EMPIRE OF CHAOS

COUNTRIES

PAGE 10

 

VIETNAM

"I want Vietnam bombed to smithereens. If we draw the sword, we're going to bomb those bastards all over the place. Let it fly, let it fly."

President Richard Nixon, 1972

 

"If development was measured not by gross national product, but a society's success in meeting the basic needs of its people, Vietnam would have been a model. That was its real "threat." From the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to 1972, primary and secondary school enrollment in the North increased sevenfold, from 700,000 to almost five million. In 1980, UNESCO estimated a literacy rate of 90 percent and school enrollment among the highest in Asia and throughout the Third World."

John Pilger

 

"By 1970, Vietnamese babies were being born without eyes, with deformed hearts and stumps instead of legs. Six pounds of toxic chemicals per head of population were dumped on the people of Vietnam."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

 

"During the Vietnam War the CIA and special units of the US military worked with the Meo tribesmen in Laos to secure control over the heroin routes of South East Asia. The CIA then used the drug revenues, laundered through CIA banks, to finance other covert operations and intelligence activities."

F. William Engdahl

 

"In Vietnam, the US. dropped several times more tons of bombs than were used in all of World War II by all sides.
In mid-June, 1994, the Vietnamese government announced that three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians had been killed in the war, four million injured, two million made invalids."

Michael Parenti

 

"The peasants watched as we supported a ruthless dictatorship in South Vietnam which aligned itself with extortionist landlords and executed its political opponents. The peasants watched as we poisoned their water, bombed and machine-gunned their huts, annihilated their crops, and sent them wandering into the towns, where thousands of homeless children roamed the streets like animals, begging for food and selling their mothers and sisters to American soldiers.
... We have destroyed their land... We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators."

Martin Luther King, 1967

 

"Vietnam was a war of rampant technology directed against a Third World people. It was a war in which the United States dispatched its greatest ever land army, dropped the greatest tonnage of bombs in the history of warfare, pursued a military strategy deliberately aimed at forcing millions of people to abandon their homes and used chemicals in a manner that profoundly changed the environment and genetic order. Some two-and-a-half million people were killed, and many more maimed and otherwise ruined."

John Pilger

 

"In Vietnam, we terrorized peasant villages with bombing attacks using napalm and cluster bombs. We supported dictators and death squads in Chile and El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti. In Iraq, more than 500,000 Children died as a result of economic sanctions the United States insisted on."

Howard Zinn

 

"What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witnessed in our times. Primitive peoples with savagery in their hearts have to be helped to understand the true basis of a civilized existence."

David Lawrence, editor of U.S. News and World Report 1966

 

"What happened to Vietnamese society was largely the result of the war. It destroyed the old, traditional government and customs and practices. The war came close - politically if not physically - bombing them back to the Stone Age."

Senator William Fulbright

 

"Most people look at Vietnam and Iraq as defeats. But the corporations made a huge amount of money off Vietnam, the military industry, huge corporations, the construction companies. And, they're doing it in a very big way in Iraq. So the corporatocracy, the people that are in fact insisting that our young men and women continue to go to Iraq and fight, they're making a tremendous amount of money. These are not failures for them; they're successes from an economic standpoint"

John Perkins

 

"Does one American in 1,000 or in 100,000, realize that, whereas the Germans dropped 80,000 tons of bombs on Britain in more than five years of war ... under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon we have dropped a total of 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos- vastly more than we and the British let loose on Germany and Japan together in World War II? It was done in the name of "a just peace," of course. Has not Nixon said it dozens of times, his face on the TV screen frozen in unctuousness, as he sent his troops to invade a new country - Cambodia, Laos - or as he ordered his bombers to resume unloading tens of thousands of tons of more lethal bombs on a country which had no Air Force with which to defend itself?"

William Shirer

 

"In Vietnam, Anti-personnel' technology was deployed with impunity; the bombs which sprayed needles into flesh and organs and were difficult to detect in X-rays created little fuss. Although millions of gallons of Agent Orange were dumped on Vietnam during the 1960s, the outcry about its genetic and environmental effects came only as the war was ending.
Death squads, which were expertly organised in Vietnam. An estimated 50,000 South Vietnamese were systematically murdered by assassins working for the CIA's 'Phoenix Programme'."

