Iraq War

"The war in Iraq we've spent 2 trillion dollars, thousands of lives, we don't even have it, Iran is taking over Iraq with the second largest oil reserve in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake, George Bush made a mistake, we can make mistakes, but that one was 'a beauty.' We should've never been in Iraq, we've destabilized the Middle East."

"Similar ferocity marked the Marine assaults against the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. Eighteen thousand of the city’s 39,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. More than 120 Americans and thousands of Iraqi civilians and insurgents died. Had it not been for modern medical techniques, about as many Americans would have been killed in Fallujah as in Hue. And over a decade later, it has taken 100,000 Iraqi forces (to include the Kurdish peshmerga soldiery) a year to kill or drive out the estimated 5,000 terrorists called ISIS from Mosul. Undoubtedly the toll, if ever accurately assessed, will be much higher than in Hue of 1968."

"President George W. Bush would have ordered the war even without the United Nations presentation, or if Secretary Powell had failed miserably in giving it. But the secretary’s gravitas was a significant part of the two-year-long effort by the Bush administration to get Americans on the war wagon. That effort led to a war of choice with Iraq — one that resulted in catastrophic losses for the region and the United States-led coalition, and that destabilized the entire Middle East."

"As I look back at our lock-step march toward war with Iraq, I realize that it didn’t seem to matter to us that we used shoddy or cherry-picked intelligence; that it was unrealistic to argue that the war would “pay for itself,” rather than cost trillions of dollars; that we might be hopelessly naïve in thinking that the war would lead to democracy instead of pushing the region into a downward spiral. The sole purpose of our actions was to sell the American people on the case for war with Iraq. Polls show that we did. Mr. Trump and his team are trying to do it again. If we’re not careful, they’ll succeed."

"The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now have internationally a lawless world (or “World Order”) in which “Might makes right,” and in which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster “law,” ruling on an international level... Take, for example, Condoleezza Rice, who famously warned “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” (That warning was one of the most effective lies in order to deceive the American public into invading Iraq, because President Bush had had no real evidence, at all, that there still remained any WMD in Iraq after the U.N. had destroyed them all, and left Iraq in 1998 — and he knew this; he was informed of this; he knew that he had no real evidence, at all: he offered none; it was all mere lies.)"

"On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet, “The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq” and wrote that “our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion,” and linked to solid evidence, backing up their estimate.... On 6 February 2020, BusinessInsider bannered “US taxpayers have reportedly paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2 trillion total for the Iraq war alone”, and linked to the academic analysis that supported this estimate. The U.S. regime’s invasive war, which the Bush gang perpetrated against Iraq, was also a crime against the American people (though Iraqis suffered far more from it than we did)."

"Probably no story I ever did changed my views more than a trip I took to Iraq for Esquire magazine in 2003. I arrived a tepid supporter of the war, and of neoconservatism more generally. I returned home a determined opponent of both. The reality of Iraq bore no resemblance to the debates we were having back in Washington. The occupation was so clearly a disaster, even early on. The problem wasn’t simply that the Iraqi resistance was more determined than we’d imagined, and the country itself more complicated, though both of those things were true. The problem was that America wasn’t suited to be a colonial power. Effective colonialists rule the countries they conquer. They bring order and clarity. They make certain they benefit from the exercise of their power, because otherwise, what’s the point? America was totally incapable of any of that. The Americans occupying Iraq couldn’t even admit to themselves they were colonialists. Instead, the State Department dressed up the whole operation like it was a kind of armed sensitivity training seminar, designed to liberate Iraqi women from their traditional gender roles: “Now that we’ve overthrown Saddam, we march ahead to overthrow the patriarchy!” The result was failure, accompanied by chaos on every level. Watching it, I realized that there was nothing conservative about neoconservatism. The neocons were just liberals with guns, the most destructive kind. The upside of the trip was that I made a lifelong friend. To this day I’m close to Kelly McCann, the retired Marine officer who guided me in Iraq. He’s still one of the most impressive people I know."

"A game about the Iraq War might not seem like it poses big questions about the politics of war, but as a hugely popular form of mass media, video games can influence people’s emotional states, thought patterns, and perceptions. Every year, military-themed first person shooters (FPS), which simulate combat from the point of view of a combatant, generate billions of dollars of revenue."

