Howard Zinn on Human Nature and Aggression

Not a revolutionary socialist by far, here's Howard Zinn putting the boot into the idea that humans are naturally aggressive. He clearly articulates the idea that humans do not readily go to war, that workers have to be persuaded via massive propaganda campaigns and when that inducement fails then coercion, via the draft, is the only option. Zinn then argues that when human aggression does manifest itself, the cause is rooted in environmental factors.

An updated Zinn talk on the subject could well have cited the number of soldiers who desert, who commit suicide (in the US its reached epidemic proportions among Iraq War vets), and who suffer mental breakdown (The Pentagon recently repotrted that some 40% of front lien troops have mental health problems).

PEACE WOULD WRING THEIR NECKS

How the hell do you interpret this interview, clearly heavily edited? Note again Bush speaking about those “awfully difficult decisions”, previously mentioned here, and the nonchalant reference to “World War III”, suggesting its a term Bush and his ilk bandy about a lot.

Me, I just can’t help anticipating another Gulf-of-Tonkin-type* incident, doubling as another Reichstag fire, providing the neocons with an excuse to launch an attack upon Iran and at the same time use the mass protests against it – which I imagine it would spark – as a means to impose some form of martial law.

I’m just so mindful of that incident in the Straits of Hormuz, on the eve of Bush’s trip to the Middle East to drum up support for tougher action against Iran, a move to create another “alliance of the willing”. And I’m mindful, too, that he went there with the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) fresh off the press and dismissing Washington’s line that Iran was an inch away from a nuclear capability. He told Israel that he doubted the report’s reliability and Israel concurred, cautioning that they could go it alone, launching an Osirak-like attack against Iran’s fledgling nuclear installation - and which brought no condemnation from Congress.

And if Bush doesn’t attack Iran, then his successor will.

Many US “liberals” I’ve argued with in recent weeks (in chat rooms and via emails resulting from posts I've made on Yahoo Answers) seem to think presidential hopeful Barack Obama signifies the changing tide of US politics, that he’ll not be the war monger Bush is. However, in a speech delivered before AIPAC lobbyists in Chicago, his language was clearly jingoistic. He stands, like the neocons in Washington, on a strong pro-Israel platform. He argued that the US must preserve ‘total commitment to a unique defence relationship with Israel’, that it must work to stop Iran’s nuclear program even if military action is necessary. He said that “no option, including military action, (should be taken) off the table” in the effort to stop Iran gaining a nuclear capacity. The world must work to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy.”

On the Sunday before the Florida primary, John McCain sounded off just like Bush: “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars. I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”

Prior to the the New Hampshire primary, January 3rd, McCain was asked how he felt about Bush’s remarks that the US would be in Iraq for 50 years. His reply: “make it 100 [years]".

McCain, himself a veteran of the Vietnam War, shot down after a murderous bombing run over Hanoi, has, for many years argued for unleashing hell on countries from Serbia to Iraq and Sudan to Iran. Indeed, Matt Welch , in his new book The Myth of a Maverick, argues McCain “envisions a more militaristic foreign policy than any US president in a century."

Not only would he let loose the US war machine on large parts of the world, he’s all for the militarization of US society too. Check out this piece of writing from The Washington Monthly, back in 2001, entitled Putting the “National” in National Service.

In the meantime, Bush is making sure that if he doesn’t flatten Iran and similar defiers of US hegemony, then whoever succeeds him as president has the weaponry at their disposal to pursue US interests for a few years to come. His demand for $515.4 billion for the Defence Department is minus the expenditure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which accounted to nearly $200 billion over the last budget year and which is estimated to cost $140 billion in 2009. Then append to those sums $17.1 billion for the Department of Energy's weapons program and over $40 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and other national security initiatives spread throughout the federal government, and you begin to realise just how obsessed with militarism, at home and abroad, the forces of reaction are in the US. This is one huge amount!!

Remember also that the $3 trillion budget, released Monday, includes $2.55 billion in defence assistance for the US Middle East satellite Israel and which increases in increments until 2013, when it will settle at $3.1 billion a year until 2018.

Call me a panic merchant, but maybe it’s because I’m all too aware of the nature of the beast! What was that line from Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, the one where the protagonist, who traipses her family around with her, as she makes a living from trading with Europe’s war machines of the 1600s, despairs at the cessation of hostilities? Oh yes, “Peace will wring my neck.”

__________

* The Gulf of Tonkin incident was an alleged attack by North Vietnamese ships upon American boats. As a result of this alleged aggression, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson permission to expand the Vietnam War.

A war with Iran to save the US Dollar?

Mike Whitney, writing over on Dissident Voice, senses logic in Bush’s recent trip to the Middle East, locating the visit in an issue covered by this blog some time ago – Iran’s desire to set up an oil bourse.

Witney suggests, as most of us have, that the trip had sod all to do with Middle East peace, as the White House claimed, noting how “three days after Bush left Jerusalem, Israel stepped-up its military operations in the occupied territories and resumed its merciless blockade of food, water and medicine to the 1.5 million people of the Gaza Strip. Bush must have green-lighted Israel’s aggression or it would have been seen as an insult to the President of the United States.” Rather, the trip was all about the US trying to restore Middle East confidence in the falling dollar, which seems to have worked for the moment. Indeed, as Reuters reported:

“After a flurry of public disagreements over currency reform last year, Gulf central bankers are trying to close ranks, talking up the pegs as a source of stability and playing down the dollar’s weakness as a temporary phenomenon.”

Gulf states have watched the economic woes in the US closely, not least because the petro-dollar props up the US economy, as it does in the Middle East oil states, and because they are having their own economic anguish. In Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Oman inflation has reached a 16-year high and is at a 19-year peak in th UAE. Currency traders anticipate another 8% rise in the dirham and riyal by April. Gulf policymakers are intervening directly in loans, property and commodity markets to offset rate cuts. Property prices has rocketed in the Gulf; doubled in the UAE in the last year. Gulf states regularly provide food subsidies and employers grant pay increases of up to 70%. In Dubai, workers have rioted, demanding a living wage. It is expected that throughout the Gulf interest rates will compel Central bankers to covert to either the euro or a basket of regional currencies. For the moment, the loyal Saudi princes have, their fingers crossed, continued their support for the dollar.

