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| What have we done? |
July 2003 to April 2004
July 2003 to October 2003
May 2003 to June 2003
March 2003 to April 2003
30th
April 2003
Message from
Moscow: " We are not with
you and we don't believe you" - Tony Blair's first public
attempt to heal the diplomatic wounds of the Iraq
war suffered a humiliating rebuff yesterday when Vladimir
Putin, the Russian president, refused to lift UN sanctions
and mocked the possibility that weapons of mass destruction
existed in Iraq.
23rd
April 2003
Blix: "Where are the WMDs?" - the weapons
inspector also accused the American government of a dirty
tricks campaign to undermine his work, "I think it has been
one of the disturbing elements that so much of the
intelligence on which the capitals built their case seems to
have been shaky and there are some flagrant cases." He added
that US officials had tried to smear him in the run-up to
the war by leaking false stories that the UN withheld
details of Iraqi weapons. The UN chief weapons inspector,
Hans Blix insisted that, without UN verification, their postwar
inspections lacked credibility. He said it was "conspicuous"
that coalition forces had so far failed to find "anything
relevant" in their search for proscribed weapons.
22nd
April 2003
Blix
attacks US war intelligence - the chief UN weapons
inspector, Hans Blix, has claimed that the US tried to
discredit his team. Mr
Blix also said the US and Britain appeared to have used
"shaky" intelligence, including forged documents, in an
effort to prove Iraq had banned weapons.
22nd
April 2003
Where are the weapons? - Britain went to war in order to enforce UN resolutions that require Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. This was the issue on which UN resolution 1441 was drafted and adopted last year. This was the basis on which Britain tried to get the UN to adopt a second resolution in February and March. This was the basis on which parliament, in its historic March 18 vote this year, authorised military action. And this was also the basis of the attorney general's legal authority to the government to carry out an otherwise dubious invasion.
21st
April 2003
Not
about control of the Middle East? The US is planning a
long-term military presence in
Iraq, in a move which will dramatically extend American
power in the region and spread dismay and fear among its
opponents across the Arab world. The move could further
inflame opposition to the US
presence in Iraq and leave America open to accusations of
reneging on its promise to leave the country "as soon as
possible" after liberation.
21st
April 2003
Not
about oil? It has emerged that the oil ministry was the
only government office in
Baghdad that the US did not bomb and protected from looters
by planting a ring of troops around it on day one of
"liberation".
21st
April 2003
Pressure on Blair
over reliability of weapons reports - the Conservatives said yesterday that
Tony Blair had a moral obligation to investigate whether the
intelligence services had misled the government into
believing Saddam Hussein was harbouring weapons of mass
destruction, (WMD) the stated cause of the war in Iraq.
20th
April 2003
Not
about oil? Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil. Plans
to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq
to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv
and potential future government figures in Baghdad. US
intelligence sources confirmed to The Observer that the
project has been discussed. One former senior CIA official
said: 'It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the
people now driving this administration [of President George
W. Bush] and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel's energy
supply as well as that of the United States.
20th
April 2003
Does
Bush represent the American people? Americans have been
cheated and lied to on
matters of the gravest constitutional importance. Is it
surprising that anti-US war books are flooding the
bestseller lists in the US?
'There is a whole number of Americans who have been
hypnotised, propagandised, and short-changed, who know
something is wrong. Apparently the moment has come for the
awful truth.'
20th
April 2003
No
role for UN in weapons hunt - the United Nations is to be
cut out of any involvement in
the hunt for weapons of mass destruction 'for the
foreseeable future', after Washington made it clear it sees
no role for Hans Blix or the Unmovic inspections team. The
move will be greeted with dismay by Labour MPs who have
demanded 'proof' that the weapons exist. Doug Henderson, the
former Defence Minister, said if there was no discovery of
WMD the war would be deemed illegal. Many backbench MPs
opposed to the conflict believe the UN is the only 'honest
broker' that can be trusted to provide an incontrovertible
answer to whether Iraq had WMD. Downing Street is nailing
its reputation on a discovery, even though officials warn it
may take months or even a year to complete the search.
