US President George Bush is preparing for a new war on Iraq using the pretext that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction.
Pentagon papers leaked on July 4 reveal plans for an assault on Iraq involving 250,000 troops. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfield is seeking new laws that will give the military a freer hand by reducing congressional supervision of the Pentagon. Meanwhile deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz has been in Ankara, pressuring Turkey to support a US invasion of Iraq.
Scott Ritter, a former senior United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq, observes there is no justification for war based upon the facts that had been presented by both the United States and Great Britain. Ritter points out that the UN has already demolished 90% of Iraq's stockpile.
Despite the failure of the CIA to find any evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, the United Nations Security Council has used this assertion to justify a crippling economic blockade on the 22 million people of Iraq (assisted by the Australian navy). A 1999 UNICEF report calculated that more than half a million children had died as a direct result of sanctions since 1990 (an average of 200 per day).
The world's greatest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in fact lies in the hands of the Pentagon, which has been allocated a budget of US$396 billion for the 2003 financial year. Speaking at the West Point military academy on June 1, Bush refused to rule out the possibility of first strike nuclear attacks against Iraq and other rogue states. With US congressional elections due in November, the propaganda machine is being cranked up to win the support of American people for a new war.
To date only two other governments have pledged their support for a US attack on Iraq: Britain and Australia.
We the undersigned demand:
No US attack on Iraq
Lift the sanctions on the Iraqi people
No Australian government support for a war on Iraq
Further, we pledge to build the largest possible peaceful protest rallies in cities around Australia on November 3, on the eve of US congressional elections.
Signed: Keysar Trad, Lebanese Muslim Association; Jamal Daoud, NSW Greens spokesperson for immigration & refugees; Nick Everett, Network Opposing War & Racism (Sydney); Pip Hinman, Action in Solidarity with Asia & the Pacific; John Hallam, Sydney Friends of the Earth; Teri Calder, Greenpeace Australia; Dick Nichols, national co-convenor, Socialist Alliance; Damien Lawson, Western Suburbs Legal Service, Newport; Layla Mohammed, Worker Communist Party of Iraq; Dr John Tomlinson, senior lecturer, QUT; Peter McGregor, senior lecturer, School of Communications, University of Western Sydney; John Nightingale, lecturer, School of Economics, University of New England; Gary MacLennan, lecturer, QUT; John Tully, lecturer, Asian and International Studies, Victoria University; Nell Graham, Environmental Education Officer; Jill Hickson, producer, Actively Radical TV; Doreen Borrow, Australian Peace Committee, South Coast branch; Marg Perrott, South Coast May Day Committee president; Ken Stewart, Urban Guerillas; Chris Cain, delegate, MUA; Daniel Jardine, vice-president, general staff, Macquarie University branch, NTEU; Alana Kerr, central councillor, PSA; Melanie Sjoberg, delegate, PSA; Noreen Navin, state councillor, NSWTF; Adam Leeman, delegate, AMWU; Liam Mitchell, delegate, AMWU; Jenny Long, delegate, PSA; Lachlan Malloch, delegate, PSA; Chris Pickering, delegate, PSA.
[To sign this staement email <nick.everett@lycos.com>.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 7, 2002.
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