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Mellanöstern
Det var inget krig. Inga strider. Det var bara ett planerat, systematiskt folkmord på en försvarslös befolkning, närapå utan att man satte en fot på irakisk mark. 1967, när Dr. Martin Luther King sade att den största våldsverkaren på jorden är min regering, kunde han inte i sina värsta mardrömmar föreställa sig vad USA gjorde mot Irak.
Ramsey Clark
Skillnaden mellan Israel och apartheidstaten Sydafrika är att Israel avrättar fler människor och håller fler inspärrade eller i militärt omringade gettobildningar.
Jan Guillou
Covert operations should not be confused with
missionary work.
Henry Kissinger describing why US withdrew aid to the
Kurds, 1975
That's a nice list of targets, but that's not
enough. [...] [It is also
important to target] ...what is unique about Iraqi
culture, that they
put very high value on, that psychologically
would make an impact on the
population and regime. [....] If push came to
shove, the cutting edge
would be downtown Baghdad. If I want to hurt
you, it would be at home,
not out in the woods someplace.
General Michael Dugan, US Airforce Chief of Staff, 15th September 1990. He was removed from his post shortly afterwards, with US Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney describing
Dugan's comments as 'inappropriate'.
If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs. They know we own their country. We own their airspace ... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great ahout America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.
US Brig. General William Looney, on the continous attacks on Iraq in the end of the 1990s
It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.
Colin Powell answering a question about the number of Iraqis killed in the Gulf war, 1991
Iran, like ourselves, has seen benefit in a stalemate situation ... in which Iraq is intrinsically weakened by the Kurds' refusal to relinquish semi-autonomy. Neither Iran nor ourselves wish to see the matter resolved one way or the other.
CIA memo from 1974, about the military aid they provided to the Kurds fighting for their autonomy in Iraq
Nobody can influence me. Nobody at all. And a woman still less.
The ex-Shah of Iran
Vi vill att Falluja ska förstå vad demokrati handlar om.
Överstelöjtnant Pete Newell talar till de 500 soldaterna i "Task Force 2-2" inför attacken mot Falluja. Minuten senare skriker han att "denna hög av skit måste rensas ut".
For the British Government to say that the quantities involved for vaccinating kids are going to produce weapons of mass destruction, is just nonsense. That's why I've been using the word 'genocide', because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view at this late stage.
Denis Halliday, August 2000
I never think back. Since I cannot change the past, why should I deal with it?
Shimon Peres about the cooperation between Israel and South Africa
We created the South African arms industry. They assisted us to develop all kinds of technology because they had a lot of money. When we were developing things together we usually gave the know-how and they gave the money. After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies.
Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to Pretoria
What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs
Head of an IDF rocket unit in the 2006 war against Lebanon
Om vi antar att till och med FN:s egna uppskattningar av skadeverkningarna på civilbefolkningen i Irak är något så när korrekta [så har sanktionerna orsakat] fler dödsoffer i Irak än det totala antalet människor som har dödats av alla så kallade massförstörelsevapen genom hela historien.
John och Kark Mueller, professorer vid University of Rochester
Vi har förlorat en del av vår medkänsla och vårt civiliserade sätt som jag tror gjorde oss så speciella för fyra år sedan. Jag tar mig själv som exempel. Då för nära fyra år sedan ryckte jag till varje gång jag hörde talas om en dödad amerikansk soldat. Det var ockupanter, men samtidigt var de mänskliga varelser och bara vetskapen om att de dödats i mitt land gav mig sömnlösa nätter. Det spelade ingen roll att de korsade oceanen för att attackera Irak. Jag kände verkligen för dem. Hade jag inte uttryckt dessa känslor i just denna blog, hade jag idag inte trott det.
Den irakiske bloggaren Riverbend i slutet av 2006
Jag tycker att alla utlänningar borde sluta blanda sig i Iraks inre angelägenheter. Dom som vill hjälpa till är välkomna. Dom som vill förstöra är inte välkomna.
