Correct Craig.
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‘The US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, told troops that the mission had been worth the cost in blood and dollars.’
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US to lower flag to end Iraq war
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16192105

Pulling out of Iraq beause were not allowed to remain, not because Obama decided so. And, in any case, remain they do, with an “embassy” with up to 17000 staff (!!), control of the waterways to the gulf, borders and air space. What a joke.

On a lighter note, you should check out this:
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/12/13/scientists-capture-first-glimpse-of-elusive-clegg-boson/

Very funny!

“final pull-out of troops (but not oil companies)”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tT2UEyZ3QY

Off-topic: Craig, maybe your Freedom of Information Act request shook things up a bit. Or maybe this is a message from the Information commissioner to UK activists: “Private Whitehall emails ‘are covered by info laws’”:
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16197167

Watching Obama praise the ‘extraordinary achievement’ of the US invasion force made my skin crawl. Not to put to fine a point on it, this isn’t the first time I’ve watched Obama pontifiwibble on the television and wondered exactly what kind of man this President might be. I hope he really is the empty suit that the Republican’s always say he is; the alternative is far more troubling …
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You get no decent coverage of our various wars anywhere on the MSM. This is a sad but true fact, and I suspect it was ever thus, I’m just getting older, and noticing more. I was particularly appalled by The Guardian’s laughably stupid support for Cameron’s little Libya strike, which as predicted by anyone with half a brain has ended up with many thousands dead, a new regime of nut cases, reprisals – oh, and fat oil contracts for Western oil companies. If I could see that from another continent, and without any journalistic training, you do wonder why the smart professional journalists with Oxbridge degrees somehow missed the obvious …
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More bullshit on the way re: Iran. Tragic.

Nice of them to leave thousands of ” security contractors ” in place to ensure the continuing flow of oil to the US…

The scary Krazies on Newsnight were a General Caslen, Kori Schake and Ian Bremmer, not counting Paxman and Urban.
37 mins in
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018b9kf/Newsnight_14_12_2011/
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Note Paxman’s throwaway line about Iran at about 45 mins in.
Schake is on some substance I should imagine. The soft voice and the empty smile and the rats’ tail hair!!
{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Schake}

They have not gone to far. After all we are on the path to Persia

http://www.darkpolitricks.com/2011/12/us-special-forces-mass-on-syrian-border/

“The US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, told troops that the mission had been worth the cost in blood and dollars.”
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No doubt doing grim yet kindly US hero to camera.
No doubt Halliburton et al agree on the dollars. But I somehow doubt that the Iraqis will agree on the blood. Were they asked, before this fatuous soundbite was uttered?

Utterly shameful behaviour – American politics and most of it military are thoroughly corrupt. The invasion of Iraq slaughtered tens of thousands in the most agonising ways imagineable, and the subsequent chaos led to the deaths of many thousands more. As well as the refugee problem of roughly 2 million departing from Iraq while a further 2 million were displaced, becoming internal refugees within their own country. Yet Washington (and a great many Americans) show no sign of remorse or regret, and the iron-fisted corporate sector goes on stuffing its pockets and accounts while prepping for possible acts of international thuggery against Iran.
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Of course, we have our own burden of guilt to bear here as well.

@ Mike Cobley
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It took US almost 30 years to apologise for all horrors in Vietnam. So probably in the next 20-30 years we will get apologies from an American president.

Well, there will still be “several hundred” US military living in the giant US Embassy. And Balad, Al Asad, Taji and Talil? These were previously scheduled to be “stay-behind” bases. Reports vary, but four or five bases will be occupied until the end of the year.
Gigantic US Embassy – details -
http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/AmerPalace.htm

Various pertinent sites on, eg. Facebook currently seem to be being almost flooded with pro-US material re. to both Iraq and Afghanistan (and Libya). Criticism of the USA/NATO seems often to be met with accusations of being pro-Taliban and/or pro-Pakistan military-security and/or pro-Iran state Islamism and so on. Failing that, one often seems to be being assigned the role of ‘Hopeless Leftist’ or ‘Hopeless Hippie’. Lots of pro-Imperialist argumentation, as well as Jihadism, White Supremacism masquerading and anti-Islam/anti-religion, etc. Lots of sensible people, too, of course. I guess, the whole range of possible opinions. But there is a concerted propaganda/PR/’comms’ effort/operation going on, one senses (as one would expect there to be).

