digitaldust

I was listening to the Today programme this morning, as I usually do and was feeling morally outraged, as I usually do, by some of the backlash coming from the Hutton report.

One of the “suggestions” seems to be that journalists cannot report news based on the word of one person. They couldn’t just ring David Kelly get his (obviously biased, but then who isn’t) views and report on that.

Now a couple of things occur to me. Firstly, wasn’t that the justification for going to war. The whole 45 minute claim was unproven and came from one dissatisfied member of Sadam Hussein’s military, who was paid for the information. Now if the Intelligence Services were swayed by the government’s desire to justify themselves, who’s to say that some guy in Iraq ain’t swayed by a huge bundle of fivers.

On another point, all news is based on subjective reporting, rumors and hearsay. In fact the biggest and most interesting news and the stuff which sells lots of product is the stuff that is purely based on that: the plethora of Royal Family allegations, the leaked report 2 days ago, the Clinton scandal, any trouble that Blair has been in over the last decade… the list goes on. All some tidbit of information from a single source, maybe the truth comes out eventually by trawling through the evidence, but at the end of the day it usually comes down to nice, biased, subjective, personally interested individuals.

Anyway, here’s an interesting picture to put it all in perspective.

There’s a whole bunch or talk flying around at the moment about Donald Rumsfeld admitting that Saddam might have destroyed his stocks of bacterial and chemical weapons before the war. Hang on a second, that’s exactly what they wanted them to do. Except that the US govt is now trying to back away from that and hide behind the Regime Change defence, that it was a regime change not a war over a clear and immanent threat to use WOMD. The party line was “We’re going to war with Iraq cause they’ve got weapons they can and will use against us.” Now it’s been reduced to “They might have had and might in the future do this.” So what happened to all the evidence that Rumsfeld, Powell and Blair produced to show that they knew where it all was? Was this just lies?

Now I believe that Saddam Hussein should have gone, and that some kind of military action was probably needed to do this, I just believe that it could have been done better and with universal world support. Not personally motivated and run by a coalition of the morally wanting. So should starting a war under false pretences be a war crime?

Guardian Unlimited | Blair faces revolt as US admits doubts.
The BBC view
And a claim by a senior official that the UK weapons dossier was rewritten to make it “sexier.”

BBC NEWS runs a crass flash movie on urban warfare. Jumping on the glitz and glamour of the military masturbation going around.

Like any good porn I’m both turned on and disgusted. CNN.com gets the war pr0n going. Taking their rightful place as George Bush’s Goebbels CNN has some rather tasteless toys to play with so their watchers will know exactly how the coalition intends to “liberate” the Iraqis. 3D aircraft models including firing missiles, dropping bombs and exploding marketplaces. And lots of glossy pictures of missiles, bombs and guns, including some tank money shots. My trousers are getting all hot now.

This Guardian Story sums up, with all the supporting legalities, my feelings on the US’s charges against Iraq.

Now I don’t support the Iraqi’s at all and I do believe that a large part of Saddam Hussein’s regime is guilty of all sorts of crimes against his people. However these examples of US hyper-rhetoric pot-calling-the-kettle-black type talk do no help at all. There ar plenty of other crimes to level at Saddam and his cronies without rolling out some petty ones like this. Like the article says the US are just as guilty of the similar crimes and just have a completely dismissive might is right attitude. Everyone of their reasons for keeping their own illegal detainees is covered by the Geneva convention.

What did they expect when they got into this.

As it’s often said there’s lies, damned lies and statistics. Statistics can be used to say just about anything about anything. It’s not the numbers it’s how you use them. Still I feel that two sets of oppositely biased statistics can tell the truth, a perverse sort of two wrongs making a right.

In the case of the Iraq conflict the “good guys” are not even using statistics to support their case, they’re using pure rhetoric and a few key facts. Like Iraq not having complied with a few UN resolutions and giving numbers of warheads and amounts of nuclear materials Saddam might have. The best statistics come from the dove side, the peaceniks come up with more and better sounding numbers. Of course I take these all with a pinch of salt but the ones I’ve personally researched are right, and many others I’ve heard before.

Anyway, to cut to the point, here’s a list of statistics supporting the side of peace. Or at least supporting the side of reduced US aggression.

A few choice selections from the 50+ stats above.

… US military spending, about $450 billion…

7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according to the UN?
A: 10% (that’s about$40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).

28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998
and September 1999?
A: 20 million

This is a good summary from the economist on the recent Iraqi issues.

Economist.com

I have been poking around on the Israel versus Iraq in the UN resolutions stakes.

Firstly some interesting reading on U.S. Vetoes of UN Resolutions Critical of Israel. The US has vetoed 39 of the 108 resolutions that have been motioned against Israel. It has voted against the rest. I’m not sure how many have been ignored. Quite a few… Then there are the admonishments, like them bombing Iraqi nuclear installations in 1981.
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21st century interdiction, stratofortresses flying in from the other side of the world. Beats a gunboat in the harbour. A technique perfected by the US and coined by their navy and now carried to a whole new height.

Here’s a list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed since the end of World War II, compiled by historian William Blum:

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999

In how many of these instances did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result?

Choose one of the following:
(a) 0
(b) zero
(c) none
(d) not a one
(e) a whole number between -1 and +1

This quiz compliments of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Ben Chitty USN 65-9 VN 66-7 68 NY/VVAW peaceCENTER

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