Sixth Anniversary of Shock And Awe.....

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Friday March 20, 2009 12:37 by Paul O'Toole Pauljotoole at eircom dot net 0863512469

Six years to forget?

On this day and arround this time in 2003, Taoiseach Bertie Aherne rose to his feet in Dail Eireann to deliver a most devistating and devisive speech. A speech which would forever change the course of Irish Forigen Policy and Irelands role in the world as a force for good, and would leave us tainted beyond recognition as a supporter of the new world order agenda of 'pre-emptive strike'. With his colleagues in Fianna Fail along with their partners in government the Progressive Democrats voted to allow the facilities at Shannon Civilian Airport to remain available to the US government to this end.

This most disgraceful act of utter disregard for the law of the land, International Law, and the innocent lives of those to whomb this act would hurt the most has continnued to this day unchallenged, unchanged and unabated.

The undermining of the UN and acting unilateraly without any legal cover for what has become the most unforgivable chapter in Irish history any government has oversaw is without doubt a sin future generations will have to bear.

Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi woman, spoke in Liberty Hall Dublin last year of her experience of 'Operation Iraqi Liberation' , I almost lost the contents of my stomach. She described how a batallion of US marines - the best trained soldiers in the world- decended on her house outside Baghdad and raped her repeatedly, they raped her twin 7 year old daughters repeatedly while her husband was made to watch and then shot all her family and left them for dead, burnig the house down to destroy any evidence as they left. Miraculously, you might well think, she survived.

She described life in Baghdad before and after the invasion. She described how there are now 1,000,000 widows in Baghdad and across the country, 5,000,000 orphans and 1,474,000 innocent men, women and children murdered since the beginning of Shock And Awe. An opperation that GW Bush and almost all western media outlets described as a success.

There are no words available to describe the horrors which the Irish Government have assisted to bring to bear upon the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Palestine. I, for one, am appalled and will remain apalled at the level of manovelance this little Island has shown itself to becapable of. When once opposition politicians, now in power, sell their voices to attain that coveted position on the other side of the house you would wonder if they had any integrity to begin with when they shouted from platforms and the backs of trucks at Anti-War rallies.

As the Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who worked for Al-Baghdadiya television, at disgust for unleashing unimaginable military devistation on innocent people, gets three years in prison for throwing his shoe (and missing) --All the leaders of the Western World swan arround like peacocks who just found another golden egg. Un challenged in the media, in the courts, in public opinion, on the doorsteps, in the UN.

Bertie Aherne (F.F.) Taoiseach said that... 'It would be a hostile act to remove facilities at Shannon to the US'.
Willy O'Dea(F.F.) Minister for Defense.... profited 410% in Petrel Resources....an Irish Oil exploration company granted licences by the Interim Iraqi Government -the US-to explore vast tracts west of Baghdad as they announced on their website....'No Point Crying Over Spilt Blood'.
Mary O'Rourke(F.F.)....Housespeaker in the Seannad (Dubbed the Granny of the house) signed the overflight and landing papers to allow Irelands participation in this genocide.

Bertie promised a copy of the Attorney Generals submission into the legal right that the government has claimed to continnue with participation in 'War of Agression' and allow Shannon Airport to become part of what Scott Ritter described as 'Part of the Conveyorbelt Of Death to the middle East' without a mandate from the UN.....

...........No one has yet seen a copy....