Whitney posits, convincingly in my opinion, that Bush’s trips to the Middle East, all this sabre-rattling, and supplying of arms to Israel and Saudi Arabia, is all down to Iran’s belated plans to launch an oil bourse – this week!!

Whitney writes:

So, how important is it that oil continues to be denominated in dollars? Would the United States really wage war to defend the dollar’s status as the world’s “reserve currency”?

The answer to this question could come as early as this week, since the long-awaited Iranian Oil Bourse is scheduled to open between February 1-11. According to Iran’s Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari “All preparations have been made to launch the bourse; it will open during the 10-day Dawn (the ceremonies marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran). The bourse is considered a direct threat to the continued global dominance of the dollar because it will require that Iranian “oil, petrochemicals and gas” be traded in “non-dollar currencies”. (Press TV, Iran)

The petrodollar system is no different than the gold standard. Today’s currency is simply underwritten by the one vital source of energy upon which every industrialized society depends—oil. If the dollar is de-linked from oil; it will no longer serve as the de-facto international currency and the US will be forced to reduce its massive trade deficits, rebuild its manufacturing capacity, and become an export nation again. The only alternative is to create a network of client regimes who repress the collective aspirations of their people so they can faithfully follow directives from Washington.

As to whether the Bush administration would start a war to defend dollar hegemony; that’s a question that should be asked of Saddam Hussein. Iraq was invaded just six months after Saddam converted to the euro. The message is clear; the Empire will defend its currency.

Iran switched from the dollar in 2007 and has insisted that Japan pay its enormous energy bills in yen. The “conversion” infuriated the Bush administration and has moved Iran to the top of the White House’s target list. In fact, even though 16 US Intelligence agencies issued a report (NIE) saying that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons; and even though the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, found that Iran was in compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation (NPT) Treaty; a preemptive US-led attack on Iran still appears likely.

And, although the western media now minimizes the prospects of another war in the region; Israel is taking the precautions that suggest that the idea is not so far-fetched. “Israel calls for shelter rooms to be set up in a bid to prepare the public for yet another war, this time, one of raining missiles.” (Press TV, Iran)

“The next war will see a massive use of ballistic weapons against the whole of Israeli territory,” claimed retired general Udi Shani.

Russia also sees a growing probability of hostilities breaking out in the Gulf and has responded by sending a naval task force into the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic.

According to an article on the Global Research site: “The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva guided missile cruiser, joined up with Russian naval warships in the Mediterranean on January 18 to participate in the current maneuvers….The current operation is the first large-scale Russian Navy exercise in the Atlantic in 15 years. All combat ships and aircraft involved carry full combat ammunition loads.

France is also planning military maneuvers in the Straits of Hormuz. Operation “Gulf Shield 01,” will take place off the coast of Iran and will employ thousands of personnel in combined arms operations that will include simulated attacks on oil platforms.”

Exercises are scheduled to take place from Feb. 23 to March 5, and will involve 1,500 French, 2,500 Emirate, and 1,300 Qatari personnel operating on land, at sea and in the air, the ministry said…Around a half-dozen warships, 40 aircraft and dozens of armoured vehicles will be in the war games, Fusalba said.

The Jerusalem Post reports: “An American missile ship set to dock at Haifa port on Monday is equipped with anti-missile defence system that could be deployed in the region in the event of an Iranian missile attack against Israel….The US San Jacinto is an Aegis Cruiser in the Ticonderoga Class …It carries the most advanced underwater surveillance system available today and is equipped with the Aegis Missile System to protect against aircraft and missiles. The ship will remain in Haifa for three days.”

Also, within the last week, three of the main underwater cables which carry Internet traffic to the region have been cut in the Persian Gulf. As a result, three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East have been lost. Large parts of the Middle East have been plunged into darkness.

Is this merely a coincidence or is it part of a broader military operation?

Ian Brockwell, of the American Chronicle said:

On the assumption that the cables cut were no accident, we must ask ourselves who would do such a thing and why. Clearly Iran, who were most affected, would gain nothing from such an action and are perhaps the target of those responsible?…Maybe this is a prelude to an attack, or perhaps a test run for a future one?

Communication has always been an important factor in military action, and cutting these cables might affect Iran´s ability to defend itself.

Despite the lack of media coverage, the build-up for war in the Gulf has continued and the probability of a US-led attack on Iran is quite high. Bush is convinced that if he doesn’t confront Iran, then no one will. He also believes that if he doesn’t militarily defend the dollar, then America’s days as “the world’s only superpower” will soon be over. The question is whether Bush will realize that America is already bogged-down in two “unwinnable” conflicts or if he will “go with his gut” once again and lead us into a ruinous region-wide conflagration.

The New World Order edges nearer

Former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands are the Authors of a new 150 page manifesto which should have been entitled “Just accept it – there will be nuclear war.”

The authors - General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato’s ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany’s former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato’s military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK - paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope. See the full story in The Guardian.

They maintain that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument” because there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”. Oh well, in that case lets just hurry up and bomb some country and get it done with.

They argue that “The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible,” and that “first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

The retired gangsters for the capitalist class assert that western values are under threat in four key areas:

· Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

· The “dark side” of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

· Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential “environmental” migration on a mass scale.

· The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

So these war mongering eejits are afraid of political fanaticism and religion? Me too, specifically the brand promoted by George Bush and his power hungry ilk!

They’re concerned about climatic change and energy? Yet we see the likes of Gordon Brown promoting the case that the World Bank is best fitted to tackling climatic change whilst it assists in the deforestation of the Amazon basin. And is not the West’s energy needs ensured via the USA’s plans for full spectrum dominance?

They fear international terrorism when the biggest practitioners are the murderers in the Pentagon and the White House and when the threat of terrorism has increased a hundred-fold since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq?

