EMPIRE OF CHAOS
WAR
Third World countries
that the United States has, alone or together with others, attacked,
bombed, invaded, and ruined.
"Coming to grips with U.S./CIA
activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have
been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is
very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up
with a figure of six million people killed. Included are: one
million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam
War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000
killed in Angola, and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people
would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by
the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military
activities and destabilize societies."
John Stockwell - former CIA officer
- resigned from CIA in 1976
"There appears to be something
about launching bombs or missiles from afar onto cities and people
that appeals to American military and political leaders. In part
it has to do with a conscious desire to not risk American lives
in ground combat. And in part, perhaps not entirely conscious,
it has to do with not wishing to look upon the gory remains of
the victims, allowing American GIs and TV viewers at home to cling
to their warm fuzzy feelings about themselves and their government."
William Blum
"Since World War Two the
United States has attempted to overthrow more than fifty foreign
governments, it has dropped bombs on the people of around thirty
countries, has attempted to assassinate some sixty foreign leaders,
helped to suppress dozens of populist or nationalist movements,
has tortured many thousands, and seriously and illegally intervened
in one way or another in virtually every country on the planet,
in the process of which the U.S. has caused the end of life for
several million people, and condemned many millions more to a
life of agony and despair."
William Blum
"The manufacturers of armaments
are not the only 'merchants of death.' To some extent, indeed,
we all deserve that name. For in so far as we vote for governments
which impose tariffs and quotas, in so far as we support policies
of re-armament, in so far as we consent to our country's policy
of economic, political and military imperialism, in so far even
as we behave badly in private life, we are all doing our bit to
bring the next war nearer.
The small, but politically powerful, minority of financiers and
industrialists is interested in various forms of economic imperialism.
By a judicious use of their resources, the capitalists of highly
industrialized countries stake out claims for themselves within
nominally independent countries. Those claims are then represented
as being the claims of the respective nations, and the quarrels
between the various financial interests concerned become quarrels
between states. The peace of the world has frequently been endangered,
in order that oil magnates might grow a little richer.
In the press, which is owned by rich men, the interests of the
investing minority are always identified with those of the nation
as a whole. Constantly repeated statements come to be accepted
as truths. Innocent and ignorant, most newspaper readers are convinced
that the private interests of the rich are really public interests
and become indignant whenever these interests are menaced by a
foreign power, intervening on behalf of its investing minority.
The interest at stake are the interests of the few; but the public
opinion which demands the protection of these interests is often
a genuine expression of mass emotion. The many really feel and
believe that the dividends of the few are worth fighting for."
Aldous Huxley in his book "Ends
and Means", 1937
"American leaders are perhaps
not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take
pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they
just don't care. The same that could be said about a sociopath.
As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire,
as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth
and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and
suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ...
then they just don't care about it happening to other people,
including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and
who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange
or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders
would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered
by such things."
William Blum
"United States military
forces have killed more innocent foreign civilians than the forces
of any other country since the end of World War II, an uncomfortable
truth for a nation whose people overwhelmingly consider themselves
liberators, even as their government has supported countless brutal
dictatorships - some of them genocidal - around the world and
overthrown democratically elected governments viewed as undesirable
by Washington and elite American interests, mostly of the corporate
variety."
Brett Wilkins, 2015
"The engine of American
foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of
morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives:
making the world safe for American corporations; enhancing the
financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed
generously to members of congress; preventing the rise of any
society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative
to the capitalist model; extending political and economic hegemony
over as wide an area as possible."
William Blum
"A terrorist is someone
who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force."
William Blum
AFGHANISTAN
"In the 1980s, Afghanistan
had a genuinely popular government that was implementing widespread
reforms. Labour unions were legalized, a minimum wage was established,
hundreds of thousands of Afghans were enrolled in educational
facilities, and women were freed from age-old tribal bondage and
able to earn an independent income.
U.S. and Western imperialism, fearful of that kind of equitable
distribution of wealth, supported the feudal landlords and fundamentalist
mullahs to sow chaos across the country, giving rise to elements
that later formed al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Afghan people
were once more dealt a severe punishment by the forces of Western
imperialism following 9/11, despite a lack of conclusive evidence
linking either the Taliban or al-Qaeda to the attacks. 30 years
of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan have left the people of Afghanistan
impoverished, traumatized, and desperate."
T.J. Petrowski, 2015
"It is due to the wrong
and devastating policies of the U.S. government and NATO countries
that unfortunately today Afghanistan is a mafia state and ranked
at the top of the most unstable and corrupt countries in the world."
Elizabeth DiNovella, 2009
"In 1973, the CIA stepped
up its subversion in Afghanistan, working together with Pakistan
and with the Shah of Iran, to try to control the new Afghan government.
... The CIA worked hand in hand with Afghan fundamentalists, who
were linked with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim World League.
... Events moved rapidly, as the Islamists, supported by the Pakistani
ISI and the US, launched an all-out campaign of terror in Afghanistan,
assassinating hundreds of teachers and civil servants.
... US arms began flowing to the Islamists.
... An unprecedented campaign began to recruit, train, transport
and pay tens of thousands of Islamic fighters-terrorists by any
definition - to fight what were, from the Muslims' perspective,
the occupying Soviets in Afghanistan, eventually bringing together
communist China, Islamic Iran, Iranophobes Saudi Arabia and Egypt,
and many more incongruous 'allies'. This policy went into high
gear after 1979 - in secret and illegally.
... Fundamentalists were recruited to Afghanistan from Tunisia,
Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. 22-year-old
Osama bin Laden joined what he may at least initially have been
unaware was a US-sponsored jihad, following his own agenda to
liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation.
... The number of CIA-Saudi sponsored religious schools (madrassahs)
increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000.
... Once the Afghan operation got going, Pakistan became the conduit
for virtually all the money, arms and fighters.
... In March 1985, Ronald Reagan issued the secret National Security
Decision Directive (NSDD) 166, which authorized stepped-up covert
military aid to the Mujahideen. The supply of arms increased from
10,000 tons in 1983 to 65,000 tons annually by 1987. NSDD 166
was the largest covert operation in US history.
... The US was to bring in men and material from around the Arab
world and beyond into Afghanistan. The most hardened and ideologically
dedicated men were sought on the logic that they would be the
best fighters. Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed
in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements
and motivations to join the Jihad. The US plan for jihad was a
Saudi dream-come-true. The Saudis were eager to see Afghanistan
as a Saudi-groomed Sunni Islamic state beside Pakistan as a counterweight
to Shia Iran. The US showed no concern for the long term implications
of destroying the fragile Afghan state, satisfied with creating
a Vietnam-like quagmire for the Soviet Union in order to destroy
it.
... When the United State took over drug law enforcement in Afghanistan,
opium production increased dramatically. All of a sudden Afghan
heroin is flooding the US and Europe. It still is. You can say
it's a coincidence, except that all the opium warlords are on
the CIA payroll."
Eric Walberg, 2011
"Afghanistan is the world's
largest producer of opium. Poppy cultivation increased 10 percent,
to 201,000 hectares in 2016, while eradication declined significantly;
the 2016 crop yielded an estimated 4,800 metric tonnes of raw
opium, a 43% increase over 2015. The Taliban and other antigovernment
groups participate in and profit from the opiate trade, which
is a key source of revenue for the Taliban inside Afghanistan;
widespread corruption and instability impede counter-drug efforts.
Most of the heroin consumed in Europe and Eurasia is derived from
Afghan opium."
Francesco Cossiga, former Italian
President, 2017
"With the U.S. occupation
in Afghanistan, opium production, which the Taliban had nearly
eliminated for the single year of 2001, reached a new high of
five thousand six hundred tons in 2006."
Peter Dale Scott
"It's hard to overstate
the magnitude of the failure of American reconstruction in Afghanistan.
While the U.S. has occupied the country for seven years and counting,
and efficiently set up a network of bases and prisons, it has
yet to restore to Kabul, the capital, a mud brick city slightly
more populous than Houston, a single one of the public services
its citizens used to enjoy. When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan
in the 1980s, they modernized the education system and built power
plants, dams, factories, and apartment blocs, still the most coveted
in the country."
Ann Jones, 2009
"Although there has been
no attempt to conduct a serious mortality study in Afghanistan
as there was in Iraq but using similar techniques to arrive at
the body count, approximately 130,000-150,000 Afghan soldiers
and police were killed. As for innocent civilians, the estimate
is about 875,000 to have been killed since 2001, with a minimum
of 640,000 and a maximum of 1.4 million."
Consortium News, 2018
"Today, U.S. soldiers who
are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying for their country;
they are dying for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. They are dying
for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American
empire, for the political ambitions of the president. They are
dying to cover up the theft of the nation's wealth to pay for
the machines of death."
Howard Zinn
"Since the US and Britain
"freed" Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime
in 2002, life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases.
Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery
and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned
from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited
from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality
of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims
are driven to self-immolation - burning themselves to death -
or severe self-harm.
Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic
proportions. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced. 57
per cent of brides are under the age of 16.
The illiteracy rate among women is 88 per cent with just 5 per
cent of girls attending secondary school.
Maternal mortality rates - one in nine women dies in childbirth
- are the highest in the world alongside Sierra Leone. And 30
years of conflict have left more than one million widows with
no enforceable rights, left to beg on the streets alongside an
increasing number of orphans. Afghanistan is the only country
in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men."
Terri Judd, 2008
"The anti-American feelings
in Afghanistan are not just coming from conservative or religious
elements. These feelings stem from the actions and military operations
of the foreign troops. The anti-western sentiment is directly
because of the military actions, the civilian casualties, and
the lack of respect by foreign troops for Afghan culture."
Shukria Barakzai, a female member
of the Afghan parliament, 2008
"The proceeds of the Afghan
heroin trade are the source of wealth formation outside Afghanistan,
largely reaped by powerful financial and business/criminal interests
within Western countries. This process of wealth accumulation
resulting from the drug trade is sustained and supported by the
US "War on Terrorism". Decision-making in the US State
Department, the CIA and the Pentagon is instrumental in supporting
this highly profitable multibillion dollar trade, third in commodity
value after oil and the arms trade."
Michel Chossudovsky
"When the US invaded Afghanistan
in 2001, there was an immediate hike in the amount of heroin that
was flowing out of the country. According to the United Nations
Office of Drugs and Crime, after the US invasion in 2001 opium
production in Afghanistan rose from 7,606 hectares in 2001 to
193,000 hectares in 2007. Now that the CIA has control of Afghanistan,
93% of the world's heroin comes from inside its borders."
John Vibes, 2015
"If you look at the deployment
of US forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that the US forces are
positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about.
It's about money, it's about oil, it's not about democracy."
Craig Murray, former British ambassador
to Uzbekistan, 2009
"The United States has
no intention of getting out of Afghanistan. It is building one
of its fortress embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan, just as it is
building a $1 billion embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Just as
it has built an enormous fortress in Baghdad, Iraq. Whatever happens
to American ground troops who eventually will be withdrawn, will
make no difference to the significance of the violent American
presence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in Iraq. These are seen
as places where the United States will have a permanent presence
- a strategic position - where it will be able to monitor, and
perhaps influence, and perhaps control the influences of its imperial
rivals."
John Pilger
"It is estimated that 130,000
- 150,000 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in the U.S. invasion
and occupation of Afghanistan. As for innocent civilians, the
estimate is about 875,000 to have been killed since 2001, with
a minimum of 640,000 and a maximum of 1.4 million."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"The war on Afghanistan
of almost two decades has become an entitlement program for the
arms industry, accomplishing nothing, killing countless peasants,
and lacking purpose other than maintaining an unneeded empire
and funneling money to the Complex."
Fred Reed, 2018
"There is ample evidence
that, when it comes to the freedom of women, education levels,
governmental services, relations among ethnic groups, and quality
of life-all were infinitely better under the Afghan communists
than under the Taliban or the present government of President
Hamid Karzai."
Chalmers Johnson, 2008
"One of the hidden objectives
of the war In Afghanistan was effectively to restore the CIA sponsored
drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over
the drug routes."
Michel Chossudovsky in his book
" America's War on Terrorism"
"Almost eight years after
the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic
and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued
domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that
ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.
... The government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords
and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban.
... Today the situation of women is as bad as ever. Victims of
abuse and rape find no justice because the judiciary is dominated
by fundamentalists."
Afghan peace activist Malalai Joya,
2009
CAMBODIA
"The United States' bombing
of Cambodia caused such widespread death and devastation that
it was critical in Pol Pot's drive for power. What Nixon and Kissinger
began, Pol Pot completed."
John Pilger
"The Khmer Rouge in all
likelihood would never have come to power, nor even made a serious
attempt to do so, if not for the massive America carpet bombing
of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince
Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to
the United States.
... The United States supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge for
several years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese
in 1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his national
security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald
Reagan."
William Blum
"Why should we flagellate
ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?"
Henry Kissinger
"What the United States
has done to Cambodia is greater evil than we have done to any
country in the world."
Pete McClosky, California Congressman
"I encouraged the Chinese
to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the Khmer Rouge."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1981
"Neither the United States
nor its friends nor those who are caught helplessly in its embrace
are well served when its leaders act, as Nixon and Kissinger acted,
without care. Cambodia was not a mistake; it was a crime."
William Shawcross
"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 (and we
thought it was barbaric), we dropped 100,000 tons on Indochina
in the single month of last November, when Nixon restricted the
bombing because of the Paris "peace" talks; and that
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 Cambodia/Laos or as he ordered his bombers to resume unloading
tens of thousands of tons of lethal bombs on a country which had
no Air Force with which to defend itself?"
William Shirer
"The Khmer Rouge, led by
Pol Pot, butchered more than a million people in Cambodia. The
Communist Khmer Rouge were eventually ousted by Vietnamese troops,
whereupon the Reagan administration quietly shifted its support
to Pol Pot's army-a cynical and outrageous foreign policy maneuver
that provoked little comment in the U.S. media at the time."
Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon
"The Cambodian Communist
Party or Khmer Rouge, a revolutionary movement led by Pol Pot,
gained power in Cambodia after the terrible destruction and disorganization
brought about by the US destabilization campaign in Cambodia from
1969 to 1973 with its intensive, secret and illegal bombing. Between
1975 and 1978 the Pol Pot regime turned all its efforts to constructing
a purified Khmer rural society. It forced the urban population
to move to the countryside and executed at least 200,000 people,
many of them deemed to be contaminated with imperialism or Vietnamese
blood or culture. Intellectuals, professionals, civil servants
and cultural leaders were systematically eliminated. Forced labor
on construction and agricultural schemes, starvation and disease
killed another 1.5 million Cambodians. About one Cambodian in
five was exterminated. The Government's ruthless hold on power
continued until it was driven from office by the Vietnamese invasion
of 1979."
Terrorism: No-Nonsense guide
"As a result of the expanded
and intensified bombing campaigns, it has been estimated that
as many as 350,000 civilians in Laos, and 600,000 in Cambodia,
lost their lives."
Christopher Hitchins
"New evidence from US government
documents, declassified in 1987, leaves no doubt that the bombing
of Cambodia caused such widespread death and devastation that
it was critical in Pol Pot's drive for power. What Nixon and Kissinger
began, Pol Pot completed."
John Pilger
"If the United States had
refused to help Lon Nol after the coup in 1970, he would have
collapsed. I would have returned and stopped the war. It didn't
happen because Nixon and Kissinger didn't want Sihanouk back.
There are only two men responsible for the tragedy in Cambodia
today, Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger.
Lon Nol was nothing without them and the Khmer Rouge were nothing
without Lon Nol. But the results were the opposite of what they
wanted. They demoralized America, they lost all of Indochina to
the Communists, and they created the Khmer Rouge."
William Shawcross
"In 1970, the Khmer Rouge's
numbers were in the 100s; in the ensuing social chaos accompanying
the heavy U.S. bombing and Sihanouk's removal, traditional Cambodian
society simply dissolved and the Khmer Rouge's numbers multiplied.
As covertly as possible the USA supported the Khmer Rouge throughout
its devastating rule over Cambodia."
Douglas. F. Dowd
"US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger supervised the carpet bombing of Cambodia in the
early 1970s which killed more than half-a-million civilians and
paved the way for the Khmer Rouge victory two years later. Margaret
Thatcher, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan all supported the regime
after it was driven from power. And China supplied Pol Pot with
weapons throughout the 1980s. Because of this the genocide was
buried for nearly 20 years. The Khmer Rouge survived until 1992."
Wayne Ellwood
"In 1969, President Richard
Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry A. Kissinger, unleashed
B-52 carpet bombing for over fourteen months against a people
who still tilled the soil with water buffalo. The 3,500 bombing
sorties resulted in 600,000 deaths. The American bombing of Cambodia
was a closely guarded secret primarily because the U.S. was not
at war with Cambodia.
Not only did Nixon and Kissinger not seek the necessary approval
from Congress to bomb Cambodia, they tried to conceal the bombing
not only from the American public but Congress as well.
Dozens of towns, villages, and hamlets were destroyed and burnt
to ensure that they could no longer serve as a base or sanctuary
for communist forces. There was no attempt to discriminate between
innocent Cambodians and the enemy during these assaults.
Cambodia was being systematically demolished, and the Khmer Rouge,
hitherto a marginal element, were becoming a significant force
with substantial peasant support in inner Cambodia, increasingly
victimized by U. S. terror.
Following the bombing, many peasants were so outraged at the United
States and their puppet leader in Cambodia that they chose to
join the Khmer Rouge, a marginal revolutionary communist group
whose ranks swelled to a major force. After taking power, the
Khmer Rouge unleashed a reign of terror killing over one million
people."
