A Dream of How to Make Britain Great Again in the Clash of Civilisations

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Tony Blair’s Mansion House Speech:
A Dream of How to Make Britain Great Again in the Clash of Civilisations

Role Played by Monopoly Media to Disinform:
Legitimising Mass Slaughter In Fallujah

Fallujah, The US Elections and 9/11: A Matter of Normalising the Unthinkable

Court Martial Confirms Britain Given Advance Warning of Iraq Invasion

The Prime Minister used the occasion of his annual Mansion House speech on foreign affairs on Monday to call on Europe and the US to work together in pursuit of what he referred to as shared values. However Blair’s speech only served to highlight the contention that exists between the EU and the US and the increasingly defensive posture that the Prime Minister is forced to adopt in regard to Britain’s foreign policy in general, and the government’s involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq in particular.

There was no intentional irony in the Prime Minister’s assertion that "Iraq now has to be freed from terrorism"; clearly he did not mean the barbaric state terrorism unleashed by US, Britain and others in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, which is already being condemned and compared to war crimes committed by the US in Vietnam and the Allied bombing of Dresden. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister felt compelled to offer some muted defence of the indefensible, as he briefly acknowledged the fact of "civilian casualties" and suggested that when "order is taken back" there would be "money and help ready to give the ordinary people there a better life". With such sentiments Tony Blair introduced his Mansion House speech.

The main focus of the speech was Britain’s relationship with both Europe and the US, but here too the Prime Minister was forced to go on the defensive as he recognised that public opinion was "now both anti-America and anti-Europe". Tony Blair’s argument was that Britain "is only going to wield power in this world through alliances", and that such alliances, despite the contrary view of the majority, are in Britain’s "national interest". According to the Prime Minister’s logic, Britain’s alliance with the US is vital because of the shared beliefs that both countries hold. He explained: "We are not fighting with America in Iraq because we are allies. We are their allies because we believe that their fight against terrorism is our fight too; because if they fail, we fail: because their way of life and ours is lit by the same light of freedom, the same love of democracy, the same fellowship of reason."

Is it not an affront to the people of Britain that the murder of the inhabitants of Fallujah and other cities in Iraq by the Anglo-American military forces is presented as being in the "national interest"? What light of freedom, love of democracy and fellowship of reason is be found in the war crimes committed in Iraq during an invasion that breaches international law, which has been condemned by world opinion and which has been repeatedly declared illegal by the secretary-general of the UN? But according to Tony Blair it is what he refers to as this "commitment to democracy, freedom and justice" that unites Europe and America. He urges that the US must reach out to Europe in the spirit of "multilateralism," while Europe’s role is to work with the US "to bring the democratic human and political rights we take for granted, to the world denied them".

Although Blair claims that he is not "advocating a series of military solutions" to bring this democracy to the world, this is precisely the course that has been taken in Kosova, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. This mission to export "democracy" throughout the world appears as the new justification for global intervention and invasion, and one which the Prime Minister seems to hope will add a moral imperative to the so-called "war against terrorism" and pre-emptive action taken against "rogue" and "failing" states. From Blair’s speech it is also clear that Britain and the US, as well as the other big powers, are preparing to impose their notion of democracy on the long-suffering Palestinian people and on the African continent too.

As has been made graphically clear in Iraq, the Anglo-American notion of democracy means democracy for the big powers to ride rough shod over the rights of the people; to deny the sovereignty of nations; to openly breach international law and carry out the most barbaric crimes; and to impose those political and economic arrangements which best suit the interest of the big monopolies. In other words it is the absence of freedom, justice and democracy for the people. But it is a conception of democracy shared by all the big powers and by the organisation of the big monopolies of Europe – the EU.

Blair’s speech therefore, aimed not just to try to justify Britain’s alliance with the US and membership of the EU, but to encourage greater unity between Europe and the US, based on their shared values, precisely at a time when it appears their contention is growing not only over Iraq and world trade, but also in relation to Iran and the attempts of the EU to reach a new understanding with China. In regard to the US and the EU, the Prime Minister claims that it is Britain’s "unique role" is to be "a tireless advocate of a strong bond between the two," all as a means of advancing the "national interest." For Tony Blair then, Britain is to be the "bridge" or the "pivot" uniting both sides of the Atlantic. This is Tony Blair’s vain dream of how once again to make Britain great through its alliances within the "civilised" world in the clash against the "uncivilised".

