Did you fail to learn the following by reading the newspaper or by watching the news?

No surprise if so. The following is mostly avoided by your mainstream media. If you believe what our governments have been saying, then the following may well seem far fetched. That is why I have tried to back up the points in my fact sheet with links to some reliable sources.

• Scott Ritter, 2nd in charge of the UNSCOM weapons inspection, team insists that in the period 1991 to 1996, 95% of all that they believed that they had was found and destroyed and they believed that the remainder was either used on Iran, the Kurds or destroyed by bombing during the gulf war.
  See: Scott Ritters book "Endgame".
  See: The interview between Ritter and Pitt in "The Guardian"
  See: Speech given by Scott Ritter in Boston
  See: Article originally published in Britain's "Daily Mirror".



• Claims made in the September Bush/Blair/Howard dossier used in getting security resolution 1441 have been proved false under Blix. Specific sites were named and pointed to on maps. Nothing has been found there and most were derelict.
  See: Article in "GreenLeft Weekly".
  See: Article in "Scoop".



• The International Atomic Energy Commission has dismissed claims of any Nuclear weapons capability, and the claims about the aluminium tubes long before Powels "evidence". There is no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear capability.
  See: International Atomic Energy press report.



• Sadam is not linked to the Sept 11th attacks. Both the CIA and MI5 have, on occasions, admitted that there are no credible links between Iraq and AlQaeda.
  See: BBC press report about leaked security document.
  See: Article "Allies Find No Links" originally published in "The Los Angeles Times".
  (use Edit/Search on your browser to find "Truth and fiction" on the page).



• Powells evidence is all either from secret sources or highly unreliable sources.
  See: Detailed analysis by the U.S. Institute for Public Accuracy
  See: Powells claims contrasted with Blix's report and ElBaradeiv's report to the Security Council
  See: U.S. Foreign Policy analysis of Powels evidence.
  See: Inspectors disprove many of Powells accusations




• Our governments and our media often make the claim that Sadam Hussein kicked out the UNSCOM weapons inspectors in December 16th 1998. They can only do this because our long term memories are not so good. Richard Butler, the then head of UNSCOM withdrew his team on that date for safety reasons just before the Operation Desert Fox bombings of Baghdad began.

  Richard Butlers activities have been documented in The New York Times and The Washington Post. These include spying and reporting Sadam's movements to the CIA, to facilitate Sadam's assassination by bombing Baghdad in Operation Desert Fox.

  See: Expose' of "Forgotten" knowledge many times exposed and admitted.
  See: How the US undermined the weapons inspection in 1998.



• Dick Cheney, Condola Rice, George Bush have all been senior executives of oil companies. George Bush Senior has a huge personal investment in arms manufacture.
  See: Article in the "Sunday Herald".
  (use Edit/Find on your browser to search for "Care for a few pointers")
  See: Article in the "Dubya Report".



• Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world at a time when the worlds oil reserves are starting to feel the pinch. The oil in Iraq has been nationalized. Iraq sells the oil to the USSR, France and to the US.. The oil companies that previously had the oil wells have accepted compensation for them. The same oil companies are now saying that they signed under duress.
  See: Oil in Iraq.
  See: History of Iraq.
  (use Edit/Search on your browser to find "compensated" on the page).
  See: Cato journal.
  See: U.S. Court proceedings re Exxon.
  (use Edit/Search on your browser to find "Iraq nationalized" on the page).
  See: Saudi journal.



• It is cheap to extract oil when it is plentiful, but expensive otherwise. Iraq's oil is plentiful and can be pumped out for under $1.00 per barrel, leaving a huge profit margin.



• The U.S. has no plans to implement any sort of democracy in Iraq. At least not until the Iraqi oil reserves dwindle. That is because 85% of Iraqis are Shiite muslims, as in Iran. Any real democracy there would simply not permit the U.S. to steal their oil. Nor would it allow Iraq to be used as a military base to attack Iran from.
  See: Kurdish Outrage.
  See: Article originally published in "The Independent"
  See: Defense and foreign policy studies.



• Despite constantly using the slogans "Freedom" and "Democracy", the U.S. has not favoured democracies over dictatorships. They have overthrown democratically elected governments when it has suited them, and where a dictator does as he is told they will interfere to prevent any democracy forming. There is a long list, but the following comes to mind:-
  • They were convicted by the World Court of terrorism upon the democratically elected government of Nicaragua. They funded terrorists in an attempt to overthrow the government.
  • They overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile, (President Allende) and installed the dictator Pinochet. Then they assisted in the murder of many in order to keep him in power.
  • Only months ago they failed in their attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan government.
  • They assisted Sadam Hussein into power and supported his government with billions of dollars of aid before the gulf war.
  
  See: William Blums book "Killing Hope" details over 50 such interventions.



• In stark contrast to John Howard's statement that we will be very careful to avoid any civilian casualties, a humanitarian disaster is expected by medical experts and non government organisations. The very most conservative estimates are around 50000. Others range well into the high hundreds of thousands. "Operation Shock and Awe" will release as much firepower on the first day as during the first gulf war... and again the next day... directly onto the capital city, Baghdad. Promising to make the bombing of Dresden look like a picnic.
  See: Analysis by health professionals "Medact" and "Physicians for Social Responsibility"
  See: Graphic descriptions of what is planned for the bombing of Baghdad
  See: Links to several studies of the likely immediate human costs




• Depleted uranium (nuclear waste) was used in place of lead in many of the US and UK missiles used upon southern Iraq during the first gulf war. The effects of these on the surviving population were similar to those experienced in Hiroshima. They caused leukemia, birth defects and cancer. Depleted uranium (DU) will be used again during the missile bombardment of the populated city of Bagdhad in 1993.

  Government politicians have denied that the nuclear wasted scattered across southern Iraq has had any bad effects, but first hand witnesses and independent studies have revealed otherwise.

  See: Effects of depleted uranium as originally published in "The Independent"
  See: Results of a Scientific study of the effects of Depeted Uranium in Iraq.
  See: Afghani vitims of Depleted Uranium.




• According to Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, 4,000 more children under five are dying every month in Iraq than would have died before Western sanctions were imposed. Over the eight years that these sanctions have been in place, over a million iraqis have died. Half of these were children under five.

  Tony Blair, John Howard etc claim that the so called effects of the sanctions are in fact due to Sadam Hussein's stiffling and corrupting this system to the great detriment of his people. Independent observers as well as the UN personnel in charge of the food for oil program tell a very different story.

  In fact it is not the lack of food that is killing people - the lack of clean water is. The majority of patients in Iraq's hospitals are stricken with amoebic dysentery, gastroenteritis and other waterborne diseases. This is because the water treatmentment plants and the power generation plants that are needed to operate them were all deliberately targeted during the first gulf war, and then the of import of spare parts etc was blocked by the sanctions.

  See: UN officials and NGOs refute Blair's claims
  See: Interview with former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq
  See: U.S. Dept Military Intelligence reports in 1991 precisely predicted what effects of sanctions would be.



• The war will be reported by means of U.S. reporters "embedded" into military units. Many reporters have been rejected because they dont have a sufficiently pro war attitude. These reporters have been made to sign censorship agreements. The news networks they work for have been made to sign another set of censorship contracts. They were given a choice:- Either sign the contract, or we wont let any of your reporters be embedded into the military. The U.S. has warned that U.S. journalists and other foreign journalists in Iraq will be killed if they attempt to use radio, satelite or other electronic means to provide independent coverage of the war.
  See: Article originally published in the "Independent".
  See: Interview with BBC war correspondent.

Other links ...