Profound research
ZIYA US SALAM
He has never shied away from exposing the war without an end. Dilip Hiro has always given us the other side of the war on terror. His new book, Secrets and Lies: The True Story of the Iraq War does more of the same.
The same exposure of American selectivity in choosing its targets, the same profundity of research marks Dilip Hiro's 26th book. Excerpts from a conversation with the author.
WHY this global conspiracy of silence regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
Actually much is being said about the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in the United States itself. According to a Gallup poll in mid-June, six out of 10 Americans wanted to see some or all US troops withdrawn from Iraq. And, by 4:3, Americans say that the Bush administration made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq.
What is more, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showed that for the first time a plurality of Americans (50-47 per cent) sees the war in Iraq as separate from the war on terrorism, and say that the war in Iraq has made the US less safe from terrorism.
The U.S. has known for long that Iraq was using chemical weapons. Why did it need 15 years to act?
Six weeks after Iraq had used chemical weapons against the Iranians in the 1983 Iran-Iraq War, the then roving U.S. ambassador in the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld, met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. They discussed constructing a pipeline to carry oil from southern Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqba. Saddam continued using chemical weapons against Iran until the end of war in August 1988.
During that time, Washington actually increased its aid to Iraq — financial, military and intelligence — while maintaining the fiction of being "neutral".
Post-9/11 the U.S has successfully morphed Osama and Saddam?
First, Bush's efforts to show that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda's terrorism succeeded only in the U.S. It failed to convince most of the Security Council members and their public at home.
The Anglo-American alliance got only five votes for their resolution sanctioning force against Baghdad. Even Mexico, ruled by a conservative president, Vincent Fox, refused to back Bush.
Secondly, in their impatience to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Bush and his team never paid much attention to the history, culture and ethnic and sectarian composition of Iraq.
Take the case of North Korea. After the U.S. and Russia, it has the best missiles in its arsenal. It is on the U.S. State Department's list of countries that support international terrorism.
It has an appalling human rights record. Yet Bush has not attacked North Korea. Why?
Does the London bombings complete a cycle of terrorist attacks on all the nations and people supporting the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq — Bali, Madrid, and London?
One needs to make a distinction between pre-9/11 and post 9/11. Also between Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US had unanimous support at the U.N. Security Council.
Senior British police officers often warned that an attack in Britain was inevitable. Britain contributed proportionately more to the invasion of Iraq than did the U.S. (a third of the total military force compared to one-tenth of the Pentagon's).
In post-war Iraq, Britain continues to deploy the second-largest force there after the US, with whom it shares the status of being an occupying power.
Equally vital was Britain's contribution in the diplomatic arena. When it came to convincing the world of Saddam Hussein's allegedly malevolent plans, Blair produced a dossier in September 2002 to establish that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction.
How appropriate is it to call the retaliatory action by Al Qaeda as terrorist attack when the Iraq invasion is regarded as just a pre-emptive exercise? Particularly when no WMDs were recovered from Iraq?
According to U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, the Anglo-American war on Iraq was illegal. He said so in his interview with the BBC World Service Radio on September 15, 2004.
It is worth noting that while Bush refers to "thugs and assassins" in Iraq, his military commanders and even Rumsfeld invariably refer to "insurgents and insurgency". In a recent interview Rumsfled said that insurgencies tend to go on for "five, six, 10 or even 12 years".
So, the scene in Iraq has escalated from "retaliatory attacks" to a sustained insurgency against the occupying powers.
By now the failure of the Anglo-American occupiers to find WMDs in Iraq, or find a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida, has been well documented by official bodies in the U.S.
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