[First published as Gideon Polya, “UK Chilcot Iraq War Report betrays humanity”, MWC News, 11 July 2016].
UK Chilcot Iraq War Report betrays humanity
By Gideon Polya
Some weeks before the illegal invasion of Iraq by the US, UK and Australia I joined 150,000 people in Melbourne and millions more around the world demonstrating against the impending war. On 20 March 2003 US, UK and Australia illegally invaded Iraq on the alleged but utterly false basis that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The false WMD claim prevailed in the run-up to war with the help of pro-war, “manufacturing consent” Mainstream media and despite expert testimony to the effect that there was no hard evidence for the proposition.
Indeed on 11 March 2003, 9 days before the invasion, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Wilkie very publicly resigned from the Australian Intelligence Office of National Assessments (ONA) over the US lackey Australian Government’s planning for war on the basis of scant evidence about Iraqi WMD. Recently re-elected to the Australian Federal Parliament in the July 2016 Federal Elections as MP for the electorate of Denison (based on Hobart, the capital of Tasmania and my home town), Andrew Wilkie stated (7 July 2016) : “Every time it's said that Iraq had a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and it was cooperating with Al Qaeda, it knew that that was not the case — that it was either clearly not the case or at best for them it was ambiguous. They took us to war on a lie. No wonder John Howard and Tony Blair and George W Bush do stand accused of war crimes. I'd like them to see an international court. I would like them to defend their position and try to prove their innocence because, all of those people who do accuse them of war crimes I think make a pretty compelling case." In similar vein, US CNN reported (2009) that: “ The Bush administration, President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups … the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism”.
While no Iraqis or Afghans had been involved in the 9-11 (11 September 2001) atrocity according to the “official Bush version of 9-11”, the official US “excuse for war” (casus belli) was that it invaded Afghanistan because the Afghan Government would only hand alleged 9-11 mastermind and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to a third country rather than to the US. Osama bin Laden was allegedly murdered by US forces in Pakistan in 2011 on orders from Obama, with the body being rapidly disposed of at sea. However eminent US journalist Seymour Hersh and eminent US economist and commentator Dr Paul Craig Roberts have dismissed the “Obama version” of the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden as an elaborate US Government concoction. Indeed former Pakistan President Benazir Bhutto in a 2 November 2007 interview with Sir David Frost (2 months before her assassination on 27 December 2007) clearly stated then that Osama bin Laden had been murdered (the BBC notoriously edited out that part of her interview; Google “Censorship by the BBC”).
The truth will out and numerous science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts reject the “official US version of 9-11” and assert US Government complicity in the 9-11 atrocity. US-installed Afghan President Karzai recently made the following remarkable statements that are in stark variance with the story-line of successive US Governments and the “manufacturing consent” Mainstream media presstitutes: “[Al-Qaeda] is for me a myth … For us, they don’t exist… I don't know if al-Qaeda existed and I don't know if they exist. I have not seen them and I've not had any report about them, any report that would indicate that al-Qaeda is operating in Afghanistan… [re Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda responsibility for 9-11] That is what I have heard from our Western friends. That's what the Western media says. There is no doubt that an operation, a terrorist operation was conducted in New York and in Washington… I neither believe nor disbelieve something that I don't know about. I can tell you that Afghanistan was as much a victim of terrorism as was America, as were the people who were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks" (Google: “Experts: US did 9-11”).
US Governments lie - most notably and consistently about casi belli (excuses for war) - and US lackey countries like the UK and Australia go along with the lies. Importantly, the US and its lackeys also lie about the horrendous human consequences of war. In a stunning example of British Establishment mendacity, the UK Government Iraq War Inquiry (aka the Chilcot Inquiry) has just handed down its Report after 7 years of deliberation with the chairman Sir John Chilcot making a 12-page Summary Statement about the Report [1]. In short, this 2.6 million word, 12-volume Report (a) makes no conclusion about the illegality of the invasion , (b) ignores the real reasons for the invasion (oil, US hegemony and Apartheid Israel) , (c) has received great praise from the Mainstream media for criticizing the UK Blair Labour Government for going to war on untrue intelligence, and (d) states that about 150,000 Iraqis may have died due to the 2003-2011 invasion and occupation (an immense under-estimate of the science-based estimate of 2.7 million post-invasion Iraqi deaths, this comprising 1.5 million deaths from violence and 1.2 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation [2]).
