Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/369/6056
From The Socialist newspaper, 6 November 2004
Iraq:
End This Bloody Occupation
100,000 killed since US-led invasion
THE US has had a policy of not even bothering to count the number of Iraqis killed during their war in Iraq. So an independent team of researchers risked their lives to survey 1,000 Iraqi households. They discovered that the death toll throughout Iraq must now be over 100,000! This horrifying figure is ten times the level previously estimated in most of the media.
Judy Beishon
More than half of the dead are women and children, killed by 'strikes' from the latest high-tech aircraft of the US military. What a damning revelation of the reality of this war!
This death toll is worsening daily. Fallujah is presently being pounded from the air. The planned massive ground assault on the town - timed for after the US election - will bring a further rise in the rate of casualties. Many areas of Fallujah already look like earthquake zones. Yet now another coalition invasion force is being assembled to go in with "overwhelming force" to "liberate the city".
Even the US-friendly and symbolic Iraqi 'interim president', Ghazi al-Yawar, felt compelled to point out that it will be a mistake for coalition forces to go into the town. Community leaders in the Sunni triangle have warned it could ignite a new general uprising among the entire Sunni minority population.
However, the more direct representative of US imperialism, 'interim prime minister' Ayad Allawi, has declared the invasion imminent saying: "I owe it to the Iraqi people to defend them from the violence and the terrorists and insurgents".
'Defence' of the Iraqi people from 'violence' by using a massive show of obscene military firepower won't convince anyone. On the contrary, it is another step into an abyss from which the US regime - backed up by Blair in Britain - will have huge difficulties extracting themselves.
Whatever the result of the US election, a large majority of workers throughout the world are becoming increasingly enraged against those who are perpetrating this vicious occupation and war. Future events will prove that the balance of forces lie against whichever new occupant of the White House continues to pursue them.
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In The Socialist 6 November 2004:
PCS Striking To Save Jobs And Services
For A One-Day Public-Sector Strike
Understaffed, Stressed And Under Threat
Socialist Party news and analysis
Is there an alternative to global warming?
International socialist news and analysis
Big events will shake Bush win
Arafat And The Palestinian Struggle
Fourth general strike in ten months in Nigeria
Volkswagen: Workers Stage Warning Strikes
Ministers Paper Over Growing EU Crises
Musharraf's Hypocrisy Won't End Violence Against Women
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