"Consider Full Spectrum Warrior, a 2004 game that began development as a training simulator for U.S. Army soldiers. The company behind it, Pandemic, modified the game into a commercial release that so the Army could send the game downrange for soldiers to play while deployed. Set in a fictionalized version of Iraq, the game features an empty, crumbling urban landscape coded to be obviously Middle Eastern, filled only with Arab men to shoot. The strongest incentive not to engage in [combat isn’t to safeguard civilians, but to avoid personal injury to your squad mates. Despite its marketing as “realistic” and messaging that it was developed with input from the Pentagon, the game-world it creates removes the complexity of urban insurgency and substitutes simplified moral dilemmas that portray the military in unambiguously good terms—an enjoyable setting for a game, but hardly reflective of the reality of the war in Iraq."

"The U.S. military also appears to have been involved in the production of Six Days in Fallujah, which raises questions about how it is intended to shape perceptions of the Iraq war. In the mid-2000s, Tamte led a different video game developer named Destineer, which partnered with the Japanese publisher Konami to release a version of Six Days. Back then, Tamte claimed the game had no stance on the politics of the war in Iraq, as he repeated this year. At the time, Destineer ran a thriving side business making training simulations for the Pentagon and the intelligence community. The U.S. Marine Corps was an official consultant for the company’s first game, Close Combat: First to Fight. And In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture investment arm, partnered with the company in 2005. The suggestion that a company with such deep ties to the government could make a game without politics sparked an outcry, and Konami deemed the game too controversial. They canceled its publication in 2009. No one is canceling Six Days in Fallujah anymore. Tamte’s current company, Victura, is also a publisher, so he is moving forward with a new developer contracted to update the game’s code and gameplay. The game is slated for release later this year."

"The first Gulf War ended not with a crushing defeat of an enemy, but with a cease fire, leaving a large army in place that continued to defy the UN treaty and waste millions of US taxpayer's dollars every year. Untold thousands of Iraqis lost their lives due to the conditions under the emboldened Saddam Hussein. After twelve years of this the United States went to war with Iraq again. That second war became known as the Iraq war, though some call it the Second Gulf War. The war seemed to finally end for the United States in 2011 when the last major US forces returned home, but the coalition forces pulled out too quickly, under President Obama, and ISIS rose up in the vacuum. Finally, under President Trump, ISIS was destroyed in Iraq and Syria and Iraq finally has some sort of peace."

"Then the 9/11 attacks happen. And the simplest way to put it is that Joe Biden just supports almost everything that the Bush administration wants in the immediate aftermath. Biden not only votes in favor of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, he plays a key role in facilitating a war based on lies."

"The invasion of Iraq has resulted in the almost complete annihilation of that country’s Christian community, and the attempt to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria has seen that country’s Christians mercilessly attacked by the agents of US power, radical Islamists. To be a Christian in the Middle East is to be in constant fear that the USA will set its sights on your country because wherever it arrives, Mujahideen are never that far away."

"Some of the wars America fought were "simply for profit" and the sanctions it has imposed on certain countries have been as destructive as wars... The American people have virtually no say over when we go to war. These decisions are made in back rooms somewhere...The American people continue to be lied to about why we go to war, because again, one of the big reasons is simply for profit, and that's always been true to some extent, but now it is in a very naked way."

"[On the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan] From a strategic point of view, it has to be seen as a complete failure, and yet it went on for 20 years, why did it go on for 20 years? Because the defense industry companies that make the bombs, that make the planes, that make the vehicles, and also the private military contractors that now are fighting the wars in lieu of public military personnel, they made trillions of dollars as long as the war continued. So they didn't care if the war was ever won, the goal was for the war to simply continue forever... the point is not to win the war, but to make sure it never ends because you're going to keep making profits."