Uzbek in UK : but they never apologised for their role in bringing down the democratically elected/nationalist government of Mosadiq in Iran, even though they acknowledged their involvement.
And as the others have said as well, they are not leaving Iraq, they are leaving 17000 Embassy personnel (at least 10,000 are either military or spies or both I bet), the security firms to protect their oil for them, and the oil companies to send the oil to them and in the process make themselves lot of money. The USA government comprises of lot of SOBs…

“So probably in the next 20-30 years we will get apologies from an American president.” Uzbek in the UK.
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I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Suhyal, I periodically put links up (Anti Zionists, Anti USA, etc) from various sources on Facebook, and I get lot of comments, even from my American friends who are totally against the USA policies. I must say I have not come accross what you have. In fact I see the opposite!

“You won’t see that on BBC or Sky.”
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I never thought I’d live to see the day when I trusted Russian state propaganda (Russia Today) more than the BBC. But here we are. I’d rather have half the truth than an eighth of it.

“We went in to liberate Iraqi oil, and set it free from Saddam Hussein to serve our Cadillacs, yachts and aeroplanes. I asked a group of barrels of Iraqi oil yesterday if they were happy to be piped to the USA. Not one made any protest. In fact, accordingly to intelligence reports, Iranian and Afghan Hydrocarbons are longing to be liberated next. How can we turn away from their cries for liberation? By the teetotalling beard of GW Bush, they will be next!” – General Cheese Burger, 100th division in the clouds

As Naomi Klein points out in “The Shock Doctrine”, soldiers are just being replaced by “contractors”.
.
Nobody kicks up a fuss when “contractors” die (they’re mostly foreign); they’re not subject to /any/ American or foreign law; and the American taxpayer doesn’t realise that he or she is paying their wages. Brilliant!

“Criticism of the USA/NATO seems often to be met with accusations of being pro-Taliban and/or pro-Pakistan military-security and/or pro-Iran state Islamism and so on.”
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Good lord, no. I’m pro-global capitalism, bombing civilians decently from a safe distance, ripping off their oil, blackmailing their governments, teaching their kids materialism, selling them crap and trashing their infrastructures. I have the moral high ground, me….

@ Azra and Suhayl Saadi
.
I am not sure if you got it but my comment was rather sarcastic.
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Western democracies including US have done a lot of wrong in so called third world. When USSR collapsed people lost their life savings in a matter of one night. Millions woken up poor, but somewhat free (at least we believed that we were free). But with the help of the US, Russia, China who cares less for freedom and liberties millions of people in the former USSR are in even worse off today (freedom wise). And today US and EU closely cooperate with even more brutal regimes in Central Asia.
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On the other hand why would anyone expected US/UK to start a war that cost them trillions just in the sake of the freedom of Iraqis.
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People here seem keep ignoring my comments about neo-colonialism but this is what it is. Iraq was the most dramatic consequence of this but around the world there are billions of people who DO NOT benefit from what they supposedly own. There are billions of ‘slaves’ who day and night work to make very few richer and richer.

George Aligaiah said this:
.
“The reputation of the Americans appeared seriously damaged. It was beginning to look like America versus the Somalis. And if it was going to come to that, I was with the Somalis… Why, when the rich world intervenes, does it still have to do so in such an overbearing and insensitive way?”

“It was the celebration of the weak when the strong are brought down to size. They(Somalis) were rejoicing in the belittling of America’s power, not the murder of one of its sons.”
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Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate to the world that the United States of American fails to learns lessons, fails to understand the mounting antipathy of illegal invasion and war in pursuit of dominion.

Don’t forget that the invasion was helped, more than any other country, by various thuggish and dull people from the UK.

Does anyone still remember who opposed the invasion?

Did anyone notice on the Snoozenight Paxman’s remark; “I know 9/11 was predicted”? That coming from an outfit, that soon after the events aired a Panorama program with a panel of movie directors, play-writers, and thriller writers debating the nature of the attacks that no one ever knew, could have ever crossed anyone’s mind!
,
Also the consensus that US people have no stomach for more wars, yet the Kori Schake character whose credentials include being an advisor to Bu$h, as well as to both McCain-Palin 2008 and Rudy 9/11 Giuliani 9/11, in addition to penning down “great pieces” about “Managing American Hegemony”, “How America Should Lead”, “Dealing with Nuclear Iran”, this thoroughly unpleasant specimen maintained the same line as Lorna Fitzsimons; “public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue.” Although hers was in a nuanced fashion; “it will be difficult for the president to encourage public support for major interventions overseas, …public hesitancy is a problem, but that is amenable to the leadership, and when it matters for the US to use force, it is the president job to build public support for that”.
,
However, the inescapable facts are; US is in no position to start another war, from the financial stand point, as well as the tolerance of the US population for any more wars are no longer at the levels before the wars of the choice in Afghanistan and Iraq, and are not likely to yield easily, even in the event of a false flag operation, as reflected in the words of Ian Bremmer;”the era of 9/11 is over”

A rare glimpse of truth from the BBC:
.
.
.
– But in the city of Falluja, a former insurgent stronghold which was the scene of major US offensives in 2004, people burned US flags on Wednesday in celebration at the withdrawal.

“No-one trusted their promises, but they said when they came to Iraq they would bring security, stability and would build our country,” Ahmed Aied, a grocer, told Reuters news agency.

“Now they are walking out, leaving behind killings, ruin and mess.” -

Off topic but..
‘
‘
Iceland formally recognises Palestinian state’
‘
Iceland formally recognised the Palestinian state at a ceremony in Reykjavik on Thursday, becoming one of the first Western European countries to do so.

“This is the day I formally submit to you the declaration of Palestine independence in accordance to the will of the Icelandic parliament,” Icelandic Foreign Minister Oessur Skarphedinsson said, addressing his Palestinian counterpart Riad Malki at a news conference.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/iceland-formally-recognises-palestinian-state-114410483.html;_ylt=A7x9QYi3BupOSjoAVwTOfMl_;_ylu=X3oDMTNxaWRmdG9zBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBXb3JsZFNGBHBrZwMxNzlhODQyOS1kZTE0LTM3YmItYTVhYy0zNjQwM2Q2M2IyMGYEcG9zAzcEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDNTAzMGRlMjAtMjcxMi0xMWUxLTg3N2QtY2RjNDhiYzg5YTBi;_ylg=X3oDMTFwcGsyZXJqBGludGwDZ2IEbGFuZwNlbi1nYgRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAN3b3JsZARwdANzZWN0aW9ucwR0ZXN0Aw–;_ylv=3

The old capofamiglia Leon Panetta (I always want to call him Pancetta) said that the cost was $1 trillion.
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Some years back Joseph Stiglitz was saying $3 trillion. I believe him.
.
http://threetrilliondollarwar.org/2011/12/07/what-have-we-learned-from-iraq/

Did you listen to Today this morning? Dr Naji at 7.32 right on to 8.20+ A description of the evils of the USUKIs cabals. I missed Perle at 8.46. ‘Should have left it to the Iraqis post-invasion’. Of course, the chaos was what they wanted. Listen to the PTSD men at 8.10 BUT no lesson is taken from them by Humphrys that the best way to prevent harm to mind and body is not to fight aggressive wars
.
In all, we know that fascism is here. 24,000 troops for the Olympics – London and at ‘other centres’. Central unit to deal with ‘failed families’. Ms Hodge’s database will be useful. Tattoo or chip them in the neo-natal ward.

.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9662000/9662348.stm

Even John Humphrys seems to have a suspicion that not all is well in Iraq. Interviewing Rchard Perle this morning (and that’s something no amount of money would induce me to do) he listened to Perle claiming that Iraqis were better off now, and replied “Those of them who are still alive”. But the BBC still sticks to the formula that “tens of thousands” of Iraqis were killed. True, but they don’t give uninformed listeners any hint that, in fact, it was probably more than 150 tens of thousands. Not to mention the maimed and bereaved, or the millions who have been rendered permanently homeless and stateless.

Yes, mission accomplished indeed. Another nation ruined; another people who will never get in the USA’s way again.

The Troubled Families Team. You could not make it up. Under the ‘leadership’ of Louise Casey of Bliar’s failed ASBO scheme.
PM vows ‘problem family’ action
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16187500
.
Correction on the number of troops for the Olympics security. It’s 13,500. The remainder will be private security. Probably long term unemployed given a month’s work by Crapita or G4S or the like.
Military to provide 2012 security
{http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16195861}

Tom Welsh,
It is sickening to be witness to the discounted numbers of the dead, and injured civilians, in the wars that Us has waged. Evidently the science that can predict how many people will die of inhaling second hand smoke? Or how many polar bears will be left without any ice to hunt on?
,
However the same scientific methods do not apply to the bombs, rockets, missiles, grenades, bullets of all manner and sizes, and shells of all kinds. Therefore we witness a situation that even in death Iraqis, and Afghans are stripped off from any dignity and their deaths are discounted.
,
Thus the 1.5 million dead Iraqi civilians are reduced to hundreds of thousands, to make mass murder more acceptable for the benefit of the hamburger munchers.

