Download this page as a PDF

• The United States, with the support of the Australian government, is threatening all-out war on Iraq that will cost thousands of innocent lives and further destabilise the Middle East.
• The people of Iraq suffered through war against Iran from 1980-88. An estimated 205,000 people died in the 1991 attack by a US-led coalition over 70% were civilians.
• Over the last decade, economic sanctions enforced in part by the Royal Australian Navy have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, especially children and the elderly.
• This is not about Iraqs weapons of mass destruction, which former weapons inspector Scott Ritter says have been rendered harmless. There is talk about evidence but it is simply a public relations stunt to justify war. US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld recently paraphrased Winston Churchill: Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.
• This war is not about Iraqs military strength, which was severely disabled by the 1991 Gulf war and a decade of sanctions. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has stated: The policy of the US is regime change, with or without [weapons] inspectors. Iraq has the worlds second largest oil reserves, and America wants to bully its way into controlling them. This is a war about oil, not democracy.
• When George W. Bush talks about regime change he means replacing a brutal dictator he doesnt like with a brutal dictator who will do his bidding.
• UN resolutions on disarmament and human rights will only work if they are applied equally, without fear or favour. All the nuclear powers and all Middle East states must abolish their stocks of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (including Israel, which has over 200 nuclear weapons in its arsenal). The USA and Israel have defied UN resolutions on Palestine for decades, and the US has refused to sign, ratify and abide by numerous international conventions on weapons of mass destruction, including the test ban treaty.
• Concern about weapons of mass destruction means a world-wide move to reduce armaments and arms sales, not selling huge amounts of weapons into Middle East countries and then bombing them to oblivion. Another war on Iraq would be a high-tech massacre, creating a toxic regional swamp of biological and chemical residues, plus radiation from radioactive depleted uranium-hardened warheads.
• We must not inflict another war on the people of Iraq and neighbouring states, with ecological and humanitarian devastation, and a flood of new refugees.
• Australia is already supporting this rush to war. Australian warships are in the Gulf, enforcing sanctions. Defence Minister Robert Hill says the Pine Gap intelligence base near Alice Springs would be utilised in the event of military action against Iraq.

Speak out, talk to friends and neighbours. Weíll only stop the war in the Middle East if thousands of people show their opposition.