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Iraq atrocities ignored in

Bush & Blair’s hollow words

Published May 30, 2006 10:25 PM

There was no apology for Safa Younis.

When U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair held a news conference in Washington May 25, they admitted for the first time to making “mistakes” and suffering “setbacks” in their more than three-year war of conquest in Iraq—things the whole world has been aware of for quite some time.

In return for this less than startling admission, the duo—each at the lowest ebb of popularity in their respective countries—received reams of sober coverage in the Western media, designed to give the impression that, finally, these leaders of the imperialist world were facing reality and could begin to turn the situation around.

But there was no apology to Safa Younis, nor any promise of reparations to her and her neighbors in Haditha, Iraq, who survived a massacre of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines last November. The massacre is the latest in a long line of bloody scandals since Washington, backed by its junior partner in London, launched the “War on Terror” in 2001.

Safa, 13, was the only survivor of her family of eight. Rampaging Marines slaughtered her father and mother, Khafif and Aeda Yasin Ahmed, her four sisters aged 14, 10, 5 and 3, her 8-year-old brother, and a 1-year-old girl staying with the family.

Neighbors said the family members were shot at close range or killed by grenades. The children died screaming.

Safa survived because she was covered in her mother’s blood when she fell to the floor.The killers thought she was dead.

Her next-door neighbors, the Ali family—from 76-year-old amputee and grandfather Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali all the way to 4-year-old Abdullah—suffered a similar fate. (“In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre,” Washington Post, May 28)

Bush and Blair also said nothing about the recent report of the United Nations Commission on Torture. The report condemned the United States for torturing “suspected terrorists” around the globe. And it called on Washington to immediately close the chamber of horrors at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where more than 400 prisoners are held without charge.

Of course, Bush and Blair were also silent on how their governments conspired to concoct the outrageous “weapons of mass destruction” lies used to justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Nor did they comment on the decades-long U.S. scheme to swallow Iraq’s vast oil wealth lock, stock and $70-a-barrel.

So just what did Bush and Blair “admit”?

Blair spoke of tactical mistakes, like underestimating the Iraqi popular resistance. “It should have been obvious to us,” he said.

But colonialists and imperialists have always discounted the people’s will to resist.

Bush, who now wishes he’d managed to drag more countries into the occupation to take some pressure off himself, said he regretted belligerent pronouncements he made after Sept. 11, 2001. He said, “In certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted.”

As for torturing and killing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, Bush was not apologetic, merely resentful of the exposures. “We’ve been paying for that for a long time,” he said.

Both refused to offer any plan to bring the troops home. Bush dismissed reports that the Pentagon hopes to reduce the U.S. occupation force from 131,000 to 100,000 by the end of the year.

When a U.S. military official told Reuters May 27 that U.S. troops might hand control of Baghdad and three other Iraqi provinces to local police later this year, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad publicly pooh-poohed the idea the next day.

On May 23, meanwhile, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported that military chiefs in London plan to keep troops in Iraq until at least 2010.

As of May 29, some 113 British and 2,466 U.S. troops have died. (CNN.com)

There will be no peace in Iraq until there is justice for the Haditha martyrs and the thousands more just like them, known and unknown. There will be no peace until all the foreign troops are withdrawn, until reparations are made, until Iraq enjoys true self-determination.

There must be no peace for Bush, Blair, or the other war criminals until they are brought to people’s justice.

If you remember nothing else about Bush and Blair’s news conference, remember this: There was no apology to Safa Younis.