The fact is that neither Britain’s membership of the EU, nor the alliance with the US, is in the national interest, if this is taken to mean the interest of the working class and people of Britain rather than that of the big monopolies. The Labour government’s aim of "wielding power in this world" through an alliance with the US has already led to insecurity, instability and war. Continued membership of the EU, an alliance of the big monopolies that violates the sovereignty of its member states, has its own military and superpower ambitions throughout the world, and which is contending with the US, will only bring further disastrous consequences.

The working class and people must totally reject this course that Tony Blair is charting for Britain and organise to constitute the working class as the nation and vest sovereignty in the people.

By David Edwards*, November 8-11.

"We'll unleash the dogs of hell, we'll unleash 'em... They don't even know what's coming – hell is coming. If there are civilians in there, they're in the wrong place at the wrong time." (Sergeant Sam Mortimer, US marines, Channel 4 News, November 8, 2004)

Introduction – Pacifying The Population

In 1984, Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead described how "demonstration elections" are "organised and staged by a foreign power primarily to pacify a restive home population, reassuring it that ongoing interventionary processes are legitimate and appreciated by their foreign objects." (Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, South End Press, 1984, p.5)

In the case of Iraq, it is of course vital that domestic audiences in the US and UK be persuaded that their governments are killing Iraqis with the support of, even on behalf of, Iraqis themselves. The possibility that Iraqis might be dying in their tens of thousands for Western power and profit must, of course, be kept so far out of sight that it is barely even thinkable.

In this morning's ZNet commentary, Herman notes that there may be a demonstration election planned for Iraq in January:

"But meanwhile it is nominally ruled by Iyad Allawi, openly selected by US officials, but taken by the media (and Kofi Annan and the UN) as a genuine leader of Iraq. In the runup to 'saving' Fallujah, US military officials say that they are awaiting a go-ahead from the head-of-sovereign-Iraq, Mr. Allawi, for permission! Like the United States needed a go-ahead from [South Vietnamese] Generals Ky and Thieu to ravage their country with Agent Orange and napalm!" (Herman, ZNet Commentary, 'We Had To Destroy Fallujah in Order to Save It,' November 8, 2004)

The Iraqi leader's mythical go-ahead being, again, vital in providing legitimacy for an attack on a Third World city with main battle tanks and supersonic bombers.

Some Would Call It A Fiction

Today, the broadcast media announced that the long-awaited superpower assault on Fallujah – a city of 300,000 people, of whom some 30,000 are said to remain – had begun.

Remarkably, the courageous ITV News reporter, Julian Manyon, did not fall into line. On today's 12:30 Lunchtime News, Manyon said:

"We've had now, this morning, the formality – some would call it, I'm afraid, the fiction – that Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq, has given the official order to commence the operation against Fallujah. Of course in reality it is an American operation." (Manyon, ITV News, 12:30pm, November 8, 2004)

This is not the hymn sheet from which the media is supposed to be singing. Fortunately, the post-Hutton BBC is on hand to channel official propaganda with the power to reassure and bamboozle the viewing public. The BBC's lunchtime news anchor, Anna Ford, opened today's news with this solemn announcement:

"Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has said he has given American and Iraqi forces the authority to clear Fallujah of terrorists." (Ford, BBC 1, 13:00 News, November 8, 2004)

Almost everything in this statement is false: Allawi is not the legitimate prime minister of Iraq, he is an American-installed stooge. Allawi did not give authority to US forces to attack Fallujah – they are the authority in Iraq, Allawi is their mouthpiece. The US goal is not to "clear Fallujah of terrorists"; it is to crush Iraqi resistance to US control of their country.

BBC executives justify affording such high-profile coverage to Allawi's words on the grounds that he is the Iraqi leader. If similar coverage had been proposed for the Soviet-imposed rulers of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the same BBC executives would have fallen about laughing. Might, quite simply, makes right.

On the same news programme, the BBC's 'embedded' correspondent, Paul Wood, gave a report that included footage of US forces and an Iraqi commando unit storming a hospital in Fallujah. Iraqi prisoners were shown being tied up and blindfolded. Wood said:

"The insurgents here were quickly overpowered, and without a shot fired."

