The Ninth Anniversary of the Anglo-American Aggression on Iraq

This month Iraqis commemorate the ninth anniversary of the aggression on their country. During this aggression, Iraq underwent a most gruesome Tatar-like attack. The perpetrators were led by the United States, along with its allies and partners from Arab countries and others in the region. There was no legal or legitimate basis for the invasion, nor was there any military action one could mention to justify it. Thus, international law and legitimacy were violated. Nevertheless, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are still unable to summon the war criminals to stand trial: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Blair and the others who contributed to the destruction of Iraq and the misleading of public opinion through the use of fabricated and spurious information that alleged both that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used within 45 minutes and that it had a close relationship with the Sept. 11 attackers. That is how the biggest war crime in history was perpetrated.

The country, after the invasion of March 2003, became a scene of bloody chaos: Repeated shocks were suffered by the Iraqi people. Moreover, crimes against humanity were committed, most notably extrajudicial killings, forced abductions and kidnappings, torture, executions and sectarian displacement.^[1]* The occupying forces contributed to the expansion of sectarian militias^[2] and to plunging these militias into the invasion of towns and regions on a large and well-organized scale. Also, they spread chaos, murder and bloodshed without any justification, using an Iranian-American tactic of warfare, rooted in a philosophy of “shock.” The demographic alteration of Baghdad’s population, based upon an imported sectarian scheme, can be readily observed. The Iraqi state was dismantled and Paul Bremer, the U.S. Administrator to Iraq, sold the state’s assets and destroyed its ability to function. In addition, he dissolved the state’s institutions and armed forces, leaving more than 3,000 state-owned factories and 4,000 state-owned companies in limbo.

The world witnessed the complicity of the international community and the Security Council in this aggression through its Resolutions 1483 and 1511, which legally recognized the legitimacy of the U.S. occupation. The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority [Bremer] issued Order 97, which recognized imported political categories to constitute a façade for the creation of a “need system” and the concept of an empty “vacuum government,” as articulated in the doctrines of Milton Friedman, so as to legitimize the military presence and the making of legal agreements that would permit the looting of Iraq. The Bush Doctrine, which divided the people into small ethnic groups and militia warlords, created the current political class. However, the [Iraqi] government and its militias have accepted the doctrine of “political terrorism” through their division of the security forces into sectarian units^[3] even though reports by international organizations have demonstrated human rights violations by these same security forces.

The strategic objectives for the invasion of Iraq: The United States of America, having inherited world dominance after the disintegration of the socialist bloc and the Soviet Union, made use of four fundamental technical/military revolutions: the mechanization of war — increased capability of transporting ammunition and its development, total control over nuclear power and the ability to limit the scope of its spread, control over space and its militarization, and the information revolution and its employment by the military. With this strengthening of U.S. military capability, the politicians representing the former U.S. administration took advantage of the international vacuum [of power] to privatize the war and to put into practice the theories of Samuel Huntington.^[4] The military capacity of America was used to enable privately held companies to achieve their ends, thus confirming that the war against Iraq was merely a business transaction of the greedy ruling capitalists of the United States. Putting aside for the moment the strategic repercussions of this act, the humanitarian disasters caused by these wars, their impact on the official world order and the ensuing supremacy of the law of the jungle, all these made the official world order lose its legitimacy and its capacity [to influence events].