David Model
"From 1961-1971, dioxin-containing
defoliant Agent Orange was used, mainly in the South Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos. Millions of gallons were sprayed with devastating
consequences because dioxin is one of the most toxic known substances,
a potent carcinogenic human immune system suppressant. It accumulates
in adipose tissue and the liver, alters living cell genetic structures,
causes congenital disorders and birth defects."
Stephen Lendman
"Although the Khmer Rouge
are fully responsible for the atrocities which they committed
in Cambodia, the United States must at least accept some responsibility
for creating the conditions that provided the Khmer Rouge with
the opportunity to rise to power. Before the American-South Vietnamese
bombing and invasion of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge were a marginal
force of about 3,000. The death and destruction resulting from
the actions of the United States and South Vietnam drove hundreds
of thousands of peasants into the arms of the Khmer Rouge giving
them the strength to eventually take over the government."
David Model
"In 1975 Cambodia fell
to the Khmer Rouge whose leader Pol Pot launched a genocide that
rivaled the earlier purges of Hitler and Stalin. The Khmer Rouge,
with vigorous support from the CIA, killed 1.5 million Cambodians."
Dean Henderson
"The word "hypocrisy"
barely begins to cover the Carter administration's support for
Pol Pot's insurgents as they fought the Vietnamese invasion in
1979, followed by support for the Khmer Rouge's retention of Cambodia's
UN seat - even as the US denounced Khmer Rouge genocide.
... It was easy enough for human rights leaders to denounce the
crimes of the Khmer Rouge. What was far harder was acknowledging
American responsibility for what had happened. And yet already
at the time of the American invasion and bombing of Cambodia in
1970, witnesses of the flight of peasants to Phnom Penh to escape
the B-52s and the shattering of their traditional livelihoods
were warning of the horrors such brutalization might bring in
its wake. In the end, this was another awful chapter in the very
old story of how savage warfare not only destroys a society but
also opens the way for the rise of a small, fanatical, brutal
leadership capable of horrific atrocities rationalized by ideology."
James Peck
"U.S. bombing of Cambodia
had already been underway for several years in secret under the
Johnson and Nixon administrations, but President Nixon openly
began bombing in preparation for a land assault on Cambodia.
... Immense damage was done to the villages and cities of Cambodia,
causing refugees and internal displacement of the population.
This unstable situation enabled the Khmer Rouge, a small political
party led by Pol Pot, to assume power.
... The Khmer Rouge's role in the deaths of millions in Cambodia
was made possible by the the U.S. bombing of that nation which
destabilized it by death, injuries, hunger and dislocation of
its people.
... So the U.S. bears responsibility not only for the deaths from
the bombings but also for those resulting from the activities
of the Khmer Rouge - a total of about 2.5 million people. Even
when Vietnam latrer invaded Cambodia in 1979 the CIA was still
supporting the Khmer Rouge."
James A. Lucas
"You should tell the Khmer
Rouge that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs,
but we won't let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve
relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don't tell
them what I said before."
Henry Kissinger speaking to a Thai
Foreign Minister, 1975
"When the bombing began
Cambodia was a neutral nation, therefore, to bomb it would be
illegal in U.S. law. For that reason, it was kept secret even
from the pilots doing the bombing.
The bombing began on March 17, 1969. By the time it ended, 14
months later, 3,630 bombing raids-raids not flights-had been carried
out by flights of 50 or so 8-engined B-52s flying mostly from
Guam or Okinawa.
When the planes took off the pilots had been given "legitimate"
targets in Vietnam; as they reached Vietnam, they were given coordinates
by radio - in Cambodia. We know that from the sworn testimony
of one of the pilots."
William Shawcross
"Between 1975 and 1979,
2,035,000 "educated" people in Cambodia were rounded
up and shot. During the short four years of its rule in Cambodia,
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government murdered over 31 percent of the
entire Cambodian population."
Charlie Robinson
"I happen to believe that
Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive Secretaries of
State in the modern history of this country. Kissinger's actions
in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew
Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer
Rouge to come in, who then butchered some three million innocent
people, was one of the worst genocides in the history of the world.
"
Senator Bernie Sanders
"More than 40 years ago,
the Nixon-Kissinger bombing of Cambodia unleashed a torrent of
suffering from which that country has never recovered. However,
in the mainstream media, Kissinger is described as a key shaper
of a world order that remained stable for a quarter of a century.
Tell that to the people of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, East
Timor and all the other victims of his "statecraft".
Only when we recognise the war criminals in our midst will the
blood begin to dry."
John Pilger
IRAQ
"The United States and
its officials aided and abetted by others engaged in a continuing
pattern of conduct from August 6, 1990 until this date to impose,
maintain and enforce extreme economic sanctions and a strict military
blockade on the people of Iraq for the purpose of injuring the
entire population, killing its weakest members, infants, children,
the elderly and the chronically ill, by depriving them of medicines,
drinking water, food, and other essentials in order to maintain
a large US military presence in the region, and dominion and control
over its people and resources including oil.
... The United States, its President Bill Clinton and other officials,
the United Kingdom and its [former] Prime Minister John Major
and other officials have committed a crime against humanity as
defined in the Nuremberg Charter against the population of Iraq.
... The United States, its President Bill Clinton and other officials,
the United Kingdom and its Prime Minister John Major and other
officials have committed genocide as defined in the Convention
against Genocide against the population of Iraq including genocide
by starvation and sickness through use of sanctions."
International Court On Crimes Against
Humanity Committed by the UN Security Council, Madrid, November
1996
"American air power pounded
the hell out of Iraqi armor and buildings with depleted uranium
rounds... I have been in and around buildings destroyed by depleted
uranium rounds, as well as vehicles, armored personnel carriers,
tanks and corpses... During the invasion, we were also exposed
to severe sandstorms, which meant that we were breathing in sand
for days, sand that more than likely contained depleted uranium."
James Gilligan, United States Marine
Corps, 2008
"The [Iraq] sanctions,
imposed for a decade largely at the insistence of the United States,
constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention... For more than
ten years the United States has deliberately pursued a policy
of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full
well the cost in Iraqi lives."
Professor Thomas Nagy
"The United States never
intended to rebuild Iraq. The United States has a long record
of bombing nations, reducing entire neighborhoods, and much of
cities, to rubble, wrecking the infrastructure, ruining the lives
of those the bombs didn't kill. And afterward doing shockingly
little or literally nothing to repair the damage."
Gen. William McCoy, Army Corps
of Engineers
"Today, U.S. soldiers who
are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying for their country;
they are dying for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. They are dying
for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American
empire, for the political ambitions of the president. They are
dying to cover up the theft of the nation's wealth to pay for
the machines of death."
Howard Zinn
"It is estimated that 2.38
million Iraqis have been killed since 2003, as a result of the
criminal American and British invasion of Iraq. However, that
is not the upper number given, which could reach as high as 3.4
million."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"The assault on Fallujah,
Iraq, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. Washington
determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This
is called "exemplary" or "collective" punishment
and is, according to the laws of war, illegal."
Tom Eley, WSWS, 2010
"The invasion of Iraq was
a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating
absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion
was an act intended to consolidate American military and economic
control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all
other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as
liberation. Americans and their British puppets have brought torture,
cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder,
misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it
'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East."
British playwright Harold Pinter,
2005 Nobel Lecture
"During the 1990s Bill
Clinton rained bombs on Iraq in what were euphemistically called
the 'no fly zones'. At the same time he imposed a medieval siege
called economic sanctions, killing perhaps a million people, including
a documented 500,000 children. Almost none of this carnage was
reported in the so-called mainstream media."
John Pilger
"Famine threatens four
million people in sanctions-hit Iraq - one fifth of the population...
The human situation is deteriorating. Living conditions are precarious
and are at pre-famine level for at least four million people ...
The deterioration in nutritional status of children is reflected
in the significant increase of child mortality, which has risen
nearly fivefold since 1990."
UN Food and Agricultural Organization
(FAO) report on the effect of U.S. sanctions on Iraq, September
1995
"Sanctions closed down
the entire Iraqi economy and devastated the people. Iraqi families
could not buy food or medicine or school books or basic household
commodities. Children starved and died. Literacy was wiped out
in a single generation. The future of the country was ravaged
in all parts. It was deliberate cruelty and a mockery of the humanitarian
principles embodied by the United Nations."
Susan Lindauer in her book "Extreme
Prejudice"
"Somebody's paying the
corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are
rebuilding it. They're getting paid by the American taxpayer in
both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we
pay them to rebuild it."
Noam Chomsky
"If a private individual
were to intentionally kill innocent children, most everyone would
recognize that as the epitome of evil. Yet, rarely is there an
U.S. op-ed or an editorial commenting on the evil of killing Iraqi
children with the sanctions that the U.S. government enforced
for more than 10 years.
... During the decade Iraqi children were dying, from U.S. sanctions
year after year, there were few op-eds and editorials in the U.S.
mainstream press pointing out the evil in killing innocent children.
It's almost as if the deaths of those children were considered
to be no big deal, especially since the killings were part of
an ongoing sanctions policy, which has become a well-established
part of U.S. foreign policy. The notion was that killing children
by sanctions was different from lining them up against a wall
and shooting them or exploding a bombing within their midst.