On ITV, Manyon had told us 30 minutes earlier that half of these hospital "insurgents" had immediately been released.

Footage followed of a speech by US marine general John Sattler to troops:

"This town's being held hostage by mugs, thugs, murderers and intimidators. All they need is for us to give them the opportunity to break the back of that intimidation."

Wood added:

"Officers from this battalion are meeting now. I think, probably, following the press conference by prime minister Allawi, they will come back to tell these marines that finally the operation is on."

Anna Ford spoke again from the studio:

"Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said the rule of law will be imposed in Fallujah very soon."

And then to a clip of Allawi's press conference:

"We are after terrorists, we are not after anybody else. And all the Iraqi people, including people in Fallujah, they want us to go ahead and finish the terrorists, and have the rule of law prevail in Fallujah, and this is what we intend to do."

Again and again, the impression was given that Allawi was in charge, that he was giving the orders, that he was intent on bringing 'law and order', rather than US control, to Iraq. You could not guess from today's BBC lunchtime news that this is in fact a war between illegal foreign occupiers and local resistance fighters.

The impression given was that Iraqis were directing the war being waged on their own people, with Western control and goals whitewashed to invisibility. This has the effect of pacifying and disarming British public opinion, so reducing resistance, so making it easier for the West to continue killing for control and profit.

Claire Marshall then reported from Baghdad:

"He [Allawi] said that he has given his authority to the multinational and to the Iraqi forces. This does seem to be the authority which they were waiting for in order to carry out their full-scale assault, possibly into the centre of Fallujah."

Imagine how horrified we would have been to hear crude propaganda of this kind from a Soviet journalist reviewing Red Army actions in Afghanistan. Marshall continued:

"Prime minister Iyad Allawi also suggested that the fight will go on. He said that 'any place in Iraq which houses terrorists will now be cleaned'."

Thus, on seven occasions, the BBC gave the impression that Allawi was the real authority in Iraq, so promoting the lethal myth that the assault on Fallujah is essentially an Iraqi operation against "terrorists" and "mugs, thugs, murderers and intimidators", to be "cleaned" and "cleared". There were no balancing words from commentators opposed to the US waging an illegal high-tech war against city slums.

Marshall added:

"Basically the people who are still in the town of Fallujah are those who either have nowhere else to go, or those who are trying to protect their houses from looting, or those who want to join in the fight."

One other category springs to mind – those who are too young, old, sick and infirm to move at all.

The Face Of Raw Power

Sometimes media choices are beyond all rational comprehension. On November 10, the BBC's 18:00 news began with a report of Sudanese government actions against refugees in the Darfur region of the country. The conflict, the BBC reported, "is thought to have killed more than 70,000 people in a little over a year – nearly two million people have been forced from their homes into refugee camps."

BBC foreign correspondent, Feargal Keane, reported that refugee shelters had been torn down by police. Video footage showed a village elder being kicked and beaten by police, tear gas was fired at women and children, a plastic bullet was fired at the BBC team. As police attempted to forcibly move the refugees, Keane noted that this represented "a clear breach of international law".

Keane concluded:

"This was a day when the Sudanese government showed the face of raw power. When the international community was left powerless, and the most vulnerable, defenceless." (BBC 18:00 News, November 10, 2004)

This did indeed represent an appalling abuse of defenceless people. But whereas the British media and public are not morally responsible for the abuses of the Sudanese government, we are responsible when our own government shows "the face of raw power" to "the most vulnerable". Can we imagine Keane, or any other BBC journalist, using similar language to describe our government's actions?

Moreover, whereas the British public can do little to influence the actions of the Sudanese government, we have a very real ability to influence our own government through elections, protest and civil disobedience. In other words, by any sane moral standard, the actions of our government represent an incomparably more important focus than the actions of the Sudanese government.

And whereas 70,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the Sudanese conflict in little more than a year, 100,000 civilians are estimated to have died as a result of our own government's invasion of Iraq since March 2003. Whereas 2 million people are said to have been displaced in the Sudan, a quarter of a million people are estimated to have been displaced from Fallujah in just the last few weeks.

There is, readers will recall, one further difference. Whereas the Sudanese police were shown tear-gassing civilians in Keane's report, US-UK forces are currently waging full-scale war on Iraqi civilian areas with main battle tanks, airburst firebombs, artillery barrages and helicopter gunships.

