Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation. Now, after the war has been fought and won, and the contracts for reconstruction have been signed and sealed, the New York Times reports that, “The Central Intelligence Agency has begun a review to try to determine whether the American intelligence community erred in its prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein’s government and Iraq’s weapons programs.” No weapons of mass destruction have been found. We had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. We had the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Public support in the US for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit coordinated by the US government and faithfully amplified by the press.

All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion and outright lies circulated by the US corporate media. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn’t any). And an ABC news poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al-Qaeda. When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Yeah, well that stuff’s way over my head,” he said. stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was “embedded” he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11, 2001, attacks. “I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty,” Private A.J. On March 21 – the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq – an “embedded” CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother’s marbles. On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawled colorful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse.Ī building went down. How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words?Īnd now the bombs have fallen, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilization. Transcript of talk by Arundhati Roy, United For Peace and Justice teach-in, Washington, DC. In the context of recent events, the word “cowardly” is most probably an understatement. Contained in our old archives (2001-2004), this article by Arundati Roy was first published by GR on June 3, 2014.

War Talk by Arundhati Roy