... The sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s continued killing Iraqi
children all the way through 2003, when the U.S. military, using
the 9/11 attacks to garner support, invaded Iraq to achieve the
regime change that the sanctions - and the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of Iraqi children - had failed to achieve. That regime-change
invasion has resulted in another million or so dead people, including
children, not to mention the number injured, maimed, tortured,
assassinated, executed, or exiled or who have had their homes
or businesses destroyed."
Jacob G. Hornberger, 2017
"Iraq's post invasion (2003-2007)
excess under five mortality has been estimated at over one million.
In Afghanistan, post invasion, at 1.9 million (2001-2007)."
Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research,
2008
"The Israelis are skillful
at exploiting Arab rivalries and turning Arab against Arab. The
Kurdish tribes, for example, inhabit the mountains of northern
Iraq. Every month, a secret Israeli envoy slips into the mountains
from the Iranian side to deliver $50,000 to Kurdish leader Mulla
Mustafa al Barzani. The subsidy insures Kurdish hostility against
Iraq, whose government is militantly anti-Israel."
Jack Anderson, 1972
"There was no one left
to kill in Iraq."
General Norman Schwartzkopf after
the Basra Road bloodbath
Operation Desert Storm, 2003
"This was an insane war
[Iraq] that brought us low economically, morally. ..We went to
war against a guy [Saddam Hussein] who had absolutely nothing
to do with 9/11. It was a total pretext. It's inexplicable, and
there you go to Cheney, there you go to Bush, there you go to
the Jewish neo-cons who wanted to remake the world."
journalist Carl Bernstein, speaking
before a roundtable at MSNBC in 2012 about the Iraq War
"I think all foreigners
should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. "
Paul Wolfowitz, U. S. Deputy Secretary
of Defense, 2003
"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
"The United States and
its 'coalition' allies attacked Iraq in 1991. Up to a quarter
of a million people were killed or died during and immediately
after the attack. As a direct result, child mortality in Iraq
doubled.
More than 1.8 million people have been forced from their homes,
and Iraq's electricity, water, sewage, communications, health,
agriculture and industrial infrastructure have been 'substantially
destroyed', producing 'conditions for famine and epidemics'."
John Pilger
"Oil was not the only motivation
for the American invasion and occupation [of Iraq] , but the other
goals have already been achieved -- eliminating Saddam Hussein
for Israel's sake, canceling the Iraqi use of the euro in place
of the dollar for oil transactions, expansion of the empire in
the Middle East with new bases.
American oil companies have been busy under the occupation, and
even before the US invasion, preparing for a major exploitation
of Iraq's huge oil reserves. Chevron, ExxonMobil and others are
all set to go. Four years of preparation are coming to a head
now. Iraq's new national petroleum law -- written in a place called
Washington, DC -- is about to be implemented. It will establish
agreements with foreign oil companies, privatizing much of Iraq's
oil reserves under exceedingly lucrative terms. Security will
be the only problem, protecting the oil companies' investments
in a lawless country. For that they need the American military
close by."
William Blum, 2006
"Kuwaiti oil minister Sheikh
Saud Nasir al-Sabah's daughter was the Kuwaiti woman who had told
the U.S. Congress in October 1990 that she had witnessed Iraqi
soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies from their incubators. Her shocking
testimony had been a major factor in getting U.S. popular support
for Operation Desert Storm. That incident was later exposed as
a PR stunt."
F. William Engdahl
"On the question of whether
or not Iraq was involved in 9/11, there was never any evidence
to prove that."
former Vice President Dick Cheney,
on Fox News, June, 1, 2009
"Before the Persian Gulf
War, Iraq was a rapidly developing country, with free education,
ample electricity, modernized agriculture, and a robust middle
class. According to the World Health Organization, 93 percent
of the population had access to health care. The devastation of
the Gulf War and the sanctions that preceded and sustained such
devastation changed all that."
Joy Gordon, Harpers, 2002
"During the Gulf War of
1991 the United States dropped some ninety thousand tons of bombs
on Iraq in the space of forty-three days, intentionally destroying
the civilian infrastructure, including eighteen of twenty electricity-generating
plants and the water-pumping and sanitation systems."
Chalmers Johnson
"The allied bombardment
had had a "near apocalyptic impact" on Iraq and had
transformed the country into a "pre-industrial age nation,"
which "had been until January a rather highly urbanized and
mechanized society."
a UN inspection team, in William
Blum's book "Killing Hope"
"The dissolution of Syria
and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in
Lebanon is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front. Its dissolution
is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger
than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes
the greatest threat to Israel.
An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq
apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to
organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of
inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will
shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq
into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon.
In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines
as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more)
states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad
and Mosul and Shiite areas in the South will separate from the
Sunni and Kurdish north."
Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist,
in 1982 article for World Zionist Organization
LAOS
"The CIA flew opium and
heroin all over Indochina to serve the personal and entrepreneurial
needs of the CIA's various military and political allies, ultimately
turning numerous GIs into addicts. The operation was not a paragon
of discretion. Heroin was refined in a laboratory located on the
site of CIA headquarters in northern Laos. After a decade of American
military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of
70 percent of the world's illicit opium and the major supplier
of raw materials for America's booming heroin market."
William Blum
"It seemed that everyone
knew what was going on in Laos, except for the American public.
And Americans didn't know about it because the media were willingly
keeping it secret."
Walter J. Smith, a U.S. Air Force
non-commissioned officer in Laos
"As a result of the expanded
and intensified bombing campaigns, it has been estimated that
as many as 350,000 civilians in Laos lost their lives."
Christopher Hitchins
"The U.S. military released
297 million cluster bomblets over Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Thirty years later these bomblets continue to kill farmers in
their fields and children unfortunate enough to find a 'plaything'."
Robert Weitzel
"Between 1964 and 1973,
the US Air Force dropped 260 million cluster bombs on Laos, or
the equivalent of a fully-loaded B-52 bomber's payload dropped
every eight minutes for nine years."
rawstory.com
"The Laos operation is
something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved
virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our
money there is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective."
U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary
of State in 1971
about American carpet-bombing of Laos which killed hundreds-of-thousands
of civilians
"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
"From 1961 - 1971, dioxin-containing
defoliant Agent Orange was used, mainly in the South [Vietnam],
Cambodia and Laos. Millions of gallons were sprayed with devastating
consequences because dioxin is one of the most toxic known substances,
a potent carcinogenic human immune system suppressant. It causes
congenital disorders and birth defects, and contributes to diseases
like cancer and diabetes.
In 1970, U.S, Operation Tailwind used sarin nerve gas in Laos."
Stephen Lendman
"Air America re-supplied
the CIA-created Meo [Hmong] Army in Laos, which fought a proxy
war for the US against the communist Pathet Lao, who had overrun
the Plain of Jars region in 1964. Air America ferried weapons
into remote Meo villages, then returned to its base at Long Tieng
loaded with opium grown by the villagers."
Dean Henderson
"A blueprint for American
strategy in the War on Terror was the 1959-1975 secret war in
Laos, where the CIA worked with hundreds of civilian contractors
who flew spotter aircraft, ran ground bases and operated radar
stations in civilian clothes while raising its own private army
among the Hmong to fight the pro-communist Pathet Lao."
Jeremy Kuzmarov
"From 1964 to 1973, the
United States flew 580,000 bombing missions over Laos. The ostensible
targets were Vietnamese communist troops and Pathet Lao forces.
In practice, however, the targets were anything that moved.
A third of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to explode on impact,
thus becoming UXO. Some of the most harmful munitions were cluster
bombs, which were dropped inside casings meant to open in mid-air
and spread the "bomblets" over a wide area. About 80
million cluster bombs didn't detonate; less than one percent of
all UXO has been cleared.
Unexploded ordnance is just one legacy of intensive American bombing
of Laos when the United States dropped two million tons of bombs
on the country - more than twelve times the amount of bombs dropped
on Japan during World War II. Laos is, per capita, the most heavily
bombed country on Earth.
Is the United States doing anything to help clean up the bombs
it dropped and assist the victims of its atrocities? Hardly. To
date, the US has allocated $85 million to help get rid of the
UXO - nowhere near the amount required and a pathetic figure compared
to the $18 million (inflation-adjusted) the United States spent
per day bombing Laos."
Brett S. Morris
"The CIA was running the
Golden Triangle narcotics business during the Vietnam War. The
heroin being sold to American soldiers in Vietnam was coming from
the CIA's clients in Laos. The CIA was protecting the major opium
producers in the Golden Triangle, just like they've been protecting
the major drug dealers in Afghanistan for the last fifteen years."
Douglas Valentine
"John Foster and Allen
Dulles backed a series of covert operations against two of East
Asia's most prominent neutralists, Prince Norodom Sihanouk of
Cambodia and Prince Souvanna Phouma of Laos."
Stephen Kinzer
LIBYA
"The Libyan revolution
was portrayed as an extension of the Arab Spring, and NATO involvement
was framed in humanitarian terms.
The fact that the CIA was actively working to help the Libyan
rebels topple Gaddafi was no secret, nor were the airstrikes that
Obama ordered against the Libyan government. However, little was
said about the identity or the ideological leanings of these Libyan
rebels. Not surprising, considering the fact that the leader of
the Libyan rebels later admitted that his fighters included Al-Qaeda
linked jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq.
... After Gaddafi was overthrown, the Libyan armories were looted,
and massive quantities of weapons were sent by the Libyan rebels
to Syria. The weapons, which included anti-tank and anti-aircraft
missiles were smuggled into Syria through Turkey, a NATO ally."
scgnews.com, 2014
"The real policy is to break
up countries in the Middle East, and leave them in turmoil with
warring factions like Libya and Syria today. And, the same in
Iraq."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2012
"Libya was once one of
the most prosperous nations in Africa, former Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi made the "mistake" of challenging the U.S. petrodollar
system by creating a gold-backed pan-African currency known as
the dinar. Following his ouster, Libya was transformed into a
failed state where there is still no clear government, terrorism
runs rampant and slaves are now openly traded in public."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"Before 9-11 there were
reportedly seven countries left in the world whose central bank
was not under Rothschild control: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya,
Cuba, North Korea and Iran. By 2003, however, Afghanistan and
Iraq were swallowed up by the Rothschild octopus, and by 2011
Sudan and Libya were also gone."
Pete Papaherakles, 2012
"Libya was once one of
the most prosperous nations in Africa, former Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi made the "mistake" of challenging the U.S. petrodollar
system by creating a gold-backed pan-African currency known as
the dinar. Following his ouster, Libya was transformed into a
failed state where there is still no clear government, terrorism
runs rampant and slaves are now openly traded in public."
Whitney Webb, 2017
"Libya was the most prosperous
and successful nation in Africa. It had one of the biggest reserves
of gold in the world before NATO's takeover. A big bulk of those
reserves is now sitting in the vaults of the Bank of England -
the Bank of Rothschilds -in the City of London.
... NATO, US, France, UK, Qatar, and every other nation involved
in the overthrow of Gaddafi's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya took a thriving,
first-rate, self-reliant Arab nation and turned it into a miserable
failed state with Al-Qaeda and ISIS savages terrorizing its population
and balkanizing Libya."
Alexander Azadgan, 2018
"As of 2006, Libya had
the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, some 35%, larger even
than Nigeria."
F. William Engdahl, 2014
"The conflict in Libya
is a CIA operation, not a legitimate protest of the Libyan people.
It's an armed rebellion that has no support in the capital city
Tripoli. It's taking place in the east where the oil is and is
directed at China."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2011
"The rise of the Islamic
State (ISIS) did not happen overnight, nor by accident. It was
the logical result of the United States continuing its strategy
of proxy warfare it had carried out against Libya."
Tony Cartalucci
"It is estimated that 250,000
Libyans were killed in the war, violence and subsequent chaos
that the U.S. and its allies unleashed in Libya in February 2011,
and which continues to the present day. The maximum estimate of
all deaths is 360,000."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
NICARAGUA
"Thanks mostly to an invasion
by murderous 'Contra' squads, who were paid, armed and directed
by the CIA, Nicaragua has been returned to its status under the
Washington-sponsored Somoza dictatorship: that of the poorest,
most indebted country in Latin America. Gone are the literacy
programmes, the child mortality figures, the 'barefoot doctors',
the improving community schools, the agricultural co-operatives."
John Pilger
"The most important effect
of the Reagan policy was the tremendous destruction it wreaked
on Nicaragua. Approximately 30,000 Nicaraguans were killed and
tens of thousands others were wounded, a death total higher in
per capita terms than that suffered by the United States in the
Civil War, World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, and the
Vietnam War combined."
Thomas Carothers
"In 1932, a coup in El
Salvador - with United Fruit sponsorship - exterminated 300,000
peasants who had risen up in revolt against the conditions in
which they were forced to live. For forty years, the United Fruit
Company stood behind the regime of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua."
DOPE, INC
"Washington continued to
prop up the Nicaraguan Somoza dictatorship with loans. The Pentagon
created, trained, and armed the National Guard, and nearly all
Guard officers spent their last year of training in U.S. schools
in the Panama Canal Zone.
The money, the training, and the arms Nicaragua received from
the United States were used to repress the poor people in the
slums and rural areas by imprisonment, torture, and death.
... During Somoza's presidency, the Somoza family alone owned
8,260 square miles, or more than 5 million acres, an area approximately
the size of El Salvador. The Somozas controlled an equally disproportionate
share of the country's industry; they owned Nicaragua's twenty-six
biggest companies.
... According to conservative estimates, some thirty thousand
Nicaraguans died in the four decades prior to the 1978-79 civil
war for opposing the government of Anastasio Somoza and his sons
Luis and Anastasio II."
Penny Lernoux in her book Cry of
the People
"After five years of Sandinista
rule, infant mortality dropped to the lowest level in Central
America. Over 85 percent of the population had learned to read
and write at least on a third-grade level as a result of a crash
literacy program acclaimed by UNESCO. The number of schools had
doubled since the overthrow of Anastazio Somoza. The Sandinistas
also initiated sweeping agrarian reform, emphasizing basic grains
and crops for local needs rather than export-a development strategy
that brought Nicaragua close to food self-sufficiency.
... In addition, the Nicaraguan government banned DDT and other
harmful sprays, while neighboring states still serve as dumping
grounds for U.S.-made chemical toxins. Strides in Nicaraguan health
care won praise from the United Nations and other international
groups. The World Health Organization lauded Nicaragua's success
in nearly eliminating polio, measles and diphtheria, and reducing
infant mortality. But many of these achievements were subsequently
eroded-along with the Sandinistas' popularity-as the Nicaraguan
government diverted its resources in an effort to defend itself
from attacks by U.S.-financed mercenary forces. "Unfortunately,"
said former contra leader Edgar Chamorro, "the contras bum
down schools, homes and health centers as fast as the Sandinistas
can build them."
Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon,
Unreliable Sources
"The main tactical issue
mulled over in the U.S. press with respect to Nicaragua's 1990
elections was how to channel millions of dollars to the political
opposition - covertly via the CIA or openly through the National
Endowment for Democracy. That such meddling - whether overt or
covert - might compromise the integrity of the Nicaraguan electoral
process was never mentioned by most mainstream journalists, who
seemingly took for granted that it's perfectly fine if the U.S.
government interferes in the affairs of other countries."
Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon,
Unreliable Sources
"The US is the only nation
on record to have been condemned by the World Court for international
terrorism - in Nicaragua."
John Pilger
"Democracy has been our
goal in Nicaragua, and to reach it we have sponsored the killing
of thousands of Nicaraguans."
Jack Beatty, Atlantic Monthly editor
"The people of Nicaragua
did not become anti-Semitic by the influence of a new kind of
bananas they have begun to grow. The Sandinista movement does
not need such questionable justifications in order to achieve
popularity-the fact that Somoza's regime is so corrupt and dirty
is sufficient grounds for any reasonable man to support, either
openly or covertly, those fighting Somoza. If more and more Nicaraguans
are hating Israel more and more, it is not because they have become
anti-Semitic suddenly. The reason is different: Because more and
more of their children are being killed or wounded by weapons
"made in Israel."
Israeli Daily Davar (on the eve
of Somoza's overthrow in the 1980s)
"It is common knowledge
in the United States and throughout the world that the power ruling
the "banana republics" of Central America is and has
been the United Fruit Company - United Brands. It is no exaggeration
to say that every coup that has taken place in the region was
backed by the fruit company, which ran the nations of Central
America mercilessly as slave-labor plantations. In 1932, a coup
in El Salvador-with United Fruit sponsorship-exterminated 300,000
peasants who had risen up in revolt against the conditions in
which they were forced to live. For forty years, the United Fruit
Company stood behind the regime of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua."
from the book 'DOPE, INC'
"Israel has active relations
with many Third World countries, mainly because of its vigorous
sales of military equipment and its close ties to the United States,
which small countries seek to exploit. Israel at times also acts
as a surrogate for the United States in activities in which Washington
wishes to conceal its involvement. A dramatic example is the Iran-Contra
affair in which Israel shipped weapons to Iran and the profits
were used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras in contravention of
congressional restrictions.
... Israel has courted and befriended such brutal despots as General
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte of Chile, Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador,
General Romeo Lucas Garcia of Guatemala, Jean-Claude Duvalier
of Haiti, Anastasio Somoza Debayle of Nicaragua, and General Aifredo
Stroessner of Paraguay."
Paul Findley
"The U.S.-backed Contra
war in Nicaragua killed some 30,000 Nicaraguans, a percentage
of their population equivalent to 2 million dead Americans."