They fear that nuclear weapons might get into the hands of our enemies? The truth is that nuclear weapons are already in the hands of our damned enemies – the hands of our class enemies. And one thing is certain – their use will never be in the interests of world peace but in the promotion of the interests of the master class.

Just a cursory look at the morons who write this manifesto reveals Lord Inge: who "served on the Butler inquiry into Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and British intelligence". Yeah, like we all trust your contribution, your Lordship.

Wake up! These bastards are party to that same clique that wants to establish a fascist world dictatorship, a one world government led from Washington and one world currency. A New World Order is very much on the cards. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Orwell was spot on: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a face... forever"

George W Bush - Middle East peace advocate or just plain gangster for capitalism?

Tomorrow sees Dubya Bush jet off for Israel – perhaps the only country where his visit would not result in angry demonstrations – and ostensibly in an attempt to shore up perhaps the most catastrophic foreign policy legacy of any US president and a popularity at home that has saw republican supporters leave in droves. It’s perhaps no accident that his 9 day departure for the Middle East coincides with the important early stages of the US election campaign – the imbecile is quite simply perceived to be one huge and embarrassing liability at the moment and someone no repuke candidate wants to be seen acquainted with.

Few if any have any confidence in Bush personally pulling off anything remotely resembling an agreement between Israel and Palestine, this being a pledge he made at the Annapolis conference back in November. Said Bush:

"I am looking forward to sitting down with friends and allies to assure them of my commitment to the Middle Eastern peace and to work with them to make sure they are committed to Middle East peace."

Not only are Bush’s plans seriously hampered because of the split in the Palestinian leadership and which has left Hamas in power in Gaza and the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, lead by the President Mahmoud Abbas, more importantly he underestimates the level of support in Palestine for Iran, a country he quite obviously intends to attack.

As Uzi Mahnaimi wrote in yesterday’s Times: “Israel security officials are to brief President George W Bush on their latest intelligence about Iran’s nuclear programme - and how it could be destroyed - when he begins a tour of the Middle East in Jerusalem this week.”

Way to go, George. What better way to promote Middle East peace than to start another war there! Sheesh, why didn’t I think of that?

Muhnaimi continues: “Ehud Barak, the defence minister, is said to want to convince him [Bush] that an Israeli military strike against uranium enrichment facilities in Iran would be feasible if diplomatic efforts failed to halt nuclear operations. A range of military options has been prepared….While security officials are reluctant to reveal all their intelligence, fearing that leaks could jeopardise the element of surprise in any future attack, they are expected to present the president with fresh details of Iran’s enrichment of uranium - which could be used for civil or military purposes - and the development of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.”

In response to this fresh “intelligence”, Bush said: “I read the intelligence report carefully. In essence, what the report said was that Iran had a secret plan to develop nuclear weapons. I’m saying that a state which adopted a non transparent policy and had a secret plan for developing nuclear weapons could easily develop an alternative plan for the same purpose. So to conclude from the intelligence report that there is no Iranian plan to develop nuclear weapons will be only a partial truth.”

Maybe Bush should start reading reports by his own people, such as last November’s CIA National Intelligence Estimate, which states:

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

“We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

The report can be downloaded in pdf format here.

And, back to Bush again: “My message to all countries in the region is that we are able to solve the problem in a diplomatic way, but all options are on the table.”

In a “diplomatic way”, George? Like when Saddam bent over backwards for a diplomatic way out of the invasion of Iraq, bending over backwards to comply with UN Resolutions and to prove he had no WMD?

Anxious for some “false flag” incident to revive support for an assault on Iran after the NIE upset plans for an attack on the country, the Pentagon coincidentally kicked off at the weekend over the “hostile intent” of Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats after an alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend.

“In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels, reports the Associated Press.

“U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. ‘It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet,’ said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.”

Click here for the MSNBC TV report of the incident.

Writing on the Counterpunch website today, Gideon Levy says:

“A man is coming to Israel this week who has left a trail of killing, destruction and global hatred. Never has the U.S. been so despised as during Bush's seven years in office, which abruptly brought his county back to the not-so-merry days of Vietnam.

“He led the U.S., and the free world in its wake, into two brutal and completely futile wars of conquest, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. He sowed mass killing in these two wretched countries under the false pretext of a battle against global terror.

“In Western Europe, in South America, in Asia, in all parts of the Arab and Muslim world and in parts of Africa, the sole global superpower has come to be viewed as a hostile, arrogant and ostracized entity…. The Middle East has only moved further away from peace during Bush's tenure.”

Make no mistake about it, the last thing on Bush’s mind during his trip to the Middle East is peace. He is the ambassador of powerful oil interests, not only concerned about US oil security but, more importantly, anxious which aspiring superpowers will have future access to world oil supplies and thus emerge as a serious contender on the world capitalist stage. Expect war to be high on the real Bush agenda over the enxt nine days!

American Leadership and War

I posted this on my previous Revolutionary Act blog site, but somehow lost it when changing sites. I found it a helpful tool at the time - wading into arguments between Democrats and Repukes in Yahoo's US political chat rooms and countering the arguments of democrats that the repukes were the real war mongers. This chart of leadership and war clearly shows that both parties are neck deep in workers' blood, with the Democrats, serving as the executive of US capitalism when in power, coming off as the biggest murderers.

Near Kandahar The Poppies Blow

Near Kandahar the poppies blow,

A US-sanctioned flower show,
That contradicts the war you wage
That ridicules your broadcast rage.
That funds your celebrated foe.

Each poppy marks an Afghan dead,
An Afghan maimed, an Afghan bled.
Where now your pledge of lasting calm?
Where now your soothing western balm?
Where now the warlords once thought fled
From Kandahar?

The Taliban you once expelled
Have now returned; their ranks have swelled,
And now endorse the poppy fields,
And profit from its record yields.
What of this trade you boasted quelled
Near Kandahar?

