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The Attack On Iraq Has Been Long Planned. There Just Hasn't Been An Excuse For It. Since George H.w. Bush Didn't Unseat Saddam In 1991, There's Been A Longing Among The Extreme Right In The United States To Finish The Job. The War On Terrorism Has Given Them That Opportunity. Even Though The Logic Is Convoluted And Fraudulent, It Appears They Are Going To Go Ahead And Finish The Job.

-John Pilger

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The Attack On Iraq

John Pilger

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The Attack On Iraq Has Been Long Planned. There Just Hasn't Been An Excuse For It. Since George H.w. Bush Didn't Unseat Saddam In 1991, There's Been A Longing Among The Extreme Right In The United States To Finish The Job. The War On Terrorism Has Given Them That Opportunity. Even Though The Logic Is Convoluted And Fraudulent, It Appears They Are Going To Go Ahead And Finish The Job.

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Watch How The Propaganda Unfolds Once The Bombing Is Over And The Americans Are Running Baghdad And Their Spin Machine. There Will Be The Discovery Of Saddam's Secret Arsenal, Probably In The Basement Of One His Palaces.

Israel Is The American Watchdog In The Middle East, And That's Why The Palestinians Remain Victims Of One Of The Longest Military Occupations.

Iraq Has Been Successfully Demonized As If Everybody Who Lives There Is Saddam Hussein. In The Build-up To This Attack On Iraq, Journalists Have Almost Universally Excluded The Prospect Of Civilian Deaths, The Numbers Of People Who Would Die, Because Those People Don't Matter.

It's Quite Clear That Gore Won Most Of The Votes. I Think The Accurate Description For Them Is A Military Plutocracy. Having Lived And Worked In The United States, I Must Add That I Don't Want To Make Too Much Of The Distinction Between The Bush Regime And Its Predecessors. I Don't See A Great Deal Of Difference.

The Attack On Iraq Has Been Long Planned. There Just Hasn't Been An Excuse For It. Since George H.w. Bush Didn't Unseat Saddam In 1991, There's Been A Longing Among The Extreme Right In The United States To Finish The Job. The War On Terrorism Has Given Them That Opportunity. Even Though The Logic Is Convoluted And Fraudulent, It Appears They Are Going To Go Ahead And Finish The Job.

When The Invasion Began, The British Public Was Called Upon To 'support' Troops Sent Illegally And Undemocratically To Kill People With Whom We Had No Quarrel. 'the Ultimate Test Of Our Professionalism' Is How Commander Mckendrick Describes An Unprovoked Attack On A Nation With No Submarines, No Navy And No Air Force, And Now With No Clean Water And No Electricity And, In Many Hospitals, No Anaesthetic With Which To Amputate Small Limbs Shredded By Shrapnel. I Have Seen Elsewhere How This Is Done, With A Gag In The Patient's Mouth.

Bill Clinton Kept Funding Star Wars. He Took The Biggest Military Budget To Congress In History. He Routinely Bombed Iraq, And He Kept The Barbaric Sanctions In Place. He's Really Played His Part. The George W. Bush Gang Has Taken It Just A Little Further.

This Is Total War. We Are Fighting A Variety Of Enemies. There Are Lots Of Them Out There. All This Talk About First We Are Going To Do Afghanistan, Then We Will Do Iraq... This Is Entirely The Wrong Way To Go About It. If We Just Let Our Vision Of The World Go Forth, And We Embrace It Entirely And We Dont Try To Piece Together Clever Diplomacy, But Just Wage A Total War... Our Children Will Sing Great Songs About Us Years From Now.

The U.s. Is A Cosmetic Democracy.

Using The Passive Voice Is Always Very Helpful. Mind You, A Lot Of That Propaganda English Emanates From Here. The British Establishment Has Always Used The Passive Voice. It's Been A Weapon Of Discourse So Those Who Committed Terrible Acts In The Old Empire Could Not Be Identified.

Vietnam Was As Much A Laboratory Experiment As A War.

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The British Labour Party Has Always Had A Very Strong "atlanticist Component," With An Obsequiousness To American Policies, And Blair Represents This Wing. He's Clearly Obsessed With Iraq. He Has To Be Because The Overwhelming Majority Of The People Of Britain Oppose A Military Action.

