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GLOBAL   RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER No.  5

 THE IRAQ WAR READER

 A History of War Crimes and Genocide

The Unleashing of America’s New Global Militarism

Michel   Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham (Editors)

I-Book   No. 5, May 2012

INTRODUCTION

The adage that “it is the victors who write history”   in matters relating particularly to war and conflict is something of a   euphemism when applied to recent military campaigns conducted by America and   its NATO allies. For what is disputable – no, let us say repugnant – about   the official accounts of these events is not merely a difference in emphasis   or nuance on the matter, which the adage may infer. It is rather that the   victors’ version of history is a wholesale fabrication, an obscene travesty   of actual events. It is not a case of victors writing history, more one of   victors “violating history”.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and what is unfolding   covertly in Syria and Iran stand out as egregious examples of how the   dominant Western powers are not just writing history with a certain   self-reflecting vainglorious bias. They are instead concocting events in such   a way as to completely distort the facts of history. It is fair to say that   in many ways what is taking place is an inversion of realities and language.

“Peace-keeping” really means “war-making”;   “protecting human rights” really means “bombing civilian centers”; “upholding   international law” really means “committing crimes against humanity”.    Accusations of “tyrants”, “miscreants”, “rogues” and “renegades” are hurled   likes bricks in a glasshouse by perpetrators who arrogate the privilege to   call themselves “civilized, democratic, law-abiding governments”. What needs   to be contested, therefore, is not some kind of half-baked history, pitted   here and there with flaws and hubris, but rather what needs to be challenged   is out-and-out willful propaganda purporting as history.

In this new Interactive Book No 5, Iraq: A   History of War Crimes and Genocide, we show how the policy of successive   US governments and their Western allies towards Iraq illustrates this grand   criminal deception; we also show how such unaccounted-for gargantuan crimes   against humanity have not just decimated the social conditions for millions   of Iraqis, but have also poisoned international law and are having   far-reaching impacts on the democratic rights of citizens globally.  We   contend that it is not just imperative to bring Western political and   military leaders to account through legal prosecutions for the purpose of   restitution for the people of Iraq; it is imperative that we do so for the   sake of ending an ongoing global war agenda conducted by these same Western   powers, and for the restitution of democratic rights for all citizens in all   countries.

The devastation of Iraq and the unfettered   aggression by Western capitalist powers towards other countries is very much   an integral part of the unfolding devastation of social conditions in North   America and Europe under the diktat of a class war by a global elite.   Understanding what really happened in Iraq, and why, is a vital part of   understanding how and why the mass of people need to fight for democracy in   the US, Europe and elsewhere. These far-reaching issues including an   examination of the evolving Orwellian Police State apparatus in Western   countries will be the object of a separate forthcoming I-Book.

Concealing Genocide As War

Take the most basic of words used in common parlance   with reference to modern Iraq – the “Iraq War”. The word “war” normally   refers to combat between two comparable adversaries contesting over competing   claims. But in the case of Iraq that country was invaded without provocation   on the basis of knowingly falsified allegations by an overwhelmingly superior   military machine  – a multiple war crime. The “shock and awe” aerial   bombardment that proceeded against a civilian population is another multiple   war crime. The US-led NATO military campaign from 2003 until 2012 in which at   least 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians, men, women and children, were killed   compared with 4,500 US troops cannot be referred to in any meaningful way as   a “war”. To do so is to employ an obscene Orwellian euphemism to describe   what really happened – that is, genocide.

However, search the annals of Western mainstream   media and no such simple truths can be found. Reams of newspaper copy and   video footage refer endlessly to the Iraq War and they reiterate, with   gullible respect, the disingenuous premises pronounced by Western governments   and military, thus giving the whole nefarious enterprise a veneer of   legitimacy and credibility. At the furthest range of criticism in such media,   we might read about how the “Iraq War” was “misplaced”, a “waste” or a   “tragedy”. But we will not read that it was genocide perpetrated by war   criminals in Washington, London or other Western capitals based on conscious   lies and willful fabrications. Truth is censored.

