Two Plots Remembered
Felicity Arbuthnot

February 22nd., marks two shameful acts. A demolishion and a meeting. They have a commonality. Both were, seemingly, not 'conspiracy theories', but actual conspiraces.

The first was the destruction of the golden Askari Mosque in Samarra, the city that became Mesapotamia's capital in AD 836. When, on 22nd February 2006, explosions destroyed the Shrine, where the two Imams, Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari were entombed under the golden dome, sixty eight metres in circumferance, flanked by two golden minarettes, thirty six metres high (later also destroyed) the United States military, near instantly, declared it a Sunni crime against a Shi'ia Shrine. Before the invasion it would have been unthinkable to divide people into ethnic or religious entitities, Iraqis, were just that. Building divisions ethnically and geographically, was a clear strategy from hour one of the barbarians through Iraq's cultural gate.

That the Mosque had been guarded with reverence in this largely Sunni town for a thousand years, was discounted. As was the fact that the town was reportedly all but sealed off, with every vehicle having to pass through US check points. Neither were investigations made in to numerous eye witness reports that US troops and their collaboration militia had been inside the Shrine all night, surrounding areas sealed. Residents had assumed a dignitary was arriving the next day and that security and preparations were being made for the visit. But the early morning destruction, by reportedly, expertly laid explosives, lit the blue touch paper of ethnic divisions in Iraq and a wider region. Statements followed from Washington that troops could not leave until : ' Iraq was able to stand on its own feet' (as if the US had ever intended to abandon all that oil) and the cynic would say: 'Mission accomplished', a sinister ghoul, crawling from the rubble of a millenium of grace and shimmering, historic beauty.

George W. Bush does not care to much for history, historic beauty or indeed legalities. On the 22nd February 2003, he met with Spain's then Prime Minister Aznar, at his Crawford Ranch in Texas, to practice and bit of arm twisting and ditching of any pretence at adherence to international law. He was determined to invade Iraq. (1)

Bush was clearly a man in a hurry. He was ' ... in favour of getting a second Resolution in the (U.N.) Security Council and would want to do it quickly', aiming at announcing a U.S., draft, just two or three days later, the 24th or 25th of February.

Aznar 'preferred to wait' until the 25th', ' ..after the meeting of the Council of General Affairs of the European Union'. Bush pushed for the previous evening, outlining pretty casually the traps the U.S., had set, seemingly intended for both the United Nations and Iraq's government. The Resolution would be written exluding mention of the 'use of force', but stating that: 'Saddam Hussein has been unable to fulfill his obligations'. Thus a: ' type of Resolution (which) can be voted for by many people.' In the light of this week's backing of Kosova's 'independence' which has nought to do with legality, but, many experts speculate, much to do with the Kosova and Albania's vast natural resources, it is noteworthy that he added: 'It would be something similar to the one passed regarding Kosova' (on 10th June 1999.)

Condoleeza Rice, also present, explained that the Resolution should be 'as simple as possible, without many details regarding (Iraq's) obligations .... we are speaking with Blix (head of the U.N. weapons inspectors) and ... his team to get ideas that can serve to introduce the Resolution'. When Scott Ritter headed the inspection team, his journey back to United Nations Plaza frequently took him via Tel Aviv. With Rice's comment, any shred of belief that the inspection teams were neutral U.N., operators, lies in the dust.

'The moment has come to be rid of him' said Bush of Saddam Hussein, '... In two weeks we will be militarily ready .... We have to take him right now .... We will be in Baghdad by the end of March'. If there was a veto: 'We will go'. He should have added 'anyway and to hell with the the Nuremberg Principles, laws and the United Nations'. So much for Iraq's 'sovereignty and territorial integrity' being guaranteed by the U.N. (The 'territorial integrity' of Serbia which includes Kosova is also guaranteed, under UN Resolution 1244. America's 'new world order' sweeps aside legalities, treaties and conventions, indeed its own Constitution, as casually as it sweeps aside human lives in uncountable numbers. A bloody orgy of greed for the natural resources of other nation states.Grab don't trade was estabished under the Founding Fathers and has long 'progressed' beyond the New World's indigenous displaced, to global dispossession and theft.)

