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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Six Days Of Shame, The Siege of Basra
(John Pilger, ZNet, March 26, 2003)
TODAY is a day of shame for the British military as it declares the Iraqi city of Basra, with a stricken population of 600,000, a "military target". . . . With Basra, shame is now our signature, forged by Blair and Bush. . . . Having destroyed its water and power supplies, cut off food supply routes and having failed to crack its human defences, they are now preparing to lay siege to Iraq's second city which is more than 40 per cent children. . . . What an ignominious moment in British history. Here is an impoverished country under attack by a superpower, the United States, which has unimaginable wealth and the world's most destructive weapons, and its "coalition" accomplice, Britain, which boasts one of the world's best "professional" armies. . . . The truth is that the Iraqis are fighting like lions to defend not a tyrant but their homeland. It is a truth the overwhelming majority of decent Britons will admire. . . . The historical comparison Tony Blair and his propagandists fear is that of the British defending themselves against invasion. That happened 60 years ago and now "we" are the rapacious invaders. . . . In fact, voluminous evidence, including that published by the United Nations Children's Fund, makes clear that the main reason these children have died is an enduring siege, a 12-year embargo driven by America and Britain. . . . And now Blair's troops are firing their wire-guided missiles to "soften up" Basra. . . . ONCE again, the Americans are deploying what Professor Doug Rokke, a former US Army physicist, calls "a form of nuclear weapon that contaminates everything and everyone". . . . Today, each round fired by US tanks contains 4,500 grams of solid uranium, whose particles, breathed or ingested, can cause cancer. . . . This, and the use by both the Allies of new kinds of cluster bombs, is being covered up. . . . Images of bandaged children in hospital wards are appearing on TV but you do not see the result of a Tornado's cluster bombing. . . . You are not being shown children scalped by shrapnel, with legs reduced to bloody pieces of string. . . . Such images are "not acceptable", because they will disturb viewers - and the authorities do not want that. These "unseen" images are the truth. Iraqi parents have to look at their mutilated children, so why shouldn't those of us, in whose name they were slaughtered, see what they see? . . . regardless of Blair's calls to "support our troops". There is only one way to support them - bring them home without delay. . . . The "new Iraq", as Blair calls it, will have many models, such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, all of them American conquests and American ruled until Washington allowed a vicious dictatorship to take over. . . . Saddam only came to power after the Americans helped install his Ba'ath Party in 1979. "That was my favourite coup," said the CIA officer in charge.

posted by LoZo 12:36 PM