In this new Interactive Book we draw on Global   Research’s extensive archive to give an accurate account of the origins of   the invasion and genocidal occupation. The US-led criminal aggression towards   Iraq involves four US presidents: George Herbert Walker Bush Senior, William   Jefferson Clinton, George W Bush Junior and Barack Hussein Obama over more   than two decades. We examine how a once-staunch Western client state became   an object for obliteration.

The latter phase of American aggression conducted   during more than nine years of US-led NATO occupation involved the most   heinous crimes against humanity in a no-holds-barred effort to crush an   ancient civilization. This Interactive Book looks at the aftermath of such   barbarity and lawlessness, not just for Iraqis and ordinary Americans, but   for the Middle East region and beyond.

Our bias is to expose official Western claims and   accounts of what happened in Iraq, how and why, with uncompromising   criticism. Our bias is to record the experiences and suffering of people in   the real world, not what governments and military officials purport to have   taken place. We are confident that our analysis presents the real story of   Iraq, not only what happened and why, but its far-reaching wider significance   for international relations. Today’s increasingly militarist foreign policy   of the US, its NATO allies and proxy states across the Middle East, Central   Asia and Africa can be traced to the awful precedent that is Iraq.

Australian author and media commentator John Pilger   once noted that journalists could be thought of as being tasked with writing   the “first draft of history”. Their reports and analyses of events will one   day provide research material for historians. This has rather disturbing   implications for future retrospective historical accounts of Iraq. That is   because the prominent newspapers of North America and Europe and other   mainstream media have, by and large, amply recorded verbatim the official   narratives on Iraq that emanate from their governments. In other words, when   future historians of modern Iraq draw on the archives in the likes of The   New York Times, The Financial Times and Le Monde, they will be   drawing on a first draft of history that is falsified, propagandized, and   indeed calumnious.

Fortunately, the burgeoning of independent media   over the past decade has afforded an alternative account of history on Iraq,   versions that arguably accord more accurately with actual events. We at   Global Research proudly present this volume of wide-ranging articles on Iraq   as an antidote of truth to the “victors’ history”.

Structure of this I-Book

The Iraq War Reader is the fifth in a new   series of Interactive   Books from Global Research. In Iraq: A History of   War Crimes and Genocide, we have selected over 60 articles from hundreds   in our 10-year-old archive that cover the background, prosecution and   aftermath of the US-led aggression in Iraq. We have also included a review of   key intelligence and policy documents, estimates of mortality resulting from   the US led occupation (Lancet Report), key videos, photographic evidence and   scientific reports pertaining to war crimes.

The book is structured in Ten Parts, these together   with highlighted chapters include an analysis of the historical background of   the 1991 Gulf War, the atrocities committed during the “sanctions   regime” (1991-2003), the extensive crimes committed against the Iraqi   people during nine years of military occupation. The latter include the   carpet bombing of urban areas, the planned devastation of the Iraqi economy   including the confiscation of the country’s extensive oil reserves, the   programmed demise of State institutions including public health and   education, the targeted and systematic assassination of the country’s   scientists, engineers and intellectuals, the ruin of Iraq’s research and   academic institutions, the pillage and theft of Iraq’s archeological heritage.

The unspoken agenda was to destroy Iraq as a Nation   State, establish a US proxy regime and, quite deliberately, impoverish the   people of Iraq under the banner of “democratization” and   “post-war reconstruction”.

The book also addresses the Pentagon’s propaganda   campaign, its various PR Psy Ops, which portray Iraq, in the eyes of Western   public opinion, as an outright evil “rogue state” supportive of   Osama bin Laden, the bogeyman and alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

Fiction become Truth. “Evil folks are   lurking”. Al   Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden is supported by Iraq’s President Saddam   Hussein. Iraq is portrayed as a “State sponsor of terrorism”.    WMD and Al Qaeda related concepts and images are routinely   funnelled into the Western news chain and on network TV, with a view to   affecting the human mindset of millions of people.

War becomes peace. the threat of   WMD by the avowed enemies of the Western World, repeated ad nauseam, is   intended to create confusion, namely to prevent people from comprehending the   “real outside World” of war, politics and the economic crisis.

This Iraq War Reader also reveals the sinister   machinations of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s inner political circle to   churn out fake yet “reliable” intelligence documents on Iraq’s WMD   program.

These fake intelligence dossiers are then candidly   presented by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council   (February 2003) as a means to acquiring the UN “green light” for an   invasion of Iraq.

Part I  is entitled   Historical Background: Regional Hegemony and The Battle for Oil. As   brought out in Felicity Arbuthnot’s essay, the systematic campaign   of US-NATO aggression towards Iraq involved the participation of no less than   four White House oresidents and five British prime ministers over a 21-year   span. In a wide-ranging historical essay, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya shows how   the conquest of Iraq was a key part of a long-term roadmap for Washington’s   hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East region.

Professor Eric Waddell’s 2002 geopolitical essay   brings to the forefront the “real intent” of the US led war on   Iraq, namely the Battle for Oil.  According to Waddell:   “What is ultimately at stake in Iraq is the intention on the part of the   U.S. and its indefectible British ally to establish control over one of the   world’s largest, cheapest and most easily accessible oil   reserves.”  

© Map by Eric Waddell, The   Battle for Oil, Global Research, 2003.  (click map to enlarge)
The Structure of the US and   Coalition Military Occupation

Part   II: Atrocities   of the Gulf War and the Sanctions Regime (1991-2003) includes two important   essays, Joyce Chediac’s analysis of the Massacre   of Withdrawing Iraqi Soldiers on “The Highway of Death” and   Professor Thomas Nagy’s award winning 2002 investigation on how the US   deliberately destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply. Confirmed by documents of the US   Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), “the U.S. government intentionally   used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country’s water supply after the   Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly   children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway.”

Part III   on The Pretext to Wage War brings forth the issue of the fake   intelligence documents used to justify the invasion, with contributions by   professors Michel Chossudovsky and Glen Rangwala.

Part IV From “Shock and Awe” to Occupation   and  Resistance focusses   on the contours of what author Chris Floyd calls The Anglo-American Dirty   War. 

Part V on the Role of the United Nations includes the contribution of former   Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, focussing on how the United   Nations, in the wake of the invasion, paid lip service to the illegal   occupation of Iraq in blatant violation of the United Nations Charter.

Part VI,   with contributions by Michel   Chossudovsky, Max Fuller and Ghali Hassan, focusses on the heinous   legacy of the clandestine unleashing of sectarian death squads by America and   Britain on the populace, which served to divide and rule and also to justify   the illegal occupation of a sovereign country.

Modelled   on US covert ops in Central America, the Pentagon’s   “Salvador Option for Iraq” was carried out under the helm of the US   Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte (2004-2005), who had served as US   ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s.

This “terrorist model” of mass killings by   US sponsored death squads had been applied in El Salvador, in the heyday of   resistance against the military dictatorship, resulting in an estimated   75,000 deaths. The “Salvador Option in Iraq” consisted in the use of death   squads “to fight against the rebels”, namely the Iraqi resistance.

In 2011, “The Salvador Option: was applied in   Syria. The US Ambassador to Syria (appointed in January 2011), Robert Stephen   Ford was part of Negroponte’s team at the US Embassy in Baghdad (2004-2005).

Civilian   casualties in Iraq were triggered by daily terrorist attacks and suicide   bombings of a sectarian nature. The media in chorus presented  “Al   Qaeda in Iraq” headed by (the late) Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as responsible   for the suicide bombings, without acknowledging that Al Qaeda was a   creation of the US intelligence apparatus. In Iraq, Al Zarqawi was   described as the bogeyman, intent upon “igniting a civil war   between Sunnis and Shiites”. But is that not precisely what US   intelligence was aiming at ( “divide and rule”) as confirmed by   several analysts of the US led war? Pitting one group against the other with   a view to weakening and destroying the resistance movement.

Moreover, the   evidence confirms that US and allied special forces, including British   SAS (disguised as “Arab terrorists”) were directly involved in   the staging of the terror events. (See British “Undercover   Soldiers” Caught driving Booby Trapped Car “They refused to say   what their mission was.” – by Michel Chossudovsky ) 

John   Negroponte, architect of “the Salvador Option in Iraq”, US   Ambassador to Iraq (2004-2005)
US–sponsored   death squads carrying out their brutal work in El Salvador
Al   Zarqawi, alleged Al Qaeda in Iraq Leader, US “intelligence   asset”

Part   VII of the Iraq War Reader   exposes   the complicity of the Western mainstream media in covering up the appalling   onslaught of violence against the Iraqi people, from the initial carpet   bombing of the country through the following nine years of murderous   occupation.

Part   VIII entitled   War Crimes: The Evidence   provides an detailed dossier of evidence and   analysis of crimes against humanity including the testimonies of key   witnesses and victims of US sponsored war crimes.

This body of evidence and opinion, as outlined by   Professor Francis Boyle, Prosecutor in The Kuala War Crimes Tribunal, makes   the case that past and present American and British political leaders are   liable to stand trial for war crimes in Iraq.

From the outset to its ongoing repercussions, this   was a war of aggression comparable to Nuremburg standards. And political and   military chiefs should be held accountable as a matter of legal and moral   principle. The detailed research of Dirk Adriaensens and Bie Kentane of the   BRussells Tribunal, Dahr   Jamail, Abdu Rahman, Professor Alfred McCoy, Tom Burghardt,   the   sworn testimony of Professor Ali Shalal, “The Man Behind the Hood”   tortured at Abu Ghraib prison, provide ample evidence of the extensive war   crimes committed in the name of the “international Community” by   president George W. Bush and his indefectible British cohort, Prime Minister   Anthony Blair.
Theology Professor Ali Shalal,   “The Man behind the Hood”

Finian Cunningham recalls one of many war crimes,   the Haditha massacre in 2005 in which 24 civilians, including women and   children, were slaughtered in cold blood by US troops. Not one of the   soldiers or their commanders involved in this barbaric crime was convicted,   as with countless other such crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Yet in the same   week that the Haditha massacre trial in the US closed without a single   conviction, Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama had only glowing praise for the   heroism of American troops in Iraq in his 2012 State of the Union   address.

The extensive dossier on war crimes in Part VIII   also includes the   results of the Lancet Study on post-invasion mortality, the essay by   Professor Souad N. Al-Azzawi on depleted uranium contamination. Several   important videos in Global Research’s archives can also be consulted   including the controversial Cockpit   Video on the Strafing of Civilians in Fallujah. 

Part IX entitled The   Criminalization of War. Prosecuting the War Criminals includes   essays by Richard Falk, Francis Boyle and Finian   Cunningham as well as video interviews with Dr. Mahathir   Mohamad, Gurdial Ninjar Singh, Denis Halliday and Michel Chossudovsky.

In Part   X entitled The Aftermath: The Destruction of Iraqi Society, Felicity   Arbuthnot, Hugh Gusterson, Jack A. Smith and former UN Assistant Secretary   General Hans von Sponeck provide the reader a harrowing glimpse of the scale   of destruction in Iraq by the US, Britain and other NATO powers.

An ancient civilization with its proud traditions in   education and culture has been bombed and brutalized with irreparable losses.   What we need to understand urgently is that the barbarism inflicted on Iraq   continues to be unleashed by the US-led powers in their ongoing campaign of permanent   war for global dominance. As Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya points out in cogent   analyses: the US has rewritten the constitution   of vanquished nations including Iraq and Afghanistan as part of    Washington’s empire-building project.

Unleashing America’s Global Conquest

Crucial to understanding the full impact of the   US-led war of aggression on Iraq is the concomitant erosion of civil   liberties in America and Europe. The crimes committed in Iraq have ironically   served to amplify the spurious “war on terror”. This has in turn rebounded in   multiple insidious ways to increase state security powers against citizens   and to justify the creation of virtual police states that can spy, detain and   assassinate citizens on the basis of secret executive orders. The war on Iraq   and Afghanistan have led to the massive expansion in state powers for   surveillance against citizens and anti-war protesters in particular, with   far-reaching implications for democracy. Incipient fascism has now become the   de facto form of government in supposed Western democracies.  The   criminalization of resistance in Iraq to illegal occupation goes   hand-in-glove with the criminalization of resistance in the US and Europe to   war-making.

