Iraq: The Massacres Continue as "Democracy-Building"

"With all the vacillations of policy since the current incumbents [Bush's gang] first took office in 1981, one guiding principle remains stable: the Iraqi people must not rule Iraq". Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch

By Ghali Hassan

09/26/04 "ICH" The indiscriminate slaughter of Iraqi citizens in Fallujah, Najaf, Baghdad, Tel Afar, Kut and other Iraqi cities, the outrageous treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war and civilian detainees, and the destruction of the nation of Iraq have not registered in the Moral consciousness of the "civilised" Western world.

The US and its "coalition" alleged that its moral "messianic mission" is to promote and "build" democracy and end dictatorships around the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US atrocities in Latin America and other parts of the world produced corrupt and violent dictatorships. America's invasion of Iraq is colonial occupation and anti-democracy. The Iraqi people have only seen the massacres of their fellow citizens and the destruction of their nation.

Mr. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN, said: "The war was illegal and contrary to the provisions of the charter of the UN". This mean that the Iraqi people and the resistance have legitimate rights to defend their country against aggression, and they are acting within the rules of law. Iraqis prisoners of war, women and children detainees taken by the US forces should be released immediately. They are all Iraqi hostages.

In April 2004, the US massive attacks on Fallujah killed more than 1300 Iraqis, mostly innocent women and children, reported by AFP. The US continues to attack Fallujah regularly, killing many more innocent civilians. According to Reuter's news agency, on September 02, 2004, the US killed 17 people, including 3 children, a woman and an elderly man. Reuters reported on the night of September 07, 2004, US jets and helicopters "pounded Fallujah all night and killed 'up to 100 militants' according to US military; though local hospital sources reported 'only' 6 dead and 23 wounded".

On September 10, 2004, the New York Times reported US attacks on northern Fallujah killed at least 8 people, including four children and two women. A local doctor told the Associated Press, another '16 people' including 8 children were wounded. In the rubble of a demolished house, he noted 'workers found only one survivor, a 10-month-old infant’' reported the Associated Press.

The ABC and the BBC reported on September 25, 2004, "US forces bombed Fallujah killing at least 8 civilians, wounding 15, and destroying several buildings in the city". Fallujah is targeted by US forces because the people of Fallujah are resisting the US barbarity and fighting back to defend their town.

The attacks came even as Iraqi Muslim Scholars denounced the air strikes as "terrorist acts". In a statement to Aljazeera, they pointed out that the victims of the US air strikes were "women and children, most of them less than 10-years old". They urged the international community to earnestly work for an end to the US acts of aggression in Iraq.

The siege and barbaric attacks on the holy city of Najaf by US forces killed more than 1000 Iraqis, most of them were innocent civilians, and a city of half a million people destroyed. People were shot and killed in Kufa, simply because they were marching for peace.

On September 07, 2004 US forces attacked Sadr City unprovoked "leaving at least 40 Iraqis and 1 American soldier dead and 202 people wounded", The New York Times reported, despite a unilateral ceasefire declared by Muqtada Al-Sadr. "Most of the victims were ordinary people".

On September 12, 2004, US helicopters fired on a crowd of unarmed innocent civilians in Baghdad's Haifa Street killing more than 13 Iraqis, including children and an Arab journalist, and injuring dozens others. The massacres of Iraqi civilians by US forces continue as if Iraqis are no longer human beings.

The fact is that the US is pursuing a scorched earth policy that destroys everything on the ground, is clear proof that this policy has failed. Many Iraqi cities are emulating the heroic example of Fallujah resistance across Iraq.

To take revenge, the US is preparing for new offensive in December to occupy towns and cities outside its Occupation. The US commander in Iraq said recently: "the cancer of Falluja is going to be cut out" soon. A policy reminiscent to fascism and terrorism ideologies of destroying and terrorising the whole community.

Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder reported on September 25, 2004, "U. S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by [resistance]". She cited a report by the Iraqi Health Ministry that "recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until September 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured". Confirming earlier reports that show "about two-thirds of Iraqi deaths caused by Occupation forces, the remaining third died from resistance attacks, and crimes that resulted from the Occupation. The atrocities continue unnoticed in the West.

With many of the crimes of murders and kidnappings against the Iraqi people are committed by those who piggybacked to Iraq on the tanks of the Occupation forces, security remained a major concern for the Iraqi people. The new created police and army in Iraq are to act as shield to protect the US forces from the resistance, and preludes to civil war. They are fighting against their own people on behalf of foreign Occupation. In fact, crime and violence in Iraq have been on the increase since the Occupation.

The London-based Medact, the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) reveals that up to 55,000 Iraqi civilians died in the bombing of 2003 alone. The charity organisation concluded that the war's continuing impact - particularly the failure of occupation authorities to ensure security - has resulted in a further deterioration of Iraq's infrastructure and the Iraqi population's health status. Western media are happy to propagate the death of 1000 US soldiers since the invasion, while ignoring the massacres of Iraqi people.

