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[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] 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. _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk