De illegale oorlogen van de VS deze eeuw hebben niet 2,5 miljoen levens gekost, maar minstens 5 miljoen

De
regelmatige lezer van dit blog weet dat ik al een paar jaar een
aantal van 2,5 doden aanhoudt die deze eeuw zijn gevallen in de illegale
oorlogen van de VS (of zwaar gesteund door de VS met een vitale rol
in coördinatie van bombardementen enz.) in Afghanistan (en daarmee
deels in Pakistan), Irak, Libië, Syrië, Somalië en Jemen. Men
hield mij wel eens voor dat het aantal van 2,5 miljoen overdreven
was, echter nu blijkt (of eigenlijk al in 2018) dat het aantal doden
die in deze oorlogen zijn gevallen minstens 5 miljoen moet zijn, dit
gebaseerd op een artikel in Consortium News van 25 april
2018, geschreven door Nicolas JS
Davies, een artikel dat bestaat uit 3 delen en waarvan ik deel 3 voor
een deel heb overgenomen. (Davies gaat uit van minstens 5 miljoen
doden, maar stelt dat dit er ook 7 miljoen kunnen zijn……)

In
de eerste twee delen komt Davies tot de slotsom dat de (illegale)
oorlog van de VS tegen Irak minstens 2,4 miljoen mensen het leven
moet hebben gekost (let wel met hulp van andere NAVO-partners,
waaronder Nederland…)….. Terwijl de (illegale) oorlog van de VS
en haar NAVO-partners tegen Afghanistan en de meer geheime oorlog
tegen o.a. de Taliban in Pakistan 1,2 miljoen mensen het leven moet
hebben gekost, waar Davies aan toevoegt dat ook de CIA hier een grote
rol in heeft gespeeld (zoals de geheime acties tegen de Taliban in
Pakistan…….)

In
het laatste deel, dat hieronder gedeeltelijk is opgenomen, gaat
Davies diep in op de VS oorlogen tegen Libië, Syrië, Somalië en
Jemen. Daarin ook weer aandacht voor de geheime militaire acties
veelal geleid door de CIA. Verder wijst Davies op het feit dat alleen
wat betreft de (illegale) oorlog van de VS tegen Irak diepere studies
zijn gedaan naar het aantal doden, onderzoeken die veel verder gaan
dan die waarop de officiële cijfers zijn gebaseerd (aangeleverd door
media en andere bronnen) middels ‘actief onderzoek’ naar het aantal
doden, aangegeven door huishoudens. Onafhankelijke onderzoeken op
universitair niveau en niet zoals de andere (niet onafhankelijke)
onderzoeken onder toezicht van overheden. (braaf overgenomen door de afhankelijke reguliere westerse media)

Andere
onafhankelijke onderzoeken naar vergelijkbare oorlogen zoals die in
Angola, Bosnië en Congo (ook wel Democratische Republiek Congo
genoemd of kortweg DRC), Kosovo, Rwanda, Soedan, Oeganda en Irak
(waarvan we inderdaad door studies weten dat het aantal doden veel
hoger is dan het officieel aangehouden getal), tonen aan dat het
werkelijke aantal doden 5 tot 20 keer hoger liggen…….

Door
de afwezigheid van zulke uitgebreide studies in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Libië, Syrië en Jemen, heeft Davies ‘passieve
rapportages’ (n.a.v. niet-onafhankelijk onderzoek) over oorlogsdoden
geëvalueerd en beoordeeld wat het werkelijke aantal doden moet zijn,
gezien eerdere (wel onafhankelijke) studies naar andere
oorlogsgebieden waarbij de officiële cijfers zijn vergeleken met het
werkelijke aantal doden die daar later werden geteld middels
(onafhankelijke) studies (zo dat is er ook weer uit). Het voorgaande
is een versimpelde weergave van de woorden die Davies gebruikt (wat
mij betreft behoorlijk ingewikkeld, maar ja ik ben dan ook weer een
dag ouder).

Davies
heeft alleen de gewelddadige doden (vermoorden) geteld en niet de
doden die indirect door die oorlogen zijn gevallen, zoals de doden
die vielen door het bombarderen van ziekenhuizen en andere medische
faciliteiten, de doden die in andere situaties te voorkomen waren
geweest zoals door besmettelijke ziekten, ondervoeding en zware
milieuvervuiling, ook al is het aantal doden dat daardoor is gevallen
behoorlijk groot (kan je nagaan…..)….. Zelf tel ik die doden wel
op bij het totale aantal doden dat door een oorlog is gevallen, zo
zijn er in Jemen minstens 500.000 doden gevallen (waaronder meer dan
100.000 kinderen), dit door honger, cholera en difterie, die zonder
oorlog niet zouden zijn overleden….. Deze mensen zijn dan ook
allemaal vermoord door de smerige oorlog die de Saoedische
terreurcoalitie voert tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen, met
directe en indirecte steun van de VS en Groot-Brittannië, vandaar
ook dat ik al jaren spreek over een (immer voortgaande) genocide die
deze terreurcoalitie uitvoert in Jemen….. (terwijl Nederland wapenonderdelen levert aan S-A…..)

Wat
betreft Irak houdt Davies het aantal vermoorde mensen op 2,4 miljoen,
o.a. gebaseerd op de schattingen naar aanleiding van een studie door
de Lancet in 2006 en 2007 die in overeenstemming waren met elkaar,
waar hij een som heeft losgelaten op het aantal doden genoemd in
passieve rapportages en het aantal doden gevonden in actieve studies
als tussen die van de Lancet en Iraq Body Count (IBC) in 2006
vergeleken met het aantal doden in het IBC onderzoek vanaf 2007.