The poem above I penned earlier today. It is purely pastiche, and recalls the famous poem by John McCrae, entitled In Flanders Fields, written in May 1915 and which I re-read this morning, and which will be read no doubt at many war memorials and cenotaphs across the country tomorrow - Remembrance Day. It just seems ironic that 89 years after the “war to end all wars” was concluded humanity has learned nothing. Remembrance Day! The idea of remembering something is that you bloodywell learn from it. Yes, you remember the countless millions of workers who were conned into giving up their lives in wars they fought in the interests of their damned exploiters, but if that’s all it is meant to signify the event is a sham.

At the moment 30 conflicts are ongoing; the most covered being those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another seems on the cards in Iran . So it looks like we’ll continue to have war dead to remember for some time to come. Workers we see joining armies today are the bearers of names we’ll see carved into war memorials of the future.

I saw TV images of NATO troops patrolling Helmand the other night. Helmand Province, where British soldiers are fighting the Taliban, is now the largest single heroin crop-producing area in the world, recording a 48 per cent increase in opium production this year. Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and the country is now the source for 95 percent of the world's heroin. The trade finances the very Taliban forces British troops are fighting, in a country from which President Bush told us the Taliban had been evicted; a country in which, as Bush told us , some time ago, peace had been restored and a country in which we were told poppy production would be quickly eradicated

One of the aforementioned troops was British. He wore a pinned-on poppy, the irony of which was hard to miss and I wondered if we would be called upon to remember him at next year’s Remembrance Day Parade.

Sexual Resources for the US Military Machine

Fact: instances of men raping women and sexual abuse are three times higher in the US military than in civilian life. When Suzanne Swift, a 20 year old MP serving in Iraq, was raped and sexually harassed, she suffered a mental breakdown and went AWOL, refusing to be reposted there. She is now in prison.

This is a YouTube video of her mother speaking at the Veteran’s for peace National Convention on 12th August.

Revolutionary Act covers this story because of its insight into the mentality of the male-dominated US war machine which sees its female personnel, as one speaker comments, as “a sexual resource for men”. Another speaker tells of how “military training dehumanises half the population.”

Five more chunks of the worth watching video footage of the Convention, with personal acounts of rape and sexual abuse, can be found at:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQSZZStxpk0&mode=related&search=

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210VOcC72cg&mode=related&search=

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxkXIVTfIz4&mode=related&search=

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhAztD8XwjY&mode=related&search=

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPP_PBD6BN0&mode=related&search=

Tony Blair - Iraq is a disaster

Only those suffering from selective amnesia will not recall the nauseating lengths to which Tony Blair went in promoting the case for the invasion of Iraq, how he used 10-year-old information gleaned from the internet, and some student’ dissertation, to argue that Saddam Hussein was quite capable of lobbing a missile at Britain within 45 minutes.

Prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, well over a million people took part in a mass protest in London - people fully aware at the time that the events of 9/11 had no link to Saddam Hussein (something George Bush promoted and later denied) and that he posed no military threat to the West. Likewise, the many who marched to Hyde Park that day were right in believing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction—a fact that was proved within months—and that any war in Iraq would fully destabilise the country (ex-president George Bush Snr. in fact cautioned Dubya that invasion would lead to destabilisation). And you would have been in a minority had you not realised the link between the intended war and the fact that beneath the sands of Iraq lay huge oil resources.

Three years after the invasion, with 650,000 Iraqis dead, the country’s infrastructure in total tatters, the country racked by a civil-war that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands more Iraqis, global terrorism far more of a reality than before the invasion, Blair has admitted that the whole damned episode is a ginormous cock-up.

Interviewed by David Frost on Al-Jazeera on Friday night, Blair sent a shock-wave through Westminster when, responding to Frost’s querying whether the Western invasion of the country had "so far been pretty much of a disaster", Mr Blair said, firmly: "It has."

However, rather than locating the problem in the invasion, the toppling of Saddam, the setting up of a stooge pro-Western government, Blair continued: "You see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

And who trained Al-Qaeda? British and US special forces, Mr Blair. And what has always been the will of the majority in Iraq, Mr Blair? That the Western occupying armies get the hell out of Iraq.

Notwithstanding the carnage engulfing Baghdad and British-controlled Basra, Blair maintained that British troops were not ready to cut and run.

"We are not walking away from Iraq," he said. "We will stay for as long as the government needs us to stay.” Or rather British and American forces will stay until the country’s oil wealth is secured for Western interests.

"And the reason for that is that what is happening in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, as elsewhere in parts of the Middle East, is a struggle between the decent majority of people, who want to live in peace together, and those who have an extreme and perverted and warped view of Islam, who want to create war.”

One wonders whether Blair gets his political weltanschauung from the same sources as his war-mongering counterpart across the pond. Nowhere do the politics of oil enter the equation – the real reason for the invasion.

Jut one day after the Frost interview and Blair was back-pedalling – for sure his telephone hotline buzzing all night with concerned messages from the jingoistic fraternity in Washington and the oil cartel at home – and his spokesman adamant that his apparent concession was a "straightforward slip of the tongue" – perhaps the kind is slip Mr Bush is so famous for! Blair’s spokesman continued: "He doesn't think that a democratically-elected government in Iraq is a disaster; he doesn't think that getting rid of Saddam was a disaster, but he does acknowledge there are difficulties, and he doesn't try to downplay those."

We wonder just what “difficulties” Mr Blair is thinking of. That in securing the ‘world’s richest prize’ people have to be killed and democratic elections – as in Iraq – have to be subverted. What, the elections were democratic, Mr Blair? Then why did all candidates first have to be cleared by the White House?

How can an election be construed as legitimate when it is carried out under foreign military occupation and when the country is apparently ruled by, and the election will be officially run by, a stooge government installed and kept in power by the army of occupation? Where the democracy in holding an election that is to be orchestrated from the US Embassy and which will be under the ultimate control of US forces? Where the democracy and freedom of expression when a raging civil war prevents large sections of the population casting a vote and when the election is so tailored as to bring into being a new assembly responsible for drafting a Washington–vetted constitution and selecting a government that will be allowed to exist only so long as it functions under the conditions of military occupation?

