Fallout

  Monday, 20 September 2004

. .< 9:56:05 PM>
Iraq War Foes Focus on Alternative Agenda to Bush

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - On the eve of President Bush's address to the United Nations, domestic and foreign critics of his Iraq war policy focused on a radically different international agenda on Monday. [Reuters: World] 'Dozens of leaders from countries that mostly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, including President Jacques Chirac of France, attended a conference at U.N. headquarters on how to combat the dark side of globalization by fighting poverty.

"How many more times will it be necessary to repeat that the most destructive weapon of mass destruction in the world today is poverty?" Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked the assembled leaders.'

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US presidential candidate John Kerry launches his most outspoken attack on President Bush over the Iraq war. [BBC News | World | UK Edition] 'Mr Kerry said the president's decision to go to war had distracted from a greater threat to the US - more terrorist attacks - and created a crisis which could lead to an unending war.

"Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama Bin Laden and the terrorists," he said in his speech delivered at New York University.

"Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. That was not a reason to go to war. We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."'

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World dispatch: Iraq has taken a bitter toll on relations between Europe and the US, writes Ian Black. [Guardian Unlimited] 'The terrorism George Bush vowed to eradicate after the 9/11 attacks seems more virulent and widespread. Indeed, it has taken root where it did not exist before: in Iraq itself.

Jacques Chirac, the French president and leader of Europe's anti-war camp, made no bones about his views when he declared that the US-led invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein had opened up a "Pandora's box which none of us can shut".' [snip]
"Is the world today safer than before the overthrow of the appalling Saddam?" Patten asked in the European parliament last week. "Is global terrorism in retreat? Are we closer to building bridges between Islam and the west? Is the world's only super-power more widely respected? Have the citizens in our democracies been treated in a way that will encourage them to give governments the benefit of the doubt next time they are told that force needs to be used pre-emptively to deal with an imminent threat? I simply pose the questions. The answers are well known."'

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Comment: Since 9/11, America has used its victimhood to demand a monopoly on the right to feel and to inflict pain, writes Gary Younge. [Guardian Unlimited] 'When 3,000 people died on September 11, Le Monde declared: "We are all Americans now." Around 12,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war, yet one waits in vain for anyone to declare that we have all become Iraqis, or Afghans, let alone Palestinians. This is not a competition. Sadly, there are enough victims to go around. Sadder still, if the US continues on its present path, there will be many more. Demanding a monopoly on the right to feel and to inflict pain simply inverts victimhood's regular contradiction - the Bush administration displays material strength and moral weakness.'