IRAQ

Just don't mention the oil. Or ask about the victims. by Robert Fisk (COMPLETE)
29 September 2003 [Premium article - fee required)

"The right thing ... a magnificent job ... heroes ... pride". So off
Tony went again yesterday on Breakfast With Frost, spinning and spinning
about Iraq.

I wonder what he'd think of the city morgue downtown from here when
they bring the gunshot victims in every morning. Or down in the Basra area
where the British rule and where, in the past few weeks, 38 corpses have been
found, hands and feet tied, each neatly executed with a shot through
the back of the neck. Baath party officials, we're told. Killed, quite
possibly, by the Shia Badr Brigade. Yup, things are getting better and
better in "New Iraq".

And as for those weapons of mass destruction?

"We know perfectly well he had these weapons, he had these programmes."
But is there anyone who doesn't see through this obfuscation? For when Tony
says: "We know perfectly well he had those weapons", he is, of course,
referring to the chemical weapons Saddam had more than 10 years ago and
which have not existed for years. The "programmes", which we still
haven't discovered, are what Tony hopes the Iraq Survey Group will come up with
when they admit in a few days' time that there weren't any weapons of
mass destruction.

No mention of course that when Saddam had these terrible things, the
British and American government were happily doing business with
Saddam.
Why not talk about weapons of mass deception?

Then we have my favourite line. "We were getting rid of one of the most
terrible, repressive regimes in the world's history." Well, I've seen
the mass graves and I've met the torture victims and I've been to Halabja
and I was denouncing Saddam's wickedness when the Foreign Office were telling
a former editor of mine that I was being too harsh on Saddam. But as for
one of the most terrible, repressive regimes in the "world's history ..."
Well, we'll just forget the Roman Empire with its system of mass slavery and
crucifixion and we'll pass on Ghengis Khan and all the Goths,
Ostrogoths, Visigoths, the Inquisition, the anti-semitic Tsars, Mussolini's Fascist
Italy, Stalin's Soviet Union and that little man with the moustache who
caused a wee problem between 1939 and 1945.

I'm afraid that even by Saddam's demented values, he doesn't come close
to the latter. But in the wheel of historical fortune in which our Tony
lives, it doesn't matter a damn. Actually, I rather prefer Thomas Friedman's
depiction in The New York Times of Saddam as a cross between Don
Corleone and Donald Duck. But you can't bang your fist on your heart and clang
your armour for such a creature. And how are the victors really faring? Well
in Baghdad today, there are more roads blocked by the occupation
authorities than there were under Saddam. There's a grey concrete wall along the
Tigris river bank three miles in length and 20 feet high to protect the
occupiers and another one of two miles to protect the so-called Interim Council
and there are walls around the Baghdad Hotel where the CIA lads stay and
there are soldiers on Humvees on every road pointing rifles at the Iraqis
they came to liberate and there is a ruthless resistance movement increasing
in size by the day.

The Americans are keen to have some "rules of engagement" for their
occupation soldiers and they've just received them - at Washington's
request - from, wait for it, the Israeli Defence Force. So stand by, I
suppose for yet more shooting at demonstrators and stone throwers and
more brutal night raids with innocents killed. But according to Tony, it was
all a jolly successful war.