Toppling Saddam was not a disaster? The very reason Saddam was not toppled in the wake of the first Gulf War - when the US prompted northern Kurds and the southern Marsh Arabs to rebel against Baghdad, offering they would come to their aid, and then sat back as Saddam annihilated them – was exactly because it was recognised an unstable Iraq was not in US interests, that it was safer to keep Saddam in power. Saddam might have been an utter bastard, but as far as Washington was concerned in 1991 he was holding the country together. This is not to say that we, as socialists, believe Saddam should have been left in power, but it is instructive to point to glaring changes in US policy.

As socialists we do maintain that it is dangerous to listen to leaders of any party and from any country, regardless of their flower cant, and insist that anything they say is taken with a pinch of salt and that workers should organise against them and in their ilk and in our own interests. The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the profit system and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, our ability to question every corrupt word that is uttered by politicians, and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency – not least of these methods is to further lie to us at every opportunity. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness question everything they say, to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

When it comes to commenting on Iraq, on would have thought that Blair would have learnt his lesson and kept his ill-informed mouth shut. For over 3 years he has lied incessantly about Iraq. It is staggering that anyone in Britain still finds anything he says believable. Just to remind visitors to this blog of some of his untruths we’re listing a sample few of his Iraq-related porkies. If you think anything Blair says is trustworthy, consider the following:

1) "The assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt … that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons" (Tony Blair’s foreword to the dossier on Iraq, 24 September 2002)

Fact: After over three months of inspections, the UN weapons inspectors reported on 6 March that "No proscribed activities, or the result of such activities from the period of 1998-2002 have, so far, been detected through inspections”.

2) "There is no doubt about the chemical programme, the biological programme, indeed the nuclear weapons programme. All that is well documented by the United Nations." (Tony Blair, 30 May 2003)

Fact: The UN had found no evidence of any on-going programmes since the mid-1990s. Dr Hans Blix said on 23 May that "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."

3) "The reason why the inspectors couldn't do their job in the end was that Saddam wouldn't co-operate." (Tony Blair, interview on 4 April 2003)

Fact: Hans Blix told the Security Council on 7 March 2003 that "the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as 'active', or even 'proactive'".

4) "the UN has tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully." (Tony Blair, interview in the Independent on Sunday, 2 March 2003)

Fact: In 1999, the Security Council set up a panel to assess the UN's achievements in the peaceful disarmament of Iraq. It concluded that: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated."

5) "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons" (Tony Blair, press conference in Poland on 30 May 2003)

Fact: Government experts believed that the trailers were used for the production of hydrogen for artillery guidance balloons - a system, incidentally, sold by the UK to Iraq in the 1980s.

6) “There is some intelligence evidence about linkages between members of al-Qaeda and people in Iraq." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, 21 January 2003)

Fact: In early February, a classified British intelligence report, written by defence intelligence staff in mid-January and presented to Tony Blair just prior to his 21 January presentation at the Liaison Committee, stated that there were no current links between the two, and that Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq".

7) "As the Foreign Secretary has pointed out, resolution 1441 gives the legal basis for this [war]" (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 12 March 2003)

Fact: Resolution 1441 was secured on the British assurance that it did not authorise military action, even if the UK or US believed it was being violated by Iraq. Britain's UN ambassador Jeremy Greenstock informed the Security Council on 8 November 2002 that "There is no 'automaticity' in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion".

8) "On Monday night, France said it would veto a second Resolution whatever the circumstances." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 18 March 2003)

Fact: President Chirac said that France would vote against any resolution that authorised force whilst inspections were still working. Chirac said that he "considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to ... disarm Iraq.

9) "The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 18 March 2003)

Fact: Britain co-sponsored a resolution to the Security Council, which was passed in May as Resolution 1483, that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues.

10) "Our aim has not been regime change; our aim has been the elimination of weapons of mass destruction" (Tony Blair, press conference, 25 March 2003 )

Fact: UN weapons inspectors were reporting Iraq's "proactive" cooperation, and were offering that Iraq could be confirmed as fully disarmed within three months if that assistance continued. If Mr Blair's aim was the elimination of prohibited weapons, why terminate the inspection process just when it was most effective?

Today, meanwhile, Gordon Brown is in Iraq and no doubt the trip will be used as a damage limitation exercise in the wake of Blair’s unwitting confession. Brown’s remit? To visit and placate British troops who may have thought this was Blair saying they were going home, and announce at least £100 million in new aid for reconstruction. For what it’s worth, the figure is peanuts. On July 18th of this year US government's top auditor told Congress that the new Iraqi government would require at least $50 billion in aid just to rebuild the country's oil facilities and electrical grids to pre-invasion levels. Brown’s £100 million would not cover the damage that is done to Iraq as a direct result of the ongoing civil war each week.
This piece is also posted here.

OFFICIAL! George Bush: Iraq had sod all to do with 9/11

President Bush in the midst of explaining how the attacks of 9/11 inspired his “freedom agenda” and the attacks on Iraq until a reporter, Ken Herman of Cox News, interrupted to ask what Iraq had to do with 9/11. “Nothing,” Bush defiantly answered. Watch the video.

Full transcript:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?
BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?
QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

Real Men Want To Go To Iran

It’s going to happen – and sooner than you think. We’ll be watching the news headlines, or maybe there’ll be a news flash, and we’ll be informed that the RAF, along with the USAF’s long-range B2 bombers, and the Israeli Air Force have carried out overnight bombing raids across Iran, targeting nuclear facilities, radar stations, airfields and anti-aircraft bases.

I can’t see a land invasion – at least not for a long time – for the simple reason that Iranian civilians are more patriotic than their Iraqi counterparts, that Iran has a much bigger and better equipped army than Iraq had and a lot more fundamentalists, the type that strap bombs to themselves and run towards you. Moreover, the country is much bigger than Iraq, with a lot of mountainous terrain and with a much larger population, which makes it far more difficult for the largely un-resisted kind of invasion the US enjoyed in Iraq.