'Saddam's Generals', would be 'treated like war criminals', asserted Bush, casually ditching the Third Geneva Convention. Further: ' We are already planning for a post-Saddam Iraq'.

Aznar commented that : 'It is very important to have a Resolution', but added that the text 'would have, amongst other things (that) Saddam Hussein has lost his opportunity'. Bush enjoined that: 'The Resolution will be custom made in a way that will help you. I don't care too much about the content'. A President breathtaking in disregard for even a nod towards legitimacy, or the potential destruction of a people and an entire sovereign nation. France's considerable concerns were written off as :' The problem (of President) Chirac (thinking) he is Mr Arab ....'

Aznar's worries included : '... combining the Resolution with the Report of the (weapons) Inspectors'. Rice said the Iraqis would state that they were: ' ..fulfilling their obligations. It isn't true and it wont be sufficient ...' Aznar asked for ' ... a little patience'. Bush as ever, was spoiling for an act of enormity, launched and executed to the last drop of the blood, brain matter, limbs, life, of others : 'My patience is exhausted. I don't intend to wait longer than the middle of March.'

Bush though, had clearly learned something from his 'Daddy'. In 1991, Cuba and Yemen voted against attacking Iraq at the U.N. The stranglehold of the U.S., embargo on Cuba, could hardly be tightened, but Yemen was reportedly told by the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., that it was: 'The most expensive vote you have ever made' - and seventy million U.S., dollars worth of aid to the little country, was withdrawn.

The United States' war criminal in waiting, told Aznar : ' Countries like Mexico, Chile, Angola and Cameroon must realise (that) what is at stake is the security of the United States and they should act with some friendship towards us. Lagos (Chilean President Ricardo Lagos) should know that the Free Trade Accord with Chile is awaiting Senate confirmation and a negative attitude could put confirmation in danger. Angola is receiving Millenium Account funds (to help alleviate poverty) and that could be jeopordised also if he's (sic) not supportive. And Putin knows .. his attitude is in putting in danger the relations of Russia with the United States'.

Here, the ever cravenly supplicant Blair was dragged in to the discussion, with Bush, in Hollywood mode, saying, regarding the time scale of attack: ' This is like a game of good cop and bad cop. I don't mind being the bad cop and Blair the good cop.' Saddam Hussein was : ' A crook, a terrorist, a war criminal. Compared with Saddam, Milosovek would be a Mother Theresa. When we go in we are going to discover many more crimes and we will take them to the Court of International Justice.' In the event there was just a wild west style lynching, a US instigated tyrranicide.

Hindsight,of course, knows who are the 'crooks, terrorists and war criminals', who should be in the dock at the Court of International Justice, for crimes including genocide and an act of aggression constituting Nuremberg's 'supreme international crime ...' Saddam Hussein, of course, like Milosovek, knew far too much about American and other Western duplicities, to ever reach a legitimate Court of Law. Iraq's President was murdered at Washington's behest, Milosovek died of a heart attack in his quarters at the Court building in the Hague. On both counts, there are undoubtedly many, high in the corridors of power, on both sides of the Atlantic, who said : 'Phew ...'

Aznar referred to the proposed onslaught as a 'game', but did say a great success would be to enter Baghdad ' ..without firing a single shot'. Planet Crawford surely inhabits another universe. The seemingly delusional Presidential draft dodger agreed that to be the 'perfect solution' - and never having seen a shot fired in anger, or confronted the resultant carnage and body parts from bomb or missile strike, added: ' ... I know what wars are. I know the destruction and death that they bring with them.

I am the one who has to console the mothers and widows of the dead.' (In the event, as Tony Blair, something he has dodged, weaved and dived to avoid, at every turn, failing to attend a single funeral - with even the photographing of returning coffins prohibited.) Deaths of course, were in reality, his lesser worry : 'In addition', Aznar's fantasy scenario : ' would save fifty billion dollars', Bush responded. Five years on, that assessment looks like small change and with the number of US dead nearing four thousand, an average of two families a day he has not 'consoled'.

