USA - Iraq Quotes

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T E Lawrence (of Arabia), UK agent from the UK newspaper, The Sunday Times, August 1920:

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from a disaster".

Egyptian song by Shaaban Abdel-Rahim:

"Since the twin towers, we've been living in a dilemma.
If one thousand died then, how many more thousands have died as a result.
After Afghanistan, here comes the turn of Iraq, and no one knows who is next."

Nicholas Veliotes, former USA ambassador to Egypt and Jordan:

"We've poisoned the well we drink from. We didn't need to announce pre-emptive strikes. We didn't need to talk about democratizing the entire Arab world. We didn't have to walk with a swagger. We've alienated our allies in the Arab world and elsewhere, now we're looking around for help, and guess what? It isn't there."

Mohandas K Gandhi, Indian philosopher and politician:

"The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within."

Dick Cheney, USA Vice-President (from 2000) speaking in 1990:

"Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well."

Frederic F. Clairmont, UK writer:

"Let's be reminded of something basic that ought never be forgotten or downplayed: two predator nations with a combined population of over 360 million, the richest in the world, with military budgets outstripping $450 billion degutted a poverty stricken nation of 25 million, a people that had been bled white by an embargo of 13 years. Their ranks have been swelled by other mercenaries."

Paul Wolfowitz, USA Deputy Defence Secretary in an interview in the July 2003 issue of magazine Vanity Fair:

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

Lieutenant-General Stanley Maude, UK general after his army had occupied Baghdad in 1917:

"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."

Henry Kissinger, USA Secretary of State during the 1980s (quoted in "The Hostage Nation" (2001):

"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hand of the Arabs".

Peter Mahoney, UK soldier who committed suicide after returning from Iraq:

"I think Tony Blair was just following whatever Bush said. He was simply his puppet. He got in too deep and couldn't back out. From what we saw Saddam's regime did not have advanced weapons. Iraqi troops were using ancient Russian machines. They were firing sticks and stones. They might as well have had catapults.".

Neil Mackay, writing in the UK newspaper, Sunday Herald ("Official: US oil at the heart of Iraq crisis"), 6 October 2002:

"President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary."

Herbert Docena, writing about the finances involved in the invasion of Iraq:

"The rhetoric about helping Iraqis rebuild their country will hopefully drown out the fact that the people who will be paying for the occupation will not be the same people who will be profiting from it.

The Iraqis will be paying American corporations for rebuilding the bridges, the hospitals, the schools, the irrigation systems, the power grids and almost everything else which the US – as prodded on by these corporations – destroyed. They will also be paying US investors to take over the corporations that the Iraqi people previously collectively owned but which will now be sold off without their authorization.

The Iraqis will be forced to borrow money from the US and the international banks without their consent– and at interest rates and with conditions that they did not agree with – in order to spend on things over which they have no say whatsoever.

It’s a small price to pay for being liberated."

Richard Perle, adviser to the USA government:

"If we let our vision of the world go forth and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, Washington Post, 15 September 2002 (Page A01):

"A USA-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries, and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition."

Amnesty International:

"The US and other Western governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and ignored Amnesty International's campaign on behalf of the thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians killed in the 1988 attacks on Halabja. Once again, the human rights record of a country is used selectively to legitimize military actions."

Parthapratim Pal, International Development Economics Associates:

"Oil has always been an important factor in the USA - Iraq conflict. The Gulf War was prompted by Iraq's attack on Kuwait was because Iraq suspected Kuwait of extracting oil from its reserves. Recently, the deputy prime minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, commented that Iraqs cooperation with United Nations weapons inspectors will not stop the USA from attacking Iraq because 'America . . . wants to control the oil in Iraq'. He further added, 'The only way to control the oil in Iraq is to destroy and divide Iraq and bring in a government like in Afghanistan'. The USA is the largest consumer of oil in the world. According to data published on the website of British Petroleum, the USA consumes about 895.6 million tonnes of oil, which is about 25.5 per cent of global oil consumption. Domestic oil production in the USA in 2001 was about 351.7 million tonnes. Calculations show that at this rate of oil production, the oil reserves of the USA will be exhausted in about ten and a half year's time."

