Interesting open letter to Congress...

REPLY TO US CONGRESS LETTER ON IRAQ, IRAN & TERRORISM TO THE INDIAN PREMIER
K Gajendra Singh

June 8, 2007

Excellencies ,TOM LANTOS Chairman ,ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN and HOWARD L. BERMAN members , Committee on Foreign Affairs , GARY L. ACKERMAN , Chairman & MIKE PENCE, Member , Subcommittee on the Middle East & South Asia ,BRAD SHERMAN ,Chairman ,EDWARD R. ROYCE Member ,Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation & Trade and THE PEOPLE OF USA

Introduction ;

"I saw a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother's body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened -"a Humanitarian worker in Iraq.

The number of Iraqi civilians killed in Baghdad according to Reuters jumped to nearly 2,000 in May, the highest monthly toll since the so called Surge ie a U.S.-backed security crackdown. In the same month 127 US soldiers were also killed, the third highest monthly total.

Number of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War on Iraq - At Least 665,000 plus according to John Hopkin's Medical school report , based on July, 2006 survey , which was published by the prestigious British medical journal 'The Lancet'. The methodology used is the same as for famines , or in Darfur and other areas of conflict and violence .

Over 3500 US soldiers have been killed and fifty thousand maimed and injured. Tens of thousands of mercenaries aka illegal enemy combatants operating against Iraq have been killed and injured.

Multiply the case of orphans like above, widows and others in Iraq , the aggressed nation and others in USA and elsewhere. But US President Bush repeated the obscenely low figures of 30,000 Iraqis dead last year . No shame of disproportion! More on the letter.

He goes on to discuss Scooter Libby's recent sentencing..

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former chief of staff and national security adviser to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury and obstruction of justice relating to the Iraq war, thus becoming the highest-level US official to be sentenced to jail since the Iran-Contra affair 20 years ago. He was fined $250,000 and in a judicial flourish - got slapped with $400 in court costs. He would also serve two years' probation at the end of the prison term. American public must ensure that criminals are not pardoned by the President.

The Judge, Reggie Walton, not inclined to grant bail, stated that he had to balance Libby's record of service to the country against a need to punish those who lied under oath. He added people occupying high office had a duty not to step over the line." The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, who recommended a three-year sentence, emphasised. "We need to make the statement that the truth matters ever so much." Lying has become a second nature!

Dick Cheney described Libby as "a man of the highest intellect, judgment and personal integrity". Whom to take seriously? The defence counsel read out 100 letters of support from mostly Neo-Cons including Paul Wolfowitz , who was ousted for trying to furnish his love nest with World Bank funds .

Libby was not responsible for leaking Ms Valerie Plame's identity as CIA covert agent but almost the whole administration appeared involved in doing that . The sentence related to the perjury and obstruction of justice and the cover-up. Joseph Wilson ,Ms Plame's husband, a former US ambassador, went to Niger and found that US claims that Iraq had been seeking uranium to build a nuclear bomb were false. His 2003 New York Times article angered the White House, which had used the false claim as an alibi to invade Iraq.

Wolfowitz had scoffed at Gen Eric L Shinseki assessment before the invasion that couple of hundred thousand of US troops would be required to pacify Iraq . A smaller number was used. The General was also wrong .Not even half a million would have stopped the Iraqi freedom fighters, as in Algeria after the second world war or in Turkey after the first. Algeria lost one million in a population of eleven million .

Wolfowitz crowed after the Fall of Baghdad that the causes belli cited for the invasion were just excuses. USA wanted Iraq oil ( for free ) and control the regions' s rich energy resources extending up to and including the Caspian basin under the bogus pretext of war on terror . All claims as alibi for invasion were proved false.

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.