Ironic that the US/UK would not give the UN weapons
inspectors the few months it requested!
20th
April 2003
Blinded by the myths
of victory - the fight to save Ali Ismail Abbas offers us
the illusion of hope to soothe
our consciences.
19th
April 2003
Prove Iraqi guilt,
MPs tell Blair - Tony Blair is facing the threat of a fresh
rebellion from Labour
backbenchers who are growing increasingly alarmed that the
failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will
confirm that the war was illegal. Backbench Labour MPs who
feel they were duped into backing the war on the basis of
questionable intelligence want the cross-party Commons
intelligence and security committee to carry out an
investigation. David Hinchliffe, chairman of the Commons health committee, said: "For many of us who talked to ministers there was an implication that more was known. Therefore a lot of people are anxious to establish the truth." His remarks were echoed by the former defence minister Doug Henderson, who warned that the war would in retrospect be deemed illegal if no banned weapons were found, because the military action was taken under UN resolutions calling for Iraq to disarm. "If by the turn of the year there is no WMD then the basis on which this was executed was illegal," he said. The doubts about Iraq's WMD programme mean that some Labour MPs will be sceptical even if a 'smoking gun' is uncovered. Mr Hinchliffe said there was a "cynical view" among Labour MPs that the coalition inspectors will doctor the evidence. Britain wants to reassure critics by appointing an international body on the lines of the Northern Ireland disarmament commission to verify any weapons finds. But the former cabinet minister Gavin Strang said the coalition should go all the way by allowing UN inspectors back into Iraq. "I do not understand why
19th
April 2003
Tens
of thousands of angry Iraqi demonstrators protest against the US
whilst countries neighbouring Iraq have called for
the US-led forces that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime to
pull out of the country as soon a possible.
19th
April 2003
President Bush
awards the £400million
contract to restore Iraq's shattered water, electrical and
sewage systems to engineering firm Bechtel. Bechtel's senior
vice-president, Jack Sheehan, was nominated to a Pentagon
board by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Former Secretary
of State George Schultz is a director. Ex-foreign office
minister Tony Lloyd said: "It looks like corporate America
and it looks like corporate greed."
18th
April 2003
Bombs silent, but the
children still suffer - a five-year-old boy blinded when he picked up a
cluster bomb while he played with friends is just the latest
victim as the agony goes on.
17th
April 2003
Abu
Abbas capture was claimed as evidence for Iraqs links with
terrorism, but once agin this is far from the truth. British officials
described him as a reformed individual who had lived quietly
for years. "His capture is not a significant breakthrough on
the terrorist front," one said. The US justice department
has said there are no grounds for extradition since
Washington had dropped a warrant for his arrest. And in
1998, the Israeli supreme court declared Abbas immune from
prosecution, referring to the Oslo peace accords and the
Palestinian-Israeli interim agreement signed three years
earlier by the then Israeli prime minister, Yitshak Rabin,
and Yasser Arafat. It was signed by President Clinton as a
witness.
17th
April 2003
Blair's alliance with
Bush is a damaging strategic error - war has undermined Britain in both
Europe and the developing world.
17th
April 2003
Why
Syria is America's new target - Israel's last strategic
opponent can turn occupied Iraq into a quagmire.
15th
April 2003
Despite promises from the UK that
Syria is not the next target in the campaign against weapons
of mass destruction, it has become clear that preliminary
planning has been taking
place in the US for a war against Syria. What has happened
to the so called "Road Map" and resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The Syrian ambassador to
London angrily rejected suggestions that Damascus had any
weapons of mass destruction or was harbouring members of
Saddam's regime. Mouafak
Nassar told Radio 4's The
World at One: "I will say I am wondering why they are
targeting one Arab country
after the other. They are ignoring totally the country that
has mass destruction weapons - Israel."