The 2.6 million word Chilcot Report can be disposed of succinctly as follows:
(a) The invasion of Iraq was illegal. International Law is quite clear about the legality of invading another country. Such invasion can only occur (1) with UN Security Council (UNSC) sanction, (2) if the country to be invaded has attacked or acutely threatens to attack, or (3) if the government of that country invites invasion - and then only after extensive discussion. None of these criteria were satisfied for the US Coalition invasion of Iraq and the ostensible casus belli (Iraqi possession WMD) was disputed by experts before the war and was shown to be utterly false immediately after the invasion. Numerous experts have stated that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. Indeed Blair’s own Attorney General, Jewish British MP Peter Goldsmith (appointed in 2008 as an independent non-executive director of the Australian property trust, Westfield Group, co-founded by Israeli-Australian Zionist Frank Lowy), initially offered that advice before changing his tune. Thus Sir John Chilcot in his Statement on the Chilcot Report: “In the absence of a majority in support of military action, we consider that the UK was in fact undermining the Security Council’s authority. Second, the Inquiry has not expressed a view on whether military action was legal. That could, of course, only be resolved by a properly constituted and internationally recognised Court. We have, however, concluded that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory [page 4]… In mid-January 2003, Lord [Peter] Goldsmith told Mr Blair that a further Security Council resolution would be necessary to provide a legal basis for military action. He did not advise No. 10 until the end of February that, while a second resolution would be preferable, a “reasonable case” could be made that resolution 1441 was sufficient. He set out that view in written advice on 7 March. The military and the civil service both asked for more clarity on whether force would be legal. Lord Goldsmith then advised that the “better view” was that there was, on balance, a secure legal basis for military action without a further Security Council resolution. On March , he asked Mr Blair to confirm that Iraq had committed further material breaches as specified in resolution 1441. Mr Blair did so the next day. However, the precise basis on which Mr Blair made that decision is not clear” [pages 4 and 5].
(b) The real reasons for the Iraq Invasion were oil, US hegemony and Apartheid Israeli hegemony. Thus, for example, US conservative Alan Greenspan (who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades) (2015): “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” and, from the Left, Professor Noam Chomsky (famed linguistics professor and anti-racist Jewish American human rights and anti-war activist of 85-Nobel-Laureate Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (2009): “There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world” [2].
(c) The US lackey UK went to war on a lie. One Elephant in the Room certainty is that US Governments lie. The absence of Iraqi WMD was empirically firmly established shortly after the 20 March 2003 invasion, 6 years before the Chilcot Inquiry was established and 13 years before the Chilcot Report was published. Sir John Chilcot concludes with typical English understatement in his Statement on the Chilcot Report (page 2): “The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraqi’s weapons of mass destruction – WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified”.
(d) 2.7 million post-invasion Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or war-imposed deprivation (1.2 million). In June 2004 in the absence of information from the US, UK or Australian Government about violent deaths in Iraq, I published the following estimates of avoidable deaths from deprivation and under-5 infant deaths in Occupied Iraq: “ Excess mortality and infant mortality have declined dramatically for nearly all developing countries outside Africa over the past 50 years. In Iraq, excess mortality and infant mortality reached a minimum in the 1980s. However, this decline reversed after the 1991 Gulf War. According to UNICEF, in 2001 the under-5 infant mortality was 109,000 in Iraq, which has a population of about 24 million, compared with about 1000 in Australia, which has a population of about 20 million. Rulers are responsible for the ruled. Accordingly the occupying Coalition, including Australia, is clearly responsible for the continuing excess mortality and infant mortality in Iraq. Both are estimated to be currently of the order of 100,000 per year, or about 300 per day. John Valder, a former president of the Liberal Party, has recently called for war crimes trials of the leaders of the Coalition, adducing the illegality of the invasion of Iraq (The Age, 9 April 2004). Mass mortality in a conquered population also constitutes a war crime, as well as a humanitarian tragedy. The actual Iraqi death toll is not being reported and publicly discussed. Ignoring mass human mortality in Iraq amounts to holocaust denial” (Gideon Polya, “Iraqi Holocaust”, ConScience column, Australasian Science, 2 June 2004).
