Travesty of the “Rings of Steel”. |
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From the Desk of George Barnard This Is Not A War The event that may soon take place in Iraq will in time be described in many ways, and by many different names. It should, however, not be described as a war. In a real war, two groups, or nations face each other in battle, and the outcome may leave one guessing for a time. In this instance, a number of nations with greatly superior technology are facing an almost defenseless population, with vastly inferior war machinery. History will mark this incident as one of great slaughter of the innocents, and unbelievable cowardice – surely as an indictable crime against humanity – in which government and press whipped up support from the ill-informed masses through lies and more lies, making truth the very first casualty here. Lies And More Lies Bravo Russia. Bravo China, France, and Germany. At least you are not falling for the Washington lies campaign, the Downing Street plagiarism, and the awkward half smiles of the Canberra puppet of the paranoid Bush brigade and obsessive Wolfowitz pre-emptive strike doctrine. Day after day we learn that there is no real reason for an attack, apart from the oil under Iraqi sands, as Cheney earlier indicated. The reasons for the slaughter change from hour to hour. Saddam has some blueprints for something quite ugly, some CD ROMs and some instruction manuals, and a few molds. He may have some anthrax hidden, but he has no spent uranium shells with which to incinerate the occupants of the tanks of the ‘alliance of the willing.’ The theory about him handing WMD to terrorists is just that, a theory. Time and again American and British suppositions are proved to be suppositions, and based on not a single shred of evidence according to Blix. Unwinnable For all -- Iraq, and the US of A, Britain, Oz and Bulgaria -- this ‘war’ is unwinnable. Innocent people will die. Children will die. Iraq will be devastated, but America will not be trusted again for decades to come. The UN may come near to collapse. Israel may well be pushed into a nuclear retaliation. Muslim terrorists will have all the justification for stepping up their attacks, and many other nations will arm themselves to the teeth, thinking, knowing – lets call it pre-empting – that they may be next. For Iraq, at least, it’s unwinnable, and its own soldiers know it, when a few training shots cause a dozen hungry Iraqis to pop up from nowhere to announce themselves to be prisoners of war at Camp Coyote. But the United States will also lose it’s taxpayers dollars, and its reputation. The Greatest Travesty The greatest travesty of this war will likely be at the so-called “rings of steel”. The ordinary populace will be caught between the advancing troops and the Republican Guard. If they fire, they will likely do little damage, but they’ll get powdered off the planet well and proper by the ‘willing’. If they up and leave their foxholes, and try to give themselves up, their own Republican Guard will very likely make them bleed all over the dust. This is a battle of vengeance for 911, which will pale by comparison to this unjustified slaughter, but the real crime will be perpetrated on the innocents who had nothing to do with that disaster, and will be caught in the middle as Stalin once promised his troops, that they would die at the front from German bullets, or from Russian bullets if they retreated. Pray with me for this world to come to its senses, and that this great travesty may be avoided… George Barnard. © 11:11 Progress Group. |