Tattoo or chip is fitting ‘Mary’ as you observe, a fast becoming fascist Britain. Only a few of years have passed since Dave Davies was deploring the erosion of liberty in Britain and countering a right wing Conservative proposal to record DNA at birth.

Tom Welch:
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My view on the Iraq War is not only that many died totally unnecessarily but that the wrong people died. Every stinking neo-con who was prepared to sacrifice others for his beliefs should have been drafted into the military and thrown into battle. Wars to “defend Western civilisation” would magically lose their urgency.

“The Iraqi Ministry of Health states, officially, that over 3 million were maimed.”

This is a truly staggering figure – 1 in 10 of Iraq’s roughly 30 million population! Yet no one in the MSM dares to repeat it. Why?

George Galloway. Good. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/15/iraq-death-knell-of-us-empire?CMP=twt_gu
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Nowhere have I seen any mention of the terrible legacy of depleted uranium in the soil and in the air and now in the humans, nor of the terrible birth defects it is causing.

The Guardian have John Bolton on too which is dreadful. Sort of ‘you’ll miss us when we’re gone’ stuff. No way Jose! Isabella Mackie is in the comments telling us about Galloway. You will remember she is the daughter of the Rusbridgers but uses her mother’s maiden name. She works for Comment is Free where as you all know there is no freedom at all.

.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/15/america-withdrawal-iraq-world-instability

@Mary [Nowhere have I seen any mention of the terrible legacy of depleted uranium in the soil and in the air and now in the humans, nor of the terrible birth defects it is causing.]
‘
‘
‘
There have been loads of reports on this even from the MSM. A quick Google search puts up 1.5 million hits including reports from the BBC and the Guardian.Birth defects in Iraq puts up over 2 million hits with reports from Reuters,Guardian,BBC.YahooNews,Huffington Post,Bloomberg and many others.
‘
‘
So anyone claiming that they have seen thee reports nowhere is not looking much.

Yes exactly Mary – it sounded to me that Humphreys was only trying to get them to apportion blame for the lack of help they received, but to their credit, neither of them would play ball. The unquantifiable cost of these wicked wars in the social ills visited on us all by the fall-out from mental illness and family breakdown is almost never raised.
My family, like countless others no doubt, still bears the scars of the suffering inflicted on parents and grandparents from the two world wars. Man hands on misery to man alright and we never bloody learn.

Alternative family troubleshooters…
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http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/big-fat-scottish-guy-to-sort-out-troubled-families-201112154678/

Regarding Uzbek’s comment about apologizing for Vietnam: of course there was massive opposition to the war at the time. But the real US response to the humiliation of defeat was electing Reagan and introducing decades of fiscal deregulation and populist politics to set up a substantially more mindless form of imperialism.
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A point about Iraq that is sometimes forgotten – though probably not by Iraqis – is the sophisticated culture that has been so badly damaged. I worked with an Iraqi psychiatrist for several years, and he was the best psychiatrist I encountered in twenty years – only one example I know, but I can think of others.

(Slightly) off-topic:
“Speaking with the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, Iranian military officials said that they were able to cut off communication between the U.S. drone and its operators, and reconfigured the drone’s GPS to make it land where it thought was its home base in Afghanistan.

“The GPS navigation is the weakest point,” the Iranian military official told the Monitor, calling the downing an “electronic ambush” of secret drone.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/iran-official-we-tricked-the-u-s-surveillance-drone-to-land-intact-1.401641
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(Somehow I doubt if that’s true. Why would they be so open about how they downed the thing. Electronic interference yes, but not necessarily in the way that they say.)

“I worked with an Iraqi psychiatrist for several years, and he was the best psychiatrist I encountered in twenty years …”
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And I’ve read that Iraq had more PhDs per capita than the USA, before the blood-drenched invasion.

Indeed, Craig. Or the small matter of that 104-acre “embassy” or the thousands of “advisors” that have stayed behind. The show with the flag is so that Obama can go to the voters and say he ended the war Bush started.