14th
April 2003
Despite claims that
the US/UK wish to "look after" the Iraqi people, the UK is
withdrawing desperately needed medical
support. The Red Cross said 33 of the 35 hospitals in
Baghdad were "no longer functioning".
14th
April 2003
Welcome aboard the
Iraqi gravy train - Iraq will be
paying for this war and the rebuilding of the country out of
future oil revenues. And who will be benefiting from all
this? Well the US of course. Many of the companies earmarked
to rebuild Iraq are US-based and have strong links with the
US administration e.g. Dick Cheney, George Schultz and John
Sheehan. What is being planned in Iraq is not reconstruction
but robbery. Some argue that
it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're
right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports
and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq"
will be the most sold country on earth. A people, starved
and sickened by sanctions, then pulverised by war, is going
to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had
been sold out from under them. They will also discover that
their new-found "freedom" - for which so many of their loved
ones perished - comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic
decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were
still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new
leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.
12th
April 2003
War
against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the
first shot was fired, the chief weapons inspector
Hans Blix has claimed. In a
scathing attack he accused the US and UK of planning the war
"well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq
to justify their campaign.
12th
April 2003
With
the US-led war all but over there is still no evidence of
weapons of mass destruction. Daily reports of suspected
finds have all so far turned out to be false alarms. There
is growing concern that the US will fabricate evidence in a
desperate effort to justify
the war on Iraq and there are calls for independent UN
inspectors to monitor any finds of suspected
chemicals.
12th
April 2003
Russian President
Vladimir Putin queries the validity of the coalition's war aim. He said that the
war itself had proved the fallacy of the original case for
invasion - ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
12th
April 2003
Children killed as marines fire on
vehicle.
12th
April 2003
Don't think it's all
over
- while most viewers in America and the UK celebrated the
fall of Baghdad - and of the statues of Saddam
Hussein - in Arab homes it was greeted with
frustration and anger. The Americans and their British
allies have now come face to face with the Iraqi people,
with all their complexities and racial, sectarian and
religious mosaic.
11th
April 2003
Where will this
madness end? The US is threatening to escalate the conflict
by accusing Syria of helping the Iraqi
regime...... Turkey threatens to send troops into
Iraq...... Law and order has broken down in
Baghdad and other Iraqi
cities such as Mosul, with looters ransacking
hospitals....... Anarchy
prevails with the rape and murder of
innocent citizens....United Nations and international aid
officials have criticised US and British troops for failing
to curb the looting in Baghdad and in southern Iraq, saying
it threatened a humanitarian disaster.......
11th
April 2003
Was
this war worth the lives of so many
people? Perhaps we should remember the human cost of war.
11th
April 2003
US-UK forces have
been accused of breaching Geneva
convention by failing to
protect hospitals in Baghdad from looters, the United
Nations has claimed.
11th
April 2003
UK
troops 'break law' by hooding Iraqi
prisoners.
10th
April 2003
Representatives of
editors in 115 countries have written to Donald Rumsfeld to
condemn the "inexcusable" and "reckless" American
attack on a hotel in
Baghdad, which left two journalists dead and several
injured. It is believed that the US could have been in
breach of the Geneva conventions when one of its tanks
opened fire on the Palestine Hotel.
10th
April 2003
The
picture says it all. The US flag goes up in Baghdad.
8th April
2003
A UN executive director accuses the west of double standards. 40 million people Africans are starving, why is the US/UK so preoccupied with Iraq? "How is it we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa we would never accept in any other part of the world? We simply cannot let this stand." "Africa's need for humanitarian aid was greater than Iraq's, yet it was receiving less attention and less money."
8th April
2003
Anger in the Arab world continues to grow, with a sense of humiliation and thoughts of revenge.
8th April
2003
Indiscriminate killing by the US/UK continues with innocent Iraqi civilians being killed, together with several journalists.