Davies
gaat ook in op de manier waarop de oorlogen worden verslagen door de
media, waarbij al vanaf Obama zo min mogelijk of helemaal geen
oorlogscorrespondenten werden toegelaten tot gebieden waar de VS als
een beest tekeerging, neem ook de VS bombardementen op een groot
aantal steden in Irak en Syrië zoals respectievelijk Mosul en Raqqa…..

De
mensen in
, , Kobane, , Ramadi, Tawergha en stierven met bosjes als er geen westerse
verslaggevers en tv ploegen aanwezig waren om de bloedbaden te
verslaan….. Harold Pinter vroeg toen hem in 2005 de Nobelprijs voor
de Literatuur werd toegekend of deze bloedbaden plaatsvonden en of ze
in alle gevallen te danken waren aan het buitenlandbeleid van de VS.
Het antwoord was: ja, deze bloedbaden hebben plaatsgevonden en waren
in alle gevallen te danken aan het buitenlandbeleid van de VS…..
Maar jij zou het niet weten. Het gebeurde nooit. Er gebeurde nooit
iets. Zelfs toen het plaatsvond gebeurde het niet. Het deed er niet
toe. Het was van geen belang. (………)

Voor
de rest van de informatie verwijs ik je naar het originele artikel,
waarin Davies o.a. tot de conclusie komt dat het totale aantal
gewelddadige doden (i.t.t. Het aantal passieve doden of indirecte
doden) wat betreft Libië op 250.000 doden ligt (minimaal 150.000 en
maximaal 360.000 doden). Als het gaat om de illegale oorlog tegen Somalië en dan vanaf 2006 (de VS voerde al veel eerder oorlog tegen
dat land) schat Davies het aantal door oorlogsgeweld gevallen doden op
650.000 (minimaal 500.000 en maximaal op 850.000 doden. Tot slot
Jemen: hier schat hij het aantal door oorlogsgeweld gevallen doden
op 175.000 doden (minimaal 120.000 en maximaal 240.000).

Nogmaals:
de manier van rekenen dus doden gevallen door oorlogsgeweld en het
aantal doden dat indirect door oorlogen valt, vind ik nogal vreemd,
immers ook de indirecte doden moet je meetellen, daar zonder oorlog
deze mensen niet waren omgekomen…..

Lees
het (hele) artikel van Davies en zegt het voort, de wereld moet zo
snel mogelijk de VS oorlogsmachine stoppen, of het nu om 2,5
miljoen doden of 5 dan wel 7 miljoen doden gaat, elke dode is er één
teveel, de terreur van de VS en de NAVO moet eindelijk gestopt
worden, hoe kunnen we ons wel druk maken om Coronadoden en het veel
grotere aantal vermoorde mensen in de illegale VS oorlogen maar links
laten liggen (beter: rechts laten liggen……)….. Dit artikel vond ik door een link in een bericht van Caitlin Johnstone, dat ik op een later tijdstip zal plaatsen.

International,
Middle
East
, U.S.

How
Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars? Part 3:
Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen

April
25, 2018

In the third
and final part of his series, Nicolas JS Davies investigates the
death toll of U.S. covert and proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia and
Yemen and underscores the importance of comprehensive war mortality
studies.

By
Nicolas J S Davies
Special
to Consortium News

 

U.S. Army forces operating in southern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Apr. 2, 2003 (U.S. Navy photo)

In the first
two parts of this report, I have estimated that about 2.4
million people have been killed
as a result of the U.S. invasion
of Iraq, while about 1.2
million have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan
as a result
of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.  In the third and final part
of this report, I will estimate how many people have been killed as a
result of U.S. military and CIA interventions in Libya, Syria,
Somalia and Yemen.

Of the
countries that the U.S. has attacked and destabilized since 2001,
only Iraq has been the subject of comprehensive “active”
mortality studies that can reveal otherwise unreported deaths. An
“active” mortality study is one that “actively” surveys
households to find deaths that have not previously been reported by
news reports or other published sources.

These studies
are often carried out by people who work in the field of public
health, like Les Roberts at Columbia University, Gilbert Burnham at
Johns Hopkins and Riyadh Lafta at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad,
who co-authored the
2006
Lancet
study

of Iraq war mortality.  In defending their studies in Iraq and
their results, they emphasized that their Iraqi survey teams were
independent of the occupation government and that that was an
important factor in the objectivity of their studies and the
willingness of people in Iraq to talk honestly with them.

Comprehensive
mortality studies in other war-torn countries (like Angola, Bosnia,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda,
Sudan and Uganda) have revealed total numbers of deaths that are 5
to 20 times
those previously revealed by “passive” reporting
based on news reports, hospital records and/or human rights
investigations.

In the
absence of such comprehensive studies in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, I have evaluated passive reports of
war deaths and tried to assess what proportion of actual deaths these
passive reports are likely to have counted by the methods they have
used, based on ratios of actual deaths to passively reported deaths
found in other war-zones.

I have only
estimated violent deaths.  None of my estimates include deaths
from the indirect effects of these wars, such as the destruction of
hospitals and health systems, the spread of otherwise preventable
diseases and the effects of malnutrition and environmental pollution,
which have also been substantial in all these countries.

For Iraq, my
final estimate of about
2.4 million people killed
was based on accepting the estimates of
the 2006
Lancet
study

and the 2007 Opinion
Research Business (ORB) survey
, which were consistent with each
other, and then applying the same ratio of actual deaths to passively
reported deaths (11.5:1) as between the
Lancet
study and Iraq Body Count
(IBC)
in 2006 to IBC’s count for the years since 2007.

