EVIDENCE OF BRITISH TERROISM IN IRAQ

by proplog2 5 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  proplog2

  Our last occupation

  Gas, chemicals, bombs: Britain has used them all before in Iraq

  Jonathan Glancey
  Saturday April 19, 2003
  The Guardian

  No one, least of all the British, should be surprised at the state
  of anarchy in Iraq. We have been here before. We know the
  territory, its long and miasmic history, the all-but-impossible
  diplomatic balance to be struck between the cultures and ambitions
  of Arabs, Kurds, Shia and Sunni, of Assyrians, Turks, Americans,
  French, Russians and of our own desire to keep an economic and
  strategic presence there.
  Laid waste, a chaotic post-invasion Iraq may now well be policed by
  old and new imperial masters promising liberty, democracy and
  unwanted exiled leaders, in return for oil, trade and submission.
  Only the last of these promises is certain. The peoples of Iraq,
  even those who have cheered passing troops, have every reason to
  mistrust foreign invaders. They have been lied to far too often,
  bombed and slaughtered promiscuously.

  The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south,
  bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south. When Iraqi
  tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying dogs of war
  to "police" them. Terror bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers,
  delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were
  all developed during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during

  Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated
  that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000
  Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the
  airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000.

  ...Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting
  they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He
  dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of
  using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a
  lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked
  and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.

  ...Conventional raids, however, proved to be an effective deterrent.
  At the time of the Arab revolt in Palestine in the late 1930s, Air
  Commodore Harris, as he then was, declared that "the only thing the
  Arab understands is the heavy hand, and sooner or later it will
  have to be applied". As in 1921, so in 2003.
• 

  Simon

  The use of gas in Iraq was before the Geneva convention outlawing it's use. After that it was not used.

  It is a shame it was a part of warfare before then but as we know, it was commonly used frmo the first world war on.
• 

  Simon

  Dulce Et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen

  Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
  And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
  Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
  But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
  Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
  Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

  GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
  Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
  But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
  And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
  Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
  As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

  In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
  He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

  If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
  Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
  His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
  Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
  To children ardent for some desperate glory,
  The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
  Pro patria mori.

  ("How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country" - -an old Latin saying very popular on military gravestones)
• 

  Pleasuredome

  ...Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting
  they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He
  dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of
  using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a
  lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked
  and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.

  yes this is our great british hero of all time, winston churchill . as with so many leaders past and present, he's only great if you dont know the truth about him.
• 

  Francois

  Come now, you're being a little unreasonable aren't you?

  I have always objected to the modern idealist sitting primly in his recliner half a century after an event, spring loaded to discharge a heavy load of moral and ethical superiority.

  You cannot fairly judge an event long past by the ethical and moral standards of today. Today's standards were not a part of the thinking in those times gone by. I have argued the American use of atomic weapons upon the Japanese in WWII with "liberals" over here, and it's exactly like talking to a post.

  Men do evil things in war. Among the most savage, evil men in war were the Japanese in WWII. The few thousand Japanese killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mere dots on the horizon compared to the millions the Japanese slaughtered like animals in the Pacific, in the Phillipines and Singapore, Vietnam and Nanking & other places in China.

  But back to Churchill. To my mind, the Man of the Century, regardless of what that wimpy Time Magazine says about it. They're just a bunch of liberals. You don't really think they're going to give a warrior/statesman the Big Prize do you?

  francois
• 

  searchfothetruth

  Men do evil things in war.

  Oh, well that's OK then.