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