IT doesn't matter whether or not President Clinton fired his missiles in order to distract attention from his troubles with Monica Lewinsky. He would have done it, anyway. Apart from the assured loss of innocent lives in faraway, impoverished countries, it is our informed reaction that matters now.

We have been through this many times before, with the lies echoed predictably from London and Canberra and by too many of those of us paid to keep the public record straight. ``Evil'' is the word they use about the terrorists. It was Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's word, and George Bush's and John Major's, and is now Bill Clinton's and Tony Blair's word. In 1986, there was the ``evil'' Colonel Gaddafi, whose country President Reagan bombed from bases in Britain, killing mostly women and children, including Gaddafi's 16-month-old daughter. In 1990, there was the ``evil'' General Noriega, said to be a dangerous drugs trafficker, whose capture by US Marines required a full-scale invasion of his country and the death by bombing of at least 2000 Panamanians, mainly the poorest of the poor in their barrios. Noriega and drugs had precious little to do with it. President Bush had been director of the CIA when Noriega was their man; and drugs have long been a CIA currency. The aim was to put Panama, its canal and its US base under direct American sovereignty, managed by other Noriegas.

In the same year, there was, as George Bush put it, ``the truly evil'' Saddam Hussein, another one of his and Reagan's old pals, whose regional adventures they had armed and backed (along with Margaret Thatcher, who sent most of her cabinet to Baghdad as supplicants or arms salesmen). Saddam's use of American and British weapons in his attack on the ``evil'' mullahs in Iran in 1980 was perfectly acceptable; a million people died in that ``forgotten'' war, and the American and British arms industries never looked back.

Alas, Saddam, the nominal victor, then attacked another country, the wrong country, Kuwait, which is effectively an Anglo-American oil protectorate. He was clearly unreliable: ``an uppity bastard'', as one State Department briefer described him more in sorrow than anger. Punishing the uppity bastard cost as many as a quarter of a million Iraqi lives, according to a study by the Medical Educational Trust. These were ordinary Iraqis who died during and immediately after a period of carnage whose true scale was never appreciated outside the Middle East.

This old fashioned colonial massacre was known as the Gulf war. The dead included thousands of Kurdish and Shi'a people who were Saddam's bitter opponents and whom Bush had called upon to rise up against their oppressor. Long after it was over, New York Newsday revealed, from official sources, that three brigades of the US 1st Mechanised Infantry Division - ``the Big Red One'' - had used snow plows mounted on tanks to bury alive Iraqi conscripts in more than 100 kilometres of trenches. A brigade commander, Colonel Anthony Moreno, said, ``For all I know, we could have killed thousands.''

These were mostly soldiers on the verge of surrender or in retreat; others were hunted down by American helicopter gunships whose bored crews described ``shooting fish in a barrel''. According to the Geneva Convention, these are war crimes. US forces fired tens of thousands of Depleted Uranium shells, which are illegal under UN Resolution 32/84. The radioactivity has a half-life of 125,000 years and the rate of cancers in Iraq has since risen dramatically.

The following year, Bush attacked Somalia in what was called a ``humanitarian intervention''. He was in the midst of his re-election campaign. Bush said the Marines were doing ``God's work ... saving thousands of innocents''. Like his moralising over the Gulf war, this was generally accepted by the Western media, with honorable exceptions. American television crews were waiting as the marines landed in a beautiful African pre-dawn: ``prime time'' at home. From the Somalian side there was perpetual darkness: ``chaos'' and ``tribalism'' and ``warlords''. When the American warlords had completed their adventure in Somalia and taken the media home with them, the story died, as we say. According to CIA estimates, the marines had left between 7000 and 10,000 Somalis dead. This was not news. Soon after he was elected in 1992, Bill Clinton attacked Baghdad with 23 Cruise missiles, said to be aimed at an ``intelligence complex''. Seven missed their target and destroyed a residential area, killing, once again, mostly women and children, including Iraq's most distinguished artist, Leila al-Attar. Interviewed on his way to church with his wife, Clinton said, ``I feel quite good about this, and I think the American people feel quite good about it.'' The pretext for the attack was an Iraqi ``plot'' to kill George Bush on a visit to Kuwait. There was no hard evidence and the plot story is now widely regarded as fake.

Two years ago, Clinton attacked Iraq again, this time insisting that he was ``defending'' Kurds against Saddam Hussein. Once again, military technology dominated the news, celebrated with maps and missiles looking sleek against the dawn light; Australian TV used Pentagon footage. The Tomahawk missiles were said to have struck only ``radar sites'' and ``strategic control centres''. Addressing the American people, yet again, Clinton invoked the paramount rule of the Old West: ``When you abuse your own people ... you must pay the price.'' Once again, an untold number of civilians - television unpeople, I call them - paid the price. Earlier this year, Clinton very nearly attacked again. Virtually the same footage appeared on television: missiles ready; Top Gun pilots ready, Brian Henderson ready; John Howard and Alexander Downer ready. President ready to address the American people, the word ``evil'' on his lips. What stopped him?

Like spontaneous combustion, public opinion all over the world raised its voice. The television cameras had also shown glimpses of Iraq's silent holocaust, the consequences of the imposition of ``economic sanctions'' by the United States and Britain (under the usual UN flag of convenience) against the Iraqi civilian population, notably its children. Tony Blair said he wept for the children who were killed on Omagh by a terrorist act; but he is silent on the children who die in Iraq as a result of one of the most enduring terrorist acts of the late 20th century. According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation, both UN agencies, more than half a million children have died as a direct result of sanctions. Other sources put the figure at more than a million. Under rules drawn up by a US-controlled sanctions committee, Iraq is prohibited from importing fertiliser and animal feed equipment. This has caused much of agriculture to collapse. Baby food and enriched powdered milk are blockaded, along with vital hospital equipment; stethoscopes, X-ray machines, medical swabs, scanners and water purifiers. As for last week's news, there is no reliable count of the casualties of Clinton's attack on Sudan and Afghanistan.

Rescuers have found limbs in the rubble, and people have terrible burns. They are all, of course unpeople. What is certain is an unerring pattern of ruthless, lawless terrorism, infinitely greater than that of any Islamic and Irish group. It is time to stop sniggering at the distractions of this rampant power and to recognise the truth about it, and to speak out.

(John Pilger's latest book, Hidden Agendas, is published in Australia by Vintage.)
Thanks to Jesse Walker for bringing this text to our attention.

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