This unimaginable devastation is largely this country’s responsibility and we are unaware of the intensity of it because Western broadcasters continue to suppress the atrocities and destruction unleashed on a defenceless country. Along with the corporate media being anything but informative, there’s Bob ****off and other gormless pop stars saluting Bush and Blair’s man-handling of the third world at Live8, further separating people from the truth. However, despite Gandalf’s nauseating carnival of PR (recently described by a Make Poverty History senior figure as their ‘worst nightmare come true’), some people couldn’t quite shake off their blood-tinted sunglasses this summer. While many were preparing for the G8 circus, some headed off to Istanbul for the world’s largest ever public inquiry into the war on Iraq. News of this event didn’t make you choke on your cornflakes though did it? Here’s why Big Media weren’t so keen on shouting about it…

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) was held in Istanbul from 24-26 June. The objective of this meeting was to discuss the illegal invasion and occupation in Iraq, point a finger at the scum responsible for it and emphasise the significance of justice for the Iraqi people. This was the culmination of twenty hearings held in different cities across the world and based on the tribunals organised by Bertrand Russell into the US invasion of Vietnam in the late ‘60s.

One of the main outcomes of WTI was their confirmation that the war in Iraq was indeed illegal. Never?! Other key facts, established after reviewing much evidence, were “blatant falsehoods about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” and that the imposition of sanctions back in 1990, the establishment of no-fly zones in Iraq and the continuous bombing over the last decade were all aimed at “degrading and weakening Iraq’s human and material resources and capacities in order to facilitate its subsequent invasion and occupation” (as if they would). And why has this happened? Well…most evidence supports the conclusion that the main motive behind this is the US’s need to control and dominate the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil as a part of “the US drive for global hegemony”.

So how many people have paid the price for this latest planetary power play? Whilst the Iraqi body-counters reckon between 24-27,000 have been massacred in Bush’n’Blair’s crusade against er, civilians, recent reports have shown that this was far from accurate. At the beginning of this year, leading health journal the Lancet reported that 100,000 people had been killed by the invasion in Iraq. After a lot of throat clearing the government declared that this was “misleading” and “entirely unfounded” due to the estimate being based on an “extrapolation technique” (using figures from one specific case and then generalising and applying to other similar cases, a technique which had to be employed due to no-go areas in Iraq.) However, on the ground Iraqi Human rights organisation Maskarat al-Islam put the number of civilian dead at 128,000 as of July 2005.
It’s Just Not Cricket

The WTI heard 54 testimonies from advocates and witnesses who came from all over the planet including Iraq, the US and the UK. These gave a voice to the victims of the war crimes and atrocities that had occurred on their own soil at the hands of US and British soldiers.

Independent Lebanese journalist Dhar Jamail described the horrific story of a civil servant in Baghdad who went to a US airbase to ask what had happened to his missing neighbours. Instead of being invited in for a cuppa (and an explanation) he was stripped naked, hooded and forced to simulate sex with other prisoners. Sound humane so far? Other barbaric tricks for kicks included being beaten in the genitals, electrocuted in the anus and being smeared in shit. This account was typical.

So why did the US military get the idea that they could carry on like this then? “Our aim is to put you in hell. These are the orders from our superiors. To turn your life into hell.” explained one female soldier to prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

BBC’s refusal to broadcast any of the copious amounts of footage and interviews it recorded at the WTI reflects the mainstream media’s agenda and only helps thicken the fog of war. After a flood of complaints about the blackout, the BBC released a statement explaining why they had decided not to cover the WTI: “We are committed to evidence-based journalism. We have not been able to establish that the US used banned chemical weapons and committed other atrocities against civilians in Fallujah” said the BBC spokeswoman.

Leading journalist John Pilger reckons this is “simply ridiculous... The US has admitted using napalm, a banned weapon, and the evidence of atrocities in Fallujah is too great to list here. Read, for example, the statements of doctors at Fallujah General Hospital and of other independent eye witnesses. The reason the BBC ‘has not established’ all this is because its reporters are embedded with the Americans and British and report the occupiers’ news, about which there is nothing ‘impartial’.” (on www.medialens.org, a UK media watch project).

This is all another reminder why independent media are so important. And while SchNEWS, Indymedia and others may be drops of truth in an ocean of bullshit, as we say in the spirit of do-it-yourself resistance - “don’t hate the media, become the media”.

* For more on WTI see www.worldtribunal.org or www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/320190.html

See  http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news512.htm for the rest of this weeks issue.