When US President Barack Obama made an   electioneering visit to Afghanistan in May 2012, he declared with typical   purple prose: “This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it   will end… We have travelled through more than a decade under the dark cloud   of war. In the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a   new day on the horizon.”

Obama asserted: “The Iraq War is over… We have a   clear path to fulfill our mission in Afghanistan”. In this way, the US   Commander-in-Chief was stealthily taking credit for ending “a decade of war”   as if he had fulfilled in good order his 2008 presidential campaign promises   to end America’s foreign wars. He went on to mendaciously conflate these   military campaigns as parts of a noble agenda of “War on Terror”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For a start,   the presumptive “peace president” had cynically reneged on pledges to the   war-sickened American electorate to promptly withdraw troops upon his   election. Obama has in office overseen a dramatic escalation in the American   ruling class’s militarism at home and abroad, as well as arrogating executive   powers to spy, detain and assassinate citizens and non-citizens alike solely   on his command and secret information.

The long-delayed dates marking official troop   withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan belie the fact that both countries will   continue to host thousands of American military, Special Forces, secret   service agents and private mercenaries for many years to come.

Merely declaring a “war over” does not mean that it   is over. Iraq is all too painfully a case in point. The bulk of the US   military forces may have departed from Iraq in December 2011, but in terms of   daily violence, deprivation, suffering and trauma, the people of Iraq are   still very much wracked by foreign aggression. After nine years of   occupation, Iraq is not “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” – as Obama   claimed on the eve of troop withdrawal.

Daily bombings and shootings claiming hundreds of   lives every month mark a country that is riven with bitter sectarian   conflicts – conflicts that were cynically inflamed by the NATO occupying   forces as a means of subduing the resistance to an illegal occupation.   Simmering hostilities between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish provinces threaten to   explode into all-out civil war and fragmentation of Iraq.

Infrastructure and basic utilities have been   destroyed by years of NATO aerial bombardment and previous years of crippling   economic sanctions. Millions of families remain homeless and displaced. One   in three Iraqi children have been made orphans. Unemployment, poverty and   malnutrition are rampant.

The same prognosis of violence and misery can be   made for Libya and Afghanistan when US-led NATO forces are due to withdraw   from the latter country in 2014 – bequeathing again a shadow army of   militias, military trainers, contractors and Special Forces amid a country   reduced to rumble.

A Harbinger of Wars of Aggression Without End

What we are witnessing is   not presumed episodic war, with a discrete beginning and end, for some noble   purpose, as claimed. But rather, we are witnessing the violent conquest of   sovereign countries by Washington and its Western allies, the installation of   pliable corrupt regimes that serve Western interests, and the ongoing   low-level military occupation of these countries to ensure subjugated status.   Iraq is a harbinger of the new militarism – wars of aggression without end in   which devastation in targeted countries becomes the status quo. The same   nefarious process can be seen for Afghanistan, Libya and any other country –   currently Syria and Iran – that befalls the imperialist attentions of the   US-led Western powers.

For further details on the Global   War agenda, see: 

This is a thoroughly criminal process involving   international aggression, crimes against humanity, and plunder and theft of   sovereign resources. Iraq’s estimated hydrocarbon reserves of 112-115 billion   barrels of oil – the earth’s second-largest known reserves after Saudi   Arabia’s – were the main prize, incredibly downplayed or overlooked by the   Western mainstream media. Having previously enjoyed a high standard of   living, the majority of Iraq’s people are now struggling in poverty with   power and fuel shortages, while Western oil giants Exxon, Chevron, British   Petroleum and Total are tapping the country’s vast natural wealth, paying off   local elites for the privilege.

