When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it. — John Pilger, Squeezed to Death, Guardian, March 4, 2000 As I have told the House on many occasions, said Hain [Foreign Office minister Peter Hain of the Labour Party in UK] on 2 May, we are not conducting a bombing campaign against Iraq . . . The Royal Air Force, together with the US, bombs Iraq almost every day. Since December 1998, the Ministry of Defence has admitted dropping 780 tonnes of bombs on a country with which Britain is not at war. During the same period, the United States has conducted 24,000 combat missions over southern Iraq alone, mostly in populated areas. In one five-month period, 41 per cent of casualties were civilians: farmers, fishermen, shepherds, their children and their sheep - the circumstances of their killing were documented by the United Nations Security Sector. Now consider Hains statement that no bombing campaign exists. In truth, it is the longest such campaign since the Second World War. — John Pilger, Labour (UKs political party in power) claims its actions are lawful while it bombs Iraq, starves its people and sells arms to corrupt states, John Pilger, 7 Aug 2000. As mentioned above, since the US and UK imposed a no-fly zone (not a UN-enforced one), Iraq has been bombed anything from almost daily to every three days. That does not seemed to have stopped, as nearly two years on from the above, John Pilger reports (April 2002) that the [British Royal Air Force] RAF and American aircraft have been bombing Iraq, week after week, for more than two years. As pointed out by Jonathan Power, in a July 6, 2000 article, the Pentagon says more than 280,000 sorties have been flown in the near decade since no-flight zones were imposed on Saddam in the north and south of the country. This goes on without much mention from the wests mainstream media. Until the February 16, 2001 bombings, it was almost hardly mentioned at all. These bombings led President George Bush to admit that this was routine to indicate that bombings occur often. (Although these were one of the rare ones outside the US-UK imposed no-fly zones.) We are engaging — an Orwellian cracker this, from the Pentagon on Friday night — in protective retaliation. And by yesterday morning, a military expert was on our very own BBC — its defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, no less — to announce that Iraq had acquired 30 surface-to-air missiles from Serbia and Ukraine to boost its military might. Really? Is this true? We in the West impose sanctions on Iraq so strict that we prevent the import of lead for schoolchildrens pencils lest it be put to military use; yet we cannot stop the Iraqis lugging anti-aircraft missiles over their border. — Locked in an Orwellian eternal war by Robert Fisk, 2001 bombings. The February 2001 16 bombings included a large sortie of US and UK planes attacking sites near Baghdad. Usually the US and UK bombings in Iraq are within the no-fly zones that they have imposed since the Gulf War ended in 1991. These recent bombings too have been met with criticism and condemnation around the world, which are also illegal. It is the most pitiful excuse for attacking somebodys country that I have heard in my lifetime. If the policy is so good, how come only Britain and the US are doing it? — George Galloway, British-US strikes followed escalation in Iraqi attacks, 19th February, 2001, the Guardian, UK. (Emphasis Added)... globalissues.org/article/107/iraq-was-being-bombed-during-12-years-of-sanctions
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 21:51:23 +0000
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