We can sum up the strategic objectives of the invasion and occupation of Iraq thusly: 1. To take control of Iraq’s strategic natural resources, most notably oil and gas (monopoly, manufacturing, transportation, pricing, marketing)^[5] in addition to its agricultural and industrial resources. 2. To complement the strategy of the U.S. military presence in Iraq to impose its political hegemony^[6] over the region and, militarily, to control the Arab world through the establishment of a network of bases and military facilities, and to make Iraq one of the logistical bases in the region. 3. To apply the objectives of the “Greater Middle East Project,” and to break up the Arab world from its present 22 countries into 56 smaller entities — in other words, to “Lebanonize” the Arab states; to abolish the concepts of homeland, nation and regime, raising strife among sects, parties and elements of society, as part and parcel of the theory of demographic war we are now witnessing in different places in the Arab world. 4. To provide full support for the sole strategic ally of the United States in the region (Israel), through neutralizing the strongest Arab countries, particularly Iraq,^[7] by annihilating Iraq’s military capacities — which had [before the invasion] constituted one of the main elements of pan-Arab strength, to achieve this as a prerequisite for filling the ensuing regional vacuum, thus modifying the previous regional equation (Iran-Israel/Arab states), causing the Arabs to lose their role in this equation. 5. To efface Iraq’s Arab-Islamic identity, and to divide it into sectarian and ethnic-based cantons,^[8] to weaken and destroy the social fabric of Iraq and reduce the Iraqi people to sects, races and ethnicities warring among themselves under the terms of the Bush Doctrine, which had divided the Iraqis before the invasion into Shiites, Sunni, Kurds and Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians, etc.

An organized and misleading strategic deceit: The former U.S. administration performed the biggest trickery and bamboozling operation ever seen in history,^[9] using the media and institutions of public relations at full blast, to allow their aggression against Iraq to take place. We witnessed the use of deceit, misinformation,^[10] manipulation,^[11] influence, falsification of facts, reports, and the deluding of U.S. and international public opinion on Iraq about the existence of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s connection with the incident of Sept. 11, 2001.

A majority of institutions, in addition to U.S. and western media, and a number of Arab media attached to the U.S. project, had dwelled upon the sole option of unilateral Anglo-American planned aggression, by means of a propaganda war directed against Iraq. The Washington Post mentioned that the White House had established an Office for Global Communications, and the Times [of London] stated that this office would spend $200 million in “a sweeping public relations attack directed toward the American and foreign public, especially in the Arab countries suspicious of U.S. policy in the region. The campaign is now working on the use of media techniques to convince the targeted groups to support the aggression.”** The U.S. State Department considered propaganda as public diplomacy: a tactic to deal with crises and wars — to address the public and to persuade or mislead it.

The most prominent of the propaganda agencies were: A. The Coalition Information Center, established in 2001 under the supervision of Karen Hughes, consultant to Bush, and Alastair Campbell, the former media consultant to Tony Blair (he is one of the media manipulation experts). B. The Office of Special Plans (Office of Intrigue), which was supervised by the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, and managed by Abraham Shulsky. This office was used to manipulate information in order to hype the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In addition, it had close ties with the Israeli Mossad. C. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was founded in November 2002. A former adviser to Rumsfeld, Randy Scheunemann, was appointed to administer it and undertook the task of selling to the public the logic of the U.S. administration in fighting the war. D. The Office of Strategic Influence, which was founded in 2002 by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the official purpose of wooing the Arab world and launching deceit and manipulation campaigns. However, this office was closed in February 2003 after the New York Times unveiled its real purposes and its methods in dealing with the international press, as well as the protests it raised in several moderate circles. E. The Office of Public Diplomacy, headed by Charlotte Beers, the most famous and prominent of the first-line figures in the world of propaganda in America. F. The Office of Total Liaison,** which was founded in 2003 to coordinate the messages intended for American public opinion. And, G. The Rendon Group in Washington, one of the largest propaganda and international public relations companies, which established the Iraqi National Assembly under the occupation.

The forces used by the Anglo-American aggression: The U.S. troops were completing final preparations for the war, according to evidence suggested on the theater of operations and the battlefield. None of the attempts to avoid this war was successful. Iraq had already undergone successive U.S. military campaigns in 1992, 1993, 1996 and 1998. Before the invasion, the U.S. media developed a media lexicon of war propaganda: “the likely war on Iraq,” ”the war tolLiberate Iraq,” ”the war to liberate the Iraqi people,”^[12] ”a war of good against evil,” and then, finally, the media formula changed to “the imminent war on Iraq.” The United States of America mobilized more than 300,000 troops, 1,000 tanks and wheeled armored fighting vehicles, 3,000 military vehicles, 1,200 combat and other aircraft, a number of destroyers, aircraft carriers and warships — dozens of different warships, hundreds of support and transportation ships, corporate special military service units (mercenaries), Israeli forces, commandos in Western Iraq, and ground units and air power based in Kuwait.^[13]