Paul Wolfowitz, biträdande försvarsminister i USA
Vittnesmålen om terrorn och tortyren i Irak blir en flodvåg i världens medier.
Per Ahlmark spår Iraks framtid vid en amerikansk ockupation, oktober 2002
Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ..
politically we are the
aggressors and they defend themselves... The
country is theirs, because they
inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and
settle down, and in their view we
want to take away from them their country.
David Ben Gurion, first Prime
Minister of Israel
Let me tell you what happened briefly. There were 114,000 seperate aerial sorties in 42 days - one every 30 seconds. Eighty-eight thousand tons of bombs were dropped. Only seven per cent were guided. Ninety-three percent were free-falling bombs that hit were chance, neccesity and no free will took them. There were 38 aircraft lost by the US in the slaughter. That number is less than the accidental losses in war games where no live ammunition is even used. No enemy aircraft rose to meet them.
When the ground war came... there was no ground war. Name one battle. It wasn't a battle, it was a slaughter. General Kelly said when the troops finally moved forward that there were 'not many of them left alive to fight'. We killed at least 125,000 soldiers and to date 130,000 civillians. We killed as many as we dared.
Ramsey Clark, Former US Attorney General, on the Gulf War
The target suffered a terminal illness before a
firing squad in
Baghdad.
CIA officer testifying to US Senate hearing,
after bloody CIA aided
coup overthrew Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel
Kassem, 1963
Arabs tend to confess; it's part of their nature.
Moshe Etzioni, an Israeli high court justice, in an
interview with Amnesty International, when asked
about the unusually high rate of confessions
from Palestinians (indicating Israel's use of
torture), 1977
The USS New Jersey started hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would.
Colin Powell in his 1995 memoir
We have come here not as conquerors but as liberators to free you from generations of tyranny.
Sir Stanley Maude 1917, before the british invasion of what is today Iraq
Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.
From a South African government's yearbook, commenting on the 1976 Israeli state visit of South African Prime Minister and former Nazi sympathiser John Vorster
Olja är en alldeles för viktig vara för att lämnas i arabernas händer.
Henry Kissinger
They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen.
Senior British commander in southern Iraq 2004
Our presence in the country is the main cause of the war. I'm not saying that if we now withdraw peace and harmony will immediately break out. I'm not saying that withdrawal is a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary condition. If we don't withdraw there will never be a solution.
George Galloway on Iraq
Europeiska rådet välkomnade den senaste tidens positiva politiska utveckling när det gäller Irak.
Europeiska rådet i Bryssel, 25-26 mars 2004
Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.
Former Ambassador April Glaspie, in reponse to accusations that the U.S. invited Saddam Hussein to take Kuwait
We declare openly that the Arabs have no right
to settle on even one
centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do
or ever will understand. We
shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians
come crawling to us on all
fours ... When we have settled the land, all the
Arabs will be able to do will be
to scurry around like drugged roaches in a
bottle.
Rafael Eitan, Israeli Chief of
Staff
In every city we visited, we documented severe
damage to homes,
electrical plants, fuel storage facilities, civilian
factories,
hospitals, churches, civilian airports, vehicles,
transportation
facilities, food storage and food testing
laboratories, grain silos,
animal vaccination centres, schools,
communication towers, civilian
government office buildings, and stores. Almost
all facilities we saw
had been bombed two or three times, ensuring
that they could not be
repaired. Most of the bridges we saw had been
bombed from both ends.
Adeeb Abed and Gavrielle Gemma,
Independent Commission of Inquiry
staff members, fact find finding trip to Iraq, April
3rd-14th 1991
That's absolute garbage, the fact is that before Saddam Hussein got himself into trouble in Iran, and then of course in Kuwait, they had invested massively in civilian infrastructure. Health care clinics, rural clinics, education, 10,000 schools scattered throughout the country, an educational and healthcare system which was the envy of all its Arab neighbours. Iraq had a very widespread food distribution system of its own before we got involved.
