Iraq

Richard Perle, in London, admits in so many words that the invasion of Iraq was illegal: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."



Well, DUH!!!!



I doubt this will make any difference or that anyone will be held accountable.

Hell, I believe the American spinmasters will spin it thusly: they had their backs against the wall and it was the fault of Old Europe, especially the French that they "had to" break international law... in order to save the poor Iraqi people from a horrible dictator.



According to Perle, international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.



I suppose since the Americans are now basing their foreign policy on the moral high ground, they should be in the last stages of planning the invasion to rescue the poor suffering people of Uzbekistan from an incredibly cruel and corrupt regime....



From George Monbiot's article: Tony Blair’s New Friend (footnote references removed by me)

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.



His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learnt his politics from the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamic terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like dissidents in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.



But Uzbekistan, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was, is seen by the US government as a key western asset. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been competing. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.

More here.





Do you get a sort of deja vu feeling here?

I know I do...