Stephen M. Walt
"Once the state of Israel
was established, the flow of weapons through Nicaragua into Palestine
was reversed: A sizable part of the Israeli armaments industry
(an estimated 60%) was pumped back into the Central American "banana
dictatorships." Israeli weapons and military hardware sustained
the Somoza regime when it came under attack and permitted Somoza
to carry out his scorched earth policy against his own population.
... Israeli weapons to Somoza were funneled under the cover of
the Israeli Maritime Fruit Company, through the services of Max
Fisher's associates... And when the United Brands mafia determined
to dump the traditional dictators of the previous half-century,
the same flow of Israeli and East Bloc originating arms began
to flow into the Sandinistas and Moscow-backed narcoterrorist
groups in Guatemala and El Salvador."
from the book 'DOPE, INC'
*****
the quotes below are
from David Model's book 'Lying For Empire'
"After the Sandinista Government
in Nicaragua overthrew the corrupt and brutal dictator Somoza,
the United States organized, trained, and supplied a guerrilla
force known as the Contras in order to restore a friendly government
in Nicaragua."
"The United States breached
the OAS charter when it mined the harbours of Nicaragua and when
it organized a guerrilla force to undermine the government of
Nicaragua."
"When the Sandinistas took
power, the educational system in Nicaragua was one of the poorest
in Latin America. Limited spending on education and severe poverty
forced many children into the labour market before their education
was complete. By the time Somoza went into exile only 65 percent
of primary school-age children were enrolled in school and only
22 percent of those who attended primary school completed the
full six years. In rural areas, most secondary schools had only
one or two grades and there was a 75 percent illiteracy rate.
To improve the educational system, the Sandinistas doubled the
proportion of GNP spent on primary and secondary schools, increased
the number of teachers, and built more schools. Using volunteer
teachers, the Sandinista government succeeded in reducing the
illiteracy rate from 50 percent of the population to 23 percent.
Enrollment in colleges skyrocketed from 11,142 students in 1978
to 38,570 in 1985.
Health care was a disaster under the Somoza regime with many Nicaraguans
having limited or no access to modern health care. The Sandinistas
completely restructured the entire health care system by spending
substantially more on health care, increasing the number of students
entering medical school from 100 to 500, building five new hospitals,
and building 363 primary health care clinics.
The Sandinistas, who had themselves been victims of the brutal
dictatorship of Somoza, were determined to construct new political
institutions and to introduce a new constitution which guaranteed
human rights.
All these progressive measures were interpreted by the new American
President, Ronald Reagan, as symptoms of communism requiring immediate
action by the United States."
"The purpose of the Contras
was not to defeat the Sandinista army in battle but to use terrorist
tactics to destroy infrastructure, health, and educational services.
Their intention was not to confront Sandinistas but to blow up
bridges, power plants, oil pipelines, ports, schools, health clinics,
grain silos, irrigation projects, and farmhouses. The underlying
purpose of these acts of terrorism was to destroy the morale of
the Nicaraguan people and to force the Nicaraguan government to
divert a high proportion of its budget to defence as discussed
in detail below. Diverting government resources to the war, forcing
the Sandinistas to cut back on their reform programs, had a considerable
negative impact on the people of Nicaragua.
Noam Chomsky, in Understanding Power
Why do we have to get rid of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? In
reality it's not because anybody really thinks that they're a
communist power about to conquer the Hemisphere - it's because
they were carrying out social programs that were beginning to
succeed, and which would have appealed to other people in Latin
America who want the same things."
"Nicaragua was a victim
of the Cold War and also of the American obsession with creating
client states in Latin America. According to U.S. policy-makers,
whenever Latin American countries experimented with progressive
reforms they were communist and a threat to American corporate
interests. Then the mighty American military and intelligence
machine jumped into action. Human rights and respect for the sovereignty
and political independence of other states dropped off the radar
screen. All that remained was American self-interest."
PHILIPPINES
"Upon taking the Philippines
from Spain in 1898, the US then fought a bloody three-year war
against Filipino rebels. In Luzon alone over 600,000 people were
killed by American troops or died from war-related diseases and
privations- as the war against the guerrillas became a war against
the people who supported the guerrillas. US General Arthur MacArthur
issued a proclamation renouncing "precise observance of the
laws of war." Among other things, MacArthur's troops tortured
and executed prisoners (civilians included), destroyed crops,
food stores, domestic animals, boats, and whole villages, and
forced tens of thousands of Filipinos into "relocation camps."
Michael Parenti
"In early 2003 then-Assistant
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called the Philippines the
"second front in the War on Terror." Since then tens
of thousands of Muslim villagers have been forcibly displaced
and hundreds have been tortured, killed, or disappeared. As a
result Muslim guerrilla activity has increased.
In October 2003, during a visit Bush cited the Philippines as
a model for the rebuilding of Iraq. Forgetting to mention the
U.S. invasion of the Philippines in 1898 and 13-year pacification
campaign when upwards of one million Filipinos died, Bush described
the Philippines as a "model of democracy"-albeit a bonafide
death squad democracy. "
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya,
2006
"You never hear of any
disturbances in Northern Luzon, Philippines, because there isn't
anybody there to rebel. That country was marched over and cleared
out. The good lord in Heaven only knows the number of Filipinos
that were put under the ground; our soldiers took no prisoners;
they kept no records; they simply swept the country and wherever
or however they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him."
a Republican member of Congress
in 1899, gave an eyewitness report on the US invasion of the Philippines
"In the United States,
the first militarist tendencies appeared at the end of the nineteenth
century. Before and during the Spanish-American War of 1898, the
press was manipulated to whip up a popular war fever, while atrocities
and war crimes committed by American forces in the Philippines
were hidden from public view."
Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire
"After the fall of Ferdinand
Marcos in 1986, Philippine conservative ruling elites aided by
the United States moved quickly to reinstate the pre-dictatorship
political system that had since Spanish colonial rule allowed
them to entrench their economic dominance over society.
Smarting from the lessons of Marcos' dictatorship, and seeing
that authoritarianism was not necessarily the most effective way
to maintain their collective grip on power, the elite leaders
restored civil liberties, but restricted democracy to mere electoral
contests that remained structurally skewed in their favor.
Dubbed variably as "low-intensity democracy," "limited
democracy," or "polyarchy" by academics, the post-1986
consensus became both the linchpin of stability and the source
of legitimacy for Philippine ruling elites."
Herbert Docena, 2006
"As our armies were committing
massacres in the Philippines - at least 600,000 Filipinos died
in a few years of conflict - Elihu Root, our Secretary of War,
was saying: 'The American soldier is different from all other
soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the
advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of
peace and happiness'."
Howard Zinn
"Of all post Marcos regimes,
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's is the most discredited and detested,
Under Arroyo, the Philippines has been rated near or at the top
of the most dangerous countries for journalists and activists.
The country has likewise been rated as the most corrupt in Asia
and one of the most corrupt in the world."
Marya Salamat, 2010
"Our men have killed to
exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active
insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up .... Our soldiers
have pumped salt water into men to "make them talk,"
and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully
surrendered, and an hour later... stood them on a bridge and shot
them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down,
as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses."
a dispatch from the Philadelphia
Ledger's Manila correspondent in 1901
"Filipino rebels. In Luzon
alone over 600,000 people were killed by American troops or died
from war-related diseases and privations-as the war against the
guerrillas became a war against the people who supported the guerrillas.
US General Arthur MacArthur issued a proclamation renouncing "precise
observance of the laws of war." Among other things, MacArthur's
troops tortured and executed prisoners (civilians included), destroyed
crops, food stores, domestic animals, boats, and whole villages,
and forced tens of thousands of Filipinos into "relocation
camps."
Michael Parenti, Sword and Dollar
"A de-facto civilian-military
alliance has been ruling the Philippines since the declaration
of Martial Law by Marcos in 1972. In the 1960s most economists
considered the Philippines to be the most economically progressive
nation in Southest Asia. With the advent of the liberalization
of the economy, it has become and remains one of the poorest and
most socially polarized country in Asia, with a per capita GDP
of $950 per year, about half of Thailand's. With over 50 percent
of total private assets controlled by 15 extended super-rich families,
it is one of the most unequal societies in the world. In stark
contrast to the rest of Asia, there has been no economic progress
in the past two decades. "
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya,
2006
"I have seen that we do
not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines.
We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem... And so I am an
anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons
on any other land... We have pacified some thousands of the islanders
and buried them; destroyed their fields, burned their villages,
turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors, (and) subjugated
the remaining ten million by Benevolent Assimilation, which is
the pious new name of the musket."
Mark Twain, October 15, 1900, about
the U.S. invasion and occupation of the Philippines
"A U.S. military counterinsurgency
document. It gave instructions on how to create terror; this was
the way they put it. And they described methods used in the Philippines
in the campaign against the Huks in 1900.
In the case of the Philippines they were talking about leaving
the bodies by the rivers. So you mutilate the bodies, you cut
them, you amputate, and then you display the bodies on the riversides
to stir terror in the population. "
Allan Nairn, 2016
"The 1899-1902 conquest
of the Philippines killed some 200,000 to 400,000 Filipinos, most
of them civilians."
