But isn't Saddam the criminal?
So what if he is! We think it's the right of our leaders to be criminals. Criminal Saddam may be, but he's a minor one and 'punishing' him is a smokescreen for crimes against humanity. There is nothing in international law which says that you can carry out crimes like the ones committed against Iraq because of any crime you say the country or its leader has committed. In fact, the opposite is the case. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 30, says that no one is entitled to justify an attack against fundamental human rights by referring to those self same rights. Amongst the laws and declarations, which the war against Iraq violates, is the UN Convention Against Racism, 1965. The demonisation of Saddam Hussein is an act of racial hatred and discrimination because it promotes hatred of an individual in order to justify war against an ethnic or national group. When you watch the 'news', ask yourself how often the sovereign state of Iraq is referred to as 'Saddam' and how often Saddam is referred to as a mad man, tyrant or psychopath.

Aren't we fighting for the world?
Too true! 'We' own it. Just as the destruction of Iraq follows a pattern which goes back centuries, so does the propaganda. The spin never acknowledges or justifies western domination of the region. Because it is racist, it simply assumes that the west has the right to control the lives of other people. Just as the Nazis presented the Jews as 'a problem' for Germany and just as the German people assumed that their leaders were 'statesmen'.

Isn't history on 'our' side?
Far from it. History tells us everything we need to know. All over the world, the west has promoted insurrections, financed coups, armed and trained death squads and paramilitaries, promoted 'covert' war and replaced popular governments with puppets. In the middle east alone, since 1946, it has 'intervened' militarily against Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, Lebanon (twice), North Yemen, Abu Dhabi and Afghanistan, not to mention Iraq and plotted to murder every Arab leader from Nasser to Saddam. In 1986, it murdered Gaddafi's eighteen month old daughter in an air raid intended to kill him, while, in 1993, it bombed Iraq as a punishment for 'plotting to kill George Bush'. The United States overthrew an elected government in Iran in 1953 and a nationalist government in Iraq in 1963. During the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, which it encouraged Iraq to start, it shifted positions repeatedly in order to keep the war going, at the expense of both countries. It armed the Kurds to make war on Iraq in 1972 and armed Iraq to make war on the Kurds in 1975. In 1991, it called the Kurds to war again but since 'sorting' Saddam, it has 'permitted' its ally Turkey, to attack the Kurds. Did you know that Turkish troops invaded Northern Iraq, in May 1997, and are killing Kurds there now? In October, US Congress passed a law committing America to arm Iraqi opposition groups, sponsoring more 'covert' war, of Arab against Arab. And this only months after it attacked Afghanistan and Sudan for supporting what it called 'terrorism' against it.

Isn't it about 'him' breaking agreements?
No. Iraq cannot break agreements because the west has relieved it of the right to make them. Iraq receives ultimatums and is punished for 'obstruction' when it acts as though it has either a point of view or a right to be heard. The west has declared Iraq, like Libya, Cuba and others, a pariah state. It's part of the pattern of abuse which the Convention Against Racism describes. It relieves Iraq, conveniently, of what would otherwise be its rights as a sovereign member of the UN.

Isn't the world on our side?
It may be afraid of 'us', but it's not on 'our' side. Most of the non white world thinks the US, not Saddam, Arafat, Bin Laden or even Netanyahu, is the criminal in the middle east. UN agencies, international 'laws' and 'human rights' legislation were not created by people who are victims of war crimes or racism, but by the powerful states who commit them. The UN 'Security Council' does not represent the international community, but acts, very often, in violation of its will, as well as of its laws. The 'sanctions' imposed upon Iraq violate the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Protocol article 54. The Genocide Convention, too, says that 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' is an act of genocide. The 'weapons inspections', like the sanctions, are a crime which offends against the fundamentals of international law. A nation's ability to protect itself from those who would organise war against it, is the essence of its ability to exist as a sovereign state. Without that, people in poor countries like Iraq have no status or rights, and, as a group, no hope of justice or redress.

Isn't 'he' the one in control?
Those who have reduced Iraq to what a UN Under Secretary General himself called 'a pre-industrial age' enjoy speculating about what 'he' will do next. How he frustrates them, stopping 'our' planes in mid air, undermining our will, conning everyone into believing he's a victim and frustrating our attempts to bomb 'him'. The choice between being bombed or starved, is no choice at all. Nor is it a choice to 'settle', or not settle, for another promise, which isn't a promise, that 'we' might look again at the sanctions. Iraq is at war, whether she is bombed or not. The sanctions will NEVER be lifted. The Americans have said so. Iraq would have to become a pro western state. After the crimes which have been carried out against it, it would never choose to do so. The UN General Assembly (the real international community) has passed resolutions in each of the last five years calling on the US to lift its illegal blockade of Cuba. It ignored them all.

