CULTURAL CLEANSING IN IRAQ. Why Museum Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered. Edited by R.W. Baker, Shereen T. Ismael and Tareq Ismael, Pluto Press, London, 2024, price £17.

Do not read this book, if you are an American or British citizen conscious of the obligations of democracy, who wants to believe that Judeo-Christian morality played some part in your government’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq to impose “democracy and freedom”. For if you do, you may be crushed by its revelations of deliberate state-ending destruction and a policy of cultural cleansing; by your shared responsibility for this human and national calamity; and, despite the near irreparability of what has been accomplished, by the massive reparations needed now and for the next fifty years to begin to counter the consequences of genocide. The case for cultural genocide is powerfully made in this extraordinary and frightening book

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAR . THE UN SANCTIONS REGIME IN IRAQ, by Hans Kristof von Sponeck, Berghanhn Books, price $39,95

"In this sober and impressive study, Hans Graf Sponeck reminds us of the provisions of the Hague Convention of 1907 that bar any penalty inflicted on people for actions for which they are not responsible, an elementary moral principle and for the past century, a binding obligation on all states. In his meticulous and carefully reasoned review, he demonstrates with painful care and precision that the UN Security Council, but particularly the US and UK, radically violated these minimal conditions of civilized behavior in their sanctions program directed against the tortured population of Iraq, including the oil for food program that he valiantly tried to direct in a humane manner, struggling against their cruel and unremitting interference. It is necessary reading, with crucial lessons for the immediate future as well. And immensely sad". · Noam Chomsky

"This is one of the most important books I can remember." · John Pilger

MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR CAPITALISM: HOW IRAQ THREATENED THE US ECONOMIC EMPIRE AND HAD TO BE DESTROYED, by Christopher Doran, published by Pluto, price £17.99 pbk.

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Why did the US invade Iraq? Christopher Doran’s new study argues that the policy has been a success, if the true motivations behind the Occupation are considered.

ERASING IRAQ THE HUMAN COSTS OF CARNAGE, by Michael Otterman & Richard Hil with Paul Wilson, Pluto Press 2024, price $20

For nearly two decades, the US and its allies have prosecuted war and aggression in Iraq. Erasing Iraq shows in unparalleled detail the devastating human cost.

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INVISIBLE WAR - THE UNITED STATES AND THE IRAQ SANCTIONS, by Joy Gordon, Harvard University Press, price $21,95

The economic sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1990 to 2024 were the most comprehensive and devastating of any established in the name of international governance. The sanctions, coupled with the bombing campaign of 1991, brought about the near collapse of Iraq’s infrastructure and profoundly compromised basic conditions necessary to sustain life.

In a sharp indictment of U.S. policy, Joy Gordon examines the key role the nation played in shaping the sanctions, whose harsh strictures resulted in part from U.S. definitions of “dual use” and “weapons of mass destruction,” and claims that everything from water pipes to laundry detergent to child vaccines could produce weapons.

BEYOND EDUCIDE, Sanctions, Occupation and the Struggle for Higher Education in Iraq, edited by Dirk Adriaensens, Ward Treunen, Sami Zemni, Christopher Parker and Lieven De Cauter, Academia Press 2024, price €9

Iraq’s former pride, its education system, has collapsed. The international seminar in Ghent was a significant first step in determining whether the extrajudicial killings, abductions, forced displacement of Iraqi academics and other professionals, the destruction of the educational infrastructure, during the war and subsequent occupation, are indeed a case of pre-meditated elimination of Iraq’s intellectual elite and education system, and could constitute “Educide”. This word has yet to enter the international dictionary of crimes; it is a composite of education and genocide [which the author has combined] to refer to genocide of the educated segments of Iraqi society. It can only be hoped that both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court will pursue the question of possible educide in Iraq. - Hans Christof von Sponeck

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