George W Bush, USA President discussing a possible invasion of Iraq needing a resolution from the United Nations:

"The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others."

George W Bush, USA President addressing his nation:

"We really don't need the United Nations approval to act. When it comes to our security, we do not need anyones permission."

Harlan Ullman, a USA military strategist in an interview on USA television describing the planned use of 800 cruise missiles on Iraq:

"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before. You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes."

Mark Steel, UK journalist:

"For most people, Blair and Bush have simply lost the argument. Despite being in a hole, these two politicians can't stop digging. Every piece of compelling new evidence for the necessity of war turns out to be even more ludicrous than the last, so we've now arrived at the plagiarised student theses and crackly intercepted phone calls that couldn't secure a conviction for possession of dope.

And this to justify chucking around the armed might of the greatest superpower the world has ever known, the equivalent of a Bali bombing every night for as long as it takes.

All this will be carried out in the name of human rights and democracy by the power that destroyed both in Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Indonesia. it will be in the name of ridding the world of chemical weapons, by the power that spread napalm and Agent Orange across half a continent. It will be to rid the world of a dictator who gassed his own people and invaded Iran, when those acts could only have been carried out with the backing of the superpower in the first place."

John Pilger, UK journalist:

"First, let us stop calling it a 'war'. The last time 'war' was used in the Gulf was in 1991 when the truth was buried with more than 200,000 people. Attacking a 70-mile line of trenches, three American brigades, operating at night, used 60-ton armoured earthmovers to bury alive teenage Iraqi conscripts, including the wounded and those surrendering and retreating. Survivors were slaughtered from the air. The helicopter gunship pilots called it a 'turkey shoot'.

Of the 148 Americans who died, a quarter of them were killed by Americans. Most of the British were killed by Americans. This was known as 'friendly fire'. The civilians who were killed, whose deaths were never recorded by the American military because it was 'not policy', were 'collateral damage'.

Today, after 13 years of an economic blockade that has been compared with a medieval siege, Iraq is defenceless, no matter the discovery of an odd missile that can reach barely 90 miles. Its ragtag army is woefully under-equipped and awaiting its fate, along with a civilian population of whom 42 per cent are children. They are stricken. Even the export of British manufactured vaccines meant to protect Iraqi infants from diphtheria and yellow fever has been restricted. The vaccines, say the Blair government, are 'capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction'.

This is the nation upon which the Bush gang says it will rain down 800 missiles within the space of two days. 'Shock and awe' the Pentagon calls its 'strategy'. Meanwhile the weapons inspectors and their morose Swedish leader go about their treasure hunt and a cartoon show is hosted in the UN by General Colin Powell (who rose to the top by covering up the notorious My Lai massacre in Vietnam).

It is all a charade. The Americans want Iraq because they want to control and reorder the Middle East. Their once-favourite dictator, Saddam Hussein, made the mistake of misreading the signals from Washington in 1990 and invading another favourite American oil tyranny, Kuwait. So belatedly, Saddam must be replaced, preferably by another Saddam, though more reliable and less uppity. There is no issue of 'weapons of mass destruction'. That is a distraction for us and the media."

Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa:

"The USA is a threat to world peace. Who are they to pretend that they are the policemen of the world, the ones that should decide for the people of Iraq what should be done with their government and their leadership. All that [the USA] wants is Iraqi oil. [Blair is] simply the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain."

Michael Moore, USA film maker:

"15 of the 19 [September 11th] hijackers were from Saudi Arabia."

Salman Rushdie, UK author, once sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeni:

"The USA approach looks like bullying because it is."

Jerry Springer, USA broadcaster:

"[Invading Iraq] would create generations that hated the USA."

Richard Dawkins, UK scientist:

"[Invading Iraq] will unite the entire Arab world against the West."

Ivan Abrahams, Methodist minister in Johannesburg, South Africa, during a march against attacking Iraq:

"We are saying to [USA President] Bush, you are not the saviour of the world and we will not bow down to you."

