Iraq: End The Bloodshed

Bring the troops home now

Iraq: End The Bloodshed

The Iraqi people must be free to decide their future

PRESIDENT BUSH and the US Pentagon want to sanitise
their war and occupation of Iraq. 

Roger Shrives
Rows of coffins of US soldiers - pictures the US banned
Banned in the United States: Photo of rows of coffins of US soldiers.

They made an order that no more
photographs should be released of flag-draped coffins of US soldiers being
brought home from Iraq. (See photo right) 

As the violence escalates ever higher, well over 100
US troops have been killed in Iraq during April together with far more than
1,000 Iraqi deaths.

1,000 Iraqi deaths

Bush and Co are scared of the return of the ‘Vietnam
syndrome’. They can remember the upsurge in US domestic opposition to
military adventures in the 1960s when the body bags started coming home from
the Vietnam war.

Already opinion polls tell Bush that 44% of America’s
people want the troops to return home immediately – and return alive. Many
more weeks such as the last and all the censorship in the world won’t be
able to save Bush and Blair’s plans.

Just in this week, a roadside bomb hit a bus south of
Baghdad, killing at least 13 Iraqis; a mortar barrage struck a crowded
market in a Shiite area of the capital, killing at least seven; suicide car
bombings in the southern Iraqi city of Basra killed 74 people and towns like
Falluja and Najaf have seen almost daily battles.

Waterborne suicide attacks on Iraq’s southern oil
terminals, which handle 90% of Iraq’s oil exports, killed three US sailors
and caused panic on world markets.

Panic measure

At this delicate juncture Tony Blair says he may send
more troops to Iraq. This panic measure is to make up for countries like
Spain which are withdrawing forces after a mass popular movement against
terrorism and war.

The war and occupation are making the international
situation more dangerous. Bush has backed Israeli leader Ariel Sharon as one
of the few world leaders who follows his political hard line and Tony Blair
has trotted obediently behind.

We say no more blood should be shed to save the face of
warmongers Bush and Blair. The troops should be brought home now and the
Iraqi people allowed to decide their own future democratically – free from
occupying forces.

It’s time to say no to the politics which create a world
of war and terror. It’s time also to fight the exploitative system of
capitalism which breeds this deadly politics. That means fighting for a
socialist alternative that could use the wealth of the world for the good of
the vast majority not the profits of big business or the battle plans of
imperialist presidents.


Torture

The US military tortures Iraqi prisoners and appoints Saddam Hussein’s General in Fallujah – have things really improved for the people of Iraq since the fall of Saddam?

Two thirds of residents of Baghdad think not, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted before the attacks on Fallujah and Najaf