Ref DU Of course I know that it has been covered but I am saying that it is NOT being mentioned currently. It is perhaps the worst part of the legacy USUKIs is leaving the Iraqi people. Half life? So long it is incomprehensible.
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The use of DU in munitions is controversial because of questions about potential long-term health effects.[5][6] Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because uranium is a toxic metal.[7] It is weakly radioactive and remains so because of its long physical half-life (4.468 billion years for uranium-238, 700 million years for uranium-235). The biological half-life (the average time it takes for the human body to eliminate half the amount in the body) for uranium is about 15 days.[8] The aerosol or spallation frangible powder produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites leading to possible inhalation by human beings.[9]
.
The actual acute and chronic toxicity of DU is also a point of medical controversy. Multiple studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure.[5] A 2005 epidemiology review concluded: “In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU.”[10] The World Health Organization, the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations which is responsible for setting health research norms and standards, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends, states that no risk of reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic effects have been reported in humans due to DU exposure.[11][12] This report has been criticized by Dr. Keith Baverstock for not including possible long term effects of DU on the human body.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
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WICKED WICKED WICKED

On Medialens
BBC: ‘tens of thousands’ of Iraqis killed
Posted by The Editors on December 15, 2011, 5:39 pm
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What is it with BBC News? Has a circular gone round stating that every news presenter and journalist has to refer to ‘tens of thousands’ of Iraqis killed – assuming the Iraqi death toll is mentioned at all? Is this the officially-decreed newspeak now from Big Brother?
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George Alagiah was at it on BBC2 in his interview with ‘Sir’ Jeremy Greenstock – one of the prime UK war mongers – at 12.37pm today:
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0186f29/GMT_with_George_Alagiah_15_12_2011/
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Michael White makes the same observation in his blog today:
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‘…today’s newspapers speak almost exclusively of the 4,500 American dead and 33,000 injured, almost nothing about Iraqi casualties other than generalised “tens of thousands” (BBC) or “hundreds of thousands ” (Guardian).’
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{http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/dec/15/iraq-after-america-hoping-best}
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BBC ‘News’? Hang your heads in shame.

Eds

Jonathan Dimbleby presents a panel discussion of news and politics from Sir John Cass Red Coat School in Stepney, London with broadcaster and former Cabinet minister, Michael Portillo, poet Andrew Motion and writer, ++John Pilger++.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0184w64

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I avoid the programme because it is usually waffle but will hear what John Pilger has to say. Iraq will feature surely. Any Answers on Saturday is usually nearer the mark. It follows a repeat of AQ at 13.10

Re Franz’s comment on Russian sources.
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I used to listen to Radio Moscow on shortwave in the old days for the laugh. The propaganda was so blantant.

I now have a DAB radio and it regularly relays syndicated output from foreign stations. I was listening to Russia Today without realising what it was and found it very interesting in its criticism of US policy. I know there is still the propaganda angle but, given the complete lack of balance in the “western” MSM it is now worthwhile to listen to opposing propaganda to redress the balance a little.

Like Franz, I never thought I’d see the day.

samesame in Vietnam. How many times did we hear about the 67,000 US dead. How many times about the four million South East Asians who lost their lives as a more or less direct consequence of the US ‘intervention’.

Insular xenophobic ignorance.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ana-marie-cox-blog/2011/dec/15/democrats-attack-mitt-romney-francophone

Bill Wilson was an outstanding MSP until earlier this year. He would have knocked most of the specimens in the HoC into a cocked hat.
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He was fighting against the use of DU and here is correspondence between him and Liam Fox who was seeking to defend its use.

.
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/382.html

I think that this so called withdrawal/war over rhetoric is garbage !!
reason being, I was sitting on one of those containers on wheels that transit passengers between flights at Dulles International in Washinton DC 3 months ago.
There was a young soldier from texas , 23 , 24 covered in tattoos on his way back home for a weeks leave from Iraq. His 4th tour of duty.We were delayed for ages in this container type contraption and it was freezing,but there was a little old lady talking to him and I was party to the conversation.
She was like a concerned mother fawning over this American hero who only was getting one week off in one year to see his family.On being asked if things were better now and if they’d be coming home soon, he looked up and just kind of sniggered a “NO”, and in his Texas drawl, said not for a long time.On being asked if it hadn’t become safer he said no, and repeated that he’d be there for a while yet.She said, but I thought we were leaving Iraq ?? And he looked up from the floor with that snigger again and said, that there were more servicemen arriving than leaving and shrugged a ” you figure it out”.
That was September , and from what I reckon was the horses mouth.
The US army has dug in and are not moving.

John Bolton http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/15/america-withdrawal-iraq-world-instability
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why is the Guardian giving this off the scale right -winger space?
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Is there a Goebbels prize at the xmas party?

As to the body count-http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/-this is where I first came across it, this-http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq-is where they got it- and this seems like a perfectly reasonable method of deduction to me
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/deathcount/explanation
And since their population is roughly half ours [UK] that translates as all the welsh dead and all the scots maimed, more or less.