For
Afghanistan, I estimated that about 875,000
Afghans have been killed
.  I explained that the annual
reports on civilian casualties by the UN
Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA)
are based only on
investigations completed by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights
Commission (AIHRC), and that they knowingly exclude large numbers of
reports of civilian deaths that the AIHRC has not yet investigated or
for which it has not completed its investigations.  UNAMA’s
reports also lack any reporting at all from many areas of the country
where the Taliban and other Afghan resistance forces are active, and
where many or most U.S. air strikes and night raids therefore take
place.

I concluded
that UNAMA’s reporting of civilian deaths in Afghanistan appears to
be as inadequate as the extreme under-reporting found at the end of
the Guatemalan Civil War, when the UN-sponsored Historical
Verification Commission revealed 20 times more deaths than previously
reported.

For Pakistan,
I estimated that about 325,000
people had been killed
.  That was based on published
estimates of combatant deaths, and on applying an average of the
ratios found in previous wars (12.5:1) to the number of civilian
deaths reported by the South
Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP)
in India.

Estimating
Deaths in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen

In the third
and final part of this report, I will estimate the death toll caused
by U.S. covert and proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

Senior U.S.
military officers have hailed the U.S.
doctrine of covert and proxy war
that found its full flowering
under the Obama administration as a “disguised,
quiet, media-free”
approach to war, and have traced the
development of this doctrine back to U.S. wars in Central America in
the 1980s.  While the U.S. recruitment,
training, command and control of death squads in Iraq
was dubbed
“the Salvador Option,” U.S. strategy in Libya, Syria, Somalia and
Yemen has in fact followed this model even more closely.

These wars
have been catastrophic for the people of all these countries, but the
U.S.’s “disguised, quiet, media-free” approach to them has been
so successful in propaganda terms that most Americans know very
little about the U.S. role in the intractable violence and chaos that
has engulfed them.

The very
public nature of the illegal but largely symbolic missile strikes on
Syria on April 14, 2018 stands in sharp contrast to the “disguised,
quiet, media-free” U.S.-led bombing campaign that has destroyed
Raqqa, Mosul and several other Syrian and Iraqi cities with more
than 100,000 bombs and missiles
since 2014.

The people of
Mosul, Raqqa, Kobane, Sirte, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tawergha and Deir
Ez-Zor have died like trees falling in a forest where there were no
Western reporters or TV crews to record their massacres.  As
Harold Pinter asked of earlier U.S. war crimes in his 2005
Nobel acceptance speech
,

Did they
take place?  And are they in all cases attributable to U.S.
foreign policy?  The answer is yes, they did take place, and
they are in all cases attributable to American foreign policy. But
you wouldn’t know it.  It never happened. Nothing ever
happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It
didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”

For more
detailed background on the critical role the U.S. has played in each
of these wars, please read my article, “Giving
War Too Many Chances,”
published in January 2018.

Libya

The only
legal justification for NATO and its Arab monarchist allies to have
dropped at
least 7,700 bombs and missiles
on Libya and invaded
it with special operations forces
beginning in February 2011 was
UN
Security Council resolution 1973
, which authorized “all
necessary measures” for the narrowly defined purpose of protecting
civilians in Libya.

 

Smoke is seen after an NATO airstrikes hit Tripoli, Libya Photo: REX

But the war
instead killed far more civilians than any estimate of the number
killed in the initial rebellion in February and March 2011, which
ranged from 1,000 (a UN estimate) to 6,000 (according to the Libyan
Human Rights League).  So the war clearly failed in its stated,
authorized purpose, to protect civilians, even as it succeeded in a
different and unauthorized one: the illegal overthrow of the Libyan
government.

SC resolution
1973 expressly prohibited “a foreign occupation force of any form
on any part of Libyan territory.”  But NATO and its allies
launched a
covert invasion of Libya
by thousands of Qatari and Western
special operations forces, who planned the rebels’ advance across
the country, called in air strikes against government forces and led
the final assault on the Bab al-Aziziya military headquarters in
Tripoli.

Qatari Chief
of Staff Major
General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya
, proudly told AFP,

We were
among them and the numbers of Qataris on the ground were in the
hundreds in every region.  Training and communications had been
in Qatari hands. Qatar… supervised the rebels’ plans because they
are civilians and did not have enough military experience. We acted
as the link between the rebels and NATO forces.”

There are
credible reports that a
French security officer
may even have delivered the coup de grace
that killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, after he was captured,
tortured and sodomized with a knife by the “NATO rebels.”

A
parliamentary Foreign
Affairs Committee inquiry
(FAC) in the U.K. in 2016 concluded that a
“limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an
opportunistic policy of regime change by military means,” resulting
in, “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and
inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread
human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across
the region and the growth of Isil [Islamic State] in north Africa.”

Passive
Reports of Civilian Deaths in Libya

Once the
Libyan government was overthrown, journalists tried to inquire about
the sensitive subject of civilian deaths, which was so critical to
the legal and political justifications for the war.  But the
National Transitional Council (NTC), the unstable new government
formed by Western-backed exiles and rebels, stopped issuing public
casualty estimates and ordered hospital staff not
to release information to reporters
.

In any case,
as in Iraq and Afghanistan, morgues were overflowing during the war
and many people buried their loved ones in their backyards or
wherever they could, without taking them to hospitals.

A rebel
leader estimated in August 2011 that 50,000
Libyans had been killed
.  Then, on September 8th 2011, Naji
Barakat, the NTC’s new health minister, issued a statement that
30,000 people had been killed
and another 4,000 were missing,
based on a survey of hospitals, local officials and rebel commanders
in the majority of the country that the NTC by then controlled.  He
said it would take several more weeks to complete the survey, so he
expected the final figure to be higher.