As the meeting drew to a close, Bush committed to : ' .. locate the history of Iraq in a wider context.' Clearly ' My Pet Goat', was still his bookshelf's only offering, the 'Cat with the Hat', his latest literary foray, not yet discovered.There was one apt prophesy : '..within a few years, history will judge us ..' But judgement has not manifested quite as he envisaged. And Iraq was to be brought : ' The uncontrollable power of freedom'.

Aznar, having pointed out that, in his support, he was departing from two hundred years of Spanish history, sounded a precient, departing, note of caution: ' The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism.' The Spanish have a collective historical memory of bloody adventures in Mohammedan lands.

' I am optimistic because I know I am right', Bush responded : 'I am at peace with myself..' Bush and Blair did not just 'use the same toothpaste' and 'pray together' - to a God which only the psychologically challenged would recognise, who approves torture, slaughter, infanticide and lies of immensity to justify them - they even use each others words. Bush also lauded his 'great relations' with former U.N., Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Perhaps their lack of vocablary was a common bond ( ' I stand by all the misquotes I have made' ) Annan limited to : 'regrettable' and 'concerned', when addressing human tragedies of global enormity.

' The more the Europeans attack me, the stronger I am in America', concluded Bush. Now there's an epitaph for the tomb stone of the man fast-tracking to be America's possibly most unpopular President ever.

(1) The complete transcript of the Bush-Aznar meeting and Gabriel Kolko's searing US foreign policy analysis, courtesy 'Brown Studies', another invaluable, politically fact packed resource from Spokesman, for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation :
http://www.spokesmanbooks.com and http://www.russfound.org

ARE THERE ANY TEARS LEFT?
Felicity Arbuthnot, UN Observer

In the Inquisition-scale horrors inflicted upon Iraq, since a month short of five years ago, the ghosts of the Western-imposed human cull over the previous thirteen years - from life's dawn, to those in its twilight - sometimes, very temporarily, briefly flicker and fade slightly, in the light of another immediate atrocity of enormity. They always return, as they must, in a sight, a scent, a phrase, a 'phone call. Reminders of sins of overwhelming enormity in high places, as Washington and Whitehall bleat about their infantile "war on terror" and 'rogue states".

Terror and rogues are by the Potomac and at the Dispatch Box of the "Mother of Parliaments" - and a telephone call has awoken again, spirits which should forever whisper in the footsteps, scream at the shoulder of these inhumans to their graves and beyond. Most of these mass-murderers-by-proxy, of course, profess their devout "Christianity", a faith their deeds may have sullied for generations to come.

As the Nineties were drawing to a close and Iraqis were already anticipating another massive bombing or invasion, an international symposium was held in Baghdad, on health and the embargo's effects. Whilst eminent international experts presented factual papers, woeful statistics and practical wish lists, inevitably denied by the United Nations Sanctions Committee - which, if implemented, would have slowed or even stemmed some of the tide of human tragedy - it was, as ever, when slipping away, alone, to talk to families, wander streets and hospital wards, that the statistics came to life - or manifested, as always, in preventable deaths.

There were again, the tiny mewings, of small children in intractable pain, denied pain relief - vetoed or delayed by the Sanctions Committee. There was the brief leap of hope, in the eyes of parents vigilling by a child's bed. A foreigner would, perhaps, be able to wreak a miracle and provide what their precious creation needed. The look, as almost always, died. Even with hard currency, stocks, mostly, simply did not exist. It was the terror of women in labour, wondering if they would give birth to baby barely recognisable as human, due to the depleted uranium and other poisonings, polluting the "land between two rivers", since the 1991 bombings and topped up by subsequent, ever ongoing ones. Scanners, ultra-sound, being vetoed, there was no way of knowing the state of the baby for certain, until birth.