Isn't 'he' getting off lightly?
Sure ... he's still alive! And so is Iraq, but only just. We've all heard the lines. You're lucky we didn't finish the job in 1991 and we'll get tough with you next time. We hear them and think they're the words of statesmen. Coming from Saddam, though, we'd think they were the words of a mad man. The 'job', by the way, was the most gratuitous campaign of killing in the whole of human history, a massacre uniquely disproportionate to the level of resistance. We'll never know exactly how many - somewhere between a quarter and half a million, in less than six weeks - because they buried them in mass, unmarked graves beneath the sands of the desert. It wasn't only the numbers they wanted to hide, but the grisly methods of human waste disposal. Iraq's retreating army was trapped deliberately, fleeing along the road to Basra, and, with thousands of civilians, methodically slaughtered, a violation of the Geneva Convention, common article three, and one of the worst war crimes of modern times. While anything up to a third of Iraq's army was exterminated, the saturation bombing campaign was intended to destroy the infrastructure of the country, its sewerage and electrical plants and its water system, aims which violate protocol one, additional to the Geneva Convention, (articles 50-57). The west 'experimented', as it always has, on what Churchill called 'uncivilised tribes' with, amongst other things, 300 tons of shells coated with depleted uranium, a radioactive material which poisoned the atmosphere and which will remain for billions of years. They are dying in Iraq and Kuwait, not only of malnutrition and disease, but of cancers and strange illnesses, as are thousands of our own servicemen and women. The 'war' violated every convention going - illegal weapons, illegal killing, illegal objectives.

But we're a democracy. Don't we debate everything?
The 'debate', like the crime, is part of the privilege of being who 'we' are and of owning other people. We are not being disarmed by those who can bomb us when they feel like it, or starved until we change our government, nor punished for the crimes which our leaders have committed, nor do we have to prove our intentions to those who have carried out war crimes against us. It's very different if you live in Iraq. Western 'statesmen' have eliminated the people of Iraq, as human beings with identities. Their propaganda has turned Arabs into an ugly, racist stereotype of fanatical 'terror' which must be contained. Or into stupid children, incapable of understanding truth because they're not 'educated' or 'free' like we are. The power these 'leaders' represent is the part of the story which really matters. It is never discussed. If you don't think it's racism, ask yourself how you would judge crimes as gross as the 'turkey shoot' on the Basra road if they were committed by people who didn't look like Blair or Clinton. Racists are not ordinary white people who live on council estates and are frightened of their black neighbours. Racists are people in power who control our minds just as they control our lives and the lives of millions like us around the world.

Isn't the suffering of Iraq just propaganda by Saddam lovers?
Saddam's propaganda is as far behind our own, as are his 'weapons of mass destruction'. Do you think that he could kill as 'we' do and convince anyone that it is war, let alone that it's proof of his greatness, his statesmanship or his 'restraint'? No, Saddam lovers, American haters and appeasers are part of the smear. Racists attack their object with illusions which are a reflection of themselves. Think how often you have heard them. They hide weapons of mass destruction, they plot to murder 'us', they hold us to ransom, they seek to build empires, they are brainwashed and they are like Hitler. You've as much right to love Saddam, as to love Blair. It's the second rather than the first who is capable of genocide, in spite of what they tell you. In fact, most of those who've spoken out against the war have a long history of opposition to Saddam, unlike the racists who armed and encouraged him. It is a fact that 1.6 million Iraqis have died as a direct result of the effects of sanctions. Contrary to the impression given by the media, the figures don't come from Baghdad. They come from UN agencies, such as the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and UNICEF. And it's no new 'ploy' devised by the cunning Saddam. As long ago as May 1991, a team of experts from Harvard University estimated that the sanctions had killed, already, more than fifty thousand people. Anywhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred people are dying every day, the bulk of them children and the elderly and thirty percent of the under five's are suffering from malnutrition. It's got nothing to do with Saddam building palaces or arms. No one is entitled to starve Iraqis in order to stop him doing either. And it's got nothing to do with Iraq having rich people. It's entitled to have those as well. Iraq was a country with one of the strongest economies in the region, and highest levels of literacy. And a health care system, modelled on the British NHS, which was widely admired. The crimes of 1991 were only an item in a long term policy, aimed at altering that status for good. The US spends sixty percent of its Gross National Product on arms, more than all other nations put together and the US and the UK combined export more (The Women's Budget, J. Midgley, 1989 and Evidence to the Scott Inquiry, Guardian, 17 Feb 1998). If the 'defence' industry was about survival, then Iraq, not America, would need the weapons. It isn't, it's about control. The Anglo American alliance cannot 'promote' peace in the Middle East, any more than its imperialism can promote 'self determination' for the people of the region. Its power is organised for the promotion of war and its 'interests' rely upon it.

What can we do?
It's more a case of what we must do. Remember that those who have organised the carve up of the middle east have been able to do so because there is no one to punish them. Two world wars and one cold war are over. They don't fight amongst themselves anymore. No possibility exists, of defeat in any war. We believe in people like Blair because we think we've no choice, because we believe them better, more civilised than us and because we've been taught that the poor, rather than the powerful, are dangerous and must be contained. We are the only people who can do anything. If you want to fight back, you will not be alone. There is opposition all over the world. Mass demos you never see on the news and condemnation from world leaders you never hear, including both of the UN's previous Secretary Generals and the Pope. Please say NO ... write to your MPs, Clinton, the BBC, Kofi Annan and all those who are partners in the crime. Tell them that you do not accept responsibility for their crimes. Tell them that you do not give your consent.

'If war aims are stated which seem to be concerned solely with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world ... The interests of other peoples should be stressed ... This would have a better propaganda effect.'

Private memorandum, the Council of Foreign Relations to the US State Department, 1941