Voices on Iraq // George Galloway

[ze_dscherman]

The Guardian is continuing its series of interviews on Iraq (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/voices/0,12811,880735,00.html).

In this interview, George Galloway gives a scorching analysis:

You have to adopt a cost-benefit analysis. The one benefit is the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Baghdad, but the costs of that so massively outweigh it that the enterprise must be judged a failure and bankrupt.
The costs can be calibrated in a hundred different ways, starting with the number of Iraqi people who were slaughtered (we don't know how many they were, because nobody was counting and, indeed, the US administration openly boasts that it can't be expected to count the number of Iraqis it killed); the number of maimed and wounded; the millions whose lives have been wrecked, who, even now, a year after the war, have no regular supplies of electricity or water and still lack basic necessities. And the vast majority are unemployed.

Then we begin to tally up secondary costs like the effective break-up of Iraq from what was effectively one country into a series of confessionary cantonments; the balkanisation of Iraq in a way that will be very difficult to put back together again; and the uncorking of the bottle from which the genie of Islamic fundamentalism has sprung. (All of this entirely predictable and entirely predicted by me and many others.)

SNIP

The proliferation of terrorism in Iraq and the world must also be counted as one of the costs of this enterprise. It's abundantly clear now that there was no al-Qaida in Iraq before the war. It's equally clear that there are now many al-Qaida operatives and groups whose suicide bombings have taken such a toll. The destabilising effects on neighbouring countries, principally Saudi Arabia, is another cost. We go on to the damage done to Britain's relations with its partners in the EU, the damage done in the UN. Our name is mud around the world, our citizens endangered, our interests threatened. All of these are on the debit side, and I'm in no doubt whatsoever that it was on balance a very foolish, very dangerous thing to do.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/voices/story/0,12820,1162935,00.html

[Malva Zebrina]

1. no punches pulled--I think Gallway is right on the button on every point

Some other things he says

This notion that sovereignty is being given back to Iraq in June is a hoax. First, this so-called governing council is the not the government of Iraq: it was imposed by the tanks and guns of a foreign invading army which illegally invaded Iraq. Nothing legal can come from something illegal. So the people drawing up the constitution have absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever. Second, they don't plan to give sovereignty back to Iraqis in June, they plan to give some sovereignty back to some hand-picked Iraqis in June, and the Americans will still run the country. The American companies will still be looting Iraq's wealth; the contracts will still be given overwhelmingly to American corporate interests.

<snip>

So the US can't withdraw and their determination not to allow elections - because the result would not be of their liking - makes a mockery of the whole thing. In the end, the state is an armed body of men, but the state in Iraq will have to be guarded for the foreseeable future - like Karzai in Kabul - by the occupying army. And an occupying army that has to guard its puppets 24 hours a day can hardly credibly claim that it has given power away.

<snip.

The Iraqi resistance have a right to defend their country against the occupying invader. They are exercising that right, with a considerable degree of success and I predict that they will continue to do that with ever greater success in the months and years ahead

</snip>

That last is disheartening--what a mess George Bush has made for the world. There is nothing of good in this man. It is hard to imagine that a man with less than average intelligence, has done this in our name. He was not elected and proceeded to strut, ass out, palms backwards over anyone on the globe who gets in his way because he da big mano mano with da big guns.

He is a fascist, indeed and he should be prosecuted, openly and publically shamed and humiliated,found guilty of treason, and thrown out of this country on his ass.