Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

There is no moving forward until the international community condemns and forces the United States of America and Britain to pay for their crimes against humanity. They must pay, not only for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan but also for countless previous illegal invasions. To continue treating with the United States of America and Britain like if all is well before this is done is to move into greater depths of illusions while validating them as the world's bully.

People of all nations must take a stand from within their regions to inform others and to lobby their leadership towards having these matters addressed before any 'normalization' of relations with the United States and Britain.

People will have to work harder to legally remove weak leadership from within their countries. They will have to develop strength of character with a clear understanding that by resisting domination and bullies they are fighting for their freedom.

We owe this to the countless people who have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of the United States of America and Britain's covert and now overt illegal activities.

March 21, 2003
by Ben Roberts

Any chance George Bush gets he describes himself, Tony Blair, and the Spanish leader as 'A Coalition of the Willing.' I beg to differ. A more appropriate designation is 'A Coalition of the Villains.' Less than forty-eight hours ago the President of the United States told his citizens, and the world, that United States forces would attack Iraq 'at a time of its choosing.' He went on to demand that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and his sons, leave that country in forty-eight hours. Bush statements, which boil down to a declaration of war, has effectively ushered in a new era in how nations deal with each other. It is called preemptive strike doctrine, and is based on the premise that if you suspect someone might attack you, you can attack them first. This is nothing short of absolute madness.

Such a scenario is the equivalent of a police officer accosting a citizen, suspecting that the individual is a real or imagined threat who might attack and, resorting to deadly force, kills the individual. The brutal death of Amadu Diallo in New York by police officers as he was harmlessly producing his drivers license is a sad real life example of such a situation. On the other side, an individual accosted by the police might fear the use of deadly force and attack the officer in an effort of self preservation. A sure fire prescription for chaos, lawlessness, and villainous behavior. Now we have an update to this scenario. The United States has attacked Iraq. In other words, we now have the first scenario, with the police officer attacking the citizen. Simply put, the United States and Britain have become the villains and rogues. They are violating the wishes of their respective communities, of the world community, and of the world body duly authorized to maintain law and order, and ensure peace and security.

One might take exception to the use of the term 'villains,' and are entitled to do so. But let us consider the behavior of someone who is regarded as a villain. They lie, cheat, steal, deceive and kill. Surely Blair and Bush, respectable leaders in their blue suits, are far removed from such a despicable designation. Think so? Think again. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, blatantly deceived and lied to us in an effort to implement his war crusade against Iraq when he plagiarized a student paper, and used it almost word for word, telling us it was an up to date top secret intelligence document of Iraqi military capability. This amounts to stealing of intellectual property and deliberately deceiving the public. The perpetrator of such illegal behavior usually ends up in front of a judge, might be required to do jail time, and provide restitution to the injured party.

Now onto George Bush. Early on in his jihad against Iraq, Bush at the United Nations showed 'pictures' of Iraqi sites of weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix, top UN investigator, countered immediately that the sites were no such thing, but rather old sites that he and his team had investigated and shut down. Do I need to explain to anyone that he is calling Bush a liar? Bush said that Iraq had been attempting to produce, and had in its possession nuclear weapons. ElBaradei, the premier investigator for the international nuclear regulatory body, the IAEA, declared that Iraq possessed no nuclear weapons, and their acquisition of aluminum tubes was not in keeping with nuclear weapons production. Is he not calling Bush a liar? Even more recently ElBaradei angrily assailed the Bush Administration, accusing them of presenting his agency with fake documents that supposedly detailed Iraqi purchases of nuclear material from Niger. If this is not lying and deception then I don't know what is. We know how the Bush Administration intercepted the Iraqi inventory document submitted to the UN, and removed 8,000 pages before anyone else got to see it. This document was the property of the UN. Is this not stealing and deception, and do we not warn our children against such undesirable and despicable behavior?

Then last night, American F-117A Stealth bombers and cruise missiles hit Iraq, attempting to kill Saddam Hussein and his top leadership. We are told that in the process there has been injuries and at least one fatality. This is attempted murder, and in the case of the fatality, murder. George Bush signed off on this action to kill Iraqis. But that is not strange. Recently, he signed off on an action that had a drone over Yemen unleash a missile that took the life of an American in that country who was guilty of no crime. No court. No innocent until proven guilty. Just the action of one man with a propensity to lie and deceive, and who has decided that he is judge and jury, with the power over life and death.

A small observation is in order here. In this so called 'Coalition of the Willing,' Ukraine has a small contingent of troops along with American and British forces at the Kuwait Iraqi border. They are supposedly primarily involved in chemical warfare. However, just three months ago The Washington Post carried an article in its Friday, December 20, 2002 issue detailing that the US was imposing sanctions on that nation for money laundering that facilitated terrorism. This week media reports revealed that they had also sold a radar system to Iraq that was capable of detecting stealth technology. In other words, the Stealth bomber. Now they are in the front lines assisting America after being paid by Iraq. How can this be? Not long ago they were despicable persona non grata slated for US sanctions. Now they are part of a supposed rock hard 'Coalition of the Willing.' My question in this instance is who bribed, threatened and blackmailed who? 'Coalition of the Willing?' What a joke. This is a villainous lot who would make Ali Baba and his band of cutthroat thieves look like a harmless Boy Scout team.

http://www.trinicenter.com/index1.php

By Bukka Rennie
March 22, 2003

War on TV! What war? The US/ British invasion of Iraq is not a war. War presupposes an equal element of danger to both sides. This surely is not the case. When the weaponry available to either side is compared it would seem that America and Iraq are centuries apart. When one considers the smart-bombs and guided missiles in the armoury of the US, Saddam might as well have had "bows and arrows".