Which issue, then, should be prioritised in BBC news reporting?

And yet the BBC's late news on November 10 began by devoting eight minutes to the Sudan story, followed by five minutes on Fallujah.

ITV – The Three Words

Over on ITV (November 10, 18:30), it is Cartoon Time as anchors Nick Owen and Andrea Catherwood stroll down the catwalk to bring us the latest news from Fallujah. This was explained with the help of computer animation: cartoon Humvees trundled along streets and cartoon tanks blasted snipers in cartoon buildings.

An outraged friend of ours asked this simple question, a question that is all but unthinkable to the media:

"What right have they got to do what they're doing to that city? What right?!"

It's an interesting question. There were no WMDs, no links to al Qaeda, the civilian population was not being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the year prior to the war. So what actually is our justification for waging full-scale war on Iraqi cities? Who are we to do it? How is it that we are helping the people we are destroying?

It is indeed like a cartoon – the US and UK governments keep running in mid-air, though any pretence of legal and moral justification has long since fallen away. But they do not fall because we have no democracy, no political opposition to establishment control, and no freedom of speech.

Our friend's question does not exist for the elite media. For highly-trained, highly professional journalists the issue is more complex – there are caveats, nuances. But in truth, in their minds, this is just another campaign in the West's permanent Just War. There are different units, different campaigns, different enemies – but it's basically always the same righteous, liberating Just War.

So, for our media, Fallujah is on a par with the Battle for Normandy, it is another phase of Operation Desert Storm. We may be illegally attacking Third World residential areas housing thousands of helpless civilians, and a ragtag army of the people we came 'to liberate', but for our media it is the same Just War. Thus, anchorwoman Andrea Catherwood spoke over a map that might just as well have been of Arnhem:

"The US marines made steady progress... army chiefs say they have control of 70 percent of the city, including the strategically important Highway 10."

But why is Highway 10 strategically important? What are US forces doing there? What right do they have to be demolishing this Third World city that has never threatened America or Britain?

ITV tells us simply that this is "a prime example of urban warfare" – of the kind we often see in our endless Just War.

What other truths do we need to know about this urban war? More cartoons: "The marines can call on some of the latest technology, like The Buffalo, that can locate and destroy mines and booby troops using a robot arm."

A cartoon Buffalo is shown approaching a cartoon car, which explodes as the Buffalo's extendable arm touches it. There's more:

"They've also got the Packbot. It's a small remote-controlled robot fitted with a camera which can climb stairs and even open cupboards to search houses and other buildings for explosives."

A black and silver cartoon robot is shown climbing a block on a roof and touching it with a probe. This feels like an outtake from a programme on space exploration. But what is being explored here is a different moral universe – one inhabited by professional executives working for the ITV subsidiary of The Corporation.

Finally we are told: "Paul Davies reports on a day of urban warfare."

We see footage of a marine in action. The marine turns and growls to camera:

"We're going in, we're taking the city this time."

This is a classic moment from Hollywood versions of the Just War. This is John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Tom Hanks – we recognise this dialogue, we recognise this figure.

Davies repeats the marine's tough-guy promise, savours it, adding: "It's no idle boast, but it's been achieved the hard way." This, also, is straight out of Hollywood.

We see grainy shots of marines firing: "These remarkable images sent back over shaky video phones tell a story just about as far away from the clinical, long-range warfare the Americans would prefer to wage as it's possible to be."

Yes, how ironic for the US forces – they would surely prefer long-range combat and "clinical" killing. It's an interesting point, isn't it, as the superpower wages a war of colonial conquest on impoverished Third World streets? Davies continues:

"But the swift progress of this operation has been at a cost. Even before today's street battles, ten American soldiers had been killed, more than 40 marines and their Iraqi allies wounded. There are no accurate figures on the number of militants dead, or civilian casualties."

Throughout the whole report, these are the words we have been waiting for, and there are three of them: "or civilian casualties". Nothing more was said on the matter.

Are we to understand, then, that because there are no accurate figures, the issue need not be discussed at all? Are we to understand that it is enough to drool over Buffalos, Packbots, tank attacks on Highway 10, how the marines are "going in", without discussing the fate of the innocent human beings being slaughtered in this city? Is this a human response to the assault on Fallujah? Is this even sane? Has there been any sense in TV reporting that this killing is, in fact, illegal?

