The value of an Iraq's life

We learnt a few interesting facts and figures today which, like everything else we learn day by day at the moment, only serves to cast more doubt and more disgrace on the heads of our political and military leaders for the murder, death, lawlessness and horror they have visited on Iraq, and on anyone else suspected of being a “terrorist”. First of all we learnt the value of an Iraqi’s life in the estimation of the “coalition of the willing”: £1,400. One and a half grand for the life of an innocent man woman or child murdered in Iraq. This money is not due to the thousands of Iraqi’s the coalition claims to have killed legitimately – the famous “enemy combatants” and “foreign fighters” who we are constantly told are undermining democracy in Iraq – and is only paid out to victims of “collateral damage”.

Semantics aside, if you are “collateral damage” then, by definition, you were innocent. If you are innocent and you are killed you have been, a priori, murdered. So, what we learn this week is that the Americans murder Iraqis then value their lives at £1,400 pounds. Or the equivalent of an eight year old Daewoo Nubira in metallic green, a Sony LCD TV, or one years car insurance for a newly qualified driver. Not a great deal in other words. The specific information came to light as part of a newly launched US military investigation into claims that US marines brutally murdered at least 26 innocent Iraqi civilians in retaliation for the death of a marine in a roadside bomb blast. What should be called, but sadly in our mainstream media never is, terrorism. For terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians with the intention of causing terror harm, distress, injury or death.

Thus, interestingly, the death of a US marine in a roadside bomb, whilst a sad and unnecessary loss of human life, does not back up claims that Iraq is a hotbed of terrorism, as the targeting of military apparatus and personnel is entirely legitimate (in relation to the ‘terms of war’ or ‘rules of engagement’ at least). Unless of course that what the media actually mean to imply when they talk a about ‘terrorism’ in Iraq is that the US armies proclivity for gunning down any civilian within firing range makes the country one of the worst centres of terrorism outside of Bin Laden’s cave complex. The story does give an interesting insight into the mindset of the US (and probably all) military personnel, and the contempt with which they approach the lives of those in whose country they are illegally stationed. We learn that following the death of a US soldier in a roadside bomb, the rest of the troop began going door to door around the immediately surrounding houses.

First they burst into the house of the Waleed’s, shot the head of the house, then turned and gunned down all but two of the remaining family members. They later claimed to have ‘heard the sound of a gun being readied to fire’. Which of course justifies gunning down a family with high calibre assault rifles. The marines then claimed to have heard gunfire from a second house. They kicked down the door and casually tossed a hand grenade into that home. Imagine. Without even pretending to try to verify the identities of those within the house, they throw a grenade in. Then they call it “collateral damage” as if people being blown up by a grenade are an unfortunate and unforeseen consequence of throwing incendiary devices into family homes. The “collateral damage” in this house included eight members of the same family, including four children under the age of ten. The marines then entered a third house and gunned down four young men inside, claiming they were “insurgents”. Because in the eyes of a young US marine on his first tour of duty any man of middle eastern origin is considered an “insurgent”, a “terrorist”.

The marines later collected the 24 corpses of the dead Iraqi’s and delivered them to a nearby hospital claiming they had been killed by shrapnel from an insurgents bomb blast. The hospital found that in all cases the cause of death had been a gunshot or gunshots to the head or chest at very close range. For suffering this unimaginably brutal and needless death the relatives of the dead were paid £1,400.

Elsewhere in the news this week the meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee unearthed some interesting evidence for the government’s claims that 90 days detention without trial was an absolute necessity in the “war on terror”. Remember at the time the new anti-terror bill was being steamrollered through parliament we were told that the police required 90 days of detention without trial for terror suspects, and that there was “compelling” evidence to back up this claim? Evidence so “compelling” that at the time they were unable to tell us what it was? Well, yesterday we found out. We discovered that (and hear I quote the Committee themselves) “the only written material that you [Charles Clarke] based the 90 day detention proposal on were three police press releases and two sides of A4 describing one case.”