The forces were distributed thus: the headquarters of the Central Region Command at the al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the Southern Center at the Salem Air base in Kuwait, the Center for Air Command in Saudi Arabia, the Naval Command Center in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the Zarqa and Aqaba base in Jordan. As for the weaponry in the [Persian] Gulf, there were more than 155 ships of the U.S. and foreign navies, and, in the process of strengthening the coalition’s military capacity: 100 ships, including five aircraft carriers, namely, Truman, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Constellation and Kitty Hawk; two British aircraft carriers, Ocean and Ark Royal, carrying aircraft such as the Harrier, with its vertical take-off capability, as well as cruisers carrying more than 2,030 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 600 Harpoon anti-ship defense missiles, in addition to combat aircraft on the carriers. They totaled more than 995 planes — including the most modern aircraft, constituting a strategic reserve ready for battle: B-1, B-2, B-52, F-117 stealth aircraft, F-14, -15, -16 and -18, Tornado and Herer-10; a large number of helicopters: Apache, transport aircraft, Chinook, Black Hawk, Agusta and Sikorsky; spy planes, such as the Black Bird, in addition to the AWACS and the Arcturus. Besides unmanned aircraft, the aircraft carrier was accompanied by naval forces, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Sixth and the Fifth Fleets of the U.S. Navy.

All these forces are characterized by International Law as an illegal use of force, as a terrorizing force: The Iraqi people were fired upon by 800 rockets — launched during one day! — under the banner of the liberation of Iraq, which ended up with the occupation of the country, the dismantling of its state, the tearing apart and starving of its people, and the opening wide of the country’s doors to Iranian influence. Note that Iran was a regional contributor to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Iranian officials.

The looting of Iraq’s state assets: A systematic plunder of the riches of Iraq was carried out by former U.S. administration figures, their political tools and their slimy cat’s paws, including political and security contractors, and also by means of native Iraqi political pawns. Greedy regional states also took part in the looting free-for-all. They strove to carry out the geopolitical weakening of Iraq, and to destroy its economy and its military capability. This has had repercussions on Arab national security, which has been completely lost, as well as on the balance of power [in the region] and on international peace and security. In September 2003, the notorious Paul Bremer issued laws prohibiting the imposition of many customs tariffs and placing caps on corporate taxes and personal income taxes so they would not exceed 15 percent. He initiated the privatization of state-owned industries, although the 1907 Hague Convention on regulations concerning the laws and customs of war prevents the occupier from selling assets of the occupied country. This privatization plan was a part of the strategy of the Bush administration from the beginning. The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran^[14] relates an incident where Thomas Foley, the Republican-appointed director of private sector development [for the Coalition Provisional Authority], boasted in August 2003 that he “would privatize all state owned enterprises of Iraq within thirty days.” When he was told that that is against international law, he responded, “I don’t care about any of that stuff. I don’t give a shit about international law. I made a commitment to the president that I’d privatize Iraq’s businesses.”

The genocide and the demographic modification war: Iraq was subjected to the most gruesome human and cultural extermination — led by America, Israel and Iran — through the killing of scientists, academicians, engineers, doctors and military officers, and the displacement of their families. In addition, the majority of the middle class was fragmented in order that there be a void that could then be filled by foreign companies and intelligence services as part of the process of privatization of state-owned companies.