"Twenty years ago today the US and the UK invaded Iraq in a disastrous military mission based on flawed intelligence, months of lying to the world, and a casual disregard for international law. The invasion would lead to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, decades of civil war and vicious sectarian violence in Iraq, and the rise of the Islamic State militant group. Incubated in a US prison camp, IS was directed and staffed in part by former members and officers of the Saddam-era Ba’ath party. In a pattern that would be repeated again and again over the following two decades of the “war on terror”, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom, assumed that overwhelming technical and military superiority was all they needed to control a distant nation and its people. A “shock and awe” bombing campaign showcasing that military power launched the invasion, and ground troops moved into Iraq the next day, 20 March. Saddam was soon on the run, and in early April, Baghdad was formally occupied. On 1 May, US president George Bush set up a theatrical spectacle on an aircraft carrier, flying in to announce “mission accomplished”. America had ended “major combat operations” in Iraq. It was a speech that betrayed American arrogance, ignorance and disdain about realities on the ground in Iraq, where decades of bloodshed were only just beginning."

"The damning Chilcot report on Britain’s involvement in the war later found that the UK had chosen to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted, and then the prime minister Tony Blair had deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Britain’s intelligence agencies produced “flawed information”, working from the start on the misguided assumption that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and made no attempt to consider the possibility that he had got rid of them, which he had. Blair ignored warnings that Iraq could degenerate into civil war after the invasion, including from US secretary of state, Colin Powell who accurately predicted “a terrible blood-letting of revenge after Saddam goes”. The British government had no post-invasion strategy and no influence on Iraq’s postwar US-run administration. Overall, Britain did not achieve its objectives in Iraq, Chilcot found. The war undermined US and British authority on the international stage, with the reputational damage continuing until today, when it has hampered efforts to gather support for Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion."

"We want to say to America: Is it worth it to you? Won't you have have, afterward, decades of hostility in the Islamic world?"

"In my opinion, it disrespects the United Nations. It doesn't take into account what the rest of the world thinks. And I think this is serious."

"In all the solemn statements by self-important politicians and newspaper columnists about a coming war against Iraq, and even in the troubled comments by some who are opposed to the war, there is something missing. The talk is about strategy and tactics and geopolitics, and personalities. It is about air war and ground war, about alliances and weapons of mass destruction, and arms inspections, about oil and natural gas, about nation-building and “regime change.” What is missing is what an American war on Iraq will do to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ordinary human beings who are not concerned with geopolitics and military strategy, and who just want their children to live, to grow up. They are not concerned with “national security” but with personal security, with food and shelter and medical care and peace. I am speaking of those Iraqis and those Americans who will, with absolute certainty, die in such a war, or lose arms or legs, or be blinded. Or they will be stricken with some strange and agonizing sickness, which will lead to their bringing deformed children into the world (as happened to families in Vietnam, in Iraq, and also in the United States)."

"Only rarely has the human story, with names and images, come through as more than a one-day flash of truth, as one day when I read of a ten-year-old boy, named Noor Mohammed, lying on a hospital bed on the Pakistani border, his eyes gone, his hands blown off, a victim of American bombs. Surely, we must discuss the political issues. We note that an attack on Iraq would be a flagrant violation of international law. We note that the mere possession of dangerous weapons is not grounds for war—otherwise we would have to make war on dozens of countries. We point out that the country that possesses by far the most “weapons of mass destruction” is our country, which has used them more often and with more deadly results than any other nation on earth. We can point to our national history of expansion and aggression. We have powerful evidence of deception and hypocrisy at the highest levels of our government. But, as we contemplate an American attack on Iraq, should we not go beyond the agendas of the politicians and the experts? (John LeCarré has one of his characters say: “I despise experts more than anyone on earth.”) Should we not ask everyone to stop the high-blown talk for a moment and imagine what war will do to human beings whose faces will not be known to us, whose names will not appear except on some future war memorial?"

