6.4.2003
From: John Kelly
Published in Westmeath Examiner on 12.4.2003
News is coming in
today of civilian casualties of US led attacks on cities and towns across
Iraq. The International Red Cross reports 100 civilian casualties per
hour being admitted to hospitals in Iraq. R.T.E. (Irish National Radio/TV
Network) and BBC also broadcast the I.R.C. statment.
The simplistic rationale projected to the world at large from the Pentagon,
Hollywood, Madison Avenue and a generally compliant media is that the
world is divided up precisely into two opposing teams.
Good Guys Bad Guys
The Good Guys have
absolute inalienable right to obliterate the Bad Guys.
Saving the World for Democracy.
Novelist Thomas Wolfe, of You Can’t Go Home Again and Look Homeward Angel fame, put it another way.
America waging war
is, in his words, Saving the world for Hypocrisy.
Good Guys Bad Guys is Hypocrisy Incarnate.
The pretence to disguise imperialist warfare aimed at gaining resources of all kind, establishing territorial strongholds, and achieving dominance in literally all spheres of corporate endeavour.
Dominance to be achieved by whatever means necessary with television coverage evidencing this policy.
The bombing of Iraq has no basis whatsoever in libertarian or humanitarian concepts or concern over Saddam Hussein’s supposed threat to the “free world” with the preponderance of weapons of mass destruction clearly in the hands of U.S. led Coalition forces.
The first casualty of war is truth.
Commentators regularly refer to “the fog of war” by way of excusing earlier erroneous reports and inflated casualty figures relating to enemy forces and deflated casualty figures related to Coalition forces and demolition of combat vehicles and associated technologies.
The Iraq War Analytical Centre created by Russian journalists and military experts provides accurate and detailed reports on the war. Space does not permit anything other than a brief reference to some statistics reported from the IWAC
“22.3.03 0800hrs - For the past day the coalition losses are up to 30 killed and around 40 wounded. 10 coalition armored vehicles were destroyed by land mines. At least 2 armored vehicles were destroyed by Iraqi anti-tank weapons. Iraqi losses are estimated in the range of 250-300 killed and up to 500 wounded.
26.3.03 1230HRS - Sand is literally eating up equipment, having a particularly serious effect on electronics and transmissions in combat vehicles. Already more than 40 coalition tanks and 69 coalition armoured personnel carriers have been disabled due to damaged engines; more than 150 coalition armoured vehicles have lost the use of their heat-seeking targeting sights and night vision equipment. Fine dust gets into all openings and clogs up all moving parts.”
Appalling civilian casualties from a relentless heartless U.S. led bombing campaign and rampage of coalition troops through the country. The IWAC report 22.3.03 states that “More than 500 people have been taken to hospitals in Baghdad all of them were civilians.”
Underequipped Iraqi hospitals cope with increasing numbers of civilians deprived of life saving medicines under the genocidal U.N. sanctions.
One additional report from the Russian Analytical Centre relates to a statistic omitted from media reports in the West with this omission amounting to a form of censorship surely -
“26.3.03 1230hrs Coalition command is trying to establish the whereabouts of more than 500 of its troops that fell behind their units, departed with resupply convoys or were carrying out individual assignments. So far it is not possible to establish how many of these troops are dead, captured or have successfully reached other units”.
To date there has been no further report on the whereabouts of the missing 500 troops.
A National Demonstration against War on Iraq and against U.S. military Use of Shannon will take place on Saturday 12th April. Assemble 2pm Shannon town Centre. Buses from Midland to Shannon town return Please contact 086 1963134 to book seat. www.irishantiwar.org The Westmeath Anti war Group meets every Wednesday at 7.30pm Greville Arms Hotel, Mullingar.All welcome.
Ends Press Release.
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3.3.2003
Stanley Kubrick’s
1963 classic black comedy Dr Strangelove explored the nightmare of Mutually
Assured Destruction.
MAD
As singularly appropriate acronym
Kubrick had set out to make a deadly serious film based on Peter George’s
message laden book Red Alert. Kubrick explained later that after working
on the project for only a short time he found the scenario so absurd that
humour was the only treatment possible.
General Jack D Ripper in Kubrick’s film orders a nuclear attack on
Russia.
There is no coming back from the brink.
The bomb, with Slim Pickens jubilantly astride as astride a colt to be
broken in, emerges from the hatch of the United States Air Force bomber
to the musical accompaniment of The Yellow Rose of Texas segueing into
Vera Lynn’s ultimate hymn to nostalgia We’ll Meet Again Don’t
Know Where Don’t Know When ……. And then there is the mushroom
cloud.
The End
The scenario today is no less absurd.
Neutral Ireland assists the passageway through Shannon Airport of U.S.
military aircraft and marines en route to what is undeniably, despite
the brouhaha about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, nothing
more nor less than imperialist venture of truly awe inspiring audacity
and illegality.
Turkey, the bulwark nation of the NATO Alliance, meanwhile expresses reservations
about permitting 62,000 United States marines entry to Turkey as part
of a proposed programme geared to the occupation of Iraq.
94% of Turkish people oppose a U.S .British assault and invasion of Iraq.
So do most thinking people everywhere oppose the war on Iraq.
The Turkish Government would ignore the peoples opposition to the war
at their peril given the imminent possibility of revolution and insurrection
amongst the ranks of the Turkish armed forces in the event of a Turkish
government assisted invasion of Iraq by the West.
Destabilisation of the entire region would be inevitable.
Destabilisation would follow on a world wide scale.
The global economy would be subject to great instability.
Who stands to gain from such a potentially vast state of global disequilibrium?
The true patriot in this era of gun boat diplomacy and Captain Morgan
like piracy may yet prove to be he or she opposing the overwhelmingly
destabilising nature of institutionalised violence masquerading ludicrously
and all too frequently as a process related to “humanitarian intervention.”
As for the fracas at Shannon Airport.
One is reminded of memorable dialogue in the aforementioned Stanley Kubrick
classic Dr Strangelove.
Peter Sellers the President of the U.S.A. faced with the very real probability
of Mutually Assured Destruction of both the civilised world and otherwise
is at the same time appalled at the behaviour of one of his country’s
leading military officials General Buck Turgidson who has assaulted the
Russian Ambassador in the most sacred and hallowed of environments within
the Administration.
“Gentlemen” cries Peter Sellers, “you cannot fight here
of all places.
This, may I remind you, is the War Room”.
John Kelly
County Westmeath
Ireland
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reserved