| <\/p> <\/p> \r\nThe war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single\r\nterrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed\r\nin Afghanistan.<\/p> Instead, one of\r\nthe poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful\r\n- to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious \"military\" targets\r\nand are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries\r\ncarrying refugees.<\/p> Unlike the relentless\r\npictures from New York, we are seeing almost nothing of this. Tony Blair\r\nhas yet to tell us what the violent death of children - seven in one family\r\n- has to do with Osama bin Laden.<\/p> \r\nAnd why are cluster bombs being used? The British public should know about\r\nthese bombs, which the RAF also uses. They spray hundreds of bomblets that\r\nhave only one purpose; to kill and maim people. Those that do not explode\r\nlie on the ground like landmines, waiting for people to step on them.<\/p> \r\nIf ever a weapon was designed specifically for acts of terrorism, this is\r\nit. I have seen the victims of American cluster weapons in other countries,\r\nsuch as the Laotian toddler who picked one up and had her right leg and face\r\nblown off. Be assured this is now happening in Afghanistan, in your name.<\/p> \r\nNone of those directly involved in the September 11 atrocity was Afghani.\r\nMost were Saudis, who apparently did their planning and training in Germany\r\nand the United States.<\/p> The camps\r\nwhich the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were emptied weeks ago. Moreover,\r\nthe Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the\r\n1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained\r\nby the SAS to fight the Russians.<\/p> \r\nThe hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington\r\nsaid nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston,\r\nTexas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.<\/p> \r\nWith secret US government approval, the company offered them a generous cut\r\nof the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans\r\nwanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan.<\/p> \r\nA US diplomat said: \"The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did.\"\r\nHe explained that Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there\r\nwould be huge profits for the West, no democracy and the legal persecution\r\nof women. \"We can live with that,\" he said.<\/p> \r\nAlthough the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration\r\nof George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed\r\nagenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest\r\nsource of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough, according to one estimate,\r\nto meet America's voracious energy needs for a generation. Only if the pipeline\r\nruns through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.<\/p> \r\nSo, not surprisingly, US Secretary of State Colin Powell is now referring\r\nto \"moderate\" Taliban, who will join an American-sponsored \"loose federation\"\r\nto run Afghanistan. The \"war on terrorism\" is a cover for this: a means of\r\nachieving American strategic aims that lie behind the flag-waving facade\r\nof great power.<\/p> The Royal Marines,\r\nwho will do the real dirty work, will be little more than mercenaries for\r\nWashington's imperial ambitions, not to mention the extraordinary pretensions\r\nof Blair himself. Having made Britain a target for terrorism with his bellicose\r\n\"shoulder to shoulder\" with Bush nonsense, he is now prepared to send troops\r\nto a battlefield where the goals are so uncertain that even the Chief of\r\nthe Defence Staff says the conflict \"could last 50 years\".<\/p> \r\nThe irresponsibility of this is breathtaking; the pressure on Pakistan alone\r\ncould ignite an unprecedented crisis across the Indian sub-continent. Having\r\nreported many wars, I am always struck by the absurdity of effete politicians\r\neager to wave farewell to young soldiers, but who themselves would not say\r\nboo to a Taliban goose.<\/p> In the days\r\nof gunboats, our imperial leaders covered their violence in the \"morality\"\r\nof their actions. Blair is no different. Like them, his selective moralising\r\nomits the most basic truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people\r\nin America on September 11, and nothing justifies the killing of innocent\r\npeople anywhere else.<\/p> By killing\r\ninnocents in Afghanistan, Blair and Bush stoop to the level of the criminal\r\noutrage in New York. Once you cluster bomb, \"mistakes\" and \"blunders\" are\r\na pretence. Murder is murder, regardless of whether you crash a plane into\r\na building or order and collude with it from the Oval Office and Downing\r\nStreet.