José Saramago, the Portuguese writer and Nobel laureate, speaking to a crowd during a march against attacking Iraq:

"We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose on the world..."

Anon: from a wall in Cardiff, Wales, UK:

"How did our oil get under their sand?"

Abbas Najib: Iraqi civilian living in Baghdad:

"The Americans will want to put in a puppet, or they will try to rule Iraq themselves. We all know they want our oil. They will try to control it whatever happens".

Glenn Kessler and Mike Allen, journalists on the USA newspaper, The Washington Post ("Bush Faces Increasingly Poor Image Overseas"):

"The messages from USA embassies around the globe have become urgent and disturbing: Many people in the world increasingly think President Bush is a greater threat to world peace than Iraqi President Saddam Hussein."

"Analysts and USA officials suggest a number of reasons the president has become the subject of such vitriol overseas. Some of it stems from personality: Bush's blunt manner and frequent references to religion appear especially grating to European ears, these analysts and officials say. But much of it is rooted in substantive questions about the role of USA power in the world and whether Bush is properly using it in his battle with Hussein."

"'The debate [overseas] has not been about Iraq,' a State Department official said. 'There is real angst in the world about our power, and what they perceive as the rawness, the arrogance, the unipolarity' of the administration's actions."

"Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes world opinion shifted dramatically against Bush when, after the new year began, he signaled he was not committed to supporting continued inspections. Cirincione said USA allies had been relieved when Bush appeared to embrace resolving the issue through the United Nations last fall. 'It now appears to be an elaborate con job,' he said. 'Other leaders feel manipulated and deceived.'"

"Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a staff member of the National Security Council during the Nixon administration, said there has been a natural progression in attitudes overseas. 'It was antiwar, not anti-American. Now it's anti-Bush, not anti-American,' he said. 'That image is stuck in people's consciousness.'"

Michael T. Klare, writing for Interhemispheric Resource Center:

"It follows ... that a policy aimed at protecting the [USA] from [Weapons of Mass Detruction - WMD] attacks would identify Pakistan and North Korea as the leading perils, and put Iraq in a rather distant third place. But this is not, of course, what the administration is doing. Instead, it has minimized the threat from Pakistan and North Korea and focused almost exclusively on the threat from Iraq. It is clear, then, that protecting the [USA] from WMD attack is not the primary justification for invading Iraq; if it were, we would be talking about an assault on Pakistan and/or North Korea, not Iraq."

"For most Arab Muslims, whatever their views of Saddam Hussein, the [USA] is a hypocritical power because it tolerates (or even supports) the use of state terror by Israel against the Palestinians while making war against Baghdad for the same sort of behavior. It is this perception that is fueling the anti-American current now running through the Muslim world. An American invasion of Iraq will not quiet that current, but excite it. It is thus exceedingly difficult to see how a [USA] invasion of Iraq will produce a stunning victory in the war against terrorism; if anything, it will trigger a new round of anti-American violence. Hence, it is very difficult to conclude that the administration is motivated by anti-terrorism in seeking to topple Hussein."

"Ever since World War II, when American policymakers first acknowledged that the [USA] would someday become dependent on Middle Eastern petroleum, it has been American policy to ensure that the [USA] would always have unrestrained access to Persian Gulf oil. At first, the [USA] relied on Great Britain to protect American access to the Gulf, and then, when Britain pulled out of the area in 1971, the [USA] chose to rely on the Shah of Iran. But when, in 1979, the Shah was overthrown by Islamic militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini, Washington decided that it would have to assume responsibility on its own to protect the oil flow. The result was the Carter Doctrine of January 23, 1980, which states that unrestricted access to Persian Gulf is a vital interest of the [USA] and that, in protection of that interest, the [USA] will employ 'any means necessary, including military force.'"

"...by serving as the dominant power in the Gulf, WE maintain a 'stranglehold' over the economies of other nations. This gives us extraordinary leverage in world affairs, and explains to some degree why states like Japan, Britain, France, and Germany - states that are even more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than we are - defer to Washington on major international issues (like Iraq) even when they disagree with us."

