Kerry, The Smarter Imperialist?
By Robert Fisk
Remember this all started at a critical moment after September 11, 2001, after the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. When Osama bin Laden was suddenly deleted off the screen, off the radar screen and Saddam Hussein was put up there. The Americans were bombarded with the idea, which many Americans, sadly, still
believe, that Saddam Hussein had had something to do with September 11 when in fact the agenda for attacking Iraq was first thought up by the neoconservatives in Washington during the Clinton administration.
We're now apparently fighting for democracy in Iraq. Originally, we were going to liberate Iraq so they could have democracy. Most of Iraq is outside of the control of the United States forces or British forces and certainly not government forces. The Iraqi government itself now has less power than the mayor of Baghdad and doesn't even control all of Baghdad. The situation - the disastrous situation in Iraq is now so grave that I don't think it could ever be turned around, not while western troops are there. And yet, Kerry and Bush talk about it, as if it is a reversible situation or actually getting better. And again and again, the concentration on America's soldiers. Well, fine, Americans should be interested in their soldiers and their welfare, but the principal victims in
Iraq are not Americans, they're Iraqis, and they're dying at an ever greater number. When I go to the mortuaries and see shrieking people holding the corpses of children, old men as well as young men. Trying to stuff them into coffins. The stench is overpowering. That's the reality on the ground in Iraq. What Kerry and Bush had to say last night bore no relation to the reality which I see inside Iraq.
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