating with the coalition
forces.
THE "WAR ON TERRORISM"
At this critical juncture, the Bush administration desperately needs the
"war on terrorism" as a justification for the killings of civilians in
Iraq, which it describes as "collateral damage".
In recent weeks, a barrage of media reports have surfaced on Al Qaeda
links to the Iraqi resistance movement. The insurgents are described as
Islamic extremists and fundamentalists: "hard-line Sunnis, foreign
extremists, and, now, Sadr and his disenfranchised Shiite followers" (US
News and World Report, 19 April 2004).
The secular character of the resistance movement is denied. In an
utterly twisted logic, Al Qaeda is said to constitute a significant
force behind the Iraqi insurgents. According to official statements, Al
Qaeda mastermind Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is in Fallujah, which has become
a so-called "hotbed for foreign fighters". In the words of Newsweek,
"Saddam may not have had direct ties to Al Qaeda, but the jihadists are
eager to fill his shoes." (Newsweek, 19 April 2004)
Meanwhile, perfect timing, the 9/11 Commission has declassified the
controversial presidential PDB memo of August 6 2001 pertaining to Al
Qaeda's pre-9/11 plan "to attack the American homeland."
The disinformation campaign ultimately consists in convincing the US
public that the "defense of the Homeland" and the occupation of Iraq are
part of same process, involving the same enemy. In the words of former
CIA Director James Woolsey in a CNN interview:
"the Iraqi intelligence, trained al Qaeda in "poison gases and
conventional explosives." And had senior-level contacts going back a
decade. And the Islamists from the Sunni side, from the al Qaeda, work
with people like Hezbollah. They're perfectly happy to work together
against us. It's sort of like three Mafia families, but they insult each
other, but can still cooperate... I think it's Islamists totalitarian
masquerading as part of a religion. Certainly if anybody in the
intelligence community is surprised by this, the really surprising thing
would be that they are really surprised. Some of them have had a idea
fix for a long time, that al Qaeda would never work with the Ba'athist
and the Shiite Islamist would never work with the Sunni. It's just nuts.
They work together on important things. It's not that one necessarily
controls the other. It's not sort of like state sponsorship, but
cooperation, support here and there against us, sure, they've been doing
it for years and years and years.(CNNFN, Lou Dobbs, Tonight, 15 April
2004)
THE OSAMA TAPE
Meanwhile, another mysterious Osama tape has emerged (See
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ALJ404A.html ).
In the tape, Osama acknowledges responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on
the World Trade Center and the 3/11 (2004) train bombing in Madrid:
"I [Osama] am offering a truce to European countries, and its core is
our commitment to cease operations against any country which does not
carry out an onslaught against Muslims or interfere in their affairs as
part of the big American conspiracy against the Islamic world.... The
truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries. [Iraq]...
Whoever wants reconciliation and the right (way), then we are the ones
who initiated it, so stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling
your blood.... What happened on September 11 and March 11 was your goods
delivered back to you." (Ibid)
In other words, Osama bin Laden offers "a truce" if the various European
countries involved in Iraq accept to withdraw their troops. In return,
Al Qaeda will declare a moratorium on terrorist attacks in Europe.
Without further investigation, the Western media have described the tape
as an attempt by "Enemy Number One" to create a rift between America and
its European allies.
The tape in all likelihood is a hoax of US intelligence. The propaganda
ploy consists not only in upholding the US led-occupation of Iraq as
part of the broader "war on terrorism", it also provides a pretext to
Western governments, pressured by citizens movements across Europe, to
remain in Iraq. In the words of president Jacques Chirac, "nothing can
justify terrorism and, on that basis, nothing can allow any discussion
with terrorists."
Underlying the Osama tape is the presumption that the "extremists" in
Iraq are the same people responsible for the 9/11 and 3/11 terrorist
attacks. It follows, that the "anti-war zealots", by opposing the US led
occupation, are in fact providing ammunition to Osama bin Laden's Al
Qaeda:
"bin Laden's deranged fantasies are frighteningly similar to those many
anti-war zealots harbor both here and abroad... He also apparently tries
to justify the attacks of 9/11 as retaliation for U.S. support for Jews
in Palestine, and U.S. invasions in the Gulf War and Somalia. "Our
actions are reactions to your actions," he said.
This is gibberish, but it is typical of a megalomaniacal mind. Even
Hitler, after all, insisted his attack on Poland was in self-defense.
Evil often comes cloaked in the counterfeit robes of virtue.
But it's also easy to see how such arguments can gain traction among
impoverished Arabs who long have been repressed by their own governments
and are searching for answers.
The United States should be grateful for this latest tape. It puts a lot
of things in perspective. Europe and the United States are at war
together, and the enemy is someone of flesh and blood who can be
frightened -- enough so that he feels it necessary to propose a truce."
(Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake city, 15 April 2004)
Amply documented, Al Qaeda is a creation of the US intelligence
apparatus. This is a known fact to the governments and intelligence
services of America's European allies. It is corroborated by US
Congressional documents. Al Qaeda is a US sponsored intelligence asset.
(See http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html ).
And more than ever, in the face of mounting resentment, the Bush
Administration and its European allies desperately "need Osama" to
justify their military presence in Iraq.
The Iraq war is presented as a "Just War". The latter is predicated on
the existence of an "outside enemy" (Al Qaeda).
Under this criterion and with the full support of Western public
opinion, the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, whose Taliban rulers had
"provided a safe haven for Osama bin-Laden".
Before the war, Osama was said to be supporting Saddam. In the wake of
the war, the propaganda ploy now consists in presenting Osama as a
spokesman for the Iraqi resistance.
* * *
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of
Ottawa and author of War and Globalization the Truth behind September 11
. For details: http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html.
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/> grants permission to cross-post original
Global Research (Canada) articles in their entirety, or any portions
thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title of the
article are not modified. The source must be acknowledged as follows:
Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/> . For cross-postings, kindly use the
active URL hyperlink address of the original CRG article. The author's
copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research
(Canada) articles in print or other forms including commercial internet
sites, contact: editor@... .
To contact the author and/or for media inquiries:
editor@...
© Copyright MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY 2004
Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation
GLOBAL RESEARCH (CANADA) : FEATURE ARTICLE
IRAQ AND THE "WAR ON TERRORISM"
by Michel Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca
16 April 2004
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO404D.html
While the Western media highlights the death and "kidnapping" of paid
mercenaries, on contract to Western security firms, there is a deafening
silence on the massacre of more than 700 civilians in Fallujah by
coalition forces.
The operation in Fallujah is casually described by the Bush
administration as "a crackdown" against extremists:
"This violence we've seen is a part of a few people trying to stop the
progress toward democracy. Fallujah, south of Baghdad, these incidents
were basically thrust upon the innocent Iraqi people by gangs, violent
gangs." (President Bush, 11 April 2004)
According to CNN, an unduly high death toll was the unfortunate result
of the "rules of engagement", which required leading a military
operation against insurgents in a densely populated urban area. The
civilians were said to have been caught in the cross-fire.
The US military claims that most of the deaths were insurgents, an
assertion which is refuted by statements emanating from the hospitals
and by several eye-witness reports:
"We've been seeing it with our own eyes. People were told to leave
Fallujah and now there are thousands trapped in the desert. There is a
13 km long convoy of people trying to reach Baghdad. The Americans are
firing bombs, everything, everything they have on them. They are firing
on families! They are all children, old men and women in the desert.
Other Iraqi people are trying to help them. In Falluja the US military
have been bombing hospitals. Children are being evacuated to Baghdad.
There is a child now, a baby, he had 25 members of his family killed,
he's in the hospital and someone needs to be with him ... The Americans
are dropping cluster bombs. They are bombing from the air. There are
people lying dead in the streets. They said there'd be a ceasefire and
then they flew in, I saw them, and they began to bomb. They are fighting
back and they are fighting well in Falluja. But we are expecting the big
attack in 24-48 hours. It will be the main attack. They will be taking
the town street by street and searching and attacking. They did this
already in a village near-by. Please get help, get people to protest,
get them to go to the Embassies, get them out, get them to do something.
There is a massacre" (Eyewitness Report from Fallujah,
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/JAS404A.html )"During the course of
the roughly four hours we were at that small clinic, we saw perhaps a
dozen wounded brought in. Among them was a young woman, 18 years old,
shot in the head.... Doctors did not expect her to survive the night.
