Labor Publications, ISBN 0-929087-54-2
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/dese-m13.shtml
Desert Slaughter: The Imperialist War Against Iraq provides a Marxist analysis of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and is essential reading for all those looking for an objective historical explanation of the driving forces behind the current US-led war against Iraq. Published 12 years ago, this critical 523-page book contains key statements, articles and comments written at each stage of the war and its aftermath by the Workers League, forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States.
The volume makes clear that the 1991 Persian Gulf War heralded the beginning of a new imperialist redivision of the world, with US capitalism attempting to use its military power to offset its declining position in the world economy vis-à-vis its major rivals. The result was at least 250,000 Iraqi soldiers killed and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, either through the savage bombing campaign, or from disease and starvation in the aftermath of the war.
“Workers Must Oppose Gulf War,” a resolution adopted in September 1990, is one of many prescient statements included in the book. It warns: “Despite the initial unity of the imperialists against Iraq, their attempt to plunder the resources of the Middle East will inevitably provoke intensifying conflicts between the major powers.”
Desert Slaughter exposes the secret White House operations to draw Saddam Hussein into an invasion of neighbouring Kuwait, and thus provide the long-awaited pretext for the US to militarily intervene in this oil-rich region. It explains the sordid manoeuvring in the United Nations by the US and other major powers, including the Soviet Union and China, that resulted in UN sponsorship for the horrendous carnage.
The volume provides a damning indictment of the labour parties and the trade unions, which either directly assisted in the war or vehemently opposed any mobilisation of the working class against it. The volume also includes a detailed history of colonial oppression in Iraq and the Middle East and explains why the Arab national leadership has been unable to mount any consistent struggle against it.
Complementing this analysis is a compelling exposure of the crude lies and propaganda of the corporate-run media and, in the aftermath of the war, the tragic suppression of Shi’ite and Kurdish uprisings by the Iraqi military, both revolts deliberately encouraged and then betrayed by the US.
Above all, Desert Slaughter provides irrefutable evidence that imperialist war cannot be stopped through protests to the ruling classes and their government representatives or the United Nations, but only through a unified socialist movement of the international working class against the source of war — the profit system.
“Today’s [American] generals are nothing more than bureaucrats of mass slaughter, working their way up the Pentagon hierarchy, spending a term at the top issuing orders to destroy helpless populations, then retiring to well-paid positions on corporate boards or as ‘consultants’ to the TV networks covering the next American blitzkrieg.”
— David North and Martin McLaughlin
Editors, World Socialist Web Site - www.wsws.org
“The bombing of Iraq: A shameful chapter in American history”
Related pages
Satanic American/British Babykillers: State Terrorism of the Iraqi People
The 3 BIG LIES About Iraq
by John Pilger
American/British Terrorism and Genocide of the Iraqi People
The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark
Iraq’s Poisoned Water:
The deliberate genocide of the Iraqi people by America and Britain
Bibliography:
American Sanctions Against the Iraqi People
Neighborhood Bully: American Militarism
interview with Ramsey Clark
America: the Ultimate Terrorist
by John Pilger
9-11:
The United States Government Committed the September 11 Attacks
The Israeli Connection To 9-11
Fox News Special Report: Israeli Spying on the U.S.
Massive Israeli Spy Ring Linked to September 11
9-11 Was a Mossad “False Flag Operation”
9-11, Mossad, the CIA and “False Flag Operations”
The CIA, Insider Trading and the World Trade Center Terror Attack
Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS
Fake Terror: the Road to Dictatorship
Related sites
WSWS : News & Analysis: Iraq
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/me-iraq.shtml
This is the index page for an extensive collection of news articles and high-quality political analysis about Iraq.
The bombing of Iraq:
A shameful chapter in American history
http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/dec1998/iraq-d19.shtml
This brief essay addresses the renewed bombing of Iraq, begun in December 1998 and continuing to this day. Written by Martin McLaughlin and David North of the Socialist Equality Party soon after the bombing started, it is an excellent political analysis and an eloquent and passionate denunciation of the ongoing U.S. war crimes against the Iraqi people.
“Today’s [American] generals are nothing more than bureaucrats of mass slaughter, working their way up the Pentagon hierarchy, spending a term at the top issuing orders to destroy helpless populations, then retiring to well-paid positions on corporate boards or as ‘consultants’ to the TV networks covering the next American blitzkrieg.”
Fire and Ice:
The Devastation of Iraq by War and Sanctions
by Ramsey Clark
http://www.iacenter.org/fireice.htm
“There was no war. No combat. There was only a deliberate, systematic genocide of a defenseless population while barely setting foot on Iraqi soil. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967, ‘The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government’, he could not have dreamed in his worst nightmare what the U.S. did to Iraq.”
