Joe Hack

Well at last a British or American politician has been censured over the bloody fiasco of the Iraq war. Wait a minute though. Its George Galloway, the UK Respect party MP who’s been one of the wars greatest critics and a constant thorn in the side of the Blair/Bush adminisrations. Hmmmm. Lets consider this. On the one hand we have Bush and Blair who are jointly responsible for lying to their respective countries, the death of over 600,000 iraqui civilians, turning a further 4.2 million into refugees, de-stabilising the middle east and making the word a far more dangerous place. They have escaped all official censure and in fact Blair has just been rewarded by being given the job of (you have to laugh) peace envoy to the middle east. On the other hand we have George Galloway, the maverick British MP who before the illegal invasion warned very graphically of its likely consequences and since then has led resistance in the UK to Blairs war. How strange. So far Gallloway is the only politician in the UK or the USA to be officially censured for his actions. Not Bush. Not Blair. Not a single one of the craven MPs or congressmen or Senators who looked the other way and supported the lies about WMD . I don’t think many ordinary people in the street are going to understand that. Do you ?

Very briefly indeed, George Galloway was a politician who knew about Iraq and had connections with it. He helped set up the Mariam appeal to help sick Iraqi children and campaigned against the allied sanctions which were killing thousands of them each year. That was essentially humanitarian and would have attracted very little interest had Galloway not committed the unforgivable sin of criticising the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq and then carried on criticizing the ‘war’, providing a focal point for growing public unrest. Over the years since 2003 his anti-war stance has provoked vicious retaliation from the establishment. He has had to contend with what most people suspect have been dirty tricks run by the spooks (the ‘dodgey’ documents miraculously ‘found’ in Bhagdad), libellous comments from pro-war newsmedia (one of which he famously took to court and forced to apologise) and the notorious occassion when he voluntarily appeared before a US Senate committee chaired by the hapless republican senator Norm Coleman where the same tired slanders were repeated . They were expecting a polite ‘British’ politician who would tamely accept the hatchet job they intended delivering. They got a mean Scottish pit-bull instead. On prime-time TV and in front of millions around the world George absolutely wiped the floor with the shell-shocked Norm and his committee. He told them contemptuously to put up or shut up. They shut up. He was also kicked out of Blairs ‘New Labour’ party and immediately founded his own Respect party and beat the official labour candidate hands-down in an election. How George Galloway has survived the last few years is hard to imagine. Every dirty trick and smear that could have been used against him has been. He must be a very tough and determined man. Others have been killed or driven out of their jobs by the same treatment.

The latest episode in this long-running and shameful saga is that this week the obscure UK House of Commons standards committee has officially censured Galloway. In a voluminous report into his behaviour they have pawed over the same old ground again with as little success. They have been forced to accept that he has never personally profited by one penny from any of his activities in relation to Iraq. Reading between the lines, he has receieved a rap over the knuckles for the rumbustious way he has defended himself and fought back against the dirty tricks and slanders. Essentially the censure seems to rest on a technicality. He was criticised for not personally going into the financial background of every donor to the sick-child charity and the provenance of any donation they wished to make. Clearly that is a standard not required of anyone else in the country associated with a charity and one certainly not operated by the Labour government which is currently embroiled in a scandal over selling political honours for cash. If thats really all the establishment can come up with after all these years of trying, after crawling over every aspect of his life and finances, after trying to make his life a living hell, then its really … well its just pretty sad and pathetic, isn’t it ?

In the press this week you will no doubt read the usual hatchet jobs on George Galloway, the smears and the innuendo that have been part of his life for the last few years. But you need some balance. An opposing view. Surely thats what freedom and democracy is really about. None of us has the gift of total knowledge, but as far as any of us can tell and going purely on the evidence George Galloway is an honest man who has been persecuted for his opposition to the Iraq war. George Galloway has not said anything about the war, or about Bush or Blair, that is untrue as far as I know. Bush and Blair, on the other hand, demonstrably misled their countries with false and manipulated evidence with all of the tragic consequences we have seen. If the public had to believe just one of those three, I’m pretty sure I know which one most people in both the UK and the USA would trust. And the surname wouldn’t begin with a B.

-Tags:Blair Bush congress galloway george galloway Iraq Political Rants respect Uncategorized War war on terrorBlair, Bush, congress, galloway, george galloway, Iraq, Political Rants, respect, Uncategorized, War, war on terror

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Some straight talking from a surprising source. Donald Trump lays into the lame-duck Bush administration over the Iraq war and other things. Riveting viewing.