Barakat’s
statement did not include separate counts of combatant and civilian
deaths.  But he said that about half of the 30,000 reported dead
were troops loyal to the government, including 9,000 members of the
Khamis Brigade, led by Gaddafi’s son Khamis.  Barakat asked
the public to report deaths in their families and details of missing
persons when they came to mosques for prayers that Friday. The NTC’s
estimate of 30,000 people killed appeared to consist mainly of
combatants on both sides.

The most
comprehensive survey of war deaths since the end of the 2011 war in
Libya was an “epidemiological community-based study” titled
“Libyan
Armed Conflict 2011: Mortality, Injury and Population Displacement.”

 It was authored by three medical professors from Tripoli, and
published in the
African
Journal of Emergency Medicine

in 2015.

The authors
took records of war deaths, injuries and displacement collected by
the Ministry of Housing and Planning, and sent teams to conduct
face-to-face interviews with a member of each family to verify how
many members of their household were killed, wounded or displaced.
 They did not try to separate the killing of civilians from the
deaths of combatants.

Nor did they
try to statistically estimate previously unreported deaths through
the “cluster sample survey” method of the
Lancet
study

in Iraq.  But the Libyan Armed Conflict study is the most
complete record of confirmed deaths in the war in Libya up to
February 2012, and it confirmed the deaths of at least 21,490 people.

In 2014, the
ongoing chaos and factional fighting in Libya flared up into what
Wikipedia now calls a second
Libyan Civil War.
 A group called Libya
Body Count (LBC)
began tabulating violent deaths in Libya, based
on media reports, on the model of Iraq
Body Count (IBC)
.  But LBC only did so for three years, from
January 2014 until December 2016.  It counted 2,825 deaths in
2014, 1,523 in 2015 and 1,523 in 2016. (The LBC website says it was
just a coincidence that the number was identical in 2015 and 2016.)

The
U.K.-based Armed Conflict
Location and Event Data (ACLED)
project has also kept a count of
violent deaths in Libya.  ACLED counted 4,062 deaths in 2014-6,
compared with 5,871 counted by Libya Body Count.  For the
remaining periods between March 2012 and March 2018 that LBC did not
cover, ACLED has counted 1,874 deaths.

If LBC had
covered the whole period since March 2012, and found the same
proportionally higher number than ACLED as it did for 2014-6, it
would have counted 8,580 people killed.

Estimating
How Many People Have Really Been Killed in Libya

Combining the
figures from the Libyan
Armed Conflict 2011 study
and our combined, projected figure from
Libya Body Count
and ACLED gives a total of
30,070 passively reported deaths since February 2011.

The Libyan
Armed Conflict (LAC) study was based on official records in a country
that had not had a stable, unified government for about 4 years,
while Libya Body Count was a fledgling effort to emulate Iraq Body
Count that tried to cast a wider net by not relying only on
English-language news sources.

In Iraq, the
ratio between the 2006
Lancet
study and Iraq Body Count was higher because IBC was only counting
civilians, while the
Lancet
study counted Iraqi combatants as well as civilians.  Unlike
Iraq Body Count, both our main passive sources in Libya counted both
civilians and combatants.  Based on the one-line descriptions of
each incident in the Libya
Body Count
database, LBC’s total appears to include roughly
half combatants and half civilians.

Military
casualties are generally counted more accurately than civilian ones,
and military forces have an interest in accurately assessing enemy
casualties as well as identifying their own. The opposite is true of
civilian casualties, which are nearly always evidence of war crimes
that the forces who killed them have a strong interest in
suppressing.

So, in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, I treated combatants and civilians
separately, applying typical ratios between passive reporting and
mortality studies only to civilians, while accepting reported
combatant deaths as they were passively reported.

But the
forces fighting in Libya are not a national army with the strict
chain of command and organizational structure that results in
accurate reporting of military casualties in other countries and
conflicts, so both civilian and combatant deaths appear to be
significantly under-reported by my two main sources, the Libya
Armed Conflict
study and
Libya Body Count
.  In fact, the National Transitional
Council’s (NTC) estimates  from August and September 2011 of
30,000 deaths were already much higher than the numbers of war deaths
in the LAC study.

When the 2006
Lancet study of mortality in Iraq was published, it revealed
14 times the number of deaths counted in Iraq Body Count’s list of
civilian deaths.  But IBC later discovered more deaths from that
period, reducing the ratio between the Lancet study’s
estimate and IBC’s revised count to 11.5:1.

The combined
totals from the Libya Armed Conflict 2011 study and Libya Body Count
appear to be a larger proportion of total violent deaths than Iraq
Body Count has counted in Iraq, mainly because LAC and LBC both
counted combatants as well as civilians, and because Libya Body Count
included deaths reported in Arabic news sources, while IBC relies
almost entirely on
English language news sources
and generally requires “a minimum
of two independent data sources” before recording each death.

In other
conflicts, passive reporting has never succeeded in counting more
than a fifth of the deaths found by comprehensive, “active”
epidemiological studies.  Taking all these factors into account,
the true number of people killed in Libya appears to be somewhere
between five and twelve times the numbers counted by the Libya Armed
Conflict 2011 study, Libya Body Count and ACLED.

So I estimate
that about 250,000 Libyans have been killed in the war, violence and
chaos that the U.S. and its allies unleashed in Libya in February
2011, and which continues to the present day.  Taking 5:1 and
12:1 ratios to passively counted deaths as outer limits, the minimum
number of people that have been killed would be 150,000 and the
maximum would be 360,000.

Syria

The
“disguised,
quiet, media-free”
U.S. role in Syria began in late 2011 with a
CIA operation to funnel foreign
fighters
and weapons through Turkey and Jordan into Syria,
working with Qatar and Saudi Arabia to militarize unrest that began
with peaceful Arab Spring protests against Syria’s Baathist
government.

