On 9 November, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly for the 14th time to condemn the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba by a vote of 182 to 4. Only the U.S., Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted against. Micronesia abstained.

The U.S. response was as usual. "For a General Assembly that has not yet seriously attempted to reform the UN Human Rights Commission to adopt this exercise in Cuban propaganda really tells you something," U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told reporters in New York. It is a typical example; the U.S. will attack the UN if the U.S. does not get its way. The aim of the U.S. embargo -- like the sanctions against Iraq -- is to destroy Cuba's civil society.

In July 2004, the UNGA voted by 150 to 6, calling on Israel to cease the construction of the Apartheid Wall through the West Bank. The Wall -- declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague -- which is built on Palestinian land, is confiscating more Palestinian land and aquifers, fractionating Palestinian communities and separating them from their farmlands. Only the U.S., Israel, Australia and the usual Pacific microstates voted against the resolution.

In April, the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemned Israel's settlement of "occupied Palestinian territory," including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and demanded the government reverse the policy. The 53-member UN watchdog voted 39 to 2, with 12 abstentions, calling on Israel to reverse its settlement policy and restrain violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. The U.S. and Australia voted against the resolution.

The U.S. insists publicly that Israel’s occupation of Palestine must be resolved through "bilateral" agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. This 50-year-old misleading argument is also used by the mainstream media to advance the U.S.-Israel position. However, behind the scenes, the U.S. encourages and supports Israel’s unilateral actions and dispossession of the Palestinians. In fact, the more brutal Israel’s policy is the more U.S. support Israel receives. The U.S. is not only undermining any peaceful and just resolution; the U.S. portrays the Palestinian people resisting the Israeli occupation as "terrorists." And to divert attention from Israel's criminal policies, the U.S. is manipulating public opinions by spreading propaganda that it is "an honest broker" working on the "creation" of a Palestinian "state."

Throughout the 57-year Israeli occupation of Palestine, the U.S. has either voted against or vetoed outright any resolution condemning Israel’s terror against the Palestinians. Indeed, the U.S. treats all unfavourable U.N. resolutions by simply dismissing them as "irrelevant" and encourages other nations to do the same and support the U.S. position. Britain comes second after the U.S in its treatment of Palestinian rights and international law; it is the U.S. "junior partner." The faithful axis has been a barrier against world peace.

In November 2004, the UNGA voted to support a treaty banning the sale of nuclear materials by a vote of 147 to 1. Israel and Britain abstained. The British ambassador to the UN explained his country's abstention by declaring that "the resolution had divided the international community at a time when progress should be prime objective." It is no wonder what the U.S. and its few allies mean by "international community."

Indeed, Britain, Israel and Australia are playing a crucial role as an extension of U.S. imperialism. In addition, the U.S. uses Britain, Israel, Australia, and other coerced states as conduits when the U.S. wants to be seen as neutral and when it wishes to avoid taking sides in conflicts. Australia and Britain have become the U.S.'s most loyal and belligerent vassals. Australia with no foreign policy of its own and the world's most tightly controlled media is simply a U.S. propaganda outpost.

Furthermore, when, in April 2002, elements of the Venezuelan military and oligarchs staged a coup d’etat and forced President Hugo Chavez -- who was elected more than six times by a majority of two thirds of the popular votes -- from office, major U.S. newspapers followed the U.S. administration line and greeted the news with enthusiasm. The New York Times, the Bible of American intellectuals and elites, declared that Chavez's "resignation" meant that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." The Times propaganda is amplified throughout the world.

However, when Hosni Mubarak and the despotic Gulf rulers, led by the Saudis and the Kuwaitis staged their own elections, President George Bush hailed the elections as the "untamed fire of freedom" spreading throughout the Middle East. The U.S. and its Western allies use the cliches of "democracy" and "human rights" as pretexts to disguise terrorism against other nations. They are propaganda catchwords that the U.S. and its allies use to fool the world.

Since 1990, the U.S. uses the corporate media to engineer crisis and manufacture misleading and false stories against Iraq. Just before the U.S. war on Iraq, a majority of Americans believed that Iraq possessed dangerous weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and that Iraq had links to terrorism and the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. As we know now, and rightly argued even before the war, the allegations were fabricated lies. The war on Iraq wasn’t because of bogus evidence, as the new media spin suggests. The motives remain conspicuously hidden from the public: the colonisation of Iraq to enhance U.S. imperial dominance, the destruction of Arab nationalism and most importantly support for Israel's Zionist expansion and criminal policies against the Palestinians. However, the most relevant was that public consent in the West has been manufactured and the U.S. had its way to commit a 'Supreme International Crime’ against defenceless people.