Stephen M. Walt
"An American weekly magazine,
the San Francisco Argonaut defended the atrocities of American
troops in the Philippines in 1902 by exulting over the enormous
riches and fertility of the islands, then noted: "But unfortunately
they are infested by Filipinos. There are many millions of them
there, and it is to be feared that their extinction will be slow
.... Let us all be frank. We do not want the Filipinos. We want
the Philippines."
Michael Parenti, Sword and Dollar
"Since President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo joined the U.S. global "war on terrorism,"
the Philippines has become the site of an ongoing undeclared war
against peasant and union activists, progressive political dissidents
and lawmakers, human rights lawyers and activists, women leaders,
and a wide range of print and broadcast journalists. Because of
the links between the Army, the regime, and the death squads,
political assassinations take place in an atmosphere of absolute
impunity. The vast majority of the attacks occur in the countryside
and provincial towns. The reign of terror in the Philippines is
of similar scope and depth as in Colombia. Unlike Colombia, the
state terrorism has not drawn sufficient attention from international
public opinion.
Between 2001 and 2006 hundreds of killings, disappearances, death
threats, and cases of torture have been documented by the independent
human rights center, KARAPATAN, and the church-linked Ecumenical
Institute for Labor Education and Research. Since Arroyo came
to power in 2001, there have been 400 documented extrajudicial
killings."
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya,
2006
"Far from being a model
for nation building and democracy ... the Philippines epitomizes
an American foreign policy based on dubious premises and false
promises.
American troops committed atrocities, attacked civilians, and
destroyed their crops and villages.
By the time the war ended in 1902 (although intermittent fighting
lasted for decades), more than four thousand Americans, twenty
thousand rebels and perhaps two hundred thousand civilians lay
dead. And the relationship of the United States to the rest of
the world had permanently changed.
It was only in 1946 that the Philippines were granted independence,
though the State Department's own briefing papers, distributed
just this week [October 2003] to the Bush entourage, still state
that "U.S. administration of the Philippines was always declared
to be temporary.
In the intervening years, the U.S. government has continued to
support a succession of antidemocratic, repressive regimes in
the Philippines."
historian Clifford Kuhn
"Kill everything over 10.
Criminals because they were born ten years before we took the
Philippines."
Teddy Roosevelt, 1901, supported
the Spanish-American War
"The newly "installed"
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo quickly instituted a neo-liberal program
of privatizations, drastic cuts for public education and public
hospitals, and onerous value-added taxes that impacted the poor
and lower middle-class. By 2005 the Philippine total external
and internal debt ballooned to over $100 billion dollars and yearly
debt servicing exceeded 30 percent of the budget. Even 8 million
overseas Filipino workers (including a significant section of
the educated professionals) sending home $12.5 billion of remittances
in 2005 could not begin to cover debt servicing. The Philippines
bears the dubious distinction of being the only country in Asia
to have seen a drop in per capita GDP during and since the heady
years of the "Asian Tiger" boom.
Macapagal Arroyo's family and friends have been implicated in
the same levels of corruption as those attributed to the deposed
President Estrada."
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya,
2006
SOMALIA
"U.S. involvement in Somalia
has a long history and reached a climax in the early 1990s, when
the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of Siad Barre was overthrown,
plunging the nation into civil war.
Thanks to Somalia's strategic location for global oil markets
at the mouth of the Red Sea, the U.S. became involved. Somalia
remained in a state of anarchy for 16 years until a coalition
of Islamic courts took over the capital in 2006. However, this
government was soon overthrown by Ethiopia with U.S. support.
Current U.S. anti-terrorism policy in Somalia, which includes
the use of airstrikes, has been blamed for worsening the nation's
conflict and its burgeoning humanitarian crisis, having driven
the nation into famine."
Whitney Webb
Somalia was invaded by mercenaries
ffrom Ethiopia, trained, financed, armed and directed by US military
advisers.
... More than one million people have been made internal refugees,
and 3.5 million people, half of Somalia's population, are facing
famine. Fighting has turned Mogadishu into a ghost town. About
700,000 people have fled - out of a population of up to 1.5 million.
James Petras, 2007
"Four U.S. oil companies
are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions
to explore and exploit tens-of-millions of acres of the Somali
countryside ... nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to
American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the
final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. president Mohammed Said
Barre' was overthrown. But, the Bush Administration and the State
Department insist that the U.S. military mission in Somalia is
strictly humanitarian. "
Michael Parenti, 1993
"Many European, US and
Asian shipping firms signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with
Somalia's politicians and militia leaders. This meant they could
use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became
widespread as the country descended into civil war. European companies
found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste."
Mike Whitney
"The Ethiopian invasion
of Somalia, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed
virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population
has built for the last fifteen years."
Abdi Samatar, professor of Global
Studies at the University of Minnesota
"One piracy was foreign
fishing piracy by foreign trawlers and vessels, who at the same
time were dumping industrial waste, toxic waste and, it also has
been reported, nuclear waste.
The other piracy is the shipping piracy. When the marine resources
of Somalia were pillaged, when the waters were poisoned, when
the fish was stolen. The fishermen felt that they had no other
possibilities or other recourse but to fight the properties and
the shipping of the same countries that have been carrying on
the fishing piracy and toxic dumping.
Toxic dumping, industrial waste dumping, nuclear dumping occured
in Somali waters in the '70s, in the '80s, in the '90s - companies
wanted to get rid of waste because of very strict environmental
rules in their countries. So these wastes have been carried to
Somalia.
The world knows, but it doesn't do anything about it."
Mohamed Abshir Waldo - a consultant
and analyst is Kenyan of Somali origin
"In 1991, the government
of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering
on starvation ever since - and the ugliest forces in the Western
world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's
food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas."
Johann Hari, Independent UK, 2009
"The ICU [Islamic Courts
Union] was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord
corruption and extortion in Somalia. Personal safety and property
were protected, ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords
and their armed thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement
that includes moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians
and armed fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and
authoritarians. Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying
the country and creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming
clan fragmentation."
James Petras, 2008
"Somebody is dumping nuclear
material off the coast of Somalia. There is also lead, and heavy
metals such as cadmium and mercury. Much of it can be traced back
to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it
on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply."
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy
to Somalia
"The Islamic Courts that
brought six months of peace in Somalia, a semblance of peace,
the best Somalis have seen since the civil war has started, were
toppled by the Ethiopian government, the Ethiopian troops, with
the help of Bush administration."
Sadia Ali Aden, Somali American
writer and human rights activist
"George W Bush backed Ethiopia
in an invasion of Somalia, basically an Ethiopian-US invasion
of Somalia. Now Obama is pumping in new arms, new weapons, into
the midst of the killing and chaos there. The already disastrous
level of hunger and starvation is increasing. Obama's body count
probably exceeds that of Bush."
Allan Nairn, 2010
"In 2006, the Bush Administration
pushed Ethiopia to invade Somalia with an eye on crushing the
Union of Islamic Courts," which is exactly what happened,
and Somalia has been a 'failed state' mired in civil war ever
since."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2011
"The estimate of the true
number of people killed in Somalia since 2006 must be somewhere
between 500,000 and 850,000, with most likely about 650,000 violent
deaths."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"Somalia is a covert war
in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt
down and kidnap Islamic militants...and secretly imprison them
offshore, aboard U.S. warships. The British civil-rights group
Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled
as floating prisons since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."
journalist Paul Salopek, 2008
"The US is perceived as
backing the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia unconditionally.
The US and Ethiopia are very close partners in the war on terror
in the region in the Horn of Africa, and the fact that Ethiopian
forces have also been committing serious abuses and that these
abuses have been met with utter silence in Washington by the US,
creates the perception among many Somalis that the US doesn't
care what the cost of this war is on civilians and really has
no concern for the welfare of ordinary Somalis. "
Leslie Lefkow of Human Rights
Watch's Horn of Africa research team, 2008
"Somalia on the Horn of
Africa was invaded by US forces in the early 1990s and for the
past three decades has been destabilized by relentless American
military aggression from naval, air and drone strikes in a so-called
'war on terror'."
Finian Cunningham
"The Somalia piracy is
a symptom; it's not the disease. The piracy is resulted from illegal
fishing and toxic waste dumping, nuclear waste dumping. And what
the international community needs to do is introduce a resolution
banning all these nations to stop the illegal fishing and the
illegal toxic waste dumping in Somalia."
Sadia Ali Aden, Somali American
writer and human rights activist
"The piracy that has exploded
in the waters off of Somalia are a result of the massive toxic
waste dumping and over-fishing done by European and American and
other major shipping lines, and have served as an excuse for the
militarization of the waters."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2011
"The United States, treating
Somalia primarily as a battlefield in the global war on terror,
has pursued a policy of uncritical support for transitional government
and Ethiopian actions, and the resulting lack of accountability
has fueled the worst abuses."
Human Rights Watch, 2008
"European ships have been
looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We
have destroyed our own fish stocks in Europe by overexploitation
- and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300million-worth
of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal
trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving."