The
mostly leftist and democratic Syrian political groups

coordinating non-violent protests in Syria in 2011 strongly opposed
these foreign efforts to unleash a civil war, and issued strong
statements opposing violence, sectarianism and foreign intervention.

But even as a
December 2011 Qatari-sponsored opinion poll found that 55%
of Syrians supported their government
, the U.S. and its allies
were committed to adapting their Libyan regime change model to Syria,
knowing full well from the outset that this war would be much
bloodier and more destructive.

The CIA and
its Arab monarchist partners eventually funneled thousands
of tons of weapons
and thousands of foreign Al-Qaeda-linked
jihadis into Syria.  The weapons came first from Libya, then
from Croatia and the Balkans. They included howitzers, missile
launchers and other heavy weapons, sniper rifles, rocket propelled
grenades, mortars and small arms, and the U.S. eventually directly
supplied powerful anti-tank missiles.

Meanwhile,
instead of cooperating with Kofi Annan’s UN-backed efforts to bring
peace to Syria in 2012, the U.S. and its allies held three “Friends
of Syria” conferences
, where they pursued their own “Plan B,”
pledging ever-growing support to the increasingly Al-Qaeda-dominated
rebels.  Kofi
Annan quit his thankless role in disgust
after Secretary of State
Clinton and her British, French and Saudi allies cynically undermined
his peace plan.

The rest, as
they say, is history, a history of ever-spreading violence and chaos
that has drawn the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, Iran and all of
Syria’s neighbors into its bloody vortex.  As Phyllis Bennis
of the Institute for Policy Studies has observed, these external
powers have all been ready to fight over Syria “to
the last Syrian
.”

The bombing
campaign that President Obama launched against Islamic State in 2014
is the heaviest bombing campaign since the U.S. War in Vietnam,
dropping more
than 100,000 bombs and missiles
on Syria and Iraq.  Patrick
Cockburn, the veteran Middle East correspondent of the U.K.’s
Independent
newspaper, recently visited Raqqa, formerly Syria’s 6th largest
city, and wrote that, “The
destruction is total.”

In other
Syrian cities bombed or shelled to the point of oblivion there is at
least one district that has survived intact,” Cockburn wrote. “This
is the case even in Mosul in Iraq, though much of it was pounded into
rubble. But in Raqqa the damage and the demoralization are all
pervasive.  When something does work, such as a single traffic
light, the only one to do so in the city, people express surprise.”

Voor het
vervolg zie het origineel.

 =====================================

Zie ook: ‘10 jaar geleden werden de Irak oorlogs-logboeken van de VS vrijgegeven, voor de oorlogsmisdaden daarin vermeld moeten niet de daders Bush en Blair boeten, maar journalist Julian Assange‘ 

VS maakte 10 keer meer slachtoffers, dan de reguliere media rapporteerden……..

Libië, het echte motief voor de illegale oorlog tegen dat land, met in de hoofdrol Hillary Clinton…..‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)

VS vermoordde in Afghanistan weer 15 burgers waaronder 3 vrouwen en 3 kinderen……..‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht naar meer artikelen over Afghanistan, o.a. met een ‘mooie rol’ voor broodschrijver Grunberg….)

—————————————————————————

Hier nog een paar voorbeelden van grootschalige VS terreur:

VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII……..‘ (tot het jaar 2000)

VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen……….

List of wars involving the United States

VS: openlijke militaire oefening met terreurgroep in Syrië……

Bang voor Amerika

NAVO gaat VS helpen in Zuid-Amerika terreur uit te oefenen: Colombia lid van de NAVO………

VS commando’s vechten o.a. in Midden- en Zuid-Amerika, aldus het VS ministerie van oorlog………

VS heeft Rusland al 3 keer met oorlog gedreigd, de laatste 2 keer in de afgelopen 1,5 week……‘ (bericht van 5 oktober 2018)

—————————————————————

Zie wat betreft westerse wapenleveringen aan terreurgroepen als ISIS: ‘Rutte en Koenders verantwoordelijk voor wapenleveranties aan IS!!

CIA valt nogmaals door de mand als wapenleverancier van IS…….

US weapons supplied to Syrian rebels ended up with Islamic State: report

Tracing ISIS’ Weapons Supply Chain—Back to the US

ISIL weapons traced to US and Saudi Arabia

Al Qaida de bondgenoot van de VS in de strijd tegen…… terrorisme! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!‘ 

VS centraal commando werkt in Syrië samen met IS en verklaarde Rusland de oorlog………

U.S Caught Red Handed Selling Arms to ISIS/AL-Qaeda (Part 1 of 2)

US TRAINED REBELS GIVE WEAPONS TO TERROR GROUP

Made in America: US-Trained ‘Moderate’ Rebels, With Blessing Of Americans, Seling US Weapons to ISIS

Exactly how the US trained and armed ISIS

Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi

Tulsi Gabbard (VS congres Hawaï): Trump is de beschermende Big Brother van Al Qaida

10 jaar geleden werden de Irak oorlogs-logboeken van de VS vrijgegeven, voor de oorlogsmisdaden daarin vermeld moeten niet de daders Bush en Blair boeten, maar journalist Julian Assange

Vorige week zaterdag was het precies 10 jaar geleden dat Wikileaks de door
Chelsea Manning gelekte documenten publiceerde over de illegale oorlog van de VS
tegen Irak. Op die dag kon de wereld zien hoe smerig en
groot de VS terreur was (en deels nog is) die op het volk van Irak werd
uitgeoefend…….. Een oorlog die in 2003 begon en in feite nog
steeds gaande is, vandaar ook dat er niet 1 miljoen mensen zijn
omgekomen door die terreur (zoals in het artikel hieronder wordt gesteld), maar eerder 2 miljoen Irakezen het leven
hebben gelaten……. Ofwel die mensen zijn vermoord door
de 2 grootste verantwoordelijken destijds: VS president George W. Bush en de Briste premier Tony Blair en dat met hulp van een
aantal andere NAVO-lidstaten, waaronder Nederland…..