@Mary.[Ref DU Of course I know that it has been covered but I am saying that it is NOT being mentioned currently.]
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Really? From last week Reuters.
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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/07/uk-iraq-withdrawal-falluja-idUKTRE7B612V20111207

‘currently’=today
Find a reference amongst the swill of today’s uncritical propaganda

@Mary [‘currently’=today]
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‘
‘
Now you are just joking Mary, you have gone from Nowhere have I seen,to currently and now you are saying you mean today. Guess it is just hard for you to admit you are wrong.There have been load of reports of birth defects and DU use in Iraq,virtually every MSM outlet has covered it.

There is a process of war afoot in the world, and it comes from a number of sources. However,of some sources for conflagrations – religion,ethnicity and economic factors ( to mention some sources) – none trumps the West’s on-going hegemonic war against the world. The “war on terror” and “Islamophobia” is the most recent fabrication to find an enemy and justify huge military expenditures in the minds of the Western populace. One might find a backdrop to this mind-set from the “great” imperial past, and no less an articulate voice than Winston Churchill might assist:-

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia
in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many
countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods
of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the
Prophet rule or live.A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan
law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either
as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction
of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion
paralyses the \ social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund,
Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread
throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were
it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science
against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe
might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome ….”

Sir Winston Churchill;
(Source: The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).
Churchill saw it coming……

What Churchill fails to appreciate are the following facts:-
1. Rationalist though is not exclusive to Christianity. If that were true then the “Dark Ages” of Europe ( some 600 years) saw preservation and growth of human knowledge within the Islamic world, which would not have taken place if what Churchill is saying was absolute truth.
2. “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith” – and what of your Christian enslavers and genocidal killers across the Americas Mr. Churchill?
3. Not all Muslims adhere to proselytising.
4. Some Christians still do proselytise.
5. “…and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science” – it simply is not factually true to state that Islamic influence freezes intellectual development, for if this were so then Khan in Pakistan would not have had the intellectual capacity to have developed the bomb.
6. While the backward elements of any religion may move to the forefront at certain stages of human history, those very ideas while dormant in some religions may not necessarily be dead.
Churchill is just assuming Western intellectual superiority ( which is perfectly in keeping with his having mustard gassed the Iraqis when he was British Minister of war). And he is not accurate in his history nor is he in his wider assumptions. Putting his “humanitarian” actions against the Iraqis aside, was it not Christianity that committed genocide across the Americas, about which Pope John Paul recently apologised, and was it not Christian “civilisation” that enslaved Africans for centuries, and found a rationale even into the 1950s and 1960s legislatively to discriminate against fellow citizens in the United States of America? What greater militaristic force does one want to witness in the world today than the use of the bomb by Christian America in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the repeated wars of aggression launched in the post-World War 11 era. So – can we really simply focus narrowly on the negatives of this or that religion without some interpretative and historical context?
Sometimes propaganda suitably placed might even make you think that you are a supremely informed and smart person while I am inherently stupid. Think again.
CB

It seems nobody wants to be accused of feeding the troll, but Ken you need to be told that your repeated bullying of Mary is both pathetic & disgraceful; can’t you find a more subtle way to derail threads ?

One of the Afghans presidential advisor has stated; there exists solid evidence to tie up the British Military presence to cultivation, production and transportation of the opium in Helmand province.
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In the other news the Iranians are engaged in manoeuvres to block the Straits of Hormuz, whilst ex Saudi intelligence minister Prince Faisal has gone on record; an attack on Iran would be a calamitous, a cataclysmic event for the world.
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China has been “invited” to set up a Naval base in the Indian ocean, on the Seychelles.
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Well if the inexperienced fuckwits in the leadership are contemplating the Fox Werrity Gould plots, they best start re-plotting to find another victim, because the whole lot is looking more like the Polish Scenario of the WWII, ie one war too far/many.

@ Fedup,

You have actually what is tanspiring in the world – so I ask again:-

“What greater militaristic force does one want to witness in the world today than the use of the bomb by Christian America in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the repeated wars of aggression launched in the post-World War 11 era?”

“actually (accurately stated) what is tanspiring in the world.” – I should have said.

Courtenay Barnett,
Often going missing in ritual reverence of the good war “wwii”, is the fact that the amazing Winston was not a trusted public figure, and most of the populace of the time saw him as a dangerous opportunist, with less said about his personal life, and his rise to power the better. This fact was reflected in his defeat in the first post war elections.
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However those bent on “supremacy” will always find an excuse, and rationales galore. although reading; ” as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy…..raising fearless warriors at every step..” are eerily parallel to the lamentations of the British armoured brigade commander in Basra; “they (Iraqis) no longer are in fear of our armour”.