Denis Halliday on the claim that lifting sanctions would do no good, because the Iraqi regime does not care about its own citizens
- It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastward.
- Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?
- A girl about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death.
- I think that one of the positions took her out.
- I and another soldier ... are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill ... Receive a situation report. We fired and killed her ... I also confirmed the kill. Over.
Radiokonversationen då en israelisk kapten lät skjuta ihjäl 13-åriga Iman al-Hams med 17 skott. Kaptenen friades av en militärdomstol.
It seems to me indecent for Clinton to have gone to war, dragging all of NATO with him and destroying Serbia in the process on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians' right of return, and then ask Palestinians to renounce theirs.
Edward Said
...a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake?
Robert Fisk
Our strategic and security interests throughout the world will be best safeguarded by the establishment in suitable spots of 'Police Stations', fully equipped to deal with emergencies within a large radius. Kuwait is one such spot from which Iraq, South Persia, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf could be controlled. It will be worthwhile to go to considerable trouble and expense to establish and man a 'Police Sation' there.
British Foreign Office, policy memo, 1947
...we have a solution, that you shall continue to
live like dogs, and whoever
wants to can leave - and we will see where this
process leads. In five years we
may have 200,000 less people - and that is a
matter of enormous importance.
Moshe Dayan, encouraging the transfer of
Gaza strip refugees to Jordan
Saddam Hussein can not restore his own
electricity. He needs help. If
there are political objectives that the UN coalition
has, it can say:
'Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we
will allow people to come
in and fix your electricity.' It gives us long-term
leverage.
US Colonel John A. Warden III, June 1991
They went way beyond the military. They destroyed schools, and hospitals and bridges, and roads, places of employment, factories, consumer, industry and so on. That's left massive unemployment to this day. They destroyed railways, domestic airports, including not just the production of oil which they bombed and missiled again and again, but they also wiped out Iraq's capacity to produce potable water, the sewerage systems were heavily damaged, water treatment plants were damaged. It was a very all-comprehensive attack. And that is still rather apparent today.
Denis Halliday on the attack on Iraq in 1991
Jag är säker på att han inte har något emot att jag kallar honom Iraks diktator. Han har pengarna. Han har makten. Inget händer utan hans medgivande i detta land.
Lakhdar Brahimi, FN-sändebud i Irak, om USA:s guvernör Paul Bremer, efter att ha blivit överkörd vid bildandet av Iraks "övergångsregering"
I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say [things in Iraq are] going very, very well from everything you look at.
General Peter Pace, the most senior military officer of the U.S., March 5, 2006
The United States did not go to war in Iraq solely because of WMD. I doubt it was even the principal cause. Yet it was the public face that was put on it.
George Tenet, former CIA Director
There is no such thing as a Palestinian
people... It is not as if we came and
threw them out and took their country. They
didn't exist.
Golda Meir, former
Prime Minister of Israel
That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in.
General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff, on
being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and
civilian casualties,
April 1991
[Middle East oil is] a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.
U.S. State Department, 1945
We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral.
Denis Halliday in 1998 on the sanctions against Iraq
It wasn't a war. It was a massacre. It's well documented. ... There's no denying it. It was murder.
Peter Leibovitch from the international war crimes tribunal set up after the Gulf War
The recent conflict
has wrought near apocalyptic results; Iraq has
been relegated to a
pre-industrial age.
All electrically operated installations have ceased
to funtion. Food can
not be preserved, water can not be purified,
sewage can not be pumped
away. Nine thousand homes are destroyed or
damaged beyond repair. The
flow of food through the private sector has been
reduced to a trickle;
many food prices are already beyond the
purchasing power of most Iraqi
families. The mission recommends that sanctions
in respect of food
supplies should be immediately removed.