Oorlogsmisdaden,
misdaden tegen de menselijkheid en grove mensenrechtenschendingen
begaan in Irak staan sinds die tijd tot ieders beschikking. Totaal onbegrijpelijk dan ook dat de reguliere westerse (massa-) media niet
de 2 grootste verantwoordelijke terroristen in deze, George W. Bush
en Tony Blair aan de spreekwoordelijke paal hebben genageld, maar
klokkenluider Chelsea Manning en de boodschapper:
onderzoeksjournalist Julian Assange…… Alsof die 2
verantwoordelijk zijn voor dat enorme aantal doden en niet de 2
eerder genoemde bloedige rotschoften……

De
reguliere westerse media hebben in deze de VS gevolgd, waar men
keihard loog dat Assange en Manning mensen in gevaar hebben gebracht
met hun openbaringen, terwijl diezelfde VS een enorm dossier aan
leugens heeft opgebouwd, zoals de leugen dat Irak
massavernietigingswapens zou hebben en daar de VS en Groot-Brittannië
mee zou willen aanvallen (als je dat weer in ogenschouw neemt snap je
zelfs niet dat er ook maar één persoon met een goed stel werkende
hersenen deze baarlijke en meer dan belachelijke nonsens heeft
geloofd…)…. Ook deze leugen werd door de westerse media uit en te
na verdedigd, zelfs de NRC bij monde van de ‘beste journalist van de
20ste eeuw’, Henk Hofland droeg deze leugen ‘met passie’ uit……
Ondanks dat iedereen al jaren weet dat e.e.a een enorme leugen is, heeft geen
mediaorgaan een rectificatie geplaatst voor de enorme diarree aan
leugens die men voorafgaand aan en tijdens die oorlog heeft gebracht (en nog brengt),
integendeel deze leugen wordt verzwegen en men doet in die media nog steeds of die oorlog
gerechtvaardigd en onvermijdelijk was….. (de Nederlandse verantwoordelijke CDA oorlogsmisdadiger de Hoop Scheffer mag zelfs les geven aan een universiteit….)

Met
de openbaringen in Wikileaks is zelfs niet 1 persoon in gevaar
gebracht en toch worden Manning en Assange gedemoniseerd in die
westerse media, waar men Assange zelfs durft uit te maken voor
charlatan……. Als er 1 journalist is die de afgelopen 10 jaar de
ene na de andere persprijs zou hebben moeten ontvangen is het Assange
wel!!

Voor
het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) worden vooral figuren uit Afrika
veroordeeld, terwijl de grootste terreurstaten die de vreselijkste
misdaden hebben begaan, de VS en haar trouwe oorlogshond in de vorm
van NAVO-lidstaten met rust worden gelaten, terwijl die landen deze
eeuw al 2,5 miljoen mensen over de kling hebben gejaagd…… (al zou
het ICC nu wel bezig zijn met onderzoek naar oorlogsmisdaden door de
VS begaan in Afghanistan)

Lees
het relaas van Tommy Sheridan, waarin hij o.a. over de vader van
Julian Assange spreekt die onvermoeid de wereld rondreist om de
waarheid over zijn zoon te vertellen. De westerse media moeten zich
doodschamen dat ze een zo voortreffelijke collega hebben
gedemoniseerd en dat alweer op basis van leugens…… Terecht merkt
Sheridan dan ook op, dat er geen onafhankelijke media zijn, ze zijn
in handen van plutocraten die geen belang hebben bij de waarheid als
het om mensenrechten, misdaden tegen de menselijkheid en
oorlogsmisdaden gaat……. (behalve als deze worden begaan door
staten die men niet mag, waar ook daarover in de dagelijkse
‘werkelijkheid’ keihard wordt gelogen zie de berichtgeving over Iran,
Rusland en China…..) Wat betreft politici die deze westerse terreur
steunden en steunen: deze zouden ook vervolgd moeten worden door het ICC, immers
zij zijn mede verantwoordelijk voor de enorme ellende die het westen
elders heeft aangericht en aanricht……… Echter je snapt het al: dat zal niet gebeuren, zelfs niet als pinksteren, pasen en de kerst op één dag vallen!!

Het volgende artikel van Tommy Sheridan werd eerder geplaatst op Sputnik en werd door mij overgenomen van Wikileaks: (onder het artikel kan je klikken voor een ‘Dutch vertaling’, dit neemt wel enkele tientallen seconden in beslag):

On
The 10 Anniversary Of Iraq War Logs: Bush & Blair Should be in
Prison Not Assang

By
Tommy Sheridan

US President George W. Bush (R) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair attend a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington November 12, 2004.

(Blair
is katholiek geworden, zo kon hij via de biecht absolutie krijgen voor
zijn vreselijke oorlogsmisdaden en leugens die tot die misaden hebben
geleid……)

October 24, 2020
Information
Clearing House

– Ten years ago today the courage of two individuals changed the way
millions view the world. A US soldier disgusted at the communications
they were reading about their country’s conduct after illegally
invading and occupying the sovereign nation of Iraq in 2003 leaked
thousands of communications confirming US war crimes to Wikileaks.

