Download Category: War History

Gas, Chemicals, Bombs: Britain Has Used Them All before in Iraq

NO ONE, LEAST OF ALL THE BRITISH, SHOULD BE SURPRISED AT THE STATE OF ANARCHY IN IRAQ. We have been here before. We know the territory, its long and miasmic history, the all-but-impossible diplomatic balance to be struck between the cultures and ambitions of Arabs, Kurds, Shia and Sunni, of Assyrians, Turks, Americans, French, Russians and of our own desire to keep an economic and strategic presence there.

Laid waste, a chaotic post-invasion Iraq may now well be policed by old and new imperial masters promising liberty, democracy and unwanted exiled leaders, in return for oil, trade and submission. Only the last of these promises is certain. The peoples of Iraq, even those who have cheeredpassing troops, have every reason to mistrust foreign invaders. They havebeen lied to far too often, bombed and slaughtered promiscuously.

Iraq is the product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient history, thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Kurdistan at the end of the first worldwar. Unsurprisingly, anarchy and insurrection were there from the start.

World War I

World War I was fought for two principal reasons: the land and wealth of Germany, and the land and wealth of Russia. The land had been ordered by God to be given to the people forever, but had been taken by the rulers. The establishment wished to possess this land and wealth of the Tzar of Russia, and the land and wealth of the Kaiser of Germany.

The first part, capturing the wealth of the Tzar, was realized. To prevent the Tzar of Russia, or any member of his family from ever reclaiming this wealth, they were shot. All of his land and property and that of his nobles, plus that of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, of which he was head, was seized. This together constituted the total land area of Russia. A prize indeed! No wonder the world bankers were so eager to finance the communist revolution[1].

The second reason, the attempt to seize the German land, was only partially successful.

DURING THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES THE YANKEES ATTACKED MY GRANDFATHER’S REGIMENT AT CROSS KEYS. It was wild. Yankee shouts, rebel yells, shells exploding, cannon firing, deadly musket rattle on the left and right, the horizon filled with writhing blue bodies trying to get to you with bayonets.

My grandfather fired, loaded, fired, loaded, fired, and – they were gone. The smoke quietly blew away. The wounded moaned. The dead lay everywhere. A hat raised on a ramrod was instantly torn by minie balls. They were over there. You didn’t stick your head up to look around.

The Yankee generals were proud. They wouldn’t send a trace flag to tend to their wounded and dead.

After a time the pigs came. They ate the bodies. They ate the badly wounded, too. At first, a shout or the sudden noise of a shot would melee them scatter. But only at first. They returned and ate until gorged. Nothing would make them stop.

Later, someone offered my great-grandfather some pork. My grandfather was revolted. He replied. “I’ll kill Yankees if I have to, but I’m not going to eat ’em!”

In our family we know better than to eat pig. When you eat pig you eat a scavenger. When you eat a scavenger you eat what that scavenger has eaten.

The Pig

Swine are to the animal world what the turkey buzzard is to the bird world. They do the job they were created to do. No rotten carcass, stinking offal, or rancid garbage remains where pigs root.

FIVE YEARS BEFORE PETER I BECAME TSAR, Russia had formed an alliance with the German Empire, Rzech Pospolita (the Kingdom of Greater Poland), and the City-State of Venice in order to oppose the Ottoman Turks. In 1695, during his first campaign against the Turks, Peter I quickly realized that Russia’s free access into the Black Sea and Sea of Azov was not possible so long as the Turks held the Fortress of Azov.

In a protracted and ultimately disastrous attempt to capture Azov, the Russian forces were defeated: Azov was both well fortified and protected by the Turkish fleet. It now further became apparent that wresting Azov from the Turks depended upon the creation of a Russian naval fleet.

Consequently, at the Preobra-zhenskoye and Voronezh shipyards, construction of a fleet of ships was undertaken in earnest in 1696. The shipbuilding proceeded quickly, and by the spring of that same year two warships, 24 galleys, four fire ships and over 1,400 smaller boats had been constructed and were ready for launching.

To understand how the war in 1939 between Poland and Germany, and consequently WWII, unfolded, it is not sufficient to look at – and accept —the widely-held view that peace-loving and weak little Poland was attacked by an ever-marauding National Socialist Germany. Rather, one must look much deeper into history.

This conflict which cost many millions of lives did not originate with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, as is still claimed today by over-simplifying historians. It is not just a black-and-white story, but a complex one. It was also not caused by the Polish mobilization of her army two days previous, on August 30, 1939, although the mobilization of a country’s army, according to international standards, is equal to a declaration of war on the neighbouring country.

Comment added by The Scriptorium: This selfsame “centuries-old, deep-seated hatred on the Polish side” is still very much in evidence today. We invite the reader to consider the vicious invective and threats that a (Polish? at least rabidly pro-Polish!) visitor to our web site saw fit to send us with reference to the article on this page