Bush goes with the flow in Iraq
It took 800 years for them to finish ‘liberating’ this country. The forests that covered the country were chopped down and carted off. Eleven miles of corridor in the Houses of Parliament are covered in it.
If it wasn’t for those insurgents like James Connolly and Eamon de Valera and the ‘jaw-jaw’ that followed, we might still be a colony or a province.
For Ireland and wood... read Iraq and oil. The numbers who died here in the Great Famine of the 1840 mirror those who have died during the UN/US sanctions of the 1990s.
Do those disappointed Irish-Americans who chastise us like we’re naughty children really believe that George Bush has spent $180 billion on invading Iraq because 26 million Iraqis needed ‘democratising?’ Iraq is the second biggest oil tap in the world. America needs cheap energy to maintain its pole position.
If this was a humanitarian intervention, why not spend the money in the Congo where four million people have died in the past five years? Do they know Saddam came to power, like so many other dictators, with the help of the CIA? Look at Chile’s 9/11 in 1973.
Do they remember Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the mid-’80s at the very time the Butcher of Baghdad was filling those mass graves? But it was OK then because he was our dictator. But then he stopped doing as he was told and the US decided it needed a ‘dictator upgrade.’ It was made urgent now because the regime in the number 1 oil producer, Saudi Arabia, looked to be on the way out. It needed to relocate troops in the region, so it was time for a $180bn regime makeover in Iraq.
The abomination of 9/11 was disgracefully used as the pretext for the oil grab. Saddam and bin Laden hated each other. But amid all the shock and hurt, Bush knew he could exploit the situation by linking the two.
Do you remember the only building to be ringed with troops once Baghdad fell? It was the oil ministry. Forget the hospitals and museums. Killing Iraqi women and children with armoured cars and tanks and guns was always going to provoke a violent response. It’s what happens when you decide people who look or sound different have less feelings and rights than you do.
The new puppet in Iraq is already talking about martial law, internment, interrogations, etc. Sound familiar? What’s the betting that he postpones the elections and asks the US military to stay indefinitely because of the insurgents. $180bn is a big investment. You cannot manipulate, bribe and bully the rest of the planet without making enemies - even among your relatives. ‘Yee-haw’ does not constitute an ethical foreign policy.
And finally, how come the French, the ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys,’ got more US investment last year than us ‘refuellers’? You’d think those big corporations would remember where their shamrock comes from.
Kevin Foley
Keel
Castlemaine
Co Kerry.
