"War crimes of monstrous proportions"... Lancet Editor

Bush's gang of mad beekeepers

Published March 19, 2003 by Canadian Spectator.

" The full-scale, unilateral US invasion of Iraq is imminent. President Bush's gang and their "allies" do not realize their miscalculation: that the costs of invasion will outweigh any benefits.

.......I've taken Baghdad what do I do now?

What is uncertain is the aftermath. This is the variable never publicly factored into the thinking(?) of the Tony Sopranos of Dubya's gang; their deeds plant the seeds of future, furious, frightening resistance. As many as half a million Iraqi soldiers may be intentionally killed and perhaps 100,000 civilians written off to collateral damage. Think of the grief of millions after this slaughter, the conversion of that grief into rage, combine that with the internecine struggles based on historical ethnic fault lines (that the Ba'ath Party has repressed), and we begin to appreciate the explosive complexity of post-invasion Iraq.

This invasion will also ignite the well financed fires of Arab and Muslim (of all shades, hues and fealties) humiliation and anger. Either in the sands of the desert or on city streets, far from this war, the body bags will build up. "

Richard Horton , Editor of The Lancet wrote in the Guradian Comment is Free this week
about the Lancet/ John Hopkins report they published October last year which calculated from an intensive academic study that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the violence in the country. It has now evident that chief advisers warned ministers not to "rubbish" the report..

Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality".

The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific advisor said the research was "robust", close to "best practice", and "balanced". He recommended "caution in publicly criticising the study".

A Foreign Office official was forced to conclude that the government "should not be rubbishing The Lancet".

The prime minister's adviser finally gave in. He wrote: "the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".....

This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair, is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference.

At a time when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights of the past half-century. It is inexplicable how we allowed this to happen. It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this government's mass resignation.

Not only have we been directly and indirectly responsible for the slaughter of at least 600,000 Iraqi's, it was predicted and predictable. On top of that we have seen a massive exodus of the educated middle classes. The infrastructure destroye, less oil is now pumped / exported, less electricity produced for the grid and Death stalks the streets.

Richard Horton states that the New Labour Government is .... party to a war crime of monstrous proportions.

Isn't it time we had another march on the citadels of power ? Or is the Lady Dame Pauline Neville Jones Fan Club too firmly in control ? Are we , as Richard Horton suggests "paralysed by our indifference" ?