FACELESS POL POTS OF THE SKIES?

As the webmistress hasn’t slept for ages, this space has languished. Today it’s being used to host comments that may arise from a photo-polemic on aerial bombardment, published here on the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.

A couple of related links: • A Sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks: http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html • Only 18% of Iraqia said they had confidence in US and coalition troops, and 51% said they thought attacks on coalition forces were justified: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6464277.stm

Post Script:

BLAIR, BUSH, HOWARD(?) COULD FACE PROBE AT THE HAGUE

From the Melbourne Age, March 19/07

TONY Blair could face the prospect of an International Criminal Court investigation for alleged coalition war crimes in Iraq.

The court's chief prosecutor said at the weekend that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the British Prime Minister and US President George Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued. Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said that his country was actively considering signing up.

The US has refused to accept the court's jurisdiction and is unlikely to hand over any of its citizens to face trial. However, Britain has signed up and the Government has indicated its willingness to tackle accusations of war crimes against a number of British soldiers.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said it was frustrating that the court was viewed in the Arab world as biased in favour of the West.

Asked whether he could envisage a situation in which Mr Blair and Mr Bush found themselves in the dock answering charges of war crimes in Iraq, he replied: "Of course, that could be a possibility … whatever country joins the court can know that whoever commits a crime in their country could be prosecuted by me."

Human rights lawyers remain sceptical about whether charges will ever be brought.

Some Muslim countries have criticised what they claim is the court's reluctance to deal with offences committed by Western governments. Sudan has called for the court to investigate coalition actions in Iraq

Comments

[Verity]

A friend just sent me this, after reading your stunning report:

TIME Magazine Sept 1925.

Sheshuan (which one is at liberty to spell in almost any possible way. ˜Chechaouen, Chechouan, Shishawen, Sheshaun, Sheshuan, Chechaoen), which is the Riffian headquarters at the western end of their sausage, was bombed 17 times by the Sherifian Escadrille (volunteer American aviators) with the destruction of many buildings and the estimated killing of 100 Riffians

Lieut. Col. Kerwood is reported to have hotly denied that the Sherifians make use of U. S. uniforms or insignia. He declared that they wear a special variation of the French Colonial uniform and "wear the American eagle on a special button dissimilar to that on U. S. Army uniforms.

M.B.

[Ron Gray]

Hello Richard
Thank you for your blog on bombing.
I have felt that there's a few bob to be made from bombs and made a fruitless search to find out what they cost.

Googling "arms manufacturer" in an expected-to-be-fruitless search for the price of bombs, over-the-counter bombs that is, legitimate bombs (if any bomb could be called "legitimate"), I hit pay dirt of sorts with this site -

http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/655-2005/6552005.html

Here, to get the stats, you need to go to Direct Commercial Sales, Parts I & II (not sure of the difference), and you'll find some info on the bomb trade.

The salient purchases from Part I are -

MINES ANTI-PERSONNEL: 8,904 , cost $2,270,520 ie $255 each

MORTAR AMMUNITION (ALL SIZES): 45,000, cost $39,226,724 ie $871 each

BOMBS MISCELLANEOUS TYPES: $200 cost 1,040,000 ie $5,200 each

>From Part II, the details are not as specific. Ammunition/Ordnance comes in at $65,100,000, not the largest item however - that honour goes to Military Electronics for $406,027,438.

In the section, Foreign Military Sales, the entire Dunda bit has been censored. The site belongs to The Federation Of American Scientists and if you go to the home page -
http://fas.org/asmp/

- you find other goodies like Fast Facts For The Global Citizen.

Don't know how many were killed or maimed by the Dunda military in 2005, so I can't estimate the cost of each, not that the total costs are reflected in these figures. Oh, I shouldn't say "Dunda military" by the way, I should say "you and me".

[Tony S]

For 40 years I've been waiting for someone to puncture the mystic bubble of adoration that surrounds the West's cockpit killers. Thank you mate. You might have a soulmate in Madrid -

MADRID, March 20 (Reuters) - The judge who tried to jail Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet said on Tuesday it was time to hold U.S. President George W. Bush and his allies to account for waging war in Iraq… Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon said the war was "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history".
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20577834.htm

[Gerrie]

As a former U.S. Marine I was knocked out by your - what its called - picture poem. It's a truth few people dare to face. It only took me ten years to rip off the blindfold.

[John Weiley]

I interviewed a lot of bomber pilots for a BBC doco I called "The
Total War Machine". They including the Australian who led the raid
on Dresden and Gerherdt Munch who had commanded the German bombers -
and Albert Speer who was head of war production in Germany. With age
all had become remorseful - particularly so when post war surveys
had shown that the monstrous slaughter of the terror bombing had not
shortened the war as Bomber Harris had promised - but actually
lengthened it by strengthening the survivors' hatred of their
attackers - leading to increased war production. The pilots were
particularly mild and thoughtful people and you could be sure that if
you gave them a can of petrol and ordered them to pour it over some
sleeping children and set them on fire they would have refused.
Unfortunately this inability to connect pressing a button in an
aircraft with it's hideous consequences is not confined to pilots.
Australian FA18s dropped a lot of bombs on Iraq. Who knows what they
hit - but worse, who cares.?

[PlatoDada]

Richard, I had top send you this!

A MONSTROUS WAR CRIME

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its lies

Richard Horton
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Article continues

Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible 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 Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality".

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

When these recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified. One person briefing Tony Blair wrote: "Are we really sure that the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies?" A Foreign and Commonwealth 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".

How would the government respond? Would it welcome the Johns Hopkins study as an important contribution to understanding the military threat to Iraqi civilians? Would it ask for urgent independent verification? Would it invite the Iraqi government to upgrade civilian security?

Of course, our government did none of these things. Tony Blair was advised to say: "The overriding message is that there are no accurate or reliable figures of deaths in Iraq".

His official spokesman went further and rejected the Johns Hopkins report entirely. It was a shameful and cowardly dissembling by a Labour - yes, by a Labour - prime minister.

Indeed, it was even contrary to the US's own Iraq Study Group report, which concluded last year that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq".

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.

Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a tactic of foreign policy. Some anniversary that will be.

· Richard Horton is a doctor and the editor of the Lancet

Richard.Horton@lancet.com