It was the stories of parents, selling all they had to provide for their children - and when there was nothing left to sell, whole families committing collective suicide. And the children’s fears of the bombings will travel for ever, with anyone who has witnessed - and which will stay with the child and the child within, throughout their lifetime. Some children, so traumatised, that during bombings, in the absence of tranquilisers, they had to be held, or even tied down, to prevent them from harming themselves, during the grip of their terror.

The journey back to Jordan was another poignant insight. I had planned to travel the 1,200 km journey back to Amman by bus. They were as reasonably serviced as possible, in the circumstances, spares available in Jordan, where local garages turned a sympathetic blind eye to the embargo. Iraq's taxis were run on little more than faith and the love of their owner for his four wheeled bread winner. "M.", however, friend and London based Iraqi businessman, said he had hired a taxi and suggested we share. The drivers needed the money desperately and the Jordan journey fare was a life saver for some months. "It will break down", I said somewhat surlily, thinking of the remote road, with no help in a crisis and the vast excess on the air ticket from Amman to London, should we miss the flight.

Looking at the vehicle's tyres, I knew this was a really bad idea. They were bald, nearly down to the canvas - as most cars in Iraq - and in temperatures over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, disaster seemed inevitable. "M.", was unshakable, the driver was desperate for the money butproud, reliable and he had done the deal and we could not let him down. I gave in. Four hours out of Baghdad, on the empty six lane highway, desert stretching to the horizon both sides, a tyre blew.

We all got out, the driver looking distraught. I, ungraciously, muttered to "M.", "I told you so."

The driver opened the trunk and we peered in. The spare "tyre" was actually through to the canvas. There was no jack. Somehow though, with that Iraqi ingenuity which never ceases to amaze, he changed the wheel with a home-fashioned wrench, raising the car, bit by bit, on bricks balanced under it, one on the other. He adamantly refused help with the lifting. We were his guests. It was incumbent upon him to look after us - and under the dignity, the pride, unmistakably, was the terror that his precious fare might disappear, should another vehicle pass by and we give up, flag it down and take it instead, to the border and on. "M." and I looked at each other. We both knew. We would have stayed with him had we had to walk.

Back in the car, as we limped slowly onwards, we sought to ease his embarrassment - and tangible misery. "M.", talked of the Province we were driving through, the tranquil, Anbar, where, from the main Baghdad-Jordan border highway, the desert seems to stretch until it meets the sky. Anbar is now, of course, "a terrorist stronghold", "restive", hosts "Al Qaeda" and "foreign fighters" - the latter, indeed: in their great, squatted bases, wielding their lethal weapons, missiles and grenades, from before Falluja, to Trebil, on the border.

As "M." and the driver talked, the desert came alive. Both seeped in their country's history, they talked of the region's ancient settlements, long gone, of battles, from the Sumer to the Crusades and onwards. They talked of the ancient trade routes, the silk, gold, spices, on camel trains, which had traversed the desert in time's mist, across Anbar. The customs of the Bedouin, whose great ornate tents could often still be seen in the distance, came to life, their homes, carpets, belongings, disappearing with their flocks, seemingly in moments, to spring up again, on newly fertile land, as if by magic, the carpets rehung again on tent interiors, laid on the ground, recreating the familiar warmth, as if they had never moved. Listening, I wondered if there was even a grain of sand which could not have told a story.

As they talked of their great history (including the British finally slinking from their base in Habbaniya, also in the Province now occupied by the U.S.) the driver straightened again. Mesopotamia's griefs and glories have been its historic destiny, its glittering history. Flat tyres pale. A couple of hours on, we spotted a garage and pulled in. The driver had announced he would buy a spare tyre, clearly a crippling investment. "M.", quietly bought him a whole set, securing his precarious income for probably another year. It was then I asked, as we waited for the changes, to divert from his clearly overcome state, whether he had always been a driver.

No, he had been in a different trade until the 1991 war, when all collapsed and he had walked back from Kuwait to Baghdad, over five hundred kilometres, surviving the carnage of the Basra Road, with the remnants of his unit. It was he, I have written of before, who then said: "We had no tears left."