The social fabric of Iraq was dissolved for military and intelligence purposes to obtain political security for the occupation forces in Iraq. Organized campaigns of physical liquidation were perpetrated, based upon the U.S. regional agenda. All the victims are also subject to the standards of a wasted life and the value of survival, so that it is difficult to estimate the number of victims, especially as the number of internally displaced persons, due to the war of demographic modification, has reached 6.8 million Iraqis, according to U.N. statistics; one out of every seven Iraqis has been uprooted from his home by force. This is considered the largest and most atrocious destruction of a people in the Middle East, except for the displacement of the Palestinian people in 1948 by the Zionist gangs. The majority of those displaced were the elderly, women and children. They have been classified by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees as victims of political terrorism, physical torture, sexual- and gender-oriented violence by sectarian militias and government forces of oppression.^[15]

Let us note that the official international order and its institutions succumbed to force — terrorist force, political terrorism. This is especially obvious when we realize that the perpetrators of the genocide, the massacres and the other crimes have remained unaccountable to the standards both of international criminal law and of Iraqi law. On the contrary, we find the killers placed at the top of the pyramid of power and in its political corridors, enjoying legal immunity, courtesy of the U.S. occupation forces and their political circles.

The cost of Iraq’s destruction has amounted to $73 trillion. The U.S. occupying administration squandered about a trillion dollars derived from the income of Iraq’s oil, taxes, borrowing, and donations made on security and prison trade, after fostering those factors that fed the terrorism industry. The authorities have been unable to improve on the performance [of the state institutions] — either internally or externally — to reach even 15 percent of what the state institutions used to achieve prior to the invasion. This is documented further by 8,000 falsified university documents that were recently discovered.

If we compare the differences in performance of the institutions established by the United States after the 2003 aggression (during the last six years), with those institutions that were built from the beginning of the formation of the state in 1923, through the 80-year period of Iraq’s development until the 2003 aggression, (dividing this 80-year period into 13-year baseline units), as measured by the difference in the level of performance, we see that the former Iraqi state performed four times better than it does today (60 percent). Therefore, if the cost of the trillion dollars is multiplied by the number of time periods and the level of the state competence before the invasion, we obtain the following equation of speculative losses: $1 trillion multiplied by 4 (the rate of competence) multiplied by the 13 cumulative time periods devoted to building the state. The total comes to $52 trillion.^[16] This is the estimated cost of the destruction of the Iraqi state.

The number of Iraqi casualties of the war and its side effects is so far estimated at 2 million Iraqis,^[17] in light of the frequency of extrajudicial killings and sectarian cleansing, as well as foreign and regional targeting of Iraq’s social infrastructure. If we consider the economic basis of the lives wasted and the value of survival, according to American standards, this was estimated at $6.2 million until 2004. By 2007 they could be estimated at $7.2 million, and if we factor in inflation and economic crises, they are, by today’s reckoning, $8.2 million; and if we try to arrive at a figure for economic compensation,^[18] with regard to the 2 million Iraqis who have died as a result of the U.S. invasion of their country,^[19] we find that the value of wasted human life amounts, according to this criterion, to $16.4 trillion at a minimum. Moreover, among the dead, there are more than 500,000 who were forcibly abducted, since, during the passage of years, they [the abductees] have not shown any sign of life, and over this period their corpses have lost their identities, as a result of the conduct of sectarian parties and their militias, government forces that kill outside the law, and the government practice of collective mass burials without the presence of the victims’ families. The rate of disappearances and abductions is 40-60 people per day and many of them meet the usual fate (murder). When dealing with the economic basis of lives wasted, as expressed by U.S. economic criteria, the value of the wasted lives of the abducted will reach $5.45 trillion.

The American aggression in Iraq was a major war crime, for it dismantled the Iraqi state, abolished it as an entity, tore apart its community and its people, and shattered its political, economic, military and institutional infrastructure. The cost of Iraq’s financial destruction is more than $73 trillion, as shown by preliminary estimates of the losses. Today, after eight years of occupation, the size of the human, economic, social and cultural genocide committed by the United States and its allies and partners against Iraq is obvious, yet the war criminals are at large, without there being an international trial. Still, a lawsuit can always be brought against the perpetrators of these crimes, in accordance with international law, since they are crimes against humanity and major war crimes.

*Editor’s Note: The footnotes appeared in the original article, but the sources from which they were drawn are not included here.

**Editor’s Note: Quotes and title of office, accurately translated, could not be verified.