Another likely terminal case was a young boy with massive internal
bleeding. I also saw a man with extensive burns on his upper body and
shredded thighs, with wounds that could have been from a cluster bomb"
(See http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAH404A.html )
Coalition forces, using their own snipers equipped with precision rifles
on rooftops, are targeting women and children. Ambulances carrying the
wounded are being targeted by the US Marines:
"The most horrible brutality was the targeting of ambulances which
carried pregnant women who were about to give birth. There were tens of
bodies which are still under debris and we could not arrive at the
places as US snipers prevented people from getting them out." (quoted in
Al Jazeera, press conference of Dr Abd al-Salam al-Kubaisi, 16 April
2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
6B0698D9-3C9D-4CB8-9275-10ECD0D46565.htm )
The killings were ordered by the US military. Tens of thousands of
refugees have fled the city. The various member states of the occupying
forces including Italy and Japan, are responsible alongside the US-UK
coalition, for these massacres, in accordance with international law and
the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal. (See
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NUR203A.html ).
The Security firms are also involved in the killing of civilians.
Western and Iraqi sources confirm the presence of some 1500 private
mercenaries working alongside and/or collaborating with the coalition
forces.
THE "WAR ON TERRORISM"
At this critical juncture, the Bush administration desperately needs the
"war on terrorism" as a justification for the killings of civilians in
Iraq, which it describes as "collateral damage".
In recent weeks, a barrage of media reports have surfaced on Al Qaeda
links to the Iraqi resistance movement. The insurgents are described as
Islamic extremists and fundamentalists: "hard-line Sunnis, foreign
extremists, and, now, Sadr and his disenfranchised Shiite followers" (US
News and World Report, 19 April 2004).
The secular character of the resistance movement is denied. In an
utterly twisted logic, Al Qaeda is said to constitute a significant
force behind the Iraqi insurgents. According to official statements, Al
Qaeda mastermind Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is in Fallujah, which has become
a so-called "hotbed for foreign fighters". In the words of Newsweek,
"Saddam may not have had direct ties to Al Qaeda, but the jihadists are
eager to fill his shoes." (Newsweek, 19 April 2004)
Meanwhile, perfect timing, the 9/11 Commission has declassified the
controversial presidential PDB memo of August 6 2001 pertaining to Al
Qaeda's pre-9/11 plan "to attack the American homeland."
The disinformation campaign ultimately consists in convincing the US
public that the "defense of the Homeland" and the occupation of Iraq are
part of same process, involving the same enemy. In the words of former
CIA Director James Woolsey in a CNN interview:
"the Iraqi intelligence, trained al Qaeda in "poison gases and
conventional explosives." And had senior-level contacts going back a
decade. And the Islamists from the Sunni side, from the al Qaeda, work
with people like Hezbollah. They're perfectly happy to work together
against us. It's sort of like three Mafia families, but they insult each
other, but can still cooperate... I think it's Islamists totalitarian
masquerading as part of a religion. Certainly if anybody in the
intelligence community is surprised by this, the really surprising thing
would be that they are really surprised. Some of them have had a idea
fix for a long time, that al Qaeda would never work with the Ba'athist
and the Shiite Islamist would never work with the Sunni. It's just nuts.
They work together on important things. It's not that one necessarily
controls the other. It's not sort of like state sponsorship, but
cooperation, support here and there against us, sure, they've been doing
it for years and years and years.(CNNFN, Lou Dobbs, Tonight, 15 April
2004)
THE OSAMA TAPE
Meanwhile, another mysterious Osama tape has emerged (See
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ALJ404A.html ).
In the tape, Osama acknowledges responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on
the World Trade Center and the 3/11 (2004) train bombing in Madrid:
"I [Osama] am offering a truce to European countries, and its core is
our commitment to cease operations against any country which does not
carry out an onslaught against Muslims or interfere in their affairs as
part of the big American conspiracy against the Islamic world.... The
truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries. [Iraq]...
Whoever wants reconciliation and the right (way), then we are the ones
who initiated it, so stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling
your blood.... What happened on September 11 and March 11 was your goods
delivered back to you." (Ibid)
In other words, Osama bin Laden offers "a truce" if the various European
countries involved in Iraq accept to withdraw their troops. In return,
Al Qaeda will declare a moratorium on terrorist attacks in Europe.
Without further investigation, the Western media have described the tape
as an attempt by "Enemy Number One" to create a rift between America and
its European allies.
The tape in all likelihood is a hoax of US intelligence. The propaganda
ploy consists not only in upholding the US led-occupation of Iraq as
part of the broader "war on terrorism", it also provides a pretext to
Western governments, pressured by citizens movements across Europe, to
remain in Iraq. In the words of president Jacques Chirac, "nothing can
justify terrorism and, on that basis, nothing can allow any discussion
with terrorists."