When we arrived in Amman, after a journey of about seventeen hours, rather then waste his precious fare and tips on a bed, he turned the car and headed back for the border, in the spirit of the indomitable, courageous, toughness, of the ghosts of Anbar and Iraq.

Being made of lesser stuff, I persuaded "M.", to come on a fantasy shopping spree with me to Amman's Gold Quarter, to briefly escape the images before I returned to them to write of them. We gazed in shop after shop, at intricate, impossible beauty, a world away from the pains of Jordan's geographical neighbour.

As we left, an old man, in worn clothes and shoes, approached, holding out a hand. I put mine in my pocket, seeking some change. "M". suddenly extended his. It was an old friend he had momentarily not recognised. His friend had been a senior engineer with Iraqi Airways, seconded to many overseas airlines, his brilliance known throughout the industry. There was no Iraqi Airways now and he had come to Jordan to earn hard currency to send back to support to his wife and children. He was working as an engineer on elevators, on anything, where his skills could be used, but Jordanians too needed work, having taken in Iraqi refugees equalling nearly half their population after the displacement of 1991 and things had become very hard.

We were going for a meal; would he join us? We talked, for a long time, of Iraq's plight and he, finally, hesitantly, spoke of his fear of anything happening him. If it did, what would happen to the wife and children he loved above all? He looked very ill and utterly exhausted but refused to allow hope to be diminished. That was unthinkable.

We left the restaurant as the sun was setting. He thanked us, shook hands and turned to walk up the steep, darkening narrow street, to his lodgings. I had asked if there was anything I could do for him, a clumsy euphemism for the remaining money I had left. He said no, he would be fine; something would turn up. I had promised to telephone his old contacts, at airlines he had worked for, on my return home.

We watched him fading, bent, as the light fell. Suddenly, he turned and walked back to us. He straightened, took my hand, then: "You can do something for me. You can adopt my son." Make him safe, away from the tenuous life of bombs, sanctions; return him some childhood normality. With British Embassies across the Middle East refusing visas to Iraqi passport holders, even for medical treatment to those with potentially life-threatening illnesses, there was no way to give an Iraqi child sanctuary for the embargo's duration. Iraqi children, anyway, belong with Iraqi parents, not subject to situations dictated by the evils of foreign driven illegalities and political pressures.

This seemingly frail, old man, was forty seven; his son, then, eleven. Back home, I called the airlines, as promised, but Iraqis, however respected formerly, were now "non-people". Unemployable.

Two days ago, "M.", telephoned. He had been working in the Gulf and had met up with his friend again, now finally in better financial times and again working for airlines, still mostly separated from but able to provide for his family in the manner he would wish to. Except for his son. In a taxi, in Baghdad, one day, a stolen childhood, rooted in nothing but fear of bombings, actual bombings, uncertainties, deprivation - in spite of his father's immense sacrifice and endeavours - caught up. He collapsed and died, a teenager, just, tentatively, entering the threshold of his aspirations.

"M.", hesitated; then: '"My brother; we were born a year apart. He was my dearest, closest friend. He managed to flee, with his family, to Damascus, after the invasion." Last November, he, too, simply collapsed and died. Another victim, who will not be added to those of the embargo and invasion. How many countless more?

"You know us", said "M.", "We do not cry ...I cried for a week. I do not know if I will ever come to terms with losing him." "M"'s., "baby" sister and her family live in Mosul, now the latest city to be razed, raped, desecrated, homes "cleared", families, children, toddlers, assaulted, shot, rounded up. The portal to the sanctuary of their homes blown, or kicked in, during night's witching hours when door and walls should represent all that is safe, not uninvited thugs, wrecking, unaccountable raiders, defiling even the carpets with their boots. "M.", cannot reach Mosul by telephone or email, communications seemingly cut, reportedly sabotaged. "Perhaps no news is good news ... but if anything happens ...." His voice trailed off.

For Iraqi's - apart from the quisling traitors, laughing all the way to their Geneva, or equivalent, bank accounts - are there any tears left?And could I, somehow, have saved just one child?