If this so-called war continues it will be tantamount to a massacre. As said before in this space, the US will virtually be "swatting flies". And the whole world will be there sitting before TV sets looking at this "war", as if it were some movie, with a surrealist plot, only in this case real blood will flow and men, women and children will be decimated.

There comes a sickness to the stomach watching all these news outfits and anchor newscasters producing these "action slots", interviewing generals and colonel-this and colonel-that talking about "strategy". What strategy, when you have the advantage that allows you to simply march and roll straight in and kill everybody?

It would be good comedy, mind you, if human beings were not at the receiving end, watching all these various analysts and experts, dressed up in their lounge suits and ties, speculating about this and that, trying their best to appear knowledgeable and intelligent answering rather idiotic, nonsensical, repetitious questions.

And these infernal reporters out there wanting most of all to impress on viewers the sense of impending danger to wit they have subjected themselves to bring the news, in fact their heroics, all the while also answering stupid questions such as: "So what do you see now", put to them by anchors.

If these reporters happen to die there they will be given posthumous awards, much like the Hollywood scenario. The blurring of perspective is what makes it so painful. And the fact that this production will cost US$70 billion while in much of the world people are starving.

But how is all this justified? The US and Britain have fabricated all kinds of evidence to prove that Iraq possesses "weapons of mass destruction", particularly of a chemical and biological nature and therefore given Saddam's propensity for evil, they conclude that Iraq is a serious threat to the US and the world.

Ashton Brereton's commentary, "Lies, damn lies, stats and fabrications", in the Guardian of March 20, is recommended reading in this context. In that article he shows clearly how the fabrication of evidence against Iraq was manufactured by Bush, Blair, Colin Powell et al even to the point of "forged documents" that the FBI has been asked to investigate.

Electronic mapping has provided these 21st century warmongers with the capacity to see every move in Iraq and yet no hard, definite evidence has been presented. What threat can Iraq be when the US can see every move and anticipate Saddam's intentions. That is why 75 per cent of the world's population cannot accept this "war" as justified.

What was most telling to me, however, was the appearance again of none other that Zibignew Brezinski. How I remember this "hawk"! Zibig, a long standing member of the think-tanks - the Trilateral Commission and the Brookings Institute - that cut across Republican and Democratic Party lines, have for decades been helping to chart US foreign policy, US view of the world and its exaggerated sense of imperialist empire. Zibig was on the TV saying to the world that America has never won a war; "we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam", he said and then went on to insinuate that it is time that America wins a war.

In other words go and kick somebody's arse, but win, in order to boost the American psyche. He did not attach much significance to their "victory" in Grenada.

Those people who pose that America has been the greatest contributor to humanitarian causes and to world development and wish us to see the invasion of Iraq as an extension of America's philanthropy need to understand that there is no free aid, that every dollar of aid that comes in to the peripheral undeveloped areas of the world facilitates the expropriation of approximately $10 back to the epicentres, and such people should listen carefully to the likes of Zibignew Brezinski who are the policy formulators behind the throne of power.

The balance of power in the world and the control of the key resources of the world are what these empire hawks are about, everything else is secondary or a means to that end. And they amass superior weapons and fight wars because that is the nature of empire building, that is the objective and subjective nature of all industrial-military complexes.

What does a country do with $800 billion worth of weaponry? And if its economy is fired by such production, how does it recharge its economic batteries? Replacement is equivalent to recharge in this context. War is the mechanism.

It is the lack of morality displayed by the Big Powers that forces insecure countries to want to arm themselves. One cannot expect equal treatment across the board. Saddam was alright and his ambitions were facilitated when he was attacking Iran. The whole western world turned a blind eye then to his development of chemical and biological weapons. In the same way every atrocity committed by Israel in its zeal for expansion from 1948 onwards was overlooked until Palestine as a country was no more.

Every attempt by the UN to sanction Israel over the years has been vetoed by the US. And we can go on and on showing examples of this logic that "my kith and kin can do anything, but others dare not" and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

There are only two positives that can be derived from this war :

1. The rise of the EU with its federal co-ordination of sovereign States as an opposing counter-power to the US which in fact will trigger the final burial of any further concept of super power and the eventual strengthening of the UN structure.

2. It may serve to pull the entire Arab region kicking and screaming into the modern world, since all of them are as thuggish as Saddam's regime, given their hybrid mix of monarchal-theocracy - royal families and religious fundamentalism - and give rise to real Parliamentary democracy as limited as this may be.

http://www.trinicenter.com/

What a war! What a something. Heads of Government giving nations,"basket to carry water." by their people. The 'war' so call is an utter shame, almost to all. It insults our intelligence, our academic learning and distors our historical record.
One think I know it shall affect everyone sychologically including the man who signs off on it. If you look at George Bush it is already telling on him. We are all in for a sychiatric help and I hope we can claim on our tax return for next year. We all can now accelerate our need for benefits if we have one. For example, whoever, is now collecting some form of Unemployment, Food Stamps can now use the war as an excuse to get more benefit. Which professional social provider cannot say that the war has affect every one even to the state of mental disability. Very soon some one will have be strong to take the president from George Bush, as he will break down from staring at the man in the mirror.

RasIene