Underlying the Osama tape is the presumption that the "extremists" in
Iraq are the same people responsible for the 9/11 and 3/11 terrorist
attacks. It follows, that the "anti-war zealots", by opposing the US led
occupation, are in fact providing ammunition to Osama bin Laden's Al
Qaeda:
"bin Laden's deranged fantasies are frighteningly similar to those many
anti-war zealots harbor both here and abroad... He also apparently tries
to justify the attacks of 9/11 as retaliation for U.S. support for Jews
in Palestine, and U.S. invasions in the Gulf War and Somalia. "Our
actions are reactions to your actions," he said.
This is gibberish, but it is typical of a megalomaniacal mind. Even
Hitler, after all, insisted his attack on Poland was in self-defense.
Evil often comes cloaked in the counterfeit robes of virtue.
But it's also easy to see how such arguments can gain traction among
impoverished Arabs who long have been repressed by their own governments
and are searching for answers.
The United States should be grateful for this latest tape. It puts a lot
of things in perspective. Europe and the United States are at war
together, and the enemy is someone of flesh and blood who can be
frightened -- enough so that he feels it necessary to propose a truce."
(Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake city, 15 April 2004)
Amply documented, Al Qaeda is a creation of the US intelligence
apparatus. This is a known fact to the governments and intelligence
services of America's European allies. It is corroborated by US
Congressional documents. Al Qaeda is a US sponsored intelligence asset.
(See http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html ).
And more than ever, in the face of mounting resentment, the Bush
Administration and its European allies desperately "need Osama" to
justify their military presence in Iraq.
The Iraq war is presented as a "Just War". The latter is predicated on
the existence of an "outside enemy" (Al Qaeda).
Under this criterion and with the full support of Western public
opinion, the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, whose Taliban rulers had
"provided a safe haven for Osama bin-Laden".
Before the war, Osama was said to be supporting Saddam. In the wake of
the war, the propaganda ploy now consists in presenting Osama as a
spokesman for the Iraqi resistance.
* * *
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of
Ottawa and author of War and Globalization the Truth behind September 11
. For details: http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html.
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/> grants permission to cross-post original
Global Research (Canada) articles in their entirety, or any portions
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© Copyright MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY 2004
From: Komunist <komunist@...>
Web magazin KOMUNIST
OBAVESTENJE
Proslava 134. g. rodjenja V.I. Lenjina
Izjava Sekretarijata NKPJ
Nova komunisticka partija Jugoslavije organizuje 22. aprila SVECANU
AKADEMIJU u cast 134. godine rodjenja VLADIMIRA ILJICA LENJINA.
Proslava ce se odrzati u Beogradu, u dvorani RU "Veselin Maslesa"
(Generala Zdanova 78). Pocetak u 18 casova. Ulaz slobodan. Ucestvovace,
pored ostalih, istaknuti operski, dramski i estradni umetnici,
folklorni ansambli, horovi...
O delu i liku Vode Oktobarske revolucije, o unutrasnjoj i spoljnoj
situaciji, o predsednickim izborima u Srbiji, kao i o stanju u
Medunarodnom komunistickom pokretu govorice clanovi najuzeg rukovodstva
NKPJ i SKOJ-a, koji je podmladak Partije.
http://komunist.free.fr
[Sono state eliminare la parti non di testo del messaggio]
Web magazin KOMUNIST
OBAVESTENJE
Proslava 134. g. rodjenja V.I. Lenjina
Izjava Sekretarijata NKPJ
Nova komunisticka partija Jugoslavije organizuje 22. aprila SVECANU
AKADEMIJU u cast 134. godine rodjenja VLADIMIRA ILJICA LENJINA.
Proslava ce se odrzati u Beogradu, u dvorani RU "Veselin Maslesa"
(Generala Zdanova 78). Pocetak u 18 casova. Ulaz slobodan. Ucestvovace,
pored ostalih, istaknuti operski, dramski i estradni umetnici,
folklorni ansambli, horovi...
