WHAT I HEARD ABOUT IRAQ

by Eliot Weinberger
London Review of Books
January 11, 2005

Eliot Weinberger's 9/12 is published by Prickly Paradigm. He lives in New York.

Extracts below. For the whole article, see http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html

I heard Major Thomas Neemeyer say: 'The only way to stomp out the insurgency of the mind would be to kill the entire population.'

I heard the vice president say: 'Such an enemy cannot be deterred, cannot be contained, cannot be appeased, or negotiated with. It can only be destroyed. And that is the business at hand.'

I heard an Iraqi man say: 'We have at least 700 dead. So many of them are children and women. The stench from the dead bodies in parts of the city is unbearable.'

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: 'Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.'

I heard that, in the last year alone, the US had fired 127 tons of depleted uranium (DU) munitions in Iraq, the radioactive equivalent of approximately ten thousand Nagasaki bombs. I heard that the widespread use of DU in the first Gulf War was believed to be the primary cause of the health problems suffered by its 580,400 veterans, of whom 467 were wounded during the war itself. Ten years later, 11,000 were dead and 325,000 on medical disability. DU carried in semen led to high rates of endometriosis in their wives and girlfriends, often requiring hysterectomies. Of soldiers who had healthy babies before the war, 67 per cent of their postwar babies were born with severe defects, including missing legs, arms, organs or eyes.

I heard that 15,000 US troops invaded Fallujah while planes dropped 500-pound bombs on 'insurgent targets'. I heard they destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city, killing 20 doctors. I heard they occupied Fallujah General Hospital, which the military had called a 'centre of propaganda' for reporting civilian casualties. I heard that they confiscated all mobile phones and refused to allow doctors and ambulances to go out and help the wounded.

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: 'Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble. There aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by US forces.'

I heard the Red Cross say that at least 800 civilians had died. I heard Iyad Allawi say there were no civilian casualties in Fallujah.

I heard Kassem Muhammad Ahmed say: 'I watched them roll over wounded people in the streets with tanks.'

I heard a man named Khalil say: 'They shot women and old men in the streets. Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies.'

I heard that three-quarters of Fallujah had been shelled into rubble. I heard an American soldier say: 'It's kind of bad we destroyed everything, but at least we gave them a chance for a new start.'

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: 'I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.'

I heard Ahmed Chalabi, who had supplied most of the information about the weapons of mass destruction, shrug and say: 'We are heroes in error . . . What was said before is not important.'

I heard Paul Wolfowitz say: 'For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, as justification for invading Iraq, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.'

I heard a reporter ask Donald Rumsfeld: 'If they did not have WMDs, why did they pose an immediate threat to this country?' I heard Rumsfeld answer: 'You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase "immediate threat". It's become a kind of folklore that that's what happened. If you have any citations, I'd like to see them.' And I heard the reporter read: 'No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people.' Rumsfeld replied: 'It - my view of - of the situation was that he - he had - we - we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that - that we believed and we still do not know - we will know.'

copyright © LRB Ltd, 1997-2004