http://indymedia.org.il
Myths of the 'War on Terrorism'Friday 07 Feb 2003
author: Pip Wilson, Jeannine Wilson (almanac@acay.com.au)
summary
Huge number of facts to use against the war. http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/myths.html for full article. Free for distribution by email, WWW or any other means (non-profit). Ideal for next time you’re in a debate about the war. More than 80 footnotes and hundreds of links in this comprehensive article, listing and deconstructing myths being fed us by CNN and Bush.
EXCERPT FROM http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/myths.html
Myth: In the Gulf War of 1991, the Iraqi people were largely protected because America used ‘smart bombs’ that hit buildings and similar military targets accurately
Comment: That is how the media presented it to us, as they were managed very carefully by the US military and its public relations machine, as the George Bush Sr administration intended not to have another situation like Vietnam in which the American voters became affected by negative reporting of that war.
In fact, 70 per cent of the 88,500 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait – the equivalent of more than seven Hiroshimas – completely missed their targets, falling on civilian populations.
Estimates of the numbers of people (men, women and children) killed by the coalition forces are generally in the hundreds of thousands. The lowest would seem to be General ‘Stormin’’ Norman Schwarzkopf’s 100,000.
According to a UN World Health Organization (WHO) report , as many as half a million civilian casualties are to be expected in the invasion of Iraq now being planned.
Non-governmental agencies, such as Oxfam , dealing with the tragic humanitarian crisis caused in Iraq by the Western sanctions , report similar projections for human misery should Iraq be invaded.