The   same agenda of hegemony over energy resources applies to Afghanistan, Libya   and Iran. Syria is not a leading oil producer, but it is a crucial staging   post towards Western regime change in oil-abundant Iran. This dynamic for   rolling conquest will not stop with these countries. Recall that former US   General Wesley Clark disclosed a Pentagon war plan from 2001 that included   the above and additional countries for conquest – Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia.   In effect, this is a global war agenda that the US-led capitalist powers are   inextricably pursuing in line with their deteriorating economic status. The   desperate drive for control by the US and other Western powers over the oil   and gas lifeblood of the waning capitalist world economy will inevitably   bring these powers into confrontation with other countries, Russia and China   in particular. The seeming insanity of this seemingly wanton global   militarism is dictated by the cold logic of capitalism. Understanding this   underlying driving force is key to understanding, and ultimately challenging,   American-led global militarism.

Such   naked imperialism cannot be conducted openly in the eyes of the world; it has   to be covered up with a wall of lies, the particular lie or pretext to be   emphasised at any given time depending on the target country in question.

Iraq   possessed “weapons of mass destruction that could be launched within 45   seconds” we were told by American and British leaders George W Bush and   Anthony Blair, who based their claims on concocted fantasy.

Indicted War Criminals George W.   Bush and Tony Blair

Iraq   was also linked to Al Qaeda, the murky global terror network created by the   CIA and MI6 that allegedly carried out the 9/11 attacks on New York and   Washington. When that lie wore thin, we were then told that Iraqis needed to   be liberated from a Hitler-like dictator Saddam Hussein, who notwithstanding   was formerly a favoured Western client until he blundered over the boundaries   of Western oil geopolitics. Latterly, after these pretexts could no longer be   sustained, Bush’s successor Barack Obama would assure the public that the   American-led occupying forces were “consolidating democracy and sovereignty”   – albeit in a country that was torn apart by US-induced sectarian fratricide   and subordinated to foreign oil companies.

All   these baseless claims, pretexts and allegations have been faithfully parroted   by the mainstream media. And so the Western war and lie machine trundles on,   conjuring new pretexts for smashing its way into the next countries to commit   yet more atrocities and crimes against humanity in its conquest of natural   resources.

The   significance of Iraq is the heinous precedent that it set. Here, Washington   and its Western allies transgressed international law in the most blatant,   criminal manner to commit genocide. Yet not only Western mainstream   journalism, but also academia, the legal profession and other sectors of   civic society gave cover to such crime, or at best failed to hold the   perpetrators to account. And, as criminologists will testify, when a criminal   gets away with crime, then there is nothing to hold him from committing   further crime. The ongoing criminal US-led occupation of Iraq and   Afghanistan, the murderous mass bombing of Libya by NATO, the clandestine   Western-backed terrorism against Syria, America’s drone assassinations in   Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere in Africa, and Washington’s   swivel-eyed threats towards China and Russia are all proof that America’s   global war of aggression has become the perverse new normal. Western   mainstream media has indeed much to answer for in its complicity in global   militarism and concomitant crimes.

The   reality check of how criminally deranged the US-led Western powers have   become is their ongoing aggression towards Iran. Less than a decade after   launching genocide on Iraq based on an outrageous fabrication of weapons of   mass destruction, the same criminal powers are repeating the same calumnies   against Iran with “no options off the table” threats that allude to   pre-emptive nuclear attack. And the Western mainstream media that aided and   abetted the genocide in Iraq are once again giving credence to the calumny   over Iran.

This is   the descent into barbarism that happens when victors violate history and are   not held to account. We are then condemned to repeat history, no matter how   barbaric and crass that repetition is.

This   Interactive Book from Global Research is an attempt to set the historical   record straight with a truthful perspective. By arming people with the truth,   we may then stop the criminal repetition of history because, armed with the   truth, we hope that Western publics in particular will begin to hold their   war-mongering governments to account in the most rigorous way.