<\/p> <\/p> \n\t\t \n\t\t \n<\/p> <\/p> GRIEF: A father weeps over his dead son after the bombs blunder in Kabul<\/em><\/p> \r\nIf Blair was really opposed to all forms of terrorism, he would get Britain\r\nout of the arms trade. On the day of the twin towers attack, an \"arms fair\",\r\nselling weapons of terror (like cluster bombs and missiles) to assorted tyrants\r\nand human rights abusers, opened in London's Docklands with the full backing\r\nof the Blair government.<\/p> Britain's\r\nbiggest arms customer is the medieval Saudi regime, which beheads heretics\r\nand spawned the religious fanaticism of the Taliban.<\/p> \r\nIf he really wanted to demonstrate \"the moral fibre of Britain\", Blair would\r\ndo everything in his power to lift the threat of violence in those parts\r\nof the world where there is great and justifiable grievance and anger.<\/p> \r\nHe would do more than make gestures; he would demand that Israel ends its\r\nillegal occupation of Palestine and withdraw to its borders prior to the\r\n1967 war, as ordered by the Security Council, of which Britain is a permanent\r\nmember.<\/p> He would call for an end\r\nto the genocidal blockade which the UN - in reality, America and Britain\r\n- has imposed on the suffering people of Iraq for more than a decade, causing\r\nthe deaths of half a million children under the age of five.<\/p> That's more deaths of infants every month than the number killed in the World Trade Center.<\/p> \r\nThere are signs that Washington is about to extend its current \"war\" to Iraq;\r\nyet unknown to most of us, almost every day RAF and American aircraft already\r\nbomb Iraq. There are no headlines. There is nothing on the TV news. This\r\nterror is the longest-running Anglo-American bombing campaign since World\r\nWar Two.<\/p> The Wall Street Journal\r\nreported that the US and Britain faced a \"dilemma\" in Iraq, because \"few\r\ntargets remain\". \"We're down to the last outhouse,\" said a US official. That\r\nwas two years ago, and they're still bombing. The cost to the British taxpayer?\r\n£800 million so far.<\/p> According\r\nto an internal UN report, covering a five-month period, 41 per cent of the\r\ncasualties are civilians. In northern Iraq, I met a woman whose husband and\r\nfour children were among the deaths listed in the report. He was a shepherd,\r\nwho was tending his sheep with his elderly father and his children when two\r\nplanes attacked them, each making a sweep. It was an open valley; there were\r\nno military targets nearby.<\/p> \"I want\r\nto see the pilot who did this,\" said the widow at the graveside of her entire\r\nfamily. For them, there was no service in St Paul's Cathedral with the Queen\r\nin attendance; no rock concert with Paul McCartney.<\/p> \r\nThe tragedy of the Iraqis, and the Palestinians, and the Afghanis is a truth\r\nthat is the very opposite of their caricatures in much of the Western media.<\/p> \r\nFar from being the terrorists of the world, the overwhelming majority of\r\nthe Islamic peoples of the Middle East and south Asia have been its victims\r\n- victims largely of the West's exploitation of precious natural resources\r\nin or near their countries.<\/p> There\r\nis no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would\r\nbe storming the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin\r\nAmerican dictators and torturers, are given refuge than anywhere on earth.<\/p> \r\nThere is, however, a continuing war of the powerful against the powerless,\r\nwith new excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies. Before another child dies\r\nviolently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in\r\nboth the east and the west, it is time for the people of Britain to make\r\ntheir voices heard and to stop this fraudulent war - and to demand the kind\r\nof bold, imaginative non-violent initiatives that require real political\r\ncourage.<\/p> The other day, the parents\r\nof Greg Rodriguez, a young man who died in the World Trade Center, said this:\r\n\"We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the\r\ndirection of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents,\r\nfriends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances\r\nagainst us.<\/p> \"It is not the way to go...not in our son's name.\"<\/p> www.johnpilger.com<\/p> For the latest on the War on Terror click here<\/strong><\/p><\/td><\/tr>\n\t <\/td><\/tr>\n\t<\/table> \n\t\n\t\t| <\/td>\n\t\t |
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