Professor Raphael Salkie in a letter to the UK newspaper, The Independent:

"I am outraged that the United States, with the largest arsenal of nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional weapons in history, can say that one tinpot Middle Eastern dictator is a threat to world peace and be taken seriously. I am sickened that my government can rush into a war which, as any child of eight can see, is clearly about American power and cheap oil."

David Frum, speechwriter for USA president, George W Bush:

"An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein – and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."

Michael Klare, USA political scientist:

"The removal of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by someone beholden to the United States is a key part of a broader United States strategy aimed at assuring permanent American global dominance."

Robert Fisk, journalist for the UK newspaper, The Independent, writing about a night of intense USA bombing on Baghdad:

"The sheer violence of it, the howl of air raid sirens and the air-cutting fall of the missiles carried its own political message; not just to President Saddam but to the rest of the world. We are the superpower, those explosions said last night. This is how we do business."

Deborah Orr, UK journalist, discussing anti-USA resentment in the Middle East:

"If America uses its decision to topple Saddam as a way of gaining control of a key territory in the Middle East, this resentment will become all the greater, and the US will have increased the terrorist threat rather than lessening it."

Piers Morgan, editor of the UK newspaper, The Daily Mirror:

"Tony Blair is a decent man who genuinely thinks what he is doing is justified. But when he sees men such as George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld smirking and boasting as they announce their Shock and Awe offensive, we hope he understands why we believe we have been dragged into something we should have been fighting tooth and nail to stop."

Albert Einstein, scientist:

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."

David Edwards, UK writer:

"In some spiritual traditions compassion is described as the 'invisible protector' of living beings. If this sounds like mere sentiment, consider that compassion is protecting the civilian population of Iraq in a very real way, right now. The millions of ordinary people who felt like insignificant ants marching in giant crowds in February and March have had this very real effect: they have placed an invisible restraining hand on the shoulders of the people throwing the Tomahawks, the MOABs and the JDAMs. The USA military does not feel able to shed the blood of thousands of civilians by bringing its giant, fiery hammers down on urban areas - they know the world is watching, they know the world will not tolerate it. They know this because you and we filled small areas of space with our bodies on the streets of our cities. It didn't feel like much at the time."

Mark Steel, UK journalist:

"We're flattening the place because we're committed to rebuilding it. To prove this another rebuilding contract was handed out yesterday, to Dick Cheney's old company. It's as if an arsonist burned your street down, then said: 'The good news is my brother-in-law can put it back up at a very reasonable price. And sorry about your dead daughters, but my cousin's an undertaker so he'll sort you out a lovely urn at a competitive rate.' And then went on television to announce: 'For some reason they're not welcoming me as much as I predicted'."

Robin Cook, UK member of parliament who resigned from the government on the outbreak of the invasion:

"Nobody should start a war on the assumption that the enemy's army will co-operate. But that is exactly what President Bush has done".

CIA Spokesman:

"We may have under-estimated the Iraqi's hatred of America".

Sergei Ivanov, Defence Minsister of Russia:

"Saddam is neither friend nor brother to us, and he will never pay off debts to us. It's the question of precedent: today the United States doesn't like Iraq, tomorrow Syria, then Iran, North Korea and then what: everyone else?"

Lieutenant Matt Martin, one of the USA soldiers who shot at a vehicle killing up to 10 women and children:

"Did you see all that? Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice."

Corporal Ryan Dupre, a USA soldier in Iraq:

"The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy. I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."

Arundhati Roy, Indian writer:

"After using the 'good offices' of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the 'Allies' / 'Coalition of the Willing' (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!"

David Walker in a letter to the UK newspaper, The Independent:

"My wife and I have just returned from Belgium where, courtesy of the hotel TV, we acquired a new perspective on the Iraq war. The difference between BBC, ITV and CNN on the one hand and the channels from Belgium, Germany and France on the other was stark and disturbing. The 'coalition' output, which strongly influences public opinion in Britain, comprises reports from 'embedded' reporters telling us about the mud and dust, press conferences by generals describing the tip of the iceberg they wanted us to see and studio debates among armchair pundits."

