The mission to Free the Iraqi People/Regime change.
The mission to free the Iraqi people began with what was dubbed “Shock and Awe”. Denis Halliday, a former UN Assistant Secretary General and head of the UN food-for-oil sanctions program in Iraq (1997-8) describes the Shock and Awe battle tactics that were to begin the war in Iraq, stating that “the United States and Britain are proceeding with plans to annihilate Iraqi society, a catastrophe that would be heightened by the threatened use of tactical nuclear weaponry”. (1.27/2003.) This message is hard to reconcile with Ari Fleischer’s statement in a White House Briefing with the Press in February 2003, claiming that “every step will be taken to protect civilian and innocent life in Iraq”.
The authors of the Shock and Awe battle plan describe locations that could be targeted as being "means of communication, transportation, food production, water supply, and other aspects of infrastructure" and in chapter 1 describe the hoped for effects of the Shock and Awe, "Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese" and in chapter 5 we are explained the reason for the need for a shock and awe type approach : "the appropriate balance of Shock and Awe must cause the perception and anticipation of certain defeat and the threat and fear of action that may shut down all or part of the adversary's society or render his ability to fight useless short of complete physical destruction".
Harlan Ullman was aired on CBS News, January 24, 2003 stating that “You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2, 3, 4, 5 days they are physically, emotionally, and psychologically exhausted.”
REF : www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/24/eveningnews/main537928.shtml .
In fact 5 years on more than a million civilians were so “exhausted” that they decided to die…
“During the first Gulf War much of Iraq’s infrastructure was targeted and destroyed. There is a unique and important series of declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents available, which studied the destruction of Iraq’s water supply and the ensuing progressive spread of sickness and disease…it is the stated intention of the “Shock and Awe” planners to re-initiate (by destroying Iraq’s water supply again)” this by targeting the infrastructure that controls and regulates the water supplies in Iraq.
John Powers, LA Weekly, 2/27-3/6/03:Gets it about right when he says simply that “…it’s about inspiring mass terror.”
(The “Shock and Awe”Experiment Compilation, Analysis and Discussion of Available Information on the Pentagon’s “Shock and Awe” Battle Plan for Iraq Especially as It Affects Civilian Infrastructure and the Civilian Population, prepared for the not in our name project, JHavenar, 19th march 2003.)
The battle concept of Shock and Awe was developed by Harlan Ullman and James P Wade, and was a product of the National Defense University, USA.
As I sit and re-read these quotes and also passages from the original text (available on-line) I can’t help but feel that the architects of this kind of thought process, this kind of complete dehumanisation of a whole civilian population, act as a terrifying reminder that a widespread social apathy towards the projects of the military and expansionist governments of the west can only result in exponential curves in this type of thinking, and continued use of this type of tactic, and also a reminder as to the dark depths that the human mind and soul can sink to.
Death tolls amongst Iraqi civilians during this initial stage are unclear, and may never be known, however given the surprise element involved in the launch of the Shock and Awe policy, the massive amount of force used, the indiscriminate nature of the attack (if any real discrimination was ever actually attempted) the lack of any real intelligence as to where military sites were located (we can quite fairly assume this given the quality of the intelligence given by the same intelligence agencies relating the location of WMDs which turned out not to exist at all...), and of course the deliberate targeting of water supplies, communications, food supplies and stores, power and infrastructure, we can assume it to be reasonably high.
To put it in another perspective, have a quick glance at this : www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s1odqQTKyU&feature=related ., & You can’t help but feel that the man doesn’t really have a handle on reality…
Life in Iraq Today :
After the years of war, the mounting civilian loses, all the propaganda, lies and misinformation, the demonstrations on the streets all around the world, the pamphlets, the articles, the political speeches, how is life in Iraq today? Are the people of Iraq any freer. Has Operation Iraqi Freedom been a success? The Red Cross in April of 2007 state that civilian life was “ever-worsening” and that civilians endure “unbearable and unacceptable” suffering.
The facts : In 2003 the so-called coalition of the willing planned, prepared and waged a war against the sovereign state of Iraq. To date, although accurate figures are almost impossible to come by, it can be estimated that the total death toll has passed the one million (civilians) mark with no immediate signs of the war or the conflict in the region coming to an end; the general infrastructure of the country has been decimated (including nearly all schools, hospitals, communications, museums, businesses etc - in short society is gone…), unemployment is high and the streets are not safe to walk about on in the major cities where road blocks and heavily armed check points are standard, as are the incidents of civilian casualties and out of countrol Western military personel and of course the Private Armies.
The Red Cross remains neutral, and so does not hold any particular party or group responsible, however, does call “on all those who can influence the situation on the ground to act now to ensure that the lives of ordinary people are spared and protected. This is an obligation under international humanitarian law for both states and non-state actors”.
However, the final thing that needs to be understood in the clearing of the air on this most important of issues is that as members of societies that have had a direct influence on the situation in Iraq, as members of societies who have paid taxes to fund both the militaries of the coalition of the willing as well as the private security firms employed in Iraq directly by our governments and directly using tax payers money, we are not neutral spectators in this. I will say again, we are not neutral spectators in this and any person who claims to be such is both guilty of decieving themselves and guilty of moral treachery.
Morally we cannot be neutral in this, for it truly is, as G.W. Bush was so found of saying, really a situation in which you are “either with them or against them”…
The Final Insult:
Alan Greenspan (head of Federal Reserve for 18yrs.), September of 2007, : “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,”
So after all those press conferences, promises, pledges, guarantees and assurances, after commemorating so solemnly all the lives of the service men and women who gave their lives in the genuine belief that they were fighting a just cause, to rid the world of an evil, and most tragically, after the death of perhaps more than one million innocent civilians in Iraq, it turns out that the whole thing was about greed, material wealth and the limitless desires of the capitalist elite…
It appears that the people of the western liberal democracies have been lied to again and again, and whats more it appears that this disception was deliberate, premeditated and commited for the basest of reasons – simply to line the pockets of themselves and their eager cronies. Well, sadly those cronies and hangers on cannot be brought to justice – within the current framework of the legal system – however the politicians could be brought to justice and face war crime tribunals. This is what I suggest, and if somehow, this is all a mistake, then they deserve to have the chance to clear their names publically, but if it is as it seems, then those responisible for planning, orchestrating and enacting this campaign of terror ought to face the international courts.
Reflecting on what Greenspan has said makes a mockery of these men - blair bush et al., he has showed the world in one blow the type of pitiful lap dogs that they are, lap dogs to the oil industry and to military-industrial complex of the pentagon, to money and to power and to hell with humanity, to hell with the innocents who must die so that they can line their own pockets, to hell with the idea of decent open transparent democracy choosing instead the path of deception and lies. There are no words in this language to describe these men and women, no end fitting for such acts of treachery of the human spirit.
Once again, there can be no moral neutrality in a case such as this and so you must be “either with them or against them…”.
Dr. Zimbadean.,
hesq.,
Dr. Zimbadean.,
Hector "hollywood" Swanson.,
