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15-22 mars : Manifs internationales pour le 5ème anniversaire de l'invasion de l'Irak |
Au moins 10 bonnes raisons de boycotter les USA > #1 Irak
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War and occupation in Iraq
Last update: November 20, 2006
Iraq war blamed for 600,000 Iraqi deaths
The Human Cost of the War in Iraq, A Mortality Study, 2002-2006 .
BAGHDAD - BALTIMORE - October 12, 2006 -- The School of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, Iraq, and The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University--in cooperation with MIT's Center for International Studies--have released a report on the under-examined question of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Its central conclusion, based on a population-based survey conducted at some risk by a team of Iraqi and American public health researchers, is that approximately 600,000 people have died violently above the normal mortality rate. Including non-violent deaths that are nevertheless linked to the war, the total is estimated to be more than 650,000.
Source: MIT Center for International Studies
More information:
Comments on The Lancet study: www.brusselstribunal.org/Lancet111006.htm
Who has got weapons of mass destruction?
Despite the Bush administration’s claimed that the war on Iraq was only about weapons of mass destruction, simmering below the surface is Bush’s ‘need’ to secure a continued supply of cheap oil.
The two main underlying reasons for the war on Iraq—the alleged terrorist connections of the regime and its possession of weapons of mass destruction—were revealed as hollow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual yearbook, a widely recognized research institute.
In 2004 the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) completed its inspection and investigation activities into alleged nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapon programmes and weapon-related activities in Iraq. In October the ISG released a substantial unclassified report on the search for such weapons and its findings.
This caused problems for many democracies with troops in Iraq. Some, such as Hungary and Spain, withdrew their forces and others considered doing so—adding to the fragility of the situation.
The same year in the US presidential election campaign, the two main parties offered little alternative thinking in the main security-related areas—Iraq, homeland security and intelligence reform.
Nationally led ‘coalitions of the willing’ of the kind that undertook the military actions in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003) pose the greatest structural challenges of all for parliamentary oversight, since the interstate component of decision making is not carried out through an established, transparent multilateral institutional process.
The basic question is, of course, what rights parliaments should have, but their near-exclusion from the sensitive judgements surrounding intervention seems incongruous in an age that generally emphasises democracy.
Sources:
Common Dreams News Center: World Military Spending Topped $1 Trillion in 2004
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
War ProfiteersThe war in Iraq has increased the share of the arms industry held by companies providing services and has reinforced the focus on new military technologies. There is only limited transparency in the contracting process for work in Iraq. What transparency there is depends on NGOs compiling information about the size and content of contracts and about the companies that are awarded them, SIPRI said. More info: |
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No war for oil!
Boycott oil companies!
Iraq is sitting on 10% of the world’s oil reserves - 112bn barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia. That’s 16 years worth of US oil consumption. It is only currently producing a fraction of that potential, and large sectors of Iraqi territory have never been fully explored, so there is a good chance that their actual reserves may be far greater. The US Department of Energy confirmed that ‘Iraq's oil production costs are amongst the lowest in the world, making it a highly attractive oil prospect.’
Yet there are alternative routes. As Peter Hain, UK Foreign Office Minister of State, has said: ‘There is no better way to enhance our energy security, and thus to increase our ability to pursue our broader foreign policy objectives, than by finding innovative and cost-effective ways to reduce our dependence on oil as a transport fuel. Doing so would also have the added benefit of boosting other domestic and foreign policy objectives, particularly those on air quality and climate change.’
More info:
The Wall Street Journal: "Oil firms guage potential in Iraq", by Thaddeus Herrick, January 13, 2003
The Cat's Dream: articles about the war and occupation of Iraq in News and Blog sections
Code Pink: worldwide movement of women & men for peace working to end the war in Iraq and stop new wars.
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