John Pilger

 

"In Vietnam between 1962 and 1971, an estimated 20 million gallons of defoliants were sprayed on 8 million acres of forests and crops. More than three thousand villages were contaminated, and 60 percent of the defoliants used were agent Orange."

Marie-Monique Robin in the book "The World According to Monsanto

 

"In excess of 1,300,000 Vietnamese people were killed, and many others were maimed for life."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

 

YEMEN


"Yemen is a country under attack by an undeclared coalition comprised of Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the EU, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. While the Yemeni people are under attack, they are simultaneously being collectively punished by the illegal sanctions imposed by a corrupt United Nations.
... The UN sanctions imposed upon Yemen are being exploited by the Saudi coalition to collectively starve and punish 27 million Yemeni people.
... To compare Saudi Arabia's belligerent actions in Yemen to Nazi Germany's undeclared wars of aggression prior to WWII is no exaggeration. Likewise, is the failure of a corrupt UN to censure Saudi Arabia for its flagrant violation of international law, the Nuremberg Principles and the entire Geneva Convention.

Vanessa Beeley, 2016

 

"In Yemen the U.S. and France are helping Saudi Arabia in its massive air war against Houthi Shi'ites.
... Western leaders encourage this violence yet decry it in virtually the same breath."

Daniel Lazare , 2015

 

"The Saudi/UAE/US-coalition has launched over 230,000 airstrikes in Yemen, killing civilians and targeting hospitals, schools, markets, and camps for the internally displaced.
Over 600,000 civilians have been killed or injured in Yemen since the Saudi/UAE/US-coalition began its attacks in 2015. The U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition's blockade on Yemen has also triggered an epidemic of disease and famine across the country."

Ahmed Abdul Kareem, 2018

 

"Barack Obama oversaw the largest exportation of homicidal weapons to the Middle East ever undertaken by a single US president. Saudi Arabia wasted no time in using its U.S. military provisions to lay Yemen to waste. Together with Obama's use of drones in Yemen, the result has been a horrific civil war in which many civilians have been killed and many civilian structures destroyed."

Laurie Calhoun, 2017

 

"As Yemen's population has teetered on the brink of mass starvation in recent months, the United States has played a crucial role in enabling the Saudi strategy responsible for that potential humanitarian catastrophe.
U.S. administrations have prioritized the US's alliance with the Saudis and their Gulf allies over the lives of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis under imminent threat of starvation.
The Saudi coalition has pursued a war strategy of destroying agricultural, health and transportation infrastructure and by choking off access to food and fuel for most of Yemen's population. The United States has enabled the Saudis to pursue that strategy by refueling the Saudi-led coalition planes bombing Yemen and selling the bombs. Equally important, however, the US has provided the political-diplomatic cover that the Saudis need to carry out this ruthless endeavor without massive international blowback.
The Saudi coalition revealed the essence of its strategy in Yemen: to impose extreme hardship on the population in Houthi-controlled governorates. The strategy included not only bombing raids that targeted Yemen's fragile infrastructure for transportation, food production and medical care, but a naval blockade, ostensibly to prevent any arms from reaching Yemen, but also clearly intended to limit severely the population's access to foodstuffs and fuel."

Gareth Porter, 2017

 

"In March 2015, Saudi Arabia, while enjoying the support of the United States and Britain, without any approval by the UN Security Council, unleashed an armed aggression against Yemen.
Saudi Arabia introduced an economic blockade against Yemen, thus inflicting unspeakable suffering upon the peaceful population of Yemen. That is why Riyadh should be held responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths caused by malnutrition.
... Of the 27 million people living in Yemen, almost 20 million people experience an acute shortage of food, which means they are being starved to death."

Martin Berger, 2017

 

"Yemen has been turned into an apocalyptic hell-hole from nearly three years of American-backed Saudi aggression against that country, including maintaining a sea, air and land blockade on the whole nation - a massive war crime - resulting in millions of children starving or dying from cholera and other preventable diseases."

Finian Cunningham, 2017

 

"Yemen is yet another war being fought over resources whose primary victims are the innocent people, and above all the children of Yemen whose sunken eyes, distended, starving bellies and bird-like limbs are a stark reminder of the cruelty of the corporatist-imperialist elite."