As in the case of Iraq, there will be the prior attempt at the mass manufacture of consent. Blair and Bush and indeed other European leaders, who think they will have something to gain, pedalling the line that newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another Saddam Hussein who, if Iran’s nuclear programme is not halted, will be able to lob a nuclear missile at the west in a few minutes and how Iran is supporting international terrorism, financing terrorist cells all over the world, including Al Qaeda. The case will be made that Iran is still very much a part of the axis of evil, first referred to in George W Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2002, and its people, secretly harbouring thoughts of Western style democracy, the country crying out for regime change. In his January, 2005, State of the Union Address George W said; "Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.”

The White House has in fact been steadily creating an anti-Iran climate in the US for some time. The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 3, “in recent polls a surprisingly large number of Americans say they would support U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran from getting the bomb.”
All of this, of course, is part of the desensitisation process, aimed at calming world public opinion in advance. And if Congress and Parliament and the people on the streets won’t buy the cant, then expect the false flags to go up - the state-sanctioned attacks on Western cities, purportedly carried out by Islamic terrorists acting on the instructions of Tehran or on behalf of Al Qaeda, the names by now interchangeable. That’ll win over the damned doubters and ditherers. There will be the mandate for another round of butchery!

And you know how it will all start. Indeed, it has already started. The high profile diplomatic efforts to refer Iran to the UN Security Council will be followed by UN Security Council Resolutions condemning Iran’s uranium enrichment programme and an insistence on an additional protocol for inspections of its nuclear facilities, and in the knowledge that Iran’s Parliament has already moved to reject any further inspections if such a scenario arises.

Sanctions could be imposed aimed at isolating Iran and turning it into a pariah state. Iran, feeling it is doing nothing wrong - it has in fact an “inalienable right” as a signatory of the Non Proliferation Treaty to develop a civilian nuclear technology for generating electricity for its population of 70 million - will, in so many words, tell the UN to fuck off, and this will be the pretext for war, with the US, the UK and Israel, like comic book super-heroes coming to the defence of peace-loving, god-fearing people everywhere. There will be warnings about the consequences from all manner of experts and demonstrations will take place right across the world – as in the case of Iraq – and reference will be made to double standards, to the fact that Israel and India and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons and are yet to sign the NPT, but to no avail. The masters of war will have their day.

It’s improbable that Russia and China will ever agree on a UN Security Council Resolution against Iran which could justify military action if it is thought to have been breached; for they have strong vested interests in Iran which they are desperate not to jeopardise. Not that this will bother the US in the least, as both Russia and especially China are economic powers that threaten US global ambitions, so any attack on Iran, that consequently leads to the overthrow of the present regime in Tehran, upsets the long term ambitions of China and Russia.

An Iranian response

But, make no mistake; Iran will be no push over. The US will not enjoy a hasty capitulation of the Tehran regime, as was the case with Baghdad, exhausted by over a decade of perpetual bombardment and sanctions. The Iranian army comprises about 350,000 active-duty soldiers and 220,000 conscripts and you can add to this 120,000 of the elite Revolutionary Guard. The country’s navy and air force total 70,000 men. Between them, the armed forces have about 2,000 tanks, 300 combat aircraft, and three submarines, hundreds of helicopters and at least a dozen Russian-made Scud missile launchers, the kind Saddam fired at Israel during the first Gulf War of 1991. Iran also has an unknown number of Shahab missiles with a range of more than 1,500 miles. With this in mind you can begin to appreciate the remarks of Under Secretary of State, John Bolton, in the build up to the invasion of Iraq: “Real men want to go to Iran”.

True, a lot of Iran’s military hardware is old, thirty years old in some cases, and no match for the state-of-the-art weaponry the US is wont to use. Nevertheless, it is still weaponry and more than capable of delivering untold damage to US forces or any other country within striking distance of its missiles and who are perceived as being pro-US.

With Iran controlling the Strait of Hormutz, oil tankers could easily be bombed as well tankers and platforms elsewhere in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. And Tehran could easily escalate any conflict, giving the nod for Lebanese Hezbollah militant attacks on Israel, sanctioning also assaults on U.S. interests throughout Central Asia.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and Muhammad Sahimi a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California, co-authored a piece for the Los Angeles Times on January 19th. They said:

“A military attack would only inflame nationalist sentiments. Iran is not Iraq. Given Iranians’ fierce nationalism and the Shiites’ tradition of martyrdom, any military move would provoke a response that would engulf the entire region, resulting in countless deaths and a ruined economy not only for the region but for the world. “Imposing U.N. sanctions on Iran would also be counterproductive, prompting Tehran to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its ‘additional protocol.’ ’ Is the world ready to live with such prospects?”

Both Bush and Blair have already hinted at military intervention and Israel has previously threatened Iran. The New York Times of 13th January 13 reported Meir Dagan, the chief of the Israeli Mossad declaring that “Israeli policy makers all agree that a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities cannot be ruled out.”

More importantly, The Sunday Times on December 11th last year reported that Ariel Sharon has instructed Israel air force to get ready for a military attack against Iran by the end of March 2006, when Israeli elections are scheduled. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s Likud Party, gave notice last year that if Prime Minister Sharon did not wipe out Iran’s nuclear installations, he would see the job was done if he became prime minister in March.

Consider also the statement by ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi, in the August 2005 issue of the American Conservative. According to Giralidi, Vice president Dick Cheney has told the Pentagon to plan for an all-out air attack on 450 sites in Iran if another terrorist incident occurs in the US. Giraldi reports that such a plan would include the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s fortified nuclear installations. Likewise, France’s President Chirac caused a furore when he announced France would respond with nuclear strikes against any state believed to be behind terrorist attacks on French soil. With Statements like this and knowing the long-term prize at stake, you just can’t help wondering if one of those false flags is being unfurled right now.

