We found pleasure marriage widely available. ibid.
The [Iraq] war may be officially over but the violence rages on. The 2000s: The Platinum Age of Television IV, television news, Sky 2008
At least Saddam Hussein fed us. ibid. Iraqi interviewed ABC news
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.’ ibid. Paul Bremer
Before the operation, the city was [Fallujah] bombed to ‘encourage’ its evacuation, and shortly thereafter sealed off – any male of fighting age (ten years old and upwards by present occupation standards) was prevented from leaving. During that operation, white phosphorus was used against civilians since, as one US soldier explained, anything that walked or breathed was considered an enemy combatant. It is reasonable to suppose that some of the melted bodies discovered had suffered agonizing deaths as the material sizzled their flesh to the bone. Others may have been more lucky – if they inhaled the substance, it will have blistered their mouths, throats, and lungs, suffocating them to death before they had to suffer the pain of flesh melting away both inside and outside. It is indeed hard to overstate what was pitilessly inflicted on Fallujah: a hospital deliberately bombed; another occupied; more than half of the houses damaged or destroyed; 150,000 people obliged to flee to live in rough tents on the outskirts of the city as they were bombed and their water and electricity cut off; those returning to the devastated city were to be subjected to forced labor. While the US military only admitted to having killed 1,200 insurgents, initial civilian tolls were as high as 800. Lately, Iraqi NGOs and medical workers have estimated as many as 6,000 deaths, mostly civilians. Richard Seymour, article 26th November 2005, ‘The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens’
He [Brown] sat in the sofa-cabinet with his predecessor as genocidal wars in Afghanistan and then on Iraq were unleashed. Like Blair and the others in that Downing Street lounge, he is a psychopath too. Not one of his successive pretexts for laying upon Iraq like wolves could justify the killing that would maim even one family. David Halpin, Alternative View II conference lecture 31st May 2009, ‘The Vortex Sucks Ever Louder’
The glorious RAF bombed two hospitals in Basra in 1991. ibid.
In the run up to the Iraq war we were fed Perle, Wolfowitz, Edelman, endlessly on Newsnight. And anyone like myself who spoke against the Iraq war was only given 2% of broadcasting time on the BBC. ibid.
This was December the 9th in Canada ... And you see behind Blair – Faith – the Blair Faith Foundation ... This is the face of a hypocrite ... He’s a psychopath, like so many of his ilk. Because he’s grinning like a Cheshire cat, and yet he has helped to put to death one point two million people in Iraq. He’s done nothing at all to stop the killing in Palestine, and he’s maimed at least two million people in Iraq, again about a third will be children, and four million displaced ... The look of confidence and happiness on his face. David Halpin, Make War History; viz Blair War Crimes Foundation
Ten years ago 10,000 troops invaded Iraq. In the war of occupation that followed, 179 British troops lost their lives. Now the father of one of them is heading to Iraq to discover whether his son’s sacrifice was worthwhile. This World: Iraq: Did My Son Die in Vain? BBC 2013
Across Iraq 2,000 doctors and 800 academics and students were murdered. Many more fled Iraq fearing for their lives. ibid.
The British effectively pulled out from the centre of Basra City. ibid.
Terrorist attacks still kill thousands of people every year. ibid.
One in five Iraqis still don’t have access to safe drinking water. ibid.
It is a mass ritual sacrifice. David Icke
Saddam Hussein wasn’t a threat but that he provided a convenient pretext to get the oil in Iraq ... It was also about setting the precedent for the New World Order to invade sovereign nations. Alex Jones, Police State III: Total Enslavement
Obama pledged in hundreds of speeches and interviews that within six months of being elected he was going to bring our troops home from Iraq. But after he was inaugurated the story changed. Now he said that they would look at bringing some of the troops home in sixteen months. Alex Jones, The Obama Deception
The true objective was to ensure that the nation remained in turmoil as a pretext to build permanent military bases as well as delivering long-term profits to defense contractors ... United States, British and Israeli forces have all been caught repeatedly carrying out staged terror attacks in Iraq. Alex Jones, 7/7 London Bombings – Government Involvement
There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was. I will begin to remove our troops immediately. Barack Obama
On arrival in Baghdad [Paul] Bremer set up office in the vast marble hall of Saddam’s grandest palace. Well there’s no accounting for taste, and as it happened there was no taste for accounting. By the time Bremer left Iraq thirteen months later, so had any chance of keeping track of the Iraqi’s twenty billion dollars. Under American management, the development fund for Iraq became the biggest cash-point machine in history. Three hundred and sixty-three tons of hundred dollar bills were shipped to Baghdad on American C-130 aircraft. It didn’t stay there for long. Rory Bremner, Between Iraq and a Hard Place
In one region of Iraq documentation wasn’t available for two-thirds of the sample of three-hundred contracts. ibid.
There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, a thug, a butcher, it’s true. It was as true in 2003 as it was in 1983/84 when Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and met with Saddam Hussein and other top officials as an emissary of the Reagan administration to improve ties to Iraq ... The United States has consistently supported Saddam Hussein throughout the worst of his crimes when his policy was consistent with US interests in the area. The minute that those interests changed then Saddam Hussein became the center of evil in the world. This is the way propaganda is used. To motivate a public to support at war that is not about liberating anyone, but about extending and deepening American control. Professor Robert Jensen
The problem for the Bush administration is that plans had already existed for regime change in Iraq had to be justified. They couldn’t just go in without public support. The public support was created by connecting Saddam Hussein to those fears of terrorism. Professor Robert Jensen
Victory in Iraq is finally in sight. Sarah Palin
33,098. The real Saddam died because he had cancer of the lymph nodes, and since his death in 1999 they’re just showing his doubles. Dr Moslem al-Asadi, cited Corriere della Sera
Almost three years ago the British and American coalition which had overthrown Saddam Hussein was given a very special responsibility by the United Nations. It was given trusteeship of more than twenty billion dollars which belonged to the people of Iraq. Over the next fourteen months it spent almost all of it. Yet no-one can account for where it all went. Literally billions of dollars have gone missing. Dispatches: Iraq’s Missing Billions, Channel 4 2006
Bags of cash were handed out daily. Security was incredibly lax. From one vault three quarters of a million dollars was stolen. Another safe was left open. ibid.
Despite the evidence, the US government has taken no legal action to recover the money. ibid.
Above all we’re in denial about the fact that the invasion of Iraq as conceived by President Bush and Tony Blair has failed. Peter Oborne, Dispatches: Iraq: The Reckoning, Channel 4 2009
Tony Blair did not just dismiss academic experts. Astonishingly, he even ignored the concerns of his own policy advisers. ibid.
George Bush and Tony Blair are just deluding themselves if they really think Iraq is on course to become a unified liberal democracy. ibid.
The idea that a post-Saddam Iraq could become a beacon of freedom and democracy in the middle east is pure fantasy. ibid.
Iraq and Iran were deadly enemies: George W Bush’s immortal achievement is to turn them into bosom pals. ibid.
The war is both just and necessary. Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens v Galloway, debate Baruch College New York September 2005
I say that Mr Galloway discussed the allocation of oil for food profits that stole directly from the Iraqi people and that helped to corrupt the scheme and programme of the United Nations; I say he discussed that personally with Mr Tariq Aziz in Baghdad at least once. ibid.
Try to imagine what thirty years of that humiliation is like … The utter atomisation and destruction of a society … A traumatised and maimed society. Christopher Hitchens vs Andrew Arato, debate 2008
George Galloway – someone who’s managed to be both a pimp for and a prostitute of Saddam Hussein in the same cycle. Christopher Hitchens