Iraq was not and never could have been a threat to the US, even its nearest neighbours were not concerned. Iraq was a defenceless country and all evidence shows that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism or the 9/11 attacks.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, told Vanity Fair Magazine in early 2004: "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on WMD [to invade Iraq] because it was the one reason everyone could agree on". The reason Mr Wolfowitz was saying was a convenient lie - a lie that has been sold to the citizens of the world. Mr Wolfowitz, who is also know as "Israel-centric" for his loyalty to Israel and his anti-Muslim behaviour, attacked the Turkish parliament for respecting the majority of the Turkish citizens and refusing to allow the US to invade Iraq from Turkey. He urged the Turkish Army to "take matter in their hands" and disregard democratic principles. Mr Wolfowitz is peculiar in that he is the so-called "visionary democrat" of the Bush administration.

The US is destroying any hope for real democracy in Iraq by appointing thugs and criminals to high positions. The US has consistently stalled on one-person-one-vote elections in Iraq, "seeking instead to put democracy on hold until it is safely managed", writes Salim Lone in the Guardian of London. The US is building dependence and subordination in Iraq. The US is building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq. To my knowledge not a single Iraqi wants the US to stay in Iraq. The mainstream media is silent on this issue of US domination.

The so-called "Western-style democracy-building" in Iraq has been contracted to US corporations such as the North Carolina Research Triangle International (RTI) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED promotes a "top-down" controlled democracy, in which few elites rule over the masses. Its chairman is the neoconservative, Vin Webber, who is signatory to the Project of the New American Century (PNAC), which has promoted the invasion and conquest of Iraq since 1997. It is promised a 100 percent increase in Congressional funding in George W. Bush's 2004 State of the Union address.

Complementing NED work is RTI; one of many of private contractors hired by the US government for Iraq's other "reconstruction." As Bechtel attempts to rebuild bridges and power plants, other US companies are attempting to fashion Iraq's legal, economic, political and social institutions so that they will be conducive to US interests. USAID and RTI is recruiting and mobilizing Iraqi quislings who it hopes will push for and defend preferred US policies. The history of USAID, RTI and NED in developing countries is of devastation, exploitation and poverty.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think-tank, recently concluded: "Iraqis have little confidence in US and other international forces - Iraqis generally dislike the continued presence of US-led forces in their country; many consider the occupation to be on-going despite the June 28 handover of sovereignty".

Sovereignty comes directly from the people; it is not something that the US can dictate by the power of tanks and helicopter gunships. The Iraqi Interim Government is a puppet government with no legitimacy or sovereignty. The so-called "prime minister" Allawi is a cheap thug, and the Occupation Arabic spokesman. Who is Allawi? Allawi and his gang are not talking on behalf of the Iraqi people. They have no support among the Iraqi people; they are foreigners. "Yesterday's speech was particularly embarrassing. [Allawi] stood there grovelling in front of the congress - thanking them for the war, the occupation and the thousands of Iraqi lives lost... and he did it all on behalf of the Iraqi people. It was infuriating and for maybe the hundredth time this year, I felt rage", writes the Girl Blog from Iraq on September 24, 2004.

According to Thomas Carothers, director of Democracy Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "is the central dilemma that the most powerful, popular movement are the ones that we are deeply uncomfortable". The US is doing everything to derail the January 2005 promised "elections". Allawi's gang has an incentive to delay the poll so as to perpetuate their power.

It should be borne in mind that it is impossible to have honest election when the country is occupied and violence is escalating. "We are against holding the elections while Iraq is still under (US) occupation," a senior member of the Association of Sunni Muslims, Ahmed Al-Samarae, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "If the elections are held under these circumstances, they won't be fair and just". He added, "the invaders will impose the figures they want in the so-called elected government in order to obtain a legal status for them to stay in Iraq". The aim of the US Occupation is to fragment the country with each community having some power. Occupation will continue and Iraqis will continue to fight each other instead of fighting foreign invaders.

Any elected Iraqi government will be obliged to ask the US to leave Iraq once it took power. Noises are already being made that insecurity will prevent democratic elections being free. Every Iraqi sees the elections as the best key to ending the occupation and getting the US to leave, reported the Guardian of London. Donald Rumsfeld, the proto-fascist defence secretary, suggesting, “to hold only limited elections”. In other words, Baghdad and several other provinces are not safe to hold elections. This is the democracy the US is trying to build in Iraq.

What the US is trying to build in Iraq is a democruptcy by way of "appointocracy", not democracy. Democracy is accountable to ordinary people and not suborns power. "The inescapable irony is that the United States, long involved in 'democracy-building' adventures around the world, desperately needs to revitalise the democratic process at home", writes Noam Chomsky.

There is no pretext for the US Army and their mercenaries to be in Iraq. The recent face-saving deal achieved by Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in Najaf demonstrates Iraqis can do things peacefully. The 200,000 US soldiers and mercenaries are not needed or wanted. The longer the US stays in Iraq, the worse life for Iraqis becomes.

If the US is concerned about human rights and democracy, the US is well advised to liberate Iraq and free its resources. The US should withdraw its troops from Iraq, take its quislings and criminals with it, and pay reparation for the destruction inflicted upon the Iraqi people. Iraqis are able to work together to rebuild their nation and civil society. So we can all live in peace with dignity.

Ghali Hassan lives in Perth Western Australia


The ONLY solution is to enforce The Plan against the N. W. O. perpetrators of
911 and the war on terrorism and reinstate God's Law:-

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