Tags:administration Bush Iraq lame duck Political Rants Trump Waradministration, Bush, Iraq, lame duck, Political Rants, Trump, War

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War is hell, we all know that. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and you can’t fight a war without breaking human beings. For some, though, the occupation of Iraq continues to plumb new depths. Its not just a few ‘rotten apples’ either. Institutionalised murder and brutality towards civilians now seems to be widespread in the American forces of occupation in Iraq and no decent patriotic American can ever condone that. A Marine corporal at Camp Pendleton testified last week at the murder trial of a friend that Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqi civilians after being ordered by officers to “crank up the violence level.”

Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo said Marines in his platoon, including the defendant, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, were angry when officers criticized them as not being as tough as other Marine platoons. “We’re all hard-chargers, we’re not there to mess around, so we took it as an insult,” Lopezromo said.

Within weeks of allegedly being told to ramp up the violence, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman conspired to go out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment. Lopezromo said their target was known to his neighbors as the “prince of jihad” and had been arrested several times, only to be released by the Iraqi legal system. Unable to find their target, the Marines and corpsman randomly dragged another civilian from his house, fatally shot him, and then illegally planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it look like he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony.

Four Marines and the corpsman, initially charged with murder in the April 2006 killing, have pleaded guilty to reduced charges and been given jail sentences ranging from 10 months to eight years. Thomas, 25, from St. Louis, pleaded guilty but withdrew his plea and is the first defendant to go to court-martial. “We were told to crank up the violence level,” said Lopezromo, who testified for the defense. He indicated that during daily patrols the Marines became much rougher with Iraqis. Asked by a juror to explain, he said, “We beat people, sir.” Lopezromo said he believed that officers knew of the beatings and he suggested that the order to ‘get tough’ with ordinary civilians soured him on the Marine Corps.

Shockingly Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong in what Thomas and the others did. “I don’t see it as an execution, sir,” he told the judge. “I see it as killing the enemy.” He added that Marines, in effect, consider all Iraqi men as part of the insurgency. “Because of the way they live, the clans, they’re all in it together,” he said. If that is true, then it is an absolutely damning indictment of the way our army in Iraq operates.

In August, Lopezromo and two other Marines were charged with assaulting an Iraqi two weeks before the killing that led to charges against Thomas and the others. Charges against all three were dropped. Thomas’ attorneys have portrayed him as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from his combat duty in Fallouja in 2004. Also, they have sought to convince the jury that Thomas believed he was following a lawful order to get tougher with suspected insurgents.

Prosecution witnesses testified that Thomas shot the 52-year-old Iraq at point-blank range after he had already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground. Lopezromo said a procedure called “dead-checking” was routine. This seems to mean the execution of wounded and helpless combatants. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him in contravention of all international law to make sure he was dead. He testified. “If somebody is worth shooting once, they’re worth shooting twice”. Marines are apparently taught “dead-checking” in boot camp, the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton, and the pre-deployment training at Twentynine Palms called Mojave Viper, he said. If this is true then it raises serious questions of war crimes and the flouting of international conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners. We reserve judgement but hope the Pentagon will launch an immediate and fully public enquiry into this alleged practice. 

Other Marines testified that Thomas was emotionally shaken by the deaths of Marines during the fighting in Fallouja in late 2004. After the death of Lance Cpl. George Payton, “he broke down and cried, he was angry, the usual effect when you lose a friend,” Staff Sgt. Gage Coduto said. Coduto said many Marines had difficulty adjusting to a change in the of rules of engagement from the Fallouja battle to places such as Hamandiya. “It took a lot of patience for guys to bring it down a notch,” he said.  

The jury comprises three officers and six enlisted personnel, all of whom have served in Iraq. The trial resumes Monday. But its not these misguided men who are on trial. They’re just pawns in the bloody game and its much more serious than that. Its Bushs new and shameful version of the American army that stands accused. Decent soldiers and vets, and there are many, are as utterly disgusted with whats been going on in Iraq as the rest of America is.

Not in our name, Bush. No way !

Tags:allied forces American brutality Bush Camp Pendleton civilians insurgency Iraq Marines Political Rants Uncategorized Warallied forces, American, brutality, Bush, Camp Pendleton, civilians, insurgency, Iraq, Marines, Political Rants, Uncategorized, War

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