Clearing the Air over Iraq.,

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.,

notes on a poet's heart.,

the poet practises a secret art, hidden deep within his groins, a world of lucid dreams and magical spells cast to no one but himself and that last final patron his friend in those long nights on empty streets the moon; and she, that moon, moves every drop of blood in him as she swings about on her orbits of the skies, transfixes his eyes to stare bleary drunk the whole world disposed to every word that he springs from the well of the soul out to the silent unhearing air but what can it matter if noone hears or he never writes down those lines that have his spine all a singing and all a tingle-jangling self obsessed half the time and cold stinging sober longing for the release of her giant orbit all the rest...

the poet speaks in codes and encriptions, and always i'm sure in his deepest confessions fears nothing more than the breaking of that code, for what use could his encription machine be then if its meanings and noise were ringing loud down those peaceful moonlit streets cluttered up in the bars and dukeboxes and whores and lepars of society... what use would it all be then?

sad truth dear poet it would be a great use and the world would rock happier on the tragedies of life's seas for knowing the mystic language you yourself taught your pen to speak, but for you it would be over, for you only death awaits now, only release into the orbits of invisible sky...

hesq.,

3 haikus 1 poem., from hesq.,

*

The Blinkered Working Horse

A horse grown restless

Behind his half drawn shutters

Shakes his white deity.

***

And Revolution

There is always one

Drop in every cloud that will call

Its final

Shot and hurtle its dissent.

***

In Tiananmen Square

In Tiananmen Square

A tank stopped and the whole

World watched it there.

***

hesq.,

hector "hollywood" swanson at the races.,

who'd have backed
the horse
no{t} one body
for sure
but i did :
and saw through
wild/wide eyes/surprised
my very own
ho{pes} rse rise
to take the late{st}
hedge alive.

*

hector "hollywood" swanson - at the races.

festival notes., sick of lists sick., condition of the arts.,

late august, edinburgh.

the festival has drawn to a close. it is now time for me to draw together the very scattered notes , to write the piece on the festival, to do the job, to write about the belly of the beast.

initial thought on the condition of the arts in this country and elsewhere represented by the festival : they are sick, degrading sweaty self-debassing spectacles sponsored by the bank of scotland and E4 tv channel media puss fueled, stagnating wringing every penny out of your pocket sick, unfunny stand up joke routines sick that play on stereotypes and knob gags sick, overly affected image conscious sick wearing the day-glo shades of self deception sick too much of the time sick, wanting to believe beyond all evidence that this is it sick, the world revolves around two-bit "every-shakespeare-play-in-60-seconds” sick, ethnic bands hawking their ethnicity for a few dollars sick, scottish bag pipers banned - on account of noise - from the royal mile and central festival in scotland sick, the usual critics swirling about the cafe scenes so chic drawing clouds in their coffee sick, mustering every ounce of buddha like patience not to punch the lights out of another hysterical idiot trying to ram flyers for their half-baked performance down your throat sick, sick of lists sick...
but at all that, if you scratch the surface - sick - there's gotta be something you tell yourself, and you'd be right, it's there all right, and it's not all sick.

*

hesq.,