A year ago it was reported that Iran was anticipating an attack by the US and that it was ready for an impressionable response within 15 minutes. For over a year, anticipating a US attack, Iran has been mobilising recruits into citizens' militia and has made plans to engage in the kind of "asymmetrical" warfare that has mired U.S. troops in neighbouring Iraq.

Oil BoarseAnd the real reason for the coming war with Iran? Forget the nuclear threat. Forget the support for terrorist cells and the other hackneyed charges against this “rogue state”. The very simple fact is that next month, in March, Iran intends to launch its Oil Boarse which will facilitate the future trade of oil in the Euro instead of the US petro dollar – the international currency that props up the US economy. (For further info see this blog’s entry for circa May 15th of last year)

John Pilger writes in the latest issue of New Statesman (13th February):

“The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.

”That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.”

Likewise, Krassimir Petrov, Professor of Economics at the American University of Bulgaria, writing of the establishment of an Oil Bourse in the January edition of Energy Bulletin, said:
"In economic terms, this represents [a great threat] because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for Euros to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the U.S. dollar altogether.

"Europeans will not have to buy and hold dollars in order to secure their payment for oil, but would instead pay with their own currencies. The adoption of the euro for oil transactions will provide the European currency with a reserve status that will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans ....The Chinese and the Japanese will be especially eager to adopt the new exchange, because it will allow them to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with Euros, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar."

The Oil Bourse aside. Iran has also sizeable oil reserves that look quite enticing and which other countries have been eyeing up for some time. The highly regarded Oil and Gas Journal reported last year that 125.8 billion barrels of oil were in Iran just waiting to be pumped out. Iran is also the number 2 producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Most of Iran's crude oil is to be found in an area known as Khuzestan, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf and the location of Iran's largest untapped oil fields - Yadavaran and Azadegan. There are serious profits to be had here but, tellingly, the Chinese state oil company China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation has a 50 percent stake in the vast Yadavaran oil field.

So to has Russia a claim in Iranian oil. Three years ago In 2003 Russia decided to expand its oil procure and distribution methods by shipping Russian crude to Iran, to be refined for domestic consumption, with Iran delivering a corresponding amount of oil to Russia, thus decreasing the cost of exports via tankers loaded at Black Sea ports and making Russian oil accessible to buyers at competitive prices.

Addicted to oil?

George Bush, in his January 2006 State of the Union Address made an interesting statement: “The US is addicted to oil”. That’s perhaps the truest statement Bush has ever said, but he’s mistaken if this is meant to signify that the US is going into detox and will be weaning itself of oil. At the moment there is just too much US corporate interest in the Middle East and Central Asia for the US to even think of cutting back on one barrel of oil.

Furthermore, there are dangerous competitors out there, who have an insatiable thirst for oil, so its important that the US has a say in who has access to the world’s oil resources. The U.S. is not that dependent upon Middle East oil for its own domestic consumption, but is aware that one way to control its foremost economic rivals is to control just how much oil they can have and at what price. The project for the New American Century is well under way, with the war-mongering neo-cons ready to use any excuse to justify the use of US military power to eradicate any regime deemed an obstacle to its global ambitions. With China a fastly growing economic, political and military power, naked aggression is a strategy they will pursue throughout the oil rich regions of the Middle East and central Asia, regardless of the cost of life and the dent to the US’ global image. The petro-dollar needs defending, world’s oil resources need to be controlled and military bases built. Iran is just one step towards total global control – the real enemy is yet to be confronted.

But for now, with International Atomic Energy Agency complaining that Iran isn’t cooperating fully with IAEA inspectors, Washington will use its man at the UN, Ambassador John “Real Man” Bolton, to help hype a global crisis which will consequently be used to justify attacks on Iran, with or without the blessing of the UNSC. No evidence exists as to Iranian desires to create an atomic bomb, but the fact that the country is enriching uranium - quite legally so, and as a signatory to the NPT, unlike pro-US nuclear states - is all the confirmation the neo-cons need for another war for oil.

100th British Soldier Killed in Iraq

Tonight's news bulletins have focused heavily on the 100th British soldier killed in Iraq, concentrating chiefly on the impact these deaths have had on their families.

Without wishing to sound churlish, shouldn't this be called collateral damage? I don't just mean the usual US military use of the term - i.e. when a missile fired at an enemy bunker misses and hits a classroom full of kids. One hundred dead soldiers means a hundred grieving families - widows, fatherless children, childless parents etc - and also a great loss to society

The late Johnny Cash sang a powerful song about the real collateral damage of conflict, entitled The Battle, the lyrics of which are:

I think, sir, the battle is over, and the young soldier laid down his gun,
I'm tired of running for cover, I'm certain the battle is done,
For see over there where we fought them, ,it's quite for they've all gone away,
All's left is the dead and the dying, the blue lying 'long side the grey.

So you think the battle is over and you even lay down your gun,
You carelessly rise from your cover, for you think the battle is done?
Then boy hit the dirt, listen to me, for I'm still the one in command,
Get flat on the ground here beside me and lay your ear hard to the sand.

Can you hear the deafening rumble, can you feel the trembling ground?
It's not just the horses and wagons that make such a deafening sound.
For every shot fired had an echo,.and every man killed wanted life,

There lies your friend Jim McKenny,,can you take the news to his wife?

No, son, the battle's not over. The battle has only begun,
The rest of the battle will cover the part that has blackened the sun,
The fight yet to come's not with cannons, nor will the fight be hand to hand,No one will regroup the forces,,no charge will a General command.

The battle will rage in the bosom of mother and sweetheart and wife,
Brothers and sisters and daughters will grieve for the rest of their lives,
Now go ahead and rise from your cover,be thankful that God let you live
And go fight the rest of the battle for those who gave all they could give.

I see, sir, the battle's not over; the battle has only begun,
The rest of the battle will cover the part that has darkened the sun,
For though there's no sound from the cannon and though there's no smoke in the sky,
I'm dropping the gun and the sabre and ready for battle am I.

