“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” (Otto von Bismarck Prussian Prime Minister, 1815-1898)
I wonder how many people really believe that the milestone figure of 2000 US soldiers killed is the real truth – I certain do not, and it has nothing to do with my views on the war, but everything to do with the various independent reports and analysis emanating from numerous sources around the world. Recently a friend of mine came back from Baghdad, what he reported was consistent with many others who have come back from the region, about the level of violence, security and the level of attacks on the US forces. Even the most die hard pro-war supporters have trouble believing the reports from the embedded sources, or from those reporting from their Hotels in the ‘comfort zone’ or the so-called Green Zone, named in the fantasy Hollywood style!
The 2000 US soldiers constitutes around 1.0% of the total number of 159,000 US troops present in Iraq. To suffer this level of loss over a period of two years should be almost insignificant, in terms of impacting the military operations. Yet, in the press there is a constant cry about the shortage of troops, and thus National Guardsmen are now being deployed in Iraq. After hurricane Katrina, shortage of National Guardsmen surfaced, as everyone witnessed the lack of manpower in helping the people of New Orleans and Louisiana to cope with the devastating hurricane.
Numerous other sources, have also confirmed as to how the casualty figures are being massaged, for example if a soldier is lifted from the battlefield to say the hospitals in Germany, and then dies there, his death is not added to the total number of dead. Then there are numerous stories of the deaths of soldiers from Latin and Central America, who are serving in the US army in Iraq with the promise of being awarded Green Card after they have completed their mission; they are not added to the total number of US casualties either. In fact many witnesses have said that their bodies were dumped in the river in Baghdad or buried in mass graves.
There is also a glaring discrepancy between the statements of the ordinary US soldiers, and the PR mouthpieces of the Pentagon, conveyed by the likes of Reuters, CNN, FOX-TV and others. A BBC documentary on the Iraq war made by Sean Langham, prior to the revelations of Abu-Ghraib, also indicated this lie about the US casualty figures. He interviewed a senior US soldier in a military hospital in Baghdad, who stated in disbelief and surprise that he could not understand where the media was getting the figures about the US casualty rates, stating that he was seeing far more casualties and deaths than were being reported; and Sean Langham himself witnessed a helicopter landing in the hospital every hour delivering wounded soldiers. That was one hospital, with one account, with one reporter, now multiply that with all of the hospitals handling US casualties, and you begin to see there is serious deception going on here.
Prior to the war you would have to scan the newspapers to see US helicopters or planes crashing. Yet, something like 40-50% of the aircraft and helicopters that have perished in this conflict are now listed as ‘accidents’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is that really true? Let’s face it, the US has the state of the art technology built into these aircraft and helicopters, giving it a lot of inbuilt safety measures, twin engines typically for battlefield redundancy, professionally maintained and the pilots are really well trained. So these accidents in volume, and frequency would again point to more lies, instead of admitting the opponent’s effectiveness, as this might sap morale and appeal for the recruiting effort back home.
Take another final example, it is reported that around 15,000 US troops have been injured, yet I clearly remember a year after combat was initiated around 2004, some of the press in the US were reporting around 30,000 injured. So the actual number of wounded has fallen?
Truth indeed is the first casualty of this war, and part of this is the distortion of the casualty figures. But the truth always surfaces sooner or later. To cover the truth you need to generate heaps of lies, so the spin-doctoring machine churns out: Iraq’s mythical WMDs, 45 minute threat from Iraq, Niger connection, plagiarised dodgy dossier, denial of torture, suppression of war crimes against cities like Fallujah, executions of wounded old men in Mosques, setting up of US sanctioned death squads to remove opponents and of course the disgusting and delinquent US favourite porno-torture.
Recently one of the most disgusting stories [1] that have surfaced is that around 50,000 US army personnel were exchanging pictures of dead Iraqis, in order to gain access to a porn site on the internet. Some of those pictures included pictures of genitals of dead corpses, obviously to cater for the sick perverts that are into things like snuff sex and other bizarre sexual practices that most of is could not even imagine. The soldiers reported that the site help to keep their morale up, which speaks volumes about the morality of the soldiers of democracy and freedom. No wonder they want to shove democracy, liberalism and freedom down our throats or up the rear end if you are in Abu-Ghraib! So, become a devout Muslim earn the label of a ‘terrorists’ but become a sodomite earn the liberal credentials!
Lies about war strategy could be understood, part of which is to conceal your casualty figures in order to keep your moral high and not to give the enemy any encouragement; but the American and the British populations deserve to be told the truth about the reasons behind this war, why Iraq? Is it oil? Is it a war for Israel given that pro-Zionist neo-cons were largely pushing for the war? Is it to deny the US competitors like China, Russia and India a cheap supply of oil?
May be it is a combination of all those facts. But it was certainly not about Iraq threatening the mighty US, with its mythical WMDs. Despite what Blair and Bush says about their reliance upon military intelligence, the whole world including so many internet pundits without the military ‘intelligence’ knew that Iraq was exhausted after the criminal sanctions imposed since 1991, the UN inspectors to which Scott Ritter and now Hans Blix will testify that all the WMD capacity was liquidated after the 1991 Gulf war. Perhaps Bush was ‘informed’ by God assuming he was also sober at the time and Blair may well have made his confession by now as a devout Catholic!
Nor was the war about liberation? If the US were liberators this would be obvious by now; the US soldiers would be walking the streets unarmed, with the fellow Iraqis, living amongst them, like they did in the UK during the Second World War and in other parts of Europe after expelling the Germans. Women in liberated Europe were showering the US soldiers with flowers and not bullets. The recent pictures of the Iraqi Shi’ites pelting British soldiers were another very stark image of this reality of the occupier, not the liberator. Now consider the latest report [2] shows death rate for the US soldiers has accelerated, proving that resistance is becoming more popular, more effective, and the occupiers are seen as the source of instability.
Of course we see those who have never fought in the battlefield and avoided all the war drafts, talk of sacrifices. Where are the sons and daughters of the members of the Senate, Congress and Parliament? Why are they not on the frontline making the same sacrifices that ordinary citizens are making? Those who talk about sacrifices they have made the least and they will profit the most. Blair whose face reminds me of the devil incarnate, as his face deteriorates everyday drenched in the blood of the innocents in Iraq, has secured a lucrative position with the Carlyle group, a background sponsor of the war. This is something I predicted early on, I do not need to elaborate on Bush and his cronies, as they were already known to have links and interests with the companies that profit from war; they profit from the blood of the innocents. Yet they are the ones trying to tell the world how benevolent they are. Consider the following verse from the Quran:
“And when it is said unto them: Do not make mischief in the earth, they say, we are only peacemakers” (Al-Koran 2:11)
Now count the number of times they scream “peace” whilst dropping bombs on you.
Yamin Zakaria (www.iiop.org)
London, UK
Copyright © 2005 by Yamin Zakaria (28th October, 2005)
[1] http://www.iiop.org/index3.php?recordID=99
[2] http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051026/ts_latimes/adeadlysurge
