The New Worker
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 17th December 2004

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Lead
RESISTANCE IN IRAQ ROLLS ON
by our Arab Affairs Correspondent
The Iraqi resistance offensive is rolling over relentlessly
against the US-led occupation army throughout Iraq. Fierce fighting
continues in Fallujah, the city the Americans said they’d take within a
week, as guerrillas emerge from the ruins to take on the marines in the
streets. American and puppet forces are under fire in Baghdad and
virtually every major town in the country and there’s a 48-hour queue
for petrol in the capital due to the continuing sabotage of the
oil industry.
Jubilant Fallujan partisans are claiming victory after three days of
street battles this week. Plumes of smoke cover parts of the city and
US warplanes are bombing suspected resistance strongholds in the heart
of the town. The Americans are using some sort of knock-out gas in
their attacks but they have proved inferior in the hand-to-hand combat
that the Fallujan partisans excel in.
A Mujahideen spokesman claimed that 350 Americans had been killed
and 47 captured and that 82 partisans had lost their lives in the
counter-attacks that have penned the Americans down in part of the
city.
Islamic
law
The spokesman said that the prisoners, who include a large number of
puppet troops, would be treated according to Islamic law and not the
Geneva Convention. And they added that the Americans have sent a
special envoy to bargain for the release of the prisoners, said to
include three senior American officers.
The Americans are pouring in more reinforcements in readiness for the
sham elections in six weeks time. Whether they take place is another
matter. Calls for a boycott are growing as Fuad al Rawi, a member of
the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) explained. “The security situation
is still deteriorating and that is a convincing reason to postpone
elections. The IIP and more than 70 political parties, organisations
and groups have called for postponing the polls for the sake of the
Iraqi national interest.”
“The IIP and the parties have also called for national reconciliation
before carrying out an election,” he told the press. “Since it is the
first time we are experiencing a democratic process, the IIP hopes
elections would be carried out under fair, just and transparent
circumstances”.
That clearly is not going to happen. Anglo-American imperialism is only
interested in a charade to rubber-stamp their hand-picked stooges who
currently call themselves the “interim government”.
The Americans are trying to boost their prestige at home and abroad
with much publicised visits by the puppets to Western leaders,
including Bush and Blair. And the first act at home has been to start
the show-trials of former members of Saddam Hussein’s government
currently held in US hands. Ali Hassan al Majid, a prominent Baathist
the Americans dubbed “Chemical Ali” may be paraded next week on charges
of war-crimes.
Their lawyer is objecting to the authority of the court appointed by
the puppet regime and arguing that only an international court would be
appropriate for such charges. He said that one of the prisoners, former
vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, had been offered a place on the
puppet council if he agreed to testify against Saddam Hussein but he
refused. Some of the senior Baathist prisoners have begun a
hunger-strike to protest at the conditions they are held in which
include solitary confinement.
Most of the imprisoned Baathist leaders have not seen a lawyer for over
a year and no one believes any one of them can expect a fair trial
under the auspices of the puppet regime and the guns of the occupation
army.
Bush may well hope that show trials and sham elections will help him
justify the illegal war and criminal occupation of Iraq to the American
people but the cold statistics of war tell another story. According to
Pentagon figures 1,448 imperialist troops have been killed and nearly
10,000 wounded since the war began last year. Most of them were
Americans. A further 5,500 US soldiers have deserted, some seeking
refugee status in Canada.
*************
Editorials
Justice for the Mousa family
BAHA MOUSA, a hotel
receptionist in Basra, was beaten to death in custody by British troops
in September 2003. His family were given the paltry sum of $3,000 in
compensation and they have rejected a further $5,000 of blood-money to
demand a full inquiry in the death of their son.
Their campaign has taken a step further following the High Court ruling
this week in favour of the family accepting that their case was
covered European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and paving the
way for a inquiry to ascertain whether there had been an unlawful
killing.
The Blair government has tried to block an independent inquiry from the
very beginning, arguing first that an investigation would hamstring the
Army’s capability to fight if it was open to civil claims and then by
hypocritically claiming that the ECHR did not cover the British army of
occupation in Iraq. The Court rejected these arguments, that come from
a Government that trumpets “human rights” when it suits it, and ruled
that as the Army is in control of Basra, British justice also applies
to those subject to its authority.
Though the High Court rejected the claims from five other Iraqi
families whose relatives were shot by soldiers on combat operations, a
number of MPs are now calling for a wide-ranging investigation into
allegations of brutality by British troops in Iraq.
No amount of compensation will bring Baha Mousa back from the grave but
an official inquiry can establish the facts and bring those guilty of
war-crimes to account. Soldiers are accountable for their actions and
so are the officers who turn a blind eye to acts of brutality by their
men. But the greatest war-criminals are those who ordered them into
Iraq in the first place.
The Blair government went to war on the basis of lies. The Saddam
Hussein government did not possess weapons of mass destruction and the
United Nations Security Council refused to sanction the Anglo-American
imperialist invasion of Iraq.
The struggle within the labour movement to defeat the Blair clique must
intensify, regardless of the fact that we are approaching a general
election. Blair and his cronies must go. British forces must be
immediately and unconditionally withdrawn from Iraq.
*************
The
mysterious death of Dr Kelly
The death of Dr David Kelly, the weapons expert at the heart of
the “dodgy dossier” scandal, continues to haunt the Government. Though
the Hutton inquiry endorsed the official presumption of suicide, two
paramedics who saw the body are now publicly expressing doubts about
the cause of death.
Dr Kelly, named as the possible source of BBC allegations about the
Government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, was found
dead in a field near his home shortly after a grilling by a
parliamentary sub-committee. His wrist was cut. The paramedics say the
small amount of blood around the body was inconsistent with the cut on
his wrist being the cause of death. Other experts, scientists who have
formed the Kelly Investigation Group, have made similar observations.
Dr Kelly’s death was never properly investigated by the Hutton inquiry
that was, in any case, seen as a Government whitewash. The disquiet
over his death continues because there has never been a full inquiry
into his death. Though the police believe Dr Kelly killed himself, only
an inquest can rule out foul play – and that is clearly what is needed
now.
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