Michel   Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham,  May 26, 2012

The Editors are indebted to the   Following Global Research Authors who contributed to the Iraq War Reader:

Dirk Adriaensens, Felicity Arbuthnot, Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi, John M. Blair, Nile Bowie, William Bowles, Prof.   Francis A. Boyle, Tom Burghardt, Dr. Chris Busby, Joyce   Chediac, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Michel Collon, Finian Cunningham, Jason Ditz,   Eric Draitser, Gregory Elich, Prof. Richard Falk, Max Fuller, Hugh   Gusterson, Denis Halliday, Ghali Hassan, Dahr   Jamail,  Bie Kentane, Prof. Alfred W. McCoy, Steven H. Miles, Tun Dr.   Mahathir Mohamad, Prof. Thomas J. Nagy, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Abdu Rahman,   Prof. Glen Rangwala, Prof. Ali Shalal, Jack A. Smith, Hans von Sponeck, Prof.   Gurdial Nijar Singh, Prof. Eric Waddell, Raymond Whitaker,  Kevin Zeese.  Thanks to James Blunt and Billy Pilgrim, Lyrics,   US-UK War Crimes

About the Editors

Michel Chossudovsky   is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the   University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for   Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca    website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New   World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005).   His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The   Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at   universities in Western Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and the   Pacific. He has acted as an adviser to governments of developing countries   and has worked as a consultant for the several international organizations.   Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to   criminalize war and a member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission   (KLWCC). He is also recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for   the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He   is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been   published in more than twenty languages.

Finian Cunningham   is currently Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent. He   has written extensively on international affairs. Previously, he was based in   Bahrain and witnessed the upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011   as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy   protests. He is now based in East Africa. Finian Cunningham’s   forthcoming book is: Bahrain and the “Arab   Spring”.

This I-Book is dedicated to Tun.   Dr. Mahathir Mohamad,  the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia   (1981-2003), who over the last six years has relentlessly and skilfully   steered the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War, leading to a historic   and unanimous “guilty verdict” by The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes   Tribunal (May 2012) against former US president George W. Bush,   vice-president Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and their   key legal advisors. In this historic judgment, George W Bush and associates   “were convicted of war crimes for their authorization of torture, in   direct violation of the Geneva Convention on torture 1949, the Convention   against Torture 1984, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United   Nations Charter, and the US Constitution.”

Editors’ Note:

Due   to formatting issues pertaining to diverse archives extending over ten years,   a number of unresolved glitches have emerged in font size and style   which have affected titles and authors’ names. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 PART I

Historical Background: Regional Hegemony and The Battle   forOil 

Media Lies on Saddam: Test Your Knowledge
-by Michel Collon,   2003-03-01

Glaspie US Embassy Memo Leaked: US Dealings With   Iraq Ahead of 1990 Invasion of Kuwait Detailed
– by Jason Ditz – 2011-01-03

Iraq and the Battle for Oil. A Historical Insight
Excerpt from The   Control of Oil.
– by John M. Blair – 2011-05-17

  PART II  

Atrocities of the Gulf War and the Sanctions Regime   (1991-2003)

Remember the 1991 Gulf War: The Massacre of Withdrawing Iraqi Soldiers   on “The Highway of Death”
– by Joyce Chediac – 2004-07-08

 PART III 

Fake Intelligence, War Propaganda  and The Pretext to   Wage War 

Who is behind the “Terrorist   Network” in Northern Iraq
-by Michel Chossudovsky -2003-02-15
Colin Powell’s Accusations at the United Nations Security Council. Who is   behind
the “Terrorist Network” in Northern Iraq, Baghdad or   Washington?

Ritter dismisses Powell report
Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter dismissed   Secretary of State Colin Powell’s allegation before the U.N. Security Council   that Iraq possesses WMD.. 2003-02-10

Twenty Lies About the War–   by Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker, 2007-03-15

The Downing Street Memo
Secret UK Government Memo Reveals that “the Intelligence and Facts were   Fixed around the Policy”, 2005-05-08

1. How Much Proof Needed Before the Truth Comes Out?
   Now Seven Leaked   British Documents Raise Iraq War Questions
   – by Kevin Zeese – 2005-06-14

   Fabricating Intelligence as a   Justification for War “The Intelligence and Facts were fixed around the   Policy”
   Michel Chossudovsky, 2005-05-01

PART IV 

From “Shock and Awe” to Occupation and    Resistance

The Nightmare:   The Iraq Invasion’s Atrocities, Unearthing the Unthinkable
– by Felicity Arbuthnot – 2010-10-09  

