TWENTY YEARS ON FROM A CRIME IN PROGRESS

The 2003 invasion of Iraq and all the political circumstantiality that preceded it remains one of the most shameful chapters in international humanitarian law and contemporary history.

 

Por Sidney Hey

On 20 March 2003, US troops that had been amassing for months on the borders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan crossed the borders of Iraq to carry out one of the most abhorrent criminal war campaigns in contemporary history, based on lies and falsehoods that would become one of the crimes against humanity that still goes unpunished.

The damage done not only to the country but to the humanity of the Iraqi people was so great and brutal that no figure can describe the magnitude of the crime.

Under the cover of the opacity of international bodies, including the United Nations, the US and Britain launched a brutal bombing campaign on Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Tikrit with the obvious intention of softening up the Iraqi defenders. For George Bush and Co, the “shock and awe” campaign would be enough to make the ill-equipped Iraqi troops surrender and the tortured civilians, stunned by the bombs, would emerge from the basements to greet the invaders as liberators. That was the fevered vision of the neo-conservatives, contrived in the framework of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which pursued ambitious geopolitical as well as economic goals (the latter linked to the appropriation of oil).

Devised in 1993 by one of the most prominent Republican Zionists in the neo-conservative circle, Paul Wolfowitz, this plan only worked if there was a shocking event that would force the US to go to war. Interestingly enough, this is how the events of the morning of 9/11 2001 unfolded, which, among the inconsistencies noted, involved those young israelis partying after the attacks on the towers in a New Jersey flat, who, after being arrested by the police, were released and promptly deported to Israel, something the federal government has never been able to explain.

And it is important to remember what was the excuse of Washington and the Bush-Cheney administration for the basis of the aggression and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. But few have asked where did the inspiration for this interventionist policy come from? This brings us to Israel and in particular to the then prime minister Ariel Sharon and his then minister Benjamin Netanyahu, protagonists and precursors (each in their own experiences) of bloodless actions against the Palestinian population and Arab neighbours under the argument of “preventive war” and which the US neocon ideologues (mostly militant Zionists) adopted and would shape as a cog in that project for the new century.

Creating the terrifying event that would hit a US society that is usually disinterested and ignorant of what is going on abroad head on, by pinning it on the CIA's operational sham Al Qaeda, was one of the central tactics in building the case against the “Islamic world” and more specifically against the old and now useless partners in Central Asia such as the Taliban and the pesky witness to Washington's interference in the Middle East that ruled in Baghdad.

Impunity and malice took hold of the federal government and the likes of Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, backed by the farcical representative Colin Powell to the United Nations, orchestrated the cloak of lies that would justify to an already sceptical public the wars that were about to be launched. Government resources were in the hands of the war's supporters and they would use them accordingly.

Bush relied on alleged intelligence reports (among other lies) arguing the complicity of Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi government, a lie that had been warned long before it was discovered as such. Likewise, the media made a circus out of this thesis and, sticking to this untruth, encouraged not only the invasions but also the taking away of liberties and the justification of total espionage on the citizenry and the development of atrocious practices against human integrity such as kidnapping and torture in all its forms.

On the basis of these abject practices they forced certain Arab assets such as Abu Zubaydah Ibn al-Libi to confess that Saddam Hussein was allied with Al Qaeda. The US, following the lies of these neocon psychopaths who copied the Israeli approach, had fallen several notches down in terms of respect for human rights and this would get worse as the wars dragged on.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq is one of the most sinister chapters of US foreign policy. It was not a simple mistake as some Anglo-Saxon political analysts portray it. Millions killed, millions maimed (physically and mentally) and millions displaced are the best testimony to that. Bush and Cheney infiltrated sectarian hatred by breaking Iraq into pieces and Obama and Biden (through the ISIS hoax) ensured that it will never be reunited.

The Anglo-American occupation created an administration of terror and through it, subjected Iraqis to an iron law whereby the military, military intelligence and the CIA turned Baghdad into a gigantic labyrinth of horror where death and disappearance was around every corner. Abu-Graib was only the symbol of that administration and the tip of the iceberg of a circuit of torture, humiliation, rape and humiliation, including the trafficking of women for prostitution. Is there an ongoing investigation into these bestialities?

The weight of this black part of US political history cannot be ignored, much less when officials like Joseph Biden have been involved in part of the creation of all the dirty dynamics that gave rise to the “fight against terrorism” and today, as if he had no stain on it all, he condemns third parties and promotes judicial measures before bodies that his own country has scorned.