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The Anti-Empire Report: Would Jesus Get Out of Iraq?

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  • The Anti-Empire Report: Would Jesus Get Out of Iraq?

    Dissident Voice, CA
    Nov 25 2006


    The Anti-Empire Report
    Would Jesus Get Out of Iraq?
    by William Blum
    www.dissidentvoice.org
    November 24, 2006

    The good news is that the Republicans lost.

    The bad news is that the Democrats won.

    The burning issue -- US withdrawal from Iraq -- remains as far from
    resolution as before.

    A clear majority of Americans are opposed to the war and almost all
    of them would be very happy if the US military began the process of
    leaving Iraq tomorrow, if not today. The rest of the world would
    breathe a great sigh of relief and their long-running love affair
    with the storybook place called "America" could begin to come back to
    life.

    A State Department poll conducted in Iraq this past summer dealt with
    the population's attitude toward the American occupation. Apart from
    the Kurds -- who assisted the US military before, during, and after
    the invasion and occupation, and don't think of themselves as Iraqis
    -- most people favored an immediate withdrawal, ranging from 56% to
    80% depending on the area.

    The State Department report added that majorities in all regions
    except Kurdish areas said that the departure of coalition forces
    would make them feel safer and decrease violence. [1]

    George W. is on record declaring that if the people of Iraq ask the
    United States to leave, the US will leave. He also has declared that
    the Iraqis are "not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I
    were occupied either." [2]

    Yet, despite all this, and much more, the United States remains, with
    predictions from Pentagon officials that American forces will be in
    Iraq for years. Large US military bases are being constructed there;
    they're not designed as temporary structures. Remember that 61 years
    after the end of World War II the United States still has major bases
    in Germany. Fifty-three years after the end of the Korean War the US
    has tens of thousands of troops in South Korea.

    Washington insists that it can't leave Iraq until it has completed
    training and arming a police force and army which will keep order.
    Not only does this inject thousands more armed men -- often while in
    uniform -- into the raging daily atrocities, it implies that the
    United States is concerned about the welfare and happiness of the
    Iraqi people, a proposition rendered bizarre by almost four years of
    inflicting upon those same people a thousand and one varieties of
    hell on earth, literally destroying their ancient and modern
    civilization. We are being asked to believe that the American
    military resists leaving because some terrible thing will befall
    their beloved Iraqi brethren. ("We bomb you because we care about
    you" ... suitable to be inscribed on the side of a cruise missile.)
    Even as I write this, on November 14, I read: "An overnight US raid
    killed six people in mainly-Shia east Baghdad, sparking angry anti-US
    protests. Thirty died in a US raid on the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi,
    Iraqi officials said." [3]

    At the same time, the American occupation fuels hostility by the
    Sunnis toward Shiite "collaborators" with the occupation, and
    vice-versa. If the Americans left, both sides could negotiate and
    participate in the reconstruction of Iraq without fear of being
    branded traitors. The Iraqi government would lose its quisling
    stigma. And Iraq's security forces would no longer have the handicap
    of being seen to be working on behalf of foreign infidels against
    fellow Iraqis.

    So why don't the Yanquis just go home? Is all this not rather odd?
    Three thousand of their own dead, tens of thousands critically
    maimed. And still they stay. Why, they absolutely refuse to even
    offer a timetable for withdrawal. No exit plan. No nothing.

    No, it's not odd. It's oil.

    Oil was not the only motivation for the American invasion and
    occupation, but the other goals have already been achieved --
    eliminating Saddam Hussein for Israel's sake, canceling the Iraqi use
    of the euro in place of the dollar for oil transactions, expansion of
    the empire in the middle east with new bases.

    American oil companies have been busy under the occupation, and even
    before the US invasion, preparing for a major exploitation of Iraq's
    huge oil reserves. Chevron, ExxonMobil and others are all set to go.
    Four years of preparation are coming to a head now. Iraq's new
    national petroleum law -- written in a place called Washington, DC --
    is about to be implemented. It will establish agreements with foreign
    oil companies, privatizing much of Iraq's oil reserves under
    exceedingly lucrative terms. Security will be the only problem,
    protecting the oil companies' investments in a lawless country. For
    that they need the American military close by. [4]

    What a mad raving dinosaur am I!