Vanessa Beeley, 2016

 

"While the U.S. is not leading the fight in Yemen, it has ardently backed the war's aggressor - Saudi Arabia - from the beginning and has supplied the Saudis with billions of dollars in weapons, as well as occasionally bombed locations in Yemen to aid their Gulf allies.
In addition, the U.S. has turned a blind eye to the Saudis' numerous war crimes in Yemen, despite the enormity of the tragedy unfolding there, including blocking aid shipments and consequently triggering widespread famine. The U.S. has been eager to see Saudi influence continue in Yemen - as it was prior to the conflict - due to Yemen's location, which grants it control over the strategic strait of Bab al-Mandab, a chokepoint for the Saudi oil trade."

Whitney Webb, 2017

 

"What is happening in Yemen is not merely a violent conflict between combating forces for power, but the willful subjugation of millions of innocent civilians to starvation, disease and ruin.
... Seven million people face starvation, and 19 out of 28 million of Yemen's population are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
... More than 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, and nearly 40,000 injured. UNICEF reports nearly 300,000 cholera cases, and a joint statement from UNICEF and the World Health Organization declares the infection is spreading at a rate of 5,000 new cases per day.
... The blockade of imports of food, medicine, and fuel, which Yemen is completely dependent on, is making the situation dire beyond comprehension. If humanitarian aid is not provided immediately, millions of children will starve to death."

Alon Ben-Meir, 2017

 

"It is estimated that 175,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi Arabia and UAE bombing started, with a minimum of 120,000 and a maximum of 240,000. Disease, starvation and other related deaths are spiralling out of control in Yemen with millions displaced and fighting a daily battle just for survival."

Nicolas JS Davies, 2018

 

"The war on Yemen moved towards the most violent form of war. A siege on a whole country with the obvious intent to cause a genocidal famine of the resisting population.
The attacking nations, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Britain and the UAE, planned to grab Yemen's resources.
... Up to July 2017 the U.S.-Saudi coalition had flown more than 90,000 air-sorties over Yemen. Most of those will have involved weapon releases.
... The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a group formerly associated with the University of Sussex, estimates that since March 2015, when the Saudis launched the war, 70,000 to 80,000 were killed due to combat. That estimate is conservative based on documented death as a result of fighting. The Save the Children NGO estimated in late 2017 that 50,000 children died that year for lack of food and from a ravaging Cholera epidemic.
The famine only increased since then. By the end of this year another 50,000 children will have died. The total number of dead caused by the war and blockade since March 2015 has thus likely exceeded the 200,000 mark.
... Saudi and UAE bombardment has destroyed at least 421,911 houses, 930 mosques, 888 schools, 327 hospitals and health facilities, and 38 media organizations, while halting the operation of 4,500 schools and leaving more than 4 million people displaced.
Additionally many bridges were bombed, roads destroyed, factories disabled and wells destructed.
... The Saudi spend an estimated $200 million per day in their war on Yemen. The money they pledged this year to the UN for aid in Yemen sums up to less than 5 days of their military expenditure."

moonofalabama.org, 2018

 

"The United States shares responsibility with the Saudi-led coalition for the Yemeni deaths from starvation that will result from the Saudi war strategy, because of the coalition's dependence on US support."

Gareth Porter, 2017

 

"The House of Saud, is waging a genocidal war of aggression that has already destroyed entire swathes of Yemeni cultural heritage and decimated entire communities... By now, we can see clearly how this is yet another ethnic cleansing programme being endorsed, fuelled and defended by the United States and her allies in the UK, EU, Israel, and the neighbouring Gulf States, the majority of whom participated in this dirty war."

Vanessa Beeley, 2016

 

"A process of degeneration is well underway in the present day, led largely by the US and its coterie of allies among the NATO alliance and oil-rich Arab dictatorships. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen are but some of the evil fruit from the poison that is coursing through international relations.
That a defenceless, impoverished country such as Yemen can be openly bombed by hundreds of US-supplied F-15 fighter jets - and for that criminality to be widely endorsed - is a sure sign that the world is once again sliding into the abyss of rampant criminality and the possibility of a more catastrophic all-out war."

Finian Cunningham, 2015
 

YUGOSLAVIA

"President Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for seventy-eight days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it humanitarian intervention.
... The main purpose of the bombings of Yugoslavia in 1999 was to make life so difficult for the Yugoslav public that support of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined. This is the classic definition of 'terrorism', as used by the FBI, the CIA, and the United Nations: the use or threat of violence against a civilian population to induce the government to change certain policies."