Furthermore, as if this wealth of evidence weren’t enough to bring us all smartly into line behind an unconstitutional piece of legislation which would terminate peoples legal right to presumption of innocence without proof, and peoples basic human rights to not be incarcerated for 3 months for no reason other than the unpublished view of an unnamed “security source”, we also learnt of another “compelling” piece o evidence on which Charles Clarke based his informed position. The opinions of Lord Carlise. Lord Carlise is an important law lord and judicial heavy weight, so one assumes that if Charles Clarke is taking is advice then his opinions are well founded. But no. We learnt this week that Lord Carlise’s reasons for backing 90 days detention without trial were based on one single case.

As is this weren’t bad enough, we then learnt that Charles Clarke took Lord Carlise’s suggestion of 90 days detention without ever bothering to investigate, research, look into, or familiarise himself with the one particular case Lord Carlise based his opinion on. So, we now know that in New Labour speak “compelling evidence” means a couple of press releases, two sides of A4, and the opinion of a senile and unelected old codger based on a single case you yourself never bothered to look into. Wow. That’s almost as compelling as the case for Saddam having WMD……

More Musings on Memory

I know that this blog seems to be getting stuck on one theme, but I guess I’m trying to figure out a few ideas in my head. Mostly, I’m trying to figure out why we (or at least the majority) seem to have such a short attention span, why whilst we may find current events appalling, we seem to be unable to accept the inevitability of this based on what we know about previous activities by our governments. For instance, last week marked the sixth anniversary of Jack Straw releasing General Pinochet, the ex-Chilean CIA backed fascist dictator, who was wanted on an international arrest warrant for his crimes against humanity during his regime. At the time I remember the incredulity amongst large sections of the British public that our home secretary, a Labour Home secretary, would release a man who carried out appalling human rights violations which many Labour ministers must have marched against in their youth. And yet now, these same people seem to have feel difficulty believing that a Labour government would systematically ignore its principles.

This same collective amnesia applies in other areas too. For instance in relation to the ongoing troubles in Palestine. Whilst it no longer makes the news, the situation is unchanged, if not worse. There are still ‘targeted assassinations’, most recently in Balata refugee camp, there are still road blocks, check points, the apartheid wall, the daily humiliations heaped upon the Palestinians, the continuing efforts to undermine democratic structures and civil institutions in the Occupied Territories, and yet people seem to believe that the situation there is ripe for the Palestinians to ‘seize the initiative’ and set up a ‘viable state’. Likewise, in a case which bought to mind the previous indiscretions of the Israeli Defence Force, especially with regards to Tom Hurndall, a young Israeli activist anarchist and refusnik, Marita Cohen, was shot in the head with a rubber baton round during a demonstration against the seperation wall last week. And yet, where this was reported in the news, it was reported in a shocked sense, apparently oblivious to the previous form the IDF has in this area.

Then we have the continuing information leaking about the Stockwell shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes. On Panorama this week I witnessed the distasteful spectacle of a senior Metropolitan Police Officer explaining that the Met does NOT have a "shoot to kill policy" but an "immediate incapacitation" policy for its Special Branch Firearms officers. Asked to explain what an "immediate incapacitation" policy was he calmly explained that this was a policy where the marksmen shot the 'suspect' in the head, but that shooting someone in the head does not constitute a shoot to kill policy. Semantics aside, there’s little chance that anyone shot in the head is going to survive is there? Especially when they’re shot at point blank range seven times with exploding ‘dum dum’ ammunition as Jean Charles de Menezes was. And yet the sophistry seems to work, as I have yet to hear anyone explain that the Stockwell shooting was almost inevitable if you trace its lineage back to its origins in the shoot to kill policy of the British army in Northern Ireland. So I guess I’m just trying to figure out how we can make these connections and make people see that you can’t believe something is inherently good if the evidence points to the contrary, that a leopard never changes its spots.