7th April
2003
Counting the victims of the Iraq
war - the International
Red Cross estimated that at the height of the bombardment on
Sunday in Baghdad they were receiving injured people at the
rate of 100 an hour. Iraq claims that more than 1,200
civilians have been killed. The American and British forces
pride themselves on hitting military targets and sparing
civilian lives. But the bombs don't always fall where
they're meant to. The Americans say
they killed some 2,000 Iraqi fighters alone during their
incursion into southern Baghdad on Saturday. At least
18 people were killed in
another "friendly fire" incident in northern Iraq.
7th April
2003
Over 5,000 people are believed to have been killed so far in the Iraq war with another 5,000 injured.
7th April
2003
Congo massacre 'leaves 1,000
dead' - United Nations
representatives have been told that nearly 1,000 people were
massacred in Ituri in the north-east of Democratic Republic
of Congo. UN investigators taken to the site at Drodro, near
the Ugandan border, saw mass graves with traces of fresh
blood still visible. According to lists compiled by leaders,
966 people were summarily executed in three hours of killing
on Thursday. A total of 4.7 million people have died as a direct result of the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war in the past four and a half years. Where are the US/UK?
6th April
2003
A fearful war to
remember - we stand on the
brink of a century of violence unless we heed the lessons of
this conflict.
6th April
2003
A morally hollow victory - no amount of
public relations/propaganda will disguise the fact that this
war is an outrage against humanity. The US/UK will
undoubtedly win this unjust war. Iraq is a depleted and weak
country. "Be mindful, as the endgame plays out, of the Home
Secretary's guidelines on war coverage. Some British
journalists, he complains, are reporting the conflict in a
manner that lends 'moral equivalence' to the Iraqi regime
and encourages a 'progressive and liberal public' to believe
this distorted version. Mr Blunkett, who yesterday
embellished his
assertions, is doubly wrong.
There is no bias, nor the slightest hint that Bush, Blair
and Saddam register equally on the weighbridge of tyranny.
On the separate question of whether Iraqi acts of war are on
a par with those of the coalition, the answer is also
simple. Ours are sometimes worse. The spectre of chemical
attack remains, but, amid Iraqi Scuds unfired and
bio-weapons undiscovered, reality trumps fear. The
cluster-bombing of civilians by an invading force
proclaiming its superior power is an outrage against
humanity and the Geneva Convention. "
6th April
2003
In
an astonishing admission the Home Secretary David Blunkett
admitted that there
may not be weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in
Iraq. Blunkett acknowledged that a failure to find proof of
WMD would lead to what he called 'an interesting debate'.
Despite categorical assurances from Prime Minister Tony
Blair and President George Bush in the run-up to the
invasion of Iraq that Saddam had weapons that endangered the
security of the world, Blunkett's extraordinary dismissal of
the need to find them will fuel criticism that the second
Gulf war was about regime change and the Bush
administration's focus on 'unfinished' US business. If
indeed no WMD are found, how do we justify this war? Who do
the US/UK account to? At the very least the admission
certainly deals a serious blow to the moral legitimacy that the US and the
British have been seeking in prosecuting the war. Even if
WMD are eventually found, the UN weapons inspectors should
have been given the time they requested to finish their job.
Whatever the outcome, the US/UN action can not be justified,
the US/UK stepped outside international law and took
unilateral action against Iraq.
5th April
2003
The
war for truth........
4th April
2003
UK
Government tries to suppress media over coverage
of the war. Politicians dislike ceaseless coverage
not because it masks the truth but because it exposes it.
You can no longer dismiss a marketplace bombing causing many
civilian deaths and tell everyone, as Mr Straw did, that it
seems 'increasingly probable' that Iraq did it. Two British
journalists claim to have found fragments of a US missile,
and most people prefer their word to the Minister's. Wartime
PR is a slippery game. It always was.
4th April
2003
Coalition forces are
using controversial cluster bombs in
Iraq, human rights groups condemn their use and the
legacy they leave.