William Blum

 

"Yugoslavia's relatively prosperous industrial base with an economy that was three-fourths publicly owned, could no longer be tolerated to compete with western capitalist production. Secession and war accomplished the goal of breaking up Yugoslavia into small rightwing client states under the economic domination of transnational corporations."

Michael Parenti

 

"Directing and encouraging ethnic cleansing, playing one nationality off of another, bombing civilian infrastructure and murdering civilians in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these acts engaged in by the U.S. and its NATO allies took place under the pleasant halo of 'humanitarian intervention.'"

Paul D'Amato, Dissident Voice, 2008

 

"In the year 2000, a strange new political phenomenon emerged in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia. On the surface, it seemed to be a spontaneous and genuine political 'movement.' In reality, it was the product of techniques that had been under study and development in the US for decades.
... In Belgrade several specific organizations were key players: the National Endowment for Democracy and two of its offshoots, the International Republican Institute, tied to the Republican party, and the National Democratic Institute, tied to the Democrats. While claiming to be private Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), they were, in fact, financed by the US Congress and State Department. Armed with millions in US taxpayer dollars, they were moved into place to create a synthetic movement for 'non-violent change."

F. William Engdahl in his book "Full Spectrum Dominance"

 

"The bombing war in Yugoslavia in 1999 violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland... The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok."

William Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal

 

"Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy. It was the only one that did not beg for entry into NATO. It was - and what's left of it, still is - charting an independent course not in keeping with the New World Order."

Michael Parenti, 2001

 

"The decision to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled "US Policy towards Yugoslavia." set the foreign policy framework for the destabilization of Yugoslavia's model of market socialism and the establishment of a US sphere of influence in Southeastern Europe.
... A series of covert intelligence operations were implemented... These covert operations were combined with the destabilization of the Yugoslav economy. The application of strong economic medicine under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank ultimately led to the destruction of Yugoslavia's industrial base, the demise of the workers' cooperative and the dramatic impoverishment of its population."

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2008

 

"The main purpose of the bombings of Yugoslavia in 1999 was to make life so difficult for the public, that support of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined. This is the classic definition of 'terrorism' as used by the FBI, the CIA, and the United Nations: the use or threat of violence against a civilian population to induce the government to change certain policies."

William Blum

 

"The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia developed from an impoverished, underdeveloped, feuding region into a stable country with an industrial base, full literacy and health care for the whole population.
... In 1991, Washington encouraged, financed and armed right-wing separatist movements in the Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian republics of the Yugoslav Federation. In violation of international agreements Germany and the U.S. gave quick recognition to these secessionist movements and approved the creation of several capitalist ministates.
... Washington initiated a wild propaganda campaign claiming that Serbia was carrying out a campaign of massive genocide against the Albanian majority in Kosovo. The Western media was full of stories of mass graves and brutal rapes.
U.S./NATO officials under the Clinton administration issued an outrageous ultimatum that Serbia immediately accept military occupation and surrender all sovereignty or face NATO bombardment of its cities, towns and infrastructure. When, at a negotiation session in Rambouillet, France, the Serbian Parliament voted to refuse NATO's demands, the bombing began.
In 78 days the Pentagon dropped 35,000 cluster bombs, used thousands of rounds of radioactive depleted-uranium rounds, along with bunker busters and cruise missiles. The bombing destroyed more than 480 schools, 33 hospitals, numerous health clinics, 60 bridges, along with industrial, chemical and heating plants, and the electrical grid."

Sara Flounders, 2008

 

"Since the 1991 US-NATO war aggression against Yugoslavia using highly toxic and radioactive uranium projectiles, the enormity of this war crime becomes clear: In Serbia, aggressive cancer among young and old has reached epidemic proportions.
... Every day a child suffers from cancer. The entire country is contaminated. By harming the genetic material (DNA) generation after generation, malformed children will be born.
... Due to the long degradation process of radioactivity and toxicity, waste from the uranium and nuclear industries - mainly DU from isotope 238 - are stored in secure landfills for a very long time. To reduce the high cost, DU is given free of charge to interested parties such as the military. DU has characteristics that are particularly attractive for the defense industry: The DU projectiles - developed according to German technology - have a high penetrating power because of the high density of the metallic uranium and are particularly suitable for breaking steel armor and underground concrete bunkers. DU is also a flammable material that ignites spontaneously when penetrating an armor plate and at 3000 degrees Celsius burns to uranium oxide dust while releasing highly toxic and radioactive substances (uranium oxide).
This uranium oxide aerosol with particle sizes in the Nano scale reaches the human body through the air, water and, in the long term, through the food chain.
... In the lungs, the DU dust particles are also attached to the red and white blood cells and thus reach all organs of the body, including the brain, the kidney and the testes, so that in many organs cancer is produced and the genetic material (DNA) irreversibly damaged. The strong carcinogenicity of DU is due to the synergistic effects of chemo- and radio toxicity. Through the placenta, the DU can also reach an unborn child and cause serious harm to it. Potential long-term damage includes genetic defects in infants, childhood leukemia, cancer and kidney damage."