"On the 20th of March 2003, at approximately 10.30 a.m. Malaysian time, the United States of America, together with Britain and its other allies, commenced military action against Iraq. This course of action was taken without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Malaysia deeply regrets this action as it blatantly disregards the multilateral process and the United Nations (UN) Charter; it is in contravention of international law, upon which the security and stability of the world is based. This military action does not have the support of the majority of nations and peoples of the world, including many citizens of the United States and Britain themselves. Malaysia has repeatedly voiced its stand at the UN and to the United States, that the issue of Iraq should be resolved through the multilateral process. Any military solution should only be considered as a last resort after all other avenues have been exhausted, and should be sanctioned by the UN. Malaysia is of the opinion that there is neither sufficient evidence nor justifiable cause for invading Iraq. Iraq has progressively disarmed in compliance with the UN Security Council Resolution. Malaysia remains unconvinced by allegations that Iraq is in a position to be a threat to other nations, especially to the United States, given the latter's military strength and geographical distance from Iraq. The world is now at a critical juncture following the action of the United States and its allies, which will go down as a black mark in history. A large and powerful nation, along with its allies has acted with disregard for international law, humanity and universal justice. It has launched an attack against a sovereign state that has diminished capacity to defend itself. What is more worrisome is the wanton destruction of Iraq that could come through the use of the most sophisticated weapons in the world, on a people and nation who have already suffered for 12 years as a result of the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations."

"It is our challenge and responsibility to sort through the propaganda of selective facts, distortions, and images in search of truth. When a country goes on a war track, stepping out of line is always hazardous. All kinds of specious accusations fly. Whether you travel to Baghdad or hold an anti-war sign on Main Street back home, some people will accuse you of serving the propaganda interests of the foreign foe. But the only way to prevent your actions from being misconstrued is to do nothing. The only way to avoid the danger of having your words distorted is to keep your mouth shut. In the functional category of “use it or lose it,” the First Amendment remains just a partially realized promise. To the extent that it can be fulfilled, democracy becomes actual rather than theoretical. But that requires a multiplicity of voices. And when war demands our silence, the imperative of dissent becomes paramount. We need to hear factual information and not let it be drowned out by the drumbeat of war. We need to think as clearly as possible. And we need to listen to our own hearts. When his visit to Iraq began, Sean Penn expressed the desire “to find my own voice on matters of conscience.” In the near future, each of us will have that opportunity."

"But tarring the Blix-led inspection mission ranked as a high priority for war enthusiasts on the Bush team who were eager to pressure Blix into becoming more confrontational with the Iraqi government and perhaps to lay groundwork for discounting his future reports to the Security Council. Key rightwing media voices were warbling from the same songbook. “We hope that as the days unfold Mr. Blix understands that his own credibility is as much on the line as Saddam Hussein’s,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized on November 22, adding darkly that “Mr. Blix has his own track record in Iraq, and it doesn’t inspire confidence that he will go to the mat to disarm the dictator. The question now is whether the seventy-four-year-old Swedish diplomat is going to let Saddam make a fool of him and the U.N. one more time.” The Journal’s editorial page, often the source of opening salvos that quickly resound in the national media echo chamber, was just getting started. Two editions later, a long top-of-thepage attack appeared under the headline “Hans the Timid.” As if to be graphic about Blix’s dubious character, the drawing that accompanied the op-ed article showed him wearing a tie with a peace sign on it"

"Many of your actions to date and those proposed seem to violate every defining principle of this country over which you preside; intolerance of debate (“with us or against us”), marginalization of your critics, the promoting of fear through unsubstantiated rhetoric, manipulation of a quick comfort media, and the position of your administration’s deconstruction of civil liberties all contradict the very core of the patriotism you claim. You lead, it seems, through a bloodlined sense of entitlement. Take a close look at your most vehement media supporters. See the fear in their eyes as their loud voices of support ring out with that historically disastrous undercurrent of rage and panic masked as “straight tough talk.” How far have we come from understanding what it is to kill one man, one woman, or one child, much less the “collateral damage” of many hundreds of thousands. Your use of the words “this is a new kind of war” is often accompanied by an odd smile. It concerns me that what you are asking of us is to abandon all previous lessons of history in favor of following you blindly into the future. It worries me because with all your best intentions, an enormous economic surplus has been squandered. Your administration has virtually dismissed the most fundamental environmental concerns and therefore, by implication, one gets the message that, as you seem to be willing to sacrifice the children of the world, would you also be willing to sacrifice ours."

"Why don't they ask [Saddam's intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush] to give us something we can use to help us make our case [to link 9/11 and Saddam]?"