O delu i liku Vode Oktobarske revolucije, o unutrasnjoj i spoljnoj
situaciji, o predsednickim izborima u Srbiji, kao i o stanju u
Medunarodnom komunistickom pokretu govorice clanovi najuzeg rukovodstva
NKPJ i SKOJ-a, koji je podmladak Partije.
http://komunist.free.fr
[Sono state eliminare la parti non di testo del messaggio]
GUERRA GLOBALE E PERMANENTE:
VERSO LA MOBILITAZIONE ARMATA DI MASSA DELLA POPOLAZIONE TEDESCA
Il Ministro tedesco Schily (SPD) ha recentemente affermato che e' ora
di risvegliare "la coscienza militare-difensiva nella popolazione
tedesca". Lo si puo' fare ad esempio attraverso la istituzione di un
anno formativo obbligatorio per tutti. Il tema non andrebbe piu' visto
"come un tabu', del quale non si possa parlare... Non si tratta piu'
solamente di difendere con le armi in pugno la Patria, bensi' di
servirla anche altrimenti".
All'uopo Schily si e' detto favorevole ad ulteriori stravolgimenti
della Costituzione tedesca, i quali seguirebbero le gia' infami riforme
che, sull'onda della propaganda antijugoslava degli anni Novanta, hanno
reso legali i cosiddetti "interventi militari fuori area": bombe su
Belgrado, assistenza sul terreno ai neonazisti pan-albanesi,
occupazione militare dell'Afghanistan, eccetera.
(a cura di Italo Slavo)
+++ Terrorabwehrarbeitsdienst ... +++
AP-Nachrichten - The Associated Press News Service. Copyright 2004, 18.
März
2004, 18:36 Uhr:
Schily fordert soziales Jahr und Erziehung zum Abwehrbewusstsein
Nach den Worten des SPD-Politikers muss angesichts der Gefahr durch den
internationalen Terrorismus ein "Abwehrbewusstsein in der deutschen
Bevölkerung" geschaffen werden. Dabei könne ein soziales
Pflichtjahrhelfen.
Schily sagte, er sehe das Thema "nicht als Tabu an, über das man nicht
reden darf" und forderte eine breite parlamentarische und
gesellschaftliche Debatte. "Es geht dann nicht mehr allein darum, das
Vaterland mit der Waffe in der Hand zu verteidigen, sondern ihm
anderweitig zu dienen." Der Minister sprach sich auch für eine dafür
notwendige Grundgesetzänderung aus.
( Quelle: Klaus von Raussendorff / Anti-Imperialistische Korrespondenz
(AIKor) - http://www.aikor.de )
VERSO LA MOBILITAZIONE ARMATA DI MASSA DELLA POPOLAZIONE TEDESCA
Il Ministro tedesco Schily (SPD) ha recentemente affermato che e' ora
di risvegliare "la coscienza militare-difensiva nella popolazione
tedesca". Lo si puo' fare ad esempio attraverso la istituzione di un
anno formativo obbligatorio per tutti. Il tema non andrebbe piu' visto
"come un tabu', del quale non si possa parlare... Non si tratta piu'
solamente di difendere con le armi in pugno la Patria, bensi' di
servirla anche altrimenti".
All'uopo Schily si e' detto favorevole ad ulteriori stravolgimenti
della Costituzione tedesca, i quali seguirebbero le gia' infami riforme
che, sull'onda della propaganda antijugoslava degli anni Novanta, hanno
reso legali i cosiddetti "interventi militari fuori area": bombe su
Belgrado, assistenza sul terreno ai neonazisti pan-albanesi,
occupazione militare dell'Afghanistan, eccetera.
(a cura di Italo Slavo)
+++ Terrorabwehrarbeitsdienst ... +++
AP-Nachrichten - The Associated Press News Service. Copyright 2004, 18.
März
2004, 18:36 Uhr:
Schily fordert soziales Jahr und Erziehung zum Abwehrbewusstsein
Nach den Worten des SPD-Politikers muss angesichts der Gefahr durch den
internationalen Terrorismus ein "Abwehrbewusstsein in der deutschen
Bevölkerung" geschaffen werden. Dabei könne ein soziales
Pflichtjahrhelfen.
Schily sagte, er sehe das Thema "nicht als Tabu an, über das man nicht
reden darf" und forderte eine breite parlamentarische und
gesellschaftliche Debatte. "Es geht dann nicht mehr allein darum, das
Vaterland mit der Waffe in der Hand zu verteidigen, sondern ihm
anderweitig zu dienen." Der Minister sprach sich auch für eine dafür
notwendige Grundgesetzänderung aus.
( Quelle: Klaus von Raussendorff / Anti-Imperialistische Korrespondenz
(AIKor) - http://www.aikor.de )