After seeing ITV's earlier lunchtime news, we had written to the editor and director of the programme on the same day. This is what we sent:

Dear Nick Rabin and Jane Thompson

Paul Davies' claim on today's ITV lunchtime news that "there is no word yet of civilian casualties" in Fallujah is incorrect. The UN's IRIN agency [United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network] channelled this report from Red Crescent today:

IRAQ: Medical needs massive in Fallujah – Red Crescent

FALLUJAH, 10 November (IRIN) – Twenty doctors along with dozen of Iraqis were killed by a US air strike on a government clinic on Tuesday in the centre of Fallujah, 60 km west of Baghdad according to Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who survived the strike.

"In the early morning the US attacked the clinic, a place that we were using for treating the injured people in the city. A girl and ten-year-old boy, I really don't know if they want to tackle the insurgents or the innocent civilians from the city," al-Jumaili told IRIN.

According to the health worker, the building was one of three community clinics that had been receiving civilians wounded since the assault on the city by US and Iraqi troops to destroy insurgents began on Monday. He said that the clinic was already running out from medicines and the only ambulance that was left in the city had also been hit by US fire.

People in the town say that hundred of houses have also been destroyed and other says that they are running out water and food, adding that shops and markets have been closed and there is no place to source food. Civilians are fearful that if they go out they could be targeted by US troops, now controlling much of the north and centre of the city.

Water and electricity had also been cut off since Sunday, and doctors say that together with the chronic lack of supplies, there is not a single surgeon in the city. Without electricity medical staff cannot keep blood refrigerated. Communication has also difficult, with telephones working only sporadically."

Not a word of this, or material like it, appeared on ITV on November 10.

ITV's evening news (18:30) continued to limit itself to the three words: "or civilian casualties". The late news (22:30) included additional combat footage, but the three words remained.

* David Edwards is co-editor of Media Lens: "Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media"

John Pilger*, New Statesman, November 11, 2004

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger demonstrates how the attack on Fallujah has been 'normalised' by the media. The same process of suppression has been applied to the 'blizzard of platitudes' that was the US election campaign and, as if nobody noticed, to the revelations of the Kean report on 9/11.

Edward S Herman's landmark essay, "The Banality of Evil", has never seemed more apposite. "Doing terrible things in an organised and systematic way rests on 'normalisation'," wrote Herman. "There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals... others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive Napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public."

On Radio 4's Today (6 November), a BBC reporter in Baghdad referred to the coming attack on the city of Fallujah as "dangerous" and "very dangerous" for the Americans. When asked about civilians, he said, reassuringly, that the US marines were "going about with a tannoy" telling people to get out. He omitted to say that tens of thousands of people would be left in the city. He mentioned in passing the "most intense bombing" of the city with no suggestion of what that meant for people beneath the bombs.

As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that heroically defied Saddam Hussein; they were merely "insurgents holed up in the city", as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life to be "flushed out" (the Guardian): a suitable quarry for "ratcatchers", which is the term another BBC reporter told us the Black Watch use. According to a senior British officer, the Americans view Iraqis as untermenschen, a term that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to describe Jews, Romanies and Slavs as sub-humans. This is how the Nazi army laid siege to Russian cities, slaughtering combatants and non-combatants alike.

Normalising colonial crimes like the attack on Fallujah requires such racism, linking our imagination to "the other". The thrust of the reporting is that the "insurgents" are led by sinister foreigners of the kind that behead people: for example, by Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian said to be al-Qaeda's "top operative" in Iraq. This is what the Americans say; it is also Blair's latest lie to parliament. Count the times it is parroted at a camera, at us. No irony is noted that the foreigners in Iraq are overwhelmingly American and, by all indications, loathed. These indications come from apparently credible polling organisations, one of which estimates that of 2,700 attacks every month by the resistance, six can be credited to the infamous al-Zarqawi.