@Mary Looks like the line up for AQ has changed, it now says:

Jonathan Dimbleby presents a panel discussion of news and politics from Sir John Cass Red Coat School in Stepney, London with broadcaster and former Cabinet minister, Michael Portillo; poet Andrew Motion; veteran foreign correspondent and broadcaster, Dame Ann Leslie; and vice-chair of the Liberal Democrats’ National Policy Committee and Hacked Off activist, Dr Evan Harris.

Producer: Victoria Wakely.

Courtenay Barnett,
Exactly, WWII has been hyped as the good war, and the standards of good and evil have been set by this war, and to date the world relives that war on a daily basis. Further, often the current batch of “evildoers” in vogue are projected to be the continuation of the same evil of that war, somehow resurrected, and made current, thus the bandwagon of aggression rolls on.
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This is the elegant consequence of the rise of the plutocracy in US, that has been in progress since the 1825, with steady rise to power of the US oligarchs. Churchill was in fact bad for UK, and he was the man who sealed the end of the empire and handed it on a platter to his American Cousins!
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However, considering that world has already lived through the American Century, as well as the New American Century, we are at the last phases of this experiment that itself is caught in a rapid downward spiral, despite the last ditch attempts to breath some kind of longevity to this bankrupt notion.
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Although there are certain too sacred to be told to fuck off parties whom fully realising the fate of US is inextricably tied to their own fate. These are busy plotting to disengage from by causing further mayhem and destruction in the area, in an attempt to ensure their own survival. After all whence the only tool in the tool box is a hammer, then every problem in the world would take the shape of nail!

Thanks Dan. What a poor exchange. Dame Ann Leslie for John Pilger. I wonder what lies behind the change? Orders from on high? A mix up? Will we ever know?
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Thanks very much Macky. I am obviously ignoring same.
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Earlier I heard Hugh Sykes on the World Service. He has been an unusually honest reporter from Iraq throughout. He had alternating excerpts from Panetta’s dirge-like speech in Baghdad with its empty platitudes and interviews with Iraqi people whose lives have been greatly harmed by the war. The effect was powerful. To hear a blinded father sobbing because he could not see his daughters was heartbreaking. The programme ended with words from a obviously dissenting US soldier saying that he had found the Iraqi people to be family orientated, warm and friendly and quite unlike the image of them portrayed by the US media. The final sounds were from a military band playing God Bless America.

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The World Today
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00m3x5s 15.45 in

PS The introduction to the item referred to the war as a ’9 year military mission’. This jarred.

Yesterday I went to my degree congregation at University of Birmingham after six years of part-time grafting. The thing that made me most proud was not the shaking of the Chancellor’s hand but a comment made by the introductory speaker the Pro-Vice Chancellor, Professor J K Heath, who spoke about reecnt research achievements. Dr Haifaa Jawad, though not mentioned by name, produced research to show how women women in Iraq have been suffering much more violence than before the war.
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http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2011/06/07JuneWomensufferingfromworstviolenceinhistoryofmodernIraq.aspx

Well done John.
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Well done too to James Blunt the singer. He was a Guards officer and comes from a military family. He could see the inhumanity and cruelty. Good video too.
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There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here.
Old men kneel and accept their fate.
Wives and daughters cut and raped.
A generation drenched in hate.
Yes, he has been here.
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And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
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/…
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11799.htm

Rather than hoping to hear him speak over the waffle of types like Ann Leslie on AQ tonight, we can read instead this short interview with John Pilger.

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An Interview With John Pilger
‘Journalism, Not Truth, Is The First Casualty of War’
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By Karuna John
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December 15, 2011 “Morning Express” — WAR IS a well-produced reality show. Embedded journalism is the star cast. Yes, there are innocents dying, but why let that interfere with what the boss wants reported? Award-winning documentary filmmaker-journalist John Pilger is like the Censor Board in reverse. He hunts down secret footage and uses it as damning evidence, countering what war mongers want you to believe. His 2010 documentary The War You Don’t See had its Indian premiere in Delhi recently. Its footage of a US chopper firing on unarmed Baghdad residents and injured children being ignored as collateral damage raises questions about the media’s engage ment with war. Ironically, the journalists were conspicuous by their absence. For someone who has covered every major war of our times, even Pilger, 72, underneath his composed exterior, seemed disappointed. He tells Karuna John that journalists owe their loyalty to telling the truth. Period.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30002.htm