"It's an intelligence document written by the then head of Iraqi intelligence, Habbush to Saddam. It's dated the 1st of July, 2001. And it‘s basically a memo saying that Mohammed Atta has successfully completed a training course at the house of Abu Nidal, the infamous Palestinian terrorist, who, of course, was killed by Saddam a couple of months later. Now, this is the first, really, concrete proof that al Qaeda was working with Saddam. It‘s a very explosive development"

"The invasion didn’t take a toll only on Iraq’s movable artifacts; it also damaged the archeological sites from which such artifacts emerge. “It’s mostly the sites in the south that were damaged in the immediate aftermath of the invasion,” said Elizabeth Stone, an archeologist who used high-resolution satellite imagery to compare the damage to sites right before and after the invasion. Her data showed a sudden “massive devastation:” Of 1,457 southern sites examined, 13 percent had already been looted prior to the invasion, by February 2003—but that proportion rose to 41 percent by the end of the year. Sites containing relics of temples and palaces, like Umma and Umm Al-Aqarib, were far removed from governmental oversight, “so lots of people just went off and dug holes,” she said."

"The speed with which the Coalition forces achieved victory over the Iraqi military contributed to a swift collapse of the security system that had previously existed in Iraq to curb looting. There were not enough Coalition troops in Baghdad to deal with remaining pockets of resistance and simultaneously control the looting. As a result, the "U.S. Army initially allowed the looting to continue unchecked." Looting extended beyond Baghdad to hundreds of archaeological sites throughout the whole of Iraq. The United States and Coalition forces simply did not have enough personnel to adequately protect all of them."

"Many Iraqis complied with the gentle pressure of JIACG agents once they realized that thy were benefiting their won cultural heritage and would not be viewed as criminals. As of September 2010, repatriation operations begun by the JIACG have recovered "roughly half" of fifteen thousand artifacts that had been looted from the Iraq Museum collection."

"The expedient fall of Baghdad was a signal to Coalition commanders that the network-centric style of warfare adopted by the U.S. military had achieved victory. Yet the looting of the Iraq Museum still resonates as a defeat."

"American academics that convened in 1943 to address the war effort made their assessments eight months before the Allied invasion of Italy and eighteen months before the invasion of France. In comparison, academic meetings with the Pentagon occurred less than three months prior to the Iraq War. A wider window of time is needed to prepare guidelines that consider I environmental and cultural conditions soldiers are expected to encounter in a specified theatre of war."

"All the looting at Baghdad's Iraq Museum had taken place by the time U.S. troops—engaged in toppling Saddam Hussein—arrived to protect it, on April 16, 2003. Between April 8, when the museum was vacated, and April 12, when the first of the staff returned, clubs in hand, thieves had plundered an estimated 15,000 items, many of them choice antiquities: ritual vessels, heads from sculptures, amulets, Assyrian ivories and more than 5,000 cylinder seals. The looting proved less extensive than the early reports of 170,000 stolen artifacts, but the losses were nonetheless staggering. "Every single item that was lost is a great loss for humanity," says Donny George Youkhanna, the former director general of Iraqi museums, now a visiting professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "It is the only museum in the world where you can trace the earliest development of human culture—technology, agriculture, art, language and writing—in just one place.""

"While destruction and looting of cultural heritage has been a by-product of war for thousands of years, the scale of the looting of the Iraq Museum was staggering. Particularly frustrating were the neglected warnings that such an incident could happen, and the immediate response from the Bush administration that “stuff happens”."

"In the chaotic, violent April of 2003, as US tanks rolled into Baghdad, the Iraq Museum was broken into and pillaged. Looters rampaged through the halls, storerooms, and cellars, stealing more than 15,000 precious objects. "It was terrible. You didn't want to believe it," says Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani, who worked for many years at the museum before moving to London. "Especially hearing about objects that you know, and then people start saying they've gone - it was a shock.""

"Lamia al-Gailani says her Arab friends had trouble accepting that Baghdadis may have been responsible for looting their own treasures. "Everyone had their own theory of who looted the museum," she says. "It depended on who they don't like. Was it the Americans? Was it the Israelis? Was it the Kuwaitis? It was very funny, but also sad that they never, never accused the actual people in Baghdad of looting.""