    Democratic Party leaders think that the election validates their
    pursuing a centrist path. Arnold Schwarzenegger credits his
    re-election as California governor to his moving to the center (or at
    least pretending to do so). They and their colleagues would have us
    all believe that the American people have resolutely moved to the
    center, abandoning the "extremes". But is that really so? I maintain
    that most Americans are liberal, and many even further left. I think
    that this would be revealed if the public was asked questions along
    the following lines?

    Would you like to have a government-run health care system, which put
    an end to the for-profit health care corporations and hospitals, and
    which covered all residents for all ailments at very affordable
    premiums?

    Do you think that when corporations are faced with a choice between
    optimizing their revenue and doing what's best for the environment
    and public health, that they should always choose in favor of the
    environment?

    Do you think that abortion is a question best left up to a woman and
    her doctor?

    Do you think that the United States should officially be a totally
    secular nation or one based on religious beliefs?

    Do you think that big corporations and their political action
    committees exercise too much political power?

    Do you think that corporate executive salaries are highly excessive?

    Do you think that the tax cuts for the super rich instituted by the
    Bush administration should be cancelled and their taxes then
    increased?

    Do you think that the minimum wage should be increased to what is
    called a "living wage", which would be at least $10 per hour?

    Do you think that all education, including medical school and law
    school, should be free, subsidized by the government?

    Do you think that the government should take all measures necessary
    to guarantee that corporations have retirement plans for all workers
    and that the retirement funds are safeguarded?

    Do you think that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake?

    Do you think that United States support of Israel is excessive?

    Do you approve of the treatment of people captured by the United
    States as part of its so-called War on Terror -- the complete loss of
    legal and human rights, and subjected to torture?

    For those readers who think that I'm presuming too much about
    Americans' disenchantment with their economic system, I suggest they
    have a look at my essay: "The United States invades, bombs, and kills
    for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?" [5]

    And for those readers who wonder where all the money would come from
    to pay for the education, medical care, etc., keep in mind that one
    year of the US military budget -- that's one year -- is equal to more
    than $30,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.


    The Great Decider

    Earlier this month the US State Department dropped Vietnam from its
    blacklist of nations that it judges to be serious violators of
    religious freedom. This occurred just days before a visit to Vietnam
    by President Bush. The Department denied any connection between the
    two events. However, to quote George Bernard Shaw: "Not bloody
    likely."

    In removing Vietnam from the list, the State Department was ignoring
    the US government's own Commission on International Religious
    Freedom, a congressionally mandated advisory body, which had called
    for Vietnam to be kept on the list. The Commission also called for
    Pakistan and Turkmenistan to be added. This, too, was ignored by the
    White House. [6]

    Foreign policy considerations routinely play a decisive role in
    determining who's included and who's not on various State Department
    lists. This is no small matter, for inclusion on one of the lists can
    lead to economic and other sanctions. It's thus another weapon
    Washington has available to bend the world to its will.

    In addition to the report on religious freedom, the State Department
    self-righteously issues annual reports which rate the countries of
    the world on human rights, the war on drugs, trafficking in persons,
    and the war on terrorism, as well as maintaining a list of
    "terrorist" groups. The Department has placed Venezuela in the worst
    category on the trafficking-in-persons list, stating that "Venezuela
    is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children
    trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor"
    and that "The Government of Venezuela does not fully comply with the
    minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not
    making significant efforts to do so." [7]

    It's all rather arbitrary and most of what the State Department
    report says about Venezuela could be said as well about the United
    States and other developed countries. In Washington, DC, for many
    years, there have regularly been cases of foreign diplomats
    "enslaving" and sexually abusing young women whom they brought with
    them from abroad to work in their home. This keeps happening again
    and again and there does not appear to be a clear and tough policy of
    the State Department to make sure it doesn't happen again. The
    stories are reported each time a young woman, after years of
    "slavery" in a Washington suburb, escapes. "Slavery" is indeed the
    term used by the legal authorities.