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, 2017

 

"For over 40 years, Washington had quietly supported Yugoslavia, and the Tito model of mixed socialism, as a buffer against the Soviet Union. As Moscow's empire began to fall apart, Washington had no more use for a buffer - especially a nationalist buffer which was economically successful, one that might convince neighboring states in eastern Europe that a middle way other than IMF shock therapy was possible. The Yugoslav model had to be dismantled, for this reason alone, in the eyes of top Washington strategists. The fact that Yugoslavia also lay on a critical path to the potential oil riches of central Asia merely added to the argument."

F. William Engdahl

 

"The motive behind the intervention in Yugoslavia was not NATO's new found humanitarianism, but a desire to put Yugoslavia - along with every other country - under the suzerainty of free market globalization."

Michael Parenti in his book "Masters of War"

 

"When Kosovo proclaimed its "independence" in February [2008] , the Western media hailed the provocative dismemberment of Serbia, a move that completed the destruction of Yugoslavia by the United States, the European Union and NATO, as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region.
If by "peace" one means impunity for rampaging crime syndicates or by "stability," the freedom of action with no questions asked by U.S. and NATO military and intelligence agencies, not to mention economic looting on a grand scale by freewheeling multinational corporations, then Kosovo has it all!
From its inception, the breakaway Serb province [of Kosovo] has served as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on spreading their tentacles East, encircling Russia and penetrating the former spheres of influence of the ex-Soviet Union. As a template for contemporary CIA destabilization operations in Georgia and Ukraine, prospective EU members and NATO "partners," Kosovo should serve as a warning for those foolish enough to believe American clichés about "freedom" or the dubious benefits of "globalization."

Tom Burghardt, 2008

 

"In November 1990, under pressure from the Bush administration, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. The new U. S. law provided that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence from Yugoslavia within six months of the act would lose all U.S. financial support. The law demanded separate elections, supervised by the U.S. State Department, in each of the six Yugoslav republics. It also stipulated that any aid go directly to each republic, and not to the central Yugoslav government in Belgrade. In short, the Bush administration demanded the self-dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation. They were deliberately lighting the fuse to an explosive new series of Balkan wars.
Using groups such as the Soros Foundation and NED, Washington financial support was channeled into often extreme nationalist or former fascist organizations that would guarantee a dismemberment of Yugoslavia...The stage was set for a gruesome series of regional ethnic wars which would last a decade and result in the deaths of more than 200,000 people."

William Engdahl in his book "A Century of War"

 

"Yugoslavia remained the only nation in the region that would not voluntarily discard what remained of its socialism and install an unalloyed free-market system. It also proudly had no interest in joining NATO. The US goal has been to transform the FRY into a Third World region, a cluster of weak right-wing principalities."

Michael Parenti

 

"The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome 'marriage of convenience' with the mafia. "Freedom Fighters" were put in place. The narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to finance the Kosovo conflict with the ultimate objective of destabilizing the Belgrade [Yugoslavia] government and fully recolonizing the Balkans.
... The application of strong 'economic' medicine' under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions [International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organizaton (WTO)] had contributed to wrecking Albania's banking system and precipitating the collapse of Albania's economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes riveted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold nickel and platinum."

Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa in an article on the Kosovo war

 

"The US success in removing Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 proved to the US State Department and intelligence community that their new model for covert regime change via nonviolent coup d'états worked. It seemed to be the ideal model for eliminating regimes opposed to US policy. It did not matter if a regime had been popular or democratically-elected. Any regime was potentially vulnerable to the Pentagon's new methods of warfare."

F. William Engdahl

 

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