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I'm entirely in favour of this action, and I'll take part in it. I
pondered this paragraph, though:
"The government has consistently prioritised disarmament issues over
humanitarian issues. Call upon Tony Blair to support the 'de-linking' of the
inspection crisis from the humanitarian crisis, as suggested by former UN
Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, and
supported by Richard Butler"
I don't think that the present policy towards Iraq does prioritise
disarmament issues - even if we ignore the fact that the US/UK and their
Turkish ally are making war on Iraq. The only weapons that the sanctions
(allegedly) are aimed at are those of 'mass destruction' and the long range
delivery systems that can be used to export these and other weapons. Weapons
that have destroyed masses of Iraqis - machine guns, helicopters, tanks -
are fine.
Further the definition of 'mass destruction' is rather odd. The
US/UK have used a nuclear weapon - depleted uranium - against Iraq, and have
systematically blocked the Iraqis from taking part in decontamination
exercises.
There is, we know, not committment to humanitarianism. But it
doesn't look like the US/UK have a committment to disarmament either, save
only to a very twisted and truncated version. This leaves the military
terror of the US/UK and their client states unthreatened, while the terror
of the Iraqi regime against the mass of the Iraqi people is not curbed. The
truth of this policy was demonstrated in 1991 by the infamous 'helicopter
order'. The US/UK are quite happy for the Ba'athist regime to be armed
against the people in Iraq: they are only unhappy at Iraqi weapons that
threaten their own hegemony. A strange sort of disarmament.
Remember that 661 also provided for Iraqi disarmament in the context
of a Middle-East wide ban on weapons of mass destruction. Did Butler go to
Dimona?
Chris Williams
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