"In contrast, the 'Old Europe' channels were showing film from reporters who had embedded themselves at the wrong end of the Baghdad blitz and the Basra bombardment. These films depicted the shattered homes, the killed and grieving civilians and the infrastructure chaos our armed forces are creating daily. Since this footage (none of it bearing the al-Jazeera logo) clearly exists, why does the Western media studiously ignore it or, when confronted by it, claim it to be Iraqi propaganda."

Geoff Hoon, UK Defence Secretary, on BBC radio after being asked if the mother of an Iraqi child killed by cluster bombs would thank UK forces for their actions:

"One day they might. I accept that in the short term the consequences are terrible. No one minimises those and I'm not seeking to do so. But what I am saying is that this is a country that has been brutalised for decades by this appalling regime and that the restoration of that country to its own people, the possibility of their deciding their future... and indeed the way in which they go about thier lives, ultimately, yes, that will be a better place for people in Iraq."

Nuremberg Tribunal Judgement from 1946:

"To initiate a war of aggression 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".

Baghdad Citizen on the day of the fall of the city:

"You'll see the celebrations and we will be happy Saddam has gone, but we will then want to rid ourselves of the Americans and we will want to keep our oil and there will be resistance and then they will call us 'terrorists'".

The Independent, UK newspaper:

"There is something unseemly, not to say alarming, about the way in which the US appears to be setting up Syria as the next threat to world peace and security even before the guns have fallen silent in Iraq. With looting and violence continuing, barely restrained, over the weekend, President Bush and his senior officials peppered Syria with warnings about its behaviour – warnings all too reminiscent of the ones that preceded the war on Iraq."

"Having eliminated Iraq as a threat, the Bush administration gives the impression that it is casting around for more enemies. The risks of such public accusations were all too apparent in the failed international diplomacy that gave way to the war on Iraq. The current disorder in Iraq similarly illustrates the dangers inherent in effecting a "regime change" by force without sufficient planning."

A Persian traveller's letter, 1258 a.d. (after the Mongol sack of Baghdad):

"You ask me about the sack of Baghdad ... It was so horrible there are no words to describe it. I wish I had died earlier and not seen how the butchers destroyed these treasures of knowledge and learning. I thought I knew the world, but this holocaust is so strange and pointless, that I'm struck dumb. The revolutions of time and its decisions have defeated reason and knowledge."

Dick Cheney about his company, Halliburton having done business in Azerbaijan, Burma, Indonesia, Libya and Nigeria

"The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States."

John Pilger, Australian journalist writing in the UK newspaper, The Independent:

"When the invasion began, the British public was called upon to 'support' troops sent illegally and undemocratically to kill people with whom we had no quarrel. 'The ultimate test of our professionalism' is how Commander McKendrick describes an unprovoked attack on a nation with no submarines, no navy and no air force, and now with no clean water and no electricity and, in many hospitals, no anaesthetic with which to amputate small limbs shredded by shrapnel. I have seen elsewhere how this is done, with a gag in the patient's mouth."

Ted Rall, USA writer after the pillage of Iraq's museums:

"Imagine foreign troops sitting idly, laughing as hooligans trashed the Smithsonian, stole the gold from Fort Knox and burned down the Department of the Interior. That was us in Iraq."

Ayman al-Zawahiri, critisising neighbouring Arab countries for aiding the USA and UK in their invasion of Iraq:

"Here is Saudi Arabia, where planes are launched from their airports. Here is Kuwait, where the heavy armies march from its lands. Here is Qatar, where the command of the campaign is based. Here is Bahrain, the command of the [US] Fifth Fleet remains. Here is Egypt, the marine ships pass through the canal. Here is Yemen, the crusader ships are provided with fuel. Here is Jordan, where the crusader troops are present. After that they shout with hypocracy and trickery that they are against the war in Iraq".

Robin Cook, former UK minister who resigned from Tony Blair's government on the eve of the Iraqi invasion, writing on 30 May 2003:

"The time has come for the British government needs to concede that we did not go to war because Saddam Husein was a threat to our national interests. We went to war for reasons of USA foreign policy and Republican domestic policies".