In a letter sent on 14 October to Kofi Annan, the Fallujah Shura Council, which administers the city, said: "In Fallujah, [the Americans] have created a new vague target: al-Zarqawi. Almost a year has elapsed since they created this new pretext and whenever they destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women, they say, 'we have launched a successful operation against Al Zarqawi'. The people of Fallujah assure you that this person, if he exists, is not in Fallujah... and we have no links to any groups supporting such inhuman behaviour. We appeal to you to urge the UN [to prevent] the new massacre which the Americans and the puppet government are planning to start soon in Fallujah, as well as many parts of the country." Not a word of this was reported in the mainstream in Britain and America.

"What does it take to shock them out of their baffling silence?" asked the playwright Ronan Bennett in April after the US marines, in an act of collective vengeance for the killing of four American mercenaries, killed more than 600 people in Fallujah, a figure that was never denied. Then, as now, they used the ferocious firepower of AC-130 gunships and F-16 fighterbombers and 500-pound bombs against slums. They incinerate children; their snipers boast of killing anyone, as snipers did in Sarajevo.

Bennett was referring to the legion of silent Labour backbenchers, with honourable exceptions, and lobotomised junior ministers (remember Chris Mullin?). He might have added those journalists who strain every sinew to protect "our" side, who normalise the unthinkable by not even gesturing at the demonstrable immorality and criminality. Of course, to be shocked by what "we" do is dangerous, because this can lead to a wider understanding of why "we" are there in the first place and of the grief "we" bring not only to Iraq, but to so many parts of the world: that the terrorism of al-Qaeda is puny by comparison with ours. There is nothing illicit about this cover-up; it happens in daylight. The most striking recent example followed the announcement, on 29 October, by the prestigious scientific journal, the Lancet, of a study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the Anglo-American invasion. Eighty-four per cent of the deaths were caused by the actions of the Americans and the British, and 95 per cent of these were killed by air attacks and artillery fire, most of whom were women and children.

The editors of the excellent MediaLens observed the rush - no, stampede - to smother this shocking news with "scepticism" and silence (mediaLens.org). They reported that, by 2 November, the Lancet report had been ignored by the Observer, the Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Star, the Sun and many others. The BBC framed the report in terms of the government's "doubts" and Channel 4 News delivered a hatchet job, based on a Downing Street briefing. With one exception, none of the scientists who compiled this rigorously peer-reviewed report was asked to substantiate their work until ten days later when the pro-war Observer published an interview with the editor of the Lancet, slanted so that it appeared he was "answering his critics". David Edwards, a MediaLens editor, asked the researchers to respond to the media criticism; their meticulous demolition can be viewed on medialens.org 2 November. None of this was published in the mainstream. Thus, the unthinkable that "we" had engaged in such a slaughter was suppressed - normalised. It is reminiscent of the suppression of the death of more than a million Iraqis, including half a million infants under five, as a result of the Anglo American driven embargo.

In contrast, there is no media questioning of the methodology of the Iraq Special Tribune which has announced that mass graves contain 300,000 victims of Saddam Hussein. The Special Tribune, a product of the quisling regime in Baghdad, is run by the Americans; respected scientists want nothing to do with it. There is no questioning of what the BBC calls "Iraq's first democratic elections". There is no reporting of the fact that the Americans have assumed control over the electoral process with two decrees passed in June that allows an "electoral commission" effectively to eliminate parties Washington does not like. Time magazine reports the CIA buying its preferred candidates, which is how the agency has fixed elections all over the world. When or if the elections take place, we will be doused in clichés about the nobility of voting as America's puppets are "democratically" chosen.

The model for this was the "coverage" of the American presidential election: a blizzard of platitudes normalising the unthinkable that what happened on 2 November was not democracy in action. With one exception, no one in the flock of pundits flown from London described the circus of Bush and Kerry as the contrivance of less than one per cent of the population, the ultra-rich and powerful, who control and manage a permanent war economy. That the losers were not only the Democrats, but the vast majority of Americans, regardless of whom they voted for, was unmentionable.

No one reported that John Kerry, by contrasting the "war on terror" with Bush's disastrous attack on Iraq, merely exploited public distrust of the invasion to build support for American dominance throughout the world. "I'm not talking about leaving [Iraq]," said Kerry. "I'm talking about winning!" In this way, both he and Bush shifted the agenda even further to the right, so that millions of anti-war Democrats might be persuaded that the US has "the responsibility to finish the job" lest there be "chaos". The issue in the presidential campaign was neither Bush nor Kerry but a war economy aimed at conquest abroad and economic division at home. The silence on this was comprehensive, both in America and here.

