AFTER the disgraceful episode, where not one soldier or officer was found guilty of the murder of Baha Mousa, the attempt to sanitise the operations of the British army in Iraq, by the MoD, has been aborted by the decision of High Court judges to lift the legal order which forbade the media from reporting allegations of torture and killings by British troops in Iraq.
The killings, torture and mutilations in question were alleged to have happened a year after, after six British troops were killed by a crowd of armed Iraqis.
The allegations are that of 31 Iraqi civilians taken into custody by British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji in Amara, in May 2004, 22 were allegedly killed and their bodies mutilated, while the other nine allegedly suffered torture.
The families of the deceased Iraqis and the survivors of the incident are shortly due to be at the High Court in London, where they will be seeking compensation and a public inquiry.
Lawyers for the Iraqi families have a video taken by relatives of the dead which shows bodies being taken to hospital in Amara and bodybags being opened.
The lawyers also have witness statements from hospital workers who saw the bodies of the dead being handed over by British soldiers for burial and allege that the bodies showed evidence of gouged-out eyes, serious injuries to genitals, asphyxiation and hanging.
The fact is that imperialist wars against oppressed nations always produce atrocities, since the imperialist forces are trained to believe that they are fighting either some axis of evil, that must be destroyed, or that they are fighting ‘inferior peoples’.
The same kind of atrocities were carried out by British forces during the Malayan emergency, and in Kenya during the Land and Freedom struggle of the Mau Mau, where tortures of all kinds were carried out in the field of operations and at the Hola concentration camp.
In fact the history of British imperialism from Ireland to Iraq is one of atrocities.
Imperialism and war crimes are inseparable.
This is especially so today when the imperialist powers are desperately using their massive fire power to try and subjugate the peoples of the Middle East and central Asia.
Despite this firepower the position of the imperialists is desperate. British troops were sent off to Afghanistan by an arrogant Labour Minister who said that he did not think they would have to fire a single shot.
Four million shots later, NATO chiefs say that the war is being lost.
The answer of the MoD is to cut the training period for new recruits from 28 to 14 weeks. This means that partially trained young soldiers are to be rushed to Afghanistan, a strange country peopled by tough, determined and brave warriors who have a history of delivering very heavy blows to the British army.
This is a recipe for early deaths of very young soldiers, the brutalisation of very young people and war crimes and atrocities as reprisals.
No wonder troops are losing control and in some cases are losing their minds as well as their lives.
The latest figures for US army suicides is revealing to say the least.
US army suicide rates are now nearly double their 2001 levels, that is the levels reached two years before the invasion of Iraq.
Eighty-nine suicides were confirmed in 2007, and if 32 suspected suicides are also confirmed, the total will rise above the 2006 figure of 102.
The data, released at a news conference, also showed that more than 2,000 soldiers had tried to take their own lives or injure themselves in 2007, compared with fewer than 1,500 the previous year.
This is the reality of imperialism, a leopard that will never change its spots, where the ex-chiefs of staff of the British army have opposed allowing the House of Commons to decide by vote whether Britain will go to war. They say that this must be ruled out since it would make a pre-emptive surprise attack by British forces more difficult.
There is only one remedy for imperialism. This is a socialist revolution to expropriate the bankers and the bosses and to smash the capitalist state including its armed forces and officer corps.
