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[casi] WMDs etc




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I've just finished reading John Pilger's Hidden Agendas (1998), Vintage Books. As I read more and 
more, I was struck by the failure of any of the world's press to juxtapose the very recent history 
of US government excursions into other nation states and the claims made against Evil Saddam 
Hussein. The horror of Viet Nam should be more than enough to refute any crap the Bush 
administration comes out with. Letīs see...chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction, 
deliberate targetting of civilians, torture, political assassination etc. Yes, the US government 
was responsible for all of the above.

Then a horrible thought occurred to me. We're always being fed the line of how Evil Saddam is a man 
so diabolical that he is even prepared to gas *his own people*. Could it be that the USUK Axis is 
so cynical that it is implying that it's OK to go and use chemical weapons against the peoples of 
other countries, but it's much worse to do it to your 'own' people. Incidentally, I am sure the 
Kurds are proud to hear that they are thought of as 'Saddam's people'.

Finally, Pilger's book (a must read for all, I would have thought) made me realise how events such 
as the war against the Vietnamese people and other things have assumed so much of an iconoclastic 
status that it is too easy to forget the very real human suffering that went on there (and 
continues to this very day). Thanks to people like John Pilger, Felicity (aw shucks), Martha 
Gelhorn etc, that side reemerges, never to be forgotten.

Fellow contributors might like to read Pilger's chapters about Viet Nam as they reflect on whether 
or not war against the Iraqi people is really the lesser of two evils. The detailed description of 
the US troops officially sanctioned massacres, the damning list of the effects of Agent Orange, 
generations on down the line, the number of dead, the length of the war, the blind eyes turned 
towards the corrupt puppet regime of the Saigon government, the dehumanisation of fellow human 
beings, the base lie that underwrote the whole escapade, the foul lies that granted the USA a 
dignified defeat, the prostitution of the whole country, the destruction of the country's natural 
heritage, the debasement of the cultural traditions, the slavery forced on the working people, the 
privatisation of non profitable schemes such as hospitals and schools, forced on the people by the 
World Bank, the vast sums of money which must be paid back by the government to the USA for 
'helping' them 'resist against evil' - all this may well await your family and friends in 
Baghdad...always assuming that they are not blown to bloody bits by a USUK bomb or gunned down in 
their beds by USUK troops or poisoned slowly by USUK weapons or maimed by trophy-hunting USUK 
warriors or left babbling wrecks as they watch their partners abused and killed by USUK heroes.

As I write, I have noticed that the shorthand for the USA and UK alliance has turned itself into a 
truly apt acronym.




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