by Ramsey Clark
former U.S. Attorney General
International Action Center,
1991; 3rd edition 2002
This new edition of the groundbreaking work by Ramsey Clark tells the truth about massive U.S. war crimes against the Iraqi people in the 1991 Gulf “War”. With a special new introduction: After September 11th, an assessment of the U.S./Iraq conflict.
The Fire This Time is an invaluable resource for those organizing opposition to a new U.S. war against the Iraqi people, an important book to be in the hands of anti-war activists, students, and readers worldwide.
The International Action Center (IAC) is mounting a full-scale international campaign to stop the unelected Bush Regime from waging a new genocide against the people of Iraq. The IAC has rushed to publish this new edition so that tens of thousands of anti-war activists in the U.S. can use it as part of an emergency campaign to educate and mobilize public opinion.
This significant book contains comprehensive research unmatched by any other book on the Iraq Genocide. The new edition includes updated information on the deadly impact of economic sanctions on Iraqi civilian people, sanctions which have been in place since August 1990.
The new introduction analyzes how the unelected Bush Regime opportunistically used the tragic events of September 11 for a premeditated act of blatant aggression and state terrorism, a war dictated by obvious imperial ambitions in the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia. It has nothing whatsoever to do with “fighting terrorism”. American state terrorism is the greatest terrorism in the world. Another Iraq Genocide would violate all international laws, in addition to the simple, basic laws of human morality.
Praise for Ramsey Clark and The Fire This Time:
“A strong indictment of the war and especially of the needless deaths of civilians caused by bombing.”
— New York Times
“The Fire This Time shows that our leaders committed war crimes in the Persian Gulf War no less surely than the Nazis committed war crimes in World War II.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
“Raises serious questions about the behavior of the U.S. government throughout the Gulf crisis.”
— Noam Chomsky
“He risked his life by traveling for three weeks through Iraqi cities in an old American sedan at a time when the U.S. was staging 3,000 bombing sorties a day.”
— Los Angeles Times
Clark presents Americans with the unthinkable: that their government killed upward of 100,000 civilians in a terrifying power exercise, sanctified by a captive media...”
— KIRKUS Reviews
About the Author
From the introduction to an interview by Derrick Jensen
“Neighborhood Bully — Ramsey Clark on American Militarism”
The Sun magazine, August 2001:
When I picture a high-ranking government official, I think of someone who is corrupt. I think of a corporate shill. I think of someone who is not a friend to the people of this country. I think of Lord Acton’s famous line about power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely. I think of the disdain with which so many Americans have viewed so many of their leaders for so many years.
Former attorney general Ramsey Clark is different. Despite having once been the chief law-enforcement officer of this country, he consistently takes the side of the oppressed.
Born to power — Clark’s father was attorney general in the 1940s and later a Supreme Court justice — the University of Chicago Law School graduate was appointed assistant attorney general by John F. Kennedy in 1961 and went on to head that department as attorney general under Lyndon Johnson from 1967 to 1969. During his years in the Justice Department, Clark was a staunch supporter of the civil-rights movement. While in charge of government efforts to protect the protesters in Alabama, he witnessed firsthand “the enormous violence that was latent in our society toward unpopular people.” He had a similar experience when he was sent to Los Angeles after the rioting in Watts and discovered abuses by the police and the National Guard.
Although back then, Clark didn’t take the strong antiwar stance he advocates today, his Justice Department record boasts some major accomplishments: He supervised the drafting and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He denounced police shootings and authorized prosecution of police on charges of brutality and wrongful death. He opposed electronic surveillance and refused to authorize an FBI wiretap on Martin Luther King Jr. He fought hard against the death penalty and won, putting a stay on federal executions that lasted until [2001], when Timothy McVeigh’s death sentence was carried out.
After a failed bid for the Senate in 1976, Clark abandoned government service and set out to provide legal defense to victims of oppression. As an attorney in private practice, he has represented many controversial clients over the years, among them antiwar activist Father Philip Berrigan; Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier; the Branch Davidians, whose compound in Waco, Texas, was destroyed by government agents; Sheik Omar Abd El-Rahman, who was accused of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing; and Lori Berenson, an American held in a Peruvian prison for allegedly supporting the revolutionary Tupac Amaru movement there. Clark’s dedication to defending unpopular, and even hated, figures has also led him to represent such clients as Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and far-right extremist Lyndon LaRouche.
Clark is founder and chairperson of the International Action Center, the largest antiwar movement in the United States. A vocal critic of U.S. military actions around the globe, he calls government officials “international outlaws,” accusing them of “killing innocent people because we don’t like their leader.” He has traveled to Iraq, North Vietnam, Serbia, and other embattled regions of the world to investigate the effects of American bombing and economic sanctions there. The sanctions, he says, are particularly inhumane:
“They’re like the neutron bomb, which is the most ‘inspired’ of all weapons, because it kills the people and preserves the property, the wealth. So you get the wealth and you don’t have the baggage of the hungry, clamoring poor.”
After the Gulf War, in 1991, Clark initiated a war-crimes tribunal, which tried and found guilty President George Bush and Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, among others. Clark went on to write a book, The Fire This Time (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992; International Action Center, 1991, 2002), describing the crimes he says were committed by U.S. and NATO forces during the Gulf War. When asked why he focuses on the crimes of his own country, instead of those committed by Iraq, Clark says that we, as citizens, need to announce our principles and
“force our government to adhere to them. When you see your government violating those principles, you have the highest obligation to correct what your government does, not point the finger at someone else.”
Related pages
Satanic American/British Babykillers: State Terrorism of the Iraqi People
Desert Slaughter: The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League
Neighborhood Bully: American Militarism
interview with Ramsey Clark
The 3 BIG LIES About Iraq
by John Pilger
American/British Terrorism and Genocide of the Iraqi People
America: the Ultimate Terrorist
by John Pilger
Iraq’s Poisoned Water:
The deliberate genocide of the Iraqi people by America and Britain
Bibliography:
American Sanctions Against the Iraqi People
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
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.
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.”
Pacifica Radio — Watch on Iraq
http://www.pacifica.org/programs/iraq/index.html
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
Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League
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