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy
to Somalia
SUDAN & SOUTH
SUDAN
"In April 2005 Sudan's
government announced it had found oil in South Darfur, a major
geopolitical event which major US and European media "forgot"
to mention when discussing the sudden new "Darfur conflict."
Washington, using US Secretary of State Colin Powell, an African-American,
to deliver the message, began accusing the Khartoum regime of
"genocide" in Darfur, though no independent proof was
given. Only Washington and the NGO's close to it used the term
"genocide" to describe Darfur. If they could get a popular
acceptance of the charge of genocide, it opened the possibility
for drastic "regime change" interventions by NATO and
by Washington in Sudan's sovereign affairs. The Washington Darfur
smear campaign soon enlisted Hollywood stars like George Clooney
in this effort. Washington and NATO launched a campaign to argue
for a de facto NATO occupation of the region.
In 2004, Chad's dictator Idriss Deby launched the initial strike
that set off the conflict in Darfur, using members of his elite
Presidential Guard who originate from the province. He provided
all-terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to Darfur rebels
fighting the Khartoum government in southwest Sudan. The US military
support to Deby was the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath. Khartoum
reacted and the ensuing tragic debacle was unleashed in full force.
... In 2011 a new "republic" was declared in southern
Sudan titled The Republic of South Sudan. It (conveniently for
the Pentagon) controlled a major part of Sudan's oil flows to
China."
F. William Engdahl, 2014
"The U.S. pushed South
Sudan to secede from Sudan in 2011, as South Sudan held 75 percent
of Sudan's oil reserves - the largest oil reserves in all of Africa.
Analysts argued that the U.S. sought to create an independent
South Sudan in order to dislodge Chinese claims to Sudanese oil,
as the Chinese had previously signed oil contracts with the (now
Northern) Sudanese government.
Just two years later, however, South Sudan dissolved into a deadly
civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more
than 1.5 million."
Whitney Webb , 2017
"US policy was instrumental
in the break-up of Sudan into Northern and Southern states in
2011-2012. That, in turn, has wrecked the economies of both states
and fomented conflicts, leading to massive displacement of communities.
It can never be underestimated the extent of underdevelopment
that Africa has been historically hobbled with from American and
European colonial and neocolonial economic exploitation."
Finian Cunningham
"Beginning in 1999, China's
major investments in oil extraction in Sudan began to sound alarm
bells in Washington. Construction of a 900-mile long pipeline
to carry oil from fields in southern Sudan to Port Sudan on the
Red Sea, where it was loaded onto tankers bound for China, was
not viewed favorably by certain powerful circles in the United
States or the UK. When China then discovered a major new potential
oilfield in Sudan's southwest Darfur Province, it was time to
begin to draw the noose around the neck of Sudan.
In April 2005, Sudan Energy Minister Awad al-Jaz told reporters
in Khartoum that an oil field had been found in southern Darfur,
and it was expected to produce 500,000 barrels of oil per day
within weeks. It was estimated by international geologists to
be part of a huge complex of oil fields in a basin that went from
Darfur into neighboring Chad and on to Cameroon, perhaps one of
the world's largest oil discoveries outside Saudi Arabia. Almost
immediately, gangs of militia swept across the unmarked desert
border from Chad, armed and aided by Western intelligence services
and spreading murder, rape and chaos in the region. Washington
had begun its Operation "Darfur Genocide." The ultimate
aim was to provide an excuse to bring NATO troops into one of
China's most promising new oil regions."
F. William Engdahl, 2014
"Before 9/11 there were
reportedly seven countries left in the world whose central bank
was not under Rothschild control: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya,
Cuba, North Korea and Iran. By 2003, however, Afghanistan and
Iraq were swallowed up by the Rothschild octopus, and by 2011
Sudan and Libya were also gone."
Pete Papaherakles, 2012
"Africa is vastly rich
in natural resources but the continent has paid a terrible price
for this wealth. In the past decade horrendous wars in Angola,
Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Liberia
have been fuelled by fighting for control over diamonds, timber,
gold, minerals and oil."
Katharine Ainger, 2004
"Failing in its attempt
to pressure Sudan to break its ties with China, Washington turned
its guns on Khartoum directly. They launched a massive campaign
to save Darfur.
... Washington and its NGOs charged Khartoum with genocide, as
a pretext for bringing UN/NATO troops into the oil fields of Darfur
and southern Sudan. Oil, not human misery, was behind Washington's
new interest in Darfur."
F. William Engdahl
SYRIA
"In Syria, by 2017, after
more than six years, the war had created untold destruction of
Syria's cities, deaths into many hundreds of thousands, more than
6 million internally displaced within Syria, and almost 5 million
refugees outside of Syria, in Turkey, and across the EU."
F. William Engdahl
"The National Security
Establishment created the Syrian crisis as part of a long term
strategy to defend Israel and help effectuate its racist, expansionist
policies, while gobbling up the region's resources and countering
Russian influence."
Douglas Valentine, 2017
"In 2009, Bashar Assad
announced that he would refuse to sign an agreement to allow a
Qatar/Turkey pipeline to run through Syria.
Assad further enraged the Gulf's Sunni monarchs by endorsing a
Russian-approved pipeline running from Iran's side of the gas
field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. This pipeline
would make Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier
to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran's
influence in the Middle East and the world.
... Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence
agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline,
military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus
that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative
Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective
of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, soon after Bashar
Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition
groups in Syria."
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 2016
"In Yemen the U.S. and
France are helping Saudi Arabia in its massive air war against
Houthi Shi'ites. And it's the case in Syria, the scene of the
most destructive war game of them all, where Saudi Arabia and
other Arab Gulf states are channeling money and arms to Al Qaeda,
the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh), and similar
forces with the full knowledge of the U.S."
Daniel Lazare , 2015
"[The Syrian conflict as
a war for control of the region's resources with] the west, Gulf
countries and Turkey supporting Assad's opposition, while Russia,
China and Iran support the regime.
If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing
a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria,
and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition
want in order to isolate the Syrian regime."
a study by the U.S. Defense Intelligence
Agency - August 12, 2012
"Two members of the Turkish
parliament, high-level American sources and others admitted that
the Turkish government - a NATO country - carried out the chemical
weapons attacks in Syria and falsely blamed them on the Syrian
government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape
plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government."
Washington's Blog March 30, 2016
"The reason ISIS is in
Iraq and Syria is that the US equipped ISIS and sent ISIS to overthrow
Assad when the British Parliament and the Russian government blocked
Obama's planned invasion of Syria. ISIS is Washington's creation,
just as is Al Qaeda."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2017
"Syria has been in the
throes of a U.S.-led regime change effort for the better part
of six years - a conflict that has ravaged one of the most prosperous
nations in the Middle East and turned it into the latest battleground
for a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.
Since the 2011 "uprising," the U.S. has continuously
funded and armed opposition groups in Syria along with several
extremist groups, many of which have since joined terrorist organizations
like Daesh (ISIS) and the al-Nusra Front."
Whitney Webb , 2017
"It is estimated that at
least 1.5 million people have been killed so far in Syria."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"The Syrian White Helmets,
a so-called "first emergency responder" NGO, was a fake.
It was created by an ex-British military intelligence officer
and financed by the US government via the CIA-tied United States
Agency for International Development (USAID). White Helmets operators
were repeatedly exposed filming fake videos of sarin poison gas
victims, all aimed to build a case for war crimes and genocide
against al-Assad."
F. William Engdahl
"The American war against
Syria and its covert actions against Iran are part of a larger
strategy to weaken and encircle Russia.
... The goal of the American elite is to make Syria, and then
Iran, and then Russia join the ranks of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan,
Libya and Iraq. The plan is to smash it into ethnic and religious
lines, and to fuel fighting between these groups for many years."
Douglas Valentine, 2017
"The primarily UK Foreign
Office-funded White Helmets, since their creation in 2013, is
a faux first-responder organisation, established in Turkey and
trained by an ex-British military mercenary.
... The majority of Syrians living in the heavily populated areas
of Syria have never heard of the White Helmets.
... The White Helmets are one of the biggest propaganda heists
ever seen in recent colonialist history. To suggest this organisation
is "unarmed and neutral" is fraudulent. To suggest they
are humanitarian is inaccurate and misleading as their videos
demonstrate minimal paramedic expertise and maximum cinematic
exploitation. They are a rag tag collection of armed fighters,
co-opted into the terrorist and extremist gangs that are occupying
areas of Syria and persecuting the civilians of those areas.
... The real Syria Civil Defence has none of the funding of the
their US, British, NATO intelligence shadow state counterpart,
but they have ten thousand times the integrity. They are recognised
and respected by the Syrian people as the ones they call when
they are in trouble. They are the officially recognised Syria
civil defence that has received accolades for its global humanitarian
excellence. In Syria, they are irreplaceable, despite the best
efforts of the US, British, NATO and Gulf state organised crime
syndicate."
Vanessa Beeley, 2017
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 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