I began writing for the highly ethical and humanitarian magazine MWC News in mid-2005. This is what I wrote in my first article published on MWC News (4 July 2005) in which I estimated post-invasion Iraqi “avoidable mortality” (excess deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) and post-invasion Iraqi “under-5 infant mortality” (under-5 year old infant deaths) using authoritative UN Population Division demographic data: “Thus the avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality have been 1.3 million and 0.9 million, respectively (for the Gulf War & Sanctions War against Iraq, 1991-2003), 6.5 million and 4.9 million (US-backed civil war and war against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, 1979-2001), 1.5 million and 1.2 million (US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, 2001-2005) and 0.4 million and 0.3 million (US invasion and occupation of Iraq, 2003-2005). About 90% of under-5 infant deaths in war-ravaged Iraq and Afghanistan have been avoidable”.
In August 2005 in a nation-wide broadcast on the ABC (Australia’s equivalent to the UK BBC) I stated: “The latest UNICEF report in 2005 estimates that for the year 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in occupied Iraq, 292,000 in occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the invading and occupying country Australia (noting that these countries have populations of about 25-million, 24-million and 20-million respectively). Using publicly available United Nations and medical literature data one can readily calculate that there have been about 0.4 million avoidable deaths in post-invasion Iraq. In 1991 the UK recommenced military action against Iraq that had kicked off in 1914. In 2003 the US, UK and Australia illegally invaded and conquered Iraq. I have calculated that the under-5 infant mortality was 1.2 million for Iraq since 1991; 0.2 million for Iraq since the 2003 invasion” (Gideon Polya, “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality”, ABC Radio National, Ockham’s Razor, 28 August 2003; also published as a chapter in a book “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007) .
In April 2006 I published an empowering article on MWC News entitled “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths” which described how anyone could rapidly access “under-5 infant deaths” in Occupied Iraq from the latest UNICEF data and then roughly estimate “total excess deaths” for impoverished countries like Iraq by simply dividing by 0.7, this providing an estimate of 0.5 million post-invasion excess deaths as of April 2006 in precise agreement with the carefully calculated estimate from UN Population Division data (Gideon Polya, "Layperson’s guide to counting Iraq deaths", MWC News, 6 April 2006; also published as chapter in Ken Coates (ed.) (2006), “Haditha Ethics, From Iraq to Iran?” (The Spokesman, London), pp78-80).
Two key papers by top US medical epidemiologists and published in the top medical journal The Lancet finally gave authoritative data based on scientific polling about post-invasion violent deaths in Iraq, estimated at about 100,000 in 2004 and at 670,000 by 2006. These expert analyses were supported by similar data from expert polling by the UK Opinion Research Business (ORB) agency. In stark contrast, Iraq Body Count has given vastly lower estimates of Iraqi violent deaths based on media and government reports, an approach trenchantly criticized by the US medical epidemiologists in The Lancet (in short, governments lie and media lie). The eminent US Just Foreign Policy organization presently estimates about 1.5 million violent Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion, this being based on the Lancet and ORB findings [2]. Just Foreign Policy: “The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003” . Conversely, Iraq Body Count presently estimates abut 170,000 violent civilians deaths and 250,000 total violent deaths since the invasion.
In 2009 the Chilcot Iraq War Inquiry was announced and I published the following commentary on MWC News: “The UK Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War is widely expected to be a white-wash. Its members are all eminent British Establishment figures variously connected with UK-US collaboration, including a pro-Zionist historian who has variously ignored, downplayed, minimized and excused Britain’s WW2 Bengali Holocaust that killed 6-7 million Indians. If eminent pro-Zionist historian Sir Martin Gilbert can variously ignore, downplay, minimize and excuse Britain’s WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which the British under Churchill deliberately, intentionally and remorseless starved 6-7 million Indians to death in the period 1943-1945, how do we expect him and his fellow British Establishment Chilcot Inquiry colleagues to respond to the 1990-2009 Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide that has (so far) been associated with over 4 million violent and non-violent Iraqi excess deaths, 1.8 million Iraqi under-5 infant deaths and 5-6 million Iraqi refugees? (see Gideon Polya, “MWC News, Bengali Holocaust, Zionist history & UK Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq”, MWC News, 28 November 2009 ).