Martti Ahtisaari, UN Under Secretary for
Administration and Management, March 20th 1991. Ahtisaari was
the first UN official to
visit post-war Iraq.
Vad kan man säga om valet i Irak? President Bush besvarade själv frågan när han sa: 'Vi kan inte gå med på att fria demokratiska val kan hållas i ett land som befinner sig under utländsk ockupation'. Jag var tvungen att läsa uttalandet två gånger innan jag insåg att han talade om Libanon och Syrien.
Harold Pinter
Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.
Henry Kissinger, on why the U.S. suddenly let the Iraqi regime crush the Kurdish rebellion in 1975
This policy was not imparted to [the Kurds], who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise.
The congressional Pike Committee, about the CIA prefering the Kurds in Iraq not to win, but still supported their struggle with military aid in order to keep the Iraqi forces busy
Det är ju inte så lätt i krigsplanering att veta att en väldig massa människor skulle bli tokiga i Irak och börja bära sig extremt konstigt åt.
Staffan Heimersson
That was the most expensive 'no' vote you ever
cast.
US Ambassador Pickering to Yemeni
Ambassador Abdallah Saleh al-Ashtol,
after Yemen voted against Resolution 678, 29th November 1990. The US $70
million aid package to Yemen was cancelled the
following day. 900,000
Yemeni migrant workers were later
The agony and moral anguish that ought to accompany an act of mass killing - yes, even in a war - seemed wholly absent from American culture.
Ruth Rosen, history professor, about the Gulf war
Blubb, blubb, blubb.
General Chaim Ben Ami, f d chef för den israeliska säkerhetstjänstens förhörsavdelning, beskriver hur det lät när de dränkte två misstänkta palestinska terrorister
Neither the foreign head of state (the Shah) nor the President nor Dr. Kissinger desired a victory for our clients (the Kurds). They merely hoped to ensure a level of hostilities high enough to sap the resources of the neighbouring state (Iraq). Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise.
US Congressional Pike Report, describing
President Nixon and US
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's policy of
arming the Kurds, 1972
Just watch. Everything... everything.
George Bush Sr, in response to press enquiry if
US enforcement of
sanctions would include food and essentials,
August 14th 1990
If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot
of oil out there we need.
U.S. Brig. General William Looney, referring to the 10,000 sorties by American/British war criminals in the first eight months of 1999
[The bombing missions in the Gulf war were a] turkey shoot... it's
almost like you flipped
on the light in the kitchen at night and the
cockroaches start
scurrying, and we're killing them.
US Pilot Colonel Richard White
Jag upplevde bombningarna av Kambodja, men det här var inte alls samma sak...
Varje natt kom det tre bombvågor. Efter tjugo minuters bombmattor blev det tyst och man kunde höra ljudet av skrikande barn och vuxna. [De överlevande] gick runt som zombier.
Paul Roberts, journalist, om bombningarna av Irak under Gulfkriget
Israelerna börjar påminna om vita sydafrikanska rasister, eftersom de betraktar palestinier som en lägre stående livsform.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, säkerhetsrådgivare under president Carter
Irak utgör inte längre något hot mot sina grannar.
William Cohen, USA:s dåvarande försvarsminister, till George W Bush den 10 januari 2001
The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Osrael, after the attack on Lebanon in 2006
The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house.
Abu Ghraib detainee
Så länge inga fångar dog, var det okej. Vi hörde rykten om att fångar var döda, så vi blev mer försiktiga. Vi nöjde oss med att bryta armar och ben.
Amerikansk sergeant från Camp Mercury i Fallujah
Jag tror att vi alla skulle vara förtjusta om Irak kunde utveckla en demokrati som liknade Amerikas i början av 1900-talet. Jag menar, kvinnors rättigheter är inte avgörande för framväxten av demokrati.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, ClA:s tidigare Meiianöstern-expert, om den irakiska konstitutionen
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