In 2003, when the U.S. failed to win the U.N endorsement to wage illegal war on Iraq, the U.S. and its loyal vassals (Britain and Australia) dismissed the UN as "irrelevant." Just before the war, the corporate media concentrated on preparing the public for the mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians by eroding historical memory with a massive propaganda campaign demonising Saddam Hussein and accusing him of war crimes. The U.S. then attacked Iraq with massive criminal violence concocted as "Shock and Awe," causing the death of tens of thousand of innocent men, women and children. The mainstream media in the U.S., Britain and Australia buried the truth and fabricated stories that portrayed the U.S. as a victim trying to defend itself against a nonexistent threat.

After the original pretext (WMD) for the war collapsed, the U.S. and its vassals continue to fabricate new pretexts. So far all the pretexts -- terrorism, liberation, human rights, democracy, etc. -- proved to be lies designed to divert the public from a criminal atrocity committed against a defenceless nation. The war has nothing to do with liberation, terrorism, or democracy.

Since the March 2003 invasion, U.S. and British troops have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children for no reason other than being brown skin Arabs.

"U.S. [and British] soldiers have been trained to view Iraqis as less than human. A clear message has been given to troops from the highest levels of political and military authority: Iraqi deaths and Iraqi suffering do not matter," writes Anthony Arnove, editor of Iraq under Siege.

In her recent sneaked in visit to Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "I want to talk about the importance of reaching across the sectarian divide, and the future of Iraq has to be one which includes everyone."

However, the new U.S.-crafted constitution -- passed by a fraudulent referendum -- is a U.S. tool to divide Iraq on sectarian lines. In addition, the U.S. and Britain have created and nurtured criminal death squads in order to terrorise Iraqi society and deliberately sow the seeds of sectarian strife, which was unknown in Iraq prior to the invasion. With the support of the occupying forces, the death squads are responsible for the cold-blooded murder of thousands of prominent Iraqis. The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) has accused the U.S. of "ethnic cleansing" operations against Iraqi communities.

"They are dividing Iraq and sparking a deadly sectarian sedition in the country," said AMS spokesman Mohammad Bashar Al-Faidi.

The reality is that the U.S. is not interested in a united and democratic Iraq, because it will not serve U.S. interests. The U.S. plan is to fractionate and weaken the Iraqi people to serve the U.S. imperialist agenda. Iraq was a much safer and freer place before the U.S. invasion than today. As a result of the U.S.-instigated violence and chaos, the situation on the ground in Iraq today is far worse than at anytime in Iraq’s history, as shown by Anthony Arnove. Peace in Iraq could have been achieved through peaceful means and without the bloodshed.

A recent UNICEF rapid assessment survey reveals that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children had almost doubled since before the war, jumping from 4 percent to almost 8 percent. The survey adds that; "Acute malnutrition sets in very fast and is strong indicator of the overall health of children." The general health of Iraqi children, the elderly and pregnant women in particular has declined because of deteriorating living conditions, including; lack of access to potable water, food, hospital care, and a sharp decline in purchasing power.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by U.S. forces, and many more Iraqis have been wounded. Iraq is littered with countless U.S.-committed mass murders masked as "U.S. operations against al-Qaida fighters." The continuing use of the phantoms of al-Qaida and al-Zarqawi proved to be powerful tools of the Occupation. U.S. forces and their collaborators are fighting indigenous Iraqi Resistance fighters defending their country against the new form of U.S.-led fascism.

The recent indiscriminate attacks -- bombing the water supply, electricity grid and communication networks and heavy use of cluster bombs in civilian areas -- on towns and villages in "western and northern Iraq continue to generate displacement and hardship for thousands of families and to have a devastating effect on the civilian population," reveals a report by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI). The attacks are a reminder of the Fallujah mass graves massacre.

Fallujah, where Iraq’s real 'legacy of terror’ took place in front of Western and U.S. cameras is now littered with mass graves committed by the U.S. forces in violations of the Geneva Conventions and International Law. The Italian daily, La Republica, confirming earlier reports which were buried by the mainstream media, Iraqi health officials, the online magazine, Political Affairs, and the U.S. Army magazine, Field Artillery, rightly described the mass atrocity.

"The Americans are responsible for a massacre using unconventional weapons, the identical charge for which Saddam Hussein stands accused," reported Italy's RAI-24 TV on 8 November. The vast majority of the more than 6,000 victims were innocent unarmed men, women and children. It wasn’t Saddam "gassing his own people"; it is the U.S. The evidence of deliberate war crimes and crimes against humanity is overwhelming and powerful. Only after it was exposed, the U.S. pleaded guilty to the crimes.

With deafening silence and unbelievable moral bankruptcy of Western citizens, the Fallujah massacre has been replicated many times in Ramadi, Tel Afar, Haditha, Hillah, Qusaybah and al-Qaim, to mention just few. After more than two years of an illegal act of aggression against defenceless people, and a criminal Occupation, it is shameful Western citizens still delude themselves with the catchwords of "democracy" and "human rights" allegedly spread by their governments around the world with horrific violence.

