A-Infos (en) Freedom 6404 22 Feb, 2003 - What we say ...

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The road to war has been signposted by a series of 
pretexts. These have been put forward by the 
governments of Britain and the United States, only to 
be discarded as soon as they're shown up as ridiculous. 
The White House has rarely bothered to pretend it 
believed any of them but, as the world's only 
superpower, it's never really needed to appeal to 
anyone's better nature. Blair, much more dependent 
on the acquiescence of his subjects (and his 
colleagues), has worked himself into a moral fervour in 
his efforts to persuade us all of the righteousness of 
George's cause. The extent of the opposition to his 
plans, revealed by the march in London on 15th 
February, means that his righteousness can only grow 
even as his logic gets weaker by the day.

To begin with, the invasion of Iraq was necessary, we 
were told, because of Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of 
mass destruction'. But it soon became clear that 
America wasn't going to wait for evidence of this from 
United Nations inspectors, even as it continued its 
diplomatic tiptoeing around North Korea, whose 
WMDs have been proved, beyond any doubt, to exist. 
Then there was the notion that Iraq was somehow 
linked to al-Qaida. This 'link' has never been proven, 
of course, unsurprisingly given that it clearly isn't true. 
Needless to say, this flaw in the official story hasn't 
stopped a compliant media from repeating it as fact.
Osama bin Laden's statement, reported last week, that 
Muslims worldwide should defend the Iraqi people was 
taken as proof of the 'link'. According to the Bush 
junta, it provided more 'evidence' to justify an 
invasion. Because America wanted to invade Iraq, bin 
Laden urged Muslims to support Iraq's people. This, in 
turn, was used to justify an American attack. To call 
this circular is being unkind to circles.

Now we've had the worst pretence of all, that this will 
be a war to liberate the Iraqi people from a terrible 
regime. Blair has actually had the cheek to say Britain 
must 'look at the morality' of the sanctions programme 
that's been in place for the last twelve years, arguing 
that attacking Iraq is the more humane option Ğ as if 
the sanctions are nothing to do with him.

Here are some other awkward facts that Blair prefers 
not to account for. The Butcher of Baghdad was helped 
into power and supported by the USA; shortly before 
Saddam gassed 'his own people', current US Defence 
Secretary and Hawk-in-Chief Donald Rumsfeld went to 
Iraq, shook the bloody tyrant's hand and sold him more 
weapons; the US preferred Saddam to 1991's popular 
revolt, letting him crush uprisings around the country 
with impunity; the US military has explicitly said that 
bombs will shortly rain down on Iraq's civilians; the US 
State Department unashamedly admits that its aim is 
to create a 'temporary' regime to maintain 'stability' in 
Iraq, headed by American appointees and guarded by a 
substantial occupation force.

But the best refutation of the pretence that this is a 
war of liberation comes from British Defence 
Secretary Geoff Hoon, who has insisted several times 
that Britain would be prepared to launch a nuclear 
strike on Iraq 'in the right conditions'. Unless his war 
of liberation means a war to liberate the Iraqi people 
of their lives, it's clear that the current pretext for 
invasion is as phoney as the rest. If the American and 
British ruling elites were really concerned with the 
wellbeing of the Iraqi people, they wouldn't have 
supported Saddam's regime in the first place. As 
usual, the government's contempt for even bourgeois 
democracy is only matched by its contempt for the 
intelligence of the general public.

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