"You know, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over. I don't believe he went in there for oil. We didn't go in there for imperialist or financial reasons. We went in there because he bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased."

"The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it. I speak of Iraq, not because everybody is talking about it, (sadly at the cost of leaving other horrors in other places to unfurl in the dark), but because it is a sign of things to come. Iraq marks the beginning of a new cycle. It offers us an opportunity to watch the Corporate-Military cabal that has come to be known as 'Empire' at work. In the new Iraq the gloves are off. As the battle to control the world's resources intensifies, economic colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback. Iraq is the logical culmination of the process of corporate globalization in which neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism have fused. If we can find it in ourselves to peep behind the curtain of blood, we would glimpse the pitiless transactions taking place backstage. But first, briefly, the stage itself."

"Before Washington’s illegal invasion of Iraq, a Gallup International poll showed that in no European country was the support for a unilateral war higher than 11 percent. On February 15, 2003, weeks before the invasion, more than ten million people marched against the war on different continents, including North America. And yet the governments of many supposedly democratic countries still went to war. The question is: is “democracy” still democratic? Are democratic governments accountable to the people who elected them?"

"Apparently in [[Tom DeLay|[Tom] Delay]]'s warped sense of logic, ethnic cleansing was an ill-defined reason for military intervention, but outright lies about "weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)," Iraqi "connections" to Al-Qaeda, and/or Saddam Hussein's "involvement" in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, were sufficient grounds to wage an unjust war costing billions of tax dollars and destroying thousands of lives."

"Audience Member: Negrodamus, why is President Bush convinced there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?"

"Cronyism and corruption are major factors in Iraq's downward spiral."

"The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it..."

"Iraq marks the beginning of a new cycle. It offers us an opportunity to watch the Corporate-Military cabal that has come to be known as 'Empire' at work...As the battle to control the world's resources intensifies, economic colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback. Iraq is the logical culmination of the process of corporate globalization in which neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism have fused."

"If we can find it in ourselves to peep behind the curtain of blood, we would glimpse the pitiless transactions taking place backstage. But first, briefly, the stage itself. In 1991 US President George Bush senior mounted Operation Desert Storm... Half a million Iraqi children died because of the regime of economic sanctions in the run up to Operation Shock and Awe. Until recently, while there was a careful record of how many US soldiers had lost their lives, we had no idea of how many Iraqis had been killed. US General Tommy Franks said "We don't do body counts" (meaning Iraqi body counts). He could have added "We don't do the Geneva Convention either.""

"A new, detailed study, fast-tracked by the Lancet medical journal and extensively peer reviewed, estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the 2003 invasion. That's one hundred halls full of people - like this one. That's one hundred halls full of friends, parents, siblings, colleagues, lovers...like you. The difference is that there aren't many children here today let's not forget Iraq's children. Technically that bloodbath is called precision bombing. In ordinary language, it's called butchering,"

"So the 'civilized' 'modern' world - built painstakingly on a legacy of genocide, slavery and colonialism - now controls most of the world's oil. And most of the world's weapons, most of the world's money, and most of the world's media. The embedded, corporate media in which the doctrine of Free Speech has been substituted by the doctrine of Free If You Agree Speech."

"The UN's Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said he found no evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Every scrap of evidence produced by the US and British governments was found to be false - whether it was reports of Saddam Hussein buying uranium from Niger , or the report produced by British Intelligence which was discovered to have been plagiarized from an old student dissertation. And yet, in the prelude to the war, day after day the most 'respectable' newspapers and TV channels in the US, headlined the 'evidence' of Iraq's arsenal of weapons of nuclear weapons."

"What does peace mean to the poor who are being actively robbed of their resources and for whom everyday life is a grim battle for water, shelter, survival and, above all, some semblance of dignity? For them, peace is war."

"We know very well who benefits from war in the age of Empire. But we must also ask ourselves honestly who benefits from peace in the age of Empire? War mongering is criminal. But talking of peace without talking of justice could easily become advocacy for a kind of capitulation. And talking of justice without unmasking the institutions and the systems that perpetrate injustice, is beyond hypocritical."