International Action Center — Iraq Sanctions Challenge
http://www.iacenter.org/iraqchallenge/
The courageous people at the International Action Center have completed their fourth trip to Iraq. Each time they bring donated medicines to Iraq that are blocked by the American/British sanctions, and then report back on the conditions suffered by the Iraqi people — conditions routinely covered-up by the mainstream corporate mass-media.
International Action Center — Iraq Sanctions: The Silent Weapon
http://www.iacenter.org/iraq.htm
MORE BOMBS OVER BAGHDAD
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.iacenter.org/maj_iraq.htm
“Once again, after almost a decade has passed, the fiendish roar of American and British jets echoed in the suburbs of Baghdad, Iraq, and a deadly rain of bombs once again hits one of the oldest cities on earth.
“Immediately, the corporate media rushed to the airwaves to promote the bombings, and [illegitimate] Bush Administration officials announced that the aerial attacks on the Iraqi capital were acts of ‘pre emptive self-defense’.
“Once again, the corporate-political media launch into the demonization game, with attacks on a ‘Hitler’-like Saddam Hussein, with foreboding threats of Iraq developing ‘weapons of mass destruction’, — yeah, uh huh.”
Birth defects of Iraqi babies caused by American/British depleted uranium weapons radiation
http://www.wakefieldcam.freeserve.co.uk/extremedeformities.htm
WARNING — the photos on this page, of bizarrely deformed infants with birth defects caused by American and British Depleted Uranium, are horrifying and nauseating. View at your own risk. The photos are worse than those from Nazi concentration camps, but they are a painfully necessary part of the public record of American/British WAR CRIMES.
See these photos and behold the future — of America and Britain.
To the cowardly pilots and military/corporate/politician slime of America and Britain: you will not live this down.
U.S. Bombing Watch
When was the last time the U.S. Bombed Iraq?
http://www.ccmep.org/us_bombing_watch.html
A huge list which provides information on the latest bombings of innocent civilian people in Iraq in the last two years.
The Amariyah bomb shelter: a sea of flames, no place to hide
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/iraq_amiria_e/index.html
From the Chugoku Shimbun (Hiroshima) newspaper site.
Ten years since the Gulf War — US and Britain insist sanctions continue against Iraq
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/gulf-j19.shtml
A good overview of the Desert Storm terror campaign, subsequent sanctions and the present situation.
Defying the Sanctions: A Flight to Iraq
by Michael Parenti
http://www.michaelparenti.org/DefyingSanctions.html
“...on the second day of our visit [in November 2000], US warplanes fired four missiles at the village of Hmaidi in the southern province of Basra, one of which struck the Ali Al-Hayaini school, wounding four children and three teachers. Several homes were also hit.”
WAR CRIMES
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-index.htm
“A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq, to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal.”
By Ramsey Clark and others.
The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on “The Highway of Death”
by Joyce Chediac
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-death.htm
“I want to give testimony on what are called the ‘highways of death’. These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.
“U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. ‘It was like shooting fish in a barrel’, said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see.”
Report presented at the New York Commission hearing, May 11, 1991.
Pacifica Radio — Watch on Iraq — links
http://www.pacifica.org/programs/iraq/links.html
BLOODY HELL: The Price Soldiers Pay
http://www.warishell.com/warishell/index.htm
The website and book Bloody Hell provide a platform for veterans to speak for themselves. Page after page of searing testimony to the brutal, bloody, unmerciful, dehumanising, haunting, destructive, grim black void of war. The pain. The lies. The reality.
The aftermath.
Veterans For Peace
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
Veterans for Peace, Inc. is a non-profit educational and humanitarian organization with a long record of accomplishments since its creation in 1985. They are now involved in The Iraq Water Project — an effort to help rebuild water-treatment facilities that were destroyed and poisoned by U.S./British bombers, or rendered inoperable by American economic sanctions.
Waterborne diseases account for most of the child fatalities caused by American sanctions — at least 4,000 per month of the children who die are under the age of 5 years old.
Gulf War Veteran Resource Pages
http://www.gulfweb.org/
Related books
The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark
American Sanctions Against the Iraqi People
(blibliography)
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky
Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum
Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum
The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman
Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others
Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991
The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky
Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving
Against Empire
by Michael Parenti
The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti
The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Censored 2000:
The Year’s Top 25 Censored Stories
by Peter Phillips & Project Censored
Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan
Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti
Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon
War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors
On Killing:
The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
Dave Grossman
published by: Little, Brown
Examines the consequences of conditioning American soldiers to overcome the instinctive loathing of killing. Shows how it has increased post-combat stress disorder and how contemporary society — especially the media — replicates the U.S. Army’s conditioning techniques, resulting in increased violence in American society.
Available from: Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller
A great number of the world’s landmines are unexploded cluster bombs, dropped by the United States Air Force all over Iraq, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.