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We Are Beckoned To See The World Through A One-way Mirror, As If We Are Threatened And Innocent And The Rest Of Humanity Is Threatening, Or Wretched, Or Expendable. Our Memory Is Struggling To Rescue The Truth That Human Rights Were Not Handed Down As Privileges From A Parliament, Or A Boardroom, Or An Institution, But That Peace Is Only Possible With Justice And With Information That Gives Us The Power To Act Justly.

The Major Western Democracies Are Moving Towards Corporatism. Democracy Has Become A Business Plan, With A Bottom Line For Every Human Activity, Every Dream, Every Decency, Every Hope. The Main Parliamentary Parties Are Now Devoted To The Same Economic Policies - Socialism For The Rich, Capitalism For The Poor - And The Same Foreign Policy Of Servility To Endless War. This Is Not Democracy. It Is To Politics What Mcdonalds Is To Food.

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Since September 11, The Mirror Has Reached Back To Its Roots, And Decided, It Seems, To Be Something Of Its Old Self Again. I Received A Call Asking If I Would Write For It Again, Which I've Done. It's A Pleasure To Be Able To Do That. It's Become An Important Antidote To A Media That Is, Most Of It, Supportive Of The Establishment, Some Of It Quite Rabidly Rightwing. The Mirror Is Breaking Ranks, And That's Good News.

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In The Sublime Days Before 11 September 2001, When The Powerful Were Routinely Attacking And Terrorising The Weak, And Those Dying Were Black Or Brown-skinned Non-people Living In Faraway Places Such As Zaire And Guatemala, There Was No Terrorism. When The Weak Attacked The Powerful, Spectacularly On 9/11, There Was Terrorism.

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The People Who Died In The Twin Towers In That Terrible Crime Mattered. The People Who Were Bombed To Death In Dusty Villages In Afghanistan Didn't Matter, Even Though It Now Seems That Their Numbers Were Greater. The People Who Will Die In Iraq Don't Matter.

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Rupert Murdoch Gave Up His Australian Citizenship In Order To Buy Television Stations In The United States, Which Is Symptomatic Of The Way Murdoch Operates. Everything Is For Sale, Including His Birthright. The Mirror Is Not Read By Soccer Hooligans. It's Read By Ordinary People Of This Country. That Comment Is Simply Patronizing. But To Be Criticized By The Moonies And Murdoch In One Breath Is Really Just A Fine Moment For Me.

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I Love Irony In Pictures. There's One Photograph From Vietnam By Philip Jones Griffiths That Shows A Very Large Gi Having His Pocket Picked By A Tiny Vietnamese Woman. It Told The Whole Story Of The Clash Of Two Cultures And How The Invader Could Never Win.

Secretive Power Loathes Journalists Who Do Their Job: Who Push Back Screens, Peer Behind Façades, Lift Rocks. Opprobrium From On High Is Their Badge Of Honour.

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If I Were A Teacher, I Would Recommend That All My Students Very Hurriedly Read Most Of Orwell's Books, Especially 1984 And Animal Farm, Because Then They'd Begin To Understand The World We Live In.

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What Nixon And Kissinger Began, Pol Pot Completed.

I'm Absolutely Convinced Of That. Israel Is The Representative Of The United States In That Part Of The World. Its Policies Are So Integrated With American Policies That They Use The Same Language.

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Private Manning Is The World's Pre-eminent Prisoner Of Conscience, Having Remained True To The Nuremberg Principle That Every Soldier Has The Right To 'a Moral Choice.' His Suffering Mocks The Notion Of The Land Of The Free.

It's Only When Journalists Understand The Role They Play In This Propaganda, It's Only When They Realize They Can't Be Both Independent, Honest Journalists And Agents Of Power, That Things Will Begin To Change.

In These Surreal Days, There Is One Truth. Nothing Justified The Killing Of Innocent People In America Last Week And Nothing Justifies The Killing Of Innocent People Anywhere Else.

I Grew Up In Sydney In A Very Political Household, Where We Were All For The Underdog.

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