Encouraging Strides?
January 31, 2007
While in Basra on Tuesday Mr Browne said the Iraqi Government was making encouraging strides in its efforts to curb violence in the country.Here’s a suggestion: If the UK defence minister, Des Browne — or a correspondent from the BBC — starts talking about ‘encouraging strides in curbing violence’ in your area, get to a bomb shelter as fast as you can:
“All British bases in Basra International Airport, northwest of the city, the base in Shatt al–Arab Hotel, the one in the area of al–Saie in central Basra and the British consulate came under intensive shelling with katyusha and mortar rockets,” Capt. Katie Brown, the spokeswoman for the multi-national forces in the south, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) by telephone.
(…)
The attacks coincided with reports about a possible visit by British Defense Secretary Desmond Browne to Basra to see British forces there.
Well Oil Be Damned!
January 08, 2007
Tony Blair today derided as “conspiracy theories” accusations that a war on Iraq would be in pursuit of oil, as he faced down growing discontent in parliament at a meeting of Labour backbenchers and at PMQs.Four years, one invasion and several hundred thousand corpses later …Blair: Iraq oil claim is ‘conspiracy theory’
15th January 03
Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third–largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large–scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30–year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large–scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
7th January 07
Think Different? Think again.
January 05, 2007
The Bush administration sought today to distance the United States and President Bush from the handling of Saddam Hussein’s execution, asserting that the growing controversy is a matter for the Iraqi government to investigate.Differently? Something more civilized? Something like this perhaps?
Spokesmen for the White House and the State Dept. each said that American officials would have conducted the execution differently if it had been up to them.White House would have “handled execution differently”
3rd January 07
America pulverised a Baghdad restaurant in a second attempt to kill Saddam Hussein, but intelligence sources suggested yesterday that the Iraqi leader had escaped.
The restaurant in the Mansur district of the capital was destroyed by four 2,000lb smart bombs dropped by a single US aircraft early yesterday.
The attack left a crater 50 yards wide where the restaurant had been. Local people said up to 14 people were believed to have died.Bombings fail to kill Saddam
8th April 2003
Because they’re worth it?
December 28, 2006
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?Seven years of sanctions and one invasion later we get a fine example from Condoleeza Rice—a.k.a. Madame Supertanker—of the U.S. government maintaining its contempt for the victims of its policies, this time by completely ignoring them:
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price … we think the price is worth it.60 Minutes
(5/12/96)
“I don’t think it’s a matter of money,” Rice said. “Along the way there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment, because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor you will have a very different kind of Middle East.”Unfortunately some 650,000 Iraqis, who have paid the ultimate price for Ms Rice’s investment since the 2003 invasion, were unavailable for comment … too busy enjoying the stability of the graveyard, along with the victims of the earlier sanctions regime.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
21st December 06
BBC stricken with Darfuritus
December 10, 2006
Dar–fur–i–tus: The inability to talk coherently about the crimes of officially designated bad guys. Clear symptoms displayed by the BBC:
Since 2003, some 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur. Another 2m have been driven out of their homes.BBC Newsnight
8th December 06
Around 400,000 people have been killed and two million driven from their homes since 2003, when rebel groups began attacking government targets.BBC News Online
9th December 06
Medical experts and epidemiologists have ascertained that the BBC’s claim that 200,000 people have been killed overnight is false, which is fortunate given the huge suffering already endured by the people of Darfur.
The experts also reported that they were currently trying to rouse the BBC from incoherence through the administration of Lancet salts. These are known to rapidly arouse the patients critical faculties, provided the subject of discussion is our crimes and not those of others.
Update - 15/8/07 –The BBC appear to have quietly recovered from their Darfuritis affliction and have now amended their original claim of 400,000 dead in the Darfur conflict to 200,000. This may be related to the fact that Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority has just ruled that an advertisement by the Save Darfur Coalition “simply could not substantiate the figure of 400,000”.
As an op–ed in the New York Times rightly notes, Darfur is “an atrocity that needs no exaggeration”. The same applies to the atrocity in Iraq, though of course the media tend to do the opposite, and downplay the death toll at every opportunity.
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