2nd April
2003
Anti-war protesters
boycott US products such as MacDonald's,
Coca-Cola, Pepsi. There is also targeting of firms that
sponsored the election campaign of President Bush.
2nd April
2003
Jordan protests over Iraqi
deaths.
2nd April
2003
Democracy is under
threat in the United
States; anyone who objects to the conflict in Iraq is not
allowed to say so. What has become of American values and
idealism?
1st April
2003
It would appear that the US press is not allowed to report
the reality of war. The veteran news reporter Peter Arnett
was sacked by NBC for reporting that
the US timetable was not going to plan.
1st April
2003
Innocent people continue to be killed as Iraqi civilian
casualties mount, US troops
kill another seven women and children
as they tried to flee Najaf.
30th
March 2003
Has Tony Blair made Britain a pariah state? The Prime
Minister's attachment to the United States, and his own
moral case for war, has damaged Britain's reputation across
the world. The images of protestors burning British flags
across the world last week signalled the start of a new
diplomatic era of isolation and hostility.
29th
March 2003
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world continue to
protest against the war.
There is anger in the Muslim world. We have seen the
first of what is likely to be many suicide bombings.
29th
March 2003
UK
Prime Minister has been humiliated. It is clear that
Mr. Bush has used and manipulated Mr. Blair in order to
justify this unjust war. By opting to join the American hard
Right, Tony Blair has made the gravest mistake of his political
life
29th
March 2003
The
US/UK have misled the world, claiming that the war with Iraq
would be easy. US and UK soldiers have been affected by this
conflict, with many wanting to come home. US and UK military
commanders have admitted their surprise at the level of
opposition and that they had not seen "displays of a welcoming
population".
26th
March 2003
The
war has now started, and we should ask ourselves some
important questions:
- Where is the evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass
destruction?
- The war is not going well, we are witnessing significant
loss of human life on all
sides, including innocent citizens, is this morally
right, why are we there?
- Where is the evidence that Iraqis wish to be liberated, we
have not seen the Iraqi people welcoming the US/UK as we
were promised? If anything we are witnessing strong
resistance and the Iraqi soldiers have not been surrendering
en masse. Is it not clear that the allied forces are not
welcome in Iraq? Iraqis mistrust the intentions of the West,
and a history of failures supports their
attitude.
- There is international outrage to this war on Iraq, is it
not about time that the US/UK listen?
- Thousands of Iraqi children have died because of
malnutrition. Evidence (including that published by the
United Nations Children's Fund) indicates that this is a
result of the 12-year embargo driven by America
and Britain. As of last July, $5.4 billion worth of
humanitarian supplies, approved by the UN and paid for by
the Iraqi government, were blocked by Washington.
Why?
25th
March 2003
The US appears to consider itself above the law. It has
withdrawn from the UN process on the issue of Iraq. The US
has also withdrawn/ignored other international treaties such
as those on the environment and nuclear arms development to
name but a few. The US readily criticises countries for
funding terrorism, whilst it has funded terrorist causes
throughout the world when it has suited their foreign
policy. The US has criticised the manner in which prisoners
of war have been treated in Iraq, but have the US not also
televised Iraqi prisoners, and what about Guantanamo Bay?
23rd
March 2003
Can the Iraqi opposition
unite? Iraq is commonly
described as being composed of three groups - the governing
Sunni Arabs, the majority Shi'a Arabs, and the minority - if
a quarter of the population can be described as such - Sunni
Kurds. This is a gross simplification of a multifarious and
sophisticated reality.
18th March 2003
Blood on their Hands - UK Members of
Parliament voted on the 18th March 2003 on a Motion supporting the use
of force in Iraq. An amendment was put forward that
asked the Government to seek a new United Nation Security
Council Resolution and that the case for war against Iraq
has not yet been established. The list of Members of
Parliament that voted against this amendment and took us to
war is shown on a separate page.
A
full list of voting on this amendment is available.
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