How dare George Bush preach peace to Israel when he’s meeting Blair to plan war on Iraq .. and the deaths of thousands more innocent people? : John Pilger :05 Apr 2002
PRESIDENT George W Bush yesterday called on Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian cities occupied by its forces during the last week.
He excused Israel’s violence, but lectured the Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East on the need for restraint and a lasting peace. “The storms of violence cannot go on,” said Bush. “Enough is enough.”
What he neglected to say was that he needs a lull in the present crisis to lay his own war plans; that while he talks of peace in the Middle East, he is secretly planning a massive attack on Iraq.
This historic display of hypocrisy by Bush will be on show at his ranch in Texas today, with Tony Blair, his collaborator, in admiring attendance.
Yes, enough is enough. It is time Tony Blair came clean with the British people on his part in the coming violence against a nation of innocent people.
AS THE crisis in Israeli-occupied Palestine deepens, Tony Blair will meet George W Bush today to plan an attack on another country, Iraq.
Their decision may condemn to death more than 10,000 civilians. That is the “medium case scenario” drawn up by the Pentagon. If the Americans implement their current strategy of “total war” and target Iraq’s electricity and water, the consequences will be even more horrific.
There is no mandate in any United Nations resolution for this invasion. It will be as lawless as Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, which triggered the Second World War. Indeed, it may well trigger a Third World War, drawing in nations of the region and beyond.
As Blair arrives at Bush’s Texas ranch the question begs: Why does he condemn Iraq, but is silent on Israel’s current bloody and illegal rampage through Palestine? Why has he not demanded that the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon comply with UN Security Council resolutions, to which Britain is a signatory, and withdraw from the Occupied Territories? Why has Blair said nothing as Sharon has sent tanks and gunships and snipers against civilians – a government targeting innocent people, like the deaf old lady shot by an Israeli sniper as she tried to get to hospital? Why has Blair not called at least for military sanctions against Israel, which has 200 nuclear weapons targeted at Arab capitals?
Blair’s culpable silence is imposed by the most dangerous American administration for a generation. The Bush administration is determined to attack Iraq and take over a country that is the world’s second largest source of oil. The aim is to get rid of America’s and Britain’s old friend, Saddam Hussein, whom they no longer control, and to install another compliant thug in Baghdad.
THAT is why Bush now tells Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian cities it recently occupied while continuing to replenish the Israeli war machine. The Americans want a rampant Israel guarding their flank as they attack Iraq and expand their control across the Middle East, whose oil is now more critical than ever to US military and economic dominance.
For almost two months, Downing Street, through the discredited system of unattributable briefings that are secret to the public, have spun two deceptions. The first is that the Prime Minister will play a vital role at today’s meeting with Bush on his Texas ranch in “counselling caution.” The second is that Blair has a “dossier of detailed evidence” that “proves” that Saddam Hussein has “a nuclear capability” and is “investigating a way to launch unsophisticated nuclear bombs” and is also building chemical and biological weapons.
The fiction of Blair as a steadying hand on his Texas buddy is to be read in Blair’s unrelenting bellicose statements, and his attempts, against the wishes of his senior military advisers, to send thousands of British troops into the quagmire of Afghanistan, where his “cautionary influence” on Bush saw as many as 5,000 civilians bombed to death while the Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders got away.
While remaining silent on Israel, Blair is alone in Europe in his promotion of an attack on Iraq, a nation of 22 million people with whom the British have no quarrel. Mysteriously, the “dossier of proof” of the dangers posed by the Iraqi regime has now been “shelved.” This is because no such proof exists and because, suddenly, more than 130 Labour Members of Parliament are in revolt, including Cabinet and former Cabinet members. It must be dawning on many of them that so much of this government’s “spin” during the “war on terrorism” has been a farrago of lies and half-truths provided by an American intelligence apparatus seeking to cover its failure to provide warning of the attacks of September 11.
TBC
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