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Current News & Views
The figures [Iraqi
dead] have now been vindicated by the
government's [UK] own advisers. It is time we held our
leaders to account for the 650,000 Iraqi dead.
By Richard Horton
The Guardian, UK - Comment
March 27, 2007 1:58 PM
Our collective failure
has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week, the BBC
reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that
the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq
civilian mortality was accurate and reliable. This paper was published in
the Lancet last October. It estimated
that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American- and British-led
invasion in March 2003.
Immediately after
publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that The Lancet's
study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The
foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were
"extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said:
"I don't consider it a credible report".
Scientists at the UK's
Department for International Development thought differently. They
concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the
Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of
mortality".
The Ministry of
Defence's chief scientific advisor said the research was
"robust", close to "best practice", and
"balanced". He recommended "caution in publicly
criticising the study".
When these
recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified.
One person briefing Tony Blair wrote: "are we really sure that the
report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief
implies?" A Foreign Office official was forced to conclude that the
government "should not be rubbishing The Lancet".
The prime minister's
adviser finally gave in. He wrote: "the survey methodology used
here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring
mortality in conflict zones".
How would the
government respond?
Would it welcome the
Hopkins study as an important contribution to understanding the military threat
to Iraqi civilians? Would it ask for urgent independent verification? Would
it invite the Iraqi government to upgrade civilian security?
Of course, our
government did none of these things. Tony Blair was advised to say: "the
overriding message is that there are no accurate or reliable figures of
deaths in Iraq".
His official spokesman
went further and rejected the Hopkins report entirely. It was a shameful
and cowardly dissembling by a Labour - yes, by a Labour - prime minister.
Indeed, it was even
contrary to the Americans' own Iraq Study Group report, which concluded
last year that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in
Iraq".
This Labour government,
which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair, is party to a
war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents
any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own
indifference.
At a time when we are
celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are
continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights
of the past half-century. It is inexplicable how we allowed this to happen.
It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this government's mass
resignation.
Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned
as the moment when Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution
and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a
tactic of foreign policy. Some anniversary that will be.
·
Bloody Thursday: 199
Iraqis Killed; 293 Wounded
·
IS GEORGE BUSH
DELUSIONAL? We're Not Really Occupying Iraq, White House Insists
·
Heck Of A Job, Uncle Sam -Four Years of Remarkable
American Achievements in Iraq: by Gilles d'Aymery – Swans Commentary, March
26, 2007, Swans.com
Iran surrounded, who wouldn’t be nervous.
·
Is UK-Iran marine incident part of larger war provocation
plan? by Larry Chin, March 30, 2007, Online Journal
·
SORROWS
OF EMPIRE: Britain Runs Into UN Headwinds Over Iran's Capture of Crew
·
Iran
Levels New Charges on Seized Brits
·
Both
Sides Must Stop This Mad Confrontation, Now - No agreed maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran: by Craig Murray (Former UK Ambassador to
the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan), March 30, 2007, Global Research
·
SPEAKING TRUTH
TO POWER: Gates Says Guantánamo Trials ‘Tainted’, Lack
International Credibility
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'We
Were Torturing People for No Reason’ by Tara McKelvey, International
Herald Tribune (IHT)
·
GLOBAL
DOMINATION BUDGET: DoD Expenditures Could
Exceed $700 Billion : March 29, 2007,Voice
of America
·
New
US counterintelligence strategy to involve public and private sectors March 29, 2007, Pravda-Russia
·
To Russia with Realism - The White House
senselessly risks a new Cold War: by Anatol Lieven, March 26, 2007 Issue, The
American Conservative Magazine
·
Kosovo:
The shocking hand of UN imperialism: March 28, 2007, Pravda-Russia
·
WASHINGTON'S Ethiopian
Proxy Forces Suffer Losses: Helicopter shot down as Mogadishu battle rages
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