    Categorizing Venezuelan thusly is as arbitrary as including Cuba on
    the list of state supporters of terrorism because a few American
    Black Panthers hijacked planes to Cuba 25 or 30 years ago, and a
    Basque activist lives in Cuba, which Spain has no problem with, but
    which the US wants to make political capital of.

    Caution: extremist statement ahead (You may never see this in print
    again, so clip and save)

    France is on the verge of approving legislation which makes it a
    crime to deny the Turkish genocide of Armenians at the time of the
    First World War.

    Denying the German Holocaust of Jews is a crime in Germany, Belgium,
    the Czech Republic, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland,
    Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and Israel.

    In the United States it's not a crime to deny the American holocaust,
    although this particular historical phenomenon encompasses Vietnam,
    Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada,
    Indonesia, Iraq, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Greece, East Timor, Angola,
    Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Colombia, and several
    other countries upon whom Washington has bestowed its precious gifts
    of freedom and democracy.

    But how long before the neo-Cons and the neo-Dems of America put
    their heads together and make it a crime to affirm the American
    holocaust? Politicians and media people carry around ten-foot poles
    to not touch this with.


    The case that is still not closed

    I have closely followed and often written about the case of Pan Am
    Flight 103, blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie,
    Scotland in 1988, taking the lives of 270 people. For well over a
    year afterward, the US and the UK insisted that Iran, Syria, and a
    Palestinian group had been behind the bombing, until the buildup to
    the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was
    desired for the operation. Suddenly, in October 1990, the US declared
    that it was Libya -- the Arab state least supportive of the US
    build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq --
    that was behind the bombing after all.

    Eventually, in 2001, a Libyan, Abdelbaset al Megrahi, was sentenced
    to life in prison for the crime, although his Libyan co-defendant,
    charged with the same crime and with the same evidence, was
    acquitted. The trial was the proverbial travesty of justice, which
    I've discussed in detail elsewhere. ("I am absolutely astounded,
    astonished," said the Scottish law professor who was the architect of
    the trial. "I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish
    judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such
    evidence.") [8] The prosecution's star witness, Libyan defector Abdul
    Majid Giaka, groomed and presented by the CIA, was a thoroughly
    dubious character who didn't know much or have access to much, and
    who pretended to be otherwise just to get more CIA payments. And the
    CIA knew it. The Agency refused to fully declassify documents about
    him, using their standard excuse -- that it would reveal confidential
    sources and methods. It turned out they were reluctant because the
    documents showed that the CIA thought him unreliable.

    Then, in 2005, we learned that a key piece of evidence linking Libya
    to the crime had been planted by the CIA. [9] Just like in movie
    thrillers. Just like in conspiracy theories.

    For anyone still in doubt about the farcical nature of the trial, now
    comes along Michael Scharf, an attorney who worked on the 103 case at
    the State Department and was the counsel to the counter-terrorism
    bureau when the two Libyans were indicted for the bombing. In the
    past year he trained judges and prosecutors in Iraq in the case that
    led to the conviction and death sentence of Saddam Hussein. Scharf
    recently stated that the Panam case "was largely based on this inside
    guy [Giaka]. It wasn't until the trial that I learned this guy was a
    nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that
    they knew he was a liar. It was a case that was so full of holes it
    was like Swiss cheese." He says that the case had a "diplomatic
    rather than a purely legal goal." [10]

    Victor Ostrovsky, formerly with the Israeli intelligence service,
    Mossad, has written of Mossad what one could just as correctly say of
    the CIA: "This feeling that you can do anything you want to whomever
    you want for as long as you want because you have the power." [11]

    So, let's hope that Abdelbaset al Megrahi is really guilty. It would
    be a terrible shame if he spends the rest of his life in prison
    simply because back in 1990 Washington's hegemonic plans for the
    Middle East needed a convenient scapegoat, which just happened to be
    his country. However, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
    is to report in the coming months on whether it believes there was a
    miscarriage of justice in the case.

    And by the way, my usual reminder, Libya has never confessed to
    having carried out the act. They've only taken "responsibility", in
    the hope of getting various sanctions against them lifted.

    William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
    Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's
    Only Superpower, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American
    Empire, and West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir. Visit his
    website: www.killinghope.org. He can be reached at: [email protected].

    http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Blum24.htm
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