Bush won by invoking, more skilfully than Kerry, the fear of an ill-defined threat. How was he able to normalise this paranoia? Let's look at the recent past. Following the end of the cold war, the American elite - Republican and Democrat - were having great difficulty convincing the public that the billions of dollars spent on the war economy should not be diverted to a "peace dividend". A majority of Americans refused to believe there was still a "threat" as potent as the red menace. This did not prevent Bill Clinton sending to Congress the biggest "defence" bill in history in support of a Pentagon strategy called "full spectrum dominance". On 11 September 2001 the threat was given a name: Islam.

Flying into Philadelphia recently, I spotted the Kean Congressional report on 11 September on sale at the bookstalls. "How many do you sell?" I asked. "One or two" was the reply. "It'll disappear soon." Yet, this modest, blue-covered book is a revelation. Like the Butler report, which detailed all the incriminating evidence of Blair's massaging of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, then pulled its punches and concluded nobody was responsible, so the Kean Commission makes excruciatingly clear what really happened, then fails to draw the conclusions that stare it in the face. It is a supreme act of normalising the unthinkable. This is not surprising as the conclusions are volcanic.

The most important evidence to the commission came from General Ralph Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad). "Air force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring towards the World Trade Centre and Pentagon," he said, "if only air traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner... We would have been able to shoot down all three... all four of them."

Why did this not happen?

The Kean report makes clear that "the defence of US aerospace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols... If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon's National Military Command Centre (NMCC)... The NMCC would then seek approval from the office of the Secretary of Defence to provide military assistance..." Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority there was no reason the procedure was not operating that morning. "For my 30 years of experience..." said Monte Belger, "the NMCC was on the net and hearing everything real-time... I can tell you I've lived through dozens of hijackings... and they were always listening in with everybody else." But on this occasion, they were not. The Kean report says the NMCC were never informed. Why? Again, uniquely, all lines of communication failed, the commission was told, to America's top military brass. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld could not be found; and when he finally spoke to Bush an hour and a half later, it was, says the Kean report, "a brief call in which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed." As a result, NORAD's commanders were "left in the dark about what their mission was".

The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe command system that worked was in the White House where Vice-President Cheney was in effective control that day, and in close touch with the NMCC. Why did he do nothing about the first two hijacked planes? Why was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the first time in its existence? Kean ostentatiously refuses to address this. Of course, it could be due to the most extraordinary combination of coincidences. Or it could not. In July 2001, a top secret briefing paper prepared for Bush read: "We [the CIA and FBI] believe that OBL [Osama Bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

On the afternoon of 11 September, Donald Rumsfeld, having failed to act against those who had just attacked the United States, told his aides to set in motion an attack on Iraq - when the evidence was non-existent. Eighteen months later, the invasion of Iraq, unprovoked and based on lies now documented, took place. This epic crime is the greatest political scandal of our time, the latest chapter in the long 20th-century history of the west's conquests of other lands and their resources. If we allow it to be normalised, if we refuse to question and probe the hidden agendas and unaccountable secret power structures at the heart of "democratic" governments and if we allow the people of Fallujah to be crushed in our name, we surrender both democracy and humanity.

* John Pilger is a visiting professor at Cornell University, New York. His latest book, Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its triumphs, is published in Britain by Random House.

By Harvey Thompson, World Socialist Web Site, November 16, 2004

A court martial into the killing of a British soldier, held on October 26, heard how United States defence officials passed on plans for war against Iraq to the British Army almost six months before the invasion.

The information emerged during the trial of Lance Corporal Ian Blaymire, who was facing charges for the manslaughter of fellow soldier John Nightingale while serving in Iraq. Both men were reservists with the Territorial Army (TA), deployed as drivers with the 217 Transport Squadron, part of 150 Transport Regiment Volunteers of the Royal Logistic Corps.

Nightingale died almost immediately after being hit in the chest, at point-blank range, by a bullet from an A2 rifle at Shaibah military camp, near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, on September 23 of last year. Blaymire was subsequently cleared of the charge.