Well done John. Well deserved, undoubtfully.
Few years back I came across the survey that showed that majority of Shias in Iraq preferred Saddam to the current Iraqi government and felt more secure under Saddam. I do not remember the source but convinced that this was true.
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@Mary
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As much as most of us want to be pacifist but certainly that at present no nation is secure without an army (Switzerland that serves as global money laundering organisation is one exception from this). Armies by their nature are inhumane and cruel, they are instruments of force backed politics. But without army no nation could fully exercise its sovereignity. Of course nations with strong armies quite often abuse this primary role of an army and use their army not to exercise sovereighnity but to project their power outside of their national borders.
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So in summary one might conclude that the problem is not in army itself BUT in the governments that use it inappropriately.

Uzbek In The UK, as much a problem as armies, is weapons. Tony Buckingham, who claims he has not been involved in mercenary activity since the nineties, has armed militias protecting Heritage Oil interests in Iraq and Libya. But more frightening still are unmanned weapons carried by drones with cameras locating a suspected enemy from the comfort of an office as though it is some kind of war game and not a human being. People who devise such things are sick.
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Mary, very moving song. Thanks.

@John Goss
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Totally agree with you on weapons. There is a brilliant phrase in Lord of War when Cage said that Kalashnikov is real WMD. The horror of that movie is that is based on real facts.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day when I trusted Russian state propaganda (Russia Today) more than the BBC. But here we are. I’d rather have half the truth than an eighth of it.”
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beyond that we are looking more like soviets than the russians ..

Wendy, I went to Russia in the Soviet days. It was all bureaucracy, a propost’ (form) for this and one for that, people carrying paper from one department to another and taking it back once it had been stamped. But I’ve noticed that is becoming more prevalent here. Sometimes you can’t find the right department for your enquiry. I’m sick of listening to piped music while I wait for someone to answer, and when they do it can be something like “You want ‘such and such’ a department. I’ll put you through.” “OK, thanks.” Then the phone goes dead. You give up in the end.
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What’s more disturbing is information gathering. The got it all from Russia. When they opened up the Soviet archives they held information on everybody. That’s where we’ve got it from.

Notice once again how silent our Governments are on the demonstrations in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is not taking part in these protests, so you’d think we’d support the people on the streets who are mainly, it seems, secular democrats. Why are we silent on this? Is there a deal being brokered between the military and Muslim Brotherhood?

John Goss,
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“What’s more disturbing is information gathering. The got it all from Russia. When they opened up the Soviet archives they held information on everybody. That’s where we’ve got it from.”
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Exactly right,although the Soviets/Stasi could only dream of the technolgy and facilty of US/UK data-trawling capabilty these days.In the peculiar minds of espiocrats the world over everyone’s guilty of something,by degrees.Naturally this is not true at all but it reflects more their warped view of the world than anything else.It’s a paranoid bunker mentality that feeds on its own irrational fears.They really need to get out more-a desk being a very dangerous place from which to view the world.To paraphrase Harold MacMillan:Anyone who spends more than ten years in the wilderness of mirrors has long since probably lost their mind.

John Goss,
What do you know about “Echelon”?
I like your charitable outlook, alas the truth is “our” bastards were/are as venal and even more so than the Russians/USSR. However East Germany under Markus Wolf was in a league of his own when it came to getting one half of the nation to spay on the other, hence his purchase in US

Any unmanned, unannounced electronic system that is breaching countries sovereing territory should be liable to be shot down without reprisals, but will the UN dare to take such stance?

Ingo,
Do you honestly see that Wan Ky Moon to steel enough balls even to whisper “breaching countries sovereing territory” in his toilet whilst trying to iron out the wrinkles out of his skin post taking a dump?

Courtenay Barnett has it to rights. Still at least a token war crimes Tribunal has convicted Bush and Blair in Kuala Lumpur.No comment in any Media outlet here of course but again R.Tv did cover it.I gave up with the Brainwashing Corp: years ago and yes it is actually 2.5 million dead if you include the million starved to death by the sanctions.4 million either fled out side Iraq or displaced internally.As to D.U. the mind reels at the implications,Dr Chris Busby is worth cheking out.Route Irish by Paul Laverty is about the contractors,worth a look.Iraq will go on being a horror story for years but torturing Tony will go on pulling in his millions. On a lighter note is it not wonderful that the little fascist Harry Windsor is to return to shoot up the Afghans from an Apache,the Heroism of it .See my poem to him at www. freedomlite.org God rot them all.