They promised that the invasion of Iraq would be without a   bloodbath…
Fallujah: The Story the Mainstream Media won’t tell   you
– by William Bowles   – 2005-11-08

PART V  

International Law and the Role of the United Nations

NGOs Demand UN Security Council to   Review Violations of International Law in Iraq
Crimes committed by US-UK Forces- 2006-05-22

 PART VI 

US Sponsored Death Squads, Al Qaeda and  the   “War on Terrorism“

Bush appoints a Terrorist as US   Ambassador to Iraq, Who is John Negroponte?
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2004-04-24

For   Iraq, “The Salvador Option” Becomes Reality,
-by Max Fuller- 2005-06-02

1. FLASH   MOVIE: Who is behind the Death Squads in Iraq?
   by Max Fuller
2. Occupation and Sectarianism
   – by Ghali Hassan –   2006-02-23
   The Occupation-orchestrated violence between Iraqis was meant to provide a   pretext for the long-term occupation of Iraq, and direct Iraqis anger away   from the brutality of the Occupation.

 Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Resistance Movement,
– by Michel   Chossudovsky – 2005-09-18
The   media in chorus presents “Al Qaeda in Iraq” headed by Al Zarqawi as   responsible for the recent suicide bombings, without ever mentioning that Al   Qaeda is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus. 

British “Undercover   Soldiers” Caught driving Booby Trapped Car,
“They refused to say what their mission   was.”
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2005-09-20

British Chief Police Investigator   in Basra dies under mysterious circumstances
He was responsible   for the investigation into the two Elite SAS men disguised as Arab   “terrorists”
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2005-10-17

PART VII 

Western Media Complicity in War Crimes

Media Cover-up of US War Crimes in Iraq
– by Michel   Chossudovsky – 2004-11-17

Media Disinformation   and the Nature of the Iraqi Resistance
– by Ghali Hassan –   2005-05-15
Western journalists and pundits are the main agents of this distorted   propaganda. The aims are to portray the Iraqi Resistance as violent   “religious fanatics” isolated from the rest of the population.

Murder of Iraqi Journalists
The betrayal of Iraq ’s media professionals,
-by Dirk Adriaensens – 2007-09-29

Killing the Messenger: The   Silencing of Journalism in Iraq
– by Ghali Hassan –   2006-01-25

Killing the “Unembedded   Truth”
-by Michel   Chossudovsky -2003-04-11
How best to disarm the anti-war movement? Kill the independent media and   convey the illusion that “the War is over”

Toppling a Country: from Statue to Legality
– by Felicity   Arbuthnot – 2010-10-21

Saddam Hussein’s Last Words: “To the Hell that   is Iraq!?”
What the Media has   Deliberately Concealed
– by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2007-01-31
The barbaric lynching of Saddam Hussein was a carefully staged U.S. sponsored   PSYOP, with a view to triggering social divisions and fomenting sectarian   violence.

The Show Trial of the Century
Trial of Saddam   diverts attention from US-UK war crimes
– by Ghali Hassan – 2005-10-20
The Saddam trial is a theatre. It is a Hollywood show to divert attention   from the destruction of Iraq and the massive war crimes committed against the   Iraqi people.

PART VIII 

War Crimes: The Evidence

8.1 Torture and Extrajudicial Killings

The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America’s Road   to Abu Ghraib
– by Alfred W. McCoy – 2004-09-20

Torture and Extrajudicial Killings   in Iraq
– by Max Fuller –   2005-11-24

Denial, Selective Perception and Military   Atrocities.
– by Felicity   Arbuthnot – 2010-09-22

US Complicity and Cover-Up of Iraq   Torture Exposed
– by Tom Burghardt –   2010-10-24

8.2 Strafing, Indiscriminate Killings and Enforced Disappearances

VIDEO:   US Apache Helicopter killing Iraqi civilians

Haditha: Another Small Massacre – No One Guilty
– by Felicity Arbuthnot – 2012-02-04

VIDEO:   British Mercenary Company Kills Iraqi Civilians