The BBC could have done us all proud and reported on the 100,000 Iraqis killed since the allied invasion and the impact on their families. One hundred thousand Iraqis dead - thousands of different skills lost, a million years of experience wiped out.

Fuck all you war-mongering, blood-drenched, jingoistic politicians; you and the

Lies, Half-Truths and WMD

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." George W. Bush, September 12, 2002

“Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.” George W. Bush, January 28, 2003

“We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction and is determined to make more.” Colin Powell, February 5, 2003

“We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.” George Bush, February 8, 2003

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” George Bush, March 18, 2003

“I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.” Kenneth Adelman, US Defense Policy Board , March 23, 2003

“We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.” Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.” George Bush April 24, 2003

“Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit.” Tony Blair, 28 April, 2003

“I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.” Donald Rumsfeld May 4, 2003

“I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago - I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago - whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.” Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne May 13, 2003

“Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.” Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 26, 2003

“For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003

"I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons." Donald Rumsfeld, May 14, 2003

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003

In the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Blair regimes produced reams of documents to prove Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and how Saddam could realistically fire them within 45 minutes. As they geared up for ‘war’ they reiterated time and again that their intention was solely to rid Iraq of its WMD and make the world a more stable place for decent and god-fearing people to live in. They campaigned long and hard for their war – for the support of their peers in governments and for the backing of the US and British electorates and, convinced they had the mandate for war, invaded Iraq in March. Three months after the end of the fighting no ‘illegal’ weapons have been found and the odds of finding any diminish greatly as the days go by.

The recent admission from a British security chief that the 50 page "intelligence" report on Iraq's WMD presented by Tony Blair to Parliament on 24 September last year - and used as the Labour government’s evidence for Iraq’s illicit weapons inventory - was spiced up on the government’s instructions came as no real surprise for those who have scrutinised the unfolding of the US-UK war with Iraq and the Labour government’s desperation to be part of it. Since the transatlantic plan to invade Iraq was hatched it was apparent that Truth would again be the first casualty of war.

For their part, the CIA and their British counterparts have tried to distance themselves from their respective governments these past few weeks, with unprecedented briefings and leaks to the press, desperate to avoid the backlash that has lead to some serious questioning in London and Washington.

On a visit to Poland on 30th May, Tony Blair told a press conference that finding the weapons in Iraq was "not the most urgent priority". And yet, according to the claims of the dossier that he defends, Saddam Hussein "has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability" and that his "current military planning specifically envisages the use" of these weapons. For months we had the Blair government ramming the WMD issue down our throats, pleading for our support for his war with Saddam, who threatened the civilisation we cherished Yet as Saddam and his military top brass, who presumably know about these WMD, which are yet to be found, are still on the run, we are told that finding the weapons is not is not an urgent priority?

Also now discredited by the CIA is the evidence US Sec of State Colin Powell eagerly displayed to the UN Security Council at the beginning of February. Powell provided explicit particulars of the key players in Iraq’s WMD programme as well as the sites that are now under US military control. Nevertheless, the biologically-armed "missile brigade", which he claimed was situated outside Baghdad has proved to be a figment of his imagination and the weapons scientists he informed the world were afraid of talking because of Saddam’s reach have not yet disclosed any secrets. As with the alleged "poison camp" near Khurmal, its labyrinth of tunnels and complex chemical communication network, so too with the photos of twenty or so Baghdad-based al-Qaeda members the UN was presented with. No evidence whatsoever.

In spite of every quality newspaper demanding answers from Blair in the wake of the secret services admission, Blair, it seemed, was learning nothing. Rather than running for cover he began blurting more lies, claiming that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the African state of Niger. The documentary evidence this fresh allegation was based on has since been confirmed a forgery by the International Atomic Energy Authority. Indeed, the Bush administration was aware that this evidence was bogus a year earlier – something Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have since admitted. Moreover, early last year Vice President Dick Cheney sent a former US ambassador in Africa to Niger to look into the story. Although the latter brought back word that the documents were not genuine, this was not sufficient to prevent the use of these documents as part of Bush’s rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

The sorry situation becomes more pathetic. US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld has lately offered that the reason Saddam’s WMD can’t be found is because they were destroyed before the war started. In other words the US-Britain invaded Iraq to rid the region of weapons Saddam never had and indeed that Saddam claimed he never had and which the UN weapons inspectors suggested he never had. If this was the case, then Saddam could never have been in breach of the famous resolution 1441, which was the justification for war.
Critics might consider that in light of recent revelations Blair should resign and that Bush should be impeached. Surely politicians should not be allowed to lie like this! But hold on. Lying is the trade of politicians under capitalism.

Back in 1925, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “This broad mass of a nation…will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one. ” Blair and Bush are fully aware of the power of the big lie, so little wonder they thought they could get away with it. Moreover, they are fully aware their support base swallow lies every living moment of the day. For the workers’ part they are lied to from the cradle to the grave: at school with distortions of history and the myth about a God up above; in the workplace, as producers, lied to by their bosses and at home as consumers bombarded with the myths perpetuated by the advertising industry.

To be sure, the entire capitals edifice depends for its continued survival on the promotion of lies, half truths and the distortion of facts. So powerful is the capitalist distortion machine that it takes all our powers of concentration, memory recall and skills of research just to separate the simplest of lies from fantasy. This constant digest of misinformation perhaps explains the amnesia the majority of workers appear to suffer from. And what is exasperating is that in spite of all the evidence revealing the architects of war to be the conniving and scheming rapscallions we always knew them to be, it is a fair bet that workers will again be ready to believe their lies when Iran is found to be stockpiling WMD, to be aiming for a nuclear capacity and harbouring al-Qaeda terrorists.

It’s a fair bet now that WMD will be found in Iraq – planted there by corrupt western regimes desperate to justify their invasion of Iraq. And this evidence will likely be used not only to prop up the discredited Messrs Bush and Blair but also to malign the anti-war movement - which claimed this was a war for oil - and to further strengthen their case for a continuation of the “war on terror”.

In the months ahead be careful what you swallow