The
site had been set up in 2006 to precisely shine a light on the dark
manoeuvres of powerful nations. Chelsea Manning risked imprisonment
by exposing war crimes. Julian Assange risked imprisonment by
publishing those leaked files and exposing the lies and heinous
crimes against humanity committed by the United States government and
military.

Yesterday I had the
honour and privilege of interviewing
the father of Julian Assange
in Edinburgh for Sputnik radio on
the eve of this tenth anniversary of the release of the Iraq war
logs. John Shipton was articulate and passionate in defence of his
son who has been in enforced incarceration within the Ecuadorian
embassy for seven years and is now locked up in the maximum-security
prison HMP Belmarsh while awaiting the outcome of a rigged
extradition show trial that was conducted in London’s High Court
over five weeks last month.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's father John Shipton is seen outside the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court ahead of a hearing to decide whether Assange should be extradited to the United States, in London, Britain September 8, 2020. © REUTERS / HENRY NICHOLLS
WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange’s father John Shipton is seen outside the Old
Bailey, the Central Criminal Court ahead of a hearing to decide whether
Assange should be extradited to the United States, in London, Britain
September 8, 2020.
 

John sat through that
travesty of justice and witnessed his son’s incredible stoicism and
bravery as a cacophony of manufactured lies was presented as the US
State case to justify forcibly transferring Julian to America to face
charges under the never used 103-year-old law called the Espionage
Act. Given the Niagara Falls of lies and distortions about Julian
Assange promoted and promulgated by the US, UK, Australian and
Swedish governments over the last decade a fair trial in America is
impossible. Julian Assange would inevitably be found guilty in a
biased US courtroom and sentenced to 175 years in a dangerous
high-security prison where his personal safety would never be
guaranteed.

Julian
Assange Exposed Government Crimes Not Government Secrets

The Espionage Act was
introduced in 1917 to deter traitors from revealing government
secrets which endangered the security of America. Julian Assange is
not guilty of exposing US government secrets, he is ‘guilty’ of
exposing US government war crimes. He and Chelsea Manning do not
deserve prison sentences, they deserve awards for performing
essential humanitarian and journalistic duties. They revealed to the
world the brutal truth of US Military behaviour in Iraq, in
Afghanistan and in other sovereign nations targeted for regime
change. The nation which parades across the world with pious lectures
about human rights, the rule of law, and the importance of democracy
is graphically exposed as the biggest abuser of human rights, the
enemy of democracy and serial sponsor of war crimes. Many peoples
suffered from US war crimes and human rights abuses, but the US
denied guilt. Wikileaks exposed both their lies – and their crimes.

After years of denying
civilian casualties in Iraq, the Wikileaks Iraq war logs ten years
ago covering the period 2005-2009 and running into almost 400,000
army field reports revealed the atrocious truth that civilian deaths
constituted more than two-thirds of all recorded casualties in Iraq.
Many thousands of deaths were deliberately not recorded but of those
that were 66,081 of 109,000 deaths were civilians. The Iraq Body
Count Project (IBC) used the published war logs to credibly estimate
civilian deaths as a minimum
of 183,249 to 205,785
while other population and family
interview-based studies estimate the civilian death toll is well over
one million
.

A computer screen shows a WikiLeaks logo (File) © AP Photo / Yves Logghe Iraqi
People Owe Big to Julian Assange for Exposing US War Crimes, Scholar
Says

Up to one million
unarmed, innocent civilians murdered on the back of a concocted lie
about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) and Iraq’s readiness to
use them. There was no threat from Iraq’s WMDs as she had none and
there was no link to the terrible 9/11 attacks in America in 2001 as
Iraq had not a single Taliban or al Qaeda operative within its
territory. Iraq was illegally invaded, destroyed and over a million
people were slaughtered on the basis of lies and deceit and the
October 22nd, 2010 Wikileaks document publication revealed the US as
the biggest war criminal on the planet.

Wikileaks
Exposures Reveal US Working With Terrorists Not Against Them

The US and the world
were still reeling from the Wikileaks publication of the Afghanistan
war logs on 25th July 2010 which revealed American complicity in
arbitrary civilian assassinations, systematic torture of
non-combatants and extreme lies to cover up their crimes in
Afghanistan. Wikileaks has continued its crusade to uncover powerful
states and companies who lie and deceive and commit crimes in pursuit
of their objectives in breath-taking displays of hypocrisy. The Syria
leaks illustrate the extent the US and its allies will go to in
pursuit of global domination with clear evidence of funding and
supporting the very Daesh* terrorists and brutes within Syria to
conduct a proxy war against the Assad government despite wholesale
condemnations and declared hatred of such groups publicly. The world
is led to believe the US is at war with Islamic terror groups like
Daesh when in fact they are in
cahoots with allies
who are arming them and fighting alongside
them in Syria.

John Shipton should be
enjoying his retirement years but instead, he is campaigning across
the world to raise awareness of his son’s terrible mistreatment by
the UK and US governments and demanding his immediate release. He
highlighted how Julian’s Wikileaks exposures have actually led to
government actions to expel US troops from their soil and thereby
saving lives. Despite empty headlines and accusations to the contrary
not a single individual has ever been harmed as a result of Wikileaks
publications and all the evidence shows Julian Assange worked
assiduously to redact the names of any potential targets in the war
logs while Guardian journalists who revelled in days of high profile
swoops and money spinning books actually betrayed details Julian
desperately worked to keep hidden.