The so-called Western "progressive intellectuals" are conspicuously silent and continue to provide political justification for the U.S. war and the Occupation. Despite the criminal nature of the Occupation, Western "intellectuals" have not expressed solidarity with the popular Iraqi Resistance or the Iraqi people in general. Indeed, some of these "intellectuals" have praised the U.S.-staged elections, and condemned the Iraqi Resistance as "bomb throwers."

Western "intellectuals" remain loyal to their imperialist masters, and quarrel among themselves to divert attention. The only reason some of these "intellectuals" oppose the Occupation, or more accurately "oppose both sides," is because of the effectiveness of the Iraqi Resistance, the rising number of U.S. casualties and the exposure of the U.S. as the master of hypocrisy. Once it is safe and their future is insured, Western "intellectuals" will emerge from their safe houses, wrote American sociologist James Petras.

On his visit to Panama on 7 November, President Bush said: "Anything we do to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture." It is not true.

We all know that the practice of the Dark Ages is used and continues to be used routinely by U.S. and British forces in Iraq. It is a fact which has been substantiated. Iraqis are not fooled; it was common practice from the first day the U.S. invaders arrived. "We need to be working on the dark side," said Dick Cheney. Despite mounting evidence that torture doesn’t work and yields unreliable information, the White House refuses to unequivocally rule out the use of torture.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children have been arrested, imprisoned and tortured. This was how the U.S. and its loyal vassals behaved and continue behaving today. There are hundreds of Abu Ghraib-like U.S.-run prisons throughout Iraq. The "number of detainees continues to increase due to mass arrests carried out by U.S. forces and their collaborators during the ongoing massive military attacks," said the UNAMI report.

A report by Human Rights Watch found that U.S. forces routinely torture Iraqis for "sport." The report detailed widespread use of torture, "often under orders or with the approval of superior officers." In addition, several U.S. army reports and eyewitnesses revealed detailed ongoing sadistic and serious human rights abuses, sexual humiliation and others forms of torture of Iraqi prisoners of war (POW) and Iraqi detainees by U.S. and British forces. The criminal practices have been contracted to the U.S.-trained police and security forces, aka the U.S.-created death squads, belonging to the Ministry of Interior of the current puppet government. According to the BBC, "the U.S. said to be troubled" by the latest revelations. To the contrary, the U.S. should be proud of the criminal practices that it has introduced in Iraq.

Furthermore, it is not astonishing that the BBC and other mainstream media, which have not reported U.S. and British forces maltreatment and torture of Iraqi POW and detainees, are now racing to report the allegations. Such serves the Occupation's purpose. It is sickening to see Western politicians and mainstream media rumbling about the allegations. The same politicians and the same mainstream media did everything to cover up the crimes perpetuated by the occupying forces. The media explain the Occupation-instigated violence in cultural terms, as "Iraqis against Iraqis." The occupying forces are not involved, but trying to stop the violence, a colonial cliche to justify the Occupation. The aim is to make the public focus on the violence of the occupied and oppressed, and justifies the action of the occupiers. Of course, the opposite is true; the Occupation is the cause of violence.

Recent reports reveal that the U.S. continues to torture foreign detainees around the world (including Iraq) where the U.S. runs its clandestine prisons. The Washington Post (Dana Priest) and Amnesty International reported that the U.S. administration (the C.I.A.) is running prisons outside the U.S. territory, where prisoners were interrogated and tortured by U.S. interrogators and C.I.A. officers. Because of the complicity of the corporate media, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia etc. were never mentioned. The U.S. uses the old gulags to avoid scrutiny by Congress and to fool the American public. In his speech on Veterans' Day, President Bush accurately described the old gulags; "And we have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before -- in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags." Isn’t about time to stop the criminal practice and close all the new gulags?

The inhumane practice is in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter. Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture -- ratified by the U.S. -- points out clearly and unequivocally that: "No State party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be danger of being subjected to torture." The fact that the U.S. administration, the corporate media, and Western elites are now arguing openly to legitimise torture is evident of U.S. hypocrisy when dealing with justice and human rights.

One of the major reasons why the U.S. and its allies are able to get away with war crimes in Iraq is the role of the U.S.-British corporate or state controlled media, and their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. The current situation in Iraq is deliberately falsified by "embedded" journalists and filtered through the media. In fact, the BBC is censoring any honest reporting from Iraq. It is simply a platform for imperialist propaganda funded by the British taxpayers.

The news from Iraq is that the British Ministry of Defence's recent poll reveals that more than 82 percent of Iraqis "strongly oppose" the U.S. Occupation of their country. "Less than 2 per cent of Iraqis (brought into Iraq on the back of U.S. tanks) believe coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security." It follows that the U.S. and Britain are illegally occupying Iraq and terrorising the Iraqi people. The lie that Iraq is on its way to "democracy" and "prosperity" has been exposed by the Iraqi people.

Finally, the U.S. is not above the laws. If President Bush and his administration have any respect for the law, the best moral act "within the law" is the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

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