Adrian Hamilton, writer for the UK newspaper, The Independent:

"For the USA is associated in the Middle East not with democracy but with the maintenance of royalist and repressive regimes, not with an even-handed approach to the Palestinian question but one overwhelmingly tilted in favour of Israel. When Bush consorts with the Arabs, to whom does he go but the sheikhs of the Gulf, the king of Jordan and the president of Egypt."

Graffiti writen in white paint near Baghdad:

"Hell with Saddam is better than paradise with the Americans".

Al-Raya, a newspaper from Qatar:

"[The USA] has surrendered to the arrogance of power and its strong desire to impose its hegemony and will on the world. The [USA] wants to control the oil of Iraq..."

Latif Afridi, a former member of the Pakistan government:

"If this is about removing dictators, why have the Americans supported so many in the past? Why have the Americans done nothing about serial violations of United Nations resolutions by Israel? Why have they ignored the findings of the UN weapons inspectors?"

Slogan in demonstration in India:

"How many deaths per gallon?"

Natasha Walter, UK journalist:

"The truly vulnerable people are ... the ordinary Iraqi people who did not choose to be caught, utterly defenceless, between a tyrant and a destructive army."

Iqbal Sacranie, of the Muslim Council of Britain:

"Rather than starting a new inferno in Iraq, our energies would have been better spent in extinguishing the existing fire in Palestine."

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia:

"The world [is] now seeing might is right."

Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations:

"Under international law, the responsibility for protecting civilians in conflict falls on the belligerents. Under military occupation, responsibility for the welfare of the population falls on the occupiers."

Reporters Sans Frontières, the international journalists' group:

"The Americans invoke the Geneva Convention when their prisoners are shown on Iraqi TV and just as soon forget it when it comes to bombarding a civil building that is protected by the same convention."

Chris Webster in a letter to UK newspaper, The Independent:

"President Bush expresses his support for demonstrators in Iran and says they should be treated with respect. Meanwhile, his own forces continue to shoot demonstrators in Iraq. What a difference a single letter makes..."

Noam Chomsky, USA writer:

"Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement was the praising of Bush's vision to bring democracy to the Middle East in the midst of an extraordinary display of hatred and contempt for democracy. This was illustrated by the distinction that was made by Washington between Old and New Europe, the former being reviled and the latter hailed for its courage. The criterion was sharp: Old Europe consists of governments that took the same position over the war on Iraq as most of their populations; while the heroes of New Europe followed orders from Crawford, Texas, disregarding, in most cases, an even larger majority of citizens who were against the war. Political commentators ranted about disobedient Old Europe and its psychic maladies, while Congress descended to low comedy.

Turkey was a particularly instructive case. Its government resisted the heavy pressure from the US to prove its democratic credentials by following US orders and overruling 95% of its population. Turkey did not cooperate. US commentators were infuriated by this lesson in democracy, so much so that some even reported Turkey's crimes against the Kurds in the 1990s, previously a taboo topic because of the crucial US role in what happened, although that was still carefully concealed in the lamentations."

Mustapha El Fawzi, former Iraq representitive to the United Nations:

"The US and Britain have been at war with my country non-stop for more than 13 years. It dragooned the UN bureaucracy into toppling our government. The platitude was regime change. It is US/UN sanctions that generated the genocide that wiped almost one million of our people. That is UNICEF data. Let's for a moment abstract from the numbers slaughtered during the second war. When asked about this, general Tommy Franks replied that they're not interested in counting those numbers. Our people, however, will not forget those numbers. They destroyed our factories, our dikes, our public utilities and our infrastructure."

Rahul Mahajan, Indian author:

"It is very difficult to explain to an Iraqi that a man fighting from his own town with a Kalashnikov or RPG launcher is a 'coward' and a 'war criminal' (because, apparently, he should go out into the desert and wait to be annihilated from the sky) but that someone dropping 2000-pound bombs on residential areas or shooting at ambulances because they may have guns in them (even though they usually don't) is a hero and is following the laws of war."


© 2004 KryssTal