AN ANGRY LETTER TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

AN ANGRY LETTER TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

In early 2003, your newspaper was one of many North American media organizations including newspapers and TV channels such as CNN and Fox, which supported the Bush administration's propaganda and lies which led to the American invasion, utterly illegal and based on false premises, of Iraq. That country, which had already been devastated in 1991 (though for more legitimate grounds, which nonetheless included the US's setting up Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait by suggesting
Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait did not concern the US) - 'bombed to the stone age' as some put it, then subjected to incessant economic sanctions which ended up killing a half-million Iraqi children, constant harassment with UN arms inspections until Hussein finally threw the inspectors out, and ad-hoc bombings by the US and the UK, whenever the US President's political ratings needed a boost, was once again destroyed. Since 2003, over 650,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, many through US bombings, although this piece of news is hardly reported in North America, or is otherwise marginalized.

The blood of those 650,000 Iraqis is not only on the hands of the war-criminals in the White House - Bush, Cheney and the erstwhile Rumsfeld - and their friends in the industrial-military-politico-bureaucratic complex, it is also on the hands of news organizations such as the Globe and Mail which supported the invasion by acting as propaganda agencies for the Bush administration and its neo-imperialist agenda. You are complicit in the crimes committed against Iraq.

But that hasn't deterred you from engaging in similar misleading propaganda about Iran. Some months ago - during the mini-brouhaha over 15 British 'hostages' captured by Iran, your editorial fumed about that nation's 'history' of taking hostages. But you didn't mention why Iran took those hostages - the history that led to that action. You neglected to mention that in the 1950s, the 'democracy-loving' US and its imperialist lapdog the UK, illegally and criminally removed Iran's democratically elected leader and installed the Shah - who for the next twenty-plus years ran Iran as a brutal police state, torturing and murdering tens of thousands of Iranian citizens. During this period, the US was able to profitably sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to the Shah, crippling Iran's economy and causing massive unemployment and unrest. It was this 'history' which you deliberately failed to mention in your editorial, which led to the overthrow of the Shah, the storming of the US embassy and the taking of 50 American hostages..... A reasonable person would conclude that this action, however unpleasant, was remarkably limited and mild given the catastrophic harm that the US had done to Iran.
And why was Mossadegh removed? Because he wanted to secure a better price for Iranian oil which was being extracted by the British oil company at virtually no cost, and for which Iran got virtually nothing. And what was the US response to this unpleasant but relatively mild Iranian protest? It gave massive support and arms to Saddam Hussein to prosecute an 8-year war against Iran which, as Ahmedinejad said at Columbia University, cost 200,000 Iranian lives, and 600,000 wounded casualties. Twenty years later, the loathsome Bush administration including the odious Rumsfeld who had personally offered the arms to Hussein, turned around and accused Iraq of waging war against its
neighbours!

As PM Stephen Harper euphemistically noted yesterday in New York, the US is hated in 'some circles'. In many circles, actually and for good reason. It has a 'history' of neo-imperialistic intervention in many parts of the world - through the CIA and other means of terror (yes terror - Professor Noam Chomsky of the MIT has published volumes of documented research on this). It has a 'history' of removing democratically elected leaders in third world countries, and replacing them with brutal dictators who serve the US's interests.

It brutally murdered millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians...through some of the most savage and inhuman bombings in history (if bombings can be anything other than inhuman)...

Unfortunately the actions of newspapers such as yours which parrot American propaganda may end up causing Canada also to be hated internationally.

Not content with your complicity in the Iraqi genocide, you now wish to support the Bush administration's posturing and lies against Iran. You deliberately portray Iran as seeking nuclear weapons and publish alarmist articles such as those written by prestigious neo-imperialist apologists like Niall Ferguson. You deliberately fail to mention that it is Israel that has hundreds of nuclear weapons. It is Israel that can easily 'wipe Iran off the map'. You deliberately misrepresent, as do the US media, the Iranian president's statements about Israel, to create the impression that Iran seeks to build nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. Your journalist, John Ibbotson, knows very well that what
Ahmedinejad said was that Israel was created by force out of Palestinian land, in the process evicting millions of Palestinian Muslims who have lived for 60 years as refugees in terrible conditions - and that the original nation of Palestine incorporating Jews, Muslims and Christians should be reconstituted as a replacement for Israel.

You seem determined to support the Bush administration's plan to attack Iran on premises as shaky and deceitful as those used against Iraq. You want more blood, it seems on your hands. Well, perhaps you will get your wish, and even evade justice until the hereafter. But perhaps that will signal the end of the US as an 'hyper-power'. Bin Laden once said the US could never be defeated in battle - it could only be drained of its strength by engaging it in 2 or 3 intractable international conflicts. Well - nobody needed
to engage the US in Iraq - it did it all by itself, against the wishes of the international community, excepting the 'bribed and the bullied' and its British lapdog. Perhaps an invasion of Iran, though catastrophic for that nation, will finally bring down the American bully and war-criminal.

If your newspaper has an ounce of journalistic integrity, it will publish this letter.

Harinder Jadwani
Brampton, Ontario