George
Bush and Tony Blair Should be Behind Bars Not Julian Assange

The absence of
bitterness from John’s conversation with me is remarkable and
testimony to his compassion and understanding of world affairs. His
admiration for his son’s courage and strength is huge. Julian
Assange committed no crimes. He is in a prison cell while real war
criminals like George Bush and Tony Blair escape justice. They are
the ones who lied and bullied and bribed and blackmailed the UN to
try and get a second resolution justifying invading Iraq. They
failed.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's father John Shipton speaks outside the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court on the final day of a hearing to decide whether Assange should be extradited to the United States, in London, Britain October 1, 2020. ©
REUTERS / PETER NICHOLLS
John
Shipton: ‘Don’t Underestimate the Consequence of the Bravery of My
Son Julian Assange’

The invasion and
subsequent occupation were illegal and they should be held
responsible for the one million civilian deaths which resulted. The
fact Chelsea Manning spent seven years behind bars before her
thirty-five-year sentence was commuted by Barack Obama is a disgrace.
She was sentenced again last March because she refused to testify
against Julian Assange. She spent a year in jail between March 2019 –
March 2020. She is the epitome of courage and integrity. Refusing to
turn on Assange revealed her inner strength and dignity.

Julian
Assange is a Victim of Psychological Torture in UK Custody

Julian Assange’s
father drew attention to the numerous investigations of his son’s
incarceration by the United Nations rapporteur on torture and
arbitrary detention. Through visits and detailed assessments
Professor Nils Melzer compiled damning evidence which showed Julian
was indeed a victim of systematic psychological torture for which the
UK bears a heavy responsibility:

The case
falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange
published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those
responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted.
Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now
exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be
extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison
conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In
summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself
and could be tortured to death in the United States. And a case like
that isn’t supposed to be part of my area of responsibility? Beyond
that, the case is of symbolic importance and affects every citizen of
a democratic country”

Please read
these words from Professor Nils Melzer
over and over again and
acquaint yourself with his various reports. Exactly ten years to the
day after exposing heinous US war crimes, systematic torture and
flagrant breaches of international law it is the man who exposed the
crimes who is behind bars when it should be the organisers,
facilitators and perpetrators of those crimes.

Plague
of Malice

During our interview,
I reminded John Shipton of an incredibly apt phrase he used recently
when interviewed during Julian’s trial in London. He said his son
was subject to a “plague
of malice
”. I suggested it should be the title of a book
detailing how Julian has not been criminally prosecuted – he has been
politically persecuted. Persecuted by powerful nations in a vengeful
act of revenge for being exposed by Julian as the practiced
criminals, liars, and murderers they are. Should Julian Assange be
handed over by a British Court to face a life sentence in America for
publishing evidence of US government war crimes it is the death knell
of investigative journalism and the most serious undermining of free
speech and freedom of expression in hundreds of years. The world will
be propelled back to the dark ages of medieval dynasties and the
denial of democratic rights and freedoms should America be allowed to
demand the release of a journalist into their custody for harsh
punishment for doing no more than revealing war crimes. It was the
celebrated author and forensic social commentator George Orwell
who said that 
journalism
is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else
is public relations.

But he also advised us that:

In a time of
deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Please get involved in
the various campaigns and online petitions and support groups
demanding the release of Julian Assange. His state-sponsored
political persecution has no association with justice and everything
to do with spite, revenge, and stark warnings to the rest of us.
Don’t you dare speak the truth or speak out or stand up against
injustices and wicked crimes committed by your governments lest you
face the same personal mauling and destruction of character meted out
to Julian Assange.

The cause of Julian
Assange is the cause of free speech, the rule of law and the right of
the public to know when their governments and the powerful commit
crimes. If they get away with extraditing Assange today it could be
any one of us tomorrow. Say it loud and say it clear – Exposing war
crimes is not a crime – Free Julian Assange.

*Daesh (also known
as ISIS/ISIL/IS/Islamic States) is a terrorist group banned in Russia
and many other countries

Click
for

Spanish,
German,
Dutch,
Danish,
French,
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may take a moment to load.

See
also

Assange
and the media: How speculative media reports play a role in
extradition hearings in London

 

Marking
10 Years since the Iraq War Logs

 Zie het
origineel
voor commentaar op dit artikel zoals dat van:

notwistalemon
80p
·
2
days ago

You summed it up as well as it
could be. At 75 and a former pilot in the USAF, I am thoroughly
ashamed to call myself an American. Something must be done to secure
the release of Julian Assange. What the hell has happened to us that
we have allowed people to be tortured in our name! The whole world
knows that the British government is a mere puppet of the US State.
Julian is being imprisoned and tortured at the direction of the US
Government. Yes, our nation is, and has been, run for many years by a
government filled with war criminals!

=============================================

Zie wat betreft westerse wapenleveringen aan terreurgroepen als ISIS: ‘Rutte en Koenders verantwoordelijk voor wapenleveranties aan IS!!

CIA valt nogmaals door de mand als wapenleverancier van IS…….

US weapons supplied to Syrian rebels ended up with Islamic State: report

Tracing ISIS’ Weapons Supply Chain—Back to the US

ISIL weapons traced to US and Saudi Arabia

Al Qaida de bondgenoot van de VS in de strijd tegen…… terrorisme! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!‘ 

VS centraal commando werkt in Syrië samen met IS en verklaarde Rusland de oorlog………

U.S Caught Red Handed Selling Arms to ISIS/AL-Qaeda (Part 1 of 2)

US TRAINED REBELS GIVE WEAPONS TO TERROR GROUP

Made in America: US-Trained ‘Moderate’ Rebels, With Blessing Of Americans, Seling US Weapons to ISIS

Exactly how the US trained and armed ISIS

Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi

Tulsi Gabbard (VS congres Hawaï): Trump is de beschermende Big Brother van Al Qaida‘Zie voor meer berichten over Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks, Irak, Afghanistan, klokkenluiders en/of ISIS, klik op het desbetreffende label, direct onder dit bericht.