My 2009 prediction on MWC News was indeed fulfilled with the 2016 Chilcot Inquiry Report following the flawed Iraq Body Count lead and estimating 150,000 post-invasion violent Iraqi deaths and totalling ignoring 10-fold greater estimates by Just Foreign Policy and ORB and radically downplaying estimates from world-leading US medical epidemiologists. The 2.6 million word Chilcot Report has predictably whitewashed the US-, UK- and Australia-complicit, 2003-2011 Iraq War in which 2.7 million Iraqis died from violence (1.5 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.2 million) by suggesting that about 150,000 Iraqis may have died due to the 2003-2011 invasion and occupation. Lies breed lies and, for example, the Australian ABC (the Australian equivalent of the UK BBC) has repeatedly offered the egregiously genocide-denying and holocaust-denying estimate of “tens of thousands of Iraqis” having died. Of course the carnage in Iraq is much greater if one includes the Sanctions period of 1990-2003 in which 0.2 million Iraqi died in the Gulf War and 1.7 million Iraqis died avoidably from violently-imposed Sanctions [2]. The Chilcot Inquiry has whitewashed the US-, UK- and Australia-complicit, 1990-2011 Iraqi Genocide and Iraqi Holocaust in which 4.6 million Iraqis died from violence (1.7 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (2.9 million), this constituting an Iraqi Holocaust (a holocaust involving a huge number of deaths ), and an Iraqi Genocide (genocide being defined by the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”) [2].
Concluding comments.
The reason for the genocide ignoring and holocaust ignoring by the Chilcot Inquiry can be seen from its members. The 5 British Establishment members of the Chilcot Inquiry included Sir John Chilcot ( English and languages graduate of Cambridge, and subsequent career civil servant), Sir Lawrence Freedman (Oxford PhD, Blair foreign policy adviser, "dean of British strategic studies", and a Jewish Zionist military historian), Sir Roderic Lyne (Etonian, history graduate of Leeds University after special entry due to poor A levels, and a career diplomat), the recently deceased Sir Martin Gilbert (history graduate of Oxford, Oxford PhD, pro-Iraq War, and Jewish Zionist historian of Churchill, WW1, WW2 and Apartheid Israel), and Baroness Usha Kumari Prashar (Kenya-born graduate in politics at Leeds University, PhD in social administration from Glasgow University, and director or chairman of a variety of public and private sector organisations). No scientists, no lawyers, and no international law experts were members of the Chilcot Inquiry but just the mandatory graduates from 92-Nobel-Laureate Cambridge University or 64-Nobel-Laureate Oxford University plus 2 people from the lesser 6-Nobel-Laureate Leeds University.
The Chilcot Inquiry had a Jewish Zionist bias, with 2 out of the 5 members being Jewish Zionists and the remainder being pro-Zionists as evidenced by the lack of any mention of Apartheid Israel in the Sir John Chilcot Statement [1]. Despite the reality that Jews represent 0.5% of the British population (with anti-racist Jews fervently hoping that most of them are not Zionists), it is apparent that there is overwhelming pro-Zionist position in the British political Establishment, whether Tory, Liberal Democrat or Labour, and this is reflected in 2 out of the 5 members of the Chilcot Inquiry being Jewish Zionists – an extraordinary conflict of interest since Apartheid Israel was actively involved in bombing Iraq in the 20th and 21st centuries and since the Iraq War was basically about oil, US hegemony and enhancing Apartheid Israeli security by destroying Iraq. Decent people around the word must (a) inform everyone they can about these awful realities , (b) insist that racist Zionists (RZs) and their supporters should be sidelined from public life as have been like racists such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, corporations and countries (notably the US, UK and Australia) disproportionately responsible for the Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide.
References.
[1]. “The Iraq Inquiry Homepage”: http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/ .
[2]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .