[A-List] Iraq: an Arab view

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Day of the chicken hawks
By Hani Shukrallah
Al-Ahram Weekly
10 -16 April 2003
Issue No. 633

The Iraqi people fought and died for the sake of us all -- martyrs in the
Christian, no less than in the Muslim sense of the word. Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld and the rest of the "chicken hawks" junta that seized the American
administration illegally by rigging the 2000 presidential election are
totally deranged, totally corrupt and totally cynical. Their blueprint for
world domination (set out in black and white in a September 2000 document)
is a Mein Kampf. Their corporate linkages are so blatantly venal as to be
the envy of a Somoza, while their intricate web of lies and deception would
make an amateur out of a Goebbels. Courtesy of another band of maniacal
marauders -- Bin Laden and co -- they got their Reichstag fire.

Condoleezza Rice was quoted in The New Yorker last April admitting that soon
after 9/11 she called together senior members of the National Security
Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalise on these
opportunities'".

The martial madness has been unleashed. It must be stopped -- no less than
the survival of the human species is at stake.

Mr Blair has been harping on about Chamberlain and his appeasement. There is
great irony in this, for the New Labourite premier is nothing like the
imperialist and self-avowed racist Tories he so likes to emulate. His place
in history will not be that of an intractable Winston Churchill, nor even
that of a bungling Anthony Eden. He will have to look across the Channel for
his historical antecedents: a certain Marshal Pétin.

Faced with wholly unexpected resistance from the Iraqi people, the murderous
thugs in Washington and London had by the end of week two of the war removed
the last of their "Iraqi freedom" masks, showing the world the monstrous
face of merciless war criminals. Baghdad and Basra were being systematically
destroyed, thousands of "chicks" -- women, children and men of all ages --
were "in the way", and they were being systematically and cold- bloodedly
put to the slaughter.

Donny Rumsfeld, we are told, often quotes the legendary Mafia boss, Al
Capone. And in proper Mafia style he began to eliminate witnesses;
journalists, not "embedded in" (read: in bed with) the war criminals' armed
forces, were to be eliminated.

So early Tuesday, the offices of two Arab satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and
Abu-Dhabi, were deliberately targeted. Later that same day, the Palestine
Hotel, where most foreign reporters working out of Baghdad have been based,
was shelled by tank fire. Three journalists, including Al-Jazeera's Tarek
Ayyoub, were killed.

John Pilger, writing in The Independent of 6 April noted, "Covering this
[killing of civilians] in a shroud of respectability has not been easy for
George Bush and Tony Blair. Millions now know too much; the crime is all too
evident. Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons, a Labour MP for 41
years, says the prime minister is a war criminal and should be sent to The
Hague. He is serious, because the prima facie case against Blair and Bush is
beyond doubt."

The murderous brutality of the bombings of Baghdad and Basra, the images of
killed and injured children (will we ever know the real figures for Iraq's
dead and maimed?), the unabashed cruelty of the scenes of hooded, cuffed and
viciously manhandled civilian and military captives (so familiar from
footage of Israeli soldiers rampaging in the West Bank and Gaza) -- and this
by the very soldiers whose government officials were screeching "Geneva
Conventions" when a handful of American POWs were paraded before television
cameras -- none of it tells even half the horror story unfolding before our
very eyes.

We now know, despite all the subterfuge and the criminal slavishness of the
corporate media, that the invasion of Iraq was planned even before the
chicken hawks and their paranoiac leader rigged their way into the White
House. We know of the Project for a New American Century, among whose
founders are none other than Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Dubya's own
maniacal 'thinker', Richard Perle and, who else, Jeb Bush, the Florida
brother who gave George the presidency.

We know of the chicken hawks' seminal report: "Rebuilding America's
Defences: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century". We know that,
far from being concerned about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the
hands of Saddam Hussein (which Bush said were giving him sleepless nights),
the chicken hawks' blueprint for global domination openly stated more than
two years ago, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the
immediate justification, the need for the presence of a substantial American
force in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

We also know, thanks to Bob Woodward, that on the morning of 12 September
2001 (that is before anything at all was known about the culprits of the
9/11 atrocity), Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a
principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Secretary
of State Colin Powell stayed his hand -- for a while.

And now, after four weeks of death and destruction, Baghdad has fallen.

On the way to this once magnificent seat of Haroun Al-Rashid, The Guardian
's James Meek came across Marine Sgt Michael Sprague by a bridge outside the
city of Nasseriya. "A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins
of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth place of
Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when the inhabitants of
north-west Europe were still walking round in animal skins," Meek observed.
Sgt Sprague, from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, noted Meek, never
knew it was there. Rather, he complained: "I've been all the way through
this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast
food restaurant. These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours
of 2500 people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other."

Back in the White House, George W Bush, so mindful of the importance of the
moment that, according to USA Today , he gave up on sweets just before the
invasion, is no doubt communicating with God over how he, his chicken hawks
and Sgt Sprague from West Virginia are going to be lording it over us all.