In the course of the trial, the court at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, heard that contingency plans for the invasion of Iraq were drawn up by Lt. Col. Christopher Warren, staff officer at Land Command, Salisbury, Wiltshire, who was responsible for operational training for regular soldiers and reservists in the lead up to the war.

In a short piece in the Independent newspaper on October 27, Deputy Political Editor Colin Brown reported that Warren said US defence planners had passed on dates for which the invasion of Iraq was proposed. The hearing was told that army chiefs wanted to start training for the war at the beginning of December 2002. However, due to "sensitivities" the training was delayed.

Warren was asked by the defence counsel, Simon Reevell, what the "sensitivities" were. He replied, "Because in December there was a world interest. If the UK had mobilised while all this was going on that would have shown an intent before the political process had been allowed to run its course."

According to PA News, October 26, Reevell then asked Warren, "I assume there was a decision training was not to start at that time [i.e., early December 2002]?"

"Yes, training was not to start at that time," Warren replied.

"Who told you?" Reevell asked.

"That would have come from the Defence Crisis Management Organisation in London. It is the political, military interface at the highest level," replied Warren.

On October 27, the Scotsman carried an article on the court martial describing "plans codenamed P-Day, A-Day and G-Day" that were passed to the British military by US defence planners as early as October 2002. The BBC carried a similar account of the uncovered war plans.

The classified documents stated that P-Day was the date on which the US president would make a decision for going to war, which had been set for February 15, 2003. A-Day stood for the air strikes, provisionally due in the first week of March 2003, and G-Day was for the ground offensive, expected to start a couple of days later.

The dates and code names were revealed after the court martial was adjourned and held in private for the information to be discussed by the legal teams. Attempts by the prosecution to have the evidence heard in camera because of concerns over "secrecy" were dismissed by Assistant Judge Advocate General Paul Camp.

After several hours of discussion, Camp ruled that the press and public were entitled to hear the evidence.

The revelations constitute a damning refutation of the pre-war scenario elaborated by the US and UK governments – that of Iraqi non-compliance with weapons inspections being the trigger for war. That plans to attack Iraq were drawn up almost half a year in advance of the invasion confirms that the diplomatic manoeuvring in the United Nations and elsewhere by Washington and London in the run up to the war was but an elaborate smokescreen to conceal the fact that war was a fixed objective and would go ahead with or without the backing of the UN.

The army's attempt to have details of the war plan heard in camera on the basis of national security interests is entirely spurious. No conceivable state secrets could be jeopardised by revealing war plans that had already been put into action before the eyes of the world. Rather, it is a continuation of the efforts made by the British ruling class to conceal the criminal character of its unprovoked war of aggression against a largely defenceless country.

In the face of mass opposition to the preparations for war against Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair repeatedly insisted that no prior decision had been made for an attack. Right up until the eleventh hour, he was claiming that should Saddam Hussein agree to "disarm" his weapons of mass destruction, war could be avoided.

Such statements were a cynical hoax. London and Washington were all too well aware that Iraq could not agree to give up what it did not possess, and were making their military preparations on that basis.

For months, several leading politicians have directly accused Blair of misleading the British people over the reasons for the war. In her evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee investigation on whether the government distorted intelligence material to justify its war plans, former cabinet minister Clare Short said that London and Washington had reached a deal in the summer of 2002 to attack Iraq.

She said that "three extremely senior people in the Whitehall system" had told her the decision had been made by Blair and President George W. Bush, and that the "target date was mid-February [2003] and later extended to March because of a difficulty with the Turks and so on and to give our prime minister a little more time".

In his evidence to the same committee, former Foreign Minister Robin Cook also implied that the case for war was concocted to fit an agreed invasion date. Referring to the string of false intelligence reports on WMD put out before the war, Cook said, "I fear the fundamental problem is that instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base the conclusion of a policy, we used intelligence as the basis on which we could justify a policy on which we had already settled."

The court martial hearing has vindicated their accounts. Blair is indeed guilty of a criminal conspiracy to slaughter tens of thousands of Iraqi people for reasons of geopolitical strategy by usurping the democratic rights of the British people.

It is telling that only a handful of news sources even reported the facts revealed during the trial, and even then in only the most cursory fashion. The failure of this story to make any big headlines confirms the complicity of the vast bulk of the media in the lies, deception and subterfuge used by the architects of the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.