Gideon Polya, “Bush War Crimes Trials. Greenspan Iraq oil confession & One Million Iraqi deaths”, MWC News, 17 September 2007.
Bush War Crimes Trials. Greenspan Iraq oil confession & One Million Iraqi deaths
The ostensibly “liberal” UK Guardian has finally found the courage to lead British Mainstream media in facing up to the horrendous realities of the humanitarian disaster that is the Bush-Blair invasion and occupation of the formerly sovereign nation of Iraq. In an article entitled “Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2 million” (Guardian & Observer September 16 2007) the Guardian unwittingly makes the case for war crimes trials of the US and US Alliance leaders.
In short, Alan Greenspan was the chairman of the US Federal Reserve for 2 decades, having been appointed by Republican President Reagan in 1987 and retiring only in 2006. Greenspan is the most important Republican economist and the ultimate “insider” in relation to the essential operations of the United States and the World. Alan Greenspan has finally and authoritatively come clean – in his forthcoming memoir he writes: “'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Well we have all known this, as Greenspan states, but this is from the “horse’s mouth”, from a top Republican economist and insider. Successful prosecution of Mafia bosses required organizational “insider” confessions – it was insufficient that “everyone” knew that the likes of Al Capone were running organized crime. We have all known it, and indeed the recent movie “A Crude Awakening” cites oil experts that all Middle East wars for the last century were about oil. Outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky of 63-Nobel-laureate MIT has recently in a Monthly Review article incisively argued that the crucial strategic importance of Iraq has been about oil and global hegemony through strategic control. Well, now we have it from the top insider expert, Alan Greenspan, the man who has had his hand on the control knobs of the US economy for 20 years – it’s the economy, stupid.
One can only speculate why this top insider has decided to come clean. He is 81, perhaps his conscience is pricking him or perhaps he is appalled by the downhill slide of the American economy and American wealth under the Bush Administration. Thus 2001 US Economics Nobel laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and his colleague Professor Linda Bilmes (Harvard University) have estimated that the accrual cost of the Bush War on Terror now stands at $2.5 TRILLION (see “The Cost of War” on MWC News).
When a violent crime such as an armed bank robbery is committed and people die there are 2 key evidential elements to be considered by the Prosecutors: (1) the pecuniary profit intent and (2) the homicides. Bush, Blair, Howard, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Dr Rice (Dr Death) and their confrères have always strenuously denied (1) any pecuniary intent and (2) the evidence from the UN and top medical epidemiologists of horrendous loss of life associated with the Bush Wars. These Global Bank Robbers still declare that (1) they did it to liberate the bank tellers and customers and that (2) the deaths they actually admit have happened are due to insurgent bank tellers and customers.
Now a leading UK commercial market analysis company ORB has done for “evidence for homicide” what Greenspan has done for “evidence for intent”. Now in September 2007 a UK polling agency ORB (Opinion Research Business) has estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have died violently post-invasion, twice as many as the 0.6 million post-invasion Iraqi violent deaths estimated by the top US Johns Hopkins medical epidemiologists in their research paper published in the top medical journal The Lancet in October 2006.
The ORB estimate of 1.2 million post-invasion Iraqi deaths is consonant with steadily increasing estimates of horrendous Iraqi deaths that I and others have provided over the last 4 years. On the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the Iraq Invasion (March 2007) I estimated that about 1 million Iraqis had died avoidably post-invasion – from 5 estimates using 4 independent set of data from authoritative sources (see MWC News ).
I have now re-calculated and updated the “post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths” as of about Sep, 2007 using the latest information from the same sources, namely UNICEF, the UN Population Division and scientific papers from the top US medical epidemiology group in the World’s top Public Health Department (the Bloomberg School of Public Health) at the top US medical university, Johns Hopkins University, and published peer-reviewed in the top British medical journal The Lancet.
The various estimates of post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) as of September 2007 are 0.7 million (from under-estimating UN Population Division data); 0.8 million (from estimating post-invasion under-5 infant deaths from UNICEF data and dividing by 0.7) (see “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths” on MWC News); 1.0 million (using data from The Lancet published in 2004); 1.0 million (using data from The Lancet, 2006); and 1.1 million (the “best estimate” from using data published in The Lancet in 2006 and using Iraq’s impoverished but peaceful neighbours Syria and Jordan for a mortality baseline).
Six (6) years after the 9/11 atrocity (and noting that the actual culprits have yet to be conclusively identified in a proper judicial trial) , the Bush-Blair-Howard War on Terror is associated with post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories totalling (as of September 2007) 1.1 million (see the “best estimate” above) and 2.5 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths totalling 0.5 million and 2.0 million, respectively (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention); and refugees totalling 4 million and 3.7 million, respectively.
In addition it has been estimated that about 0.1 million people die each year around the world (0.6 million over 6 years) from opiate drug-related causes. Accordingly about 0.5 million have died avoidably since 9/11 from opiate drug-related causes due to the US-UK restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 5% in 2001 to a current 93% of world market share (see UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, World Drug Report 2007.)
The human cost of the Bush-Blair-Howard War on Terror is thus 1.1 million + 2.5 million + 0.5 million = 4.1 million excess deaths, this carnage approaching that of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) or the “forgotten” and contemporaneous, man-made, World War 2 Bengal Famine Holocaust in British India (4 million victims; associated with horrendous sexual abuse of starving women and girls; possibly due to a deliberate British strategic scorched earth policy to prevent Japanese invasion of India; and “rubbed out” of British history) (see “Body Count”; Mason, C. (2000), A Short History of Asia. Stone Age to 2000AD (Macmillan, London); Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London); Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).
The Bush War on Terror is in horrible actuality a cowardly, racist War on Women and Children and, more specifically, a War on Arab Women and Children, a War on Muslim Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children, a War on South Asian Women and Children, and a War on Non-European Women and Children.
Slobodan Milosevic was indicted, arraigned and tried before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for complicity in war crimes in the recent Balkans Civil War in which some 0.25 million people died - yet the Bush War on Terror has already killed over 4 million.
In 2004 and thence in 2005 I made formal complaints over US-UK and US Alliance war crimes to the International Criminal Court (see “Formal complaint to ICC over Coalition War Crimes” on MWC News ). According to the UK Telegraph “the court's chief prosecutor told The Sunday Telegraph that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the Prime Minister and American President George W Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.”
British Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter has called for the prosecution of Bush and Blair for war crimes stating: “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading as a last resort all other justifications having failed to justify themselves as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice.”.
Over 4 million? More than enough, I would have thought. Bring on the Bush-ite and Bush War Crimes trials.